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Mac Slocum
September 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Direct-To-Fan: Radiohead, Marillion And The End Of Labels (Robert Andrews, paidContent.org)

80s rock group Marillion, hardly a Top 10 draw nowadays, engages its fans so closely that they funded its latest album to the tune of £360,000. Erik Nielsen, who masterminded the strategy as MD of Marillion's Intact Records business arm, told our London EconMusic conference: "About a decade ago, we set out to release the bonds of the record companies over the artists. We worked out that we needed 5,000 fans to finance an album - when 12,000 did, we thought 'well, we can do this now'. We've continued to do that since 1999." By releasing the digital version of that album specifically on to P2P networks this month - "just to see what might happen, because we knew it was going to happen anyway" - the band has tripled its normal sales of physical deluxe copies.

State of the Blogosphere: The How of Blogging (Technorati)

One in four bloggers spends ten hours or more blogging each week. The most influential bloggers are even more prolific. Using Technorati Index data, we analyzed the posting and tagging behaviors of bloggers according to their Technorati Authority. Over half of the Technorati top authority bloggers post five or more times per day, and they are twice as likely to tag their blog posts compared to other bloggers.

Why the Financial Times can charge for metered content (Jason Preston, Eat Sleep Publish)

Those people who are just passing through and "joining the conversation" can be given free access, while those people who are your actual customers will be asked to pay for their content. By metering their content instead of simply throttling it like the New York Times did, FT is able to keep their content out from behind a wall while still charging for it. [Emphasis included in original post.]

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Mac Slocum
September 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

The End (Boris Kachka, New York Magazine)

The kind of targeted, curated lists editors would love to publish will work even better in an electronic, niche-driven world, if only the innovators can get them there. Those owners who are genuinely interested in the industry's long-term survival would do well to hire scrappy entrepreneurs at every level, people who think like underdogs.

Part Three: Bookstores vs. Online (Joe Wikert, Publishing 2020 Blog)

Why do loyalty programs always just have to be about one store/chain? Why can't there be a loyalty program that includes two or more stores I shop at most frequently? One might be a bookstore but others might be a grocery store, an electronics retailer or maybe a gas station. Points accumulated at all these locations would be pooled together so that one month I might redeem them for a book and the next month I might use them on my gas purchase.

The Future Of Media Round Table (Media Magazine)

Esther Dyson -- I think part of what's happening is that as more and more media becomes possible, different kinds of information find their most suitable venue. Yellow pages are stupid on paper and they make more sense online. Whereas a book, that's linear; you're supposed to read from beginning to end, so it's fine on paper. So I think they'll persist in those forms. And a sort of visual-display kind of magazine makes a lot of sense. Anything that is interactive, where the data changes, like stock prices, again, makes no sense on paper.

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News Roundup: Sony Reader Arrives in UK, Google Scanning Newspaper Archives, Blanket Copyright Licenses vs Fair Use

Mac Slocum
September 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

UK Reaction to Sony Reader Release

Sara Lloyd discusses the impact of the Sony Reader's recent release in the United Kingdom:

Anecdotally, Waterstones store staff report a great deal of interest from customers, and the rumour mills (or well-planned leak??) put a 6 figure number on the Sony Readers sold by the morning of Thursday 4th September.

As I'm sure all of those working in the digital publishing departments of trade publishing houses will agree, it's nice finally to have a major high street bookselling brand pitch itself into the ebook ring so wholeheartedly - and the Sony device is the most compelling (and competitively priced) there is of the dedicated devices so far available here in the UK. I must say it did make my heart leap just a little bit to see huge POS displays promoting the Sony Reader and the associated ebook catalogue from Waterstones in the Tottenham Court Road and Picadilly branches, and it was fun to go in and do some underground detective work to discover that the Waterstones staff seemed quite clued up about it all. (Continue reading)

Google Scanning Newspaper Archives

Google is extending its scanning efforts to newspaper archives. From the New York Times:

Under the expanded program, Google will shoulder the cost of digitizing newspaper archives, much as the company does with its book-scanning project. Google angered some book publishers because it had failed to seek permission to scan books that were protected by copyrights. It will obtain permission from newspaper publishers before scanning their archives.

Google ... will place advertisements alongside search results, and share the revenue from those ads with newspaper publishers. (Continue reading)

Colleges Weigh Blanket Copyright Licenses vs Fair Use Rights

The Copyright Clearance Center is extending its offer of blanket licenses to larger universities. In a 2007 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), some school administrators expressed concern about the implicit waiver of fair use assertions:

But some librarians are ambivalent about blanket licenses, Mr. Rehbach [Jeffrey R. Rehbach, the library-policy adviser at Middlebury College] says, because they fear that colleges will pay for copyright licenses instead of asserting their rights under fair-use doctrine. "We debate back and forth whether this is the best model for us," he says. "As we move toward more licensed products, are we giving up basic rights under the law?"

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Mac Slocum
September 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Digital Newspapers and Digital History (Adam Hodgkin, Exact Editions)

A Kindle for books, a Plastic Logic napkin for newspapers, and no doubt an iMag reader of some kind for magazines. That way lies madness. Google have a better plan [to] try to deliver everything through a web browser. That should work in the direction of universal access. I hope Plastic Logic realise that their device needs to run a standard web browser before they commit everything to a Kindle-like proprietary device.

I Am Trying To Believe (that Rock Stars aren't Dead) (Jim Stogdill, O'Reilly Radar)

... "sell records" was not some complex business model come down from on high. I can't help but think that if there was an equally effective replacement someone would have thought of it by now. That's not to say I don't think new and better music distribution and monetization models won't be invented, I just don't think they will capture and concentrate as much value as the one that is dying before our eyes did. I suspect the balance between linear (touring) and leverage (selling stuff while you sit at home) has simply and irrevocably shifted toward the linear.

A unified field theory of publishing in the networked era (Bob Stein, if:book)

Reading and writing have always been social activities, but that fact tends to be obscured by the medium of print. We grew up with images of the solitary reader curled up in a chair or under a tree and the writer alone in his garret. The most important thing my colleagues and I have learned during our experiments with networked books over the past few years is that as discourse moves off the page onto the network, the social aspects are revealed in sometimes startling clarity. These exchanges move from background to foreground, a transition that has dramatic implications.

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Mac Slocum
September 4, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Create Digital First (Martyn Daniels, Brave New World)

Today we are the start of a digital consumer offer but it is in the main based on yesterday's physical cost model, processes and perceptions. Merely taking the finished book and generating a digital rendition that mirrors the physical one is what music did with CDs. Is it logical to merely replicate the book and create just another rendition? We don't envisage the same demand change as music experienced in selling just fragments (tracks), but it is possible to see the selling of installments or part works, where all the complete 'book' may not be bought.
(Via the Reading 2.0 list)

The Elements of a Perfect eReading Device (Dear Author)

I think that there is a technological gap between what readers would like in the perfect ereader and what can actually be done. If you don't like LCD screens, then you are limited by refresh rates and the inability of eink technology to actually perform some multi function device programs. If you don't like to be limited by refresh rates, want a backlight, and ability to play video, browse the web, and even do a lot of typing (or editing of manuscripts), then eInk devices aren't for you.
(Via Electric Alphabet)

Google Chrome is Bad for Writers & Bloggers (Edward Champion, Edward Champion's Reluctant Habits)

Anyone who uses Chrome will technically own the copyright, but who needs copyright when the Chrome user effectively gives up her right to distribute this content in all perpetuity and without royalties? So if Joyce Carol Oates is using Chrome and types an email to someone, she "owns" the copyright. But Google has the right to use anything that Ms. Oates types into Chrome for any purpose. Google responds. (Via Jose Alonso Furtado's Twitter stream)

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