NYT Web Piece on Mobile Outperforming Web Demonstrates Own Conclusion

Andrew Savikas
March 12, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Listen

NYTimes.com has a piece from Wednesday about several popular mobile apps that are better than their "parent" websites (using Zillow and Yelp as examples). What struck me when I first opened the page on my laptop after following a link to it on Twitter was how the NYTimes.com web experience stacks up to their own mobile app.

Many critics of smartphone reading lament the relatively small screen real estate, but a look at how a site like NYTimes.com actually uses the extra real estate a laptop browser offers is instructive:

I count about 50 words from the story visible on that page, with most of the screen taken up by navigation, ads, and whitespace.

Looking at a similar article on the NYT iPhone app, you actually get more of the article text (more than 70 words) before you have to scroll down:

Having a larger screen size is only an improvement if you actually take advantage of the larger screen size (conversely, the smaller screen of a smartphone imposes constraints that result in a much better reading experience).

Mobile phones and smartphones are not the same thing

Mac Slocum
March 8, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (3) | Listen

Comparing a basic mobile phone to a spiffy new smartphone is like comparing a circa-1993 desktop computer to a Macbook Pro. They're related in a basic sense, but the discrepancies are immense.

Why is this relevant? Because worldwide mobile phone penetration is high while smartphone penetration is relatively low. And if you're a digital publisher trying to reach new markets, you better create material that works on the dominant devices. That means small displays and limited functionality. Arthur Attwell, co-founder and CEO of Electric Book Works, expands on this phone divide in the following interview.

Making the most of the iPad life preserver

Simon St. Laurent
March 5, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (5) | Listen

I was very happy to hear less fear at last week's TOC conference than I've heard at previous shows. Publishers, while still concerned about their futures, seem to be adjusting to the prospects of a much less book-centric world.

A couple of years ago I'd hear standard complaints like "people don't read any more," "customers would rather surf than read," and "piracy just makes the whole Web thing impossible." On the bright side, we all agreed that "at least we don't work in newspapers."

This year, attendees seemed more excited and definitely more positive about the future. Maybe it was Macmillan's successful spat with Amazon. Perhaps it was just an adjustment to the lowered expectations of the economy, and a sense that those who've survived this far are past the disaster.

I suspect, though, the anxiety reduction has something to do with publishers having more hope about the three things all financially-driven publishers need to function:

1. An audience
2. Something to sell that audience
3. A market for selling those things

The audience (1), seems to be coming back, if it ever really left. I didn't hear much about "the decline of reading" this time, but I did overhear "texting is awful, but at least it's text." While the Web may not have helped book sales, it does seem to have made basic literacy much more clearly relevant.

Based on the conversations I had during TOC (an admittedly unscientific sample), publishers' hopes are reviving in large part because they expect the iPad to create a market for their goods (3) on terms they mostly like better than Kindle's terms. Apple's design appeal has created a market for its devices, while Apple's thirst for control over their products has created a controlled market with simple terms, prices publishers (mostly?) control, and relatively little piracy. Publishers have craved something like this for the last decade.

I worry that many of the conversations I heard at TOC assumed that publishers already had (2), something to sell, under control. After all, publishing does an excellent job of creating books -- all kinds of books, on all kinds of subjects, for all kinds of readers. Convert them to ePub or PDF or maybe even an iPhone app if necessary, and we have something to sell, right?

For the moment, yes. There is still demand for traditional books presented through shiny new devices. Millions of readers love and understand books, yet might be willing to make the transition from bound paper and ink to an electronic rendition. Unlike most previous ebook readers, however, the iPad puts its content in direct competition with the Web as readers have come to know it. Unlike the Kindle, for instance, where browsing felt like an afterthought that would use up expensive connectivity, connecting to the Web is more central to the iPad experience than is reading books.

The competition from the Web won't just be free content versus paid content, but a matter of user experience. Will readers be content to follow a long text, or would they rather switch applications to something more interactive, with more connections between content?

I saw two talks at TOC that seemed to get to the heart of this: Pete Meyers' Book Meets Tablet: 10 Ways to Enhance Your iPad Books, and Bob Pritchett's Network Effects Support Premium Pricing. (Neither talk, alas, is available online, though their slides are available at those links.)

Meyers looked at the challenges of competing with the far more interactive Web world, of keeping users interested in the content that publishers hope they will buy. His 10 suggestions, presented as sketches, were all about ways to use the new format to pull readers into the book. Some of it is supplementary material, some of it is allowing readers to personalize their books (with notes), and much of it pushes into new territory that takes a more interactive turn than books have allowed. My personal favorite was renegade sidebars and footnotes, which take familiar asides in books and let them cause more interesting trouble.

Pritchett took a somewhat different course, talking about the possibilities of breaking books out of their covers and bundling them into more comprehensive applications. Pritchett has something of an advantage going into this, as Logos Bible Software works in a field, Bible study and religious reference, where consistent hypertext referencing has gone on for hundreds of years. Concordances, citing chapter and verse, and an immense collection of explorations along similar pathways give Logos a rich field for creating new products by connecting different resources. Establishing those connections and making their use comfortable is a challenge in itself, but opens possibilities no single project can have.

(Beyond the confines of the TOC conference, I also highly recommend Craig Mod's Books in the Age of the iPad, which steps back even further to question the differences between books and the iPad experience.)

So should publishers be happy? Is the iPad a much-needed life preserver for publishers on stormy seas?

Well, yes. It gives them access to a market of people who are interested in buying things from them, who are familiar with their goods, and who likely have the spare cash and time to enjoy them. The harder question, though, is what we publishers are going to do with that life preserver. Is it just going to keep us afloat, or are we going to swim to new places? Most of us, I suspect, should be practicing our swimming.

(And of course we should all worry about Apple's fondness for control leading to limiting what its partners are allowed to do or striving to abolish its competition through aggressive patent suits. This is definitely a salvation worth questioning.)

Continuous publishing through Live Editions

Simon St. Laurent
March 1, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (19) | Listen

One of the biggest challenges of technical publishing is that sinking feeling you get a few moments, days, weeks, or months after you first see a book in print: it's obsolete. No matter how much hard work you put into a book, you can only do so much future-proofing. Sometimes obsolescence comes slowly, but often, especially for popular topics, books have a depressingly short shelf life. Readers want to be able to use the latest and greatest, and blame books quickly when something no longer works.

We've been working for a while on a new way of ensuring that our content will continue to have a life after it's been set down in print. Last week, we released Learning Rails: Live Edition, the pilot for what we hope will become a common way to ensure that our customers can get current content from us, even if it's not yet time for a new edition.

The Live Edition is presently available as an Ebook (PDF, Mobi, and ePub) bundle, and the updated content will also be available through Safari Books Online and eventually print on demand. Customers who buy a Live Edition will get all the updates to the book up until the next new print edition of the book, when the cycle will start again. (For Learning Rails, customers will get all the updates for the upcoming 3.x version of Rails.)

Live Editions follow a different process. Instead of a long wait for a slow new edition, the model is "release early and often." Authors can quickly respond to reader feedback and errata immediately, rather than filing it away for a reprint or a new edition.

Right now, Live Editions are built as an extension of our normal DocBook publishing process. Authors do have to make their updates in markup, rather than Word or OpenOffice. This may be unfamiliar to some authors, but gives them the power to do things like add or remove index entries as the book changes, and gives them a quick path to seeing PDFs in final form.

We plan to create more Live Editions in the near future, starting with topics where change is constant and having the latest information is the critical feature.

Emerging topics from TOC 2010

Mac Slocum
February 26, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

It's interesting to chart technical developments in the publishing industry against TOC's brief history. As Andrew Savikas notes in the following video, things like ebooks and mobile have evolved from small topics to dominant themes. If the pattern holds -- and I don't know why it wouldn't -- we'll see international markets and digital analytics claim more attention at future events.

An expert view of unicorns and digital rights management

Mac Slocum
February 25, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Kirk Biglione, principal at Oxford Media Works, was tracking the Apple tablet / iPad way before other analysts. I believe he was one of the first to dub it "the unicorn," a phrase that beautifully captures the inflated hopes and the actual promise attached to the thing.

Beyond unicorn watching, Biglione is also a digital rights management (DRM) historian who brings a clear-eyed perspective to this inflammatory topic. While others jump on soapboxes, he actually does the homework. Case in point: Biglione's in-depth look at the music industry's stormy history with DRM.

Biglione took a few minutes at TOC to discuss both topics with us.

Author, sell thyself (but in a good way)

Mac Slocum
February 24, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (6) | Listen

Authors who want to jump into Twitter, Facebook and all the rest should pay heed to Chris Brogan. He's spent years -- more than a decade -- carrying on a conversation with his audience. Take a look at the sheer number of @ replies in his Twitter feed and you'll see how seriously he takes this stuff.

In the following interview, Brogan outlines easy community-building techniques and common pitfalls that should be avoided at all costs (narcissists, beware). He's also got a few pointed comments for laggard publishers.

Web community is messy in all the right ways

Mac Slocum
February 23, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (7) | Listen

When you run into Richard Nash, founder of Cursor, you're encountering the embodiment of TOC enthusiasm. He's the anti-curmudgeon.

As you'll see in the following interview, Nash is passionate about the web's ability to connect audiences and authors with the topics that excite them. His thoughts on tagging are particularly compelling (1:57 mark) because he really hits at the heart of web communities: like tags, communities are broad, messy, organic things that should never be pigeonholed by strict taxonomies.

What Nash outlines could very well be a blueprint for future publishing businesses.

The chaos and the opportunity in Arab publishing

Mac Slocum
February 23, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Egyptian publishing is far more chaotic than its Western counterparts. ISBNs are used fleetingly and book rights are a moving target. But that same chaos also breeds opportunity, particularly in the mobile and digital publishing spaces.

Ramy Habeeb, director and co-founder of Kotobarabia, sat down with us at TOC 2010 to discuss the current state of Arab publishing as well as the impact mobile and epublishing may have on that market.

The e-reader growth spurt of 2010

Mac Slocum
February 23, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

At last year's Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, ThreePress Consulting president Liza Daly introduced attendees to the small crop of e-readers in the nascent e-reader market. There weren't many devices to choose from a year ago, but the session hinted at big changes to come.

As TOC 2010 is held this week in New York, it's clear those changes have arrived en masse. E-readers are bountiful -- everyone jumped on the bandwagon -- and adoption is poised to grow beyond envelope-pushing consumers.

I caught up with Liza to get her take on the latest e-reader developments: Amazon vs. Apple, iPad vs. Kindle, mobile apps vs. web apps, and more.

TOC Preview: The Future of Digital Textbooks

Andrew Savikas
February 19, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (4) | Listen

Technology is driving change in the way people teach, learn, and create. The impact of technology on teaching and learning in K-12, higher education, and professional learning has been profound, and, while no one can predict the future, it's safe to say this transformation has only just begun.

At next week's Tools of Change for Publishing conference, a session titled "The Future of Digital Textbooks" and an open roundtable on publishing, emerging technologies, and education, will discuss the devices, business models, and technologies impacting education and textbook publishers.

As a prelude to TOC, panel moderator John W. Warren, Marketing Director, Publications, at the RAND Corporation, posed questions about digital textbooks and their impact on students and teachers to panelists Neeru Khosla, Co-Founder and Executive Director of CK-12 Foundation; Frank Lyman, Executive Vice President of CourseSmart LLC; Nicholas Smith, Chief Operating Officer, Agile Mind; and Eric Frank, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Flat World Knowledge.

John Warren: What are the prospects for ebook devices, such as the Kindle, compared to tablet devices such as the iPad, or accessing digital textbooks on computers, whether desktop computers or laptops?

Neeru Khosla: Ebook devices in their present format (i.e. Kindle, iPad) have limited functionality. They also cost too much for education. When a panel of high school students was asked what device they couldn't live without, 75 percent responded that they couldn't live without their computers. That's a complete device -- providing their music, communication (Skype, AIM), reading, you name it. 

For an ebook reader to be successful it will need to be a multifunction device. For now, there are simply too many limiting factors -- affordability, battery life, portability, and readability. I believe that most of these limitations will be overcome with time; however, the mindset of readability in print format versus online is a huge one and needs to be addressed.

Frank Lyman: Millions of college students are now using computers to access various kinds of digital course materials. This activity has reached almost complete market saturation, with 88 percent of students owning laptops, 9 out of 10 using course management systems and accessing online course materials within the CMS.

Because nearly every student can already access digital textbooks on a computer, the initiatives that are successful at scale in the near term will likely be those focused on the computer as the main access point. Scale is more important in the academic market than in most consumer markets because the institution is interested in providing an equal experience across student groups. This is one of the main reasons why digital learning moved slowly during the past decade, as the "digital divide" narrowed for both computer ownership and broadband access.

That said, I believe there are strong prospects for both ebook and tablet devices in education. The Kindle DX may not have been successful in its initial pilots, but that may reflect the reality that it's better suited for specific educational uses as opposed to being an across-the-board textbook device. For example, at the Darden School at the University of Virginia, the Kindle replaced printed loose-leaf business cases, and there it has been received more positively than in some of the other pilots.

In my opinion, tablets have greater potential as a game-changing device across the educational market. Browser-based interfaces will run some of the best existing interactive learning products for computers, and the new form and functions are likely to drive a new generation of innovative teaching and learning products. That said, in the near term, scale will continue to be an issue for these devices. Until an institution can feel comfortable that students have equal access to this type of experience (as they do with a textbook) they will be reluctant to support large-scale initiatives. So the tablet market will probably grow as the laptop market did -- student by student at first, then adopted institution-wide by some forward-thinking schools, finally reaching the kind of scale that we now see with laptops. Content strategies that support the tablet market will grow more robust through that lifecycle.


Eric Frank: In general, I think we will see continued fragmentation in how people read textbooks. Device manufacturers, be they dedicated devices like the Kindle, broader utility devices like the iPad, or fully featured computers, will continue to compete to gain textbook market share by consistently adding functionality and decreasing price.

All of that competition will lead to device convergence -- dedicated devices will continue to look more like computers, computers will continue to get smaller, and reading functionality will be enhanced. In the end, it will be a lot like the PC market -- lots of consumer choice, huge fragmentation, and constant downward pressure on prices for device manufacturers.

For content companies, this fragmentation presents a continuing challenge. The fixed editorial and development cost to publish a single copy of a textbook requires investment. Now, however, publishers need to spend more money converting files to each of the formats required by devices people are using. And publishers will be paying a "toll" to the device manufacturer that now has pricing power, like Amazon or Apple. All of this while the pressure on prices the market will sustain for digital books will continue to press inexorably toward zero.

Nicholas Smith: I'm going to pose an alternative question here. What problem is the ebook trying to solve? From an educational perspective at least, I feel a little bit like we are trying to put wheels on a horse. This question, and the general discussion, seems to come from the viewpoint of publishers trying to fit traditional content into a new format. What problems are we trying to solve for students and teachers? Is it simply the dissemination of two-dimensional print content in a highly consumable, electronic format? We have an opportunity and a responsibility to design products that fully leverage the power of technology.

Stealing from Henry Ford, let's not design a faster horse; let's design an automobile. Learning involves reading, but it involves so much more that we can offer through technology. Imagine that I no longer read a page of text and look up, realizing that my mind has been wandering for half of the page. Maybe I start the "page" by watching a video that engages me in a topic and poses some provocative questions, I then read a paragraph or two, and finally I'm presented with a couple of questions. By answering these questions, I confirm my understanding of what I just read and can continue reading, or drill down into this topic further through some links if I am curious. If I answer the questions wrong, I am immediately pointed to where I need to go to get steered back on course. And then, when I get to class, my teacher already knows what I and others have been having trouble with, since the results to the questions I've answered -- and failed to answer -- are sent to her, thus she can teach to what I, and other students, don't know instead of what we already know.

That's an automobile, not a horse with wheels.

Got Tips for TOC Newbies?

Andrew Savikas
February 18, 2010 | Permalink | Listen

This week I'll be posting some preview highlights about next week's (nearly sold out) TOC Conference in New York.

While there's plenty of familiar faces on the attendee list for TOC (welcome back!), there's also a lot of newcomers who can learn from your advice and experience about how to make the most of their time at TOC.

We've posted a Newcomer Tips page on the conference website where you can leave your suggestions in the Comments section. We'll also be offering (optional) "Alumni" and "Newbie" ribbons to affix to your conference badge if you'd like to wear your status with pride. Pick yours up before the opening cocktail reception as a great way to break the ice.

A full list of on-site events is posted here.

TOC Preview: Ebooks Are Here (But Print Still is Too)

Andrew Savikas
February 17, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

This week I'll be posting some preview highlights about next week's (nearly sold out) TOC Conference in New York.

Much of the conversation in publishing today revolves around ebooks, digital reading, and the exploding mobile web. As it should. But of course print books are still the cash cow for most publishers, and will remain an important revenue stream and delivery format for some time to come.

We've lined up several sessions meant to address the challenges of retaining and sustaining a print business and workflow alongside the need to innovate and experiment with digital and mobile reading:

• Digital Printing
  
• Running Two Companies—Taking Book Publishing beyond Publishing Books
  
• The Digital Marketing Wave: Handselling in a Networked World
  
• Case Study: Lessons Learned from TOC 2009 to Grow my Publishing Business
  
• Going Beyond Ebooks: One Publisher's Journey from a Book to Training, Print to Digital
  

While you're checking out the sessions, you can also create a personalized conference schedule on the conference website.

TOC Preview: Getting the Reader's Perspective

Andrew Savikas
February 16, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

This week I'll be posting some preview highlights about next week's (nearly sold out) TOC Conference in New York.

One of the concerns we heard loud and clear from last year's conference (and has been echoed since more broadly in a variety of blogs, Twitter, and email conversations) is that publishers aren't paying enough attention to how things look from the reader's point of view, especially when it comes to things like pricing and purchase experience.

We've lined up several great sessions and panels to explore the reader perspective from a variety of angles. Note that when you've logged in to the conference website, you can indicate whether you're interested in specific sessions:

• How Academics and Students Use Ebooks: Evidence from the JISC National Ebooks Observatory Project
• Test Driving the Digital Reading Experience
  
• Essentials of Digital Books from the Consumer's Point of View
  
• Form & Function: The Future of Reading Digital
  
• Changing the Way Medical Students Learn: Four Stories from Europe
  
• Understanding the Ebook Consumer: The Results of the BISG Consumer Survey
  

I'm also happy to say we've managed to squeeze in a session about using the capabilities of Apple's new iPad to better serve digital readers.

More tomorrow...

Lightning Demos and Ignite!: Micropresentations at TOC 2010

Andrew Savikas
February 12, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

At the first three TOC Conferences, we held evening "Lightning Demo" sessions for brief product pitches and short-form presentations. The constraints of a brief time slot often spur impressive creativity among speakers (and for the audience, the clunkers are mercifully short!).

This year, we're putting the Lightning Demos right in the main program (on Wednesday morning) with a great list of people and companies ready to give a short but sweet preview of their technology. And we're bringing the popular Ignite! format to the Tuesday afternoon keynotes, with our first-ever Ignite! TOC. Ignite speakers have exactly 5 minutes to speak, exactly 20 slides to show, and exactly 15 seconds for each slide. It's a fun and fast way to sample a lot of great stuff in a short amount of time (there's some great Ignite! videos up on iTunes and on the Ignite website if you want a sneak peek at the format).

I'm almost certain we'll sell out for TOC New York sometime early next week, so if you haven't registered yet, sign up today.