A Surprising Spurt in Self Publishing
April 19, 2010
Short honk: I read “Self-Published Titles Topped 764,000 in 2009 as Traditional Output Dipped” and was surprised by this factoid:
A staggering 764,448 titles were produced in 2009 by self-publishers and micro-niche publishers, according to statistics released this morning by R.R. Bowker. The number of “nontraditional” titles dwarfed that of traditional books whose output slipped to 288,355 last year from 289,729 in 2008. Taken together, total book output rose 87% last year, to over 1 million books.
Quite a treasure trove of uncurated content. If I were younger, there might be some useful information tucked in these publications.
Stephen E Arnold, April 19, 2010
A freebie.
eBook Sales to Grow
April 15, 2010
In a report from Goldman Sachs, analysts predicted growth in book sales. “U.S. Book Sales to Increase on E-Books, Goldman Says” included this statement: “Apple’s share of the e-book market will surge to 33 percent in 2015 from 10 percent this year.” Amazon, it seems, will see its share of e-book sales decline to 28 percent from 50 percent. Will e-books remain books, or will e-books morph into interactive media? Will authors of books be able to create products that will appeal to users of new devices like the Apple iPad? If publishers have to invest in software development, will increased costs of production put further pressure on author royalties?
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2010
Unsponsored post.
Tablets and a Puzzle for Publishers
April 13, 2010
Here’s the article I thoroughly enjoyed: “The Dark Side of Steve Jobs.” If you are interested in online information and tablets like the iPad, it is a must read. I even tucked a copy in my “quotes” file. The main point is that Apple’s Steve Jobs is exerting control over publishers, programmers, and for good measure Adobe. The write up makes a number of interesting observations and weaves a compelling story of how some publishers responded to Steve Jobs’s sales pitch.
Now the iPad may not look as the life boat some publishing companies wanted to float by their executive dining rooms and deliver boat loads of cash. Developing for the iPad will have some costs and require that publishers follow Apple’s rules.
The options available to publishers range from Google, which is not a particularly big hit on the partner league table for some, Amazon which is embroiled in a pricing tug of war, and the raft of other eBook reader manufacturers. Nook, anyone? JooJoo. WePad?
I think that some publishers will have the expertise to become a software development company that can code in Apple’s mandated programming language. Other publishers will try and be swamped by costs and the brutal life of bug fixes, updates, and enhancements. For publishers with deep pockets, no problem. For other publishers, problems.
Who will join the merry band of Googlers? Who will jump on the Amazon Kindle? Who will embrace the other eBook hardware devices? Which publishers will try to diversify and run conferences, become hardware manufacturers, or buy Web 2.0 properties in the hopes of spinning money?
I have no answers. Data will become available with each quarterly report going forward.
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2010
Unsponsored post.
Magazines May Not be Rescued by the iPad
April 13, 2010
If you are a magazine, don’t expect the iPad to be your knight in shining armor.
While there is a lot of hubbub in the print industry about the many possibilities of the iPad to rejuvenate dying magazine sales, things don’t look so rosy upon closer inspection. TBI Research recently posted an interesting story, “Here is Why the iPad Won’t Save the Magazine Industry” listing the many ways this new technology will let down the magazine business.
For starters, magazines are planning on charging higher prices for digital issues than print, in some cases $15 a month. But an even bigger hurdle for this industry is the massive amount of free, searchable information available. For any topic imaginable, iPad users will be able to seek out low cost and free resources and directly skip costly magazine subscriptions. Doesn’t sound much like a savior to us.
Patrick Roland, April 13, 2010
A freebie.
If Books Become Apps, What about Regular Reading?
April 13, 2010
My view is that the era of text is drawing to a close. Words won’t go away, but the future is video and interactivity. Even InDesign CS5 allows moving stuff to be inserted into text. Text is becoming a sidebar. The real action is jiggly wiggly content. You can get a glimpse of the future in “The Amazing Media Habits Of 8-18 Year Olds.” The article is based on a study funded by the Kaiser Family Foundation and you can view the PowerPoint highlights on the Business Insider Web site. For me, the most interesting item in the Kaiser study is summarized in the screenshot below:
If books become multimedia, then book consumption may go up. The reason is that books will be more like games or TV, two popular pastimes for the sub 18 year old set. The problem facing any traditional publisher is shown in the slide below:
Looks like the sub 18 crowd is moving beyond text. Apple may be better positioned that either Amazon or Google in this sector. Which horse will win the rich media derby? A favorite or a contender off the radar at the moment?
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2010
Google to Newspaper Industry, Experiment
April 13, 2010
I found the article “Google CEO: ‘Journalism Will Triumph’” darned interesting. I am sitting in the Rome airport and reflecting on the suggestion to newspapers to experiment. I found the following passage particularly fascinating:
Speaking to the American Society of News Editors’ annual convention at the J.W. Marriott in downtown Washington, Schmidt showered praise on the industry, calling journalism an “art.” Schmidt said he reads three newspapers, and called their work indispensible. And he blasted blogs, saying that any questions about the value of newspaper editors can be answered: “Look at the blog world.” “High quality journalism will triumph,” he said.
According to the article, the Google speaker was not “adversarial”.
Three thoughts:
- Experiments are underway with the iPad and all manner of innovations to generate revenue. In fact, the experiments have been underway for decades. How much time and money remain?
- Google offers a solution. I call this “surf on Google.” Problem is that newspapers may not be adept surfers.
- Google is building bridges, but is it too late? The focus seems to be shifting away from text, where Google dominates, to the Facebook approach to content.
Read the article. Decide for yourself.
Stephen E Arnold, March 12, 2010
No one paid me to write this.
Does a Google Manager Have AOL News at Sea?
April 12, 2010
If AOL is going to be the 21st century media giant it wants to be, someone better tell the management.
The media behemoth has been suffering an identity crisis that doesn’t seem to be getting better. A recent Business Insider story, “AOL’s Content Strategy is Still a Mess,” showcases a company with its heart in the right place, but its execution failing at every opportunity. One of its main objectives is to create high quality online content by hiring seasoned journalists and editors. The logic being, if everyone has a voice in the new web, those with proper writing and editorial skills will speak loudest. This sounds great, but swallows great gobs of time and money. Meanwhile, the company is also bum rushing search engines with a glut of SEO-friendly content from practically anyone off the street. The result is a two headed monster going nowhere fast.
Patrick Roland, April 12, 2010
No one paid us to write about AOL.
MarkLogic and the American Institute of Physics
April 9, 2010
MarkLogic, fresh from nailing the University of Virginia account, reported that “American Institute of Physics Utilizes Mark Logic to Launch Publishing Platform.” MarkLogic Server is a software system that can give information-centric organizations a versatile tool for accessing, processing, and repurposing content. According to the write up:
the American Institute of Physics (AIP), a non-profit scholarly publisher, used MarkLogic Server to build its next-generation platform for hosting online publications, Scitation C3. AIP has moved its 12 archival journals to the MarkLogic-based Scitation C3 platform, which hosts 2,000,000 articles from more than 200 science-related publications.
The article continued:
… Scitation C3 features include full-article HTML rendering, improved visual presentation of inline math, and in-context links to references, figures, and tables. AIP now offers “Smart ToCs” that allow users to further customize listings with abstract previews and the ability to hide non-relevant content. AIP has also added more search options and controls to explore content based on article type, topic, author, keyword, PACS, journal, and publication year. In addition, researchers can find information faster by highlighting a term within an article to produce a list of related content.
For more information about Mark Logic, navigate to www.marklogic.com. I will be one of the participants in the upcoming Mark Logic User Conference. Information about that event is available at http://www.marklogic.com/UserConference2010/.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2010
A freebie publicizing my participation in a user conference.
Murdoch and Google: Temperature Rising
April 8, 2010
I read “Rupert Murdoch defiant: ‘I’ll Stop Google Taking Our News for Nothing’” and realized that Google may find the business temperature rising. The period between 2006 and 2008 was a period of relative calm. Since 2009, Google finds itself in the same situation that was going to plague Gulliver. Folks who seemed “small” to Gulliver found ways to tie down Swift’s big boy.
The write up reported that the news industry has to charge for content. For me the most interesting comment in the article was:
“We are going to stop people like Google or Microsoft or whoever from taking stories for nothing … there is a law of copyright and they recognize it,” Murdoch told a packed audience of students, journalists and other media professionals. He said search engines had tapped into a “river of gold” by aggregating content but that the days of free news had to come to an end. “They take [news content] for nothing. They have got this very clever business model,” he said.
Interesting to see if this is the shot that escalates the tension among the Googley and non Googley by an order of magnitude.
I thought that newspapers sold advertising. The news was an important part of the mix, but ads carried the freight. Google moved into advertising and now the newspapers have to find something to sell. Content seems to be it. In my experience, the value of content in an online environment is devilishly hard to make pay at the levels associated with the traditional newspaper method in a pre digital era. I worked at a pretty good newspaper, and I have to say that the newspaper’s ability to create original content has deteriorated over the years. Now with the costs of innovating in software added to existing costs, the executives like Mr. Murdoch have their work cut out for them.
Google is a target, but I don’t think Google is the problem. Google is at a tipping point itself. Innovation won’t do the job. Complicated factors are now operating, and I think the next surprise may be an emergent one. Tough to predict too.
Fascinating.
Stephen E Arnold, April 8, 2010
A freebie.
iPad: Wall Street Journal Looks for Silver Lining
April 8, 2010
I don’t want to make big deal of the news story “Ipad Sales Fall Short of Estimates.” For me, the key point is captured is this statement:
…today [April 6, 2010[ the Wall Street Journal published a statement from Apple which said that more than 300,000 Ipads were sold on day one. This would be considered great, but if you take into account the fact the figure included all the pre-sales and the hype that said a million would be flogged on Day One that number is dismal. According to the WSJ, Wall Street took a deep breath when analysts heard the figures.
Those iPads have to sell to generate the money from the publishers’ for fee content. Without lots of iPads, we won’t know if iPad users become big buyers of for fee content. The Wall Street Journal and some other “real” journalistic operations have great expectations for the iPad and its hoped for ability to convert rich media consuming folks into magazine, book, and newspaper readers.
Stephen E Arnold, April 7, 2010
A freebie.
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