I have to say, when I read this news from EA Games last month I was not TOO blown away:

Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announces the development of FLIPS, an innovative new book range created for the Nintendo DS. FLIPS has been designed to give children of all ages a fun new way to read their favorite books. EA has worked with some of the UK`s leading publishers of children’s books and magazines, including Egmont and Penguin Publishing, to bring modern classic titles from critically acclaimed authors such as Cathy Cassidy, Eoin Colfer, Enid Blyton, and the various writers from the popular boys series, `Too Ghoul for School` to the DS. Each FLIPS title features multiple books and the first four titles will be released exclusively on Nintendo DS in the UK on 4th December 2009.

But then I saw one (the Artemis Fowl-Eoin Colfer collection) in action at the CBI Digital Developments Seminar on Saturday 28 November in Tallaght Library. I’m still not blown away but I am more impressed than I thought I would be. The device is the same as any DS but the program is actually fairly clever and offers a range of extras that kids might just find enjoyable, though to a certain extent it remains in essence a book on screen. I don’t think this will be converting non-readers into readers. Still, interesting move.

One of the discussions that I tumbled into on Saturday was whether digital products opens a new market for books and will deliver new readers. I’m not sure that it will in any real sense. It may make it easier for people who have always read to read digitally, or enable people who have wanted to read but couldn’t to read with great ease, but NEW readers, people who simply didn’t read out of choice deciding to read on screen, seems unlikely, especially not book length pieces.

Still, one interesting development I spotted [in Publishers Weekly] today is that ScrollMotion are launching a series of releases for their Iceberg ereader which will be heavily child focused with:

animations, audio content, interactivity. Picture books in the Iceberg Kids format are more than books—they’re activities. The app has a sleek and entertaining aesthetic and navigational system (though all e-books will be sold as separate apps for the moment, they all share the same design and navigation system), featuring five buttons—”Read,” “Bookmark,” “Index,” “Record,” Settings,” “Help”—that make musical sounds when tapped.

To accommodate full-page illustrations in the iPhone’s small format, the application automatically pans around the illustration while the child or parent advances through the text on that page. By pinching the screen, one can move around the entire illustration at will. The text can be made larger or smaller, and automatically moves to accommodate the art.

I remain unconvinced by the need for these type of applications when they could be as easily hosted on a decent website, that had a mobile access mode, but still, it is good to see development on the area one way or the other.
Eoin

Looking through the Level 26 website and it’s really interesting to see Anthony E. Zuiker’s concept of a DigiNovel (it’s very similar to a Nook).

It’s combining two main formats -

1. The Written Word.
2. Video.

To create a compelling narrative.

Zuiker is supporting the narrative with a very well done website, some interactive content, and an online forum. 

You can also get an iPhone App (which has the same text + video narrative) or you can get a Digi-Audio experience (audiobook plus videos).

That makes you wonder about all the choices we have for telling our stories – and the fact that hardly anyone is using them.

Possibilities for constructing our Narrative - Medium/Format.

The first dimension is obviously the medium used and the senses involved.

There are so many possible formats we have available -

1. Writing.
2. Speech.
3. Poetry.
4. Songs.
5. Video. Not on the Kindle – however, you could do it online.
6. Pictures.
7. Games.
8. Things we haven’t thought of yet.

If you think of the Kindle as an eStoryTeller and not just an eReader it’s clear that the possibilities are hardly being explored.

Where is the background music? Where are the puzzles in the mystery novels?

Authors aren’t really writing for eReaders – they are still writing for print. Here are some things people are missing -

• Using the Mp3 player for background music.  
• Asking users to go online for video clues (admittedly breaks the flow).  
• Including audio clips for clues and story. 
• Having games and puzzles in the book. 
• Using Non-linear structure.  

Authors are limiting themselves by using just words to tell their story.

Constructing our Narrative - Interactivity and Immersion

With technology we can let the listeners of our story get a lot more involved.   

1. Non-linear navigation and navigation decisions.
2. Clues online. 
3. Clues in Video or Pictures.
4. Weaving together different formats.
5. Interaction during reading.
6. Interaction before and after reading.  
7. Illustrations that can be zoomed and searched for clues.

The trick is to do this without breaking the flow and the immersion.

Stitching it Together – Immersion, Smooth Flow, and more

More possibilities for Narrative make things complicated -

• The more mediums you include the greater the probability things get confusing.
• The more interactivity you include the higher the chance readers get lost.

What direction do we go in?

1. Should we choose just 2 i.e. text and audio?
2. Is Background music safe?
3. What formats and what forms of interactivity keep the flow – the Kindle has game books now and they work alright.
4. The tic-tac-toe eBook worked fine too.
5. What will appeal to people?
6. Do we have different products for visual, kinesthetic, and auditory readers.

The Digi-Novel and Vook are just the beginning

It is a scary thought.

The video+text novel is such a huge leap – and it’s just adding one dimension.

What happens when people start exploring all the formats available? Start including interactivity?

Take a simple example -

• A Horror Novel that is mostly writing.
• Scary Background music.
• Pictures at various parts of the story to set the mood (Monstrumologist does this excellently with the illustrations at the very beginning).
• Having to use the browser to search for clues to answer a puzzle.
• A decision based on that puzzle.
• One of three paths based on your decision.
• An ending with links to online sites for follow-up elements.

We do not know whether that would make for a better narrative than just text – However, there is a chance and its about time authors and storytellers started exploring it.

Notable news
Tor.com have announced the launch of the ebook of the second book of the epic (though perhaps a new word should be created to describe the scale) series, Robert Jordan’s, Wheel of Time, The Great Hunt:

We’re happy to announce that The Great Hunt, volume two in Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, is now available as an eBook from the Sony eBook Store and other online retailers. This edition sports a new cover and has been re-typeset especially for ebook production.

But riddle me this?
Why do they not just sell it direct? The multi-publisher bookstore provides just the platform, they have created an incredible audience and the property is a very, very good one. I cannot understand this decision. Sure the rest of Macmillan also avoids ebook sales listing instead other sellers on their site bit surely teh selling of a digital download is not THAT difficult? Is it?

Eoin
PS: The covers are quite frankly fantastic for the ebook series, savvy to redesign them!

The wonderful people over at The Book Depository have rolled out a free ebook program. Kieron Smith, Managing Director of The Book Depository, said [in their press release]:

We wanted to give our customers a really wonderful present this Christmas. We’re continually working to increase the number of books that we have available on our website – 2.4 million at present, which is an unparalled number. Ebooks are much talked about at the moment but difficult for people to try, this gives people a chance to experiment, read something new and try ebooks all at no risk and free of charge.
We’ve not launched ebooks for sale as yet, but will do soon, this promotion is a great way for us to start talking to our customers about what they want from the format.

Quite wonderfully in my opinion, the program uses PDF. After all most people who don’t know anything about ebooks, know about PDF and feel confident in downloading them. I think the ebook program is nicely executed. It is smooth, fits into the rest of the site where you would expect it and offers something very interesting to readers.

I’m hoping this also drives print sales for The Book Depository’s Dodo Press. I’ve downloaded these two (1,2) for free, what will you get?

Lots to enjoy here,
Eoin

Mike Cane writes about writer Declan Burke giving up writing, hopefully not for long. Declan Burke writes -

I decided over the weekend, after interviewing James Ellroy, that it is actually immoral of me to steal time to write fiction when I could be writing freelance material that will actually earn real money. And that’s not even factoring in the time I steal away from my family on the ‘writing’, a catch-all word which includes, these days, reading and blogging too.

I’d love to finish up with some kind of gloriously noble declaration about how writing isn’t just a business, it’s a vocation, a passion, an obsession, and come hell or high water, I’ll write the next novel and let the chips fall where they may, etc …  

But I can’t. Not only would such a decision be immoral, it would be foolhardy verging on insanity

Sarah Weinman writes about it and hopes he returns to writing.

Truth is there are no easy options for writers any more – finding a publisher is nothing compared to the level of effort that’s going to be needed now.

There are four paths to choose from -

1. Quit Writing - See Reality As It Is i.e. in the future of books we’re headed to writers are going to struggle much, much more than they currently do.
2. 50-50 i.e. split your working time equally between a paying job and writing.
3. Control your destiny i.e. build out your own revenue stream and channel. 
4. Build a sustaining Revenue Stream – Use writing about something with commercial potential to create a revenue stream and then free up time to write.

Note: Finding a Publisher is still a top option. This post assumes that option will be gone soon – while Publishers are around do try to get a Publishing deal.  

Will start with the most dismal one i.e.

See Reality As It Is and Quit Writing.

Publishers and Literary Agents at least love writing and books. Plus they were very, very vested in the success of authors.

We’re moving in a direction where competition and uber-powerful gatekeepers will suck out all the profits and leave writers with next to nothing -

1. Value perception of books is falling.
2. The gatekeepers are getting all the branding and control.
3. Competition amongst authors is increasing.
4. Readers are overwhelmed and quality control is poor.

Consider the potential gatekeepers.

Amazon and Barnes and Noble still have a huge stake in books so they might care. Apple and Google and Sony would hardly be affected.

The gatekeepers of publishing could be companies that neither need books to remain profitable nor the quality to stay high nor would they be vested in authors’ success.

Fundamentally, we’re transitioning to a model where authors will be completely marginalized and have little brand power. The new system wants all the power and profits to stay in the channel and authors don’t really matter. Just the way newspapers are being told they should be glad for the traffic, authors will be told they should be glad for the readers.

See Reality As It Is (as Jack Welch would say) and find another career.

The second best option in my opinion (really wish it wasn’t).

Next, is probably the riskiest option (though it seems the safest).

50-50 – Equal amounts Work and Writing

This is the standard option if you don’t have overwhelming responsibilities -

1. Devote half your working time to ensuring you don’t starve to death.
2. Devote the rest of your work time to writing.

What makes it harder than before is that there may no longer be a big book advance or royalties waiting if you hit the big time.

The big time will be rather different -

1. It’ll be 30% or perhaps even 50% of $1 or $2 ebooks.
2. The gatekeepers will make sure no author becomes too big of a brand – Divide and Conquer.
3. It’ll take a lot of marketing budget to hit the big time. However, there will be no big pay-off so no Publishers paying for marketing.
4. Your work will not be valued as much as books currently are.
5. Random factors become very important i.e. a great marketing strategy or a gimmick replaces the place of quality control by literary agents and publishers.

This is the best path for people who want to work just for the love of writing. It’ll be painful to see other companies profit and grow rich off of your work while you earn barely enough to make ends meet. However, you can have the carrot of ‘people reading your work and recognizing you’.

It also makes it difficult to support a family and write at the same time. If Malcolm Gladwell is right (in Outliers) about the 10 years and 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master your craft, we would have -

1. Great (and good) Authors hitting the big time at older and older ages.
2. After finding success, authors still not having 100% of their time to devote to writing.
3. Less masterpieces as less time is spent on writing overall.
4. Lots of great authors would be passing on kids to be able to succeed as writers. Perhaps having kids at 35-40 instead of 25.

This is unfortunately the easiest path i.e. the path of least resistance. Most people who are committed to writing will be forced to choose this. The struggle is the same as now, except there will no longer be a big payday or royalties.  

After that, we have an interesting option – go solo.

Build your own channel and Control Your Destiny

Coming back to another lesson from Jack Welch – Control your destiny or someone else will.

The Internet is a double-edged sword -

1. It lets people with bad intentions steal ebooks for free or try to steal the profit of ebooks.
2. It also lets writers find people of good intent.  

Authors need to keep that in mind as they build their channel – your only customers are people of good intent.

You can build a channel that can sustain you if you focus on people of good intent.

Your Own Channel, Not Someone Else’s

If you don’t own the whole channel you can be turned into bonded labor working to make the channel owner rich.

Yes, it’s difficult. You don’t understand technology, you don’t have the time, you don’t understand how things work.

There’s an easy answer – it’s all much simpler than you think, and it’s necessary to own your channel completely if you want to make a decent (perhaps even good) earning off of it.

For the same reason that Publishers and Newspapers need to build their own Hulu, authors need to build their own channel. If either of the three don’t, the channel owner will bleed them to death.

How can an Author build their own channel?

1. Above all else, build it on your own website.  
2. Second, have a blog and blog every single day.  
3. Band together with the best writers in your genre.
4. Do not be dependent on one source of traffic/readers or on one store for selling books.
5. Take responsibility for beginning to end i.e. a reader searching for mystery novels to finding you to buying your ebook. All of it is your responsibility.
6. Ask your readers for help – to spread the word, to buy ebooks, to buy merchandise.

Your channel is a path to your readers – if you keep it pure and free of companies trying to take a share off of your rightful earnings, you will be greatly rewarded for it.

How long will it take?

At least 2 years.

You have to budget to survive at least 3-4 years or have a 20-30 hours a week job you can keep doing until your channel becomes strong enough.

What sub-channels should your channel include?

As many sub-channels as you can work in for free and little time investment i.e.

1. Twitter.
2. Kindle Store.
3. Blog (most crucial).
4. Facebook.
5. Book Networks.
6. Book Forums.
7. Apple App Store. Only if you can get your book converted for $500 or less.

70% plus of your time should be on websites and blogs you own. Don’t spend 50% of your time ‘twittering’ so that Evan Williams can sell his site for $3 billion. You aren’t going to get any of it.

Thoughts on Building Your Own Channel

This is the toughest strategy by far. It’s really hard – on the plus side, it’s pretty much guaranteed to set you up for life.

There will be perhaps 10 to a few dozen authors in each genre that pull this off over the next 2-3 years. They will be the new stars. Why not join them?  

Finally, we have the delayed gratification plan.

Build a Revenue Stream and then Switch to Writing

Consider what AOL is doing – Low Cost Content Machine.

Now twist it into a site/blog that -

1. Is Focused on one particular niche.  
2. Has high quality, very hard to produce content instead of cheap content.

Find a niche at the intersection of your aptitudes/passions and create one of the top 2 best websites in the world for it - 

• That means expert insights and in-depth discussions and analysis. 
• It means blogging and/or updating every single day.
• It means a lot of passion.
• It means exactly what Gary Vaynerchuk is doing with wine.

Content is still King. Your writing has very, very high value. Pick whatever you like and create a blog on it and monetize it.

It’s going to be way beyond your comfort zone – however, dig around a bit and you’ll see its worth it.

The Big Sacrifice of Delaying Writing isn’t a sacrifice

There are a few things to consider if you’d rather starve writing than build a revenue stream to support your writing -

• Whatever niche you pick (and become a heavy-weight in) is going to give you financial freedom.
• It’ll also give you an audience, a platform and lots of other benefits when you’re promoting your book.
• You’ll be helping a ton of people and you do it through your writing.
• Pick an area that’s an intersection of your aptitudes and passions and it’ll be fun. More fun than doing a dead-end job.
• You own your niche site – all of it. Total artistic control.

Read Gary V’s Crush It

There are a few good sources to understand this and Gary V’s vook (or book) is a good starting point.

There are lots of other good examples -

1. The blogger who sold Bankaholic for $15 million. 
2. Numerous smaller blogs that have gotten acquired (some in the millions range).
3. Lots of blogs that make over six figures annually.

Leave a comment if you want examples of a niche you’re interested in and will find you examples and tips.

It’s a pretty good option – once you’re established you can get by on 20-25 hrs work a week and the rest is free for your writing.

How long does it take?

2 to 3 years if you’re lucky. 3 to 4 years if you’re unlucky.

If you pick a niche that suits your talents and you like you might find that blogging for 100 thousand people a month is as satisfying as writing a book that sells 100,000 copies.

Which of the 4 options are best for you?

That’s a tough one. Hopefully you don’t quit and you don’t choose the 50-50 option as it doesn’t guarantee anything.

The other two options are both great. Writers can make money – they just have to think of themselves as Writers + Publishers + Marketers + Storekeepers.

4 articles in the last 24 hours – all worrying about the future of books.

Micah Mertes discusses the serious challenges the book industry is facing

In the Lincoln Journal Star Micah Mertes has an excellent article that first discusses the Devaluing of the Book  -

• How it’s affecting Lincoln’s independent bookstores and used book stores.
• How this will change the industry.

The article also brings up the ABA’s concerns that the price war between Amazon, WalMart and Target will destroy the book industry and their asking the Justice Department to investigate.

Independent bookstore owners aren’t sure if and how much they are threatened -

“It could have the potential to be devastating for the industry,” said Kate Janulewicz, Indigo manager. “It could affect the independents in that we may not be able to stay afloat. But it may not affect us directly because we offer titles that aren’t best-sellers.”

The article also has the quote of the week -

The titans are fighting in the clouds and we’re down with our lemonade stands just taking nickels.

The article then covers the digitization of the book and the imminent explosion in eReader sales -  

The devices are getting cheaper. They boast more content, and they’re getting better retail distribution.

With Microsoft and Apple slated to enter the eReader market in 2010, competition will grow more fierce, leading to higher quality, greater diversity in look and function, lower prices and more

It’s got some good thoughts on whether print is dead, dying or will be just fine.

John Sledge at Southern Bound thinks Books might be Fading

John Sledge talks about the physical size of books and the size of children’s backpacks -

Bibliophiles like to go on about how much they glory in the feel and the heft and the smell of books, and why digital reading can never replace any of that. But, truth be told, there are clearly times when the physical nature of books, especially their weight, is a decided disadvantage.

He also brings up this amusing factoid -

 According to a 2007 BBC report, the Vatican library (1.5 million books on 37 miles of shelving) was literally sinking under its printed burden.

The 16th-century building’s foundations were discovered to be buckling beneath the strain, and in order to arrest the problem, the library was forced to close for the first time in its 500-year history.

Yang Sung-Jin discusses the struggles of the Korean Book Industry

Yang Sung-Jin in The Star talks about the Korean book market and how it’s grappling with the shift to eBooks.

• It starts off talking about Samsung’s new eReader and a new eReader from iRiver.
• The Korean market is taking inspiration from progress due to the Kindle in the US.

There are good quotes from Professor Yi In-hwa from Ewha Women’s University -

the change in favour of a new digital format in the publishing market is irreversible and even destructive for paper-oriented publishers.

Yi acknowledged that e-books will not overtake the paper-based book market overnight, but the time-honoured platform of traditional paper and ink is becoming obsolete and ineffective …

Interestingly, the two thorniest issues they mention are eBook formats and DRM (copyright). Guess the Korean market is not that different from the US market.

Finally, Baek Won-keun of Korean Publishing Research Institute makes a great point about what is needed -

… a viable vision about the act of reading itself at a time when other options such as video gaming, Web surfing and mobile texting are widely available.

“At the heart of the problem is that people are spending less time reading books in general and we have to think about whether we can persuade them to read books again by offering a digital version.”

The Nation discusses eReader challenges in Thailand

It talks about how reading is not as established in Thailand (really?) -

Without a strong reading culture like among the Japanese or the Germans, a vast majority of Thais would have no real use by possessing an e-reader beyond just flaunting it emptily.

Now that television is giving way to the Internet, people are being redirected back to reading more texts, but this is still not the same as reading a book, which requires a longer attention span

Not much else – However, like Korea, Thailand are looking at the success of the Kindle in the US and expecting ebooks to spread worldwide.

Thoughts – Are all the concerns justified?

Yes, most of them are.

There are quite a few issues here -

1. Books have to compete with movies, games, etc. and the Vook and Digital Books and eReaders and other technology are necessary.
2. Books will gradually be replaced by a mix of books and eBooks and the Book Industry has to prepare for this new model.
3. The value perception of books is under threat and the Industry has to avoid a race to zero.
4. There’s a huge transition and lots of upheaval and authors and publishers have to ensure they don’t get marginalized.

The pace of articles worrying about books has accelerated. Last year it would be surprising to see 4 articles in a week or even in a month. Today, we have 4 articles in a 24 hour span.

Everyone can sense the winds of change. Everyone’s worried and they have reason to be.

You have to wonder just how many books Amazon Encore has to publish before we consider it a fully fledged book publisher? I wrote a long post about the implications of Amazon Encore here some time ago. In it I said:

Sure this can be extended and it is clearly being set up to do so. Amazon is in a great place to carry out their program to almost any conceivable scale. That in itself should indicate that they intend to extend. If you don’t believe it look at what Barnes & Noble have done in Classics and Rediscovered titles and you will get the idea.

But add to it the previously mentioned POD set up, they wouldn’t even need to expend extra capital on print runs, they’d be able to deliver books on demand so even if a huge proportion of the titles failed, their costs would be lower than the major publishers and the bookstore publishers too. That competitive advantage would be added to the fact that they wouldn’t have to pay a retailers discount unless they were selling to the retailers themselves. In effect, aside from what the author and their agents can grab from the chain, Amazon with Encore has successfully placed itself in control of the entire value chain of which I wrote some more about last week but didn’t quite count this in.

And now, quelle surprise, Amazon has expanded the encore program by 300%! I’ll admit from 1 to 3 is not a huge leap, but if every season (twice a year say) they leap 300% by the end of 2012 they would be publishing over 2000 titles. Of course that is an exaggeration I doubt that Amazon will expand the division at that speed but even at a lesser pace they could easily be publishing 100, 200, 300 titles a season.

Are we ready for that? I don’t think we are.
Eoin

Tom Peters’ The Brand Called You article in Fact Company is spectacularly relevant to everyone in ebooks. His ending sums it up really well -

It’s this simple: You are a brand. You are in charge of your brand. There is no single path to success. And there is no one right way to create the brand called You. Except this: Start today. Or else.

Branding and Relationships are really important for ebooks because the whole Publishing Industry is going through a transformation -

During this transformation a lot of the brands people used to buy from will disappear.

While lots of companies are trying to sell eReaders and eBooks, very few of them seem to be aware that actual people with emotions and feelings will be buying these books.

Companies that survive (perhaps Amazon) and new companies that thrive (perhaps Google) are not guaranteed to take over all of Branding and relationships. In fact, at some level, they aren’t prepared for the sheer amount of personal connection involved.

Here is where a big opportunity arises.

First, let’s look at some fundamentals.

What happens when people buy a particular brand they know/like/love?

There are lots of ways to describe what happens when customers choose to buy from a particular company -

1. Brand Awareness - They know/recognize you.
2. Trust - Customers trust that a particular company will only sell quality products and provide good value for money.
3. Relationship - Customers feel an attachment to a company and a de-facto relationship.
4. Committment and Consistency – The more a customer buys from one company the stronger the committment. That means following purchases are more likely to be from the same company.
5. Shortcut Building – It’s easy to go with what you already know. You don’t have to do 500 things like decide whether the company can be trusted, enter credit card information, and enter your mailing address.

These are all fancy ways of saying – If a customer knows and trusts you, it makes it likelier (all other things being equal or close) that the customer will choose you.

This isn’t just a vague concept. Marketing speak makes it seem that way.

Branding and Trust have very strong underlying psychological explanations.

Trust is Perhaps as Important as Product.

We obviously have to have a quality product to satisfy and possibly even delight customers.

However, customers will choose us only if they are aware of us and trust us (or have no other option).

While it is true that large, nimble online companies will tend to beat slow, inefficient local bookstores, it’s the physical constraints of local bookstores that are killing them - their personal touch is still an advantage.

This is where the twist comes in.

1. Branding and Relationships can be scaled.
2. The cost for taking care of customers can be cut – without sacrificing quality, and often times by increasing it.
3. Gary Vaynerchuk did this with wine. Michael Arrington did this with tech news.
4. Lots of bloggers are doing this in lots of areas.

The part that’s missing is realizing that once you have that relationship with customers and their trust – You have the most important part.

The Big Opportunity is creating Customer Relationships

In particular – the biggest opportunity is to create points of trust and build relationships.

Provide value and a top-notch product and you can become the next biggest brand in ebooks after Amazon and Google.

That brand will be worth billions – and your name might be written all over it.

It’s not only possible – it’s inevitable.

It’s going to happen and since hardly anyone else is doing it, you just have to show up.  

• A great local bookstore owner can help a thousand people a month. The best book review blogger will be helping millions.  
• A great distributor/wholesaler agent can build dozens of relationships with authors. Mark Coker of SmashWords can build great relationships with tens of thousands of independent authors.
• The best eBook and eReader blogs will have the trust of millions of ebook readers.  
• A great librarian can change a city’s reading habits. Online, she could change a country’s. 
• A literary agent superstar could unveil 2-3 star writers a year. With the right tools they could unveil 10 online, or perhaps create a platform that helps ALL writers.

 5 people could form a bigger brand than anyone imagines

Combine these 5 people into a technologically well thought out alliance and suddenly you guide the flow of Publishing -

1. The best known literary agent.  
2. An online publishing platform or the foremost online publishing guru. 
3. The best book reviewer. 
4. The best eBook industry blogger.
5. A top-notch, Internet aware author (like Coelho).

They would be guiding people with -

• What eBooks to buy.
• Where to buy eBooks.
• Where to sell ebooks.
• How to publish. 
• What’s worth following.
• What’s news. 
• Customer Issues.
• Direction for the industry. 

This might seem like forming the equivalent of a Top 6 Publisher, and it is.

This 5 person alliance would need just a skeletal support staff. They would become the biggest brand in Publishing. They could eventually become the single biggest stream for sale of ebooks.  

Will 1 Person Mega Brands and 4-5 People Mega Alliances happen? 

Yes for the former. Perhaps for the latter.

The Internet tends to magnify success - the best in a field are found by everyone. They then wield huge amounts of influence and can provide value to millions and millions of people.

A lot of authors, literary agents, publishers don’t realize the opportunities -

• The fact that you can go straight to customers.
• The fact that you can write once and reach millions of people.
• That you can build a thousand relationships in a few days (perhaps even in a few minutes).
• That everything accelerates – the rich do get richer.
• That you can scale every aspect and reduce costs along every dimension.

Take TeleRead and MobileRead – those two sites account for over a million people a month. Not just people – some of the most interested and committed readers.

They could turn an author into a success just by promoting his work (with no marketing cost). Only Amazon can match that.

Opportunities like these exist in every nook and cranny of eBooks.

This is yet another post on the benefits and dangers of going open. My utter confusion about what’s best stems from the fact that -

1. No one actually knows what’s best for customers. 
2. Some customers don’t care.
3. Some customers care a lot about openness.
4. It’s definitely not in the platform owners’ best interest to open the platform.
5. It’s definitely in the interest of non-platform owning companies to ask for the platform to be opened.
6. It’s worthwhile for some companies to create new open platforms and push them.

There are just three hypotheses this post will put forward -

1. Platforms are extremely lucrative. Opening them up endangers that.
2. There is no such thing as a benevolent company and they are not buying you a Free Lunch.
3. At some level customers don’t care if a company dies i.e. the same customers asking companies to do the right thing will not turn around and maintain profits for the company.

A lot of this stems from the Kindle Sudoku Apps and the one person who complained that $1 for 10 Sudoku puzzles is too expensive when they are available free elsewhere.

Platforms are extremely lucrative

Take Apple -

1. iPhones are subsidized by Carriers.
2. Carriers can afford to do this because they will make money back on subscription plans for data and voice.
3. At the $600 to $700 retail price there is NO way tens of millions of iPhones would be selling without subsidies.
4. The huge market size means the App Store can become a force. It means 100,000 apps are released by developers. 
5. App Store adds more value to the iPhone and generates more revenue.

It’s all connected.

Open is a Trojan Horse trying to compromise this profitable Platform

Google is pushing for an ‘open’ App Store so they can push Google Voice.

Now consider what Google Voice is trying to do -

1. Make voice calling free or very cheap.
2. This would kill voice plans i.e. customers wouldn’t need it.
3. Make iPhone customers into Google customers.
4. This would reduce Apple loyalty because instead of seeing Apple and associating the iPhone with Apple, they’d associate it with Google.

If Google gets to run Voice freely, carriers can no longer subsidize iPhones – They don’t have the voice plan revenues any more.

Basically, opening up the platform kills the value carriers can make from it, which in turn kills the ability to sell iPhones at $100 and $200.

This in turn means carriers can’t subsidize the iPhone - which lowers the sales rate and weakens Apple’s revenues and the App Store.

There is NO benevolent company except ones that are turning down money

Everyone loves the delusion that a company that is supposed to make its founders and shareholders and employees richer is a Care Bear that wants to keep giving us gifts and buying us lunch.

That’s just not true.

Let’s say a VoIP company like Skype takes a look at the App Store. Here’s their thinking -

1. Apple and AT&T spent a bunch on R&D and infrastructure to set up this platform.
2. They are now making a ton of money off of it.
3. How could we come in and steal the most profitable part?

It doesn’t matter whether they sell it as ‘best for the customer’ or whether they’re honest and say ‘it’s too good of an opportunity to pass up’.

1. Skype did not think ‘How could we best serve customers and make zero money’ – No, that would be Wikipedia and Craig Newmark.
2. If a company is selling for billions (like Skype or YouTube) or making billions (like Microsoft, Apple, Google) they are NOT benevolent self-sacrificing entities.

Take Skype – its founders are suing eBay – the same company that bought it out for billions. Even billions of dollars aren’t enough for these companies.

Yet, people live under the delusion that these same companies want to give them things for free. Perhaps it’s not delusion.

People go with their best interests

This is a simple reality that people themselves ignore.

1. Apple is the greatest company because they gave us this shiny, pretty iPhone.
2. Wait a minute – they won’t let us use free VoIP – Apple is evil.
3. Skype and Google are giving us free VoIP – they are our new favorites.

There are two different value propositions being offered -

1. Apple says if you sign up for a voice and data contract you can get this great iPhone for super cheap.  
2. Google and Skype say you can get voice calling for super cheap.

Customers want the Best of Both Worlds. They want to take Apple’s offer and get a $100 iPhone and then they want to turn around and stop paying for voice calling.

It’s about time we called a spade a spade.

1. People love to hear ‘open’ because it usually means free.
2. Companies that lost the race to create a platform love ‘open’ because they can steal other companies’ customers.

You can look at it in one of two ways i.e.

1. It’s all positive and customers want to work in co-operation with the company that gets them the best deal. 
2. It’s customers optimizing for themselves and companies optimizing for themselves.

In either case it’d be great to stop bringing in morality and good and evil into simple business decisions.

Good and Evil are Business Strategies being used very well

In every single area we always have the losers complain about how the #1 company is evil and how the losers are good and open -

1. Microsoft is Evil because it owns OS and Office software and they leverage their market position unfairly.
2. Apple is Evil because it won’t let other companies take it for a ride. 
3. Google is Evil because they’re using their position in search to attempt hostile takeovers of other markets i.e. books, browsers, etc.

It’s just tiring to hear people focusing on Good and Evil instead of building a great product.

We live in a free world. If you think Apple isn’t good – then build a better phone. Stop trying this ‘right thing to do’ nonsense.

the Kindle and the Kindle Store

Amazon is going to have to face all of this (in some ways it already is). No one cares that Amazon invested time and money and effort into resuscitating ebooks.

Nah, when it comes to our best interests we only have short-term memory. How evil of Amazon to not let every other company get a free ride. How evil of them to try and make money off of ebooks.

We’re less than 2 years removed from a world where $10 release date ebooks didn’t exist and yet we want cheaper and cheaper. Who cares about authors or publishers or Amazon. Free is best for us and everyone else doesn’t matter.

If another company launches a great eReader App Store Amazon will be forced to open up a Kindle App Store - Hello Trouble .

Promises made, must be kept!
I promised I would post notes to go with my Pecha Kucha speech from TOC FrankFurt at the start of the week but it has been quite the week, so here, a little later than promised, they are!

For those who attended TOC Frankfurt the notes give some more detail on what I said (or would have liked to say) at the event and fill in what I couldn’t fit in.

Pecha Kucha
I want first, to say a few things about the format:

1) It is great fun
2) It is very hard
3) I tried to do too much
4) I learned an awful lot
5) I’d do it again

So to my actual thoughts
I think that digital change is fundamentally altering the world of publishing. Like a glacier it reshapes the geography that it passes over. But in many ways that’s not very useful to a publisher, what is useful is to think about how you might react to this change and what specifically you need to be thinking about.

One of the ways to react is to develop vertical niches in product categories where you are, as Dominique Raccah put it at TOC, “Essential to the conversation!”. A vertical niche is a community organized around a particular type or genre of content, for instance, Irish History, Military History, Science Fiction or Cookery. I’ll leave it up to you to find the niches and communities that suit your market, you might even decide that you can do better than the existing ones (if there are existing ones), or indeed you may need to create some because they do not exist yet.

But what do you need to be thinking about in order to achieve a digital vertical niche or a community? I highlighted 6 things, there are more implications and perhaps these 6 are not even the most important but they are the 6 I wanted people to think about.

1) Sales Channels
2) Brand
3) Content
4) People
5) Education
6) Time

Sales Channels
Creating a community changes drastically the ways and opportunities for selling. For one thing it changes publishers, traditional Business to Business companies into direct to consumer companies. So your sales channels will change. That is okay though because the types of products you’ll be selling will change too. Publishers need to think about how community will change their niches/market segments/genres. If you are a publisher of computer books for instance, it seems to me that some kind of partnership with O’Reilly’s Safari is inescapable in the medium to long term (40 or so publishers agree). I strongly suspect that Tor.com have created a beast of a similar nature. Competing against it may well be folly, so how do you engage and use it as a sales channel? If your segment does not yet have its Safari or Tor.com, how can YOU create it?

Brand
I used to think that we could as easily dump the plethora of imprints that major publishers control and develop a more streamlined brand much as Thomas Nelson did recently. But recently it has occurred to me that many of these imprints can be rejuvenated as niche brands, focused exclusively on single vertical of content, filled with meaning and relevant to consumers. Of course this would require a new way of thinking as well as new honesty with readers too and a willingness to allow imprint to develop an identity of their own.

Content
If your thinking about how sales channels, products and brand are going to change then the way you look at, commissioning and using content will alter completely. In my speech I gave this quote from Mike Statzkin and I think it brings into focus the kind of thinking publishers need to do about their content offering:

The bottom line is that we can expect to see reshuffling as publishers trade off areas they can’t afford to market to for others where they’re going to expend the marketing effort and want to have the most possible content to dominate the niche and from which to extract a payoff for their efforts.

You need to double down in the niches where you can add value and create a community. Otherwise you will spread yourself too thin. That may mean allowing imprints to develop as stand alone companies, trading lists, shuttering imprints or simply commissioning tonnes of new content in a niche you already dominate.

People
If your are going to develop a community around your content then you need to consider people. Not just editors, authors and readers, but community members and the crucial voluntary leaders of those communities. How do you intend to grow an authentic community without recruiting readers and community leaders? Does an audience exist online to do that yet? How can you grow this organically? In a digital community, your content will be worthless without people and engagement. Without people your brand will not grow and your newly thought out sales channels will yield no revenue.

Education
So assume you have the right content mix, your brand has succeeded in attracting attention and you have successfully engaged volunteer community leaders how will you keep other readers interested? The key readers are new arrivals to the community. Do you have the content to hand to lure them in, is there a receptive atmosphere that encourages participation and education of people new to your topic area or genre? Or does your community intimidate newcomers and leave them cold? You need to think about how you will draw those newcomers in and educate them. This will be hard.

Time
All of this is going to take time. And a lot of that time is going to look very unproductive. You need to be ready for that. If you work in a publisher with a decent editorial staff, you’ll be used to that in any case. Of course, once you have a functioning community and so long as you don’t undermine your community and lose it, the community will be easier to maintain than to build. It will be as they say defendable and will create something of a barrier to entry* in your genre.

And that, was pretty much what I wanted to say. I know it didn’t quite come out that way, but you live and you learn Pecha Kucha!
Eoin

* Though my thinking on this is that if you have a truly open community, new publishers will be part of it either as partners or as members. Either way they will add value and ensure that your members see more reason to stay in your community or vertical.

In retrospect, this revised talk by Michael Tamblyn from Shortcovers at TOC Frankfurt was one of the most positive and enjoyable! Thankfully following some pressure on Twitter and such like, he put it up on Blip.tv! You should watch it!

This is a very clever post on building a channel (read niche if you will):
Here

Mike Cane on Apple’s long term strategy for ebooks! You’ll like it:
Here

That’s right YOU.

It bears repeating because at times I fear people have missed the reality that If you have a Blogger or a WordPress.com blog, if you Tweet, Tumbl or Flikr YOU are a publisher.

That carries enormous implications as Guy Gonzales points out in a Tweeted response to me:

What you do about it is up to you, and it doesn’t guarantee success but it IS a fact.
That is why the tagline of this blog is:

It’s that simple — and that hard. And that inescapable.

It’s a line from a rather excellent article in Fast Company by Tom Peters. The article is called The Brand Called You and it’s about branding. It is deeply relevant to this discussion. You should read it.

Eoin
Publisher
Eoin Purcell’s Blog

Interesting post about engagement strategy and an upcoming webinar from Digital Book World.
Here

Smashbooks looks at how authors need for publishers is being diminished.
Here

Mike Shatzkin has a great post that sums up the problem facing Print Publishers.
Here

I’m putting these up cold, but there will be a post that goes into detail early next week.

Comments most welcome!
Eoin

It is well worth dropping over to The Digitalist and reading Sara’s notes from her speech at TOCFrankfurt. I thought she was most refreshing for a large publishing as I mentioned in my previous blog about the event.

Lots to get done today,
Eoin

PS: The Bookseller covered the controversy and featured a response from Andrew Savikas.

The Frankfurt Cleared The Air Edition

Richard Eoin Nash’s post on the Frankfurt Book Fair blog is all kinds of excellent:

Not only, it turns out, are the readers of the world looking to buy our content if we can deliver it to them digitally, but the world’s leading hardware companies are looking to help us. Along with Sony, iRex, TXTR, and other dedicated reading device manufacturers exhibiting, presenting, and working the floor, two Apple executives were traversing the halls of the Fair to let publishers know all the opportunities that await them on that platform. (Let it be said: that platform, right now, is the iPhone. Not any other rumored device. Apple has not been in private discussions about a larger device and reports that they have are a hoax. But Apple does believe in the opportunity for the publishing industry’s content, contrary to the occasional snarky comment from Jobs.) Apple is working to improve the Books section of the App store to make it more browsable, and they are trying to help publishers find the right developers to work with.

You should take the time to read all the contributions from Richard and his fellow Book Fair Bloggers, they provide a nice slice of the fair.

Brian O’Leary has put the slides for his trouble causing presentation on piracy up on Slideshare, when you read through, you’ll find it hard to find the controversy and wonder just how tightly poised those knee-jerk reactions are.

The news of Google’s Google Editions, which first came to light back in June has been formed up by more recent news. Like this AP story:

Tom Turvey, head of Google Book Search’s publisher partnership program, said the price per book would be set by their publishers and would start with between 400,000 to 600,000 books in the first half of 2010.
“It will be a browser-based access,” Turvey said Thursday at the 61st Frankfurt Book Fair. “The way the e-book market will evolve is by accessing the book from anywhere, from an access point of view and also from a geographical point of view.”
The books bought from Google, and its partners, would be accessible on any gadget that has a Web browser, including smartphones, netbooks and personal computers and laptops. A book would be accessible offline after the first time it was accessed.

Of course as you would expect it is platform neutral (if web based/cloud based is neutral), omnipresent and smart. Anyone who thinks that devices are the future is living in the past.

There is a whole load of other stuff on the margins, but in terms of signal, I think this is it!
Eoin

UPDATE: I missed the comments by Sara Lloyd on Andrew Savikas’ post over at the TOC Community. Worth reading in context. They go a long way towards making sense of her comments. Also fits in with my experience of Sara.

Whither Trade Publishing

Fionnuala Duggan, director of Random House Group Digital, told The Bookseller Daily: “Some of the speakers were computer programmers, who have peculiar and particular needs, and what is right for their type of publishing is not necessarily right for ours. There are broader questions that need to be answered and issues that need to be addressed before claiming that DRM-free is the answer. O’Reilly is just one of the many voices we need to listen to.”

And:

Sara Lloyd, digital director of Pan Macmillan, was the first keynote speaker at the conference, and has also spoken at its events in New York.

She was cautious about suggestions that O’Reilly was pushing a certain agenda, but said: “The O’Reilly perspective is quite slanted by the content and market that they serve, and that perspective shines through in their choice of speaker and subject matter.” She added: “There needs to be a greater understanding of what the differences are between a computer software manual and a fiction bestseller. I’d like to see more of a consumer publishing perspective.”

Now perhaps I’m blinded by the fact that I attended TOCFrankfurt free of charge* because I spoke at the Pech Kucha session organised by George Walkley. On the other hand I couldn’t help but feel that those pushing a negative about the conference had some other motive than the schedule.

For instance, Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks was nothing if not practical and alive to the realities faced by fiction publishers.

In fact her presentation (the best and most inspirational of the day to my mind) dealt with the thorny issue of simultaneous (or rather not simultaneous as the recent controversy over Bran Hambric indicates) releases of print and ebook versions of titles, the challenges of growing digital revenues while keeping the print company alive not to mention her valuable explanation of the publishing continuum for niches something I had a concept of but she put across very clearly.

Sourcebooks is not another O’Reilly whose success in digital and online endeavours has often been put down to its particular audience. Rather, Sourcebooks is a savvy active and realistic independent publisher. They may dwarf quite a few English and Irish independents but they are hardly in the league of Random House. It might serve Random and other to listen more closely to what Dominique had to say. It seems to me that there was far more than just O’Reilly’s viewpoint on display at TOCFrankfurt, as Kassia Krozser’s comment in the story makes plain:

I have one major question about Fionnuala Duggan’s comment about some of the speakers being computer programmers (just glancing at the bios of the speakers, I count one whose work is primarily programming, though, yes, some have that skill on their resume). The speakers come from a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives. While I agree that each publishing house has its own unique needs and requirements, that doesn’t mean commonality doesn’t exist. The comment about piracy suggests to me that the issue is more that the industry is not ready (or willing) to hear certain perspectives; my thinking is that you don’t have to agree with what’s being said, but it’s instructive to listen to these voices.

I still have questions
Further it is not as if what was being said was all that controversial (there is a good summary of the early keynotes here at Scholarly Kitchen). At least it should not have been.

On DRM and Piracy for instance. Cory Doctorow is a forward thinker on Copyright that much is clear, but his views are well known and hardly that crazy. Much of what he says makes sense to “the people of the book”. I certainly have problems with excessive zeal for copyright and have no love for DRM.

Brian O’Leary of Magellan Partners drew quite a storm with his piracy talk but from talking with him afterward (I missed his session) his point was not that piracy is good or bad but that :

1) you need to measure it to see if it is costing you and how much it is costing you and
2) if it isn’t hurting your sales, is there a chance it is helping them? If it is, how would you measure that

The fact that he is basing that assessment on evidence rather than gut reaction gives his position a great deal of credence in my view and ought not be dismissed out of hand. The Bookseller seemed to cover that well in their defence.

And then there is the fact that I know and like Sara Lloyd. Any discussions I’ve had with her leaves me thinking she is not 100 miles away from where O’Reilly are on most issues, nor for that matter would her speech have indicated that she was either. I rather liked her notes that we were IN the revolution and that publishers should focus on platforms not devices. One might be misled into thinking that O’Reilly was an exemplar of focusing on platforms (hello Safari) and the more you read about their current sales, the more they provide evidence of being IN the revolution.

I’m tempted to say that perhaps the Bookseller made lukewarm remarks into something more than they were to spice up what’s proving to be quite a dull fair, but who am I to cast such vile suggestions …

More to follow soon
Eoin

*Full disclosure, O’Reilly waived the conference fee and hosted a poorly attended speakers reception after the conference, but I paid my own travel expenses.

UPDATE: A bonus #5: No content on the Amazon Kindle Global Blog!
Update: Making it #6: UK Kindle buyers (and by extension Irish Kindles readers) pay 40% more for ebooks

This is just a short list but here are some reasons I suspect this is a rush release by Amazon:

1) It’s not shipping till 19th October! Did they need the news before Frankfurt and not have the device ready?
2) No country specific sites, you need to order the device from Amazon.com
3) The iphone/itunes app is not yet live in Ireland, I doubt it is live in the UK yet either (Twitpic)
4) No word on the extension of the Digital Text Platform to other countries (that would extend the device to independents and authors outside of the US, currently you need a US Bank Account)

I’m sure there are more, but this feels like something of a rushed and to my mind fluffed launch, despite the massive space given on four site home-pages to the product!

More on Kindle International here too,
Eoin

Amazon announce the international kindle

IT WILL SHIP TO IRELAND (SEE BELOW FOR MORE)

So Amazon announced that they are now allowing pre-orders of the Kindle worldwide. They launched no country specific sites for this, just a letter on the homepage of Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr and Amazon.co.jp. You MUST order from Amazon.com

Kindle Germany

Kindle France

Kindle Japan

The NYT has a story on the release:

International users of the new Kindle will have a slightly smaller collection of around 200,000 English-language books to choose from, and their catalogs will be tailored to the country they purchased the device in. Amazon said it would sell books from a range of publishers including Bloomsbury, Hachette, HarperCollins, Lonely Planet and Simon & Schuster.

Among the apparent holdouts: Random House, which is owned by Bertelsmann, the German media conglomerate. Stuart Applebaum, a Random House spokesman, said the company’s “discussions with Amazon about this opportunity are ongoing, productive and private.”

As does our own Irish Times (though, to be frank, it’s basically a rewrite of the NYT piece).

I’ve checked and Amazon will allow preorders for Ireland, but the full cost is

Items: $279.00 ($20 more than the US version for no apparent reason)
Shipping & Handling: $20.98
Total Before Tax: $299.98
Estimated Tax:* $0.00
Import Fees Deposit $64.50 (Customs will make us pay this anyway so that’s free money for Amazon as far as I can tell)
Order Total: $364.48 (For an ereader, you must be joking!)

But think on this
Amazon devoted the front page of FOUR of their international sites to this product. It must be making them money in large amounts or else why would they do that. Two posts I read yesterday pointed to royalty statemenst reflecting good sales for ebooks, this one by Andrew Savikas (from an author perspective, well an author who is a publisher) and this one from kirstin Nelson (so from an gents perspective). I wonder what the kindle element of that is? Perhaps we really have passed the point of no return.

Interesting times as they say,
Eoin

Maybe, it’s because of the time of the year, the first week of October see the launch of an incredible number of title worldwide as large, small and medium companies try to launch a christmas bestseller, but this weeks the news is flowing!

Brian Cody and Brian Cowen got a brief mention in the Independent becuase of Cody’s new Autobiography.

Showtime: The Inside Story of Fianna Fail in Power, by Pat Leahy also had a review in Saturday’s Independent, as did Barry Duggan’s Mean Streets: Limerick’s Gangland.
For the week what’s in it, the Herald has a decent look at Banned & Censored Books in Ireland:

Most of us are aware of books that were banned here in the past — Madonna’s Sex is a book some of us will remember, outlawed in 1994, before finally being permitted on the shelves in a lewd silver wrapper.
But the list of writers banned in Ireland with the introduction of the Censorship of Publications Act in 1929 is real hand-over-the-mouth stuff. From Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms banned in 1939, to Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, outlawed in 1953, we really did pick on some classics, as well as condemn our own, like Liam O’Flaherty in 1930.
Ulysses, contrary to popular belief, was never actually banned in Ireland. A 1967 film adaptation by director Joseph Strick was, however, outlawed. Apparently, it’s pretty awful.

Sarah Webb has a nice round up of the October Children’s Book Festival.

Adding to the weight of books that are rooting out the causes, connections and elites responsible for our current economic woes, Matt Cooper’s book, Who Really Runs Ireland? The Story of the Elite who led Ireland from Bust to Boom — and back again, is reviewed in the Irish Independent.

The Indo also carried a note on a biography of recently deceased Fianna Fail minister, Seamus Brennan.

O’Brien’s new Gerry Bradley book gets some interesting coverage:

He spoke out last night, saying some republicans had even compared him to murdered ex-Sinn Fein official Denis Donaldson, who was shot dead in 2006 a year after admitting he was a British spy.
“This is a pro-IRA book,” insisted Bradley from Dublin, where he has gone to “clear his head” from negative reaction and to publicise the book.
“I’m still a republican. There has been a knee-jerk reaction to coverage of the book with people jumping to the conclusion that Gerry Bradley is telling the Brits everything.”

Just to remind us. How touch the economy can be on book publishers, the Gill & Macmillan results are not good. That said, G&M is an impressive company that will no doubt rebound with the economy and, it should be noted, they still made a profit, despite the economy.

As I said, lots of news.
Eoin

Thinking leads to more thinking
A rather great comment from Litlove got me thinking today. She wrote:

I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said – that the slice of the market that makes the money is where digital needs to take hold, and then inevitably from there it will take over.

And I’m still not sure that this isn’t just ideologically driven. When I worked in the bookstore, what made our money really was back list. Okay, every so often there’d be one book that did surprisingly well, but they were few and far between. It was the steady sale of backlist titles that kept us afloat.

Oh I don’t know. To be totally honest, I don’t want digital. I love reading and the thought of having to do it on yet another screen and not to have an actual book in my hands strikes me as hugely depressing.

I’m really not convinced at all why this move has to be made.

So I replied:

Litlove,

I’m with you, why does anything NEED to change?

Sadly where we are is a place where technology facilitates and enables change, a significant group of actors benefit or have a perceived benefit from the change and so those two factors being present, it would be almost impossible to prevent the change.

That said, I am firmly of the view that PRINT CULTURE is far from dead. In fact I’d wager BOOKS as a printed entity will thrive. Just not in the model we have right now. I’ve been meaning to write more on this but I suspect print runs will dip dramatically for all but the biggest books and they will individually become objects of greater value (Andrew Simone @ Lone Gunman has a post that touches on this today) or considerably less value depending on whether they are cheap paperbacks (probably Print on Demand or Massive Print Run) or expensive hardbacks, printed in low quantities.

The web is a reading culture though. Sure video, audio and art illuminate and decorate it, but the medium is a very textually based one. The network is better with a little friction as possible and this is best achieved through a single window (the browser) which is why I see ebooks as a temporary thing, driven by old “iron horse” notions. We will eventually learn to pay for deep deep piles of online content streamed to us or supplied to us via broswer windows just as now we get that largely for free.

Still, as I say, PRINT CULTURE will be around for some time I suspect!

And that basically is where I stand! It seemed like a good idea to put that up front and centre.
Eoin

Beastly goings on
There have been a few pretty big moves in the last few days towards what seem (At least to me) sensible models for getting digital and quickly. The first is Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast’s deal with Perseus Press that the NYT featured yesterday:

Ms. Brown said that Beast Books would select authors from The Daily Beast’s cadre of writers, most of whom are paid freelancers, to write books with quick turnarounds. She said she planned to publish three to five books in the first year.

The beauty of the deal though is that they making digital first publications:

Beast Books, that will focus on publishing timely titles by Daily Beast writers — first as e-books, and then as paperbacks on a much shorter schedule than traditional books.

I rather hope this works, it certainly sounds like a good news story if it does. The model seems sensible, it capitalises on the eyeballs the Daily Beast is dragging and as The Big Money puts it in a sensible and thoughtful paragraph:

The good news is that this is exactly what digital publishing needs to fuel its growth: a product ideally suited to a new technology. Brown’s entry into the field validates the idea of writing specifically for the Kindle and its competitors, a huge vote of confidence in the tools. The less-great news is that for all of Brown’s talent for attention-getting, the Daily Beast may not have the right content to drive sales. Which just might be the point of the whole deal—with Brown using the book deal as a back door to better content.

Disney Digital

In what it bills as an industry-defining moment — though rivals are sure to be skeptical about that — Disney Publishing plans to introduce a new subscription-based Web site. For $79.95 a year, families can access electronic replicas of hundreds of Disney books, from “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too” to “Hannah Montana: Crush-tastic!”

DisneyDigitalBooks.com, which is aimed at children ages 3 to 12, is organized by reading level. In the “look and listen” section for beginning readers, the books will be read aloud by voice actors to accompanying music (with each word highlighted on the screen as it is spoken). Another area is dedicated to children who read on their own. Find an unfamiliar word? Click on it and a voice says it aloud. Chapter books for teenagers and trivia features round out the service.

I like this idea because it is heading more towards the type of product that can win the battle for attention and hold its own against numerous distractions. What is more, a site like this (and being a site is crucial) has a certain seamless quality, it fits into the web rather than standing aside from it in a “connected” device. It will simply be a rich content website that you happen to pay for! That is important! that, I believe, is the future.

Both these moves are taking big publishing digital very rapidly. This is a space to watch!
Eoin

The things that get you thinking
I’ll be speaking during the Pech Chang session at TOC Frankfurt in October. I’m going first and frankly, I’m terrified. Even so I’m looking forward to it. It feels like an opportunity to talk about some of the forces shaping the future of publishing and books.

I mention it because one of the things I will be talking about is Branding and why, in a nichified world, it will become increasingly important. This has been an absolutely huge meme online in the last few days and it’s worth sharing some of those thoughts here.

Mike Shatzkin, as ever, was there ahead of me and many others, with an interesting piece on his blog. He focused on the reason why publishers need to understand brand:

In the next 20 years or so, the brands that will dominate for a very long time will be created.

Why?

Because the organization and delivery of stuff — including information — is being realigned into verticals; that is: subjects. The requirements of physical delivery required aggregation across interests that the Internet does not. So enduring horizontal brands of content like newspapers or book publishers but also outside content, among retailers, for example, that thrived across interest groups will find themselves challenged by new brands that are narrower and deeper. Being narrower and deeper permits a much more involved engagement with the audience. It strengthens the brand.

Read the rest of the article, it makes complete sense, echoes much of what I think and places the conversation in context from a publishers perspective.

Then Seth Godin spoke at a small event organised by the DPG in New York and touched off a firestorm! And for reasons I cannot quite get a handle on. The video’s don’t seem too radical to me, but you be the judge:

And Eugene G. Schwartz’s blog about the talk over at Personanondata make me think that the ony issue is that some people haven’t seen the truth, that the digitisation of reading, makes publishers largely irrelevant unless they react adapt and change.

Patrick over at the Vroman’s blog has a wonderful post that nicely sums up some of the arguments of Stein, alludes to some of and suggests some positive views too. The subsequent discussion is worth reading as well.

What this all comes down to of course is that as Don Linn noted in the tweet below, business models are all very well, but profitable business models are hard to find.

Profit is good!

Bob Miller, in this video from Ron Hogan, says pretty much what Don and Seth are saying but from the finance side of the fence.

Changing a brand and making it matter will not be THE panacea, publishers will still shrink and they may well not survive as large companies. If they do, they will publish books (as Richard Eoin Nash has said and wouldn’t you know it, I cannot find the link, but here is a general one for Richard) like movies are currently produced.

That is because the internet and digital media enables the removal of every single point in the value chain except author and consumer. In this model the only scale that needs large capital (and furthermore justifies the application of capital with large rewards) is when you need to market to everyone, brand will enable you to connect with niche reader and writers at as granular a level as you can building something that is worthwhile to readers, so worthwhile that they give you money. Of course, who YOU are may not be a publisher.

Working on letters and notes, thoughts and ideas, trying to avoid too many down thoughts!
Eoin

Originally posted on our collaborative site, Ourblook.

(Author-editor Thad runs The Future of Publishing, Inc. …www.thefutureofpublishing.com… what better guy to ask than him about the future of books?)

Newspaper circulation is declining, and fewer people are watching the TV networks’ evening news. What is the situation with books? Are any segments doing particularly well; any particularly badly?

TM: Book publishing is not suffering nearly as heavily as most other media segments. As another example beyond newspapers and TV news, after years of rapid sales increases, the computer gaming industry saw June 2009 sales decline 31 percent (emphasis mine) from the same month last year. (I consider all forms of publishing and media in my studies on www.thefutureofpublishing.com, as I believe that there are very important interrelationships between different media industries).

According to the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), total U.S. book publishers’ net revenues reached $40.32 billion in 2008, up 1.0 percent over 2007, while 2008 unit sales reached nearly 3.1 billion, down 1.5 percent over 2007.

Children’s book sales are often down when it’s not a “Harry Potter Year,” although Stephanie Myers and her vampires are picking up the slack. According to the BISG, sales of professional books showed strong revenue growth, posting a 4.0 percent increase between 2007 and 2008. Sales of Elhi and College books also continued to grow in 2008, seeing an increase of 4.5 percent in net revenue for each category. Meanwhile the religious segment underperformed the book publishing industry as a whole in 2008, with revenues declining 10 percent.

Book review sections at some major newspapers have been eliminated or curtailed. Your thoughts?

TM: I don’t see this as a major problem because the web is providing probably several thousand times the coverage of books beyond what newspapers ever did, and is engaging readers more deeply than just reading reviews. When you look at a web site like Canada’s largest newspaper The Globe and Mail, while its print coverage of books is down, its web site has greatly enhanced book coverage, of course in a far more engaging way.

It is easier than ever to write a book … if it’s ever easy to write one … in that e-mail makes interviewing and research more convenient, and word processors make adding to, deleting or shuffling content as efficient as possible. Yet many great books were produced in the past with laborious quill pen handwriting. Is there much of a correlation between the type of process and the quality of product? Are books better than ever or worse than ever or neither?

TM: Great question; tough to answer.

I recall that when the use of personal computers first exploded in the 1980s, many authors insisted they would continue to use pen, pencil or typewriter … that the ease of making changes made them worse writers, not better ones. I still occasionally encounter that sentiment in author interviews today.

I argue that creativity in writing exists completely apart from the tools used to create. All writers must use the tools that they are most comfortable with … good writers will produce good work; bad writers the opposite.

With nonfiction, there’s a significant distinction to be made. Probably more than two categories are required here, but to simplify the argument let’s say that there is literary nonfiction and there is informational nonfiction. As with fiction, literary nonfiction requires great skill with language, grammar, and also great intelligence in formulating arguments and presenting them persuasively.

Informational nonfiction is tasked mostly with being clear, comprehensible and accurate. The very good (and best-selling) computer journalist, David Pogue (from the New York Times), dictates all of his books using Dragon Naturally Speaking … excellent transcription software. I write a great deal, but find that my conversational voice is very different from my writer’s voice, and so stick with the computer (not however with pencil or pen!). I find that I type at roughly the pace that I compose reasonably clear sentences and am a great believer in rewriting and in good editors.

The extraordinary growth in self-publishing .. I estimate one million titles were self-published last year (although a significant portion were reprints of out-of-print books) … means that a lot of not-very-skilled writers are getting their work into print, generally without bothering to pay a good editor to help, so there is a lot more dross on the market than ever before. But the dross does not inhibit great writers to continue in their work, and while the largest publishers are cutting back on their total title output, I’d argue that any fine author can find a publisher who will bring their book into print. Marketing on the Internet: well that’s still a relatively new and developing skill (which even the largest publishers have yet to master).

Do you foresee any social media techniques … i.e., Twitter, texting … being used by people writing books in either seeking or receiving material?

TM: Certainly social networks are a great mechanism for reaching out to people, whether to source information, solicit input or comment, and to publicize the final product. Narrative is not well-served if constructed a sentence or two at a time; it favors more comprehensive forms. Yet apparently in Japan writers are finding some success with novels sent as numerous short text messages.

The overriding point is that the novel is as much an accident of history, technology and economics as the feature film is. The LP, cassette tape and CD in the music industry were convenient formats to manufacture, market and distribute and led to a particular form of music called “the album.” Wikipedia defines this as “a collection of related (emphasis mine) audio or music tracks distributed to the public.” But now that people can easily download single tracks from an album (CD, mp3, whatever), the concept has been revealed for the essential fraud that it was. Relatively few albums had any thematic consistency. They were just collections of music that could fill about 60 minutes. Back then selling “singles” was not as profitable, and so they were priced too high to become as popular.

There’s no question that the Internet and the web will create numerous remarkable opportunities for creative expression. The book has no monopoly on creativity.

Books have always been fixtures in our culture because they are personal, physical products that are lovingly kept in one’s home. Do electronic reading devices such as Kindle threaten that or augment that?

TM: Years ago one of my mentors, Neil McLean, began referring to books as “artifacts.” It was a prescient recognition that the physical object is just that; what’s contained within is what truly matters. At the same time, “book arts” should not be neglected. Designers are self-interestedly inclined to overemphasize the value of design and manufacturing in a book. But consider the alternative. What is “Alice in Wonderland” without the superb illustrations of Sir John Tenniel? What are the great dictionaries without their very fine and carefully-selected woodcuts? Many authors and designers feel that choices in typography can enhance the meaning or impact of their text.

The current e-reader offerings tend to drop illustrations and do a great disservice to typography (amongst other small crimes). Of course technology can address these issues over time. But I just do not think that the notion of dedicated eReaders makes any sense. Those who read almost always are interested also in some combination of film, music, e-mail, phone, texting, Web-surfing, etc. The winning technology will find a single device to offer optimal user-experience for each of these varied but connected interests.

Is there anything else you’d like to say about the past, present or future of books?

TM: When the U.S. media look at the changes in media consumption trends, naturally enough, they tend to focus on the United States. This is terrifically misleading. Newspapers are thriving in countries such as India and China. Pirating is a even larger challenge in those countries than it is here. The increase in literacy in the Third World drives greater demand for books: on what medium remains to be seen, although paper is currently most cost-effective in those countries.

On my thefutureofpublishing web site, I focus on the interconnectedness of all media and on many external influences. Right now a lot of the energy driving the demand for e-books is a belief that electronic books are more carbon-neutral than paper books, although this argument is highly suspect when you consider the power demands of the enormous computer server farms that facilitate their distribution, and the non-biodegradability of most of e-reader components. But of course it’s easy for people to think that digital = eco; paper = destruction.

I say to my friends and colleagues: “You should feel blessed. You are part of a revolution in how information is distributed far greater than the invention of the printing press, and certain to have more far-reaching effects. Yes, it can be wearying to keep up with it all, but think of it as adventure, not as threat.”

(Thad says about himself: “Writing and publishing are in my blood. My father, Kim McIlroy, was an author, playwright and broadcaster. My great-uncle, Gordon Hill Grahame, was a novelist (his first novel, “The Bond Triumphant,” won Hodder and Stoughton’s Canadian Prize Novel Contest in 1922). My great-great-great (etc.) uncle was Kenneth Grahame, author of the children’s classic “The Wind in the Willows” (remember Toad of Toad Hall?).” For the rest of his bio, go to … http://www.thefutureofpublishing.com/pages/about_thad.html )

Museum Legs, by Amy Whitaker

Team publishing
I’ve written about Hol Art Books once or twice before but I neglected to mention them when they issued their first books and I wanted to address that. Hol Art is based on a remarkably simple to outline and yet difficult to get right system called team publishing. They have a nice guide to how it operates on their website:

Team Publishing
In a departure from traditional publishing, we bring authors and publishing professionals together online to collaboratively identify, evaluate, and develop our titles. The processs is open to everyone.

• You and your team select, edit, design, and promote the book.

• We print, distribute, and market it in our seasonal list of titles.

• And everyone–the author, the team, and Hol–gets paid a percentage of the book’s sales, for as long as it sells.

Hol Art lets you start a project, join a project and general become the life blood of a venture. It is actually fairly genius.

Why this is smart
I’ve discussed before why self-publishing is attractive for both authors at the top of the publishing ladder and at the bottom too. That is because as the costs of the actual physical publishing process (editing, design, printing a book) drop relative to the less tangible (to the author) costs (distribution, marketing, acquiring attention and successfully promoting and selling a book) the role that publisher play that is of use to the author SEEMS to become less valuable. I stress seems because publishers who are wise will look at what they do well and concentrate their resources on doing that.

Many houses now have few if any in house editors and work almost completely with freelancers. This tends to work for both parties, reducing payroll costs for publishers and enabling better balance for those freelancers. Quite a few houses have outsourced design in the same way and few small or medium publisher have ever handled distribution themselves anyway.

What I like about Hol Art Books is that they have taken that kind of thinking and applied it sensibly to their own chosen niche. Art books tend to be more expensive to print so they pay that cost, marketing tends to be more niche focused so recruiting a publicist to each team is very sensible. And, to top it all off, they are totally and scarily open and honest, just read this piece about the money side of affairs if you doubt me!

Hol Art have a nice, new and (I think) viable model. It will be interesting to see if this can be adapted for other niches. I suspect there is room for it. The type of model might sit very well with the discussion from Publishing Perspective last week (MJ Rose & Robert Miller).

Going with the flow
Interestingly too, it goes towards the ideas about how the work force will be reshaped in the coming decades. Ideas I first encountered in Nine Shift but remarkably read today again on the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog.

I still think there are things that Hol Art could add to the model, and maybe they might work better as part of a larger entity (even a museum or university) rather than a solo enterprise, but you have to admire what the founder Greg Albers has created.

Enjoying exploring the work of Molly Crabapple, great stuff!
Eoin