Entries tagged with “web 2.0” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Publishing Lessons from Web 2.0 Expo
Liza Daly
September 26, 2008
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Last week I was in New York for the city's first Web 2.0 Expo. I was a member of the program committee and one of our goals was to make it a uniquely New York event. This meant a real focus on measurable outcomes and integrating Web 2.0 principles into established business, in contrast with the more startup-friendly atmosphere of the San Francisco event. The fact that the conference ran during the week of the Wall Street meltdown only reinforced the need for pragmatism in tough economic times.
Naturally I was interested in applying what I learned to the publishing world. If you couldn't make it to the event, here were my big take-aways:
Web 2.0 is social software
Consultant Dion Hinchcliffe's tutorial on the Web 2.0 landscape summed it up best: Web 2.0 means software that gets better the more people use it. This is radically different from traditional software development, which gets better only when programmers add new features. (In the case of Microsoft Word, it generally gets worse.)
The best example in the publishing space is LibraryThing, which has a more accurate book catalog than Amazon.com, but also content found nowhere else. My favorites are the Legacy Libraries, which collect works associated with famous dead people. The Legacy Library project illustrates a related principle of Web 2.0: encourage unintended uses. LibraryThing was designed for individuals to catalog and rate their own books, but this user-driven initiative has added tremendous unexpected value.
Thinking outside the box
That is, outside of a single computer (geeks like to call them "boxes"). More Web applications are either being built on top of other services, or make use of so-called cloud computing. Amazon, Google and other providers now offer a wealth of ready-made software and infinite computing power to allow companies to leapfrog over problems of cost and scaling.
Only a few years ago when I was approached by a publisher to start a project, we would begin at the beginning: purchasing a computer, selecting a service provider, writing some HTML, crunching some data. With services like Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, there's no longer any need to buy hardware: instantly an application can be deployed on one computer, or a thousand, at very low cost. This makes experimentation much more feasible: if no users come to a new product, no expensive hardware investment has been wasted. If it's successful, a few keystrokes can add 10X the computing power.
Cloud computing has also created tremendous benefit for offline processing tasks, as shown by The New York Times when converting their digitized archive for use on the Web.
It's not just about people, it's about data
Finally, Toby Segaran's talk on "The Ecosystem of Corporate and Social Data" reminded me how much value publishers have. Toby explored clever ways of finding usually-expensive data for free (for example, rather than paying for Yellow Page listings of restaurants, he scraped the New York City health department Web site, which includes ratings of every food-service facility).
Diving deeper, he emphasized how much value can be added to digital services if they are already full of content. Wikipedia came preloaded with a public domain encyclopedia, as it's much easier to correct or update old content than to enter it wholesale. The more of your content that users can find and interact with (for example, by providing an extensive full-content backlist), the more engaged they'll be.
Speaker presentations for the conference are available here: Web 2.0 NYC presentations.
App Mashes Up Digital Text on Facebook Platform
Peter Brantley
July 31, 2008
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Digital Texts 2.0 is an interesting application for Facebook that lets you group and share digital material. It's intriguing to see cutting edge development occurring in this space. From the Digital Texts 2.0 about page:
Digital Texts 2.0 was undertaken by Dr. Stéfan Sinclair as an initiative to experiment with applying the principles of Web 2.0 to the realm of electronic texts. We intend to preserve and expose all of the existing qualities of digital texts (rich hypertextual associations, refined encoding practices, analytic affordances, etc.), while enhancing them with additional characteristics provided by Web 2.0 and social networking. Thus, it is a preliminary attempt to better understand the phenomenon of social networking and how it might be adapted to benefit the ways in which humanities scholars interact with electronic texts.
Web Community Lessons from Stephen Colbert
Mac Slocum
May 8, 2008
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Stephen Colbert urges fans to edit Wikipedia and game Google, but instead of Internet ostracism, Colbert's Web abuse has netted a Webby Person of the Year award and, more importantly, a broad and active online community.
Old guard Web folks might frown on Colbert's intentional disregard for Web community standards, but the Webby award is rightfully deserved. Colbert's use (or misuse) of Web-based tools shows how interactivity and brand building can be harnessed, adapted and evangelized in Web communities. There's a lesson amidst all this cheekiness, and Colbert knows it. From the Associated Press:
"The Web is essentially improvisational ... The Internet is the shortest, hardest wall against which your voice will echo back," Colbert said. "It's a big place, but, boy, you get an echo back really fast."
Colbert's recognition of the Web's ability to "echo" reveals a forward-thinking perspective. This same perspective can help book publishers form and engage their own Web communities.
For example, Colbert and his staff take full advantage of their most important asset: the TV show. The creation of a top-down, far-reaching platform -- like a TV program -- is arduous and risky, but this is familiar terrain for book publishers. What publishers need to realize is that the hard part is finished; the expensive infrastructure required to publish books is already built. Now, publishers should take a page from Colbert's playbook and use their established platform -- books -- to engage with the audience through the Web.
As we've discussed before, these book-to-Web efforts can be simple add-ons, such as message boards, blogs, widgets and social network integration, or more intricate initiatives like online/offline meet-ups, immersive games, mash-ups and writing experiments. The key is to pay attention to those "echo" opportunities and then look for ways to use a book's core themes, ideas or characters as community builders.
Nabokov's Final Novel: The Perfect Mash-Up Source
Mac Slocum
April 29, 2008
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Vladimir Nabokov died before he could finish The Original of Laura, and the long history of the unpublished novel is worthy of its own literary epic. The saga is coming to an end now that Nabokov's son, Dmitri, announced his intention to publish the work.
But here's the rub: The Original of Laura is drafted -- in fragment form -- on 50 index cards, and Dmitri Nabokov has no intention of finishing the novel himself. Nabokov tells the BBC:
I would never presume to finish my father's works for him because there are so many strands and threads and thoughts there that perhaps might have been developed further. And I simply don't have the right.
Will another author accept the daunting task of completing a Nabokov title? Or, will the text from the 50 index cards be edited together as a book?
Here's another idea: publish the fragments on the Web and let Nabokov scholars and fans interpret the material. I know the chances of Nabokov-inspired literary mash-ups are remote, but content with this kind of pedigree would bring significant attention to digital publishing experiments.
"Dilbert" Embraces User-Generated Content
Peter Brantley
April 23, 2008
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"Dilbert" creator Scott Adams and his distributor, United Media, are supporting user-generated content through Dilbert.com. Visitors can rewrite captions and redistribute the results, and the full "Dilbert" archive will eventually be available for free. From Webware:
I asked Adams why he and United Media are opening up the Dilbert intellectual property like this, and he sent me a response by email: "We're accepting the realities of IP on the Internet, and trying to get ahead of the curve. People already alter Dilbert strips and distribute them. If we make it easy and legal to do so, and drive more traffic to Dilbert.com in the process, everyone wins. Plus it's a lot of fun to see what people come up with in the mashups.""
Q&A with WEbook President Sue Heilbronner
Mac Slocum
April 15, 2008
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WEbook is a new Web-based platform that blends traditional writing workshops with Web 2.0 functionality. Authors and groups can use the site to develop manuscripts, novels, screenplays and other publishable content, and if their efforts are well received, the projects are published by WEbook.
In the following Q&A, WEbook president Sue Heilbronner offers further details on the company and its collaborative process.
How did WEbook start?
WEbook is the vision of Itai Kohavi, our founder and CEO. In addition to being a twice successful entrepreneur in the technology space, Itai is a twice-published author. When he "completed" his manuscript of his third project -- certain that it was in good shape -- he sent it to a few sharp friends for their feedback. The critiques he received were superb and comprehensive, but he realized that if he had the reactions and input throughout the writing process, he would have produced a far better written product in far less time. In addition, he would have enjoyed working together with friends and fellow writers. He looked online to see if anyone had created a cooperative publishing tool that would have met his needs. Finding nothing suitable, he conceived of WEbook, doing away with the age-old vision of the lonely author and embarking on a community-sourced content creation environment for book publishing.
Is the platform based on wikis? Blogs? Is it proprietary?
Our platform is proprietary and was built for this purpose. It is based in part on wikis, with additional focus on inline comments, inline ratings, and versioning.
How many people are currently participating in projects?
As of April 9, the day WEbook opened its public beta following the alpha, there are 750 registered users of WEbook. Many of the alpha users were recruited in to the process to help provide valuable feedback on the platform and prove that collaborative authoring works.
How are projects created and managed?
Projects are created by an instigator who has an idea for a new book, collection, story, screenplay, etc. That person, the "Project Leader," has the ability to invite others to participate in the writing, give feedback, or both. She sets exposure level and permissions for the project when she establishes it. The Project Leader is charged with managing the project, but in many cases the work can take on a life of its own, with other writers or reactors moving it ahead at a rapid pace.
Are all projects public?
No. WEbook felt it was extremely important to balance the interests of writers -- who feel very strongly about the ownership and protection of their written work -- with the wish of WEbook to create a vibrant community. WEbook allows a project leader or author to make a project private. In doing so, she can be the only member of the project or elect to invite a few friends. A "private" project can stay that way so long as it stays under 35 people (not coincidentally the size of the largest possible creative writing class). At member number 36, the project is effectively a WEbook public project. Users are made aware of this when their project hits that limit, and there are implications of this decision within the Terms of Use and the rights allocation.
Do authors maintain copyright?
The Terms of Use for WEbook required some really new thinking, as the model doesn't exist anywhere else on the Web, and we needed terms that departed in important ways from copyright law in order to make the process possible. Authors who work on private projects with fewer than 35 people retain rights throughout. Once they hit that 36th member, put their work into the public realm, or submit their work for contention as a published WEbook, WEbook takes a six-month option to publish. If WEbook does indeed publish a book, rights are transferred to WEbook, the publisher. If WEbook does not publish, rights revert to the author. That's the simple version. The WEbook Terms of Use are more detailed. We're also producing a short, snappy video to highlight key issues of this all-important topic.
What is the revenue split with authors?
Authors and substantial contributors receive a total combined royalty of 5 percent of net sales.
How are substantial contributors determined? Is it a quantifiable level (i.e. they posted x number of times)?
We use a formula to determine materiality. It has a few softer inputs beyond quantity, which constitute attempts to create a measure of quality and significance to the ultimate work. This is not fully refined, and we expect this algorithm to be a continually moving process as the site evolves. Ultimately, users will see a measure of how they stack up against the algorithm to give them motivation and transparency. We also are intrigued by the idea of giving authors marketing tools to motivate users to contribute to their projects. This might have royalty implications in the future.
Have you found certain topics that are suited for collaboration?
Our goal is to provide a platform that adapts and grows in the direction the community sets. Our first book is Pandora, a fictional thriller written by 17 authors and 17 other contributors and editors. We believe a novel is the highest challenge for collaborative writing, and we took it with the alpha community to prove the concept and learn how writers could write together in the hardest scenario -- a continuous work of fiction.
That said, we think the majority of the WEbook successes will fall into the category of non-fiction or fiction collections. Topics that resonate most with users and, presumably, with the reading public, will be those that are enhanced in coverage because they have input from a community. So, for example, we have a project on our site related to successes families have achieved at home with kids diagnosed on the Autism spectrum. On a far less serious note, there is a great collection of essays on 101 Things Every Guy Should Know How to Do and The First Year, a collection of harrowing essays from first-year teachers.
How will books be selected for publication?
The community will vote on projects that have been put into contention for publication.
How will voting be managed?
Voting will be done on the site. Ratings already occur there for in-progress works and submissions. You will need to be a member of the community to vote. The bar to join is low, joining is easy, and we feel that in order to give an important thumbs-up or down to a work, you should at least identify as a member of the community.
The community will be the overwhelming majority voice in what is selected for publishing. This makes sense, as we view the community as an ingrained base of potential buyers. That said, it would be disingenuous to say that WEbook will move ahead on 100 percent of their top selections or not move ahead on something that just missed the cut. We have strong writers on staff and in our adviser circle (mainly coming out of the alpha experience), and we intend to use them as an occasional input to ensure we're on a good quality path for constantly improving the brand and the work we bring to the market out of the site community.
What formats will books be available in?
WEbook plans to leverage the full range of existing formats -- paper books, ebooks, audiobooks -- as well as delve into new potential formats, including mobile dissemination and unique, customizable downloads.
Will the books be made available through retailers?
Pandora will be available at Amazon.com, BN.com and other Ingram-related online retailers. As WEbook establishes critical mass, a following, and a brand, we will pursue favorable distribution opportunities with brick-and-mortar retailers.
Opportunities in Book Publishing and Web Communities
Mac Slocum
April 1, 2008
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A recent piece in the The New Yorker bangs the familiar death knell for newspapers, but amidst the gloom lies a potential roadmap for community-savvy publishers:
"... the owners of the Huffington Post had discovered a formula that capitalized on the problems confronting newspapers in the Internet era, and they are convinced that they are ready to reinvent the American newspaper. “Early on, we saw that the key to this enterprise was not aping Drudge,” [Kenneth] Lerer [Huffington co-creator] recalls. “It was taking advantage of our community. And the key was to think of what we were doing through the community’s eyes.” (Emphasis added.)
The concept of community doesn't come easily to traditional publishers (including book publishers) because top-down content has been the heart of virtually all pre-Web publishing. But once you get past the paradigm shift -- and the fear -- of community-centric efforts, the opportunities reveal themselves. For example, sites like Goodreads, LibraryThing and Shelfari are using the love people have for books to develop community-driven businesses.
But there's more to community than book recommendations, social networking and the latest Web 2.0 tools. Communities often need advocates who start and continue conversations, and who better to advocate for content than the publishers of that content?
To illustrate: imagine you've got an upcoming business title that's in the vein of The Tipping Point or The Long Tail (you're lucky). You've seen that these types of topics get people thinking and arguing, and you also know that you -- as the publisher -- should facilitate these conversations. So what do you do?
You think "through the community's eyes."
You can connect readers to authors and editors through a blog; develop forums around the book's themes and topics; create an information exchange for related ideas and projects; incorporate the opinions of bloggers, experts and pundits into an overall "conversation hub"; organize blog tours; provide a platform for real-world and digital meetups, etc.
And if you want to push the envelope, foster community before books are even published.
What community ideas do you have? What topics lend themselves to community efforts? Please share your thoughts and comments.
Borders Stores Turn Back on Long Tail
Mac Slocum
March 12, 2008
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Borders is counting on a simple turn of the wrist to boost profits and reduce in-store inventory. According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), the retailer is displaying three times as many books "face out."
Shelf Awareness notes:
" ... The new approach has led to sales increases 'in the double digits' and has led to the removal of 5%-10% of the average store's titles -- many of which sell only one copy a year in each store."
Borders' move could introduce a unique opportunity for retailers with offline and online storefronts: eschew the long tail in brick and mortar outlets and embrace the long tail on the Web.
Enterprising book marketers could also take a note from the seamless integration we're all experiencing on the Web: just as Web apps unite the desktop with the server-side, a retail store could merge with the retailer's online presence through in-store kiosks (perhaps with a Cover Flow layout to continue the "face out" concept) and print-on-demand equipment.
For these offline-online companies, the long tail doesn't need to be an either/or proposition.
Harlequin as Innovator
Allen Noren
February 11, 2008
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An truly impressive talk, and I hope we can convince Brent to speak at the next TOC. Do yourself a favor and visit eharlequin.com. Study what they're up to.
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