Entries tagged with “web publishing” from Tools of Change for Publishing

BBC Shifts Conversation Style: Go Where They're Already Talking

I think this deserves to be pondered. BBC News is moving away from merely hosting comments to inciting discussion in a variety of formats and locations. From Reportr.net:

For the US presidential debates, it [the BBC] has opened channels on video services Qik, 12Seconds and Phreadz. Some of the videos were subsequently edited and posted on the BBC News website.

The purpose, explains [BBC Editor] Matthew Eltringham, is "to join in conversations wherever they were happening rather than expect people to come to us and host them on the BBC's platforms."

This is a major change in the BBC's approach to user-generated content. It signals a shift away from the idea that the BBC should host the conversation. [Link added]

Overestimating the Home Page

Brett Crosby from Google Analytics says a home page is often mistaken as the most important part of a Web site. From TechRadar:

Where are your visitors landing, bouncing, and viewing? It's often assumed user experience begins on the homepage, and this misconception drives many an ecommerce site to waste hours of design work in the wrong place. Search engines dig deeper into ecommerce sites, bringing visitors to not just 'electronics', but also televisions, MP3 players or sat navs. Analytics data will tell you where your real 'homepages' reside, so you can focus your design work there.

Crosby's point applies to content-based sites as well. Visitors often enter through an individual story page or blog post, not the home page. This is why there's value in serving up related posts, embedded links and call-outs to other features and tools on story-level pages.

(Via Jeremiah Owyang's Twitter stream)

The Crowdsourced Cat Book

Amazing but True Cat Stories is a 38-page coffee table book born from the combined efforts of Mechanical Turk contributors. The creator/editor of the book, Björn Hartmann, describes the genesis of the project on his blog:

The idea for this book was born in Terminal A at Washington Dulles, where I was stranded for some hours in late July 2008. To spend my time, I posted the following two tasks on MTurk:

1. What's the craziest thing your cat has ever done? Write at least one paragraph about a funny, unbelievable or otherwise memorable incident involving your cat. This should be a real story that happened to you or your family.

2. Sketch a cat. With or without an environment and toys. The cat can be drawn in software or on paper. Do not upload photographs of cats. Have fun!

Before I got out of that terminal, it was already clear that the submissions were too good to keep to myself. My fiancee Tania suggested turning the stories into a book. So, after a few days of collecting, I selected about 25 stories and 20 images and spent an evening doing a nice layout for a Blurb book.

The book can be previewed here.

(Via the Reading 2.0 list and Boing Boing)

TOC Recommended Reading

Could the iPhone be a Kindle Killer? (Bill Trippe, Gilbane Publishing Practice Blog)

Here's a project I would love to do if I had the time--a face-off between Kindle, the iPhone, the Sony Reader, an eBook Technologies ETI-1, and a few other devices. Take a few book types--novel, textbook, graphical book, business document to begin with--and create a feature matrix and evaluation criteria.

Random Ebook Thoughts From A Jetlagged Mind (Kassia Krozser, Booksquare)

Here's a truth: ebooks sell far better than numbers from traditional publishers indicate. This is because there's a huge market for erotica out there. Women buy erotic ebooks instead of purchasing physical books because, well, if you're female and over thirty, you've been taught that good girls don't go there. Actually, good girls do. They just do it under the radar.

Why blog publishing 'failed' in the UK (Ashley Norris, TechCrunch UK)

... many brands and their agency planers have chosen to play it safe and will work with established media brands or mega portals like MSN, even when the ads themselves will be seen by a less focussed and often an inappropriate audience

Web Video Advertising Stuck on Pause

Users are flocking to Web videos and video companies are serving millions of streams, but video executives speaking at the RBC Capital conference noted that advertisers -- the final variable in this equation -- have not fully embraced the format. From News.com:

So when and for whom will the money start rolling in? Video ad executives said that while YouTube has a lot of inventory that's hard to monetize, sites with professional content such as Hulu.com don't have enough inventory to serve demand from brand advertisers.

News Roundup: iPhone Apps Developer Shocked by Windfall, Author Reaps Rewards of Web Openness, Comcast Buys Web Publisher for $125 Million

iPhone Apps Developer "Shell Shocked" by Outsized Payday

Seth Weintraub over at 9to5Mac reports on the outsized success of at least one iPhone Apps developer, Eliza Block, who's now earning an unexpected $2,000 a day from her crossword puzzle app, 2Across. Noteworthy certainly, but also instructive about the platform Apple has created for what can certainly be called "self publishing":

But, she deserves it...her app is the best of the breed, filling a need that many people want.  The amazing thing is that Apple has taken care of everything from the development environment to the transaction services to the distribution to the marketing.   You can be a great software developer on your own without having a huge company to back you up.  This is truly a game changing play for Apple and the development community. (Continue reading)

Author Paulo Coelho Illustrates the Upside of Openness

Budding authors may not be able to duplicate the success of Paulo Coelho, but Coelho's willingness to experiment across mediums is certainly worth studying. From Jeff Jarvis' Guardian column:

Coelho is the thoroughly modern author. But he still believes in print. For him, this isn't a matter of print v digital. It's a question of what comes when you add digital to print. What does it bring him? "It gives me a lot of joy," he said, "because writing is something you do alone." He recalled the night in 2006 when he read that he had become the second best-selling author in the world. He was bursting. "My God, my wife is sleeping. How can I share this news with anybody?" Now he can shout it from the mountaintop of his blog. (Continue reading)

Comcast Pays $125 Million for Lifestyle Web Publisher DailyCandy

Comcast is buying shopping/lifestyle Web publisher DailyCandy for $125 million. From the New York Times:

... the company, driven by a small army of contributors providing breezy tips, has grown to encompass 13 daily and 8 weekly newsletters, reaching 2.5 million subscribers in 11 American cities and London. (Continue reading)

TOC Recommended Reading

What's Really Killing Newspapers (Jack Shafer, Slate)

Other institutions do far better jobs at issuing social currency these days. What is Facebook but the Federal Reserve Bank of social currency? And it's all social currency you can use! Like cocktail chatter, a Facebook posting--be it a link, a list, a photo, or travel plans--conveys the message, I am here. Listen to me. A well-executed Facebook presence, like a superb pontification at the bar or a great phone-in to sports talk radio, demonstrates one's status within one's existing social network. If skillfully wielded, a Facebook page can increase a person's status by attracting "cooler" or more influential friends. These days, you can't raise your status more than a bump by carrying the Wall Street Journal under your arm.

The Plight of Politico -- And Everyone Else (Ezra Klein, The American Prospect)

A year-and-a-half after launch, [Politico is] getting 3.5 million unique visitors per month and 25 million page views. And yet not only is it unprofitable, but 60 percent of its revenues come from advertising in the 27,000 circulation print version. In other words: Politico got the online readership it dreamed of, but it hasn't come even close to figuring out how to monetize it.

Secrets of book publishing I wish I had known (Mark Hurst, Good Experience)

Publishers and bookstores are in it for the money. But you, the author, can't be in it for the money - it doesn't pay enough. You should write a book because you believe in it. And that's the trouble: what you love isn't necessarily what publishers believe will sell. If you can find a topic that you love and that will sell in the market, well then, go forth and type. You're one of the lucky ones. [Emphasis included in original post.]

Comcast Pays $125 Million for Lifestyle Web Publisher DailyCandy

Comcast is buying shopping/lifestyle Web publisher DailyCandy for $125 million. From the New York Times:

... the company, driven by a small army of contributors providing breezy tips, has grown to encompass 13 daily and 8 weekly newsletters, reaching 2.5 million subscribers in 11 American cities and London.

As the Times notes, DailyCandy is one of a number of independent Web publishers acquired in the last year. Most recently, the company that runs paidContent.org was purchased by The Guardian Media Group for $30 million.

Web Community Management Tips

Whether intentional or not, Bob Garfield from NPR's "On the Media" reopened an old wound when he questioned the need for user comments on newspaper Web sites.

The "comments issue" is polarizing. Die-hard community advocates believe comments are an integral part of the online experience. Detractors draw a straight line between user comments and the apocalypse. It's a contentious topic with very little middle ground.

For our purposes, there's no point in looking at all the arguments and counter-arguments. The comments debate has been going on for at least 10 years (much longer, if you count Usenet), and it will persist as long as trolls continue to lower the conversational bar. That's just the way it is.

However, this latest flare up offers an opportunity to redirect the focus to some of the time-tested best practices for managing Web communities. Derek Powazek (whom we recently interviewed for an unrelated piece) offers an excellent starting point with "10 Ways Newspapers Can Improve Comments," and Cory Doctorow's "How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community" is also recommended reading.

I've also picked up a few bits of wisdom from my own experiences as a community manager:

  1. Nurture the Good -- The majority of people want to do the right thing. They want to engage in fruitful and fulfilling conversations. They want to build and protect special communities. These are the people you focus on.
  2. Push Trolls to the Margins -- All popular communities will eventually suffer through a troll infestation. The trick is the minimize a troll's impact by not taking the bait. Moderators should never engage in a public argument, and key community members should be encouraged via private messages and back channels to ignore troll attacks. A marginalized troll is a useless troll, and they know it.
  3. Share Ownership -- I focused on inclusiveness in my first community because I was unsure about my own voice and opinions. In a serendipitous twist, the "we're all equal and we're all in this together" perspective led to a shared sense of ownership. It took a while for folks to buy what I was selling, but a consistent focus on collaboration and equality eventually led to individual responsibility and effective self-policing. I've used this same technique on subsequent communities and the results have always been positive.
  4. Calm by Example -- Experienced community managers know that the Web is a fickle place; today's egregious opinion often evaporates within a matter of days. A measured community manager allows fiery debates to run their course without spilling out of control, and on those rare occasions when guidance is required, a calm force is far more powerful.

What community tips do you have? Please share your thoughts in the comments area (unless you're a troll).

The Media Industry's Perspective Problem

A newsroom survey conducted by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism touches on one of the major issues -- and failings -- affecting mainstream media: the power of flawed perspective. Here's an excerpt from "The Changing Newsroom" report:

Staffing for coverage of sports, local government and politics, police and investigative reporting, all grew in 30% of the newsrooms surveyed. Although not specifically measured in the survey, anecdotal evidence suggests that at least some of these gains have been driven by pressure to provide web content during the course of the day. Some of this content is often then "reversed published" back into the newspaper. [Emphasis added.]

There's a huge difference between "published" and "reversed published." A published piece of content -- be it an article, a podcast, a broadcast, or even a book -- is pushed into the world with a clear intent (inform, entertain, influence, etc.). But reversed published content has been stripped of intent. Its sole purpose is to fill space; whether it entertains, informs, or influences is secondary.

The whole concept of "reversed published," and the adjacent issues of print vs Web vs mobile vs broadcast, illustrates a fundamental flaw in the media perspective. Content should be defined by its audience, not by its container. If an article is initially published on the Web, that article must be geared toward the Web audience. If the same material later appears in the paper, that material needs to be geared toward the newspaper audience. Same goes for mobile consumers and broadcast consumers.

Repurposing material without regard for its audience is a luxury the media industry used to enjoy when it was a primary information conduit. The only difference is that years ago the Web was where rehashed shovelware was dumped ("Story continues on A12", anyone?). Early Web users quickly tired of media's detritus, so they looked elsewhere for useful information. Apparently, media organizations didn't learn from this past mistake because now they're pulling the "repurposed content" maneuver with traditional audiences. No one wants rehashed bits.

This is where perspective comes in. If a media organization continues to think in terms of content containers rather than content consumers, then it will inevitably default to "reverse publishing" and other bad habits. These days, as audiences scatter and company valuations plummet, every piece of content needs the justifications and intentions of fully published material.

Web Publicity + Free = A Fighting Chance

Sci-fi author Scott Sigler uses podcasts, giveaways and grassroots Web marketing to build interest in his work. We've covered Sigler in the past, but his recent interview with The Independent illustrates the value lesser-known writers can derive from Web-based brand building and free distribution:

Sigler's thinking -- and this is the revolutionary bit -- is that it's worth making commercial sacrifices to secure a fan base, because fans will always want physical copies of the books, even if they've already heard an audio version for free.

"The only way to get people's attention these days is to give them something for free," Sigler says. "If someone walks into a bookstore, why would they pick up a Scott Sigler when there's a Stephen King? They won't. So I give my content away, give readers a chance to try it for free. And if they like my stuff, then guess what: they'll go out and buy the book."

Guardian Blazes New Media Trail with paidContent.org Acquisition

According to Kara Swisher, The Guardian Media Group has purchased ContentNext, publisher of paidContent.org, for more than $30 million. ReadWriteWeb says this acquisition and separate open-data initiatives have pushed The Guardian to the head of the media pack:

What do you get when you combine cutting edge tech openness with some of the leading new media publishers online? A kick ass publisher ready for the 21st century, hopefully. Meanwhile the rest of the newspaper industry struggles to survive attacks from Craigslist.

(Via Peter Brantley's read20 list)

Huffington Post Goes Local in Chicago

The Huffington Post started as an aggregate political blog, but founder Arianna Huffington is now eyeing something bigger: local news coverage.

Chicago will serve as Huffington's local guinea pig. From The Guardian:

[Arianna] Huffington said the Chicago site would aggregate news, sports, crime, arts and business news from different local sources as well as contributions from bloggers in what will be the first of a series of projects in "dozens of US cities". The Chicago site will initially be curated by just one editor.

Similar hyper-local efforts have struggled to achieve sustainability. The Guardian says the Huffington Post received $10 million in funding in 2006 and 2007, and the company is pursuing additional investments to fund the local expansion.

(Via mediabistro)

Reading Campaign Taps Web Trickery

The following is for entertainment/information purposes only. Don't blame us when you get fired for reading Animal Farm on the job.

Read at Work is a Web site that displays a Windows XP overlay on your computer (in itself not all that impressive ... especially if you're on a Mac). But look closer and you'll see that the clickable desktop folders contain poems, short stories and novels -- all rendered in fake PowerPoint files complete with cliched PPT navigation and generic clip art. It's certainly not the best way to read a classic, but the increased job security should offset any formatting annoyances.

The New Zealand Book Council launched the site as part of a reading campaign. More info is available at BestAdsOnTV.com.

(Via BuzzFeed.)

"Ask a Ninja" Creators Use Web for Shot at Hollywood

While we all wait for the digital domain to grow up and replace established revenue streams, there are lessons to be learned from the digital pioneers who have already cracked the sustainability issue.

Silicon Alley Insider breaks down the per-episode and annual revenue of the popular "Ask a Ninja" Web video series. According to the Alley Insider, "Ninja" founders Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine net $3,900 per spot. They produce 40 episodes a year, so their annual take-home is around $156,000.

"Ask a Ninja's" Web success is unusual. It consistently draws 2-3 million views per month (a huge audience in Web terms), and its ad inventory is managed by Federated Media, an outside firm that works with high-traffic Web sites [disclosure: Tim O'Reilly is an investor in FM]. The increased attention from the "Ninja" series has also led to burgeoning movie careers: Nichols and Sarine are working on an update of the B-movie classic, "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes." Nichols discussed the "Tomatoes" deal on his blog:

By going to straight to features, the entire showbiz world is still open to us. We'll be able to move freely up and down the aspirational chain without being pigeonholed as the web guys. And actually we'll be even more valuable since we have a deep understanding of the new media landscape.

We want to have careers that stretch into decades. That means diversifying and trying [to] succeed in larger, more established businesses.

The real lesson here lies in the two-pronged revenue approach Nichols and Sarine have employed: they've achieved a degree of short-term stability by monetizing their Web success, but they've also used the increased notoriety to create new opportunities in the old-school film industry. Similar motivations catalyze many of the innovations and experiments in the "free" meme we've discussed in recent months.

Linking Books with the Web-Way of Thinking

I spent most of this morning reviewing several O'Reilly books in Adobe Digital Editions that we've converted into EPUB format -- we've been working to get our heads fully around the spec, and figure out how to best fit some our content into the constraints of the ebook medium. And the more time I spent scrolling and clicking through the books -- a very Web-browser-like experience -- the more I realized how frustrating it was that the books don't take full advantage of something we take for granted on the Web: outbound hyperlinks. The constraint sword cuts both ways (at least for now).

I can't really blame the authors -- they wrote their manuscripts for print, after all. And there's much we as the publisher can do to retrofit at least some links prior to distributing books in a digital form.

But this issue is a great example of the changing nature of book content, something nicely described in a great post from Martyn Daniels (link via Peter Brantley) about digital text and non-linear thinking:

We have long promoted that ebook readers and the current conversion of 250 pages of text into 250 pages of digital content is transitional. The challenge is not just to adopt the technology but adapt it to do things differently, exploit its true potential, learn from the experience and move on to the next step change. Merely taking today’s content and converting it into digital content follows the logic that digital is merely just another format or manifestation and that it will be read the same way. This is the greatest challenge to many genres: travel, reference, religion, art and design, craft etc, who can do things differently in the digital world and must not be drawn into mere replication.

That's very much in line with Thursday's post on the AAP's EPUB stance: publishers must begin making the transition from creating books to be consumed primarily in print with ebooks as an afterthought, toward designing books intended to remain digital throughout their lifecycle -- in particular, adding new value that leverages the potential of digital content. Of course, that also means that sometimes they won't be building "books" at all -- but instead whatever does the job best (here's Tim O'Reilly on the subject):

The failure to think about what job your product does for the customer, rather than the tools or approach you've historically used to do that job, is the reason why many established companies fail to make the transition when there is a technological change. Hence the old saw, "If the railroads had realized they were transportation companies, they'd be airlines today." (Well, maybe yesterday, as the airlines are suffering their own business transition. Maybe they'd be Fedex/Kinko's today. Or Google/Skype.)

Martyn's point about transitional forms is a critical one, and a simple example illustrates Tim's point about the transition: Encarta on CD-ROM was a transitional format from printed encylopedias to Wikipedia. Note that's three completely different players: Brittanica sold encyclopedias; Microsoft sold software; readers were looking for comprehensive general reference, not encylopedias or software.

We're experiencing this acutely at O'Reilly, as more of our audience finds the information online they once sought in our books. We've historically sold books; readers are looking for answers, information and instruction. We've found other ways to do those "jobs" and remain relevant, but it's not an easy transition.

Use Publishing Experiments as a Guide

Kevin Anderson's recent post on the future of newspapers reiterates the importance of digital experimentation -- a vital topic that extends well beyond newspaper publishing:

The difference between the late 1990s and now is that cost of editorial experimentation has dropped almost to zero in some cases. Creative use of freely available web tools can achieve most editorial goals, and it can be used as a guide for future development. Out of all of the things you could do, it will help you understand what you must do.

(Via contentious.com)

News Roundup: Web Focus Yields Revenue for Tech Publisher, Out-of-Print Books Return Via POD, UK's First E-Reader, TorrentSpy Hit with $110+ Million Judgment

Tech Publisher Finds Path to Web Revenue

Tech/trade publisher International Data Group (I.D.G.) rolled one of its largest magazines, InfoWorld, into a Web-only publication in April 2007. A profile of the company in the New York Times reveals encouraging first-year results from InfoWorld's digital transition:

There were nervous months after the switch as the company awaited the reaction from advertisers and readers, but before long InfoWorld’s Web audience was growing and its business improved. Today, I.D.G. says, the InfoWorld Web site is generating ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of 37 percent. A year earlier, when it had both print and online versions, InfoWorld had a slight operating loss on monthly revenue of $1.5 million.

Lessons for Publishers in IDG's Digital Success

PersonaNonData talks about the recent story in the New York Times on IDG's transition to digital publishing:

Since their [IDG's] market is technology they have some advantage over other types of magazines; however, their navigation of this transition is instructive and predictive of the manner in which publishers will ultimately become successful.

... In IDG's case they have remained faithful to the mission of providing content their core market wants, aggressively managing the performance of their titles and shutting down those that don't perform and they have combined staff into cohesive and focused groups. Companies that make this transition early and successfully will establish difficult to surmount positions relative to their competitors ...

Faber Brings Out-of-Print Titles Back Through POD

Faber & Faber is launching Faber Finds, a print-on-demand (POD) imprint specializing in out-of-print titles. From The Guardian:

The new titles, which will retail at about £9, and be printed with automatically generated cover designs, will not be stocked in large quantities by booksellers, but will be available to order through most major booksellers and the majority of internet-based book retailers ... The publisher aims to publish up to 20 new titles every month, after the launch list of 100 books to be made available this June. Faber is the first mainstream non-academic publisher to invest heavily in the POD model, and actively to source material previously published elsewhere for a POD imprint.

Iliad Book Edition E-Reader Coming to UK

Just in time for our discussion on the ideal e-book reader comes a new product that will be the first e-reader sold in the United Kingdom.

Trading Wi-Fi for increased storage and an overall price drop, the iLiad Book Edition is a successor to the iLiad 2. Both use the same iRex e-ink technology and feature a tablet-based touch screen. There is no bundled online service or book store, but both iLiads have support for open formats such as PDF. 50 public domain books are preloaded. (Continue reading)

TorrentSpy Hit with $110+ Million Copyright Judgment

Defunct BitTorrent index TorrentSpy has been ordered to pay more than $110 million in damages for copyright infringement. From News.com:

The judge ordered TorrentSpy to pay $30,000 per copyright infringement -- for 3,699 films and shows. That works out to be worth $110,970,000.

TorrentSpy shut down its site in March. Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney in the copyright suit, tells News.com the company declared bankruptcy last week, a fact he says will be lost amidst the judgment's large dollar figure. (Continue reading)

Some Quotables from OnCopyright 2008

I spent last Thursday at Copyright Clearance Center's OnCopyright 2008, and came away with some great lines from the panelists well worth sharing here.

On a meta-level, one of the recurring themes on the panels was the value of using the work of others as a starting point for creative experimentation, as in a pastiche. So it was fitting to learn from the organizers that they found inspiration at the February TOC Conference, both in terms of speakers and in staging. (The panel title "Technology: Confronting the Tools of Disruption" was another nice nod.)

I've enclosed direct quotes in quotation marks -- the remainder is generally faithful paraphrasing, but may suffer from some transcription abbreviation.

Chris Sprigman:

  • "Copyright law is not in place to protect business models, it's in place to protect creativity."
  • Who controls copyright law? According to a 5th-grade civics class: Congress. According to a cynic: People who care enough to spend money to get Congress to do what they want.
  • Intellectual property has nothing to do with what craigslist does, and craigslist has significantly diminished newspapers' ability to create a return on what they do.
Read more…

Lessons for Publishers in IDG's Digital Success

PersonaNonData talks about the recent story in the New York Times on IDG's transition to digital publishing:

Since their [IDG's] market is technology they have some advantage over other types of magazines; however, their navigation of this transition is instructive and predictive of the manner in which publishers will ultimately become successful.

... In IDG's case they have remained faithful to the mission of providing content their core market wants, aggressively managing the performance of their titles and shutting down those that don't perform and they have combined staff into cohesive and focused groups. Companies that make this transition early and successfully will establish difficult to surmount positions relative to their competitors ...

Stay Connected
RSS TOC RSS Feeds
 News Posts
 Commentary Posts
 Combined Feed
 New to RSS?
Newsletter Subscribe to the TOC newsletter.
Tarsier Icon Follow TOC on Twitter.
Newsletter Join the TOC Facebook group.
Newsletter Join the TOC LinkedIn group.
TOC Widget Get the TOC Headline Widget.
Search
Tag Cloud