Eoin Purcell's Blog

Eoin Purcell

I’d like to say I saw this coming
But that would not be true. In fact it is only in retrospect that the obviousness and the attractiveness of this type of deal is evident. The Bookseller has details:

Random House is to set up a book club with supermarket chain Tesco. Tesco will select one Random House title each month which will be featured in stores nationwide, clearly marked with Tesco Book Club branding.

The launch title is Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir, followed by One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson in July. The books will be Tesco Special Editions with a branded bookmark and each will feature exclusive extra content. Titles will also feature in Tesco Magazine and be promoted to Tesco.com customers via an email campaign.

In terms of publishing coups you have to say it is quite the score for Random House. I wonder if it means the other big houses will rush to deals with the remaining chains? Of course none is quite as well positioned as Tesco is (Apparently £1 in very £8 spent on groceries in the UK is spent in Tesco).

Seems like an interesting development one way or the other.
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

From Long Tail author Chris Anderson:
BookTour Where authors and audiences meet.

Intrigued
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

I may be biased but:
The RTE Election 2007 site has really triumphed for me this election. Firstly I am listening to the radio coverage (far superior to the television coverage) and watching the studio on web cam. That in itself was great but by far the best feature has been the liberal use of rich visual tools for displaying data and great access to that data. Excellent stuff.

If I had a favourite section, it would be Results Extra.

Tired but happy (as far as it goes)
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

The more they do the more I like
It is funny that I mentioned Random House Uk yesterday, because today they feature too. LibraryThing has launched a lovely new feature called LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

It’s a pretty Funky Dory idea. I kinda hope it expands. Tim says:

Members should understand what this is, and what it isn’t. We’re going to talk about LibraryThing Early Reviewers, but won’t be pushing Random House’s or anyone else’s books at you. Similarly, getting a free advanced readers copy comes with NO obligation. Under no circumstances will a bad review change your chance of getting another.

If more people want the books than we have copies, we’ll have to ration them. The basic algorithm is randomness, but other factors come into play. We’re going to try to spread the wealth around. And if you complete a review—good or bad!—you’re more likely to get another. Finally, LibraryThing’s matching algorithm will try to match up books with readers, based on the rest of your LibraryThing catalog. For publishers, that’s the interesting part; we’re anxious to see how it turns out.

I can see a couple of big uses here and not just at this late a stage in the publishing process. But I guess that is for the future.

Getting election fever!
Eoin

Opps: The early version had a slight error in the placing of quotes so please forgive me!

Eoin Purcell

Call me crazy but . . .
I don’t pretend to be privy to anything that goes on at Random House UK but I was searching through their rather excellent new online bookstore: rbooks, can you find their imprints listed there? I can’t. Which is odd because for all the books listed on their front page and deeper (for example: Wicked by Jilly Cooper), Amazonlists the imprint.

Sure, you can find the list of their imprints on their home-page but you have to know they exist and click a menu drop down to go to them and helpfully they offer an explanation for those who don’t know what an imprint is:

Each imprint has a slightly different publishing philosophy. Most imprints publish either hardback or paperback editions, so the same title usually appears under two different imprints. For instance John Grisham is published by the imprints Century and Arrow which are both part of Random House.

The lack of positioning for the imprints on the retail site is important because it reflects the reality both of the book-selling trade (I guarantee that Waterstones, Borders and Foyles shelve by category and not by Publisher) and the customer experience (few readers care what imprint publishes their book, though for sure some might know the better known houses they will not know the endless sub-divisions of the giants).It also makes perfect sense. The books are what are important not the imprints. And rbooks does a lovely job of displaying Random’s books.

Am I getting ahead of myself?
Maybe they don’t plan to phase them out and rbooks is in its infancy so they may simply be learning lessons critical to online selling (Though they seem to ignore the discounting policy so prevalent at Amazon.co.uk eg Pig Island).

Maybe they have thought about it and see the benefits. I’d advise them to read Michael Hyatt’s assessment of the Thomas Nelson moves in the recent past as further support for doing away with them. All in all, I hope they do eradicate their imprints. Despite the many proud names that might disappear, book publishing would be stronger and better for it I am sure.

Thinking heady thoughts
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

Then you will love this:

It is just something else.
Eoin

Via Kottke

Check out the independents new look: Here

And the editors post abut it: Here

They actually want comments:

We’d also like to hear more from you – now you can post a comment on a selection of thought-provoking articles.

‘Today’s Paper’ enables you to browse through each day’s edition of the newspaper while additional content from our sister titles is also featured in channels such as Sport, Business and Entertainment. We’ve also created new Lifestyle and Health channels so you can stay “hip and healthy” with the minimum of fuss. New features such as Columnists and Editor’s Choice will highlight some of each day’s most interesting articles, while Most Popular will bring the articles you consider important to the fore.

Looking for more
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

Even the greatest lover of books has doubts
Whenever I doubt the vibrancy of my industry I take a tour of bookshops. It is amazing to see the difference between stores. Some are old, dark and smell unmistakably of books, others are bright, warm and air conditioned smelling only of the expensive coffee baristas are grinding in the attached cafes, a few fall somewhere between, showing neither the elegance and (usually) the stock depth of the old style nor the front list power and cheapness that pervades in the newer. I have favourites at both extremes, but some, a very few really, manage to drop into the middle and lack appeal for me.

If pressed I would say Hughes & Hughes are the best exponents of the new style in recent times in Ireland, though it has to be said that Barker & Jones of the Book Centre group sets new standards in my mind). Their newer stores (Most notably their Dun Laoghaire branch but with an honourable mention for their Wexford one too) are almost carbon copies of the huge Borders store in Blanchardstown (excpet for that stores incredible size).

Shelves of major and minor booksellers swell with attractive product, at juicy discounts featuring every conceivable fancy from footballer (and his wife) to chef (and his wife), from billionaire maverick, to spiritual patter. There is no end to the niches served by modern publishers in their quest for profit and no end to their inventiveness in attempting to reach readers.

The wealth of cover art, the experimentation with format, colour, price, finish, and every other physical parameter of books in the recent past forces even the most sceptical to accept that whatever problems might exist within the book publishing industry, inventiveness, effort, talent and investment are not amongst them.

The search for profit and the desire to bring new creativity to the market makes the bookshop a great place to renew a persons faith in books, the publishing industry and the people who work in it.

One more thing about bookshops old and new that always boost my spirit is people. Bookstores always have customers. Large and small, old and new they aways have broswers and buyers in search for bargin and classics, chic lit and humour, gifts and local history, serious current affairs and true crime. It reminds you that what we do provides entertainment for thousands and it reminds you of exactly who is important in the whole equation, the reader, our end customer.

Staying grounded
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

The Thomson Sales
Thomson sells its Thomson Learning division for $7.75 billion or £3.9 billion depending on your currency. Not only is this a great deal more than was originally floated, it is also a huge boost for Thomson’s $17.6 billion mooted bid for Reuters. An interesting piece by Personanondata gives some detail:

It was approximately 1o months ago that Richard Harrington causually mentioned to the FT that they would consider selling the Learning unit. By October the divesture was confirmed and the sale process started once the final year end numbers were finalized. Any observer of the manner in which Thomson spoke and presented its business would have seen strong indications that Learning did not feature in their plans. The detail and excitment given over to Thomson Financial during the analysts calls was indication enough. Speculation suggested that a price between $5.5 and $6.0billion would be good news for Thomson. As it turns out, Thomson management has kept one step ahead of everyone with some suggesting that the recently announced merger with Reuters has been in the works for two years and their post merger plans indicate that the merger with Reuters has indeed been long in the planning. The extra billion they are getting for Learning will really help out the Reuters deal which looks increasingly cheap.

Cui bono
The question that strikes me is the way these deals have been getting so expensive. Who on earth is going to gain (the obvious exception of the seller) from a deal where a billion more than was expected changes hands for assets that re threatened as much as any publisher by digital and internet technologies. If you read Personanondata daily (as I should and if you are in publishing you should too) you will see that Educational Publishing has been exceptionally active recently. I think there is a smart motive behind all this, the move of learning online just like the authors of Nine Shift suggested a good while ago:

Shift Eight. Half of all learning is online.

The traditional classroom rapidly becomes obsolete. Half of all learning is done online, changing the nature of how we learn and how we teach.

Shift Nine. Education becomes web-based.

Brick and mortar schools and colleges of the past century become outdated. All education becomes web-based, providing a better education for both young people and adults.

But I could be wrong and so I wonder, is there more that I don’t know?

Pondering deeply
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

Being in books that is
Not least because you meet people who are also in books and you get to talk about them (the books). Now, if you are as nerdy about books as I am you will enjoy something like SlowFire, an initiative led by James Bridle from the wonderful Snowbooks. I have long wondered if there is room for a publishing barcamp and James takes thinking to the doing step and I always find the doing part impressive.

Between starting at Mercier, watching the world of publishing without commenting as heavily as I normally do and listening to some of my co-workers, I am getting exceptionally excited about my industry again. It is so nice to meet like minds (or even not like minds, perhaps those even more so) and to encounter passion for books and writing and for the job of publishing.

I had my first new titles meeting, my first Mercier launch and finalised some details of our year end BLAD this week all of which went much better than might be expected. The welcome has been great and the weather has been spectacular. If only Ireland has this weather all year round.

Enjoying a rest
Eoin