Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog

Brookstone's Content Opportunity

While dining with the family and waiting for a table at The Cheesecake Factory Saturday night I decided to kill some time in Brookstone's.  They had a device on display that really caught my eye.  It's called the SportCast Wireless Baseball Scoreboard.  It's a simple LCD display that provides up-to-the minute box score and standings information, all received through a satellite feed. 

I'm a baseball junkie but even I feel the $99 price tag for this was way too high.  I look at something like this and think of what it could become though...

The device's dimensions are ideal for placement on a desk or shelf.  Sitting next to your computer you'd have a bit of additional content surface area that could be used for a variety of things.  It's also a great size to take with you.  I could see them adding a flap that's set up to serve as both the stand and a protective cover.

Why make it more portable?  Because I think there's a great opportunity to provide more content.  Think of this as a stripped-down Kindle.  Thanks to the satellite feed it could receive all sort of additional content.  Would I want to read a book on this thing?  No, but it would offer a great way to take newspapers, magazines and other short form content on the road, always up-to-date.  If there's not enough memory already built in to house the content, just add an SD slot for customers to increase it on their own.

Then there's the advertising component.  It would be pretty simple to create an additional revenue stream by including banner ads, for example.  They could offer two subscription models: One that's less expensive with ads and an ad-free one that's a bit pricier.

(Speaking of advertising, when we finally got seated at The Cheesecake Factory I noticed that every other page of the menu is an ad for another store in the mall.  Pretty smart, especially when you think about the captive audience reading the menu and the fact that they're already at the mall.)

Suddenly that $99 price tag wouldn't seem so expensive, especially if this device could be my gateway to portable content that's priced at the same level as what Amazon charges for the same content on the Kindle.  I wouldn't need the sexier eInk technology for this...a simple LCD would do the trick.

eBookwise 1150: Is There Room for a Third Device?

You've heard of Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader, but have you heard of eBookwise and their 1150?  I didn't think so, but don't worry.  Most people haven't, and if this Google Trends chart is any indication, very few people are even searching for it (eBookwise doesn't even register on Google Trends when compared to the Kindle and Sony's Reader).  Alexa comparisons show the same results; IOW, Amazon and Sony get all the buzz, leaving almost none for other players.

While many are criticizing the high price of the Amazon and Sony devices, eBookwise is going after the low-price sector.  eBookwise offers several different configurations and the cheapest one comes with 8 MB of internal memory and costs $109.95.  It uses traditional LCD technology (not the eInk you get with Amazon/Sony) and includes a backlight.  Unfortunately, backlit LCD screens make my eyes go crazy after working on my computer all day, so it's not a good option for me.

The bigger question is whether the ebook device market can support more than two players, particularly when the leaders have the marketing muscle of Amazon and Sony.  I would think the high price of the Kindle and Sony's Reader would leave room for a large audience on the low-end, but the website traffic trends seem to indicate a lack of interest.  It will be fun to keep an eye on all this as the e-book device market continues its evolution.

What Does the Technology Add?

As a publisher focusing on the professional IT sector, I ask myself this question a lot: What does the technology add?  Is this new tool or release measurably different from the others?  Will it enable users to create products faster, less expensively, with more useful features...or all of the above?

I found myself asking the same question when I recently read about this project, The 21 Steps, by Charles Cumming, which is part of Penguin's We Tell Stories initiative.  In The 21 Steps, Cumming uses Google's satellite imagery to help tell the story.  Different?  Yes.  Functional use of the technology to enhance the reading experience?  I'm not so sure.

To be fair, I only got through the first three chapters before I lost interest.  Perhaps it's because I'm not into fiction, but I found the text and imagery integration lacking as well.  I didn't see the benefit to having the animated movements on the satellite images.  I also got pretty tired of clicking again and again, just to read the next sentence or two.  In short, if technology is added to the formula for something like this, I feel it should improve the overall experience; in this case, it seemed to weigh it down.

I'm also not the sort of person who thinks in terms of satellite views.  I'm more of a street level guy and I suspect I'm not alone.  After all, we see and experience things from a street-view view, not an overhead one, so it forces you to constantly adjust your perspective as you're reading through the screens.

Before anyone jumps down my throat on this, please realize that I absolutely love the fact that Penguin is experimenting with technology on this project.  If I published into the fiction area I'd be jealous that I didn't think of this approach.  The lessons that can be learned from the pioneers like Penguin will help benefit everyone in the long run.

For example, as I ran through those chapters of The 21 Steps, I started to think about other applications for a narrative-map mashup.  Think about travel guides for a moment.  A walking tour of a city with travel guide content spliced into satellite map displays would be cool.  Switching to street-level view instead of satellite probably makes it better.  Offering the capability to flip between both is better yet.

I'd also like to see more content goodies sprinkled throughout, and perhaps this is where community content could come into play.  Maybe the tour features great pictures from previous visitors or recommendations they have for future visitors.  Let them be ranked by the community itself so that only the top show up as push-pins on the screen.

The device has to be considered here as well.  If I'm doing the tourist thing it's unlikely that I'm carrying around something larger than a cell phone or Blackberry.  You can't design this for a computer when it's being used on a display that's much smaller.  This is where the Kindle might evolve into something highly useful.  Imagine a next-generation Kindle with a color display.  The Kindle's Whispernet technology would enable cellphone-like connectivity with a larger, but still portable display.

So again, I applaud Penguin's efforts here and although I'm not convinced this is anything more than technology for technology's sake, there's much to be learned from the experiment itself.

New Publishing Solutions Interview with Jim Nye

Jim Nye was one of the top executives running what at the time was called ITT Publishing, my first employer out of college...many, many years ago.  Jim was an insightful leader and someone I always looked up to.  We went our separate ways after ITT Publishing but our paths recently crossed again.  Jim is a partner in a venture called NEW Publishing Solutions and I thought it would be fun to interview him on the blog:

JW: Ingram has certainly built a strong reputation as an important wholesaler in our industry.  You've done a lot of work with their Digital Group -- what are some of the more interesting things Ingram is doing to further diversify their operation on the digital side?

JN: Ingram, through Ingram Digital Group (IDG), aims to be the number one distributor of digital content.  Working with them to build the beginnings of all of what IDG has become was very exciting. The key focus of all of this is to help Publishers sell more content. IDG is organized into four main business units - publisher, retail, institutional and educational solutions:

Publisher Solutions (CoreSource)
Brings comprehensive digital asset management and distribution capabilities to publishers. Among the features of such a relationship are:

• Viral marketing via a widget
• The flow of content directly into print on demand
• Direct selling via websites powered for the publisher
• Custom publishing is enabled
• Content can be flowed to any customer through any channel
• Files can simply be transformed from one format to another

Retail Solutions
Allows publishers to sell content to consumers through the retail channels and  includes encrypted eBook download in various formats, pdf, .lit, palm etc. Full search and discovery plus a browse inside the book capability are available. They have some 130,000 unique titles available.

Institutional Solutions –  The MyiLibrary
Allows publishers to sell their digital content to academic, Public, Corporate and Government libraries.

Education Solutions
The VitalSource platform is the leading textbook distribution platform and allows publishers to sell their eTextbooks to students, distribute them to faculty (eComps) and offers the capability for search within a title, across titles and within a class or course grouping.

Ingram now has over 500,000 digital files from some 4,000 publishers that are being and are optimised for all the solutions.

JW: You've had a couple of stints as President and CEO of two organizations with an emphasis on computer/web-based training products (Carnegie Learning and ExploreLearning).  How did your traditional publishing background help you in both of these roles?

JN: With both Carnegie and Explore I was working with very bright people who had created ingenious answers to educational challenges without any experience or background in the business of educational content. Having a clear perspective on the relationship between content and intent as well as years of experience in the systems of learning gave me a wonderful chance to bring their great ideas into the mainstream.

I was able to not only help create appropriate systems of management, sales and marketing for them but I also introduced both of the companies to traditional publishers, their people and their business systems.

Interestingly there are a lot of wonderful, effective ideas that are being developed outside the publishing norms all of which can benefit from working with someone with a traditional publishing business experience base.

A number of my small clients fit this profile exactly.

JW: You also held a variety of positions with several educational publishing companies.  Where do you see the college textbook market heading?  Will a device like the Kindle ever live up to everyone's expectations and enable students to carry their entire textbook library with them (without breaking their backs!)?

JN: First, Joe, I do not think that the any answer being sought is going to be provided by a reading device. Kindle, the Sony Reader, and other such attempts have the limitation of primarily being black and white readers with little or no interactivity possible. To my way of thinking the most likely utilized "device" on the market today, that has tremendous potential, is the iPod Touch.  And, the iPod Touch is much more a computer with reading, interactivity, wi-fi, etc. than simply an ebook reading device.

Much of what I see happening to the market is focused around the growing interest in access to content in a fluid and dynamic system, anytime and anywhere and within a wrapper that allows for measurement both normative and formative as the learner approaches desired outcomes.

Who makes the content decision, how it is made and how the selected content is presented and the results measured are undergoing change. Achievement that can be measured and outcomes that can be defined are clearly becoming a part of the educational imperative.

Technology allows for and supports such systems and technology also offsets the limitations of printed and bound pedagogical tools. We can house all of the content required for a college major and much, much more in almost any laptop computer in popular use today (no breaking of the back).

There are some fascinating initiatives underway that are attempting to deal with all of the issues of digital content in education.  One of the most interesting is the California State University Digital Marketplace Initiative.

It is the intention of this program, as one example of the application, to have all of the classroom materials in use on any California State University campus in the future available in digital form. Ohio has a "like" program underway as do a number of schools and universities individually.

Other interesting initiatives are:

• MIT project
• Curricki
• Merlot

and other open source programs that are developed and developing.

Then, another force that I see impacting the educational content market is the entry of non-traditional providers such as Intel, Sun, Cisco, Google and Microsoft who are developing or supporting educational programs central to their corporate mandates.

One only need look at what is going on in the K-12 segment of the educational market to see the impact of new entries, modalities and designs that will bubble up in to Higher Ed.

JW: Finally, quite a few publishing professionals have toyed with the idea of eventually becoming an industry consultant down the road.  You successfully made the transition, so what advice do you have to offer anyone who's currently thinking about making that switch?

JN: Network, network, network.

Know the people who are working in your marketspace, learn what their interests are, how they do their business and establish friendly relationships with them and remember who they are. They will be going places in their companies (or maybe the one you work for) and become an amazing resource.

And do not restrict yourself to meeting people in your specific business. If they are on your campuses or at the meetings you attend you need to know who they are and what they do.

Having this kind of perspective not only will pay off in the future as references, it will enhance your work with your primary targets if you better understand all the work of the people in their world.

Oh, and by the way, if someone is considering becoming a consultant I am always looking for new talent!

Opinionated: A Kindle Exclusive

Thanks partially to the Kindle's Whispernet connection feature, new and innovative ways of distributing all sorts of content are likely to emerge.  For example, this week's announcement by Tribune Media Services (TMS) to create a Kindle-exclusive magazine called Opinionated: Voices and Viewpoints on America and the World.

The print magazine business is currently going through some challenging times.  If it's not higher paper costs, more advertisers going online or a decline in subscribers you also have to face the fact that Walmart is cutting almost 1,000 titles from its shelves.  Why fight those odds when you can launch in the happy world of no inventory management or manufacturing costs?

The only real question is whether enough Kindles can be sold to make this a profitable venture for TMS.  Since it's exclusive to the Kindle, I have to assume Amazon was willing to make this a sweeter deal for TMS than they've done for other magazine publishers, especially in the short term while Amazon works to address the Kindle supply issue.

All You Can Eat iTunes: What Could It Mean for Books?

There's renewed speculation that Apple could be working on an unlimited music subscription model similar to the Rhapsody model.  The deal appears to hinge on Apple sharing part of the hardware sales revenue with the record labels.

As I mentioned in this post late last year, an unlimited content model for books could be a very interesting option for the Kindle.  Amazon probably wouldn't be too keen on sharing their hardware revenue with publishers but if it makes sense in the music world...

As long as Amazon is unable to keep up with Kindle backorders they probably have no incentive to consider a service like this.  But once manufacturing catches up with demand this could be the spark that really ignites the e-book market.  And keep in mind it would just be another option for customers to consider.  Kindle owners would be free to buy one book at a time as they always have, just like Apple would still offer single track sales even if they eventually add an all-you-can-eat option to iTunes.

eBook Reporter Blog

If you're interested in following developments in the ebook market there's a new blog you should check out.  It's called eBook Reporter and it's written by Jim LaRoche.  You might remember Jim's name from this earlier post I wrote about his BlogBook service and how he used it to create Joe2Go, the conversion of my blog archives into PDF and Kindle formats.

Jim just launched eBook Reporter earlier this month but already has several insightful posts about the industry like this one, which points to eInk as the likely culprit for the Kindle shipment delays.  Be sure to grab his RSS feed.

Survey Says: Book Lovers Love Books

Yes, you read that right.  If you buy into the results from the 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey from the UK you'd have to assume readers will never abandon print for e-books.  As this summary notes, "books have the highest attachment rating of any leisure media activity" and that "53 percent of respondents said that they would 'never' or would 'hate' to stop using them (print books), and another 24 percent said they would be 'uncomfortable.'"  Further, "39 percent of the respondents said that the readers were appealing or very appealing, but 61 percent had the opposite reaction."

I wonder if Amazon would be satisfied with selling a Kindle to 39% of the book-buying market...  Call me the eternal optimist, but I'll bet they'd be thrilled with those results!  Heck, I'll bet they'd be happy just reaching 10% of today's book-buying audience.

Smashwords Sounds Superb

It looks like the self-publishing and e-book markets are going to evolve a bit further when a new operation called Smashwords hits the scene in the (hopefully) not too distant future.  Here's a press release with the details.

Some of the highlights that should make this an attractive service:

• Anyone can become a published e-book author in "minutes" and the service is ideal for just about any length work including "full length novels, short fiction, essays, poetry, personal memoirs, non-fiction and screenplays."
• The effective royalty rate is hard to beat as authors will get 85% of the net proceeds from each sale.
• They're planning to offer all the latest marketing and PR tools like embedded YouTube book trailers and widgets.
• The sampling and pricing models are extremely flexible and should allow for a great deal of try-before-you-buy activity.  In fact, authors can make up to 99% of their work available as a free sample.

I also like the fact that they're planning to offer DRM-free files in a variety of formats, including .mobi.  I don't want to speculate too much on this, but if it's done properly it could create an entirely new content service for Amazon's Kindle.  That's right.  DRM-free .mobi files should load seamlessly onto a Kindle via the USB cable with no intervention from Amazon.  If this takes off it would make the Kindle less of a closed/proprietary system, at least from a content point of view.  Very interesting...

Joe2Go Fully Loaded!

All the archives from Publishing 2020 are now available in PDF or Kindle format via this page.  Feel free to download the free PDFs or get the 99-cent Kindle versions from Amazon.

Thanks again to Jim LaRoche and his BlogBook service for pulling all this together -- he did a fantastic job and I highly recommend his service.