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Il Ritmo

Category: Metadata , E-commerce
The Book Standard features an article on Ritmo Latino, the Spanish-language music chain that's expanded into the book market. One thing I found interesting - some of these stores have Internet cafes, where customers can "go online for 'see inside the book' features."

Big question: are these features in English or Spanish? The US book-content market has been looking for a Spanish-language solution - bibliographic data, reviews, summaries, author bios, tables of contents in Spanish rather than English - and if Ritmo Latino is getting this content from somewhere, plenty of people would like to know where. If Ritmo Latino is composing this themselves, there's a lot of money to be made here.

If neither, then once again this points to the underserved Latin market and someone really ought to be getting a jump on getting book information to the Spanish-speaking customer in their own language.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 26, 05, 7:26 AM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

AOL follow-up

Category: Metadata , E-commerce
Via the goddessly Tess, this piece from Newsday revisits AOL a month or so after its content was unleashed for free. Their big claim to fame - offering full coverage of the Live 8 concerts.

"Offering niche content, such as online webcasts like Live 8, is key to AOL's ability to distinguish itself and compete, said Walton of Walton Holdings."

Truthfully, the Live 8 concerts were broadcast live on numerous websites, the BBC among them. So I don't know how "distinguishing" these kinds of content offerings are...when lots of other websites are offering them as well.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 15, 05, 8:09 AM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

July 14, 2005

Category: E-commerce
Summer's a slow time for news, as we know, and if it's not about Harry Potter it's just not news.

Nevertheless, the Times has a piece on the Junxion Box, a gadget that lets multiple mobile users connect to the web. Fabulous for commuters and those who travel lots. A consumer version is coming out shortly. Naturally Verizon's up in arms. One priceless quote:

"We're not surprised that people are building services like this and trying to attach them to our network," Mr. Nelson of Verizon said. "It verifies how cool and how important our network is. We're going to protect that investment."

Chances are, if you have to tell people how cool your product is, it ain't so cool. Chances are, if a development from a small company is legal, and it's a threat to your throttle on the market, it's time to figure out a new way to do business.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 14, 05, 9:07 AM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

The Google Threat

Category: Google , Metadata , E-commerce
10 years ago, Amazon was poised to take over the world...with a homepage that looked like . With content updated daily, an e-newsletter service, and a million titles for sale...everyone in the book world was wary. Who was this guy - the book industry is fairly incestuous and nobody had ever heard of this clown Bezos before. Where was he getting his money? And what was Amazon going to turn into?

That last question was the most disturbing of all. At B&N, trying not to outpace the competition but simply catch up, not knowing what Amazon would do next was unnerving, to say the least. But it wasn't simply about competition - what was Amazon selling, exactly? Books, yes. Information? Content? News? Was it a bookstore, or a magazine that sold books? What should B&N try to be?

Ultimately, the dust settled on these questions. Now Amazon is not the bogeyman it used to be. For that, we have Google.

 Moby Live's guest essay this week is the garbled latest in "sky is falling - and it's all Google's fault" kvetching. As with the issue of outsourcing (Lou Dobbs, don't even get me started), the question is not whether gathering information about users and what they're searching on should happen. It is happening. The salient question is, how should that be handled?

Haven't seen too many essays about that. Anyone wants to send me one, you know where to reach . I'd be grateful to leave all the kvetching behind.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 12, 05, 9:54 AM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

A Man for Your Plan

Snap him up, folks - Eric Throndson, formerly of Baker & Taylor, tells me he's...formerly of Baker & Taylor. If you have not been fortunate enough to benefit from his experience and smarts - and his very direct and dry way of looking at things - now's your chance. You can find his resume here, references here, a testimonial here, and an article he wrote for Against the Grain on ISBN-13 here. Do yourself and your company a favor and hire this man.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 6, 05, 11:09 AM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

More Muze News

Category: Metadata
Oh boy!

 Biblio.com, the used/OP site, has paired up with Muze to provide actual descriptions of the titles they carry. If you've tried searching for OP titles, frequently you'll be frustrated by the descriptions - they're limited to descriptions of the actual condition of the book (which is helpful) rather than plot summaries, reviews, etc. (which would be even MORE helpful). Finally, Muze's catalog is large enough to support such a necessary project (and it takes a while to aggregate enough OP data to do so).

Unfortunately, Biblio's catalog runs some 21 million items deep. And while Muze has OP data going back before 1995, there are always going to be a significant number of Biblio's titles that will never have the marketing information that the more recent or well-known titles do. It'll be interesting to see how (or if) Muze handles this. For the most part, Biblio's customers are not going to be searching for that early Shirley Jackson title, or the book one's mother wrote in her youth - they're looking for used copies of Harry Potter, plain and simple.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 4, 05, 11:38 AM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

July 1, 2005

In 1995, more or less the dawn of the Internet age, I was hired by a small company located in a warehouse in Williamsburg. Like a scene out of Brazil, there were wires draped everywhere, dust floating into our coffee (we learned to put index cards over our coffee cups in between sips), constant blowing of fuses (both electric and emotional). This was Muze, already 5 years old, a company supplying data about CDs, videos, and - as of 1995 - books, to clients such as Amazon, MSN, and Borders.

What I loved about Muze was its resemblance to a skunkworks, its lab-like atmosphere and the sense that we were doing work that was either massively groundbreaking or massively irrelevant. We kept expecting the company to go out of business at any moment - and it never did.

 Trev Huxley (yes, grandson of Aldous), one of its founders, left the company in 1990. Paul Zullo, the other founder, just departed the other day, and has been replaced by one Bill Stensrud, previously an executive at the venture capital company that acquired Muze. A quick Googling of Mr. Stensrud brings up bucketloads of praise. Perhaps he'll be the guy to finally bring Muze into its own. One can hope....
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 1, 05, 12:33 PM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post
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