Eoin Purcell's Blog

Eoin Purcell

Sometimes the EU makes Ireland adopt stupid laws:
Like this one. Public Lending Right is one of those bad ideas that has just become too big to stop, no matter how valid the argument against it. Now I know it comes as surprise to most people to hear a publisher resist the extension of copyright but this one is truly the most useless extension one could devise. Just a few of the reasons why:

1) How do you assess a fee?
I assume one could be assessed by the number of times a book is borrowed by readers. This sounds fine except if the sum per borrow is low (as it is) the totals add up only slowly making the system inefficient and benefiting only the collection agency and the larger authors who don’t really need the money. The people who might actually really need the money (the struggling small author with few books) will not be read enough to get money in any scale. It would be far better to fund those artists directly (which we in any case already do). One could pay on a per book per library basis too. This has some merit but has the same flaw as above. The sums for most authors would be pretty useless. The system would cost as much to administer as the fees paid.

2) Where does the money come from?
Central taxation is the obvious source meaning people who don’t use libraries are paying which fair enough thats the rule. Often unmentioned here though is that people who buy books also pay. So someone who pays the retail price in a store and thus contributes to author royalties, publisher profit and booksellers wages, pays again from their taxes.

Even if you set aside that inconvenient truth look at the reality of budgeting. If Libraries get a certain allocation to cover their expenditure and they need to apportion some amount to pay these PLR fees, there will be less money for books, staff and building. Say what you like but that is the inescapable reality. Libraries budgets will at some point cease rising and PLR fees will be a legally mandated cost, books need not be bought (sadly true).

3) Logical Consistency
Would dictate that everyone should get a portion of the pot. If the author is being compensated for lower sales because of library readership, why is the bookseller not compensated for lower sales as a result fo the same and the publisher too? Are their losses somehow less worthy? I think not.

4) There are better ways
Let the libraries buy more books or pay full price for the copies they buy. That way higher sales would lead to higher royalty payments to the author, the publisher would see some return, money would not need to be wasted on collection data and money and then again on distributing it to authors.

PLR is an ill-conceived, useless idea, thought up by some Culture Buff thinking not of a real world but an imagined one where penniless authors can be rewarded for their endeavour through complicated, bureaucratic systems. Frankly I hate it and cannot see how anyone sees it as useful. I have no doubt that many people think it an essential component of copyright and author protection but not me. That Ireland has given in to the EU is sad, though also inevitable!

My only hope is that people will begin to understand that less copyright protection is what we need, not more. The notion that copyrights are essential to the making of money ought to be put to bed by this, this and this (oh this and this too)
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

ByeBye Charkinblog
Times they are a changing. Bloomsbury announced that Richard Charkin will join them as executive Director on 1st October:

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc has today appointed Richard Charkin an Executive
Director of the Company with effect from 1 October 2007.

Richard joins the team with responsibility for operations worldwide and with
particular focus on spearheading growth through acquisitions, new publishing
areas and international expansion.

MacMillan also commented and as you might expect, Richard had some words for his own blog:

What it means is that I won’t have to think of something to write about every morning on this blog. Just for the record we’ve had 1,137,267 visitors and generated $338.37 in advertising income. More importantly I’ve made new friends, learned tons and had fun. Thanks to all of you and pip pip from charkinblog.

As if to seal the deal, comments are closed on the post.

Seems like a good move to me
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

AuthorAssistant
This just may be the smartest move by a mainstream publisher in some time. The Bookseller has an article on the new site here. The bones of the idea is helpfully given by HC’s corporate press release:

enables authors to create and post information, images and links quickly and easily. This new author network is a central destination where fans can find exclusive, comprehensive, and authoritative information on their favorite authors.

I am not too interested in how much use this content is on HarperCollins’ sites, although I am fairly sure they will be, what interests me is that by creating a platform for all authors (and I hope they roll this out across everyone of them [currently its got 40 from the Avon imprint]) Harper has moved their game up several dozen notches. When it is in place an functioning perhaps they should consider making it contractual for authors to blog on the platform and allow search engines to index and rank them.

That way when a reader searches an authors name the traffic can be driven not to some strange site controlled by others but directly to the publishers author pages with live blogging material, helpful insights and comments from the author. Currently they don’t seem to offer comments which is a shame and should be changed. They do have this (See below):

option on author pages (Victoria Alexander in this case). Two e-mail sign ups for readers. One that sends out a general e-mail from the Avon group and another that sends out alerts for that author. Clever stuff.

Author Assistant is cleverly packaged as an author tool (which in some ways it is) and hides the real advantage which is to build the marketing base for HarperCollins. I for one can see no problem with that, in fact I think its rather smart.

Listening to Feist but wishing I was at the gig!
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

Not so long ago David McWilliams gave the Irish book industry a real kicking an walked away with huge sales and great hype with: The Pope’s Children (Published by Gill & MacMillan)

Now he is kicking the whole economy (and it needs it) with The Generation Game> Some frankly terrifying lines from todays second episode in the three part TV series that accompanies it:

- All the world’s botox is made in Westport
- The MAC Store in Dublin Airport is the 6th biggest MAC store (by revenue) in the World
- We are now the biggest foreign property investors in the UK
- Last year we invested 60 tomes more overseas properties than we did in high tech start ups

I think this book will go well too!

It is a good series.
Eoin

Eoin purcell

And Google should be worried
Had time allowed this week, i was hoping to do a quick comparison of online book services. As it happens I am glad I didn’t have that time because Adam Hodgkin over at Exact Editions has announced something I have know about but not been able to talk about for a little bit, Exact Editions for Book Publishers:

We have for some weeks been testing how Exact Editions works as a promotional service to book publishers and the first customisation is now in the open for Berkshire Publishing at http://www.exacteditions.com/berkshirepublishing.

The service looks great and I think the control it offers publishers is an enormous plus in its favour. You should go spend a little time checking it out. There is more from Berkshire too:

This platform provides fast searching of text, maps, captions, and index, as well as extensive linking within the text. We’re providing access to the complete volumes for this limited introductory period.

Overall I am impressed
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

I don’t normally complain
But this really got me thinking today:

I opened an account at rBooks just to see what it was like. I have mentioned the service before. I inidcated that I was a huge Terry Pratchett fan and when my home-page opened I was offered a massive discount on Making Money his latest book.

However there was a snag. The release date was listed as Monday 24th September so I was pre-ordering not ordering, the discount was only 20% (£15.19) and judging from the site I would have had to pay a delivery fee anyway. I would have been very disappointed had I not already bought the book in WH Smiths in Stansted airport for only £13.99 on Thursday evening on my way back to Cork!

Why hobble yourself?
Now far be it from me to tell rBooks and Random House how to sell (they do fairly well without my help) but the question does pop almost instantly into the brain, why on earth would you hobble yourself like this? If retailers are selling the book and for considerably less (in truth I nearly bought it landside, full price but in a rush to get through security left it till airside and thus saved a £5!) why wait for the official launch date to sell the book? is it some internal system thing?

Part of me likes to think that there is a reason I simply do not fathom but I suspect that there is not!

Befuddled
Eoin

PS: Had I been smart enough to wait I could have gotten it from The Book Depository @ £12.23 Delivered but it would have cost £14.47 Delivered on Amazon.co.uk.

Eoin Purcell

Big news
From The Bookseller:

Borders UK and Ireland has been sold to Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson’s Risk Capital Partners for a £10m up front cash payment plus an additional deferred £10m cash consideration. Borders Group will retain an equity interest of around 17% in the business

In time for the Christmas rush!
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

Robert Jordan RIP

This is remarkably clever
LibraryThing have responded to Google’s My Library effort with this:

Google Book Search Search is a bookmarklet that searches Google Book Search for the titles in your LibraryThing library. It works not unlike the famous SETI@Home project. You set it up and searches Google Book Search slowly in the background.* You can watch, do something in another window or go out for coffee.

When it’s done you can link to and search all the books in your library that Google has scanned. You’ll find a “search this book” link on work pages, and a Google Book Search field to add to the list view in your catalog.

What it does is simply co-opt Google’s ability to display text with very little effort. It also sheds some light on what Google Book Search actually has on file already. Although many of my books are non -preview ones, a few are full access and more snippet access.

In doing this it makes the two sites partners in data sharing and books on the web. It adds value to LibraryThing and to the work Google is doing. It is a great step towards breaking down the silos of information that seem tpo be building up around books on the web.

Really pleased by the LibraryThing news, saddened by the Jordan news!
Eoin

I’m heading to Galway today to talk with the student of this course/ I’m looking forward to it, but I’m alway strangely nervous!

Then next week it is off to the UK for this course. Busy few days really.

Hoping I get some rest this weekend
Eoin

Eoin Purcell

*

Thurles library is amazing
It sits just over the bridge and has the most incredible look, feel and atmosphere. A fountain throws shoots of water into the air midstream, there is a riverside walkway and the concrete and steel build looks so european and yet seems to belong in a town that has changed little in style since the GAA was founded in its famous Hayes hotel way back in 1884. You can read more about it here.

Buildings like this make me begin to think that Ireland really has come a long way since the 1980s. But the reason I am blogging about it has less to do with the fantastic building and much more to do with Clé’s Author Editor Library Tour.

I was least accomplished part of a trio of Mercier representatives there last night for one of two Thurles based events. Joe Ambrose has the misfortune to arrive on time (a slight mix up in times between Clé and ourselves) and the pleasure of speaking for 40 minutes solo before myself and Gabriel Fitzmaurice made an appearance.

Joe is the author of two books for Mercier, Dan Breen and the IRA and Seán Treacy and the Tan War (which has just been released and for some reason that has not fed through to our website!). Both are great stories as well as being passionately written and brilliantly researched. Dan Breen was one of our top selling books last year and I think Seán Treacy looks set to match it.

Gabriel is a poet of note and hails from the village of Moyvane near Listowel, the home town of the late and great John B. Keane and Writers Week (a point he made explicitly clear last night was that he was from the Listowel area but not from Listowel!!).

His most recent work for Mercier was Really Rotten Rhymes a book of poetry for children and one that I think will become a classic. it would be unfair not to mention that his poetry and writing goes far beyond children and he has been publish by over 10 publishers in his time.

It was a great evening and while before the event I was skeptical as to the value of such an evening, I thought that I would definitely do another one if a new season of events is planned for next year.

Special thanks are due to Anne-Marie Brophy and everyone at Thurles Library who put up with one wayward editor and made everyone feel exceptionally welcome there.

Still hearing the poems in my head today
Eoin

* Forgive the twee music please, its good music just not well matched I think, to the video.