Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog

TOC Podcasts: Now in iTunes

A month or so ago we decided it was time to extend TOC's reach with industry news, interviews, etc., in the form of video podcasts. I've already featured many of those segments here on the 2020 Publishing blog but now you'll be able to retrieve them in a more convenient manner.

Head over to iTunes and subscribe to the TOC podcast series using this link. Four of the first sessions are currently available via iTunes and more will follow shortly. Going forward we plan to create 1-2 new segments every week.

We're always on the lookout for new and interesting people, products and platforms to cover via this podcast series. If you know of any be sure to send them my way and I'll make sure the TOC team follows-up on them.

Porous Paywalls and Book Publishing

Felix Salmon recently wrote an article talking about how the New York Times paywall is working because it's porous. He contrasts that to other paywalled sites who haven't enjoyed the same success as the Times. As I read Salmon's article I was thinking less about pourus vs. rigid paywalls and more about DRM'd vs. DRM-free books.

There are definitely some similarities here. At O'Reilly we believe in a DRM-free world because we trust our customers and we believe they value our content enough to pay for it rather than steal it. It would be naive of us to think this philosophy totally eliminates the illegal sharing of content though. We just happen to believe those situations shouldn't cause you to penalize all your customers. Shoplifting happens from time to time at your local grocery store but that doesn't mean the store manager should put everything under lock and key.

But it was only when I read Fred Wilson's follow-up post to Salmon's article that I realized what other connection this has to book publishing: advertising, sponsorship and other revenue streams. As Fred points out, the Times doesn't necessarily have to charge for each online page view since they run ads on every page served.

I'm not suggesting we can suddenly give away book content and make the exact same amount of revenue with advertisements. But what I am saying is that advertising and its close cousin, sponsorship (e.g., "This book brought to you in part by..."), can and will play a role in the future of book publishing. Every publisher won't necessarily experiment with that model but many will.

24symbols is a great example of how this can work. 24symbols offer both freemium (free, ad-supported content accessible only while online) and premium (for-pay, without ads and can be read offline) models. The customer decides which option they prefer. That last point is critical. 24symbols isn't just serving up free content and hoping that alone will somehow create a successful business model. They're also offering an ad-free offline option that some number of users will upgrade to. They key is to make the premium service feature set compelling enough that customers want to pay for the it.

Will 24symbols be successful? It's too early to say (although I'm a huge fan of Justo Hidalgo and what he's doing with 24symbols; if you missed it, check out his presentation at our TOC SneakPeek from earlier this year). But I'm convinced the future will bring more advertising-based book publishing experiments, not fewer. And as I've said before, I can see a future where Amazon offers two versions of many (if not all) Kindle titles: an ad-free version with pricing similar to today's models and a second one with ads but at a lower price. Amazon has taken the first step with the hardware itself by offering the lower-priced "Kindle with Special Offers." As Jeff Bezos mentioned in the 7th paragraph of Amazon's most recent earnings announcement, "Kindle 3G with Special Offers has quickly become our bestselling Kindle."

Customers are already voting with their wallets and overwhelmingly choosing the advertising-subsidized version of the device itself. These results will undoubtedly encourage Amazon to start experimenting with ad-subsidized content as well.

Services like 24symbols and the Kindle platform are one thing, but the next logical step after that is for publishers to expose more of their content to the major search engines. How long will it be before some of the current New York Times bestsellers are fully and freely readable online with ads? If the stories are good enough and the premium alternative offers a significantly better reading experience (e.g., no ads, can be read offline, includes other features/services, etc.), some number of customers will upgrade, just like they're doing with Times subscriptions.

"Google-level Relevance, Facebook-level Social, & Apple-level Design"

Of all the items I read over the holidays, a blog post from Bradford Cross called Why the iPad is Destroying the Future of Journalism was by far the best.  It's a must read for everyone involved in any form of publishing.  Here are some of my favorite excerpts (italics) and with a few comments of my own mixed in:

The iPad has been dubbed a revolutionary device and the journalism industry has raced to embrace it.  But their embrace is more of a desperate final grasp at the past.

Yes!  That's exactly why I've tried out at least 4 or 5 different magazines on it but have yet to subscribe to a single one.  Wired is my favorite example.  I spent $4.99 on the first iPad issue and never went back for more.  Even though they lowered the price, why should I buy the iPad version when I get the print one for $10 a year?  There's nothing new and exciting enough to get me to switch.

Publishers want to have their own branded channel - whether in their own app, or in some meta-app.  They are fighting back against syndicating their content on the web and they want you to come to their sites and pay.  Nobody gets their content from only one source; this is the Internet.  Nobody is going to pick their favorite newspaper or magazine and just stick to their app.

This is where we in the publishing industry need to think more about getting our content to where readers already are and not expect them to always come to us (or grab our latest app).

Nobody wants an app for each content source.  The parallels to RSS are striking.

This reminds me of a conversation I was part of at a recent conference.  One person in the session mentioned that he couldn't recall the last time he opened his RSS reader.  Another agreed, saying she felt too guilty seeing the new tally of unread items in it.  How true.  I also can't tell you the last time I looked at my RSS reader, but I certainly don't like the idea of individual apps for every type of content I'm interested in.

Since most non-direct traffic for news now is coming from search, Facebook turns out to be the largest subscription source of news content on the Internet.

Even though Bradford's post is all about the news industry, I believe there are parallels to book publishing here as well.  See this earlier post on publishing in the social world for more info.

The success of search, social, and design seem to indicate that the future of news products need Google-level relevance, Facebook-level social, and Apple-level design.

What a terrific way to state it.  And unlike the famous words of Meatloaf, two out of those three simply isn't good enough.

If journalism is going to rediscover a model that works, it has to figure out how to integrate with the social web.  What should I be able to do with that Economist article?  Should I be able to share it à la carte so I can discuss it with the people I want?  Should I be able to share it within my network?  Should I be able to share it publicly?

I think the answers should be yes, yes and yes.  Btw, I read this article using the Instapaper app on my iPad.  Doing so helped me realize social network functionality that need to be added to Instapaper as well -- see my latest iPadHound post for more info.

I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works, by Nick Bilton

Nick Bilton writes about technology for The New York Times.  I've been a big fan because every time I read one of his pieces I learn something new and valuable.  As a result, I was probably one of the first people to buy his ebook, I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works, the day it went on sale in the Kindle store.

Unlike a lot of forward-looking books, this one doesn't waste a bunch of time on dreamy predictions of the specifics (e.g., flying cars, time travel, etc).  Rather, Nick talks about trends he's seeing and research he's worked on or studied.  You, the reader, are then free to use that information to think about how all this information might affect your future and the future of your business.

I generally rate a book by how many excerpts I highlight while reading it.  Good ones typically have 10-15.  This one had dozens.

Nick is a terrific storyteller.  Btw, one of the points he makes about the future is that storytelling was, is, and will forever be important.  That's not limited to books or movies, of course.  Think of the best teachers you had in school, for example.  Mine were all excellent storytellers and that made learning significantly more fun and engaging.  It's good to know that certain skills never get old!

Here are a few of my favorite excerpts from this insightful book:

Online, the lines between television and newspapers have blurred -- and soon the same will be said about books, movies, TV shows, and more.  There is one more wrinkle: Amateur content and professional content are beginning to exist in unison, on the same devices with the same reach.

We're all constantly cutting up content, picking out the best pieces, and passing it along.

Throughout history we have tended to dramatize the death of one form of communication when another is being born.

There was a time in the 1920's when cultural critics feared Americans were losing their ability to swallow a long, thoughtful novel or even a detailed magazine piece.  The culprit: Reader's Digest.

In reality, we don't pay for the content; we pay for the experience.

People who make their living telling stories will feel more and more pressure to create experiences that offer multiple layers of content, additional social feedack from a community with shared interests, threaded topics and true interaction.  If they don't, they may capture only their audience's partial attention.

Imagine you're reading an article about a new food recipe on your computer at work.  When you get home from the office, your television should know that you've read the article and automatically show you video clips of the recipe on this new screen.  At the same time, as your phone is in the same room with you, with the flick of a button the television can send the recipe to your mobile phone so that you can pick up ingredients at the grocery store the next day.

He goes on to talk about how devices need to offer more interoperability, so devices know where you are, where you've been and how best to update you from one location to the next.  Very cool and not so far off given all the sensors in today's gadgets.

If you're looking for a great read on the future of content and storytelling you'll definitely want to check this one out.

Where Are All the iOS Magazine Subscription Apps?

Sports Illustrated is the latest big-name magazine publisher to offer an iPad edition.  It's a nice looking product, btw.  The app itself is free and it includes a sample of what's to come.  It joins the likes of Time, Wired and Newsweek...but they all currently have the same limitation: You can only buy individual issues, not sign up for a one-year subscription.  Worse, most of them seem to think they can charge the full print cover price for each iPad edition.

I bought the initial Wired edition for $4.99 but I'm not buying the second one.  Over the weekend I realized I played around a bit with the Wired iPad edition but never finished reading it.  In fact, I'm more likely to read the print copy that's sitting on my desk than the iPad version.  And since I get the print version for $10/year, why in the world would I even think about paying $4.99 per iPad issue?

I'm certainly not the first to blog about this and I doubt I'll be the last.  What I can't understand though is why, after Apple made in-app subscriptions possible months ago, are none of the big guys selling their magazines that way?

Does it have to do with Apple's 30% cut?  Are they all trying to find a way to get around this and sell direct?  That's what Amazon does.  When you buy a Kindle edition via the iPad app you're actually just going direct through the browser, not buying through iTunes.  I'm assuming Amazon therefore doesn't have to pay Apple a cent on the transaction.  Why wouldn't magazine publishers want to do the same, especially on longer-term subscriptions?

Of course, with magazines and newspapers we're talking about publishers who aren't exactly on the cutting edge when it comes to technology solutions.  They're still clinging to their print models as much as possible.  Why else would I get at least 2-3 "please come back" snail mails from BusinessWeek every month?!  So all these magazine/newspaper publishers are probably operating independent of one other, each trying to come up with their own direct sales app/tool.  I wonder how much time and money is being wasted because they're not working together on this.

Here's a crazy idea: Maybe they should consider pushing it all through Amazon.  If Amazon were smart, they'd pull an end-around on Apple and tell the magazine/newspaper publishers, "hey, sell your subscriptions through us...we won't charge you 30% like Apple...how about 20%, or maybe even 10%?"  Amazon already has the infrastructure in place to push content to the iPad as well as a terrific customer service operation, so why shouldn't they leverage their platform for something like this?

One potential pitfall is that Apple might decide it was OK for Amazon to sell their books for the iPad without getting a percentage, but if they're going to be magazine/newspaper distributors for the platform they'll cut off Amazon's iPad access.  Let's hope not.  After all, if Amazon could take this on, it would create a very healthy competition with Apple, and that would likely be a good thing for consumers.

The Social Networking Potential for eContent

I recently finished reading Kiss It Good-Bye, another take on the Pittsburgh Pirates and their miraculous upset of the Yankees in the 1960 World Series.  (It's a pretty good book, btw, if you're a Pirates fan!)  I bought the Kindle edition and read it on my iPad.  That's when I discovered a feature Amazon slipped into the reader that I hadn't noticed before.  It's called "Popular Highlights" and you can see an example of it in the screen shot on the left (click on the thumbnail version for a larger view).

You'll notice a small pop-up bubble that says, "3 other people highlighted this part of the book."  The popular highlights have dotted underlines, setting them off from the rest of the book.  In fact, you can see another one at the very top of that same page.

The cool thing about this is I can see what other readers felt were the most interesting aspects of the book.  That's nice for a story about the 1960 Pirates but it becomes even more compelling when applied to how-to guides or textbooks.

What if a chemistry e-textbook included highlights from everyone else who used it in previous semesters?  That capability exists today and becomes more valuable the more the book is used and highlighted.  Take it a step further.  What if you add notes to that e-textbook?  Again, the more it's used the more valuable it becomes.

One problem here is that each e-reader platform (e.g., iBooks, Kindle, etc.) will implement their own versions of these highlighting and commenting features.  So, unfortunately, the comments/highlights added by Kindle readers won't show up when iBooks readers use the same book.

Nevertheless, this could easily grow into a very valuable feature.  So valuable, in fact, that I could see a model where it helps distinguish one retailer's version of the book from another: If the iBooks edition has more highlights and comments, it's a more attractive option than the Kindle one with fewer highlights/comments; that leads to more people buying the iBooks edition, adding their own highlights/comments and creating a snowball effect.  If ebook retailers are smart, they'll invest heavily in this functionality since it will help distinguish them from their competitors.

Btw, I'm sure somewhere deep in Amazon's end user license agreement (EULA) I allowed them to share my highlights with other readers.  OK, but wouldn't it be nice if publishers and authors could turn the tables and say, "sure, you can capture all this information, but when you do so with our products you need to share the results with us."  We'd learn more about what readers think of our products, which pieces they felt were most important and if we're smart, we'd use that knowledge to create better products (e.g., revisions, related titles and supporting materials).  That's wishful thinking on my part though, I'm afraid.  As a publisher, of course, I'd love to see the Amazon's and Apple's of the world simply share this information with their publisher partners, but I figure it's more likely they'll charge for it as they do other services.

Why does this feature have to begin and end with books though?  I think it could be even more useful for newspapers and magazines.  I can't keep up with all my news sources and I'd find it extremely helpful if I could just quickly glance at the key elements of a story, as highlighted by all those people who read it before me.  Sure, the newspaper sites offer commenting functionality today but they don't let readers highlight what they feel is most important.  Newspapers feel they're being ripped off by Google and other search engines?  They should make this highlighting feature a key element of their e-subscriptions, something that's not accessible through their free website.  Wouldn't it be cool if your local e-newspaper subscription showed up on your iPad each day with yellow highlighting of the key pieces of each story?  What we're really talking about here is convenience, time-savings and a service that's not accessible through the free access option of a website.  I'd pay for that!

Reaching New Audiences

After 5 weeks of iPad use one thing has become crystal clear to me: Magazine, newspaper and book publishers are too focused on applying the same old, tired business rules.

Maintaining your current customer base is critical to any business, but the number of existing customers is generally a fraction of the total potential base.  We're somewhere in the midst of an inflection point in the content business.  This is a stage where existing models are challenged, new ones are created, leaders can be toppled and the proverbial "guy in a garage" can completely reinvent things.  So why are so many publishers trying to apply all the old rules?  Here are a few examples:

Magazines at $4.99 an issue.  This one's just too easy to pick on.  Are you kidding me?  The product is nothing more than a quick-and-dirty print-to-e conversion.  Were these guys not paying attention to the book industry when they saw nobody could sell their quickie p-to-e books at the print price? Curiosity is driving some sales now, but that's not a long-term strategy. Look at some of the comments about Time's app:

Only $260/year to get content freely available on the web or delivered to your door in print for a fifth of that.  Idiots.

If each issue was a dollar I'm sure more people would buy this mag.  $5 is silly.

Time notes that they're only selling single issues right now and that a subscription model is coming.  Fine, but in the mean time how about doing something more creative?  If not a dollar an issue how about giving me the last 5 issues for $5.  Just because you can sell print copies at a newsstand for $5 each doesn't mean you should charge the same for single digital issues, especially when there's little to no value added.

I really want these guys to succeed and I'm more than willing to pay a reasonable amount for an issue or a subscription.  They should use this opportunity to come up with models that help them reach new customers, not just squeeze the early adopters because they know they have more disposable income.

P.S. -- It seems so obvious but I can't help think these guys have forgotten that they make a good deal of money on advertising, so if they go with lower prices and expand their audience they'll increase their reach...without the cost of printing and mailing.

Newspapers are still asleep at the wheel.  The New York Times seems afraid to commit.  Their Editor's Choice iPad app is OK but it's more of a teaser than a viable, long-term product strategy.  As I mentioned in this earlier post, these guys are just training me to find workarounds to get the content I want.  And although I'd love to pay for a subscription they don't even offer one.

USA Today is doing a better job but only going half way to a total solution.  Their iPad app is nice and it's even free.  I only read USA Today when I'm on the road but I'm starting to read it more thanks to this app.  That said, they need a model that pushes the content to me every day, not one that forces me to open the app for updates.  Go ahead and charge...it's OK!

My local newspaper is more typical of the larger problem though.  We've been paying subscribers for almost 20 years and every month we're one step closer to canceling.  Want to know how they could keep me on board?  Offer an iPad app version of the paper for free with my print subscription.  And please, make sure it includes every bit of content that's in the print version.

The focus there is on customer retention, not reaching new ones.  To solve that problem, how about forging alliances with other newspapers so that the app provides much broader access?  So if I'm heading to Seattle today I can open my app on the flight west to catch up on all the local news.  Sure, you can accomplish all this in a browser for free...if you're willing to grab the pages in advance.  But we're talking about convenience, which often comes at a price.  And don't forget about the additional advertising reach for all those non-subscribers today who could become customers tomorrow.

Lemmings waiting for the next channel to open.  Why does it seem like publishers are all sitting around waiting for channel equilibrium to happen on its own?  I have two words for everyone: Go direct!  Sure, you'll want your products in iTunes, the iBookstore, etc., but why is everyone so leery of creating a direct relationship with their customers?  Yes, some existing accounts will complain, but if you're not building a direct strategy you'll lose in the long run.  Despite Apple's "closed" model it's remarkably easy to add epub books bought elsewhere to your iBooks library.  And look at Amazon.  Even though they have a Kindle app for the iPad, any purchases you make for it are untouched (and untaxed) by Apple.  Why wouldn't you want to capture 100% of the transaction by building a direct channel, especially since the choices aren't mutually exclusive?  The more storefronts your products are in, including a storefront of your own, the better!

Here's an example of how we should all be thinking: The Elements, from Touch Press.  Why would a tightwad like me spend $14 on a subject I dreaded in high school and has nothing to do with my job or personal interests?  Because it encourages discovery.  I don't know the difference between Dysprosium and Holmium but this crazy app makes me want to learn more about both.  So while most chemistry publishers would have done quick-and-dirty p-to-e conversions, these guys took the time to make the topic fun and interesting.  As a result, they're reaching far more new customers than a dusty old periodic table ever would have.

So if the periodic table can be completely rethought to encourage discovery and reach a totally new audience, what about the topics you specialize in?  How can The Elements inspire you to approach your business differently?

How Magazines & Newspaper Publishers are Training Me

The iPad is now more than 3 weeks old and there are apparently 1,000+ apps available for it (plus the 180K or so iPhone apps you can run on it).  If there are a thousand iPad-specific apps out there I haven't discovered one tenth of them; I just keep seeing the same ones over and over again in iTunes.  Even with that many apps available there are two areas I feel are severely underrepresented: magazines and newspapers.

I've purposely avoided renewing all of my print magazines subscriptions for the past several months because I figured I'd switch them to iPad apps/subscriptions.  My plan hasn't worked so well.  I no longer get BusinessWeek, Fast Company or The New York Times, but none of them are available as apps either.  So what has this led to?

I now just bookmark all those magazine/newspaper web sites on my iPad and read pretty much everything I want for free.  The longer these publishers delay introducing an iPad app for their content, the greater the likelihood I will have moved on and won't ever buy it.  What a mistake.

The whole experience has also caused me to wonder if there's an opportunity for a whole new type of app.  Think of it as a combination of Fluent News and Offline Pages.  What I want is an app that automatically checks each of those magazine/newspaper sites and pushes me the full contents of the latest edition.  Without this sort of app I'm forced to do this manually, looking through nytimes.com, clicking on each article that's interesting and then hitting the "Save to Offline Pages" webmarklet that's installed on my browser.  Why make me go through all that effort?  Why not let me tell this new app what newspapers and magazines I want the latest from and deliver them to me?

Before you say that's what the RSS feeds are for think again.  Many of those feeds are partial.  They don't include the entire article or they make you click and go to their website to see their ads.  Fine, I'll look at the ads...but in the version that's cached in this new app I'm describing.

Isn't this ridiculous though?  These publishers are trying to control the flow and use of their content so they're forcing customers like me to come up with better ways of using it.  (Hey, that sounds a lot like the denial stage the music labels went through back in the Napster days.)  And btw, I'm a customer who is more than willing to pay for online access to this content, but by not providing apps these publishers won't let me!  These are the same publishers, at least on the newspaper side, who constantly complain that Google has stolen their IP.  Google hasn't stolen anything.  And if the publishers don't get wise to the rapidly growing iPad platform they'll probably see someone else swoop in and steal the app revenue opportunity they're currently ignoring.

Payment Models

I thought the micropayment model was dead.  Back in the '90's and early 2000's it was simply too much of a hassle to pull out my credit card for any one- or two-dollar transactions.  Then came iTunes.

Now I'm amazed how quickly I'll make a 99-cent purchase.  Part of the reason is the seamless way iTunes is integrated into the overall iPhone/iPad ecosystem.  Apple has created a model where payment is too temptingly simple.  Amazon may have patented one-click payment but Apple is perfecting it.  A quick check of my recent AMEX statement shows I paid Apple more last month (for mostly sub-$5, including a large number of 99-cent, transactions!) than I paid Amazon.  That wasn't the case 6 months ago.

There's still a huge difference between grabbing a free app and paying for one, even if it's only 99 cents.  I'm still pretty stingy here and I want to feel confident I wasn't snookered into paying for something that's not even worth a dollar.

The problem in the book publishing world is that we haven't found a good content model for the sub-$5 purchase.  Customers don't want to buy chapters, so don't kid yourself about that model.  And sure, you can do the quick-and-dirty print-to-e conversion and sell it for a fraction of the print price, but that's not much of a future.

We need to create more product entry points that appeal to the masses with low initial prices that offer a great value proposition as well as upsell opportunities for additional irresistible content and/or services.

What can we learn from other experiments in the app world?:

• First, don't assume the quick-and-dirty p-to-e conversion model is more viable just because the iPad offers a large, full-color screen.  I still refuse to pay $4.99 for a single iPad issue of Time, for example.  (You'd think the magazine folks would realize that's no way to attract new customers.  What about the free trial subscription to let me see what's special and get me hooked?)
• Second, and perhaps most importantly, think about rich content, not just quick-and-dirty conversions (see my earlier highly relevant posts here and here).  A chemistry textbook publisher creates this while a visionary creates this.  The former is a yawner while the latter, even as a fairly high-priced iPad app lures me in because it's so tempting to explore and discover with it.  Question: How many customers would describe your e-products with words like "tempting", "explore" or "discover"?
• Third, think about subscriptions, not just one-time payments.
• Fourth, think about selling the network, not just an individual product.
• And finally, don't ignore the advertising and sponsorship worlds.  Yes, I know many people say they won't stand for in-book advertising.  That's fine.  Offer two different versions, including the higher-priced one for those folks who won't tolerate the ads.

Rethinking "Rich Content"

The inspiration for this post came from my most recent (and probably final) Kindle book edition purchase.  The book is called Kiss It Good-bye and it's the story of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates.  How could a Kindle edition book about a baseball season 50 years ago have anything to do with rich content?

Let me start by saying what I mean by "rich content."  Many in the publishing industry are trying to figure out how to integrate video with text.  A book or article featuring step-by-step or how-to content might benefit from the addition of video, for example.  In fact, video tends to get most of the attention when anyone talks about rich content.  Most people either yawn or note that they'd prefer to not have to navigate around a bunch of video inserted into whatever book they're reading.  Good point.

When I bought Kiss It Good-bye I started thinking about ways it could offer rich content without being intrusive.  Although none of what I'm about to say could be supported on today's Kindle platform, it all started there...

If you own a Kindle you're familiar with the built-in dictionary.  You scroll to the line with the word you want to look up, click a couple of times and the definition appears.  Pretty simple.

Now apply a similar approach on the iPad.  You find a word you want to look up, touch it on the screen and a menu appears, hovering over the book page.  This menu not only has an option to look up the word you've selected, but other options as well.  For example, let's say I highlighted "Pittsburgh Pirates."  The menu options might include look-up's to the team's entry in the Wikipedia or the Pirates official website.  That's just the beginning though.

Now let's say you get to a chapter where the author discusses the events of "Game 7 from the 1960 World Series".  Selecting that string shows a menu with a variety of options including the game's box score.  That chapter will undoubtedly talk about the game's hero, Bill Mazeroski.  Touch his name and the resulting menu would include links to Mazeroski's career stats as well as a video of his exciting, series-winning home run.

In short, the book would be filled with all sorts of hooks to other content but none of it would interrupt the reading process.  No underlined words indicating links.  Nothing extra shows up till you touch a word or phrase on your screen, but it's all there waiting for you to discover it.

Up to now I've talked about integrating links to content from websites, but there's no reason you couldn't also build it out with related content from other books, magazines, newspapers, etc.  This builds upon the "network effect" Bob Pritchett talked about at our recent TOC conference (and I blogged about here).

Now the hard part: How do you build in all these connections?  If it's a manual process it simply won't scale.  I believe some level of automation is required for this to be successful.

One option is to put the book through something similar to the indexing process, but in this case, every word/phrase in it is run though a tool that pulls back all the top relevant links from the web, other books, etc. Handwork is required to ensure the best links make the final cut, but over time you're building a database of reusable links.  So every time you refer to the same team, player, etc., you wouldn't be starting from scratch.  Web links change over time though, of course, so verification would still be a required step.

The key is to make all this content accessible but not intrusive.  Maybe it requires a new authoring tool.  Or perhaps it's something that could be built into a publishing company's existing toolchain for editorial and production.  Either way, it's something I believe could turn static books into richer content products, without interrupting the natural flow of the original work.

With its full-color touch screen and 3G/wifi connectivity, the iPad is the perfect device for this, btw.  Do you see a opportunity for a product like this?