Managing Joy

This week at the ECPA Executive Leadership Summit, Kelly Gallagher of Bowker reported that over a million ISBNs were produced in the last year.

I remember when the entire content of Books in Print was less than a million titles. That was 20 years ago.

Much of this is due to format proliferation, where the supply chain requires a separate ISBN for every format of a title, including digital formats. So the fact that an ISBN needs to be assigned to the Kindle format, and another ISBN to the Overdrive ePub file, and another ISBN to the Apple ePub file, and yet another ISBN to the PDF…yes, you can see how the ISBNs pile up.

And much of this is due to self-publishing – more people are publishing more books than ever before, because the barrier to entry in the book market has significantly gone done..

While many are ripping their hair out over metadata and identifier bloat in the supply chain – and yes, it IS worth ripping your hair out about – I would argue that a million ISBNs in the last year is a sign of something very very good. Something that many amazing people (Ramy Habeeb of Kotobarabia, Arthur Attwell of Electric Book Works, Pablo Francisco Arrieta) have been working towards.

A million ISBNs in the last year means that more books are available in more formats to more people than ever before.

It means that more books have the chance to get into more hands the world over than ever before in the history of books or hands.

And sure, a lot of these books are not going to last. Most of them, I’d say. But the point is, words and ideas have flooded the marketplace in an unprecedented way. We are living in an intensely creative time. And that is a cause for joy.

On a practical level…

How’re we going to manage all this joy?

Same way we manage everything else – with tools. We’ve got databases to handle metadata and identifiers. We’ve got XML tools to manage formats. We’ve got digital asset management systems to manage pictures and sound files and video files. We’ve got XML repositories and XML editors to manage words.

And with people. People who are passionate about (and creating order out of all this chaotic joy). People about ,a xhref="http://twitter.com/bsandusky">getting work discovered. People about – and people about . People who and . People who can by saying, ;

And people who can and begin to .

A million books created in a year – in the US alone! What a phenomenal achievement. And we are well-positioned to manage that joy into billions of hungry hands.

Fear and Loving at TOC

The Value of a Publishing House

Slipping into the New York Times the day after New Year’s was an op-ed by Jonathan Galassi, president of FSG, which begins with the question, “What is an ebook?” and ends (or nearly ends) with this observation: “A publisher — and I write as one — does far more than print and sell a book. It selects, nurtures, positions and promotes the writer’s work.”

In between the opening question and the conclusion is a gap roughly the size and consistency of the La Brea tar pits.

To the first point – “Are e-books a new frontier in publishing, a fresh version of the author’s work? Or are they simply the latest editions of the books produced by publishers…?” – the answer is, of course, “It depends.”

If an ebook is simply a digital reproduction of a print book, the answer leans towards being “the latest editions” – and frankly, in the case of a lot of ebooks, it’s less of a reproduction than a travesty of formatting and a sort-of approximation of what the print book was supposed to offer.

If an ebook contains new information/illustrations, is presented in a variety of formats and fonts, and possibly contains video, or an author interview, or other material…it’s probably “a fresh version of the author’s work” which has been curated by the ebook publisher in a different way than the print publisher did. (And which is what Open Road is saying they’re all about.)

But is it solely the author’s work that forms the basis of that ebook? Galassi argues, in the case of William Styron, “An e-book version of Mr. Styron’s “The Confessions of Nat Turner” will contain more than the author’s original words. It will also comprise Mr. Loomis’s editing, as well as all the labor of copy editing, designing and producing, not to mention marketing and sales, that went into making it a desirable candidate for e-book distribution. Mr. Styron’s books took the form they have, are what they are today, not only because of his remarkable genius but also, as he himself acknowledged, because of the dedicated work of those at Random House.”

All true!

But then the trouble starts. Galassi states: “An e-book distributor is not a publisher, but rather a purveyor of work that has already been created. In this way, e-books are no different from large-print or paperback or audio versions. They are simply the latest link in an unbroken editorial chain, the newest format for one of man’s greatest inventions: the constantly evolving, imperishable book — given its definitive form by a publisher.”

And here is where I strongly disagree. It’s those words “definitive form” – which presume that the hardcover first-run is the “real” book, while everything that follows is somehow derivative. As our work with StartwithXML has demonstrated, this view of the “editorial chain” is rapidly evolving into a model where there is NO “definitive form”.

It is true that an ebook distributor is not a publisher, in the same sense that a physical book distributor (Ingram, Baker & Taylor) is not a publisher. And many physical distributors are also ebook distributors.

But an ebook PUBLISHER is a publisher. And this is where I think Mr. Galassi gets it wrong. Because nowhere in this essay does he even discuss ebook publication, or regard ebooks as anything other than a digital version of a print book.

Let’s have a look at audiobooks as a parallel. Audio versions of books have to be read by someone – either a professional reader such as Jim Dale, or a famous/semi-famous actor, or a voiceover artist. That person must modulate his voice, decide what to emphasize, re-create the work aurally. A simple reproduction of the book so that you can hear it is more along the lines of what DAISY does for the visually-impaired, where you get a computerized voice reading rapidly and without inflection, spelling the words it doesn’t recognize.

Audio divisions of publishing houses – and independent audiobook publishers such as Brilliance – determine abridgement, voice quality, and a host of other factors in producing these “books”. And I would argue that the level of nurturing, curation and editorial is as meticulous as it is for that hardcover book. Audiobook publishers are not simply distributors – and to call them this is a disservice to what they provide.

As we fully explore the potential of ebooks (as Open Road is doing) we’ll find opportunities for precisely the sort of care-taking and curation that Mr. Galassi values so highly - just as we have for audiobooks. The “traditional” publishing process will not be replaced or diminished by ebooks – it will be amplified.

So yes, there will still be publishing, as Galassi himself concludes. “Even if someday, God forbid, books are no longer printed, they will still need the thought and care and dedication that Mr. Loomis and his colleagues put into producing William Styron’s work for nearly 60 years. Some things never change.”

Which kind of leaves me ultimately shrugging at this article. So what was your point?

The truth is, Galassi’s point is largely unspoken – and you have to have been in publishing a little while to glean what he’s really talking about. It’s very clear that he wants some form of credit for what traditional hardcover publishers do. In publishing, the form of credit that is most widely recognized is, of course, rights.

It’s interesting that Galassi brings up Random House in this particular example – because initially, Styron’s publisher was Bobbs-Merrill (as a correction notes at the end of the piece). In early December, of course, the CEO of Random House issued a memo asserting that Random House retained the digital rights to all its titles - shortly after Open Road announced that it would be mining publishers' backlists for ebook material. Galassi seems to be lining up on the side of Dohle – that publishers, when they acquire a book from an author, are allowed to publish that book however they want, whenever they want.

And if those rights were not explicitly granted in contracts (because of course many contracts pre-dated any existence of ebooks), and if the courts do not uphold Random House’s position, it appears that what Galassi is not-so-implicitly saying is that publishers nevertheless deserve a portion of whatever profit is made from those digital books.

This gets even more interesting, of course – Galassi is essentially saying, “You wouldn’t even have a product if it weren’t for what we’ve done, so we should get some compensation beyond what we’ve earned from the production of this hardcover book. Those rights are implicitly granted in the contract with the author."

Which is basically an invitation to a large and long party attended by contracts and IP lawyers.

Practically speaking, however, the question then becomes, “How are you going to figure out what the hardcover publisher's compensation should be?” Because in order to carve out that compensation, a monetary value has to be placed on each component of the publishing house: editorial, marketing, sales, production, etc. And no traditional publishing house I’m aware of actually tracks these functions the way they would need to be tracked to create useful algorithms. Is Galassi saying they’re going to start?

There are other issues, of course. Not every author is a Styron – you’re not going to want to invest all that caring and tending in every single author. (And not every editor is Gordon Lish or Max Perkins, tenderly re-shaping, or in some cases gutting and renovating, what the author brings him.) When I worked in publishing 20 years ago, 80% of what my editors acquired went directly to copy-editing – no nurturing, no sitting down with the author…no reading. So I honestly have to question how much value is inherent in that 80% – obviously, the copy-editing process has value, of course, but what if the editor took a manuscript (as increasingly happens) from an agent that had already been edited, packaged, otherwise made publication-ready?

Authors have traditionally complained that their publishers aren’t doing such a great job marketing and selling their books; the explosion of self-publishing ventures and digital marketing consultancies (ahem), as well as the influx of new marketing-department hires at traditional houses, are evidence that these authors may in fact have a point. If an author can demonstrate an increase in sales after moving to a self-publishing model (as Steven Covey appears to be doing) or hiring a marketing consultant, what value is the publisher actually bringing? (I AM excited about publishing's new digital marketing hires - many of them are very clued-in and will contribute a great deal of value - if they are allowed to do the things that need to be done.)

As for production, typesetting, paper selection – these are very important for print products, obviously, but ebooks use entirely different formatting and thus a great deal of print production is irrelevant to ebook creation.

I’d argue that we can’t take for granted that a traditional publishing house – simply by virtue of being a publishing house – adds value. The value a publishing house adds really depends on the editor, the author, the culture of the publishing house, and the book itself.

Whatever a “book” is. Wanna go there?

Survey Says!

ISBNs and ebooks: Part 7624

Yesterday the AAP's Digital Working Group hosted a meeting where Phil Madans of Hachette, Angela Bole of BISG, and I talked about ISBNs and identifying digital content. This came on the heels of Mark Bide's webinar for BISG yesterday on the same subject.

We broke the topic down into three discrete parts: ISBNs and ebooks, ISBNs and chapters, and ISBNs and "chunks". I stopped the presentation after each slide so we could discuss each part before moving on to the next one. And some interesting findings emerged.

Metadata

The primary objection (even more than cost - but of course these were larger publishers who can buy identifiers in bulk at a discount) to assigning an ISBN to each format of ebook is having to track the metadata on each record. Databases begin to bloat with products that are identical except for format, and managing the metadata becomes both repetitive and confusing. 

Furthermore, it became apparent that publishers are not particularly using ISBNs to track royalties and sales - they are using SEVERAL fields, and the ISBN is not even necessarily the most important among them. So the ISBN International Agency's argument that the ISBN is an essential tool for tracking these things falls by the wayside.

We talked a bit about the prospect of third parties assigning ISBNs to different ebook formats - most publishers seem to just want to produce an EPUB file, assign an ISBN to that one, and then send it "into the wild" (as Bide says) for conversion and distribution. The distributors and retailers are primarily book-related and their databases are generally keyed off an ISBN, so those third parties would have to assign ISBNs to whatever formats they are distributing and selling. But the publishers at this meeting did not seem particularly worried about that prospect.

One publisher also stressed that by supporting more than one format, they're contributing to format proliferation and they would prefer very much not to do that.

However, the downside to allowing third parties to assign ISBNs to digital products on an as-needed basis becomes problematic when there are changes to the metadata. If a pub date shifts, if a price goes up, if there are corrections to author names, additions to synopses and reviews - any time you have to edit the metadata on a title, if you've got third parties with their OWN editions of that title, you can't be sure the edited/corrected metadata will reach those editions.

ISBNs and Chapters

Even less popular than the one-ISBN-per-format model is the one-ISBN-per-chapter idea. This expands the metadata bloat exponentially. At present, most publishers who are offering chapters for sale are doing so from their own websites, so ISBNs are not such an issue. However, once retailers begin offering individual chapters of books, the industry will face the same problems it does with different ebook formats. Multiplied by however many chapters are in a given book.

In addition to identification of chapters for the purposes of trading with third parties, there is the issue of tracking royalties. With textbook authors, this is problematic - many authors contribute to textbooks, and determining who wrote which chapters can be daunting. It was generally agreed that without significant market demand, identifying chapters for the purposes of trade is not a high priority.

ISBNs and "Chunks"

First there was the objection to the term "chunks". Which I agree with! It's nasty. But Anna Wintour said the same thing about the word "blog"...and look where that got her! It seems "chunk" is the term we're stuck with, and I am heartily sorry about that.

Second, everyone at the meeting pretty much agreed that this is a vastly esoteric subject and not likely to become a pressing issue anytime soon. Even Amazon does not sell sub-chapter-level content. Licensing content to third parties (such as websites) will likely mean putting together discrete digital assets into various packages, but there seems to be no trade reason right now for ISBNs to be attached to those packages. This may change as the market changes.

We ended with a "watch this space" message, and are now putting together a survey which looks at some of the assumptions behind past ISBN-use recommendations.

PDFs and Kindles

Ebay not liking digital sales so much

Using the Classified Ads format, sellers receive a 30-day ad at a fixed price. This solution enables sellers to continue to market their digital goods on eBay; however, because Classified Ad listings are a lead generation tool and do not result in transactions that go through eBay, Feedback cannot be exchanged between buyer and seller.

 

Ingram Gets Learned

The company said ALPSP members are invited “to contribute titles to an ALPSP-branded range of subject-based eBook collections which will be offered to libraries and other institutions” through its MyiLibrary content distribution partners including Swets. ALPSP members have access to all of Ingram Digital’s digital content solutions, like CoreSource for digital asset management, and member publishers can use Lightning Source Inc. to produce print-on-demand titles as well as enable digital content distribution to all markets and channels.

Because They're French!

The project, to be unveiled at the [Paris Book] fair, will offer more than 60,000 digitised works from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) and 2,000 from about 50 publishers, some of whom received subsidies for the purpose. The BNF plans to add another 40,000 books imminently, with those copyrighted books supplied by publishers expected to quickly exceed 10,000.

Google Book Search Releases API

Web developers can use the Books Viewability API to quickly find out a book's viewability on Google Book Search and, in an automated fashion, embed a link to that book in Google Book Search on their own sites.

Big Digital On Campus

Digital gurus frighten publishers, leave them twitching in anxiety

BISG survey on experimentation and innovation in publishing

Suzanna Ellison leaving McGraw-Hill

Amazon to buy Audible

Damn the iPod, damnit!

Ebooks up, audiobooks down

Michael Eisner gets into digital book marketing

Publishers have attempted to use the Internet to market books and attract new readers with little success, but G.P. Putnam president Ivan Held thinks this could be a breakthrough approach.

"One of the challenges for the industry in marketing books is how to bring in new readers," Held said. "This concept will certainly help reach a new audience as well as hook the consumer on the book before it ever comes out."

Steve Jobs to Publishers: Drop Dead

Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Macbook Air vs Kindle?

OCLC extends partnership with Blackstone Audio

"Blackstone Audio has enjoyed a successful partnership with NetLibrary as a provider of eAudiobooks for purchase," said Steve King, director of digital sales for Blackstone Audio. "We anticipate continued success with NetLibrary in offering a subscription option to libraries that would prefer the convenience of this model."

BISG/BIC White Paper on identifiers

The Identification of Digital Book Content is intended to stimulate debate in the book industry about how digital book content should be identified and to encourage further work on the development and implementation of identification standards and best practices for such content.

Joe Reynolds promoted at Ingram Library Services

"Libraries everywhere will be the first important adopters of digital content...As librarians make the print-to-digital transition, we know we can be a valuable member of the team."

Shaz's Crystal Ball

XML will no longer be considered optional. Increasing sales of customized books will make publishers turn to their backlists for “repurposing.” When they do, they will find the cost of retro-tagging XML is often, particularly for illustrated books, prohibitive. They’ll also learn that with a little discipline and an improved process, doing XML tagging while creating content is almost free.

As a Tastebook Customer

I fell for Tastebook. I uploaded all my recipes. I organized them into breads/brunch dishes, appetizers, fish, poultry, meat, pasta/rice/grains, soups and salads, desserts, and of course the ever-necessary "other stuff". I chose a cover image, a title, and placed the order: three copies shipped to me, three to my brother (Uncle Pete, of the House of Technological Wonders).

A week later, the order had weirdly cancelled itself. I placed a re-order. Suddenly, the order doubled itself. I called the helpdesk. They'd mistakenly cancelled the order, then un-did it themselves, then my re-order doubled the order. They cancelled the second order.

Two weeks later, Uncle Pete received six cookbooks and had not the foggiest idea what that was about.

Three weeks later, in several deliveries, I received six cookbooks. My account was only charged for one order.

The books themselves were gorgeous.  The exact cover I'd selected. Delectable illustrations. Awesome layout. Nice paper stock, tab dividers between sections. Inside, however, were 12 pages of advertisements (masquerading as recipes from Bertolli olive oil), which I removed from each book.

Would I do it again? Probably. As a gift item to friends and family. Would I use Tastebook as a POD? No. At $35/pop, it's tough to recoup cost plus profit. But as a vanity project, a gift of my kitchen to my friends and Uncle Pete, it's a great idea. 

Larry Kirshbaum Joins Overdrive Board

"During my career, I've seen the publishing industry evolve with the adoption of new book formats, business models, and sales channels," said Kirshbaum. "Today, eBooks, audio books, and digital media markets are exploding, and OverDrive is uniquely positioned as a global leader in the value-added distribution of digital books and other content."

Overdrive's .epub is ready for download

The new "epub" standard for eBooks and other digital publications was developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum (www.IDPF.org), a non-profit standards and trade association, and unanimously approved by IDPF member companies. Publishers benefit from "epub" as it allows them to produce a single digital publication for all distribution channels rather than producing multiple formats for competing reader applications. OverDrive, an IDPF member, joins Hachette Book Group USA, Adobe Systems, Sony, and others in actively supporting the new format.

Hacking the Kindle

Hacker Igor Skochinsky has reversed engineered the DRM of the Kindle to allow Mobipocket books to be read on Amazon'e eBook device. It works by actually changing the DRM of the files to be compatible with the Kindle.