Kindle, Sony on Notice: Here Come Your Rivals

While Sony has been upgrading its Reader, and Amazon may be upgrading its Kindle (we may know in a week or two), rival firms have not been sitting on their hands. We've reported on several contenders like the iRex Reader 1000, described as a "Kindle Killer." Now Foxit has climbed into the ring with a bantamweight called the eSlick Reader.

One thing it has going for it is price - $230. That's about one-third less than that of its prestigious competitors. And, according to Jose Fermoso of Wired, "It might be the first large hardware eInk device to play eReader files." Translation: it uses the Palm format, meaning it can run on iPhones and a number of other mobile phone platforms. It would also presumably enable those who carry eReader books on their Palm Pilots to transfer the files to a larger and more navigable display unit. Down the road, if the gadget takes off, it might carry other, non-eReader platforms as well.

Wired's Fermoso calls the device ugly, and the name "eSlick Reader" scarcely dances trippingly o'er the tongue. But if it gets the job done, and brings us closer to the tipping point of a $99.00 e-book reader, we'll forgive its homeliness.

RC

Professionals Elbowing Amateurs Off YouTube?

There was no YouTube when poet Robert Frost penned the deathless line, "Nothing gold can stay." But if he were alive today he would certainly feel his image aptly described the possible fate of YouTube as professionals get set to move in on it. The very zeitgeist of the 21st century represented by the ingenuity, the spontaneous combustiveness, the wacky hilarity, the instant, viral, visceral responsiveness of a public that knew what it loved and voted for it with billions of mouseclicks, may now be giving way to the slick creations of Hollywood television and film companies backed by studio and network money, branded sponsors, and calculating marketers. Here's a quote from Brian Stelter's reportage in the New York Times:

YouTube and the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent agency, are close to signing a deal that would place the company’s clients in made-for-the-Web productions.

The deal would underscore the ways that distribution models are evolving on the Internet. Already, some actors and other celebrities are creating their own content for the Web, bypassing the often arduous process of developing a program for a television network. The YouTube deal would give William Morris clients an ownership stake in the videos they create for the Web site.

From the beginning Google recognized the commercial potential of YouTube when it acquired the emerging phenomenon, paying a then eye-popping $1.65 for it (a price that in restrospect seems like a steal). But despite 100 million visitors a month, monetizing YouTube's content and making Google's investment back has not proven to be a slam-dunk thanks to the complexities and potential liabilities of copyright. Now that it looks as if the William Morris Agency is taking charge of the packaging and selling, you can be sure that copyright clearances will be diligently handled, production values will soar, lots of money will be made, and something precious will be spoiled.

Fred Davis, a senior partner at an entertainment law firm, is quoted by Stelter as commenting that “Although everyone realizes that the monetization of this content is not quite there yet, everyone also realizes the huge potential as the digital media business matures.”

Well, Hollywood, there are millions of us who don't want YouTube to mature. We like it just the way it is -- embarrassingly sophomoric, amateurish, LOL hilarious, pathetic, dopey, dirty, funky, and utterly counterculture. It belongs to We the People. Can't you go co-opt some other industry? We can think of a lot of them that could use your genius, your money and your values.

Nothing gold can stay, but as for the innocent fun of a freshly posted video produced by an inspired amateur, we can quote another poet on that score, Robert Graves: Good-bye to All That.

- Richard Curtis

No, I Haven't Read Your Book, But I've Seen the Video

A wag once said about book advertising, "We know it's fifty percent effective. We just don't know which fifty percent."

I was reminded of this quip when I read J. Courtney Sullivan's essay in the New York Times Book Review about the thriving industry dedicated to designing book-specific websites and producing elaborate video tie-ins. "Today, you can’t be a successful writer without having a little Barnum in your bones," Sullivan quotes thriller writer Brad Meltzer, one of the earliest creators of a website devoted to a book.

Though it's now accepted wisdom that every author needs a website, it didn't take long after the introduction of book sites like Meltzer's for authors to try outdoing each other to produce the most colorful, interactive, and sense-stimulating sites money could buy. Book videos were introduced around 2002. Then publishers raised the stakes by creating dedicated web pages for their prominent authors and featured books. In time these displays grew into Hollywood-like productions, and publishers began asking authors to contribute to the cost or even to produce the trailers themselves. "A sizable industry has sprung up," Writes Sullivan. For instance,

"AuthorBytes, a multimedia company started in 2003, has built sites for more than 200 clients, including Paul Krugman, Chris Bohjalian and Khaled Hosseini. They cost from $3,500 to $35,000 — with writers paying about 85 percent of the time. The staff of 20 even includes three employees whose entire job is updating."

A visit to the AuthorBytes ("Everything authors need to shine online") website is instructive. Among the services offered are custom websites for authors and publishers, podcasts, multimedia Trailers and online book promotions.

Authors who can't pay the freight for productions like those done by AuthorBytes often try to do it themselves, with less than stellar results. "Many book videos are little better than home movies, painfully dull and almost laughably bad," comments Sullivan. "But others are impressive, full-scale productions. Naomi Klein’s nearly seven-minute companion film to 'The Shock Doctrine,' directed by Alfonso Cuarón with a full crew and shown at the 2007 Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals, has been downloaded more than a million times."

Do these dog and pony shows sell books? That takes us back to the fifty-percent rule. Or maybe it's the eight percent rule, for Sullivan cites a survey that found that that's the percentage of book shoppers who visit author websites in a given week. "It didn’t, however, say how many clicked on the 'buy the book' link," she says.

But is that the point?

There's nothing wrong with having a little Barnum in your bones. But, despite Sullivan's conclusion that the Web promotions have not proven themselves, it's likely that her article, See the Web Site, Buy the Book, is only going to contribute to the ratcheting of author anxiety to an almost pathological pitch. In an essay called "Watching Books" posted a few months ago I wrote:

It never hurts for authors to be attractive and promotable, and no one in publishing is so naïve as to deny that publishing decisions are influenced by an author’s sex appeal, charm, showmanship, and other extrinsic factors. To utilize the mighty resources of the Internet in order to play up those factors is by no means deplorable as long we keep things in proportion. Which means that, ultimately, it’s all about the book. But as the publishing industry’s drift into the rapids of show business accelerates, we should not be surprised to see computerized pyrotechnics become significant if not decisive factors in the acquisition of books.

Sullivan's essay suggests that the trip down the rapids has indeed accelerated for authors.

Richard Curtis

Amazon "Mystery" Announcement Slated for Feb 9

Back in October E-Reads Production Manager Michael Gaudet speculated on rumors that the second generation of Kindle was in gestation, and the proof was in some "leaked" spy shots of the device.

Today a number of publishing and e-book executives received invitations from Amazon to attend a press conference at New York City's prestigious Morgan Library.

What could the announcement be? Perhaps...

1. Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon, has been named the Obama administration's Car Czar;
2. Amazon envoys have brokered a lasting peace treaty in the Middle East;
3. Amazon has acquired Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan Group, and Hachette for $137.50.

Gizmodo thinks that "Amazon's new-and-improved Kindle could soon see the light of day." That would make the most sense.

Amazon's pre-announcement announcement comes on the heels of the firm's notification of publishers and authors that it will cease offering e-books in the Microsoft Reader and Adobe e-book formats. "In the future, the online retailer says it plans to offer only e-books in the Kindle format (for wireless download to its Kindle reading device) and the Mobipocket format, both of which are owned by Amazon," writes Calvin Read in Publishers Weekly. The move won't have much practical effect. As Reid points out,

"Amazon did not specify how long the Adobe PDF and Microsoft formats will continue to be available. A search of the site turns up mostly technical works and e-docs in PDF form and very little in the Microsoft format. Amazon offers tens of thousands of titles in the Mobipocket e-book reader software, which allows e-books to be read on a wide variety of handheld mobile devices. The company said it will now be urging customers to buy e-books through Mobipocket. Amazon also sells more than 200,000 titles for use on the Kindle."

E-Reads will be in the throng at the Morgan, thumbs poised over the Send key to release the announcement.

RC

Publishers Weekly Fires Beloved Editor in Chief

In a season of shocking news, the firing of Sara Nelson, Publishers Weekly's editor in chief, blindsided the book trade community and brought the industry's recession home in a deeply personal way. Me? I'm in mourning. Sara Nelson was one of us.

Nelson's hiring four years ago brought a lively voice to the stodgy old news magazine. Her weekly editorials - I haven't kept count but I doubt if she missed more than a handful of issues - were intelligent, thought-provoking, and often fearlessly controversial. She overhauled every section and injected color and sparkle to deadly dull listings and boring announcements. She was a passionate advocate for all the right causes, but she did not disdain gossip and buzz. She wore her love for books and book people on her sleeve.

Reed Business Information, the magazine's owner, gave no valid reason for letting her go, but the Times's Motoko Rich offered this:

Like the industry it covers, Publishers Weekly has suffered from a downturn in the retail economy as publishers have stopped advertising their upcoming books in the magazine. In past years, publishers used the magazine as a way to inform booksellers of the buzz on upcoming titles, but now most publishers communicate directly with bookstores and executives at the biggest book chains

Brian Kenney, editor in chief of School Library Journal, will now take over the job. He has a huge pair of shoes to fill.

RC

Authorial Misdemeanors

From time to time an author will do something that causes me to scratch my head. I've compiled a list of these foibles and offer it here with a light heart. If you have perpetrated any of these transgressions I'll let you off this time without a fine, but don't let me see you in this courtroom again.

To hear about these pet peeves, click here.

Gatekeepers

For those who fret over the perilous state of publishing in the 21st century, Lev Grossman's article in the January 21st issue of Time is a solid summary of all we need to know as we stand at the crossroad where the Old World of Tangible meets the New World of Virtual. Read Books Unbound and find your own place at the intersection.

To exemplify the paradigm shift Grossman cites a number of self-published novels - notably Still Alice by Lisa Genova and Daemon by Daniel Suarez - that became wild successes. He suggests that this proves that the conventional book industry has been cut out of the loop and that the public is "rising up to claim its right to act as a tastemaker." The so-called "gatekeepers" of the traditional publishing game - editors, bookstore buyers, reviewers and critics, literary agents - are given short shrift in their role of tastemakers and kingmakers:

In theory, publishers are gatekeepers: they filter literature so that only the best writing gets into print. But Genova and Barry and Suarez got filtered out, initially, which suggests that there are cultural sectors that conventional publishing isn't serving.

Has the elite gatekeeper role truly passed from publisher to the man and woman in the street? About a year ago I asked, Do Amazon Reviews Count? Noting the success of Zagat restaurant guides, which rely on the ratings of just plain folks like you and me, I wondered if a similar phenomenon could occur in rating books. "We live in an age when peer review is meaningful if not significant, and Amazon.com has used this fact to create a cadre of reviewers who must be taken seriously," I wrote, noting that although I hadn't seen too many traditional books with Amazon.com quotes emblazoned on the cover, I wouldn't be surprised if that changed before long.

Well, a year later I still haven't seen one. What I continue to see however are blurbs by those familiar gatekeepers known as household name bestselling authors. Clicking on Genova's Still Alice page on Amazon.com, I was greeted by raves from Brunonia Barry, a New York Times bestselling author; Beverly Beckham of The Boston Globe; Phil Bolsta, author of Sixty Seconds; Julia Fox Garrison, author of Don't Leave Me This Way; and Charley Schneider, author of Don't Bury Me, It Ain't Over Yet. Similarly, Suarez's Amazon.com reviews were keynoted by a rave by the flagship of book industry gatekeepers, Publishers Weekly, followed by plugs from: William O’Brien, Director of Cybersecurity and Communications Policy, The White House; Craig Newmark, Founder Craigslist; John Robb, futurist & Author of Brave New War; Stewart Brand, Founder Whole Earth Catalog & co-founder of the Long Now Foundation; etc. etc. Not a Just Plain Folk Like You And Me in the lot. To learn what the man and woman in the street think about these books you have to click on all editorial reviews. In short, when it comes to promoting books, brand name celebrities are firmly in control of the gates and the hoi polloi remain outside.

Of far greater significance is that while Genova and Suarez were carried into the stratosphere on the wings of viral popularity, it took traditional publishers paying big bucks, printing tons and tons of tangible books, and distributing all those copies through brick and mortar bookstores to monetize their success. Nor must we forget that the fame of their books was measured by yet another traditional gatekeeping institution - bestseller lists.

Of course, some authors may be satisfied with egoboo in lieu of cash. Grossman says,

And speaking of advances, books are also leaving behind another kind of paper: money. Those cell-phone novels are generally written by amateurs and posted on free community websites, by the hundreds of thousands, with no expectation of payment. For the first time in modern history, novels are becoming detached from dollars. They're circulating outside the economy that spawned them.

That is most assuredly not music to the ears of this gatekeeper, who holds with the immortal words of that dean of gatekeepers, Samuel Johnson: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."

Perhaps the best way to characterize the state of the publishing industry is that it is a complex ecosystem where exciting new species are identified by the proletarian processes of the Internet, but their commercial potential can only be realized by the traditional book industry. In time the former may eclipse the latter, but at this moment in time the two cannot really live without each other.

Richard Curtis

Galley Slaves Still Opt for Paper Bondage

We recently reported on a recent conference introducing trade book editors to XML, the markup language that promises to facilitate so many costly, time-consuming and tedious functions performed by traditional book publishers. Among the most significant improvements stressed by Hachette Book Group David Young was that XML could eliminate printed galleys, which Young described as a "major money pit."

It appears as if we're going to be wallowing in the pit longer than XML drum-beaters would like. Craig Morgan Teicher writes in Publishers Weekly that "most people would like to put off using e-galleys as long as they can."

Bound proofs, some plain-covered and others handsomely jacketed, are early uncorrected versions of forthcoming books, submitted by publishers to reviewers. Because of the long lead time it takes for reviewers to read and write up books, it is unfeasible for publishers to submit finished copies. But, as Hachette's Young points out, it is a big expense. It's also about as far from green as it gets: reviewers receive hundreds of galleys a week and are only able to review a handful. The rest they toss. Now that publishing is doing digital, proofs submitted via email would seem to be a perfect solution.

Not so fast.

Ron Charles, senior editor for the Washington Post Book World, says, "As a reviewer, I need to have a physical book to read at home and on the subway - the last thing I want in my life is more screen time!” And Teicher reports Lev Grossman, book critic for Time magazine, saying,

“I've been offered them before, but only tried to read one once, on an early-generation Sony Reader. I hated the experience. That low-contrast screen, the poky refresh rate! It was like a horrible, crippled imitation of a book. But having said that, I think e-galleys are inevitable. They just make too much sense—financially for publishers, environmentally for everybody. Maybe by the time I'm forced to read them, e-readers will have turned into something less insulting to the eye.”

Despite the resistance, book trade observers think it's only a matter of time before paper gives way to e-ink, especially because improvements to the production and submission process are on the way.

Read The E-Galley Cometh? and judge for yourself.

RC

Who Says You Can't Do Two Things At Once?

Good reporters distinguish themselves by looking away from the things most of us think are newsworthy, and focusing on small but revealing details. Farhad Manjoo, a New York Times reporter, exemplified this truth when he recently visited the spectacular Google headquarters. There's enough there to make just about any civilian visitor slaphappy. But,"What caught my attention on a recent visit was something pretty pedestrian: the programmers’ desks. Specifically, their computer monitors," he writes.

"I recently met several software engineers who work on Gmail, and each sported a spectacular configuration of screens. Some paired wide monitors with tall ones, others had huge screens married to small ones, and still others used several displays in series, giving the impression that in addition to building a Web-based e-mail system, they were helping Norad keep tabs on the nation’s airspace."

Most of us multitaskers are content to open multiple windows on one normal-sized monitor and navigate between them. Manjoo cites some studies that indicate that two displays, or even one humongous one, are far more effective because you're able to see more of what you have to do, like spreading all your papers out on the surface of your desk instead of piling them up. Manjoo mentions one in particular:

"In a study commissioned by the electronics company NEC, researchers at the University of Utah recently asked office workers to perform several common tasks using various monitor configurations. They found that people who used two 20-inch monitors were 44 percent more productive at certain text-editing operations than people using a single 18-inch monitor."

Whatever effect all these screens may have on your productivity, it's hard to believe they do much for your eyes. Pictured above is a Google software engineer after fifteen hours of programming on two monitors.

Read more.

RC

My Irreplaceable You

When told that he was indispensable, the illustrious general and eventual president of France Charles De Gaulle said, "The graveyards are full of indispensable men."

Every business captain needs to post that quotation on the wall in front of his or her desk as a reminder that great leaders must be great delegators. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, is as indispensable as corporate heads can possibly be, but adverse health has forced him, as it did De Gaulle, to look at his mortality and relinquish to others tasks that threaten to sap the energy he needs to restore his health.

It's a difficult challenge for Jobs, his delegatees, his devoted fans - and investors, who turned bearish after Jobs farmed out the State of Apple keynote presentation at Macworld 2009 to Senior Worldwide Product Marketing VP Philip Schiller. By way of comparison (invidious or otherwise), here's Jobs giving the 2008 keynote, boiled down to 90 seconds. Do you think it raises or lowers his IQ (Irreplaceability Quotient)?

Apple's CEO, Timothy D. Cook, reassured analysts: “There is extraordinary breadth and depth and tenure among the Apple executive team, and they lead 35,000 employees that I would call wicked smart,” Cook was quoted in the New York Times. “We believe we were put on the face of the earth to make great products, and that is not changing.” It's significant that Apple rebounded forcefully from the Jobs health-jolt with a $1.61 billion profit for the fourth quarter of '08.

Jobs is one of many famous historical and contemporary figures forced to confront the realization that if your company or nation are going to live after you, you will have to find a way to turn some and eventually all of your authority over to heirs and successors. That is the theme of an article by Steve Lohr in the New York Times. Lohr's conclusion? "The notion of the irreplaceable individual is a myth." He mentions such business leaders as Wal-Mart's Sam Walton and Microsoft's Bill Gates as leaders who retired from active management at no great harm to their firms' productivity or profitability.

Among the earliest and most celebrated instances of delegation can be found in The Book of Exodus (chapter 18). One of the first things Moses did after leading his people out of Egypt was confer on others responsibility for adjudicating disputes. His father-in-law Jethro counseled that justice could not be served if Moses occupied himself settling every petty quarrel in his vast camp of contentious Israelites. "Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee," said Jethro (in the King James version). "For this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone."

Art thou listening, Mr. Jobs?

Moses was humble enough to take the advice, reserving for himself the capital issues. Though it still took forty years to reach the Promised Land, it's arguable that the wanderers would not have made it at all had their patriarch sapped his vitality on the small stuff.

In case you want to read the story in full, Mr. Jobs, there are a number of excellent Bible apps available in your store for download on your iPhone.

RC

No Roof in Sight: November E-Book Sales Double 2007 Tally

Trade eBook sales hit $5,100,000 for November 2008, a whopping 108.3% increase over November 2007, according to Michael Smith, Executive Director of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). Smith cited stats gathered by the Association of American Publishers. Calendar Year to Date Revenue is also up a robust 63.8%.

The figures obviously reflect a Kindle boost, but what is even more encouraging is that in a month in which pre-holiday print book sales slumped miserably, e-books flew high.

Just a reminder that:

* These are wholesale revenues reported from 13 participating Trade Publishers
* This data represents United States revenues only
* This data represents only trade e-book sales via wholesale channels. Retail numbers may be as much as double the above figures due to industry wholesale discounts.
* This data represents only data submitted from approx. 12 to 15 trade publishers
* This data does not include library, educational or professional electronic sales
* The numbers reflect the wholesale revenues of publishers
* The definition used for reporting electronic book sales is "All books delivered electronically over the Internet OR to hand-held reading devices"
* The IDPF and AAP began collecting data together starting in Q1 2006

The stats we're all waiting for are December, when we'll know just how e-book sales fared against book-books during the gloomy holiday season.

RC

Music Biz Pirates a Page from Pirates' Playbook. Lesson for Book Publishers?

The Nokia cellphone you buy will Come With Music. The capital letters are intentional: purchase of the phone entitles you to unlimited downloads from a catalogue of more than five million tracks, according to Eric Pfanner of the New York Times. "Comes With Music" is the name of the benefit that comes with your purchase.

This is the latest ploy in the music industry's war on pirates, and of course we're not necessarily talking about an organized cabal of evil offshore thieves, but also about garden variety citizens who simply can't understand what's wrong with ripping a CD, even though the accompanying text has one of those funny (c) symbols next to the song title, composer or performer.

Does this mean the music business has finally surrendered to the Music Wants to Be Free Army? Not at all. When you buy that Nokia, the price of the "free" music is built into the price of the gadget. “Two thousand nine should be the year when the music industry stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb,” Pfanner quotes Feargal Sharkey, head of UK Music, a trade group for the British music industry.

The Nokia scheme is just one of a number of strategies employed by the music industry to counter piracy. You can read about others in Pfanner's Music Industry Imitates Digital Pirates to Turn a Profit.

The same issues confronting music are operative in book piracy, and the Nokia approach may be appropriate for manufacturers of e-book reading devices as well. But it is the polar opposite of what might be termed the "King Gillette Strategy". Gillette, the genius who invented disposable razor blade and founded the shaving products business named after him, exhorted emulators to give away the razor and sell the blades. Nokia is selling the razor and giving away the blades.

Which is the better business model? Though disposable and electric razors rendered the question moot, when it comes to music and literature I'm with Gillette.

Richard Curtis

Publishing Mysteries Revealed at Last. Sort of.

Though I've done my best in my Publishing in the 21st Century blog to explain the arcane practices of the publishing industry and the mysteries of the creative process, I don't think I could produce a better or more succinct (3 minutes 37 seconds) summary than the one displayed on YouTube ascribed to Macmillan's digital staff. Nor do I think I could produce anything wittier. It's so so completely deadpan you can't spot the bulge of the tongue in cheek.

April Fool's Day three months early, but who cares? A great spoof is a great spoof any time.

RC

Reason Asserts Her Rights: Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States of America, Inaugurated

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

- William Wordsworth

Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress--to assist the work,
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself)
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The playfellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
Their ministers,--who in lordly wise had stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it;--they, too, who, of gentle mood,
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,
And in the region of their peaceful selves;--
Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire,
And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;
Were called upon to exercise their skill,
Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us,--the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!

William Wordsworth - French Revolution

Moral Rights: Love Me, Love my Book

You just attended a screening of the film made from a spy thriller you'd written several years earlier. You were, of course, not so naïve as to believe the adaptation would be absolutely faithful to your story, but you were scarcely prepared for the monstrous perversion portrayed on the big screen that evening. Except for the basic premise, the producer had thrown out every idea, every tasteful scene, every line of dialogue in your book. Surrounded by friends and family, you slunk out of the screening room humiliated to the very core of your being. In a black rage, you phoned your lawyer.

Do you have a case? You may.

The little understood law governing this situation is known as droit moral. It may be written into your book contract; it is likely to be written into your movie contract. Written or not, it may nevertheless govern legal actions arising from the humiliation of having your work altered by your publisher or film producer.

Read about it here.

A Gutenberg Project You Won't Find on Project Gutenberg

Not long after the dawn of the Digital Revolution, Project Gutenberg began digitizing books that had fallen into the public domain and, relying on volunteer help supported by contributions, publishing and making them available online free of charge. As of this writing there are over 27,000 free books in the project's online book catalogue. Among them are several versions of The Bible. When you go to the Project Gutenberg website you can read the words of The Bible. But you can't see The Bible.

Soon you will be able to see it as if it just came hot off the printer's original press. This Gutenberg Bible is not sponsored by Project Gutenberg. It's a digital facsimile of Gutenberg's original edition, undertaken by the Morgan Library. The Morgan has no fewer than three copies of the 1455 Mainz edition, described by Julie Bloom in the New York Times as "the first significant printed book in the West." When the digitization is completed, you'll be able to view all 1,026 pages of the Bible on the library's website.

If you have never visited New York City's Morgan Library you owe it to yourself to go there. J. P. Morgan's original mansion library, shown in the illustration with a copy of one of its Gutenbergs displayed, is one of the most breathtaking rooms you will ever see. And if you are a bibliophile it will bring you to your knees.

RC

B&N Follies Take a Dark Turn: Almost 100 Execs Let Go

The drama began in November when Leonard Riggio, Chairman of Barnes & Noble, Inc., announced that holiday sales were shaping up to be the worst in memory. In the subsequent installment, we wondered why, if things are so terrible, is someone (media mogul Ron Burkle) buying a big stake in the bookstore chain? Then we wondered why, if things are so wonderful, is someone (William Ackerman of Pershing Square Capital Management) dumping an even bigger stake?

The story now takes a dark turn with the announcement. reported in Crain's New York Business.com that B&N is eliminating close to 100 corporate positions. CEO Steve Riggio (Leonard's brother) notes in the release that, "The business climate in which we are operating is unprecedented." The company's holiday sales were down more than 5% over the previous year.

Refreshments will be served in the lobby while we wait for a scenery change.

RC

Book Clubs Had a Good Thing Going, but Finally Drop "Negative Option"

It started as Book-of-the-Month Club. After merging with a number of rivals it became Bookspan, and now it's called Booksonline.

Is the name the only thing that's changed? As a matter of fact, the brilliant - some say diabolical - principle on which BOM was founded, has been abandoned some 83 years after it was created by a marketing genius. This according to the deluxe edition of online book trade newsletter Publishers Lunch.

The formula was called the negative option. I described it in a blog about book clubs.

An enterprising merchandiser named Harry Scherman founded the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1926. He perceived that an enormous potential audience, particularly in rural areas, had inadequate access to bookstores in towns and cities. Mail order, which worked so successfully for many other products purveyed to rural people, ought to work with books, too, Scherman reasoned. And he was right.

Scherman, however, put a twist on this concept that made it a dramatic departure from the Sears, Roebuck approach. It's called the "negative option," meaning that unless members expressly indicate that they do not want the latest selection, the club will assume they do want it and will send it to them. Scherman's insight into human nature was almost diabolically shrewd. Perhaps he didn't trust that members would buy books simply because they were good, and he counted on such human foibles as laziness, guilt, and confusion to make members default on their obligation to return their cards in time to prevent clubs from shipping selections to them.

Whatever the motives of Scherman and subsequent book club entrepreneurs, the clubs caught on fast and hard, sweeping the country.

How do today's book clubs work? Book Clubs Online has this to say:

There are two basic types of book clubs: commitment book clubs and continuity book clubs.

Commitment book clubs feature attractive introductory offers containing several books for a symbolic price (for example 6 books for 99¢ or 4 books for 1$ each) in exchange for a commitment to buy a few more books at the regular club price within a certain timeframe; usually this means 2-4 books within a year or two. The club price incorporates a considerable discount, which can be anywhere from 30-80%, in some cases even more.

Commitment book clubs send their members a catalog (either printed or electronic version) every 3-4 weeks, along with a card which includes the title of the Featured Selection – a book chosen by the club's editors as a must-read of the moment. Members are not bound to buy the Selection though; they can opt for a different book (or several books) instead, or skip the offer altogether. Note that the Selections are no longer shipped to members automatically, as was the case until recently; now, members need to request/order the desired book. [italics mine: RC]

Once the obligation is fulfilled, the membership can be canceled at any time. Typical representatives of commitment book clubs are Doubleday Book Club, The Literary Guild, Book-of-the-Month club etc.

If the formula ain't broken, why is Booksonline fixing it?

Apparently it is broken: "No books are shipped to members automatically anymore," Lunch quotes from the announcement. "In this day and age of commercial overabundance and enlightened consumers armed with access to a boundless pool of information, it just couldn't fly anymore." In plain English, that seems to mean that Americans are too savvy to buy into a sales gimmick that plays on ignorance, laziness and confusion.

Well, it was fun while it lasted, but now the clubs' books will have to sell on their own merits and on bargain pricing. Luckily for the clubs there's plenty of that to carry them for the next four score years. Book clubs are fundamentally a good thing for all the reasons on which they were founded, and they should continue to thrive relying on a new and cleaner business model.

RC

S&S Launches New Improved Site, Ditches SimonSays

There was no such title as "CDO" - Chief Digital Officer - until Simon & Schuster brought Ellie Hirschhorn aboard to bring the company into the 21st century.

The first fruit of her Chief Digitizing is a complete overhaul of S&S's website, now visitable though still in beta. The SimonSays.com URL has been retired.

With the site goes a new viewpoint and a new branding strategy. The URL "focuses entirely on consumers (and for the most part highlights the overall company brand rather than individual imprints)," says online pubtrade newsletter Publishers Lunch. "Hirschhorn notes much of the emphasis of the new site design is 'giving our authors the red carpet-like, celebrity treatment they deserve'(carried through questionnaires, feeds of news and blog mentions, videos and audio clips, and more) as well as aiming 'to immediately engage the visitor, better enable search, and foster discovery.'"

In view of the recently reported conference introducing editors to the joys of XML, it's certain that more editorial types will soon be hauled, willy-nilly, into the 21st century. You can look for "CDO" titles to be conferred at other houses and maybe some even more exotic ones - EFAM (E-File Archive Manager)? MLPS (Markup Language Protocol Supervisor)? XW (XML Wrangler)? Suggestions welcome. And while you're at it, any ideas about what the sower in the S&S logo, drawn from the famous Millet painting, might now be seeding the soil with in the Digital Age? Zeroes and ones?

On the other hand, as it's accepted wisdom that S&S's sower is sowing ideas, maybe we should leave the logo alone. Ideas are publishers' stock in trade, valid for this or any other century. Looked at it that way, the logo ain't broke and we should not presume to fix it.

RC

Publishing People Dip Toe in XML

They may not merit a Nobel Peace Prize but the organizers of the "StartWithXML" conference in New York deserve kudos for bringing together two cultures that have been reluctant dance partners in the past: trade book publishing people and representatives of the technical world. The subject was XML, the markup language for documents containing both content and instructions for identifying such structured information as footnotes, captions, tables, headers, and the like.

Obviously this is not the kind of language that book editors are comfortable with, but as digitization casts a longer and longer shadow on every aspect of their daily activities it's clear they can no longer leave such matters to Joe the Geek.

So, the Book Industry Study Group among other industry sponsors invited both camps to participate in a daylong tutorial. People from such book houses as Hachette, Wiley, Simon & Schuster, and Oxford University Press mingled, listened to panel discussions and heard presentations by representatives of Magellan Media Consulting Partners, Klopotek North America, Cengage Learning, Firebrand Technologies and codeMantra. Attendees were treated to discussions of such XML-facilitated functions as style sheets, efficient rights management, digital production workflow, digital marketing, content licensing, and multi-format publishing. If they wished they were back in their cubicles blue-penciling action adventure thrillers, they gave no sign of it.

Futurist and book industry consultant Mike Shatzkin of the Idea Logical Company gave an introductory speech, then turned the proceedings over to David Young, CEO of the Hachette Book Group. As reported by Publishers Lunch Deluxe, the book industry's online trade newsletter, "Young started the day by touting the flexibility, possibilities and cost savings of an XML-driven process while at the same time promising that the transition may not be as dramatic as it strikes some. At the fundamental level, Young said, 'there is one difference - the difference between tagging a digital file and manually marking up a physical manuscript.'" Young definitely got everyone's attention when he stated that XML could eliminate printed galleys, which he described as a "major money pit."

"Like all evolutionary shifts, it will take time," Young concluded, but he expressed confidence that the transition to an XML-driven trade book industry is "a no-brainer."

Perhaps in time it will be, and no doubt everyone in the room thought it should be, but for those who only recently crawled out of the primordial ooze and mastered the difference between RTF and PDF, the challenge of XML remains, for now, very much a brainer.

RC

Has Mobipocket stood up its date with the iPhone?

Although it was only alluded to once by Mobipocket in public, the Mobipocket iPhone application is potentially Amazon's best weapon for indoctrinating more Kindle customers and pulling the Mobipocket format away from obscurity. So, where is it?

At the IDPF conference in May, 2008, I watched Martin Gorner of Mobipocket state to the audience that they had plans to release the Mobipocket reader for more platforms, including the iPhone, before the end of the year. Mobipocket is tightly leashed by their owners, Amazon, so this was great news for Mobi fans. Mobipocket has never really supported any Apple OS before, and my brain enumerated the possibilities of a Mobi iPhone app. My first thought was that this could be the start of some really wonderful synergy for Amazon's Kindle, because they'd be foolish not to join forces in a new application. And besides adding Apple support, maybe they planned to really update the Mobipocket Reader software and create a user experience on par with the Kindle's user-interface or Adobe's Digital Editions.

Just imagine that you could have a similar Kindle experience on your iPhone, shopping for books wirelessly, using a built-in dictionary, taking notes, etc, and at the end of the session all your book data would be sync'd with your Kindle account and back to your Kindle (through the Kindle's wireless connection), if you had one. Amazon would sell more books, people might upgrade to Kindle devices for the larger screen real estate, and the Mobi format would really come alive, too, if its DRM was supported. It would just require Mobi and Amazon to allow readers to keep both their Mobi and Kindle purchases in the same library and allow for note/bookmark data in the cloud (on Amazon's internet servers), so that customers' libraries could be re-downloaded and synchronized across devices. Add special location aware services (via the iPhone's GPS), special note export features (for bibliographies and personal footnotes), and then I'd be impressed.

Well, by the end of 2008 this never materialized. In December, Chris Meadows of the blog TeleRead surmised that Amazon put the whole project in the deep freeze so it wouldn't undermine Kindle sales ("The mysterious case of the missing iPhone Mobipocket reader" and "Is Amazon sitting on the Mobipocket iPhone client after all?"). An anonymous source apparently told Chris that "Mobipocket had its iPhone reader complete and ready to ship as of August—but Amazon.com did not permit them to release it." That isn't hard to believe, but I hope there's more to that story. I'd like to know why. Does Apple have secret ebook plans that Amazon is aware of?

In the meanwhile, other contenders have stepped up to the plate, offering E-Book software for the iPhone that comes close to the full potential, but not without limitations. For readers who take the time learn how to crack the DRM on their purchased E-Book files, BookShelf is an iPhone application that can read Palm .PDB and Mobi .PRC files, as well sync with "Shelf Servers," which are libraries of content on the internet or on your computer (there are E-Reads' books at Baen Webscriptions' Shelf Server). And, of course, there's the popular Stanza iPhone application, that is a wireless Fictionwise storefront (with access to your Fictionwise eReader library bookshelf), as well as a terrific E-Book reader for growing ePub format. Yet despite supporting over a dozen other formats, too, eReader's .PDB is the only DRM that works with Stanza, at the very least because of Fictionwise's support.

Has Mobipocket lost too much time? It's hard to tell. E-Book sales are still ramping up across all the major platforms (Sony, Kindle, eReader). Our expectations are that iPhone readers are adding to sales, not cannibalizing from other devices. The iPhone has something that the Kindle and Mobipocket should be envious of: popular mindshare with 18-35 year-olds. Every day Mobipocket or Amazon isn't a part of that zeitgeist, it sets them as outsiders and it counts as lost revenue in the current quarter. Maybe Amazon is gambling that when they do enter Apple's market, it will make up for all their time hemming and hawing. Maybe they just don't see the money there, yet (but I doubt this). However, no one has delivered the perfect E-Book reader application for the iPhone yet, either. Let alone for Google's Android or the new Palm Pre. It's still Amazon and Mobipocket's game to win or lose. At the very least, they can sell some ebooks. They just have to show up.

- Michael Gaudet

Let's Run it Past Legal

Having maligned the legal profession last week, I hope to return to grace with some high praise for one branch of the species.

It may be hyperbolic to refer to the legal counsels of publishing companies as "grey eminences," a term one usually assigns to the shadowy power brokers who manipulate the controls of vast corporate or political networks. But it would be no exaggeration to state that tremendous influence resides in the hands of the attorneys who counsel publishing executives on the legal aspects of their companies' operations. Few significant corporate decisions are made without clearance by a publisher's lawyers, and no book is published that has not somehow been affected by procedures originating in the firm's legal department. To the degree that the men and women of those departments are seldom colorful, their eminence may indeed be depicted as grey. But it must never be underestimated, because the power they wield over the fate of your book is both total and final. However headstrong the chief operating officer of a publishing company may be, he or she will override a house counsel's advice at the utmost peril.

Read more.

Curtain Rises on Act II of B&N Follies

Just when we thought the financial status of Barnes & Noble could not be more perplexing - it got more perplexing. B&N-watchers will recall that in November B&N czar Len Riggio announced the worst holiday season in memory and predicted the affliction would continue well into 2009. Why then did media mogul Ron Burkle buy an 8.3% stake in Riggio's company, as announced last week?

But wait, it gets even more mystifying: according to Publishers Weekly, "Pershing Square Capital Management has dumped its entire stake of Barnes & Noble stock." That comes to 11.8%.

In short, if things are so terrible, why is someone buying in? And if things are so wonderful, why is someone cashing out?

To add to the intrigue, PW speculates that this move now puts William Ackerman, Pershing's head, in a position to put his "entire focus on Borders" and possibly take the chain private. Yet for some time Borders' pulse has barely been fluttering.

Where is Lewis Carroll when you need him?

La commedia di B&N non e finita, so watch this space for Act II, Scene 2.

RC

HarperStudio President Responds to Author Compensation Post

Robert S. Miller, President and Publisher of HarperStudio, the HarperCollins imprint that recently announced a nonreturnable distribution arrangement with the Borders bookstore chain, has responded to Richard Curtis's post, "Is There a Better Way to Compensate Authors?" It's reprinted in its entirety below, and we invite authors and publishing people to comment.


Just Desserts: Going Non-returnable in the Search for a Bigger Pie

I read Richard’s blog entry yesterday about returnable/non-returnable with interest, since—as Richard mentioned—one of HarperStudio’s goals is to go non-returnable. It is indeed a tough puzzle to solve, one that has frustrated previous efforts. But I’m hopeful that we’ll at least make some progress on this front. As Richard mentioned, Borders has already agreed to give our non-returnable terms a try, and several other large accounts have expressed interest as well, though they prefer to do so in confidence. Many others—especially small independents—can’t afford the risk of increasing their unsold inventory, so we’re offering all booksellers a choice between the traditional returnable terms and pretty generous non-returnable terms. But we’re encouraged by the response so far.

Richard points out that the difficulty in previous attempts stems from the publisher’s inability to be generous enough in their non-returnable discount to make it worthwhile for booksellers. This is where the hope lies in our model, since we are working on a 50/50 profit share with our authors, not a royalty. So unlike in the Fawcett example, where the publisher offered its authors a choice of royalties, we are able to offer the deal that makes the most sense to booksellers without needing to adjust our royalties at the other end. Our calculations show that even at an aggressive discount for booksellers who go non-returnable, we’ll end up with a larger profit to share with our authors, since we’ll be reducing wasted printing and shipping of unsold copies.

Our hope is that at the end of 2009, the booksellers who have gone non-returnable with us will see that they have been more profitable—and more efficient—by doing so, and that we can use their example to convince others to give it a try. And we’re convinced that the more we can get booksellers to go non-returnable, the more money we’ll make for our authors, in spite of the discount. It may seem counter-intuitive to suggest that we can make more money for booksellers and authors at the same time, but remember that our business currently has an average 40 percent return on new adult hardcovers; the more we eliminate that waste, the bigger the pie grows, and the more pie there is for us all to share.

Robert S. Miller
President and Publisher
HarperStudio

Is There a Better Way to Compensate Authors?

We recently reported that the Borders bookstore chain had agreed to retail a publisher's (HarperStudio) books on a nonreturnable basis.
Whether they will achieve it depends on how effective is the publisher's strategy of according a higher discount to the chain. However, previous attempts to implement this business model do not give cause for optimism. How can publishers possibly raise discounts higher than they already are without cutting even further into slim profit margins? Has something been overlooked?

As a matter of fact, something has. It happens to be the way royalties are calculated. Read about a proposal for radically reconfiguring the way publishers compensate authors.

Read more.

This Year's Hottest Handbag Takes its Place in the Sun

Joe Hynek was the only male in an experimental garment design class, and not surprisingly he passed up the opportunity to design dresses. Instead he created a purse for women "interested in projecting power," according to Rachel Aviv in the New York Times.

Hynek's purse projects power all right, enough to recharge a variety of electronic devices. It's covered with solar panelettes which absorb the sun's energy and charge a battery which in turn recharges a cell phone, music player or camera. (Battery included).

How does the purse function on a cloudy day? Hynek thought of that. You put your keys, wallet and tissues in it.

He's developing other solar-powered articles of clothing like ties. The article doesn't mention hats or parasols but let's see if the Power Purse carries the $350 price he contemplates charging for it.

RC

This Power Purse Works at Night

Here's another hot purse, the Swarovski Power Minaudiere Purse, an elegant clutch covered with dazzling crystals. Oprah says, “They call this crystal mesh clutch with removable chain a power bag. A good name for such a high-voltage accessory.” Unlike Joe Hynek's Power Purse, this one works on cloudy days and even at night. And if you want to look like a million dollars it will cost you only $650.00.

The only thing is, it doesn't have solar panels or a battery. You can put your cell phone, camera or iPod into it, but it won't recharge them. You simply carry this glittery handbag to a night club or expensive wedding, flash it at friends and watch them them smolder with envy. Other than that, it seems to be good for nothing except luxurious beauty.

Beauty for its own sake? What the hell is the point of that?

RC

CyberLibe Downloads Soar at OverDrive

Overdrive, a leading digital media service provider specializing in e-library sales, reports a record-busting 5.3 million checkouts, according to Publishers Weekly. How high over the bar did OverDrive fly? How about a 76% increase over 2007!

Most popular download? Here's a hint: the first word is "Stephenie" and the second is "Meyer".

The content wasn't just e-books but music and video as well. Some 150,000 items in these media are available in OverDrive's catalogue, which is offered to some 8500 libraries. The company's founder Steve Potash, a great visionary and prime mover in the e-book industry, deserves kudos for navigating through the many challenges of creating an e-business model for libraries. Think about some of them. Unlike brick and mortar libraries, e-libraries don't necessarily have a locus. Are their patrons loyal to a specific branch or can they traverse cyberspace to find the item they want to borrow? How does a library "lend" an e-book or tune or video? How does a borrower "return" the checked-out item? How do publishers make money on e-books they place with libraries? Do they sell just one "copy" or, if' it's a hot bestseller, do they sell multiples? Once an e-book is sold to a library, is that it? Forever? Or does the license have to be renewed?

It's worth spending a few minutes exploring the OverDrive website to learn about the firm's resources.

RC

Where's the Fire? Ask the Virgin, the Bride, and the Widow

Three different women at three different stages of life, yet possessed of one thing in common: their fiery passion. Virgin Fire, Bride Fire, and Widow's Fire display Elizabeth Chadwick's intimate familiarity with the west -- and with the hearts of the women who lived, loved, suffered and triumphed there.

In Bride Fire young Cassandra, stranded in the wild, is rescued by a muscular mustanger named Alex Hart - rescued for a while, anyway. But a determined Indian, Counts Many Coup, has other ideas. Cassandra is stranded again, this time torn between two loves.

Read the sister volumes to Bride Fire as well as three other Chadwick novels, all available on Chadwick's author page.

RC

For the First Time, the $B-Word is Used to Describe E-Book Future

Jeff Segal and Rob Cox, blogging on the breakingviews website, crunched some breathtaking numbers in an effort to project a valuation for Amazon's Kindle. They projected clear into the stratosphere (or "blue sky", as quixotic speculations are often referred to), suggesting that billions of dollars is by no means an unrealistic number.

You can trace their thinking on the breakingviews.com blog, but in essence they calculated that out of Amazon's $24 billion market capitalization, "$9 billion of value is apparently unaccounted for. Could that be the 'Kindle premium'?"

Segal and Cox assume that Kindle sales will expand as exponentially as iPods have done, which means sale of over two million Kindles in 2009. They further assume that Kindle owners would then buy two $10 books every month. These are assumptions that Don Quixote himself would shake his head over. If only we loved books a fraction as much as we love music!

But then Segal and Cox drop an intriguing number and the laughter stops. Pointing out that Amazon is developing a student version of the Kindle, they wonder if that could be "an attempt to snag part of the $5.5 billion annual United States college textbook market." Now you're talking, gentlemen. The student market is ripe for the E-Book Revolution, and a ten-digit revenue projection is completely in the realm of possibility.

But - there's another whopper of an assumption here, namely that is that Kindle is the only dog in the hunt. Knowing that a lot of big, well heeled companies - Apple for instance - are developing tablet-sized readers for the educational market, Amazon will have to produce a killer gadget to realize the kind of profits being bandied about.

For that reason I wouldn't be too quick to propose putting Jeff Bezos's picture on the billion dollar bill. But it certainly quickens the heartbeat to hear the B-word kicked around.

RC

Pulse Detected at Borders

Borders has a new CEO, Ron Marshall, and he's been putting in a lot of time on the horn assuring publishers that though his bookstore chain has been taking a lickin' it keeps on tickin'.

This according to the Wall Street Journal. "Publishers and other suppliers said that Borders is currently paying its bills," says WSJ. "But the retailer has been aggressively selling assets, slashing costs, laying off employees, and reducing debt to stave off the kind of financial crisis that could result in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing."

Borders is in a classic bind because some publishers have been supplying books in cautious quantities, and others may not have supplied any at all until they see if the chain survives. But standing on the umbilical could only accelerate the chain's demise. Which puts publishers in a classic bind of their own: if Borders fails, publishers that withheld product will bear responsibility; if it survives, those same publishers will lament lost sales opportunities.

In any event, at least, as of 5 AM on Friday, January 9, 2009, Borders can sing, "I'm still here." Just bear in mind that the name of the Sondheim show that tune appears in is "Follies."

Meanwhile, Borders' rival Barnes & Noble got an infusion of optimism when it was announced that Yucaipa, a private equity outfit owned by billionaire investor Ron Burkle, had bought 8.3% of the company's stock for about $67.3 million. Does anybody find this odd? A month ago B&N czar Len Riggio was lamenting that the 2008 holiday season was shaping up the be the worst he'd seen in three decades, nor did he see much light on the 2009 horizon.

What does Ron Burkle know that the rest of us don't?

Don't leave the theatre. Act II of Follies is about to begin...

RC

Apple Removes DRM Shackles. Books Next?

A while back I got a Zune player and tried to load my iTunes library into it. Couldn't. My Mac friend shook his head. "Why didn't you ask me? I could have told you iTunes doesn't sync to non-Apple devices."

For years, Apple has been segregating its iPod and iTunes Music Store customers from the competition. The biggest caveat for iTunes customers has been that many iTunes files have restrictions that keep you from playing them on anything but an iTunes "authorized" device. No Zunes allowed.

Now that's going to change, according to Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president for worldwide marketing, who pinch-hit for Steve Jobs as keynoter at Macworld in San Francisco. Apple's "iTunes-Plus" files, which have higher audio fidelity and no restrictions on copying, will soon be available for all the songs in the iTunes Music Store, effectively ending an era of stifling sales and policing audio files.

In fact, a lot's going to change thanks to Apple's decision to end DRM restrictions on music content. "DRM" is jaw-friendly abbreviation for Digital Rights Management, the rules and regulations governing the licensing and exploitation of copyright-protected intellectual property. Brad Stone of the New York Times reports that, "Beginning this week, three of the four major music labels — Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group — will begin selling music through iTunes without digital rights management software, or D.R.M., which controls the copying and use of digital files. The fourth, EMI, was already doing so."

Apple also agreed to set more flexible pricing on song downloads, a concession to the major labels. With Apple music sales drooping somewhat under competitive pressure from rivals like Amazon's MP3 store, they have agreed to drop prices on slower moving tunes to 69 cents from its rigid one-99-cents-serves-all policy. But hit and hot songs might go out at $1.29 per download. That price could come down as sales soften. Many other tunes will stay at 99 cents. This approach will goose sales of the backlist while taking advantage of hot items without gouging.

“I think the writing was on the wall, both for Apple and the labels, that basically consumers were not going to put up with D.R.M. anymore,” Stone quotes a market research analyst.

Should we look on the same wall for writing about digital books? Stone's comment about DRM in music might apply to e-books: "Industry pundits have long pointed to D.R.M. as one culprit for the music companies’ woes, saying it alienated some customers while doing little to slow piracy on file-sharing networks."

One reason the e-book business has taken so long to develop robustly is publishers' concern - yea obsession - with copyright. No one can blame them, but by insisting on DRM protocols and withholding content from etailers who did not adhere to rigid copyright protections, much traction was lost in the last decade, and still is. Yet, in cases where DRM is not strictly observed such as the MultiFormat feature at Fictionwise, the leading etailer in the business, piracy has not really been as big an issue as one would think. From our own experience here at E-Reads, piracy seems to thrive when books are not readily available or are available only for prohibitive prices. As soon as those books go up for sale, piracy seems to diminish. Given a choice between a free pirated edition and a legitimate one for sale on a reputable website, consumers will usually choose to pay. A key reason is that they are wary of contracting viruses when downloading from pirate sites.

We are all concerned about Steve Jobs's health and wish him a full and speedy recovery. But whatever is afflicting his hormones has not compromised his mind. His change in policy is smart and will prove a boost to every sector of the digital content business.

RC

More Juice for Handhelds

The world's first official e-book conference, held in Washington DC in 1998, was a thrilling, supercharged pep rally for true believers who had dreamed for decades of the day when they could read a book on an electronic device nestled in the palm of their hands. At the same time, like any convocation of like-minded people whether it be shoe manufacturers or atomic physicists, the shoptalk was stultifying and the presentations soporific - until the Battery Lady got up to speak. She was beautiful, tastefully dressed and spoke in a lilting Continental accent. Someone called her Greta Garbo in a business suit. The topic was battery life and she was mesmerizing, delivering her topic like Eartha Kitt singing "Santa Baby" to a lovestruck male in a nightclub. During the coffee break she was all the geeks could talk about. No one quite remembered what she said but we all agreed she should be invited back the following year even if it was to tell us, in her enchanting, artless way that battery life had been extended by five minutes since the previous year's conference.

The Battery Lady should be brought back today to expound on exciting initiatives to conserve the battery life of smartphones and other handheld devices. Thanks to an article by Anne Eisenberg in the New York Times, we're informed that outfits like Pixtronix and Qualcomm have developed the means to make power last and last.

The Pixtronix color display technology, called PerfectLight, "uses energy-efficient LED bulbs, creating the image with thousands of tiny shutters that slide open and closed like digital pocket doors," explains Eisenberg. The drain for backlighting is less than 50 milliwatts. A conventional LCD uses about 200. A Pixtronix executive says, “We have a single shutter for each pixel,” he said. A display in a cellphone might have 76,000 to 300,000 shutters for as many pixels."

Qualcomm's approach could not be more different. Explains Eisenberg:

New technology by Qualcomm takes advantage of natural light, reflecting the short, blue waves of daylight, for instance, and combining them in the same process that lets bluebirds glow with iridescent color in the sun.

A Qualcomm exec boasts, “You can end up with about a fifth of the optical energy that is put out by the backlight — or even less.” Very significantly, the screen color remains true in direct sunlight.

RC

Lawyers (Groan)

Whenever an author asks me if he should show a publishing contract to his attorney, I emit a noise not unlike that of a rutting moose whose girlfriend has just trotted into the woods with his rival. "Please," I beg, "anything but that. Take my firstborn. Take my condo, even. But don't show your contract to lawyers. They won't understand."

My anxieties are by no means unusual. Many lawyers are not familiar with the unique language and historical conventions of publishing contracts that make them seem like little more than glorified handshakes. Many publishing people consider lawyers to be humorless spoilsports placed on our planet to raise hypothetical questions about events that have only the remotest possibility of coming to pass.

Most lawyers make serious efforts to understand the unique nature of publishing law; they are reasonable, thoughtful, realistic, and no more venal than anyone else; and they regard litigation as an extremely distasteful last resort. Nevertheless, by the very nature of their profession, lawyers tend to be extremely literal-minded about the language of contracts. And, sad to say, the literal language of publishing contracts is enough to induce cardiac infarction in even the most liberal of attorneys.

Read more.

Print Media: So Much Bad News, We Need a Triage Manager

Some years ago my brother and I were fishing in a dinghy in Rockaway Channel when, with a godawful hooting, a fireboat came tearing around the bend at full steam, heading directly towards us. A fireman with a bullhorn was shouting from the bow, "Get the @#%@#@ out of the way!" as if we needed any encouragement. My brother grabbed one oar and I the other and we started rowing to save our lives. Unfortunately, he was rowing forward and I backwards. When we realized our mistake, he started rowing backward and I forward. Our cockleshell spun in circles as the mammoth bore down on us. By the time we coordinated our strokes it was too late. There was only one thing we could do.

We started to laugh.

Somehow we managed to ride the wake out without capsizing, but the situation was so cosmically preposterous that laughter seemed like the only way to deal with it.

I thought of that experience when I read today's (January 5, 2009) news describing various developments in the print media. The news is so awful it's preposterous.

1. The Web is now officially a greater sources of news than newspapers. Alex Mindlin of the New York Times reports a Pew Research Center survey in which more than a thousand people stated they get most of their national and international news from the Internet.

2. Some major magazines lost so many pages at the end of the year they looked like promotions for bringing the Twiggy look back. The Times's Stephanie Clifford says that although it's normal for end-of-year issues to be thin (the industry average for January was minus 17%), Condé Nast's flagships such as Wired, Architectural Digest, Vogue and Lucky were all off by more than 40%.

Are we laughing yet?

3. "In its latest concession to the worst revenue slide since the Depression, The New York Times has begun selling display advertising on its front page, a step that has become increasingly common across the newspaper industry," writes RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA. This is may not sound tragic but it's kind of like the society dowager selling off her antique brooch. The conclusion of the article tells us what's behind this extraordinary move:

The company recently reported that in November, revenue from continuing operations fell 13.9 percent from November 2007; from January through November, it was down 7.6 percent. Advertising revenue at The New York Times Media Group, consisting of The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, the radio station WQXR-FM and Baseline StudioSystems, an online database, declined 21.2 percent in November from the same month in 2007.

4. And finally, in an article titled, "Puttin’ Off the Ritz: The New Austerity in Publishing," Motoko Rich reports how book publishers are cutting back on luncheons, parties, travel, convention displays and attendance, and other perks.

Venerable houses including HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Penguin Group, Random House and Simon & Schuster have all announced salary freezes or layoffs, or both. Simon & Schuster canceled its annual holiday party, held for the last few years at Tavern on the Green and scheduled in 2008 for Guastavino’s, a splashy banquet hall in Manhattan. One division of Random House had pizza, beer and wine in a room off the cafeteria for its holiday lunch instead of going out for pricey cocktails. Across the city, editors with Four Seasons taste are being asked to scale back on their lunch tabs.

Among the industry spokespersons solicited for the article was Robert Gottlieb, former editor in chief of Knopf and one of the most powerful people in the industry at the time. “I don’t think the dire situation of the publishing world is going to be solved by tightening that particular belt,” he says of cutbacks in luncheons. “It’s small potatoes compared to the problems they face.”

I second that motion, particularly as I remember having lunch with Gottlieb. We had yogurt on the carpet. The reason we had to dine on the floor is that the chairs and sofas were piled too high with books and manuscripts to sit in them.

It was one of the most satisfying and stimulating publishing luncheons I've ever had.

RC

A Fortune Awaits Discoverer of Cure for App Addiction

Apps gone wild!

If you loaded one new application per day into your iPhone, it would take at least 27 years to try them all. According to Matt Richtel and Laura M. Holson of the New York Times, over 10,000 new apps have been posted to the Apple store, generating 300 million downloads. "The new status symbol is what your phone can do — count calories, teach Spanish, simulate a flute, or fling a monkey from a tree," they write. "The popularity of such applications for Apple’s iPhone, the leader of the transformation, is driving a fierce competition among the makers of the BlackBerry and Palm devices, and even Google and Microsoft." One venture capital company thinks it's such a goldmine that it has created a $100 million fund for iPhone developers.

Naturally, our favorite is the Stanza, the free e-book reader, and we've also written about the Android-powered barcode scanner. But it's not just the thousands of wonderful, stupid, crazy, and absorbing add-ons that make the phone-omenon notable, but their convergence into one device that brings us closer to the science fiction dream of a personal slave-device that carries out our every command at the graze of a fingertip.

But like any other convenience there is a danger of addiction and even abuse. In December Joe Wilcox, author of the Apple Watch blog, put a name on a syndrome whose symptoms are all too familiar to iPhone users: Apple App Addiction. "I've casually asked about two dozen other iPhone or iPod Touch users about their devices," writes Wilcox. "Nearly all confessed to being app addicts."

It looks like Apple App Addiction is the new obesity. What are the signs you're hooked? Says Wilcox,

Can you put the devices down? Do you use them frequently throughout the day—and more frequently than you would a vanilla cell phone or music player? Do you compulsively check your e-mail, Facebook or Twitter—or other app, perhaps? In a crowded room—maybe it's a party or business meeting—do you tap, tap, tap that touchscreen?

If 'yes' is the answer to any question, you're an Apple app addict.

Wilcox describes the technique for "hooking" users that sounds exactly like the way dope dealers hook victims:

Some of these app addict dealers are smart. Tapulous gave iPhone and iPod Touch users just a taste with Tap Tap Revenge. "C`mon, it's free. Try it." The game is highly addictive, and it's got a killer soundtrack. But successors like Nine Inch Nails Revenge and Weezer Christmas cost five bucks a piece. Damn, if they're not addictive, too. That taste leads to paid addiction.

There are organizations for treating alcohol, dope, gambling and even sex addiction. But I'm not aware of an Apps Anonymous (at least not one in my community) and because of the syndrome's potential impact on workplace and school performance, it may be the deadliest of all. Wilcox says, "People ask to be buried with their cell phones," and I can personally testify to that. Not long ago I attended a funeral in which the recently departed was laid out with his beloved cell phone hooked to his belt. "It was a part of him," his widow confessed to me. "No one ever saw him without it." When I viewed the corpse I noticed a blinking light indicating the phone was on. Someone else noticed it too, because, as a macabre practical joke or maybe just to see if the deceased would pick up, they called him and his unique ringtone warbled.

The thing is, nobody laughed. It seems like the most natural thing in the world.

RC

Hand-Wringing Over Used Books While New-Book Industry Teeters Over the Brink

The New York Times's David Streitfeld recently beat his breast so hard, the thumping reverberated throughout the book publishing's trade journals and blogs. In an article called Bargain Hunting for Books, and Feeling Sheepish About It, he expressed guilt feelings about buying used books.

...it’s all the fault of people like myself, who increasingly use the Internet both to buy books and later, after their value to us is gone, sell them. This is not about Amazon peddling new books at discounted prices, which has been a factor in the book business for a decade, but about the rise of a worldwide network of amateurs who sell books from their homes or, if they’re lazy like me, in partnership with an Internet dealer who does all the work for a chunk of the proceeds.

Since Amazon's used-book feature has been in place for years, and indeed six years ago Streitfeld himself wrote about it (Authors, Publishers Protest Amazon’s New Strategy for Selling Used Books), it's a little too late for Mea Culpas. But Streitfeld does raise some important issues when he asks, "...where do I want that money to go? To my local community via a bookstore? To the publisher? To the author?"

The first thing we need to get clear is that money for used books has never gone to authors. There are some enlightened lands where royalties are paid to authors when their books are checked out of a library. Otherwise, authors are not exempted from the cruel fact that the secondary market for artistic product leaves the original creators out in the cold. Authors may take what comfort they can from knowing that someone out there thought enough of their books to buy them used. But unless they're saints, that comfort will be more than offset by the realization that their books were resold for as little as one penny, a fraction of what the bookseller, Amazon and UPS made on freight and handling charges.

Nor do publishers participate in the proceeds of used-book sales. Streitfeld's 2000 article acknowledged the bellows of anguish from publishers about being cut out of the loop.

Local community bookstores? They don't realize much by way of profit from used books, either. Major booksellers like Olsson's, Robin's, and Powell's have either gone out of business or are contemplating it. Wonder Book and Video, a major firm in the field, is fighting to stay competitive. And, though described as one of the great used-book stores in the country, New York City's Strand closed its Annex in the Financial District in September of 2008. Is anybody making money in used books? Think about this: a month before Strand shut its Annex, Amazon announced it had bought Abebooks, a major used-book purveyor.

As I say, it's a little late to lament the ceding of the used-book business to Amazon. The game is pretty much over. Jeff Bezos, the company's founder, beams with pride about the centralization of a process that, for all its serendipitous delights, was chaotic, labor- and real estate-intensive, and frequently just plain crazy. To hear him tell it, Amazon is rescuing a dying business and bringing service and professionalism to it, to say nothing of increasing literacy. Reading Bezos's defense of the practice - written six years ago - is a little like listening to Mephistopheles praising the virtues of immortality. But you have to pay the Devil his due, and I think we should.

Feeling sheepish about helping to fatten Amazon's bank account? Time to get over it. Big as the used-book issue is, we have far greater fish to fry, like how our poor dear broken old publishing industry is going to go on producing new books.

Richard Curtis

CD's Going the Way of Book-Books?

If you substitute "books" for "CDs" in Ben Sisario's New York Times article Music Sales Fell in 2008, but Climbed on the Web, you'll see parallels both encouraging and disheartening, depending whether you're in the print books business (which I am) or the e-book business (which I am).

Though total sales of CD's in the year gone by were high - 361 million - they were down almost 20 percent from 2007. Adding full-album downloads to the charts raises the total to 428 million, but that too represents a 14% decline over the previous year. No matter how you cut it, the arrow pointed down in the year gone by. You can mark some of it down to the economic recession, but when you look at the arrow for sales of digital music, you know it's not "the economy, Stupid." Proof is that for the last eight years, when the economy was relatively strong until recently, album sales have been dropping. Between 2000 and 2008, they plummeted by 45%.

On the other hand, in 2008 more than one billion songs were downloaded, a 27 percent increase from 2007, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Five years ago, that figure was 19 million.

If you look at the bar graphs for the e-book business, you see the same dramatic growth. Though stats for all of 2008 aren't in yet, as of the end of the third quarter e-book revenue was up 57.7% over the same period the year before. Whether it's books or music, the plain truth is that retailers don't feel they can generate the same level of sales per square foot of store space (which is how most businesses calculate the profitability of any given product).

But now let's shift from plain truth to one that is emerging from dust at the crossroads where the hard-copy and digital businesses intersect, and that is the profitability of content purchased on web sites.

One reason that the traditional book and record companies cling to their hard-copy model, in the face of all the evidence that consumers are going in another direction, is that the digital model has not proven it can generate revenue on the same scale as the Old Way. Online advertising, secondary exploitation of content, and other revenue-producers have yet to step up to replace the same functions in world of tangible goods. One of the big causes is the Informaton Wants to Be Free mindset among online consumers, a gaping hole at the ship's water line that has not yet been sealed. To executives watching the stupdendous paradigm shift in the media, Free Downloader is just one four-letter word away from Freeloader.

According to the Times's Sisario, however, there is hope. Some record companies, he reports. "...say they are finally beginning to wring significant profits from music on Web sites like YouTube and MySpace." “As the digital side grows," he quotes a market research analyst, "you get a different business model, with more revenue streams.” Sisario cites videos and ring tones as kinds of revenues flowing into those streams. “We don’t focus anymore on total album sales or the sale of any one particular product as the metric of revenue or success,” says an executive VP for Universal Music Group's digital division. “We look at the total consolidated revenue from dozens of revenue lines behind a given artist or project, which include digital sales, the physical business, mobile sales and licensing income.”

Is there a concommitant revenue stream to be exploited by book, newspaper and magazine publishers looking for a bridge to the New World of Digital? I don't know what the book equivalents of ring tones and videos are, but it's imperative that publishers find them and find them fast.

RC

A War to the Death Against an Unknowable Alien

How do you write a sequel to a science fiction novel in which you've destroyed Earth and killed off most of its inhabitants? Greg Bear asked himself that question after completing Forge of God. But he did not shrink, or even hesitate, before the challenge. Not too many authors would have even attempted it; fewer would have triumphed so thoroughly. But behold Anvil of Stars, offered at last in e-book format.

After Earth's devastation by self-replicating robots, a handful of human survivors aided by a benevolent race of aliens sets out to confront the planet-killers. Turning their backs on their sundered mother world, they seek revenge against a race so vast, so technologically advanced and so heartless that the odds of succeeding are infinitesimal.

"A knotty philosophical question--how moral is "eye for an eye" revenge preoccupies Bear in this provocative and entertaining follow-up to Forge of God...Employing plausible new hard-science concepts, Bear fashions an action-packed and often thrilling plot; by using each of the well-depicted alien races to mirror human behavior, he defines what it means to be Homo Sapiens. Bear draws on the full range of his gifts, seamlessly pulling together action and characterization to create a gripping story." -- Publishers Weekly (Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

“Like Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, this sequel to The Forge of God explores the issues of morality and justice, using children as its vehicle. Bear's treatment differs, however, in that his characters have already lost their innocence and face their destiny with open eyes. As a stylist, Bear writes with a heady brilliance that communicates a sense of immediacy and credibility.” -- Library Journal

Our e-book edition of Forge of God is in production, so watch this space for announcement of its release.

RC