Mountains & Plains ABA

Digital Downloads - a nest of vipers

Imagine a bookstore that sells only works published by Random House. If you want a HarperCollins title, you have to go to the store down the street. In this world, you're permitted to read Penguin books either on the train or lying in bed, but Vintage books can only be read on the couch. It's absurd—but no more so than the world of video downloads as they exist today.

Borders and B&N - back in the ring

Ebooks First

Books on YouTube

[F]or titles like "The Average American Male," targeted at young men, Internet video can be a better marketing vehicle than traditional media outlets.

More on Muze CEO

POD for everyone!

[C]onsider ordinary people being able to print out best-sellers for instant reading on paper—maybe bound, maybe not.

Brooklyn Public Library to compete with Netflix

Libraries still not getting Swimsuit Edition

On the SerialST electronic discussion list this week, librarians complained that the issue has yet to be delivered and that the process for getting it delivered seems to be as confused as the initial policy decision not to send it.

Kluwer sold

New CEO at Muze

Outage apologies

WH Smith looking at Borders airport stores

Always a new way to rig the rankings

VTLS to offer free ILS licenses

The program is open to facilities "running products for which their vendor has announced the end-of-life."

Warner now Grand Central Publishing

Grand--"We are 'grand' because we are big, impressive, even magnificent at times."


Central--"We recognize the huge audience of readers between New York City and the West Coast who are looking for books across a wide range of tastes."


Publishing--"The future of our business depends on offering reading content through new channels and in many formats (not just books)." 

Filtering YouTube Might Make Things Worse

But if Google were to implement copyright filters, proactively screening content before it’s posted to the site, would YouTube leave the safe harbor of DMCA?

Mossberg hits the nail on the head

We need a new digital copyright law that would draw a line between modest sharing of a few songs or video clips and the real piracy of mass distribution. We need a new law that would define fair use for the digital era and lay out clearly the rights of consumers who pay for digital content, as well as the rights and responsibilities of Internet companies.

If you line up all the bytes of the True Cross...

The uploaded versions of the relics or artifacts are much more than just still images or document files. They will be able to be studied in full 3D, rotated and zoomed in and out. 

OUP Behaves in the Sandbox

What we publishers have come to realize is that Google and friends have opened up the world to our content by showing us that discoverability and access leads to interest and opportunity. Every major media company is now thinking they need to figure out their share of the digital space.

The Secret World of Google Book Search

So books that people would not traditionally read in their entirety, or that require frequent updating, are likely to migrate online and perhaps to cease being books at all. Telephone directories and dictionaries, and probably cookbooks and textbooks, will all fall into this category.

They also want media suitable for unhurried reading in beds and bathtubs and on beaches. Above all, they want paper books for what digitisation is revealing them to be. Books are not primarily artefacts, nor necessarily vehicles for ideas. Rather, as [Seth] Godin puts it, they are “souvenirs of the way we felt” when we read something. That is something that people are likely to go on buying.

Borders: Me Too!

Borders Group Inc. says a turnaround effort will set its stores apart from those of Barnes & Noble Inc., but the chain's plan appeared to mimic innovations at its rival.

New YouTube Rival: NBC/Fox

The companies said Thursday that distribution partners for the online content would include Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s MSN network and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit. The site, which will be free, is expected to launch this summer and will carry full episodes and clips from hit shows such as "Heroes," "The Simpsons," "24" and "My Name Is Earl." It will also feature movies, including "Borat."

News Corp. and NBC said they've already lined up several big advertisers for the site, including Cisco, Intel and General Motors.

PW Hosts ThinkFirst

"Technology is impacting the entire publishing process from manuscripts to marketing to how you publish," said panelist Cliff Guren, director of publisher evangelism for Live Search Books and Live Search Academic at Microsoft. "Publishers across the board are going to have to spend more on technology than they have in the past."

Viacom Not All That

We contacted both Viacom corporate and iFilm to ask them if they took steps to proactively identify and remove infringing videos or if they relied on copyright holders to notify them of infringing content. Some time after publication, Viacom responded with the following statement: "Contributions to iFilm are all screened by iFilm employees prior to posting, to ensure that copyrighted, pornographic or other restricted content is not posted to the site." A search using the term "NBA Brawl," however, returns a number of clips of televised footage of both NBA and college football fights and it is not clear that Viacom owns the copyrights on those clips. In fact, it looks a lot like what one would find on YouTube.

More Thomson Education Rumors

Unnamed insiders were quoted in the Financial Times on Thursday as saying Bertelsmann was eyeing Thomson Learning with...private equity groups. It did not give the names of the buy-out firms.

Borders Divorcing Amazon - Starting Own Website

Mr. Jones, who once served as president of world-wide licensing and studio stores at... Warner Bros., says he has met with the heads of various Hollywood talent agencies in hopes of striking publishing deals.

As a result of those talks, Borders will publish on June 1 "Slip and Fall," a debut thriller by Nick Santora, a seasoned TV writer whose credits include episodes of "The Sopranos," "Law and Order" and "Prison Break."

MySpace for Booksellers

Having a MySpace profile may not directly affect book sales, but it does seem to draw people to events. Miller, of the Tattered Cover, said a recent author event with Ishmael Bael drew an overflow crowd of more than 200. Announcing the event on MySpace may have had something to do with that, she said. And Kothe, of Book People, said her store surveyed customers at a recent event and found that 15% of them found out about the event through MySpace.

Chinese Farmers Get Web Savvy

These large databases were established to process and integrate resources from libraries, museums, art galleries, art research institutes, performing arts groups, film companies and more, nationwide.

Millions of farmers have benefited from the project. They share the resources through the internet, internet mirrors, satellites, CDs, portable storage devices, digital TV and cable TV. In many areas, farmers rely on the project for technological training and migrant workers for basic employment skills.

EBSCO to distribute Newstex content

Newstex automatically tags each blog post with company names, stock tickers, key executives and government officials, and detailed topical categories. Each news story and blog post delivered as part of Newstex Blogs On Demand will include Newstex’s proprietary PeopleTickering™—a system that synthesizes metadata from numerous premium sources and quality blogs to create a database of people who make the news.

Wiley Buys Anker Assets

Founded in 1990 by James Anker, Anker Publishing has annual revenue of approximately $1 million. Its offerings include materials on creating teaching portfolios and improving teaching practices as well as resources for department chairs, deans, and other administrators on management, leadership, and change in higher education.

Pinksheets

B&T finalizes AMS deal

The Big Picture - Guest column by James Lichtenberg

Are Libraries Still Necessary?

The value of libraries grows as the value of information increases in society - libraries fulfill an essential need in producing, organizing and providing access to information.

MIT and DRM

SAE’s DRM technology severely limits use of SAE papers and imposes unnecessary burdens on readers. With this technology, users must download a DRM plugin, Adobe’s “FileOpen,” in order to read SAE papers. This plugin limits use to on-screen viewing and making a single printed copy, and does not work on Linux or Unix platforms.

Google Makes a Game Out of Advertising

Delivering ads into games -- such as a virtual billboard on a racetrack or a poster in a boxing arena -- is a small business, but many in the videogame industry believe it could eventually be lucrative.

Downloadable Video in the Library

There's no limit on the number of MyLibraryDV users; pricing, as with Recorded Books' downloadable audiobooks, is based on expected usage....Libraries can contribute content as well, such as video versions of library events.

Give Them a Grant, and They Buy Another Company

OCLC said that WebJuntion, its online community of librarians, "will further develop this web-based technology management and planning tool with particular attention to helping public libraries create E-Rate compliant technology plans."

Dangers of Success

"six different ILS in support mode and two-to-three in active development at all times. We're trying to be all things to all people. This Rome platform is the opportunity, solution, and vision for how we're going to do it."

The Big Picture Launches Tomorrow

• Jim Lichtenberg of Lightspeed LLC has a guest column about the whole Google/Microsoft/AAP/Viacom mishigas - making sense out of it for all of us in the book industry.
  
  
• We introduce TIA - This Issue's Acronym - with an explanation of FRBR: what it is, what it's supposed to do, and who uses it.
  
  
• We've got industry gossip - the latest scoop on your trading partners, their products, and their people.
  
  

YouTube Sticks its Tongue Out at Viacom

Making Information Pay

Nicole Poindexter, VP & Director of Strategic Planning for Hachette Book Group, will provide the opening keynote entitled Reaching a New Generation of Readers. A closing keynote entitled Beyond the Book: Responding to a Changing Marketplace will be delivered by Allen Noren, Director of Online Marketing for O'Reilly Media. Further confirmed speakers are:

• Mike Shatzkin, Founder & CEO, The Idea Logical Company, Inc. Success in a Parallel Universe, Perhaps with Some Help From Your DAD
• Chris Hart, Random House Technology Services Case Study - Gaining Insight into Digital Asset Management at Random House
• John Rubin, Founder and CEO, Above the Treeline Improving Inventory Management Using Web-Based Analytical Tools
• Ted Treanor, Rosetta Solutions, Inc. Creating Buzz and Increasing ROI in Pre-Publication Review, Marketing, and Sales

For the full agenda and conference registration information, visit http://www.bisg.org/conferences/mip4.html.

Digital Divide in England Affects the Elderly

The proportion of adults using the Internet declines with age. Only 15 percent of those aged 65 and over visit Web sites....The most common reasons given by older people for not using the Internet were a lack of interest or confidence; having no computer; seeing no benefits in the Web and cost.

Digital Writing at Roanoke

Funky music, swirling visuals and 3-D text are regulars on the Web site as readers are encouraged to approach the material in a "Choose Your Own Adventure" spirit.

Some Good News: Digital Divide Shrinking in US

What still eludes many, however, is the full, interactive Internet experience. For less-affluent minorities, particularly Latinos, the Web is still very much stuck at 1.0. Only 29% of Hispanics have home broadband connections, compared with 43% of whites and 31% of African Americans.

Instead of a digital divide, the U.S. has a "digital dimmer switch," says Pew associate director Susannah Fox....[Minorities] often gain access to the Internet though a dial-up connection or via computers outside their home, and use it to check e-mail, search, and visit Web pages, according to Pew. But they don't build the pages themselves, says Fox. "Broadband users are shaping their online environment, not just using it," says Fox. "It is interesting to think about not only what Latinos are missing out on if they don't have this, but what the rest of the population is missing out on in terms of the content Latinos might be contributing to the Internet."

Illegal Music Downloads Outstrip...The Other Kind

"It is likely that the annual number of legal users will surpass P2P users in 2007," said NPD vice president Russ Crupnick.

Google protected by DMCA?

Rare Books Online

more than 600,000 pages of scanned full-text, fully searchable facsimiles from the original sources, covering a broad range of subjects, including art and architecture, cultural and regional studies, the history of the book, Judaica, medicine, music, natural history, science, theology, travel, world literatures, and more.

Bantam Dell Gets A Second Life

Koontz's real-time appearance (at 6 p.m. PST) will feature a detailed avatar of the author, and Second Life residents will be able to hear him read and answer questions (via audio file) submitted via IM. A Bantam Dell avatar /assistant will be on hand to emcee the eventand field questions from the audience.Hulsebosch said there will also be giveaways—books as well as a virtual BD coffee mug that will brand your avataras a book lover.

Alacra adds Experian

Google to Anonymize Searches

Google plans to make its stored data anonymous by eliminating the last set of numbers in the Internet-protocol address associated with the computer that made the search query, which would hide that user within a group of 256 potential users. It will also alter data kept about cookies on the searcher's computer to make it less likely that that information could be used for identification purposes.

Cisco buying WebEx

PW site redesign

Microsoft out of IDPF

Since Microsoft has obviously set out on a path to unilaterally establish a digital publishing platform tied to their monopoly OS platform, why should they support open standards and an inclusive process that involves publishers as more than just passive recipients of the latest Microsoft technologies?

Google vs. Microsoft again

Google's Book Search probably doesn't violate the spirit of copyright law, but there is a grey area that still has to be defined, and there's room for argument. There's absolutely no question as to the legitimacy of Microsoft Live Book Search. Microsoft seeks permission first, then indexes. Google indexes first, then sorts it all out later. From the perspective of fairness to copyright holders, Microsoft leaves nothing open for debate.

Viacom YouTube digest

More on Viacom vs. YouTube/Google

Viacom, parent of MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, claims there are nearly 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom programming on YouTube and said settlement talks with Google and YouTube have been "unproductive."

More On Affordable Textbooks

ebrary Goes European

Viacom Sues Google - Insert Lawyer Joke Here

Eat your own dog food

DefectiveByDesign notes that Jobs could reverse the current trend and distribute all Pixar films on iTunes sans DRM. Jobs states that removing DRM is "clearly the best alternative for consumers" and he is the head of Pixar and the largest individual Disney shareholder.

King Biscuit

Wikipedia to check credentials

Florence Devouard, Mr. Wales’s successor as the head of Wikimedia Foundation board, the parent of the many Wikipedias in scores of languages, said she was “not supportive” of the proposal. “I think what matters is the quality of the content, which we can improve by enforcing policies such as ‘cite your source,’ not the quality of credentials showed by an editor,” she added.

European pressure on Apple

“Do you think it’s fine that a CD plays in all CD players but that an iTunes song only plays in an iPod? I don’t. Something has to change,” EU Consumer Protection Commissioner Kuneva was quoted as saying in a preview of an interview to be published on Monday.

Not everything is Google-able

"There's an illusion being created that all the world's knowledge is on the Web, but we haven't begun to glimpse what is out there in local archives and libraries," said Edward L. Ayers, a historian and dean of the college and graduate school of arts and sciences at the University of Virginia. "Material that is not digitized risks being neglected as it would not have been in the past, virtually lost to the great majority of potential users."

"This is why people concerned about digital preservation should be on Google's side of their dispute with the AAP and the Author's Guild. An 'opt out' policy for books scanned from library collections is far more preservation-friendly than one that is based on 'opt in', as the publishers request."

Textbook prices cause state-level consternation

In Minnesota, legislators are considering more tightly regulating the textbook publishing industry and requiring professors to be more cost-conscious in choosing course materials. At least a dozen other statehouses, from California to Connecticut, are taking up the issue.

Google Bavaria

Other libraries participating in Google's book-scanning project: Oxford University, University Complutense of Madrid, the Library of Barcelona, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Michigan, the New York Public Library, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Princeton University, University of California and the University of Texas at Austin. Google also is working on a pilot project with the Library of Congress.

Code Version 2.0

Code v2 was written in part through a collaborative Wiki....Lessig took the Wiki text as of 12/31/05, and then added his own edits. Code v2 is the result.

MP3 Travel Tours on sale at B&N

Now people can visit a foreign city and tour museums and historical sites while devices like an iPod or cell phone take them on a tour, place by place, room by room. "It's like having your own personal National Geographic expert with you everywhere you go," said Bill Browne, company spokesman.

Forbes says "Buy" on B&N stock

But Stifel Nicolaus analyst David Schick is telling his clients to push money into the company. He mulled over the numbers and decided that Barnes & Noble still tells a good story with solid cash flow, real estate and store productivity.

Schick also thinks that the company could be a good take-private candidate in the low-to-mid $40 range and that a management-led buyout is perhaps the best option.

Cool game

Overdrive passes 1 million users

No swimsuits in the library

SI spokesman Rick McCabe acknowledged to LJ that publisher TIME, Inc., neither offered to let libraries opt out of receiving the issue nor announced it beforehand.

Race to the...library

According to publishing industry veterans, companies seeking to launch online book services typically first set up a Web site, then line up publishers and authors to promote books.

Once publishers agree to provide content to the likes of Google and Baidu, readers pay to read online versions of the books. Revenue is then shared between the companies operating the book-sharing Web site and the content providers.

Google hits back

Big Picture launch nears

Lightning Source photo albums

Windows Live loses search leader

Historically, Microsoft's MSN service had relied on Yahoo for its search results. Under Mr. Payne's team, MSN set off in 2003 to build its own search engine, eventually switching off Yahoo Inc.

Since that time, Microsoft's online unit has steadily lost market share. In January Microsoft held just 8.9% of the U.S. search market, handling only 2.5% more search queries than a year earlier, according to NetRatings Inc. By comparison Google handled 40.6% more queries over the same period for a 53.7% market share, the research firm said. Microsoft ranks third in market share behind Google and Yahoo.

Content ROI contest

• Are you trying to tell whether your company is making good or bad investments?

• Are you trying to ensure your organization effectively uses purchased content, and delivers business results from your content investments?

Berrett-Koehler with Ingram

"We are a copy with subtitles"

One of his better known theories postulates that we live in a world where simulated feelings and experiences have replaced the real thing. This seductive “hyperreality,” where shopping malls, amusement parks and mass-produced images from the news, television shows and films dominate, is drained of authenticity and meaning. Since illusion reigns, he counseled people to give up the search for reality.

Great bytes

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Microsoft Google Smackdown

ProQuest CSA's first rollout

New life for sheet music

...and it's only going to get worse

Chuck Hollis, vice president of technology alliances at EMC Corp., the data-management company that sponsored the IDC research and the earlier Berkeley studies, said the new report made him wonder whether enough is being done to save the digital data for posterity.

"Someone has to make a decision about what to store and what not," Hollis said. "How do we preserve our heritage? Who's responsible for keeping all of this stuff around so our kids can look at it, so historians can look at it? It's not clear."

Random House buys Virgin Books

Microsoft addresses AAP, slams Google

Microsoft is trying to differentiate itself from Google by portraying itself as more sympathetic to copyright holders than Google, and has sent a letter to executives of big media conglomerates, offering to work with them to eliminate piracy from Soapbox, a new video service on MSN.

Profs with Podcasts

BBC signs with YouTube

Grim outlook from B&N

The word is spreading

Digital Divide Shrinking?

Chicago Libraries

Blockbuster acquiring Movielink?

Convera betas Publisher Control Panel

enables print and online publishers to add, manage, and refine vertical search capabilities so they can develop search-based revenues for their Web sites.

Got the Answer?

Digitizing Local History

ILS news

Audible sales jump, but they post a loss

IDPF hot race

Berners-Lee on DRM

Berners-Lee, speaking before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet in the U.S. House of Representatives, said it was "very, very important" for lawmakers to protect the ability of users to access the Web content they want regardless of their Internet service provider.

Bono questioned if his idea would prevent mass stealing of copyright materials. "Is that not the equivalent of having a speed limit but not enforcing the speed limit?" she asked.

Big Brother Is Watching You - or is that the other way around?