Monthly Archives: June 2007

Chapter Chunks: O’Reilly selling chapters individually online

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Eoin Purcell

One of the compelling lessons of the digital music revolution was that people wanted to acquire and share songs, not albums. The analogies to books are imperfect, because books tend to be more of an essential organic whole than albums, but even with books, especially reference or tutorial books, it’s certainly possible that someone wants only part of a book.


Tom O’Reilly pushes the boat out
I think sometimes that there are two publishing worlds. One where things like this happen and one where they don’t. The key here though is that this concept is actually only the fruit of previous thinking as another quote makes obvious:

This capability is a direct outgrowth of the Xquery infrastructure we originally built for SafariU, our remixable textbook initiative.

That in itself is impressive. It shows foresight, a willingness to plan for possibilities beyond the current need and a desire to be able to reach distant goals.

Impressed
Eoin

Links of Interest (At least to me) 2007006017

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4

Eoin Purcell

The Return
It has come to my attention that although the link blog does get visited, links I really really like don’t get the usual traffic. So I am reinstating Links of Interest. Here goes.

LibraryThing goes over 15,000,000 books (Now that is a lot of books).

LibraryThing demonstrates something we always knew—that regular people have a lot of books—probably many times what all the world’s libraries hold. I’ve never seen the relative numbers discussed. It never mattered before, but now that regular people can put their catalogs online and engage in tasks, like tagging and work disambiguation, that bear on age-old issues of library science, it’s not entirely pointless to compare the two.

I don’t know why for sure, but I’m desperately excited by the this news. Mcclatchy are launching a new news website nationally in the US. They also run a spiffy blog for news editors called Etaoin Shrdlu (Yeah the name took me a minute too, so here‘s an explanation link).

For all you Lulu.com curious this link is certainly a beaut. Simple, structured, its like the missing manual for lulu.com. Here

Everybody’s talking about VIDEO

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Eoin Purcell

And why not
Isn’t it the hip, happening and trendy thing to do online theses days? They even have an award.

Aren’t we still a little amazed that YouTube was bought by Google for such an incredible chest of money? And isn’t the book world a flurry with news like Simon & Schuster’s new bookvideos.tv.

S&S have been smart. They have set up an accompanying YouTube site to make sure they are with the times.

Personally I don’t quite get the obsession with Book trailers. But who am I to argue with the marketers. if it works then go for it. I just wonder if it actually does. Movie trailers though do. And I say one for Wall E the upcoming pixar movie and cannot wait.

So maybe there is room for good, innovative Book Trailers.

Thinking about it
Eoin

Blurb to jump into Europe

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Eoin Purcell

Where only Lulu.com has gone before
Blurb.com is to expend some effort in building market share in Europe according to The Book Standard:

Starting next month, the company will launch specific website improvements geared toward European users, including the option to view Blurb books in metric dimensions and see prices and buy books with local currencies. The improvements will allow international Blurb users to create, publish and ship books for less.

Important or not?
Blurb has always worried me from the perspective of a publisher. The software it provides they increasingly powerful while remaining easy to use. Whereas lulu.com provides excellent printing for your average paperback, I see blurb attacking niches.

If you read the links Thursday to this report on Trade Publishing and the importance of niches, then you will begin to understand that worry.

After all as the power to design and print books shifts from the hands of publishers and becomes decentralised why should we be able to retain the market share we currently have? Given that books published by blurb.com and lulu.com can be sold online (even at places like amazon.com & .co.uk) and distribution is being outsourced to postal and delivery services, there is no limit to what these outfits can achive if they get into the minds of niche writers.

Takeover targets I wonder?
To a degree I wonder how likely Blurb or Lulu are to survive outside of one of the larger publishers. After all their technology would be beneficial. It would enable the big houses to attach themselves to the long tail. It would also enable them to offer their own POD service and not be totally reliant on Amazon’s or other players POD arms.

Alternatively they could always replicate the infrastructure themselves. But that would cost time, money and commitment not to mention an understanding fo the market. Much better to offer employment to the founders by buy out as Google and other tech focussed companies have been for some time.

Waiting for the first for sale sign
Eoin

Best lines I have read so far today . . .

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Eoin Purcell

And I thought there was no chance of surprises in this industry:

Physicist, author and professor Stephen Hawking is writing a children’s book, to be published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers in the fall. Hawking’s bestselling A Brief History of Time has sold more than 12.5 million copies, according to S&S.

Co-written with his daughter, Lucy Hawking, and illustrated by Gerry Parsons, George’s Secret Key to the Universe follows George as he befriends his scientist neighbor, his daughter Annie and Cosmos, their super-computer, and then “finds himself on a wildly fun adventure, while learning about physics, time and the universe.”

From The Book Standard.

Eoin

Oh and if it is still up why not take RTE’s Bloomsday Poll
(Look to the right hand column)