Michael Hyatt buys an iphone (I want me one of those, I’d even buy out my phone contract for it too!)
Here

Harper Collins gets all cute with the iphone and their browse inside widget (Why always a marketing tool??)
Here

Snowcasing (Why are those Snowbooks people so very smart? Who knows but go them!)
Here & Here

The Postal Service mad and Loving the Feist too.
Eoin

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

Why you ask?
A Little while ago I posted a fleeting thought on Random House and its imprint strategy. It kicked up a very small storm in the teacup that is my blog when one commentator called out one of the examples I used Michael Hyatt (CEO @ Thomas Nelson) among other things:

First, I will agree with you that consumers don’t care who publishes a book and that bookstores don’t merchandise books by publisher but by category. But the world of publishing is considerably deeper than just this. Agents and authors DO care about Imprints and what they bring to the table. They do matter.

The funny thing is, Jonathan had a valid point. But only as far as it goes.

Publishers have interests too!
It seems recently that publishing has been taking a beating. Supermarkets are getting better at selling books and forcing prices down and threatening the high street chains. Competition for quality authors is forcing advances and royalties higher with increasing numbers of high profile failures for celebrity driven titles. All the while publishers are told that they are saddled with an antiquated print product that is dying and that in ten years people will simply stop reading. But the alternative hasn’t made a good running just yet despite some positive press.

In the midst of all that it is a wonder anybody gets into the business at all. Never-mind people with fresh ideas and successful ones too. But they do. And they do it because they have reason to believe that they can make a living from it. What people forget sometimes is that although publishers like it keep authors happy and while seeing joy in the faces of readers is all very well, none of it matters a damn if it doesn’t put bread on the table.

Authors can like imprints as much as they want, heck they can see them as prestige or non prestige but the reality is that they create a confusing clutter especially when they proliferate. Marketing budgets get wasted and diffused, too many books get published and companies make less money because of them.

That to me is the reason that merits their elimination. Publishers have a right to make money, as much as they can. Author will do better in the long run too as will readers, both benefiting from better marketing, better selection, clearer thinking and hopefully richer publishers with greater luxury in the choice of books and authors.

Certainly that is the goal we should have in mind when we are thinking about imprints, the interest of publishers, neither the imagined preferences of authors and agents, nor even the desires of the reader (except when these are relevant to our interests) but the cold hard logic of getting out of the most the greatest attainable share of the profit.

If that sounds mercenary, that’s because it is.

Feeling better now after my rant
Eoin

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

Intrigued
Eoin

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

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

Project Red Stripe
Maybe its the inter-company rivallry (what with a million penguins at penguin) in the Pearson stable (though they only own 50%), maybe its just a heady year or two in media but THIS is definitely a cool idea:

We’re a small team set up by The Economist Group, the parent company of the eponymous newspaper. Our mission is to develop truly innovative services online. We already have some ideas, of course. But as champions of free markets, we abhor the concept of a closed system. This is why we would like you to submit your idea (or ideas). Just think big – and we’ll do the rest.

They are accepting ideas here and have suggestions and hints here oh and Jeff Jarvis mentions them here.

Loving the name and the cool-ness of it all
Eoin

[via Ryan Sholin's blog (well worth reading by the way)]

Wow
Red Herring reports on a huge investment by Oak Investment Partners and Tudor Investment Corporation in an e-paper venture:

In one of the largest venture capital rounds in European history, Plastic Logic announced Wednesday that it had raised $100 million to build a factory in Germany to make display modules for electronic reader products.

Now that is a fat chunk of cash and Ryan has some further points on the implications of e-paper. I have mentioned them here too. It looks like, over the past few days, as if people are moving to stack their cards in the right pile for digital and that all of a sudden the corporate world is seriously considering the changes the digital revolution is forcing on the world of publishing and actually acting to get ahead of the curve.

Interesting times indeed
Eoin

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

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