Cornered in a Nook in Book and Toy Store
July 9, 2013
Yesterday evening I stopped at the local Barnes & Noble store. I wanted to ask a couple of the workers about the resignation of the Barnes & Noble CEO. I learned about this development in the story “Barnes & Noble CEO Resigns.” The main point of the story is that Barnes & Noble has not been able to make headway in a tough market. The article focused more specifically on the Nook eReader, pointing out:
Barnes & Noble has largely failed to adapt to the growing tablet and e-reader market. And although its Android-based Nook tablets have received decent reviews, they haven’t been selling very well.
When the Nook hit my radar, I wrote “The Nook Hook: Not Knowing What You Do Not Know.” I based my observation on my experience with manager from one business assuming that their expertise applies to another business. Technology often throws curve balls at folks who see nothing special about creating a high-tech gizmo or a software program.
Now back to my on site data collection. I asked the Nook sales person who was standing in the New York Times best seller section (not at the Nook counter), what do you think about the management shake up? The response, “What management shake up?” I moved to the check out lane to pay for a watch magazine I snagged. I asked, “What do you think of the management shake up?” The person responded, “What? Hey, are you a member of the discount club?” I replied, “Nope, I don’t need a toy store discount.” The young clerk looked confused. “Toy store?” he queried. I paid and left.
I concluded from this quite shallow research:
- News of the shake up did not reach the workers at my Barnes & Noble store
- I did not purchase a Barnes & Noble discount card because my local stores are more like card and knick knack shops than book stores I recall from my youth
- I was the only customer buying reading matter. There were several people in the snack shop looking at books and magazines.
Here in Louisville, Kentucky, the Nook has not sparked much interest in me. I fear for the future of my local Barnes & Noble. I am not sure an expanded book light section and a dwindling stock of actual books will kindle sales. Oops. Kindle is not a pun. No, really.
After the failure of the publisher of my New Landscape of Search, I have decided to make my monographs available directly from Xenky.com under the Beyond Search “brand.” Too bad that book stores and publishers assume that the old content world is easy to manage. MBAs are so darned confident. Perhaps a listen to the Harvard Business Review podcast will bolster the management acumen.
Stephen E Arnold, July 9, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky
Judge The Work By Its Quality
July 8, 2013
Let us stroll down the laurelled lanes of academia for a moment and gaze at the mountains of published articles in academic journals. If you have ever stepped into a university library or searched through an academic database, you will realize that most of these articles probably do not get read. The purpose of being published is being read, correct? The technical answer is yes, but really the answer is no. William M. Briggs takes a jab at academic publishing in his blog post, “Scientists Discover Way To Increase Publication.” Being published is a means as survival for many academics, but there is an overwhelming (and alarming) status quo: only good news hits the ink.
This methodology causes false facts to be considered truth. Briggs brings up the “Trust In Science Would Be Improved By Study Pre-Registration” signed by more than eighty signatories and for the scientific community to require pre-registration for publishing before results are in. The idea is that journals would publish whatever the results and reduce the amount of “making a piece publishable” thought processes.
Briggs does not think that is the solution:
“There will be a minor flood of papers pre-registering sketchy theories, and these will be all that is remembered. Some authors will publish their negative results, but many will forget them and move on to more fertile grounds. The bulk of these maybe-so works will be taken as positive evidence even if positive effects are never found or if negative effects are published.”
More papers will be published, but the rate of them being read is even lower because there will be too many. Briggs wants people to judge a paper by its quality and not the quantity. How often have we heard this before? An idealist hope, but not impossible—almost though. What questions can we draw about integrity? Just remember to always question and do research on your own.
Whitney Grace, July 08, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Churnalism Invades The US And UK Press
July 5, 2013
For those who cannot tell by the nifty combination of churn and journalism, churnalism refers to reporters “churning” out pieces that regurgitate press releases and other prior existing content into a news story. The problem with churnalism is that it only pulls from one resource, which is contrary to good journalism that requires research and fact checking. MakeUseOf.com focuses on churnalism in the US and across the pond in the United Kingdom in the article, “Churnalism: Find Out When Reporters Re-Print Press Releases.”
There are two ways to figure out if an article has been “churnaled” or not. There are two search engines that churn articles (one for each country) and matches results against press releases. The databases only check a few databases by default, but more can be added based on the user’s preference. Also there are web browser extensions to check articles as you surf the web.
Keep in mind, however, that even though too much churnalism is bad that does not mean all articles are unoriginal:
“Churnalism warning you about an article doesn’t mean it’s “bad” – much of the time the only thing you’ll see in an article is a quote from the release. This probably means the reporter didn’t talk to the people in question, but it’s up to you to determine whether this matters.”
Remember to use the one feature developers have not been able to program yet: human judgment. Only an inquiring mind can decipher schlock from gems.
Whitney Grace, July 05, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
PRatronizer Alert: Have Info for ArnoldIT? Proceed with Caution
July 4, 2013
I am not a journalist. My academic training is in medieval poetry in Latin. I was lucky to get out of high school, college, and a couple of graduate programs. Few people embraced my interest in indexing medieval Latin manuscripts. Among those who made the most fun of my interests were those in journalism school, electrical engineers, and people studying to be middle school teachers.
In graduate school, the mathematics majors found my work interesting and offered grudging respect because one of my relatives was Vladimir Ivanovich Arnold, a co-worker with that so-so math guy, the long distance hiker Andrey Kolmogorov.
I have, therefore, some deep seated skepticism about “real” journalists, folks who carry around soldering irons, and the aforementioned middle school teachers.
Last week I received a semi-snarky email about one of my articles. The person writing me shall remain nameless. I have assembled some thoughts designed to address his question, “Why did you not mention [company A] and [company B] in your article about desktop search. I think this was a for fee column which appeared in KMWorld, but I can’t be sure. My team and I produce a number of “articles” every day, and I am not a librarian, another group granted an exemption from my anti journalist, anti EE, and anti middle school stance.
Let me highlight the points which are important to me. I understand that you, gentle reader, probably do not have much interest. But this is my blog and I am not a journalist.
First, each of my for fee columns which run in four different publications focus on something “sort of” connected to search, online, analytics, knowledge management (whatever that means), and the even more indefinable content processing. I write about topics which my team suggests might be interesting to people younger and smarter than I. In short, PR people stay away. I pay professionals to identify topics for me. I don’t need help from you. I don’t need the PR attitude which I call “PRantronizing.” Is this clear enough? Do not spam me with crazy “news” releases. Do not call me and pretend we are pals. When a call came in yesterday, I was in a meeting with a law librarian. I put the call on the speaker phone and told the caller to know whom she buzzes before she pretends we are pals. The PRatronizer was annoyed. The law librarian said, “None of us on your team are that friendly to you. Heck, I don’t think you are my friend after four years of daily work.” My reaction, “That’s why you are sitting here with me and the PRatronizer is dealing with a firm, ‘Get lost.’”
E Know Joins Thomson Reuters Elite Alliance Program
July 2, 2013
I suppose this seems logical in today’s world—a top publisher has embraced law firm management. Ah, diversification! Noodls reports, “Thomson Reuters Elite Announces Alliance Partnership with E-know.net Limited.” Reuter’s Elite division was formed to serve legal- and professional-services firms. About its Alliance Program, the press release tells us:
“The Thomson Reuters Elite Global Strategic Alliance Program provides a one-stop global marketplace that fosters cooperation, streamlines the buy-sell cycle and helps all involved achieve a competitive edge. Elite partners are experienced technology, services and consulting organizations ready to innovate, collaborate and help our clients solve their most pressing business challenges.”
New program member e-know, founded in 1998, now hosts more than 80 applications for its legal clients in its Telford, UK-based data centers. The write-up quotes e-know’s director, Nigel Redwood:
“e-know.net has an unrivalled track record in the UK legal industry, meeting the needs of our clients for more than 12 years. By outsourcing IT to e-know.net, Thomson Reuters Elite clients can focus entirely on managing their businesses. Our secure and flexible IT management is proven to improve organizational performance and ensure business continuity.”
May the new partnership be beneficial to both parties.
Cynthia Murrell, July 02, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Publishing Consolidation in the Good Old Summertime
July 1, 2013
The world of ink-on-paper publishing no longer makes my heart race. When I was younger and the traditional publishing sector more robust, I did like the thrill of doing the dead-tree thing. I recall the aroma of just-printed annual reports, for example. I look back fondly on days spent at Case-Hoyt in Rochester, New York, where I watched the world’s largest pocket calendar being printed for a very, very wealthy client located in distant climes.
I read on the ABC news site a short item which seems to have originated from the Associated Press. You can dip into the original on the ABC Web site for a short time. The write up asserts that the Hachette Book Group is going to acquire Hyperion. What’s interesting is that Disney, the company which owns some darned interesting information companies, is willing to let content for old people go. Young person content remains in the seven dwarfs’ cabin along with Snow White I believe.
I heard that in the near future a couple of other giant publishing outfits are going to get hitched. Pearson, Bertelsmann, and Random House will doing one of those business gene splicing things. The resulting intellectual protein structure with binding hydrogen atoms will, I assume, lead to soaring revenues, larger profits, and better books and related knowledge outputs.
Smaller publishers may benefit from massive consolidation. I recently purchased a textbook on bioengineering from a company in Singapore which was unfamiliar to me. I was, however, familiar with the price — hundreds of dollars. I assume that high-cost, narrowly-focused print books will continue to sell in the low hundreds.
Will a roll up of niche smaller publishers follow the consolidation of North American and Western European publishing companies? Will new start up print publishing companies gain greater traction in niche markets?
Margins in publishing have been under pressure for years. The cost of paper is an issue. The potential for environmental backlash exists. Traditional books are selling for writing superstars. For less sparkly wordsmiths, sales are less robust.
With Amazon and Apple in the game, it is a fascinating times for traditional publishers. But my heart is beating normally. My hunch is that publishers’ senior management experience a bit of heart flutter when quarterly financials are prepared every 12 weeks.
It is summertime. Beach books sales should be warming in the sun.
Stephen E Arnold, July 1, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky
Interests Begat Quantity and Quality of Information
June 17, 2013
Making the transition from print to web, there is no question that journalism has evolved much over the last several years. Fast Company Labs has looked into another major questions in journalism: do people want short or long articles? The article, ”This is What Happens When Publishers Invest in Long Stories,” sheds some light on longer pieces akin to “slow live blogging.”
These “slow live blogging” articles take a mindful approach that information does note always develop in real time and stories can be built upon over time. These super-long articles start out being posted initially as stub stories.
The article tells us more about the processing for developing a stub story into something more grandiose:
“But when more news breaks, you go back to the article, insert an update at the top, and change the headline and subheadline (known in our business as the “hed” and “dek”) to reflect the update. Our system updates the story “slug” when the headline changes–check the URL of this story, and you’ll see words from the headline in the URL: /this-is-what-happens-when-publishers-invest-in-long-stories. But the number preceding the slug–on this article, it’s 3009577–is a unique node ID which never changes. So essentially, every time we update an article, we get a fresh URL with a fresh headline, but pointing back to the same (newly updated) article. So, it’s like having many URLs and many headlines which lead back to the same big, multi-faceted article. We called these “Tracking” stories.”
The article delves into a longer sub-section on the motivation behind these long stories. As one might guess, quality and depth of information are at the forefront and Fast Company has seen a spike in average visit duration numbers. Short content or length — where there is an interest, there will be an information source.
Megan Feil, June 17, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
OMICS Publishing Group Threatens Billion Dollar Suit Over Slanderous Blog Post
June 14, 2013
The article on the Chronicle of Higher Education titled Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for One Billion tells the story of Jeffrey Beall, who runs the blog Scholarly Open Access. The blog has a list of predatory or questionable publishers and journals. One of these publishers, OMICS Publishing Group from India, wants to sue Beall, and put him in jail.
“The OMICS Group’s practices have received particular attention from Mr. Beall and some publications, including The Chronicle. In 2012, The Chronicle found that the group was listing 200 journals, but only about 60 percent had actually published anything… On his blog, Mr. Beall accuses OMICS of spamming scholars with invitations to publish, quickly accepting their papers, then charging them a nearly $3,000 publishing fee after a paper has been accepted.”
The letter sent to Beall accused him of racial discrimination as well as unprofessionalism. Whether the suit is a publicity stunt or sparked by legitimate outrage is unclear, but in India it is against the law to publish “menacing” information online under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act. Is pay to play content really such a contentious concept? The academics desperate to be published in legitimate journals who follow Beall’s blog would certainly say yes.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 14, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Thomson Reuters Embraces the Economist Approach
May 30, 2013
One of my two or three readers sent me a link to “Thomson Reuters Hires Economist Group Chief to Head news Agency Arm.” One of the characteristics of large, traditional publishing companies is that when one executive is needed, the go-to source for a qualified person is another traditional publishing company. Thomson Reuters has returned somewhat lackluster revenue growth in the last few years. Will the Economist approach change the course of the aircraft carrier?
According to the write up:
Rashbass, a former managing director of Economist.com who became chief executive in 2008, said that Reuters was well positioned to drive commercial growth.
We agree. Now the task is to deliver revenues, not magazines. Lord Thomson of Fleet is probably watching and hoping for greater success for his outfit.
Stephen E Arnold, May 30, 2013
Sponsored by Augmentext
Useful Source of Open Books
May 10, 2013
The good folks at O’Reilly Media offer a roster of Open Books for your inner programmer. O’Reilly has not only navigated the open license landscape to offer these publications, but also got them digitized into e-books so they can be available to anyone with an Internet connection. Though the publisher has offered books under various open copyrights for years, it now has a concerted focus in this area.
The write-up makes sure to give credit where credit is due:
“We’re happy to have partnered with two innovative nonprofits, Creative Commons and the Internet Archive, to solve the licensing and digitizing challenges involved in bringing Open Books to readers.
“While the books listed here use various open licenses, since 2003 we’ve focused on using the licenses created by Creative Commons. O’Reilly has adopted the Creative Commons Founders’ Copyright, which we’re applying to hundreds of out-of-print and current titles, pending author approval.
“Through its Open Library project, the Internet Archive is scanning and hosting PDF versions of our open books. We posted the first book, the original edition of The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog in October of 2005, as part of the launch of the Open Content Alliance (we and the Internet Archive are among the founding members of the alliance).”
O’Reilly expresses gratitude to Creative Commons and the Internet Archive, and suggests users consider donating to these initiatives. (We concur.) Check out the generous list—you might just pick up some crucial information for free.
Cynthia Murrell, May 10, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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