Eoin Purcell's Blog

Eoin Purcell

If you look at my linkblog, you will see that I have just shared this post by Penguin.

Basically what they are offering is six classic titles with blank covers allowing you to draw, paste or even to build your own cover with beads. From the post:

The covers are art-quality paper, and from internal Penguin efforts we know that they hold ink, paint, pencil and glue (see the first efforts here). Each one comes shrink-wrapped so the paper doesn’t get dirty, and I hope people might give them as gifts.

Now doesn’t that sound cool to you? It sure does to me. They have set up an online gallery here and they already have some of their own samples posted.

The titles are:

Meditations: Marcus Aurelius
Crime and Punishment: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Magic Tales: The Brothers Grimm
The Waves: Virginia Woolf
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Oscar Wilde
Emma: Jane Austen

A really innovative and impressive move by Penguin.

Very impressed today
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

Google have two posts this morning talking up their improvements to Google Book Search.

From the Official Google Blog:

My latest assignment has been to help develop a better way to browse our digitized books on a computer screen. I’ve always had an interest in cutting-edge web applications — existing Google products such as Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Docs & Spreadsheets make heavy use of JavaScript and DHTML to create full-featured applications in a web browser that you can use without having to download and install anything.

My Verdict:

You really do have to hand it to them, they have vastly improved the readability of the online books, even offering a double page spread and a new non-reloading view which looks much better than their previous efforts. Overall the functionality at the reading stage is better and smoother and feel like the service should have to begin with!

I suspect that this is an important move for those more mobile in their reading than I however. The whole interface appears ready made for an internet enabled mobile electronic reading device. Now that is on my part total speculation but go look at this example and see what I mean.

Basically it is as if Google have reworked this product and released a version that works like we expected it would work when we h=first heard the concept. It equals anything out there right now for viewing e-books, even the flashy new Adobe Digital Editions I mentioned previously.

Go Google!

The Whys?:

It seems to me that the recent news that the company was focussing on features instead of products (read this LA Times piece for more on that) seems to be great news for some of their heretofore rather ignored tools. For all the controversy that Book Search has generatedit has never been the most reader friendly.

Of course it might also have something to do with this.
But who am I to suggest that Google fears the oncoming competition?

Launches are fun (but work)!!
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

Wiley & More

The Wiley acquisition of Blackwells (of which more here) seems to have generated a huge body of interest amongst searchers on the web. My page-views yesterday doubled and the bulk of those views were of the tiny post I had noting the acquisition. Richard Charkin speculates a little and explains more in his blog today.

Puzzling:

At first I was puzzled but on consideration it reminded me of a similar scenario with a post I wrote on Ottakars several months ago. It has proven to be an enormous success and has drawn massive search traffic (massive at least in my terms) to the site.

Is it something to do with English Bookstores & Publishing firms? Are they considered more established? Or are English book buyers and writers more attached to their bookish institutions?

I for one do not know but I remain intrigued by the massive interest these topics generate and would welcome any views!

As An Aside:

It is often so hard to know where traffic comes from on the web and thus almost impossible to determine who you are actually reaching (If you doubt me search for traffic stats or page view statistics on the web and see the masses of companies offering services. Why so many if nobody needs or wants them?). There are some very interesting blogs on these topics like Datamining which I heartily recommend visiting from time to time.

Working towards a Happy Christmas (first mention this year, at least here)
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

So the question arises of what the options for distribution are for any given author and I thought it would really help to go over everything there is methodically both traditional, less traditional and new.

Traditional

~A Full Service Publishing House: Okay so this is the old school, old flavour, way of getting published. You submit your manuscript and it emerges from the slush pile, [or not]catches the eye of an editor and they offer you a deal. Lately this route has been closing and it has become more regular (especially in Fiction) to have an agent make the deal happen. The agent champions the manuscript and negotiates the deal and also acts a pre-selector or initial filter for the publisher.

You will not be asked to pay for publication and you will be paid a royalty (and more than likely an advance). The publisher will do their best to market the book but in all likelihood as a first time author much of the support will be your doing and you will need to be good at it to build momentum (unless you are a celebrity, preferably a chef). of course they do solve the distribution issues [most of the time].

~ Vanity Publisher: A good vanity publisher will always let you know where you stand. You are paying them to publish your book, it is that simple. They will not pretend to be a publisher with a sales channel, they will not pretend to have an outlet that will build sales and recognition just you pay money and you get books, it is not a bad deal, it is necessary sometimes and is a route to market for some people who really know what they are planning and how to get there. They may offer some associated services, like distribution and order fulfilment but it should cost more and also be up to you to find buyers.

I think to be fair to the changing field of Self-Publishing that it needs a clean post of its own. I will set that up and hopefully run it before the end of the week.

Working hard this week
Eoin

I missed much of the coverage on this deal in which Wiley acquired Blackwell but it strikes me as one more sign that there is a great deal of acquisition to come and industry consolidation too.

With the Riverdeep acquistion recently this marks one of a few large and interesting recent moves. Over on Personanondata you will find much better coverage such as this.

Eoin

I spotted some nice praise for one of my favourite authors in Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2006:

No Present Like Time
Steph Swainston (Eos)Swainston’s scintillating prose, well-developed characters and talent for brilliant absurdities mark this as one of the more innovative fantasies of recent years.

Just wanted to share it.
Buy her first book too its excellent:
Here

Happy seeing priase for a good writer
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

While it sounds a little humorous and more like a game from my childhood in actual fact this is a very important issue and and that will become more so over the next few years.

Editors are an endangered species in one sense and a rare commodity in another. They are endangered because the revolution in publishing is making their role either superfluous or too expensive. As publishing technology develops and becomes easier to use, more people are capable of using that technology that has facilitated it to publish articles, magazines and books for themselves.

Endangered because . . .
Editors, designers and all the other people who had up to this point been involved in the process are thus marginalised because a large body of people (the new self publishers) see no need for them. What is more, the people who hire editors and designers, Publishers, begin to see them as cost centres in an increasingly competitive market. When you are competing against books and other publishers that do not use professional design or professional editors and thus have lower costs (not to mention those for whom the costs are largely irrelevant) in the journey toward the bookshelf you can understand their logic.

It’s a perfect storm for editors then. One the one hand they are no longer wanted by one side of the industry and on the other they are being seen as drags on profit rather than assistants in making it by publishers. Tough spot to be in.

But rare commodities because . . .
The skills are still vital. Think about the digital world for little and consider the real stars. One group of stars are quality writers and editors. The staff who ensure sites like paidcontent.org and Lifehacker function well are armed with the skills of the reporter and journalist. There are those who would disagree but I think while there is too much hype about blogging in general, in specific cases bloggers are as good if not better than journalists.

The skills of the writer and journalist then are as valid and useful in a world where publishing written content is in essence (once access issues and power are considered and not forgetting those left behind) free. The reason is that these people are talented at rooting out information, capable digesters of information and able to scrounge up scoops and news stories that interest the readership. Not everyone can do it, or wants to do it. it is the reason why Jason Calacanis idea of paying for talent from Digg to work on Netscape was at once brilliant and controversial.

The future . . .
Talented editors will still be in demand for the same reason that talented editors and reporters will succeed in the new environment. But before that happens a number of key blocks will have to slot into place:

1. Self publishers must realise that although they do not NEED editors, their work might still BENEFIT from their expertise.
2. Publishers must realise that although they do not CREATE REVENUE, editors CREATE VALUE.
3. Editors need to take responsibility for themselves, either by joining companies where they are champions for their books (like Snowbooks) or by going it alone as freelance editors and building a business that they control.

So you can see what I think of Where’s the Editor? The real editor needs to stand up, face the music and to some degree tough out a rough time until smoother waters come their way.

Looking forward to rest
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

The Snowblog vision

A few days ago, Rob Jones over at Snowblog wrote an intriguing post on the future of publishers in a changing world.

One of the best parts is when he isolates the key function of the publisher:

Of course publishers do one more thing: they absorb risk. That’s to say, they take a chance on their titles. They put their money, effort and reputation behind a book and hope that their gamble pays off. In that sense they do make books, thus ensuring that a few horribly formatted files on a computer (or god forbid, a sheaf of typewritten pages) become an actual, professional-looking, shop-bought book.

But the real meat of the post is in his conclusions:

So I think we’re left with publishers being the backers and risk-takers behind books. And what I see is that every year technology makes it easier to turn a Word file into a pallet full of paperbacks – or just a single copy, if you prefer. And every year devices for reading books electronically get more desirable, more practical and more affordable. I’m wondering if there’ll come a day when the only reason that publishers can put forward to justify their cut of the book industry’s profits is that they tell readers what to read. Then all it would take is for readers to band together into online communities and share their collected opinions of new writing and we wouldn’t need publishing companies’ biased views on what was good; we could be guided by our fellow readers. And on that day publishers will go the way of the dodo and the clanger, and Em and I will have suddenly have a lot more time on our hands to work on our blog entries.

The funny thing about all this is that while I agree with almost all the points expressed I cannot agree with the conclusion. So let’s break it down:

Easier, cheaper, design:
There is no doubt that this is a trend already well underway. One only has to look at the Booksmart software that blurb.com distribute as part of their publishing package to see how close a usable, author friendly and cheap design alternative is. What is more if you actually work with Indesign or Quark Express you will know that these programs can be relatively easy to use (though harder to master all their complexities). There can be little quibble with this from any perspective.

Electronic Books:
There is no doubt that reading books electronically will happen more and more (though not to the exclusion of print for some time to come). But how do you deliver them? Do you use iTunes and hand Apple the control of your content? Do you use your own site? If you do how do you get traffic and sales? Here arises the first major problem with the Snowblog vision.

Distribution and promotion will remain a major issue for any newly published title. Yes you can build a site and blog about your books, yes you can hope that book clubs take the title to heart and spread positive news about it but what you cannot ensure positive blog coverage or news coverage just as even now publishers cannot ensure that a title can get placement in stores or newspaper reviews (although sometimes they can pay for it).

Online communities
While I can see the concern here the first question is how the online communities actually discover the books in the first place? As with the last query we have run into the issue of publicity pretty quickly. Oh and distribution!

Where does that leave us?

So what emerges from the points is that they are all valid but that they raise questions. The questions point to areas that require expenditure. Distribution means paying to distribute, publicity means paying to publicize. All of which reminds me of a post some time ago now by Mark Cuban over on his blog:

There should be. The potential customer base consists of 90mm broadband users in the USA. 100s of millions across the world. Any programmer with a high speed data line can reach any of them. Yet no one chooses to invest an amount equal to even the least expensive broadcast network show. Why?

Because in an ala carte world, the cost of reaching an audience is outrageous. And consumers arent ready to pay the freight to receive that programming.

As i have said before, the movie market is ala carte. Look at which content rises to the top in terms of revenues from consumers and visibility. The content from the biggest companies who have spent the most money to market .

Our movie from HDNet Films, Enron – The Smartest Guys in the Room cost a relatively small $770k to make, but we needed to spend millions to create visibility for the film. When we tried to get creative and offer the film day and date with its release on HDNet Films, the big theatrical chains got together and decided they wouldnt carry it. Despite our unique offer to share in the revenues from the sale of the DVD. The point being that if video distribution goes ala carte, the response from the powers that be wont be to embrace the change. It will be to find ways to circumvent the change to their advantage. The movie industry is the perfect example. Despite the fact that anyone with a videocamera and PC can produce a movie, the cost to get it to consumer in an ala carte movie world, precludes all but the biggest and/or very, very fortunate from reaching an audience large enough to break even on a movie release.

There it is. In publishing the price of writing a book was always low, but now the price of making a book is to all intents and purposes free too. Publishing it costs nothing now if you use a trick like lulu.com and very little if you use self-publishing services like Xlibris, Trafford.com or even Blurb.com. The Publisher will still be needed to absorb the risk because the risk has not going away, it is just changing, shifting and moving along the value chain from printing and design to marketing and distribution.

At least those are my thoughts!
Eoin