View from the Trenches: Surviving Change

Kassia Krozser
August 27, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Listen

I am a veteran of the format wars. I started as an innocent civilian, caught on the side of Beta while the DVD army pushed the front closer and closer to my home. Later, I joined the motion picture special forces, dutifully accounting for units of Laser Discs, Beta tapes, and endless VHS videocassettes. I don't think a truce was signed as much as the other formats faded away, though Beta did manage to live on as a professional favorite until just a few years ago.

As I moved up the ranks, I saw industries die. I saw them resurrect. I saw panic. I saw salvation. I saw resignation. I saw false hope. I saw belief. I saw consumer indifference.

The first death -- arguably -- was the rental store. Back in the olden days, you'd go to a store and rent a video. You'd find it on the shelf*, fork over some money, take the video home, watch it immediately, return it. If you failed in either of the last two steps, you'd be dinged with a late fee.

This market was ruled by scarcity. Stores paid big bucks for those units. Retail price was in the neighborhood of $80, higher for some titles. The videocassettes (and yes, we really called them that) could circulate a certain number of times before they were worn out. Only the popular titles were repurchased.

Bookish lesson. But the market was growing, growing, growing, and smart minds were figuring out how to make it bigger. The studios messed with their major markets, introducing a whole new revenue stream. This impacted everyone from theaters to airlines to pay television channels to television networks to local stations. Yet those markets adapted and thrived. Imagine the joy in the finance ranks!

Then, around July 1992 (give or take), the rental industry was destroyed. The studio I worked for released its first major sell-through title, and the world was never the same. Quick definition: in publishing, sell-through is the percentage of actual units sold versus units shipped. In motion pictures, sell-through is defined as direct to consumer sales (versus rentals). Today, we include "electronic sell-through (EST)" or "digital sell-through (DST)" in our jargon. I prefer the latter, the guilds seem fond of the former. I will win this battle.

Read more…

Is Your Survey Data Lying to You?

a primer on interpreting statistical data

Jeevan Padiyar
August 27, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (9) | Listen

As the book industry continues to change, we are inundated with statistics about user behavior:

·         49% of e-book readers are bought as gifts [Bowker]

·         28% of US adults are avid (5+ hours/week) readers [Verso] - 64MM avid readers

·         The heart of the U.S. romance novel readership is women aged 31-49 who are currently in a romantic relationship. [Romance Writers of America]

These statistical nuggets are great because in isolation they give us a glimpse into why people do what they do, and how we can adjust our business to match market needs. But how often do we blindly accept data because it comes with pretty graphs and sound bites that seem to make sense? Probably more often than we'd like to admit.

The best way to ensure that we are not led astray, is to look at what biases have been introduced into a study before using its data to make a decision.  Bias is systematic favoritism in the data collection process which causes misleading results.  Two types of bias are hazards in studies: selection bias and measurement bias.

·         Selection Bias can occur when the group that is surveyed does not accurately reflect the target of the study, or is simply too small to matter. For example, if a study claims to describe the behavior of all readers in the U.S. but only surveys 30 stay-at-home moms in Indiana, it is hardly representative of every reader in the country.

·         Measurement Bias occurs when the questions asked favor a specific outcome. A survey question like "Do you agree that e-books are replacing print books as the preferred medium?" will deliver very different results than one that asks readers to choose their preferred medium from among e-books, purchased p-books or books checked out from the library.

As you read a study, ask yourself the following questions to determine if the authors tried to mitigate bias. Remember: the target population is the group that you want to generalize about, and the sample is the group that you actually survey in order to make those generalizations.

1.       Is the target population (sometimes called the sampling frame) well-defined? If it isn't, the study may contain people outside the target, or it may exclude people who are relevant. In researching e-book reader purchase behavior, a well-defined population could be American consumers who purchased an e-book reader either online or in a physical store over the last 2 years. But if a study only looked at online shoppers at Christmas, the results could be skewed towards gift givers, and they could not be generalized to consumers who bought e-book readers in stores.

2.       Is the sample randomly selected from the target population?  In a truly random sample, every member of the target population has the same chance of being included in the study. When asking this question be wary of surveys that are conducted exclusively on the web, but draw generalizations about all people. These types of studies have participants that are not randomly selected, as they only capture a slice of the traffic to a given domain, and at best can only ever speak to the habits of the users of the particular site conducting research.

3.       Does the sample represent the target population? Here it is important to look at all of the characteristics of the target population to see if they are mirrored in the sample. If you are looking to figure out the book purchase habits of Americans, make sure the sample has the same diversity of ethnicity, geographic distribution and age as is reported in the latest U.S. census. 

4.       Is the sample large enough? The larger the sample the more accurate the results. A quick way to estimate if a sample is large enough to produce a reasonably small margin of error is to divide 1 by the square root of the sample size (Margin of Error=√Sample Size). So a 1,500 person survey would produce a margin of error of 2.58%. It is also important that the sample size in this calculation be the number of people who responded to survey, not the number of survey requests that were sent out.

5.       What is the response rate for the survey? The response rate is defined as the number of people in a target population who actually responded to a given survey.  If the response rate is too low, a study may only reflect people who have a strong opinion about the topic, making the results biased toward their opinions and not the larger and less vociferous target population. A "good" response rate is dependent upon the margin of error that a study is looking to achieve (or that it claims), and the size of the target population being studied. There are two factors to consider here. The first one is a no-brainer: The higher the response rate, the more accurate the study. The second is a little more subtle. The larger the target poplulation being examined, the lower the response rate required for the same level of accuracy. The linked figure helps explain the correlation graphically. (According to the chart, for a study that is looking to achieve a margin of error of +/- 5%, and is studying a population of 2000 people, the response rate needs to approach 20% to achieve the desired result.) At the end of the day, know the response rate and make sure it closely matches the stated margin of error that study purports to achieve.

6.       Do the questions appear to be leading the respondents into a particular answer? If they do, run the other way! This means that the researchers' agenda is adding a measurement bias and the results aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Also be wary of any study that doesn't share its sampling method, sample characteristics and survey questions.

In the end, the goal of a survey is to accurately describe a larger population. This can only be done if great care is taken to 1) ensure that the results wouldn't change much if another sample was taken under the same conditions and to 2) reduce biases that can be introduced into the system.

About the Author
Jeevan Padiyar is a technology entrepreneur and product strategist with ten years experience in e-commerce and product development. He is passionate about using data to validate growth strategies for new market penetration.

A pioneer in the book rental industry, Jeevan is CEO/CFO of BookSwim. Jeevan helped shape podcast monetization as chairman and CFO of RawVoice, Inc., making ad deals with GoDaddy, Citrix and HBO. Prior to that, he studied medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow. Before coming to New York, Jeevan founded arena blimp manufacturer Simply Blimps. He led it to $30M in sales in five years, with clients like NHL, NBA, Yum Brands and Subway.

Jeevan holds degrees in chemistry and biochemistry from Kansas State, graduating Phi Beta Kappa

A New Take on the Coffee Table Book

Sideways Takes the Coffee Table-Style Book to the iPad

Kat Meyer
August 27, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Listen

In one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes, Kramer comes up with the brilliant idea for a coffee table book with fold-down legs that makes it into a little coffee table--a coffee table book COFFEE TABLE book. Hilarious.

Today I receive a press release from the folks over at Sideways announcing, "Sideways Takes the Coffee Table-Style Book to the iPad."

Huh, I think. That's just silliness. How can an app be a coffee-table book? The coffee table book is an icon. The coffee table book is, by definition a big hardcover expensive book you keep on your coffee table. Right? Just in case there is some chance I am incorrect about this, I grab my iPad off my coffee table and check with Wikipedia, which backs me up, and I quote:

A coffee table book is a hardcover book that is intended to sit on a coffee table or similar surface in an area where guests sit and are entertained, thus inspiring conversation or alleviating boredom. They tend to be oversized and of heavy construction, since there is no pressing need for portability.

Thought so.

I email Charles Stack of Sideways. He calls me. I get to the point.

"Okay, Charles," I say. "About this press release. How can you claim that an iPad app is a coffee table book? A coffee table book is a big heavy book you keep on your coffee table." (I don't go as far as telling him that I have verified this with Wikipedia).

And Charles, who (I soon learn) has an answer for everything, pipes right up:

"I have three kids and a wife. We have between us, two ipads. They are quite often on our coffee table. Sometimes I will be using one to play Sudoku, while my wife does a crossword puzzle on the other. Other times, we will use them to look up info about what's on TV. Sometimes we use them to look up stuff we might be disagreeing about to prove each other wrong. The ipad is the new coffee table book."

So, he's being cute with me, eh? Before I have a chance to say, "Well, yeah but you know what I mean...," Charles continues with the real answer, "Printed art books done well are about beautiful images. I spend a lot of time with them. But they don't have that immersive quality of images viewed on an iPad. The experience is so different. The iPad really lends itself to contemplative browsing."

Okay, okay - but that's what the web is for, right - looking at pretty pictures can be easily done on the web already, yes?

Charles corrects me, "The web is NOT about contemplative browsing. The web is about 'hunter' browsing." Which, I have to kind of agree with...web and contemplative - not so much. While I'm contemplating this, Charles goes on to explain some of the more practical features of the Sideways "coffee table book" platform:

"Printed art books are expensive for the publisher to produce, and they are expensive for the consumer to buy. With the Sideways platform, an art book house or museum can produce a 'coffee table style book' at a fraction of the price it would cost them to do a print version using the least expensive overseas printer."

Okay, I guess I can not argue with that. It all sounds good. But, does it look good? Is it really a "coffee table book" worthy experience, this coffee table book-like app?

I check out photographer Diana Curran's "coffee table book" app - created using the Sideways platform. And, it's nice. It really is a contemplative experience. I can even see how this is not so much a cutesy play on "coffee table book," but a valid reinterpretation of the term.

So, long story short, I won't be getting rid of my big heavy gorgeous printed coffee table books, but I like the idea that I can now fit (and afford) a whole lot more "coffee table books" on my coffee table via my iPad.

Learn more about Sideways here.

The Diana Curran 'Personal Gallery' App on iTunes.

TOC Announcement

Kat Meyer
August 25, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

The Tools of Change site will be undergoing some reorganizing and streamlining over the next few weeks - the hopeful result of which will be a much better experience for the TOC community.

Among the changes - we'll be shutting down the TOC Ning site on August 30.

For those of you who have active blogs via the Ning site, we apologize for any inconvenience.

Additionally, we will be discontinuing the Directory and Resources sections of the TOC site.

For those of you looking for a platform for continuing the discussions you've started on the TOC Ning site (or beginning altogether new conversations!) we encourage you to join the TOC LinkedIn Group, where well over 3,000 TOC LinkedIn members are actively engaged in discussions about publishing, technology, and everything in between.

We'll keep you posted with more news about the changes to the site -- all good news!

Sincerely,

Kat Meyer
TOC Conference Co-Chair, and Community Manager

TOC's Wednesday Devices, and Gadgets and EReaders Update

Kevin Shockey
August 24, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Today we're excited to launch a new weekly column that focuses on the rapidly changing sector of devices, gadgets, and ereaders. Through this new feature, we'll be rounding up the most exciting news about everyone's favorite ways of consuming e-books. In addition, we'll work hard to keep you updated on the evolution of the existing leaders in this sector, such as the Apple iPad, the Amazon Kindle, and the plethora of stand alone ereaders and smartphones.

In this first installment, the two main themes that rise to the surface are the arrival of many new e-book reading capable devices, some of which are based on the Android platform, and the second is the entrance of new devices or the slashing of prices for existing devices, which push the cost of an e-book reader below the $100 threshold.

The bottom line is that the market for devices capable of reading e-books is getting more crowded. While on the one hand this is good for consumers, because as competition heats up device prices will continue to drop. On the other hand, the more crowded the sector becomes, the more challenging it becomes for consumers to choose a device. It also raises one of the biggest worries of consumers and challenges for the industry. If a consumer purchases books for one device and decides to change to another later, can they take their e-book collection with them?

As you can see, this sector is rapidly becoming more complicated, which is why we've decided to dedicate some of our attention on the ever-changing landscape of devices, gadgets, and ereaders.

Samsung E60 eReader Goes on Sale

This week one of the UK's leading retailers, WHSmith, announced that the Samsung E60 eReader would finally be available. Originally announced in May for a July release, the new Samsung features a first of its' kind slider design to reveal navigation controls beneath. In addition, the E60 also includes a stylus for making handwritten annotations on books and other texts. Another model, the E61, is planned for release and it will contain a full QWERTY keyboard. Currently the new device is available only in the UK.

Aluratek Slashes the Price for Their Libre eBook Reader Pro

Recently Aluratek announced that they were cutting the price of their Libre eBook Reader Pro
from $169 to $99. While lacking the wireless capabilities of other devices in this space, the Aluratek eBook reader provides a reasonable alternative. Capable of displaying e-books in PDF, TXT, FB2, EPUB, MOBI, PRC,  and RTF formats, the device also has the ability to play audio books in MP3 format. Although the Aluratek is not really an apples to apples comparison to other leading devices, I believe the price drop is significant and predicts further price cuts from the competition.

The Laser EB101 E-Book Reader

The Laser EB101 E-Book Reader seemed to appear from out of nowhere this week, when it when on sale in Australia. Catching many in the industry off guard, the new device offers a respectable alternative to the usual suspects (Blio, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, or Sony Reader). The device features a slim and stylish 5" TFT screen design with a full-colour LCD touch screen. In addition to an e-book reader, the Laser EB1010 also includes a media player capable of playing a extensive range of media formats including MP3 data tagging ID3 V2 4.0 technology. The device depends upon a USB connection to transfer content onto the device.

Pocketbook Unveil Android Color Touch Screen eReader:

And in what might be one of the most talked about announcements, Pocketbook unveiled the first color touch screen e-book reader based on the Android platform. This week Pocketbook launched 5 new models that will be officially launched at the IFA Berlin in September. The new Pocketbook Probook will come in a variety of form factors but one thing they will share in common is that they will be based on Android 2.0. Details about the new models are sketchy at this time, but should be filled in when the devices are unveiled in Berlin.

Read more…

The (Real) Story of Free

An experiment in Free, ROI and earning out in the marketplace

Brett Sandusky
August 24, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (3) | Listen

One of the major advantages of the seemingly contentious agency model is experimentation with pricing. In a print business, supply chain represents an entire business strategy for the publisher to be able to move product based on the availability of the physical book in the retail space. But, this notion is completely lost in an eCommerce setting due to the binary nature of the commodity itself. In a digital business, pricing strategy replaces supply chain in the hustle to get more product into the hands of our consumers.



One of the most discussed pricing strategies is 'Free'. Anecdotally, free product has been said to increase print sales of the same title, to play a marketing role in acquainting customers with an unknown quantity, to allow for a later up-sell, and to provide branding opportunity.



This week, Kaplan is placing nearly 100 of our eBook titles on sale for free for a week on the iBookstore. Something of a grand experiment, we've planned a veritable marketing bonanza to publicize the promotion. In the end, the experiment itself will yield more information about our consumers' interests, how we connect to our readers, and our eBooks themselves than any other products we are selling this year.



Free is not easy. For a marketer, Free is really not easy. In fact, I would argue that Free is more difficult than a regularly priced book: Free comes with a different set of expectations. Free changes what we consider important in a product's life cycle. ROI on Free is virtually impossible to calculate.

In this post I'll be covering the reasoning behind our experiment in Free, what our expectations are for our the campaign, and how this affects our products in the life cycle. In a future post, I'll be sharing the results of our experiment. I'd also invite others to post comments with their experiences with Free.



Read more…

The Tragic Death of Everything

...oh, silly Chris Anderson, you just have to refresh your browser

Kat Meyer
August 24, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Death makes for good headlines, and those of us in the publishing world have been reading a lot of headlines lately about the death of everything from print, to bookstores, to ereaders, to publishing itself. What up with all the declaring everything dead all the time?

Recently over at the Technologizer, Harry McCracken has assembled a lovely list of all the gadgets, software and media that have, over the years, been prematurely declared dead by trigger-happy journalists and pundits.  McCracken was spurred by the most recent (and perhaps most obviously a ploy for media attention) claim - that by Wired's Chris Anderson pronuouncing the Web is dead:

"Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson is catching flack for the magazine's current cover story, which declares that the Web is dead.

I'm not sure what the controversy is. For years, once-vibrant technologies, products, and companies have been dropping like teenagers in a Freddy Krueger movie. Thank heavens that tech journalists have done such a good job of documenting the carnage as it happened. Without their diligent reporting, we might not be aware that the industry is pretty much an unrelenting bloodbath.

McCracken's article is a pretty funny and fascinating look at the phenomenon of things beging declared dead and then...not dying. Or, in his words, the article is a "moving recap of some of the stuff that predeceased the Web-you may want to bring a handkerchief." Read the full article here.

Continue the Death Discussion with #FollowReader this Thursday: "Bring Out Your Dead"
Personally, I'm kind of sick of all the death hype. So much so, that I've enlisted Jason Boog of eBookNewser and GalleyCat to spend this Thursday's #FollowReader (4pm EDT) with me investigating who or WHAT is behind all the false rumors and spurious insinuations that everything even remotely related to our industries is dying.

#FollowReader, sponsored by NetGalley (in cooperation with O'Reilly's TOC), is a heck of a fun way for bookish, techy, publishing tweeps to gather together an hour each week on Twitter for a bookish, techy, publishing twittersation. Click here for some info on what to expect from this Thursday's #FollowReader.

And we hope you'll be joining us. Assuming, that is, you're not dead yet.

Reminder: TOC 2011 RFP Open Until September 9, 2010

Kat Meyer
August 24, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

The O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, happening February 14-16, 2011 at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers, is an inclusive meeting ground for exploring the options, a gathering place for collaboration, and an unparalleled opportunity for in-person inspiration. At TOC, stakeholders from across the book publishing and tech industries will share ideas, engage in lively debate, and consider the many issues we face individually and collectively.

Some of the topics we plan to include in the 2011 conference program are:

• Reaching mobile readers: when your customers carry bookstores in their pockets
• The real costs of digital book production
• The value of creating quality metadata
• Pricing and packaging digital content
• Methods for gathering and understanding customers' behavioral data (through web metrics and surveys)
• Case studies of successful (or unsuccessful!) new publishing and digital initiatives
• Case studies from implementing lessons learned at a previous TOC Conference
• Strategies and tactics for incorporating print-on-demand (including the espresso book machine) into a supply chain
• Tools and challenges for an efficient all-digital workflow
• When digital is NOT the answer: Startups using old means of production with new business models
• Revising your P&L's for the economics of digital publishing
• Understanding and responding to the changing retail landscape
• Game plans for publishers transitioning from B2B to B2C transactions
• Best practices for working with Amazon, Google, Apple, and other big Internet players
• Best new practices and tools for working with and supporting authors during editorial, production and/or marketing phases
• Systems and devices for displaying digital copy (demos welcome)
• Business models for delivering and/or receiving material via new devices
• Determining rights, sales, and royalty management: the challenges of an electronic global marketplace
• XML, EPUB, RDF, and other TLA's (three-letter acronyms) decoded and explained
• Using open-source tools to assemble a digital publishing workflow

Want to contribute to the discussion at a higher level? If so,  submit your proposal to speak at TOC 2011 by September 9, 2010.

TOC Frankfurt Program Update (with discount code)

Kat Meyer
August 24, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

TOC Frankfurt
If you missed the news last week, the program for TOC Frankfurt has been updated.
TOC Frankfurt will feature a full day of cutting-edge keynotes and panel discussions by key figures in the worlds of publishing and technology. From mobile reading and social media to enhanced books and the impact of free content on your bottom line, our speakers will highlight new business models that have proven successful (and others that have not stood the test of time). Please stay tuned for additional program updates in the coming days.

TOC is offering a discount good for admission at 399 EUR + VAT price. Just use the discount code TOC10BL when you register.

TOC Evolvers: WingedChariot Press

Neal Hoskins and the wonderful world of picture book apps

Kat Meyer
August 17, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

WingedChariot is a young publisher of international, multi-lingual picture books. Founded in 2005 as a print publisher, WingedChariot made launched into digital in 2009--and were the first paper publisher to bring out a picturebook on the iphone. Winged Chariot's founder Neal Hoskins, interviewed below will be presenting on app development and marketing October 5 at TOC Frankfurt.

Why apps (as opposed to other digital book options)?
Apps allow for the experience of touching, playing, drawing, reading and that's something kids love. We don't want to restrict that experience with formats, especially with children's picture books, why limit digital with just one format?

The user interface for your picture book apps is very intuitive. Was that intentional?
Yes and no. It grew out of our book publishing. The design aesthetic that we ascribed to in print was very simple and clean. When it came to digital, we gravitated toward simple and clean in our user interface as well -- we went with what best served the book, and in the process we learned that kids "get" it. They don't need a lot of instruction, or arrows, or highlighted objects. In fact, if you have to use lots of icons in your user interface, you've probably failed. You shouldn't need two pages of instructions on how to read a book.

What do you say to the argument that book apps are potentially more distracting to children than they are educational?
I'd say there's no clear yes or no. Some kids might do better with paper and text, others might learn better with an interactive book app, and some kids who might never have otherwise taken interest in books, might find a love for reading via apps. Literature can be accessed different ways. The bigger question might be: if a device does more than one thing, how tempting is it for a child to pop in and out of that book, and attempt to multi-task? But maybe kids grow up with that around them and learn to deal with all that.


Read more…

APPSTART

Of books as experiences and the ever-increasing need for "unlibraries."

Chris Meade
August 17, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

A good book at bedtime helps a child to wind down, to float away into their imaginations and from there, drift off to sleep. Reading books together help parent and child to bond, to relax, to share. In contast TV and computer games have traditionally been thought of as winding children up, cutting them off from their inner selves and intimate relationships. Isolated? Alienated?
 
And that may be a crass generalization, but now that we can find stories on mobiles as well as on pages, we realise that a book isn't an object at all but an experience. Meanwhile the mainstream literary community has been so fixated on defending paper books, they've failed to find other ways to define what they most want to preserve about our literary culture.
 
Bookstart is one amazing project which slips books into children's lives in the most elegant way. All parents in the UK having their beloved newborn checked over by the Health Visitor at eight months are given a linen bag by this trusted agent of wellbeing. The bag contains two beautifully written and illustrated board books plus an attractively illustrated booklet for parents on the pleasures and benefits of sharing books with babies.  The book stays in the toy box of the child who may not have any other book in the home. The scheme promotes the library as a free, family friendly place to go, and, whether or not parents can read well themselves, all can enjoy showing the pictures to a gurgling babe who will point and laugh merrily. Mums and dads like to be seen with the Bookstart bag, proclaiming their love of books and baby, and the reading habit is embedded in family life. This scheme is run by Booktrust of which I was CEO until 2007.
 
Read more…

What publishers can and should learn from "The Elements"

Theodore Gray, author of "The Elements," on interactivity, apps vs. ebooks, and the future of print.

Mac Slocum
August 12, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (5) | Listen

"Gorgeous" isn't often associated with ebooks. "Useful," perhaps. "Easy," certainly. But most of the time, ebooks are decidedly utilitarian.

That's not the case with Theodore Gray's "The Elements." The iPhone and iPad editions are a significant milestone in the marriage of text, photos and deep interactivity.

Gray recently fielded a host of my questions. The full interview is after the jump -- and I recommend giving it a read because Gray's perspective is quite valuable -- but I also want to call out three important points he made:

1. The level of interactivity and multimedia included in a digital edition must be decided on a case-by-case basis. "There were a whole lot of ideas for interactivity that we didn't put in, because they didn't pass the test of actually making the book better," Gray said, discussing the iPad edition of "The Elements."
2. Truly useful interactivity requires skill sets beyond those commonly found in publishing companies: videography, audio, programming, etc. If you want to produce a great ebook (or app), you need to bring in people who can make that happen. "Programmers need to be treated as top talent, just like authors," Gray said.
3. Gift giving is directly related to the physical nature of print books. "A gift code for a copy of the ebook is really just not the same thing," he said.

You'll find the full interview and lots more insight below.

Read more…

TOC Evolvers: OR Books

John Oakes shares a bit about OR Books

Kat Meyer
August 7, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (3) | Listen

This marks the first entry in our "TOC Evolvers" series wherein we shall profile folks who are doing something different in the world of publishing. If you know of a forward thinking, publishing-related business, organization, or individual who might make for a good TOC Evolvers profile, please let us know!

ToC:What does OR Books do? When were you established? How many employees do you have?
John Oakes: OR Books is driven by two concepts. Well, three. One: the current system of distribution and production, returns and discounts, in publishing doesn't work for stores, authors, or publishers. Two: we will publish politically progressive and culturally adventurous work. Three: the classic rules of publishing still hold true: you need good editing, design, and marketing.

To address the first concept, we decided to scratch the Byzantine rules that surround the distribution and production of books: we sell straight to consumers, do intensive marketing, and then license the book to "traditional publishers." We generally do not sell to wholesalers or booksellers, be they independent, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble. We are "platform agnostic," offering consumers their books as ebooks or in physical, printed form. They choose.

We started operations in the fall of 2009, and had a riproaring debut with GOING ROUGE: Sarah Palin, an American Nightmare. Since then, we've signed up a number of really exciting authors, including Norman Finkelstein, Doug Rushkoff, Chris Lehmann, Eileen Myles, Bill McKibben, Laura Flanders, Sue Coe and others.

We're a total of four people, plus one intern.

ToC: What drove you to create OR Books?
JO: Colin (Colin Robinson, co-found of OR Books)  found himself expelled from Simon & Schuster, and I, after two decades working in independent presses, became convinced there had to be a better way to do business. This all coincided with our discovery of something called "the Internet," which holds the promise of zooming in on interested consumers wherever they may lurk. Publishing is like the weather: we all talk about it, but no one's doing anything to fix it. So we decided to give it a try.

Read more…

Links of Interest

Publish books with WordPress, Cheap and lazy in abundance, new stats on how we use mobile

Kat Meyer
August 6, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Another week comes to an end and once again I offer up items I've stumbled upon over the past few days -- some are so-called news, others are more or less just stuff you might find interesting, but all are somehow or the other related to this thing we currently call publishing.

Anthologize and "One Week, One Tool"
The tool is cool-- the process of creating the tool? Even cooler!
From the Anthologize website:

Anthologize is a free, open-source, plugin that transforms WordPress 3.0 into a platform for publishing electronic texts. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, import feeds from external sites, or create new content directly within Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a single volume for export in several formats, including--in this release--PDF, ePUB, TEI.

From Dan Cohen's blog: "Thoughts on One Week, One Tool"

If you haven't already done so, you should first read the many excellent reports from those who participated in One Week | One Tool (and watched it from afar). One Week | One Tool was an intense institute sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities that strove to convey the Center for History and New Media's knowledge about building useful scholarly software. As the name suggests, the participants had to conceive, build, and disseminate their own tool in just one week. To the participants' tired voices I add a few thoughts from the aftermath.

#FF  (click here for a list of the folks involved with "1 Week 1 Tool" and their twitter IDs)
Read more…

#FollowReader: Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading

Kat Meyer
August 4, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Note from the editor: #FollowReader is a weekly Twitter-based conversation focusing on topics of interest to the the book and reading community. Co-hosted by me (@KatMeyer), and Charlotte Abbott (@CharAbbott), and sponsored by NetGalley (@NetGalley), #FollowReader features guests from all over the book publishing world. In partnership with NetGalley, TOC will be cross-posting summaries of the weekly #FollowReader chats each week both here on the TOC blog, and at the FollowTheReader site. ~ Kat

On last Thursday's #FollowReader, we welcomed Kelly Gallagher, VP of Publishing Services at RR Bowker (@DiscoverBowker). Kelly oversees the ongoing study, "Consumer attitudes Toward E-Book Reading" with the Book Industry Study Group, and during Thursday's #FollowReader chat, Kelly previewed some of the results from their most recent survey. The study itself is the result of surveying thousands of ebook readers, several times during the year (first in November 2009, then in January 2010, and most recently in July 2010). The survey respondents answer questions such as: Read more…