Scribd Store a Welcome Addition to Ebook Market (and 650 O'Reilly Titles Included)

by Andrew Savikas | @andrewsavikas | comments: 7

The document-sharing site Scribd has launched a new "Scribd Store" selling view and download access to documents and books. As part of the launch, there are now more than 650 O'Reilly ebooks now available for preview and sale in the Scribd store, and all include DRM-free PDF downloads with purchase. (Scribd will soon be adding EPUB as a format, and we'll make that available as soon as possible.)

Many publishers (including O'Reilly) have kept Scribd at arm's length because the service was often used by people posting copyrighted material without permission. Though Scribd was reasonably responsive to takedown requests, that puts the onus for monitoring on the publisher, a whack-a-mole scenario that will consume as many resources as you throw at it if you let it. But Scribd has implemented a new system that uses the ebooks provided for sale to identify (and remove) any other unauthorized versions of that material, as well as prevent future unauthorized uploads. Like any technology it's far from perfect (for example, I suspect scanned images are more difficult to test than standard PDFs), but it's good enough for us to be comfortable participating, and is as good an example as any of turning lemons into lemonade.

For a publisher (and I use the term loosely) the terms for the Scribd store are impressive -- publishers set the sale price directly, and keep 80% of the revenue (compare that to Amazon's DTP program, where the standard terms are that Amazon gets to set the actual price, and the publisher only gets 35% of their "suggested" price). There's also an interesting "automated pricing" option in Scribd, which uses an (unspecified) algorithm to set the sale price. But the pieces of the Scribd store I'm most excited about is the real-time reporting (compared with a lag of a month or more with most ebook resellers, including Amazon), the option to easily provide free updates to existing content, and the variety of adjustable display options -- like preview amount, refreshingly optional DRM, and purchase-link images. Administering and understanding your sales in Scribd is downright delightful compared with the same for Kindle.

A service like Scribd further reduces the barriers to content creators interested in self publishing digital material (and again offers much better terms than Amazon's DTP program for Kindle), so in some ways absolutely a threat to existing publishers. But we also view it as an opportunity to get our books in front of interested readers, and a promising sign that the market for ebooks is large enough to continue attracting startups like Scribd who bring needed diversity and competition among resellers.

Clay Shirky's "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable"

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 37

Sometimes Clay Shirky astounds us by articulating something we've never thought of, and sometimes he astounds us by telling us something many have thought, but never so clearly and so compellingly. But always, he astounds.

Into the first category falls the claim that he made in his keynote at the last Web 2.0 Expo that "the critical technology of the 20th century...was the sitcom." Who would have thought that so penetrating an analysis could hinge on such a preposterous assertion! (If you haven't already done so, read the transcript or watch the video.)

Yesterday's piece, Newspapers and thinking the unthinkable, falls into the second category. When I said the other day that "Twitter is the most minimal newspaper," or when I talked to the New York Times about rediscovering what is essential in what they do, I was speaking to this same topic, but like so many others, I was still framing the dialogue around "saving the newspaper." By contrast, Clay cuts the Gordian knot:

That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place....

And so it is today. When someone demands to be told how we can replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.

This is a piece that anyone concerned with the future of publishing simply MUST read.

That being said, when I speak to this topic myself, I offer this hope: that while institutions may be overwhelmed by the tide of change, new institutions do arise. The deep needs that newspapers serve aren't going away. We will find new ways to serve those needs. As Clay says:

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

And to be quite frank, we can already see the shape of that reinvention in specialized fields. In the mid-1990s, Michael Leeds, the CEO of CMP, in its day one of the titans of specialty computer newspapers, told me that if he couldn't get one of his papers to $50 million in revenue in 3 years, he would shut it down as not worth doing. Today, many of the papers he owned are gone, yet small firms like Techcrunch, Mashable, and ReadWriteWeb are successful (and doing at least as good a job of covering computer industry news) at an order of magnitude less revenue than CMP would once have thrown away.

Jobs that matter get done. But no one is guaranteed that their business as they conceive of it today will be preserved, especially at any given scale or profitability. So, have faith. The world as we know it is being broken. Now, let's get on with reinventing it!

Four short links: 27 Feb 2009

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 0

The Economist in Chinese, online news, concurrency, and community. Have a great weekend!

1. Translating the Economist -- Andy Baio reports on a Chinese electronic community that, each week, splits up and translates The Economist articles into Chinese. The DIY ethos here, "we want this, it's not here yet, let's make it happen", is tremendous.
2. Business Models of News -- excellent insight into the travails of newspaper business. "In essence to secure the advertising for the print edition, they have in the past completely undermined the business they need to survive in the future. They have told every one of their advertisers that online adverts are not worth paying for." (via Julie Starr)
3. Embracing Concurrency -- Ignite UK North talk on parallel coding, at a high and clear level, by Michael Sparks of BBC R&D, who is also author of Kamaelia.
4. Things I've Learned From Hacker News -- Paul Graham on social and community lessons from running Hacker News. "Probably the most important thing I've learned about dilution is that it's measured more in behavior than users. It's bad behavior you want to keep out more than bad people. User behavior turns out to be surprisingly malleable. If people are expected to behave well, they tend to; and vice versa."

Four short links: 26 Feb 2009

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 3

Three stories about old-media in new-media age, and some patent goblins to leave a bad taste in your mouth:

1. The Kindle Swindle -- the Authors Guild president argues that the robot voice of the Kindle does away with audiobook royalty streams, lucrative for some titles. Doesn't mention the vast majority of books for which there is no audiobook. Creators have attempted to regulate use with licenses, but I think the plasticity of bits argues against this being possible for much longer. Now "audiobook"-ness is a feature of the device, not a feature of the retailed artistic work, and the question is not only how to charge for it but whether it makes sense to continue to charge for it. Neil Gaiman, by the way, doesn't feel the same way as the head of the Author's Guild.
2. If You Want to Save Newspapers, Learn to Love Your iPhones -- a long Observer piece about the "future of newspapers", reinvention in the mobile age, subscription models, the curse of Google, etc. Many great quotes, for example: "Google is great for Google, but it’s terrible for content providers, because it divides that content quantitatively rather than qualitatively. And if you are going to get people to pay for content, you have to encourage them to make qualitative decisions about that content." -- Robert Thomson, the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.
3. NYT ArticleSkimmer -- reminscent, vaguely, of Arts & Letters Daily, the original "big heap o' content" page. Between this and Big Picture, I'm enjoying the experimentation in online newspaper formats.
4. Microsoft Sues TomTom Over Patents, Including Linux Kernel -- Microsoft patented elements of the FAT filesystem, including the system for representing long filenames on systems that only handle 8.3 filenames like CRAPWARE.EXE. This filesystem is used in pretty much every digital camera and Flash filesystem device, and the TomTom system in question. This Ars Digita article raises the interesting possibility that the Open Invention Network could respond by flexing its patent portfolio muscles and make it clear that nobody wants a battle over patents (except lawyers who are paid by the hour).

Four short links: 11.5 Feb 2009

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 3

This second Feb 11 post was brought to you by the intersection of timezones and technology. If there's a third Feb 11 post, I'm changing my name to Bill Murray.

1. Hacking the Earth -- an environmental futurist looks at "geoengineering", deliberately interfering with the Earth's systems to terraform the planet. Radical solution to global warming, unwise hubris and immoral act of the highest folly, or all of the above? (via Matt Jones)
2. Reinvention Draws Near for Newsweek -- fascinating look at how Newsweek are refocusing their magazine. "If we don't have something original to say, we won't. The drill of chasing the week's news to add a couple of hard-fought new details is not sustainable." gives me hope. Newsweek are hoping to target fewer but richer advertisers, essentially a business strategy of tapping existing customers for more. This feels like they're ceding the contested parts of their business (commodity news stories) and doubling down on the bits that nobody else is fighting for yet (their columnists, pictures, whitespace). What else could they do? Possibly nothing (see Innovator's Dilemma), but the alternative is figuring out something new that people want and giving them that. Easy to say, hard for anyone to do.
3. Tinkerkit - a physical computing kit for designers. Arduino-compatible components for rapid prototyping. Sweet!
4. Stanford University YouTube Channel -- short interesting talks by Stanford researchers. Brains on chips, stem cells to fight deafness, and brain imagery are some of the first up there. The talks aren't condescending or vague, they're aimed at "a bright and curious audience", as the Mind Hacks blog post about them put it.

Did you read the book from that movie?

by Brett McLaughlin | @oreillybrett | comments: 15

New Radar blogger Brett McLaughlin is the executive editor of O'Reilly's Head First books and a Java developer-turned-author.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that media is changing the way books are viewed. In fact, video - and YouTube in particular - has already changed how books are sold. Most big fiction releases are heralded by short "book trailers" that give an almost movie-like feel to the contents of the book.

But in a recent article published by the Christian Science Monitor, I was surprised to see that there's an even more notable link between movies and the sale of books:

In the upcoming Christian movie “Fireproof”, screenwriters created a book as plot point. The movie tells the story of Caleb Holt, a firefighter with a troubled marriage. To help prevent divorce, Caleb’s dad suggests he read a book called “The Love Dare.”

The book changes Caleb’s view of marriage and transforms his life. As soon as preview audiences saw the film, they began flooding bookstores with inquiries.

The only problem: The book didn’t exist.

It does now, however.

Brothers and associate pastors Alex and Stephen Kendrick, also co-directors and producers of “Fireproof,” sat down and penned such a book in the space of a few weeks. It hasn’t hit bookstores yet but has already sold 300,000 copies and may go on to become the bestselling Christian book of 2008.

This is pretty remarkable. Keep in mind, we've long seen books-turned-into-movies re-released with movie-centric covers. We've seen movies come out, and then books released that are adaptations of the movie, in cases where the movie's based on an original screenplay. But books that happen to be featured in movies? That's a new one.

Is this an isolated case? Or perhaps a phenomenon related more to religion and self-help tomes? Not so much; from the same article:

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s the story of the “Sex and the City” book. When Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) sat in bed reading a book called “Love Letters from Great Men” in a scene in the film, women viewers everywhere decided they needed a copy.

Again: As the press was quick to report, the book didn’t actually exist. (At least not with that title.)

But there was something close enough: a 1920s title called “Love Letters of Great Men and Women” reissued last year by Kessinger Publishing. On the strength of the movie, the book suddenly became a hot item for booksellers.

So what does this mean for publishing as an industry? Even more poignantly, what does this mean for learning books; the sort of books that O'Reilly and other technology, math, science, educational, etc. publishers routinely put out?

I'm not completely sure, although I plan on positing a few ideas in the coming days... but one thing that is clear: the competition for a book sale is no longer just other good books. Movies, videos on YouTube, even the latest Metal Gear Solid game on PlayStation 3 are increasingly key competitors. They're informing buyers about what to buy, in very unique and surprising ways.

And when the competition is no longer just books, everything changes... whether we acknowledge it or not. Anyone - or any company - that doesn't realize and react is going to be hurting before decade's end.