Is it time to revise the manner in which the publishing industry establishes standards for the industry? The pace at which the industry is moving suggests that the model of serial committee meetings staffed by over worked volunteers may no longer be an optimal solution.

Into a vacuum does a 'standard' establish itself and I believe the RFID situation in the library community is just one example. In the absence of a universal approach to RFID tagging in the publishing and library community we now have several vendor specific 'standards' that mitigate some or all of the benefits of the technology itself. Time to deliberate and debate ad nausea is a luxury we can't afford when digital content and transaction models are changing rapidly, so I was interested to see the following comment from BISG regarding digital content:

“The committee will work to find solutions that will benefit the entire book industry – publishers, retailers, search engines, authors, wholesalers and distributors – by improving the process by which online book content reaches consumers. To expedite standards development at a time when the book industry is moving rapidly forward, the Committee will start its work using a briefing paper, requirements, and draft specification that were developed within the Association of American Publishers (AAP) to serve as frameworks for further work.”

It will be interesting to see how this develops; however, just making the old system work faster may not be enough. An alternative approach could be to establish a forward thinking (anticipatory) approach to new standards development. Importantly, a small 'reconnaissance' team that sits permanently could identify new standards needs and establish a minimalist framework for these new standards. This framework could include the identification of less than 10 data elements and with definitions that would immediately enable standardization at a very basic level. This group would generate standards projects based on submissions from the community as well as from their own initiatives.

Once the framework was completed the new born standard would be published and passed on to the committee best suited to expand on it and extend its relevance. In some cases, the standard could remain dormant and/or industry participants could submit their own amendments and additions to the standard rather than wait for the committee to define new data elements and requirements.

Posted by: Michael Cairns, Information Media Partners

Maybe you don’t know what a Radiohead is but you can bet your children do and moreover they have probably recently made a rational economic decision on the value to them of the band’s most recent album. Why is this important to book publishers? Well directly perhaps not so much, but the indirect impact of what Radiohead announced last week will be significant to all media including publishing.

As an established band, Radiohead have a large existing fan base and they are taking their music directly to this fan base by releasing their new album via download at whatever price the fan wants to pay. If the fan believes as stated by one of them, that the band is ‘rich enough’ they can pay 99cents for the entire thing (they could get it for free) or they can pay a traditional retail price of $12.95. Whatever. Radiohead receives all the revenue rather than having to split a fee with a recording company. Suddenly, after nurturing and investing in Radiohead over the past 10 years there is no longer a place for the record company. Is this fair you wonder? The question really doesn’t matter because the old model of artist development is dead.  Music companies are going to have to create a new model where reliance is not so much on revenues derived from recordings but shared across the pantheon of revenue opportunities from merchandising to touring to music publishing. The transition will be brutal for both the artists and the recording companies.

Radiohead finished recording their new album only 10 days before they released it via their web site.  Fans have two product choices: They can take a download and pay what they want or they can have a download and preorder a traditional CD and book package. The latter will be release in December. I expect that despite the availability of the download many fans will either buy the CD package initially or return later to buy it. Radiohead are likely to make a pile of money from this model both because of their fan base and due to the publicity that the action has generated. Typically a band would make more money touring than they would from CD sales mainly because their cut of the full retail price is so small. It is because they have so little to lose and that they want to get people to come out and see them that more bands will elect to forgo CD royalties in order to build tour revenues.

Back to publishing. What happens when John Grisham or Stephen King decide to forego a publishing contract and go direct? Well the truth of the matter is that it is already happening. Remember The Long Tail? The book was available for review and comment online long before it was finally published and this not only helped the author fine tune his argument it increased publicity for the printed book. There are other examples and the model will become more prevalent where authors either independently or with a publisher’s collaboration will allow free or discounted access to books both before and after publication.

The economic model may be less different between music and book publishing than is first thought. Related revenues in music come from merchandising and touring and in book publishing they can come from movie, tv, merchandising, and rights. Point is in both cases artists and authors and publishers and producers will increasingly be looking at the totality of revenue opportunities rather than in narrow terms. This could lead to some interesting new collaborations: the screen writer that signs a book deal with a movie producer, the musician who signs a CD deal with a book publisher, or the author that signs a deal with a tour organizer. To some degree these models are starting to become more apparent and as publishers we will need to think more creatively and in collaboration with the authors we publish so that we can remain competitive in an environment where the traditional boundaries are being eroded.

Posted by: Michael Cairns, Information Media Partners

What gives with these ‘literary’ competitions? Over the past year we have seen a number of large publishers launch the paper equivalent of American’s Next Top Model in a pageant likely to draw as much interest as the next blog launch: Oops, you missed it. As any aspiring novelist knows, assuming they are honest with themselves, the chances of getting a publishing house to respond let alone give their life’s work even fleeting notice is miniscule. Now this may not be the case with smaller houses but then who has the time or staff to review the slush pile with any degree of diligence? So, if the publishing companies are not facing some dire shortage of content what are they up to? Well just like American’s next Model, it’s really not about the pretty girls; it is about the people who watch the pretty girls. In the case of the publishing companies they are surely along for the ride as Amazon.com and Gather.com – two of the current partners of Penguin and Simon & Schuster respectively – look to increase awareness and traffic for their web based products and tools. So, should we be congratulating the publishing companies for being innovative and ‘with it’? This would be a reasonable reaction and perhaps they do deserve some kudos for the publicity and brand identification that goes along with the arrangement; however, these programs are paper tigers. I don’t believe they will have any positive long term impact on the publishing companies involved and in fact will influence a category of authors to associate Amazon, Gather.com and others as publishing platforms where they can develop, manage and launch their own content packages. Rather than partnering with these web platforms and social networks, publishers should be focused on developing their own capabilities that puts more control in the hands of their authors. In effect, publishers should themselves provide an umbrella of services for their authors that allow them to make some of their own decisions while still retaining the benefits of a relationship with a major publisher.
Posted by: Michael Cairns, Information Media Partners