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?

Digital gurus frighten publishers, leave them twitching in anxiety

BISG survey on experimentation and innovation in publishing

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?

David Cully at B&T

Cully's primary responsibilities include managing all merchandising and purchasing functions, managing BTMS, and managing Baker & Taylor's new Specialty Markets Group.

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.

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. 

NYCIP this weekend

Juicy Juicy Juicy

The wires are abuzz with Judith Regan, who has little to do with what we cover. Everything's more or less drowned out by the shocking accounts of how she was asked to withhold information from federal investigators about her affair with Bernie Kerik, in a Murdochian scheme to pump up Giuliani's credibility to take the Republican Party nomination. In addition to Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly, all of Fox News, Jane Friedman, and a host of others, Sara Nelson of PW is also implicated, along with the writer Michael Wolff. She's not going down alone, people.

Link roundup: 

Mediabistro

NYTimes

PW

The Book Standard 

BISG Annual Meeting presentations online

More Lessing

Normally we keep this blog to issues of technology in the book world, but today we are over the moon about Doris Lessing winning the Nobel Prize. After decades of defending why we love her work, it feels so great to be validated. Yes, she can be a bit heavyhanded at times, and yes, her Campos in Argos series was probably not the most successful sci-fi ever written...but she articulates truths like nobody else. Martha Quest, The Golden Notebook, The Fifth Child, and The Diaries of Jane Sommers (as well as the first volume of her autobiography) are...probably the strongest depictions of the internal lives of women we've ever read. And to say that these depictions - to say that the internal lives of women - merit a Nobel is just...well, it's about freakin' time.

Istanbul or Constantinople?

Frankfurt Vibe

Folks, the pre-Frankfurt drumbeat is SOOO digital. Monsters and Critics has a big article on how the book industry is afraid of 0s and 1s. Probably the most fabulous paragraph:

Some European libraries have portrayed the bid to digitize 500 years of books and newspapers as an imperialist plot, because the big players such as Google are based in the United States.

Yes! It IS an imperialist plot! (Gawd, wouldn't that be more intriguing than what it actually is, which is a FREAKIN' MESS.)

But the best news is at the bottom of the article:

The New York Times has reported that Amazon is to launch in October an e-book reader brand-named the Kindle and priced above 400 dollars. The most likely venue: the Frankfurt Book Fair.

I keep forgetting about that October launch. 

Print vs audio books

So I downloaded Stephen Colbert's book - I haven't started listening to it yet. But I saw the review in the Times and was glad I'd chosen to listen rather than read.

Meanwhile, over at the Huffington Post, Michael Giltz uses the Colbert/Audible thing as a jumping-off point to talk about One More Thing That's Wrong With Publishing:

One of the suits says the audio book is so creative and different that, "I would think that you would buy the book and the audio because they are really different." In other words, he expects fans of Colbert to buy the hardcover book for $27, then buy the audio book for about $16 and while you're at it, when a downloadable version becomes available for your Sony Reader or computer or Blackberry, maybe you'd be willing to pay another $25 or so for that version. He's not alone. Even when the audio book isn't somewhat different from the hardcover, they expect fans of a book to buy it twice.

Imagine if the music industry demanded you buy one copy of your album for playing on your home stereo, another for your car, another for your iPod and so on. You wouldn't do it, would you? But the book industry - which publishes more than 100,000 titles a year - thinks it's perfectly reasonable to expect you to do it for books. 

I don't think anyone expects that readers are generally going to pursue both the audio and the print book, AND the ebook - people consume their media in different ways. But later Giltz goes on to talk about bundling products - buy the hardcover and get the audio or the ebook for free - which makes eminent sense. Seth Godin was talking about that at last year's Google Unbound conference. I think that's only a matter of time. Publishers are very leery about cannibalizing book sales via other media. But they are coming around, gradually.

What is a book, anyway?

Did you know this? I didn't know this. In order to qualify for an ISBN (and therefore be considered a "book"), your product has to have 48 pages or more.

I wonder, with the advent of ebooks and the shortening of the attention span, if this will hold true over time. 

POD Price Comparison

Link Digest

• A dialogue on digital publishing and libraries, including reps from Microsoft, Google, and UCal.
• iPods don't work for blind people because you have to navigate them to find what you need to listen to. Fred's Head Companion details improvements and accessories to the iPod, so the unsighted can listen to audiobooks with ease.
• Marc Kramer, a business writer for The Street, lists four ways you can get your book published.
  
• Researchers at Carnegie Mellon are using CATCHPAS (those bits of nonsense text you type when you validate that you're not a bot, on Craigslist and Blogger) to digitize books.
• Silicon Alley Insider offers perspective on why ebooks continue to fail. It may have something to do with prices.
• MyiLibrary continues to collect publishers like Grandma collects Hummel figurines.
  

Romance Huge in Ebooks

Steve Potash, CEO of Overdrive, noted in the 9/8 issue of The Big Picture (login required, but it's free) that romance ebooks are hugely popular in the library market - something I never would have foreseen - and Harlequin seems to be stepping up to address that, as reported by Library Journal:

The publisher announced this week that it is making its complete frontlist available electronically...The electronic releases will cost less than their print counterparts and will be available in Adobe, MobiPocket, Microsoft Reader, Sony, and Palm formats.

News Flash: Publishers Cautious About Digitization

Earthtimes.org posts a summary about publishers' tentative approach to mass digitization, listing the various digitization services (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) and publishers' reactions to each of their programs. It's actually a pretty clear delineation of publisher response, although it's framed in a way that suggests publishers are being dragged kicking and screaming into the world of ebooks:

Fearing that it will lose out financially, much of the book industry is resisting internet pioneers' vision of putting the world's entire store of published information online. Some European libraries have portrayed the bid to digitize 500 years of books and newspapers as an imperialist plot, because the big players such as Google are based in the United States.

Despite the histrionics, there's some good info here.

Why I Love Writing Contests, in 100 words or less

The writing contest, a staple of the mid-20th century, are experiencing a resurgence in popularity - largely because there are so many interesting ways to use Web 2.0 technology to harness user-generated content.

On the heels of its romance-writing competition, Gather.com is partnering with CourtTV and Borders for a crime-writing competition, reports the Book Standard. In addition to taking advantage of Gather's intensely loyal participants, the contest implements some interesting interactivity with CourtTV via interviews and web postings. Says Gather.com CEO Tom Gerace:

"The Gather.com, Borders and Court TV alliance is a powerful mix of media that delivers a multi-faceted platform to identify, vet and elevate aspiring mystery writers."

The heavy-hitter judges are Sandra Brown, David Baldacci, and Harlan Coban. The contest is a way of driving interest in CourtTV's new series "Murder By the Book". Presumably not about the victims of being thwacked over the head by a Riverside Shakespeare (though God knows some of us have attempted this route when all else has failed us).

, Penguin and HP are also sponsoring a writing contest for first novels, in which the winner gets a non-negotiable $25,000 contract with Penguin. In this case, the novel is submitted using CreateSpace, a POD publisher owned by Amazon. According to the Book Standard:

"The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award reflects the Print 2.0 momentum seen in the book world, where production platforms like the HP Indigo press help creative people say what they have to say through on-demand publishing," said Rich Raimondi, vice president and general manager of U.S. Graphic Arts Organization at Hewlett-Packard. "We are pleased to be working with Amazon.com and Penguin Group to provide an opportunity to a deserving author who otherwise might not have access to the broader publishing community."

HarperCollins launches AuthorAssistant

The Bookseller reported on Tuesday that HarperCollins has launched a new service for readers and authors called AuthorAssistant:

AuthorAssistant allows authors to create and post personalized information and gives readers a chance to learn more about their favorite authors....On the author pages, readers can see comprehensive biographical information, links to press and articles, author blogs and favorite websites, photo albums, news, essays and more.

Shelf Awareness launches new service

Shelf Awareness, in partnership with Unshelved, has announced a new service for publishers with drop-in titles (or crash titles):

Drop-in titles (also known as crash or add-in titles) continue to grow--and getting the word to booksellers and librarians about these sudden new books or titles with major last-minute changes is ever more problematic. Publishers send the information via reps, faxes and e-mail, a process many of them admit is cumbersome. Sometimes the message makes it through, but booksellers and librarians often feel deluged by the material and can't keep track of it all. Opportunities are lost.... For a small fee, announcements about drop-in titles will appear in the Shelf Awareness and Unshelved newsletters--and then reside in our drop-in title database web site. The web site is fully searchable and will archive all drop-in listings.

Book Video Company Needs Salespeople

TurnHere, whose videos we covered a little earlier today, is now advertising on Craigslist for a "Publishing Vertical Sales Manager". Given that they just signed deals with 12 new accounts, that's a good sign of expansion.

Book video time really HAS come. 

It's Time for Author Videos Again

Years ago, when I was at Barnes & Noble.com, Steve Riggio launched a series of expensively-produced author interview videos, which (after a few months) experienced such little traffic that the project was ultimately scrapped.

A couple years later, when I was at Sirsi, I licensed author videos from Charles Halpin's Bookstream, Inc. These videos were much less expensive (and the quality was really great), but the time was too early for them. We couldn't get libraries to adopt them.

Shortly after this, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, I was approached by David Freeman, a British book TV host, about his own line of videos. Given the difficulty we were having getting libraries to accept the Bookstream videos, I had to turn him down.

And now...author videos are popping up all over the place. GalleyCat reports this morning on Turn Here, which produces BookVideos.tv - they've signed up Library Thing and Buy.com, among other partners. In June, USA Today reported on the book video phenomenon. Could it be that their time has finally come?

Could it be that all this time we were waiting for YouTube to come along and get people accustomed to watching things on their computers? Congratulations, Charles and David - you are demonstrably ahead of your time.

Andrew Grabois Reports on Libraries

I ran across an interesting article this morning which discusses the uneasy relationship between publishers and libraries due to the "first sale doctrine" - and discovered it was written by Andrew Grabois, formerly of Bowker and now an independent consultant.

Great article, and it only confirms what I've written in "What Publishers Should Know About Libraries", the white paper that I excerpted in last week's issue of "The Big Picture".

Some particularly resonant notes from Andrew's article:

• 'In a recent press release announcing the publication of ALA’s 2007 State of America’s Libraries report, the headline read “Predicted demise due to Internet fails to materialize.”'

• "According to the Book Industry Study Group’s annual Book Industry Trends report, libraries bought more than $1.8 billion dollars worth of books in 2006, a 3.2% increase over 2005. BISG predicts a 2.6% increase for 2007 and increases of 2-3% from 2008 to 2011. Sales to libraries will exceed $2 billion by 2010."

• "Even though libraries are now buying almost 100 million books a year, and spending more per book, on average, than anybody else, they still have an uneasy, high-maintenance relationship with publishers. Unlike other English-speaking countries where there is a Public Lending Right that compensates authors for potential loss of sales from library lending, the U.S. recognizes a limitation on copyright called the first-sale doctrine, which allows copyrighted works to be sold or given away once they have been legally obtained. This means that after buying the first copy, libraries have the right to lend it to multiple borrowers without compensating the copyright holders."

Twenty-seven percent???

A sad statistic from AP this morning: 27% of American adults haven't read a book in the past year.

The poll reports that oddly, those of us in the Northeast are least likely to pick up a book - due to competition from the Internet and other media (on-demand movies?). And of course, in rural areas, reading is a less likely pursuit.

Perhaps if rural areas were better served by bookstores, there'd be a little shift in these numbers. 

HarperCollins Titles on Your iPhone

MediaBistro reports this morning that HarperCollins will be distributing book excerpts via the iPhone:

"Reaching consumers on mobile devices and the Internet is increasingly important for publishers," Brian Murray, president of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, said in a statement that noted the publisher has some 10,000 titles already digitized. "Our digital warehouse gives us the unique opportunity to quickly offer access to our titles on the newest technology, and we encourage people to provide feedback about their experiences."