Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

O'Reilly's Tools of Change (TOC) Conference Starts Tomorrow

I've been counting down the days for this one and tomorrow it will finally be here.  I'm talking about O'Reilly's TOC conference, which starts bright and early tomorrow in NY with a series of tutorials.  I'm heading there tomorrow afternoon and plan to attend a conference-related Tweetup that's scheduled for later in the evening.  Then it's two full days packed with great sessions from morning till evening.

I've been tipped off to several exciting product announcements that will be made at TOC this week, two of which that have really caught my eye.  I can't say anything more about them just yet, but stay tuned for upcoming blog posts and Twitter tweets over the next 3 days.  Actually, I'll probably spend more time Twittering than blogging, so look for more of the former and not so much of the latter.  I also have a search panel set up in my TweetDeck feed, searching for #toc entries; there are already a lot of tweets piling up there, so if you can't make it, be sure to watch the stream from attendees.  And, if you see me tweet from within a session and have a question you'd like to ask the speaker, send me a direct message and I'll do my best to get an answer.

Finally, I'm already keeping an eye out for some of you, but if you're a Publishing 2020 reader and would like to say hi at TOC, be sure to pull me aside between sessions.

Mygazines.com: The Magazine Industry's "Napster Moment"?

Let me start off by saying that I firmly believe mygazines.com is a blatant copyright infringer and deserves whatever penalties it might eventually receive.  I say "might" because it's an offshore operation which means it will be tough to hunt down and hold anyone accountable for the website's activities.

My concern isn't about whether mygazines is legal or not (it's not), but rather about how the magazine industry should respond to it.  The music industry crushed Napster because the major labels couldn't come up with any other solutions.  I tend to agree with most of the points made by both Ian Da Silva in this Wikinomics blog post as well as what The Motley Fool has to say in this article (although I certainly don't agree with the Fool's suggestion that this is "the end of publishing as we know it"!)

This is a golden opportunity for the magazine industry to see how a Napster-like platform for periodicals could and should work effectively.  Mygazines is essentially doing e-content R&D for the entire magazine industry; I just hope the industry takes the time to study and understand the results before they look to kill the service.

I took a quick look at mygazines and immediately felt like it would be worth paying a subscription for, provided all the content was legal.  I've been letting most of my magazine subscriptions lapse because I find more up-to-date info online and I can't justify the price.  That's one more set of eyeballs each of those magazines just lost for their advertising income.  So in addition to possibly getting mygazines shut down, why not figure out how this model could actually help rebuild readership and advertising income?

If a coalition of magazine publishers managed to intervene and kill mygazines, but take it over in the process, would that be a good thing?  Possibly.  Would I pay $5/month to have access like this to several magazines I'm not currently subscribing to?  Absolutely.  In fact, if they build in the right social networking capabilities it could easily become an extremely popular alternative for a lot of customers.  I just hope the magazine industry takes the time to learn what it can from this before they focus on crushing it.

P.S. -- Speaking of magazines, I have a short update to the BusinessWeek subscription I let lapse earlier this summer.  They stopped sending issues shortly after I posted that note back in June and I have to admit that I miss the service.  I'm greatly disappointed that it's not offered on the Kindle but a renewal offer I received over the weekend has tempted me to return.  The deal is $20 for a full year's worth of issues.  I'm pretty sure I can't say no...

P.P.S -- Well, it turns out the slick folks at BusinessWeek were simply trying to pull a fast one on me.  Upon closer inspection this new $20 deal is only for six months, not a full year.  When I balked at $40 for a year some wisenheimer there apparently decided to toss a "$20 for six months" offer at me instead.  Silly me...I almost fell for it!

Wiki Contributor Compensation Challenges

As the Wikipedia and other great wiki-based resources continue to evolve, the question of contributor compensation always seems to come up eventually.  Should contributors be paid?  If so, how much?  How would you effectively track the system?  Why would someone want to contribute for free?

The open source software development world has dealt with these questions for many years now and it continues to thrive.  Even commercially successful companies like Red Hat have figured out how to build an effective business model around the work of contributors, so there's no reason to expect the content world would be much different.

I recently came across this excellent summary by Evan Prodromou, co-founder of the popular Wikitravel site.  Evan does a fantastic job of explaining his point of view and why he believes that paying contributors is a bad idea.  I think the two most important aspects of this are openness and reinvestment in the community, both of which Evan summarizes quite effectively.

WWGD: What Would Google Do?

What would Google do?  That's one of the questions posed in this Fortune article.  Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine was the person asking the question and I think it's an important one for anyone involved in content creation/distribution to consider.  As the article reports, Jarvis hosted a panel called "Exploding Media" and said "media companies should stop complaining and ask themselves 'What would Google do?'"  He also suggested that "today's mandate is to help people distribute both their own creations and what they receive from professional media in their own way."

An excellent example that was cited is the combination of Google Maps and Google Earth and how they are both made even more powerful by the contributions of users.  What's the analogy in the book publishing world?  What will it take for book content to be open and accessible enough to allow for customer mashups, for example?

Talk about a huge can of worms...  This is an extremely tricky subject given all the IP rights and other ownership issues involved.  Then there's the challenge of effectively monetizing the model.  Nevertheless, it's something I think will happen at some point; it's just a question of who and when.

This is where I see so much opportunity for social networks and devices like Amazon's Kindle.  Imagine a world where you're reading a book on the Kindle and the latest chapter/passage reminds you of a good friend.  With almost no effort at all you're able to select that passage and e-mail it to your friend with a note saying, "I thought of you when I read this and I wanted you to read it too."  As an added incentive, the message has all the hooks in it to give you an affiliate cut of the transaction if your friend ever winds up buying that book.

How about tools like LibraryThing and the iRead Facebook application?  Imagine how much more interesting and powerful those services could become if content access and sharing found its way into them.  Yes, the legal issues are daunting but I am optimistic that we'll get there at some point.

David Berlind on DRM

I subscribed to MLB's online video service the first year they offered it.  I dropped it the next season because it was unreliable and the video often froze or was painfully choppy.  Based on what ZDNet's David Berlind has to say in this post I'm glad I never went back.

I have yet to see an outstanding DRM solution.  Most seem to incorporate too many restrictions as a deterrent for thieves but in reality wind up penalizing the honest customer. That's why when we launched our WROX Blox product line last month we opted for a DRM-free approach.

We've considered a number of non-DRM solutions for e-content.  In fact, at one point we joked about inserting the customer's credit card number into the WROX Blox PDF -- now that's a way to get someone's attention and reduce the likelihood of content getting released into the wild!!  My point is there's more than one way to skin this cat and I hope others will continue to experiment more with non-DRM solutions as well.

Rights Reversion and Out-of-Print

Technology impacts every industry and publishing is no exception.  This article from TheBookseller.com asks whether "out-of-print is outdated."  The short answer is yes, for the most part.

Publishers do indeed want to hang onto and exploit rights for as long as they can, especially as they're building out more of a digital presence.  Most also figure they made a significant investment in the project and they'd like to enjoy the long tail revenues for as many years as possible.

I agree with that logic and apply it to my own group at Wiley, but I'm also a reasonable person.  If an author figures they can do better by placing the book with another publisher (or self-publishing it) I'll generally do what I can to revert their rights.  I say "generally" and not "always" because there are plenty of factors to consider.  For example, where are we in the life cycle of the book?  It might be selling a modest quantity every month and we've got plenty of inventory on-hand; we, the publisher, invested in producing that inventory and I'd like to recoup as much of that investment as possible.  But when sales go negative (returns exceed gross sales) or we're down to single-digit sales over several months, well, that's a pretty good sign that the book has run its course.

The big question authors need to ask themselves is the one Derek Johns asks in this article: "...where else can you go?"  Is another publisher really interested in taking this book on as a new title?  If so, why?  That's important information to share with the current publisher -- it's a bit of a long shot, but maybe the current publisher could use that information to spark renewed interest and sales of the book without having to change publishers.

At the end of the day, if you (the author) feel like you'd be better served by getting your rights back, give your editor or publisher a call and have an honest discussion with them.  Regardless of what your contract says, exceptions can be made.  I still tend to think you're better off letting the current publisher do what they can to push the book as part of their backlist, but like anything else, it's best to talk it through so that you thoroughly understand the pros and cons.

Kids & Intellectual Property: Where Have We Failed?

Here's a disturbing article from The New York Times.  On the surface, it's yet another story of the mean, old RIAA going after a supposedly poor, defenseless college student for stealing a song or two.  The more I thought about how this particular student reacted and what he said though, the more irritated I became.

Here's a college student (Zachary McCune) at one of the nation's finest institutions admitting that he had been warned before and "his eyes glazed over", "it was a campus cliché" and he "quickly forgot about it."  This is the sort of person who gets pulled over twice for speeding, is issued warnings both times and then becomes outraged when the third incident results in an expensive fine.

This experience pushed McCune into action: He co-founded the local chapter of Students for Free Culture.  Great idea.  I tend to agree that the language and spirit of our laws need to be revisited from time to time, especially when technology comes into play.  The group apparently has roots tied to Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture book.  (It's a great book and I reviewed it earlier here.)

Although Lessig presents numerous interesting cases and models, I seriously doubt he'd ever advocate stealing content.  That's the point students like McCune need to understand.  It's perfectly fine to swap and share in the open source world, for example, but you need to respect IP ownership in the world of copyright.  So by all means, go ahead and build, contribute to and otherwise support the exchange of free content and ideas via the use of the Creative Commons license, but don't try to apply the exact same terms to other products that are protected under other models.  I firmly believe both can co-exist and thrive, but only if everyone abides by the laws.

This reminds me that I need to sit down with my own kids and make sure they're clear on all this...

The Cult of the Amateur, by Andrew Keen

As I read Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur, I couldn't help think that if he could wave a magic wand, Keen would love to see the Internet go away.  He seems to romanticize about the days of gatekeepers controlling what TV shows we watched, what news we read/saw, what music we heard, etc.  I imagine if he would have lived in the early 1900's he probably would have complained about this horrible thing called the automobile and how it's killing the horse industry.

I kept asking myself if he wrote this book just to become a controversial contrarian.  When I read a book I often dog-ear the pages that caught my eye.  With Keen's book, I not only dog-eared more pages than usual, I also wound up writing notes in the margin, mostly about misleading points the author was making.  Fear, uncertainty and doubt are all key ingredients in Keen's recipe.  Of course when he talks about things like child pornography and the online gambling problem, very few people are going to disagree with his position.  But when it comes to wikis, blogs and other so-called amateur content, I think he's way out of line.  Here are a few excerpts and my thoughts on them:

These days, kids can't tell the difference between credible news by objective professional journalists and what they read on joeschmoe.blogspot.com

Is there still such a thing as "objective professional journalists"?  Are all "professional" journalists really and truly objective?

Our trust in conventional advertising is being further compromised by the spoof advertisements...

I'm not sure I've seen the words "trust" and "conventional advertising" used together before...

Of course, every free listing on Craigslist means one less paid listing in a local newspaper.

Isn't that what happens in a free world?  If someone finds a better way to build a mousetrap or deliver an ad, why is it so bad to offer the new service/product?  Just because Craigslist doesn't feel the need to monetize the ad like a newspaper, so what?  That creates new competition for the paper.  They need to innovate or die.

No software can replace the implicit trust we place in a movie review by...Roger Ebert...

Probably not, but I tend to trust my friends and their recommendations more than the so-called experts in this case.  If an "amateur" movie critic has a blog and my likes/dislikes happen to map well to his or hers, I bet I'll wind up listening more to them than the "professional".

With more and more of the information online unedited, unverified, and unsubstantiated, we will have no choice but to read everything with a skeptical eye.

Is this really such a bad thing?  I mean, didn't the phrase "don't believe everything you read" become popular long before the Internet hit the scene?

They (Townhall.com, HotSoup.com, etc.) are the digital equivalent of online gated communities where all the people have identical views and the whole conversation is mirrored in a way that is reassuringly familiar.  It's a dangerous form of digital narcissism; the only conversations we want to hear are those with ourselves and those like us.

I could close my eyes and almost think Keen is describing the Democratic or Republican National Conventions...

...the average 30-second (advertising) spot costs $381,000.  Yet Frito-Lay paid a mere $10,000 to each of the five finalists in the (amateur advertising) competition, leaving $331,000 on the table.  That's $331,000 that wasn't paid to professional filmmakers, scriptwriters, actors, and marketing companies -- $331,000 sucked out of the economy.

Huh?!  Wouldn't this just be $331,000 that dropped to Frito-Lay's bottom line, available for reinvestment in the business or payout to the company's shareholders?  That amount is still very much in the economy!

OK, I'm going to stop at this point.  That last excerpt was from page 62...I folded over quite a few pages after that, but this post is already getting to be too long.

Believe it or not, I think everyone reading this blog should read this book.  Why?  It's important for you to analyze Keen's rationale and decide for yourself.  I tend to think he's way out of line with much of his message, but time will tell.

The Myths of Contract Negotiations

I enjoy reading JA Konrath's blog and I think I've even contributed a comment or two on it over the past year or so.  When I read today's post about negotiating contracts I felt a simple comment wouldn't suffice.  He does a nice job giving newbie authors a frame of reference, but a number of his items require further clarification.  I've italicized a few excerpts from his post below and added my own thoughts below each point:

We're afraid that if we don't take the offer, we won't get published. Publishers know this. And they use this to their advantage.

Not really.  In fact, if you (as an author) start to feel you're getting treated this way by a publisher/editor I recommend you run for the nearest exit!  There are far too many other publishers (and self-publishing options) out there to let yourself get bullied around like this.

It is in their best interest to offer low advances and try to acquire as many sub rights as possible.

Also not true, at least the advances part...  Publishers realize that author advances are just like any other part of a transaction: You get what you pay for.  No publisher wants an author to walk away from the negotiating table feeling like they're not getting what they deserve on an advance.  Why?  The publisher wants, no, needs the author to be properly motivated throughout the project.  Anything short of that will compromise the results.

A healthy advance also shows that your publisher is confident in your books, and will spend a sizable amount on marketing them.

This is one of the biggest myths in author contract negotiations.  Honestly, there's zero correlation between the level of the author advance and the amount of money spent on marketing.  In fact, some publishing houses will tell you that the bigger the author advance, the less they have left to spend on marketing.  So many other factors come into play on this as well, not the least of which is author platform; we publishers are looking for authors with great platforms, mostly because we find those are a much better promotional vehicle for the book than advertising or premium placement in a store.

Converting the Public Domain into Personal Income

Here's an interesting Business 2.0 magazine article by Paul Sloan that talks about how to take advantage of content in the public domain.  Matt LaClear, the subject of the article, is apparently making more than $25K/month by selling old, freely-available content.  In some cases, he's just changing a few words around to modernize the references!  It's hard not to admire this LaClear fellow, even if he is just repackaging someone else's work.