I prepared this forecast for the winter issue of Slice, the newsletter of Potomac Indexing with a view to sharing it with the readers of ForeWord Magazine’’’s blog site. It was of interest to me that one way of looking at the cultural transformation of our industry, is the role of indexing, classifying, and keywording in the Web 2.0 world of today.

As we begin a new year, and the dust has settled on America’’’s watershed election, those of us who have been around awhile can look back with wonder at the remarkable transformations that have taken place in our society as a whole as well as in the publishing industry. We can also look forward with curiosity, if not some concern, at what the future portends. What is the state of our industry, and where is it going?

For indexers, the past, present and future of publishing as an information art and science should hold some comfort and predictability. It could not have escaped your attention that as digital search techniques and venues have expanded, the fundamentals of indexing have increasingly become the touchstones to information access and transfer. Knowing about keywords is not enough – one needs to intuit which words people will select in their searches, and how to incorporate the most effective selection in titles, captions, tables and text. One needs an organizing taxonomy to aggregate content for specific purposes and contexts, to provide a checklist of what has been searched and what has not been searched.

Recently, Google announced its new mobile device’’’s Barcode Scanner application that would enable someone to scan the barcode on a book and call up the work on Google’’’s Book Search, where the full power of keyword search would be available. ““Why would someone want to do that if they are holding the book in hand and can use the index to search the book?”” some have asked. Well, not all books have indexes, and no index, however complete, can reference every keyword on every page. And, ““find”” on the computer is a faster trip to a reference than is flipping to the page and looking for the right sentence in which the reference is lodged.

The concept of ““the wisdom of crowds”” is a major recent insight into mining true contextual keywording by drawing on the actual phrases people use when searching for and identifying information and concepts. Wikipedia is founded on this premise – that with enough people commenting on and contributing to a citation, with accountable mediation, the closest thing to an accurate definition can be arrived at. The now-common practice of blogs and other social networking sites to aggregate the keyword searches that visitors have used for an article, and to rank them by type size so that the most frequently used tags are highlighted, provides indexing cues as to how the ““crowd”” thinks of accessing a subject or theme.

So, what does this mean to the book industry? All of its new directions are based on technologies that are driven by algorithms that can distinguish the structure as well as the definitions of content based on these intelligent search insights. These insights are what make possible all of the developments I will be discussing.

The book, whether in its printed or electronic form, endures as a container that captures narrative, imagination, instruction, compilation – sacred or profane – in words or in pictures and even with embedded sound and animation. So, it would be fair to say in any review of book publishing industry trends that while its content formats and delivery systems are being radically transformed by disruptive technologies, we should not be thrown off balance. The fundamental editorial purpose of the book remains, whatever its form – and authors, artists, editors and publishers (or whatever they might be called – a rose is a rose) will continue to provide and shape that which everyone is busily indexing and keywording in this new age of search. The problem is how to make a living at it.

By the numbers

The Book Industry Study Group describes a $37.3 billion industry in 2007, which moved 3.13 billion net units (books) into the marketplace. Bowker reported more than 400,000 new ISBNs issued to over 80,000 self-identified publishers for the year – clearly a reflection of the explosive growth of independent, self-issued and on-demand publishing in the last five years. Ten years ago, new title output was around 60,000.

Growth in sales volume over the next five years is estimated at an average of around 2.5-3 percent per year – but unit sales will remain practically flat at 0.3 percent per year growth. This data only marginally reflects electronic publishing revenues – especially in the reference market – and only portions of the more than $1 billion audio book market. This year, the BISG has embarked on a major revision of its data reporting to take into account the new media and distribution channels that have emerged in the past ten years and whose dynamics are not measured by traditional unit print sales metrics.

While conventional publishing is projected to remain static or decline as a proportion of our population and gross national product growth each year, the internal dynamics of the industry are bubbling with possibility and invention – and if one looks at cyberspace, the Internet and Web 2.0 social networking as the new marketplace for ideas, information and stories, there are horizons out there yet to be measured.

So, here are ten of the most significant events and trends on the horizon:

1) Self-publishing and print on demand (POD) services, made possible by file-transfer technologies and such online publishers as Lulu, Blurb, Author House, iUniverse and xLibris, and POD services such as Lightning Source and Book Surge.

2) Reinvention of the bookstore through on-site book production and sales in book stores and libraries – one such mechanism is the Expresso Machine, now being installed in bookstores, libraries and airports, which enables paperback titles to be printed to order in minutes. The ABA has recently launched a program under which a bookseller can publish and sell on demand classic, out-of-print books.

3) The Book Rights Center, an ASCAP-like agency resulting from the landmark Google Book Search settlement, to be operated by the AAP and the Authors Guild as a clearing house for payments to publishers and authors by Google and others who are providing search access to copyrighted books. This agreement has also set the pattern for electronic rights business models.

4) Book Industry Study Group’’’s active role in developing and facilitating adoption of data management and transmittal protocols. Examples are the new Start with XML initiative to redefine publishing work-flow standards from a print-based to a digitally based platform, and its new Product Data and Product Label certification program for qualifying publishers.

5) Integration of conventional and electronic distribution of inventoried books with print on demand and electronic format services. The latest such initiative is by Perseus, the largest U.S. independent distributor to provide a digital asset management and POD distribution service. The University of Chicago has operated Bibliovault, a similar service for university presses, for years.

6) Cloud computing, in which data (in the case of publishing, content files) and software applications are stored and provided as an outsourced service through global data storage servers operated by aggregators such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, as well as by smaller targeted outsourcers.

7) E-book readers, such as Amazon’’’s Kindle, whose e-ink technology and wireless downloads have advanced from a limited special interest device to a more popular mobile device. Sony and other European firms are building markets for dedicated e-book readers as well.

8) Website widgets, enabling owners of content to plant a window with access to their intellectual property that they can control, on any web site that will accept it.

9) Web 2.0 and social networking tools that create content through feedback to authors and publishers, by anthologizing, customizing, and mashups.

10) Simultaneous multimedia publication of books in print formats, e-book, and audio form, with free online content (chapters or whole books) as promotional tools for sale of print products.

The aforementioned trends have yet to make a significant dent in anyone’’’s revenue or profit margin base. According to industry watchers and early adopters, the future revenue-generating power of these innovations in lies in the hands of the younger Internet generation for whom all forms of information access are equal as long as they are immediately at hand.

Of this I am certain: there is an exciting and creative future ahead.

Posted by: Eugene Schwartz, Editor-at-Large

The blogosphere among book industry professionals who follow trends has been in high alert as the transformative and the unexpected shake up our comfort zones almost daily. It is a perfect storm of a turbulent global economic outlook, providing an anchorless setting for an irreversable technological and cultural shift in both the marketplace and in the business models for the book industry. That is a mouthful—but one that needs to be digested.

The most recent visible signs of distress and tightening came in a rush the first week of December, which Book Business magazine characterizes as “A Week of Grim News for the Book Industry. Announcements were issued about restructuring at Random House NA and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt—both houses absorbing and eliminating legacy imprints and reducing staff, Simon and Schuster and Thomas Nelson layoffs—and the HarperCollins pay freeze.

To put these events in perspective it is required therapy to walk into a bookstore or a library regularly to connect with the situation on the ground. At the same time, the situation up in cyberspace is where the action is—Google, Amazon, Powells, Sharedbook, Fictionwise, BookReporter, LibraryThing, Lulu, SafariBooks, Lexcyle Stanza, Daily Lit—the list goes on of new ways that books are sold, new media in which they are delivered, and new social networks that thrive around them. And thousands of booksellers and independent publishers are building communities of interest and selling books on their sites.

The brisk activity among independent publishers—economic downturn notwithstanding—doesnt tell us anything about the long range—but with just in time print runs, and online demand publishers keeping demand printers working 7x24 this holiday season, print seems to be holding its own for the time being.

It is not clear even at this writing (first week of December) whether the holiday season will be as bad for bookselling as Barnes and Noble has been forecasting, but there is a seismic change going on for “big box” retailing. Writing for his blog, PersonaNonData, Michael Cairns observes that due to changes in consumer buying patterns “superstore physical book retailing, particularly its suburban version, may be a casualty.” At the same time, he notes, “it’s not all bad news.” Main street shopping may be returning, “which doesn’t compete with the web stores abundance but serves deeper consumer needs.”

The most recent up tick in discussion was promoted by Author’s Guild board member James Gleick’s November 30 New York Times article, “How to Publish Without Perishing.” He sets up the threat by observing that “as book sales plummet, amid the onslaught of digital media,” along comes Google’s epic settlement with authors and publishers for the scanning of all books into a universal library. “One could imagine the book, venerable as it is, just vanishing into the ether.”

But not so fast, he then cautions. In fact, “we’ve reached a shining moment for this ancient technology.” Publishers may not have figured out a way to make a lot of money on it, but “as a technology the book is like a hammer. That is to say it is perfect” for what it does. And like hammers will never become obsolete.

His point is that while there are many uses for the book that are better achieved in electronic form—especially, I would note,  for reference or search, for repurposing and multimedia, and while traveling for diversion, reading in snippets or immersive reading—there are other uses that will persist alongside of electronic media that have lasting value.

Perhaps his conclusion is overly romantic in its vision (although I agree), but for the “old-fashioned publisher” who is not going for the blockbuster book or the mass market as their salvation, he advises they go back to the idea that “the book is a thing of beauty.  Make it as well as you can. People will want to cherish it.”

Resting on this art-side of our industry as a business model may make a Godine or a Melville House, but it won’t make an industry. But I do think there are other aspects to the printed book as a technology that will keep it alive for some time to come.

That said, it behooves us to remember that what is in the book—the words and images that form the message—are the heart and soul of our experience. Digital technology, e-ink substitutes for paper, portable devices that offer convenience and their own art-forms as artifacts, environmental pressures supporting pollution-free delivery systems—all of these media options will find ways to deliver in an appealing fashion the words and images that form the message.

Publishers at their base find, mediate, deliver and call attention to the message. The book is one container of many. We have to be prepared to deliver that message in the form that the marketplace demands. That means in multiple media and with business models that enable us to stay in business.

To my way of thinking, independent publishers have a good future arising out of their ability to be opportunistic about how we deliver our messages. More and more, however, I think it will be the book as an art form, or as a convenience that will determine the survival of print. For most of the content we create that rely on words, digital forms will prove more convenient and will have become part of the every day culture of the generations of young people now growing up. Independent publishers should be building their futures around this fact.

Whither goest thou, codex?

Posted by: Eugene Schwartz, Editor-at-Large

Award winning philanthropist and businessman Eric Greenberg is the independent publisher and co-author with accomplished editor and writer Karl Weber, of  Generation We: How Millennial Youth Are Taking Over America and Changing the World (Pachatusan, 9780982093108, November). He expects to be on the way to a million or a million and a half free downloads with its launch on www.gen-we.com this past Monday. Printed copies of the four color illustrated, 256 page book will be available in October

The book is the outcome of Greenberg’s concern with the “abuse and erosion” of our American system, “—the concept of freedom under law and a flexible, balanced government responsive to the will of the people as formulated by our founders and delineated in the Constitution they wrote over two centuries ago.”

To reverse this abuse and erosion, he believes, is a mission for today’s generation of emerging leaders —the Millennials (people born between 1978 and 2000.). Muhammad Yunus, Founder of Grameen Bank and Co-Winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, recently validated this premise, when he said “I share the hope expressed by Greenberg and Weber that this new generation will help re-orient our planet and conquer the problems of poverty, war, and pollution that currently plague it."

“The We Generation” is a compelling public affairs and futures study, lends distinction to independent publishing, and delivers a powerful personal manifesto.

The Making of the Book

In preparation, Greenberg had read the writings of, and met with “many of the world’s leading experts on the major problems of our time, from our reliance on fossil fuels and our burgeoning burden of debt, to the deepening crises affecting the environment, health care, and education.” He met Karl Weber, who joined him as a collaborator in the research and writing of the book.

Greenberg engaged Gerstein/Agne Strategic Communications to conduct a comprehensive research study into the values and attitudes of the Millenials. It included a survey of 2,000 individuals aged 18 to 29, as well as series of 12 focus groups. Its cost—one to one and a half million dollars. The results of the study, details and transcripts of the focus groups are all available for free access on www.gen-we.com.

What they found in the main is that “the worldview of the Millennial generation is shaped by two overriding dynamics that set this generation apart from those that have come before them. The first is a commitment to the common good over individual gain, an ethos that reaches across traditional divisions such as race, ideology, and partisanship. The Millennials are not a ‘Generation Me’ but rather a ‘Generation We.’ ”

The second dynamic that fundamentally shapes the Millennials’ worldview “is a comprehensive rejection of the country’s current leadership and dominant institutions. Whether it is Congress and the federal government, major corporations, or organized religion, these young Americans believe the large institutions that dominate so much of our modern society have comprehensively failed, placing narrow self-interests ahead of the welfare of the country as a whole.”

According to the survey, Millennials by percentages ranging from 73-76% highlight a series of social and political issues they believe are being neglected:  “America’s dependence on fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and oil  . . . America’s dependence on foreign oil . . .declining quality and rising inequality in America’s public education system  . . .the rising cost of health care and growing number of uninsured… Lack of long-term job and retirement security . .  . Increase in obesity and chronic disease  . . .rapid shift of the U.S. economy from manufacturing to services”

While by a margin of almost two to one, Millennials say “they are less likely than previous generations to believe that government has a positive role to play. . . The scale at which Millennials want to tackle problems suggests a potentially large role for government. ”

Greenberg and Weber analyze the various issues and Millennial attitudes in detail. These observations and the survey results are the meat on the bone in this book and should serve as a wakeup call for every reader.

They then propose an agenda for the future.”History shows that every generation has a mission.  Some rise to the challenge nobly as the Greatest Generation rose to the challenge posed by the Great Depression and the rise of fascism . . .  Others muddle through, as the Silent Generation of the 1950s  . . .. For the Baby Boomers, the verdict seems to be mixed . . . as evidenced by a wealthy nation plagued by a sense of moral and spiritual emptiness.”

So it is the Millennials to whom the authors assign the cleanup. “We believe that Generation We, together with their supporters from other generations, can and will band together to create the greatest political force in the history of our nation. 

“The first step in the restoration of their birthright and the revival of the American dream: Project FREE, to technologically innovate the next generation of energy.  . . .  We must immediately implement an Apollo- or Manhattan-like project to invent new sources of non-fossil fuel energy free from carbon emissions, based on hydrogen, fusion, or other means.”

This isn’t just another blue sky energy program. It fits into a larger concept of what society is all about and how to get there. The authors show how the program will relate not only to national security, job creation, economic growth, and environmental sustainability but also to the societal transformation proposed.

While government action in the form of some central agency with a strong leader and budget will be needed, the ingredients for the social and political movement are in place in the form of the “real time society” network of the internet, Greenberg feels.

I am reminded of the dream that “If you build the field, the people will come,” to paraphrase the movie . I think this book can be that field.

Posted by: Eugene Schwartz, Editor-at-Large

“Generation We,” is not your typical independent publishing story. Yet it is emblematic of how independent publishing can provide a platform that will reach an instant audience in the narrowest or widest range.

It was just a week ago that industry futurist and consultant Mike Shatzkin broadcast a posting to his friends and colleagues announcing this remarkable forthcoming publishing achievement. It was only a month earlier that he was engaged by Greenberg to bring together the ingredients requisite to publication: a production supervisor (Brian O’Leary of Magellan Media) a printer (Quebecor), a publicist (Max Pulsinelli of Maximum Impact) and, with the help of Rich Freese, former CEO of PGW, .a distributor (BookMasters/Atlas in Ashland, Ohio).

Nor is it that Greenberg is your naive innocent operating on a shoestring. He already knew that going with a conventional publisher would mean giving up the production and marketing controls that were so important to his reasons for doing the book in the first place. Having poured over a million dollars into the research that led to the book, what he didn’t anticipate were the logistical intricacies that could impede a quick and effective launch—especially one that wants to be in the market before election day. Hence, Shatzkin.

Bringing the book out now was important because Greenberg chose independent publishing  as a platform from which he expects to accomplish nothing less than the mobilization of a new generation of 95 million Millennials in the cause of the social and political transformation of American politics. Catching the crest of the wave of election campaign interest will help his message become part of the national conversation.

The Personal Odyssey

How did this come about? After all, according to his Barnes and Noble.com bio, “Greenberg has founded and established many businesses in his entrepreneurial career including wind farms in partnership with Native American tribes in the Great Plains; Acumen Sciences and the Acumen Journal of Life Sciences; Scient, a consulting firm focused on eBusiness and emerging technology; and Viant, an internet systems integrator. An award-winning philanthropist, he was named by Worth Magazine as one of the 10 Most Generous Americans Under 45”

Greenberg writes in the book’s introduction, “Through hard work, applied intelligence, and good timing, I was able to prosper. By the turn of the century, I was a paper billionaire at 35 years of age...Although I was lucky enough to have  a stable relationship with my wife, everything else around me devolved into a pit of misfortune, conflict, and poor health. 

“I was miserable. By 2004, I weighed 275 pounds, was dependent on prescription medication, depressed, and sometimes selfish and thoughtless. The world was giving me a valuable lesson: Life is not about things and what you do for yourself.  I was imploding from my ambition-driven ego. My life was unsustainable...I closed my business and stopped working.”  

So it came to pass that an Emeryvlle, CA based business man, had his personal epiphany while in the Amazon jungle in 2006 during a two year process of self-renewal and rediscovery.

He returned determined to do something about the state of crisis he felt was undermining the foundations of American society. This story of personal transformation is a back story interesting and inspiring in its own right.

In addition to launching his Millennial generation project, Greenberg has applied his talents to a socially responsible enterprise as President and Chief Executive Officer of Beautifull, Inc. (Beautifull.com), “a prepared, fresh food company focused on providing tasty, healthy, and real food for retail and home delivery.”

As I listened to Greenberg in our interview and as I later read more of the book, I realized that Greenberg was looking for the “big idea”—a line of attack that would break out of the mold of the conventional with the prospect of leading to serious change. He wanted to find the fertile soil for new ideas, seed it, and enable a new crop of actors to grow and take over.

Once a Reagan Republican (for which he doesn’t apologize in the book), but now in a new place for social and political transformation, Greenberg remains an idealist, but is not a utopian. He is not advocating the overthrow of the system. “If we ever are going to fix the problems we have today we have to do it with political action,” he says, and it needs to be done within the system and within the two parties if possible.

He writes, “This book is for our future.  The most powerful force that can make our future better than our past is the youth binding together on the outcome, resolve, and political will to achieve it, no matter how they may differ on details of implementation. I’m not a member of Generation We, and I don’t aspire to lead it.  My great hope in writing this book is that it will inspire a handful of  great leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or Mahatma Gandhi to emerge and lead their peers.”

At its heart, the purpose of this effort, he told me is “to ignite a passion for the greater good.”

The name of his publishing house, Pachatusan, by the way, is taken from a holy mountain in Peru, which can mean, “he who sustains the world.”

Posted by: Eugene Schwartz, Editor-at-Large