Entries tagged with “digital” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Amazon's Physical vs. Digital Dissonance
Andrew Savikas
May 18, 2009
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In March of 2008, I wrote about the frustrating experience of trying to get this blog added to Kindle. Fourteen months later, apparently that "rather large ingestion queue" is still full, because the blog never showed up, and I never heard another peep about it. (There is now a self-publishing feature for blogs, but as with their self-publishing book feature (known as DTP), the standard terms of service you must accept to participate aren't something many commercial publishers will be willing or eager to swallow.)
As you might expect, Amazon is one of our biggest customers, and our relationship with them is an important one. They give us far more (virtual of course) "shelf space" than most retailers could possibly provide, and their lean ordering systems mean much less exposure to the risk of significant returns. But much of the efficiency and innovation that is the hallmark of their physical-goods business doesn't seem to be translating into their newer digital programs.
Cory Doctorow has a post over on boing-boing venting his own frustrations with trying to get answers from Amazon:
I love Amazon's physical-goods business. I buy everything from them, from my coffee-maker to my DVDs. I love their consumer-friendly policies, and their innovative business practices. I just wish their electronic delivery business was as good as their physical goods side.
(For the record, we're the "major publisher" Cory references -- I passed his questions along to my own contacts on the Kindle team, and despite repeated attempts haven't been able to get a response either.)
I do understand that many of these are new products and systems, and it's inevitable that there will be glitches and problems; it's often important to be willing to be "good enough" in order to move quickly. But some of these things are bordering on the absurd (like the 14-month wait for ingestion of this blog...). For example, while we were thrilled they worked quickly to help us get The Twitter Book up for sale on Kindle, for more than two weeks (until just last Friday) the product page for the print version not only didn't show the Kindle version as available, it actually included a link saying "Tell the Publisher! I'd like to read this book on Kindle." Sigh.
In the wake of releasing about 200 of our books onto Kindle, more than one customer complained that the Preview wasn't up to par:
@timoreilly I love how the Kindle sample of the Twitter book doesn't even get past the preface for the book. Not much of a sample.
Turns out the default preview percentage is 5% of the book, so we asked if we could dial that up to 20% (in line with the amount included in a preview of one of our books on Google Book Search). The response? Since we're the only publisher that's asked for it, it's not a high priority change they're prepared to make right now. (Note to other publishers: please let Amazon know you'd like the option to increase the preview percentage on your Kindle books.)
Amazon is a business like any other, and they're entitled to prioritize as they see fit. And I hope that all of the new vendors, sites, and services popping up (or ramping up) to sell ebooks create some urgency for Amazon to improve their own programs so they're as efficient in the digital supply chain as they are in the physical one.
Good Company Culture Comes in Small Packages
Kate Eltham
February 5, 2009
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Common wisdom says that small companies are more nimble, responsive and adaptable than their larger cousins.
My personal experience reflects this. I've worked in large organisations -- FMCG corporates, international aid organisations and government -- and I've worked in small ones -- private consulting firms and small non-profits. In each case I've found that small enterprises outperform large ones when it comes to transformation. Smaller companies are faster to identify industry trends and respond to new business opportunities. They also punch above their weight on some forms of R&D, particularly business process innovation. Put simply, small companies are more fleet of foot.
But why?
We're seeing a lot of reports come through about how small publishers are responding to trends and opportunities. MediaBistro and The Christian Science Monitor have both reported small publishers are leading the charge when it comes to digitization. In his article, "E-book revolution favors the agile", Matthew Shaer said:
But it's not the bigger houses, such as Macmillan or HarperCollins, that are moving the fastest. Instead, some of the most extensive restructuring efforts are being undertaken in the independent publishing world, traditionally a hotbed for innovation and experimentation.
Soft Skull Press, Canongate, Akashic are all good examples. Shaer also points out that publishing is emulating the music industry in this pattern and, I'd wager, other industries as well.
Again, I ask why?
The obvious reasons are the ones people usually point to. Smaller companies are like the canary in the coal mine. They are first to feel the effects of major shifts within an industry and may need to move faster to find solutions. On the other hand, small publishers also have an incentive to exploit technological efficiencies that might even up the playing field against big competitors.
Small size also helps with changing direction. This week Wheatland Press announced it is taking a publishing hiatus in 2009:
What this means is that I will publish no new books during 2009 (including Polyphony 7). I will continue to fill orders on existing titles and will keep those titles available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com ... I will explore ways to put Wheatland Press on a firmer financial footing including, but not limited to, seeking external funding via arts councils, seeking partnerships with other presses, etc. I hope the break will allow me to return to a regular publishing schedule in 2010.
On one level this could be regarded as just another volley of bad news from a publisher affected by global economic conditions. But it's worth noting that only a small publisher could make this kind of decision. HarperCollins and Random House can't make the choice to stop publishing books for a year to sort out their business model and make necessary changes. They can cut costs through staff layoffs and tightening budgets, but their operational overheads are way too large to ever get off the treadmill of publishing hundreds of titles a year.
Underneath it all, though, the one thing that has the biggest impact on a company's ability to transform is the one thing that almost never gets talked about in the publishing industry: organizational culture. Paul Biba of TeleRead, quoted in the Shaer article, hints at this but doesn't quite nail it down:
"In general, I'd say the big publishers tend to be really dinosaurs, intrigued by e-books but afraid of them ... [Younger readers] have grown up with a whole different way of looking at the world, and I don't think many publishers understand this. They think people are just sitting down in leather chairs and reading hardcopy books."
I'm not sure this is a fair characterization of publisher attitudes today, but I do think it alludes to a bigger problem that is stopping large publishers from embracing new opportunities.
Big trade publishers are fighting a losing battle against their own organizational cultures. The history of business is littered with examples of companies that couldn't transition from one paradigm to the next, not because they couldn't see the necessity, but because they couldn't undertake the necessary internal change.
The larger a company is, the harder organisational change is to effect. The big trade publishers are now subsidiaries of the largest media companies in the world with thousands of employees, hundreds of offices and decades of crusted-on beliefs, traditions and systems. Small teams, by virtue of scale, can change their organisational culture quickly, sometimes through shifts in personnel, other times by the sheer force of personality from a charismatic leader. In any case, smaller teams tend to adopt a tenacious, can-do, try-anything culture because they have to.
Organisational culture is the bedrock of performance. This, more than any problem of physical infrastructure or technical or financial systems, makes big publishers slow to adapt. Too slow, I fear, to survive the speed of change within the cultural and economic ecology of which they are a part.
New experiments are popping up, such as HarperStudio, which could be the exception that proves the rule. Only by hiving itself off as a separate, entrepreneurial unit within HarperCollins, with its own small-team culture, has HarperStudio been able to achieve the clear-eyed perspective and momentum to try really different and new ways of publishing.
Paul Biba may have called it right by using the word "dinosaur." After all, it was the small dinosaurs, with modern-day descendants still thriving, who made the successful adaptation that evolution requires. The big guys fell hard and fast and it's increasingly rare to find any evidence of their impact on us at all.
The Economic Realities of Digital-Only Newspapers
Peter Brantley
February 2, 2009
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Alan Mutter has an incisive analysis explaining why an all-digital strategy would be unacceptably painful for the majority of established newspapers:
Because newspapers on average derive approximately 90% of their sales from print advertising, the only ink-on-paper newspapers that can afford to attempt digital-only publishing are the ones that are irreversibly losing money. Moving to digital publishing is the last, best hope to salvage at least some value from their waning franchises.
But those web-only franchises would produce far less cash than their print predecessors, reducing the value of those businesses by several magnitudes. How much less? A conventional newspaper moving to online-only publishing might produce at best 10% of the cash generated by its print-plus-online predecessor.
This would be catastrophic for any of the newspaper companies that operate today on the premise of selling both print and interactive advertising. This is especially true for the many publishers that borrowed billions in recent years to finance acquisitions that for the most part have not produced sufficient profits to service the loans.
"None of this is good or bad; it just is"
Mac Slocum
January 22, 2009
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Lev Grossman takes a pragmatic look at the changing state of authors, readers, and the definition of publishing:
Self-publishing has gone from being the last resort of the desperate and talentless to something more like out-of-town tryouts for theater or the farm system in baseball. It's the last ripple of the Web 2.0 vibe finally washing up on publishing's remote shores. After YouTube and Wikipedia, the idea of user-generated content just isn't that freaky anymore.
And there's actual demand for this stuff. In theory, publishers are gatekeepers: they filter literature so that only the best writing gets into print. But [Lisa] Genova and [Brunonia] Barry and [Daniel] Suarez got filtered out, initially, which suggests that there are cultural sectors that conventional publishing isn't serving. We can read in the rise of self-publishing not only a technological revolution but also a quiet cultural one--an audience rising up to claim its right to act as a tastemaker too.
iPhone App Outperforms Most Print (Computer) Books This Holiday Season
Andrew Savikas
January 7, 2009
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Conventional wisdom suggests that when choosing pilot projects, you pick ones with a high likelihood of success. It's hard to argue that iPhone: The Missing Manual was a reasonable choice for testing the iPhone App waters. But while we knew it would do well, we've been quite pleased with just how well:
- If the iPhone App by itself had been a book, it would be a top 10 seller in BookScan for Computer Books this holiday season, based on just 17 days of sales
- The print version appears to have been unaffected, retaining a solid position in the top 3 for Computer Books in BookScan
- A full 1/3 of those buying the app are outside the US, mostly in countries where the print book is not readily available
There are certainly some who don't care for the book-as-app approach, preferring the library model (where one app enables reading multiple titles). It's also clear there's substantial customer interest in both options, and we strongly believe that offering a variety of options and letting customers choose is the right approach. This is a time for experimentation, and we'll be doing quite a bit more of it (format, pricing, content) in the digital -- and especially mobile -- space in the coming months.
The Inevitability of Newspapers' Downturn
Mac Slocum
December 11, 2008
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In a post at Boing Boing, Clay Shirky takes issue with the newspaper industry's slow adaptation to digital and its propensity for playing the victim:
I'd only arrived on the net in '93, a complete newbie, and most of my opinions about newspapers came from talking with Gordy Thompson of the NY Times and Brad Templeton of Clarinet. Instead, what struck me, re-reading my younger self, was this: a dozen years ago, a kid who'd only just had his brains blown via TCP/IP nevertheless understood that the newspaper business was screwed, not because this was a sophisticated conclusion, but because it was obvious.
Google, eBay, craigslist, none of those things existed when I wrote that piece; I was extrapolating from Lycos and it was still apparent what was going to happen. It didn't take much vision to figure out that unlimited perfect copyability, with global reach and at zero marginal cost, was slowly transforming the printing press into a latter-day steam engine. [Emphasis included in original post.]
Publishers: Let the Containers Go
Mac Slocum
December 3, 2008
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In a guest post at Boing Boing, Clay Shirky says publishers who focus on book lovers rather than readers are setting themselves up to fail:
Businesses don't survive in the long term because old people persist in old behaviors; they survive because young people renew old behaviors, and all the behaviors young people are renewing cluster around reading, while they are adopting almost none of the behaviors tied to cherishing physical containers, whether for the written word or anything else. Can you imagine a 25-year-old telling a publisher "To get my business, you should stick to a single, analog format? Oh, and could you make it heavy, bulky, and unsearchable? Thanks."
Experimental O'Reilly Ebook iPhone Integration with Stanza
Andrew Savikas
November 25, 2008
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UPDATE: The Stanza integration is no longer experimental. All of O'Reilly's ebook bundles are now available for sale in the Stanza online catalog.
Back in August, I showed how to read O'Reilly EPUB ebooks on an iPhone (or iPod Touch) using the popular (and free) Stanza reader app. I'm pleased to announce that you can now directly download EPUB ebooks purchased from O'Reilly on your iPhone to Stanza. The integration is experimental for now, as we iron out some kinks and work to make our own site more iPhone-friendly.
These instructions assume that:
- You've purchased one or more O'Reilly ebook bundles from oreilly.com (as of this writing, there are 57 total titles available -- an updated list is available at oreilly.com/ebooks).
- You have an iPhone or iPod Touch with the Stanza App installed
To download one of your O'Reilly ebooks to Stanza, follow these instructions (if you're reading this post via RSS, you may need to click through to the original post to see the screenshots):
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On your iPhone (or iPod Touch) open Safari and go to http://members.oreilly.com
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After signing in, navigate to the Electronic Media tab.
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If you zoom in, you'll see that among the download options, there's now a "Stanza ePub" button. Press the button to begin downloading (to scroll the list of titles, use a two-fingered vertical drag -- again, this is experimental, and we are working on a better iPhone UI).
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Pressing that button will open Stanza and download the book.
This kind of integration was simple and straightforward in large part because many of the moving parts around Stanza are based on open standards, including EPUB and the Atom Publishing Protocol (both successful and important XML standards that publishers should be paying attention to -- find out more at January's StartWithXML forum in New York).
Thanks to Marc Prud'hommeaux at Lexcycle for working with us on the integration, and to our own Nick Pilon for connecting the plumbing on our end. Marc will be talking about Stanza and about reading on the iPhone at February's TOC Conference.
PC Magazine Goes Web Only
Peter Brantley
November 19, 2008
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PC Magazine's January 2009 edition will mark the end of its print run. A reduced staff will focus on the PCMag Digital Network. From paidContent.org:
The magazine, which was started in 1982, has a storied history, but its print base eroded over the years as its core brand of journalism -- news you can use while shopping for computers -- moved online. It cut back from bi-weekly to monthly earlier this year. PCMag, which literally invented the idea of comparative hardware and software reviews, at one time during the '80s averaged about 400 pages an issue, with some issues breaking the 500- and even the 600-page marks, according to this Wikipedia history.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball says this is likely an ever more frequent transition as the recession deepens. Both U.S. News & World Report and the Christian Science Monitor have announced plans in recent weeks to end/reduce print editions.
Edit - 11/20/08 - John Gruber's name was misspelled in the original post.
Redefining Professional Content and Accepting Digital's Limitations
Mac Slocum
November 18, 2008
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Scott Karp expands on claims that Hulu is nipping at YouTube's heels with 10 pointed observations about the future of media. Karp's full list is recommended reading, but the following points inspired a few thoughts of my own:
1 . Professional content still has A LOT more value than "user-generated content."
This bodes well for publishers, studios and other companies that have attained professional status, but there's another aspect that deserves mention: The concept of professional in the digital realm is transforming from exclusive to inclusive.
Under traditional models with limited channels, a professional was someone who achieved a certain title through luck, talent and output; the content produced by these people was deemed professional by default. But digital platforms allow consumers to choose material on their own terms, and with that comes a shift of the professional label from job association to consumer impression. If consumers deem a piece of "user-generated" content to be professional, then it is (to those particular consumers). And if enough consumers assign the same value to the same content, advertisers will eventually get on board. We're in the very early stages of this professional transition (and the ensuing debate), but I'm excited to see how a reimiagining that includes both traditional companies and upstart professionals plays out.
8. Most analogue media businesses, when fully transitioned to the web, will likely bear little resemblance to the original businesses.
Karp summarizes something that's been gnawing at me for months: the old models just don't hold up in the digital world. Distribution went from narrow and expensive to wide and cheap; audiences once limited to specific channels have dispersed across a broad landscape; Web advertising revenue will not replace traditional ad revenue; and, after 10-plus years of Web use, consumers now expect basic digital content to be free. Fighting against these changes delays the inevitable, but acceptance opens up enormous opportunity to build leaner businesses that use content, community and the Web's efficiences to sell scarce products (i.e. targeted research, consulting, education, events, experiences, and access).
U.S. News Shifts Focus to Digital
Mac Slocum
November 5, 2008
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U.S. News & World Report is pulling the plug on its regular print edition. From the Washington Post:
The financially struggling magazine, which cut back to biweekly publication earlier this year, now plans to reinvent itself on the Web. While it will publish one print edition each month, according to staffers briefed on the decision, these will be entirely devoted to consumer guides -- such as its annual rankings of colleges and hospitals -- and contain no other news.
Last week, the Christian Science Monitor announced that its daily print edition will be replaced by Web coverage in April 2009.
[TOC Community] How Does Digital Affect Territorial Rights?
Mac Slocum
September 22, 2008
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Over on the TOC Community, David Henley poses interesting questions about rights and territories:
With the looming ebook and international POD availability, won't the traditional territorial rights market start to become shaky? Especially for publishers in countries like Australia whose main income comes from distributing US and UK owned content?
Perseus Targets Small Publishers with Digital Services Suite
Mac Slocum
September 4, 2008
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Perseus Book Group's new Constellation service offers independent publishers a conduit to digital formats and platforms. From the New York Times:
The companies involved in the deal include Google, for its Google Book Search feature; Amazon, for its Kindle electronic reader; Sony, for its Sony Reader; Barnes & Noble, for its "See Inside" feature on its Web site; and Lightning Source, a print-on-demand company.
Publishers who use the new service can provide a single digital book file to Constellation and specify how they would like it to be used.
Ingram Digital, OverDrive, LibreDigital and the non-profit Caravan Project provide similar digital services, although the tools, formats and distribution channels vary across firms.
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
September 4, 2008
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Create Digital First (Martyn Daniels, Brave New World)
Today we are the start of a digital consumer offer but it is in the main based on yesterday's physical cost model, processes and perceptions. Merely taking the finished book and generating a digital rendition that mirrors the physical one is what music did with CDs. Is it logical to merely replicate the book and create just another rendition? We don't envisage the same demand change as music experienced in selling just fragments (tracks), but it is possible to see the selling of installments or part works, where all the complete 'book' may not be bought.
(Via the Reading 2.0 list)
The Elements of a Perfect eReading Device (Dear Author)
I think that there is a technological gap between what readers would like in the perfect ereader and what can actually be done. If you don't like LCD screens, then you are limited by refresh rates and the inability of eink technology to actually perform some multi function device programs. If you don't like to be limited by refresh rates, want a backlight, and ability to play video, browse the web, and even do a lot of typing (or editing of manuscripts), then eInk devices aren't for you.
(Via Electric Alphabet)
Google Chrome is Bad for Writers & Bloggers (Edward Champion, Edward Champion's Reluctant Habits)
Anyone who uses Chrome will technically own the copyright, but who needs copyright when the Chrome user effectively gives up her right to distribute this content in all perpetuity and without royalties? So if Joyce Carol Oates is using Chrome and types an email to someone, she "owns" the copyright. But Google has the right to use anything that Ms. Oates types into Chrome for any purpose. Google responds. (Via Jose Alonso Furtado's Twitter stream)
Shopping Electronic Publishing Rights
Peter Brantley
August 26, 2008
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Kassia Krozser discusses why and how authors are getting savvy to retaining electronic publishing rights. From Booksquare:
As publishers like Random House try to redefine concepts such as "out-of-print", savvy authors and agents will be more diligent about defining tight deadlines for contracts (in fact, I'm a bit surprised this isn't happening more frequently). Firm deadlines allow authors to renegotiate terms, especially as the digital market grows and evolves. While publishers love the idea of locking someone into 2008 rules, it's a safe bet to say that this landscape will be vastly different in ten years.
Going Digital Gives Publishers Safety Net
Mac Slocum
August 21, 2008
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Sarah Lacy provides an articulate and approachable list of digital lessons for book publishers. Her passage on going "electronic from the get-go" is an important reminder about the vital efficiences of digital content:
You might be stunned to learn that in book publishing, once you get to the final manuscript stages, there is no electronic version. The manuscript is FedEx'ed back and forth with Post-it Notes. If FedEx were to lose it, publishers lose months' worth of copy edits, legal edits, and other elements of the painstaking publishing process. There's not even a photocopy. No joke.
That makes publishing the book in other digital formats a challenge at the outset. Publishers would do well to keep the book electronic-- even if it's PDFs of typeset pages. That would help them blast teaser chapters around the world (engaging bloggers and the long tail of the press). Presumably it would help get the book on Kindle and other e-books from day one.
Infinite Permutations of the Digital Book
Peter Brantley
August 19, 2008
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James Bridle discusses the near infinite malleability of digital books. From booktwo.org:
Imagine a book that told a different story every time it was opened. The story might change depending on the gender of the reader, or the sex. It might depend on the location of the reader, or the position of the book in time; the time of day, or time in years. Centuries might pass before the book tells the same story again.
The nature of the web makes such a book possible. Immediately, a simple reading of the user-agent to determine the reader's operating system and browser could be used to present each with a different version, breaking the narrative along several general pathways. Sections could be hidden or revealed by simple manipulation of the layout.
Which Game is the Kindle Changing?
Mac Slocum
August 7, 2008
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Labeling the Kindle a game changer is premature, says Liz Gunnison from Portfolio:
... the Kindle's target buyer would be a person who reads so much that they have ceased instilling books and periodicals with nostalgic value...yet not so much that they are rarely far enough from a computer to really need a separate device.
To top it off, one can imagine a single device (and Amazon account) being used by an entire household. And we're talking only about those that choose a Kindle, of course, rather than a competing device such as Sony's portable reader.
So, all things considered, how many Kindles does that work out to? Two million? One million? Five hundred thousand? [Emphasis included in original post.]
Gunnison's analysis looks at the Kindle as a book game changer, but Gary Frost from futureofthebook.com says the device is actually a shopping disruptor:
The book reading function is a decoy to disguise a portable shopping device. The one click is a well known Amazon purchase feature. The connected Kindle device makes this relation portable and the format is just as accessible for a baby register or power tools as it is for books. Its also worth a mention that Kindle sells print books.
Frost is on to something. Amazon built its early business on books, but it eventually diversified with thousands of additional product categories. The Kindle might follow a similar path: sink the first mobile-buying/digital-consuming hook into early adopters with the Kindle, then expand.
Acknowledge and Move On: A Useful Debate Format
Mac Slocum
July 15, 2008
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Mindy McAdams tries to kick start a useful conversation about the future of journalism by outlining 10 facts that should not be part of the debate. Here's a select few:
#1. Newspapers did NOT make a huge mistake by giving the content away for free.
#5. Newspapers were a nice business ... However, this is clearly over. It's done. It worked for a long time, but now, like trans-Atlantic leisure travel in big passenger ships, it will never work again.
As we've recently discussed, book publishers would be well served by a similar debate format -- i.e. put away past models and current fears so you can take on the issues and opportunities at hand.
Analyst: Digital Disruption Has TV and Film in Crosshairs
Mac Slocum
July 8, 2008
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In the wake of Lehman analyst Anthony DiClemente downgrading a wide swath of the entertainment industry, paidContent.org provides some blunt analysis:
Boiled down, the core argument is basically: You saw what happened to the music industry and the dramatic fall-off in CD prices. You've seen what's happened to the broadcast TV and newspaper industries. Now it's time for it to happen to TV and filmed entertainment. Hopes that digital revenue might somehow make up for lost physical sales are misguided, he [DiClemente] says, and again, you just have to look back at the music industry.
During a conference call, DiClemente also touched on the growing issue of rentals vs. purchases. From CNBC:
"Owning a collection of movies in this new digital world is really just not that cool for young adults in the target demographic that we look to for the future of the business," DiClemente said.
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