Publishing Matters

Saber Es Poder and the Wisdom of Crowds

2008-05-08T06:15:52.6743879-07:00

To know is to have power. Or, in a more muscular way, knowledge is power.

This old maxim, that I first learned in my high school Castillian Spanish class many moons ago, comes to mind as the world of words and pictures and intellectual property is being roiled about by the explosion of digitally based media and instant communication through wireless and the internet.

Do we really understand what it is "to know"? Does it make any difference what is true or not true? And if it does, is there some standard by which we can reach that conclusion? And, even if we are never certain that we know the truth, do we believe that it is knowable?

This is heavy duty philosophy on the one hand – but is also a very simple and practical question whose answer governs how we approach everything we do. It is certainly at the heart of how we see our mission as publishers – of what each of us chooses to publish and why.

Generations of human beings today are being introduced to information and ideas with the expectation that they will be instantly available and instantly validated by virtue of the number of unique visitors, eyeballs, hits, user reviews or comments that accumulate around a citation or a work on Google, Yahoo, You-Tube, Slate, Drudge Report, Huffington Post, Move On, Wikipedia, or you name it.

If enough people line up behind an idea or a fact, that becomes the metaphysical truth of the moment. If enough people desire to have unrestricted access to words or music or images, the wisdom of crowds will view barriers to access as elitism or Berlin walls to be scaled.

If Wikipedia says it is so, even if with a warning that more editing is needed, the information becomes the fact for the day – suitable for a term paper or inclusion in an essay or opinion piece.

These facts and truths of the day carry the enormous power of knowledge into the market place of human behavior and social action. Instant communities coalesce around what later may turn out to be a misquote, a mis-attribution, a misplaced decimal point, an incomplete or out of context citation, a plagiarism or a made-up observation.

Gone are the days when one had to reason their way through an argument, support it with documented attributions, relate it to universal truths already known or hypotheses previously investigated. Buzz words, slogans, talking points and conventional wisdom pass comfortably among us as the stuff of conversation and dialogue. Ad hominem attacks against the messenger serve to invalidate or quash discussion of the message.

On the other side of the coin on the knowledge issue, Chris Anderson (of The Long Tail) has figured out that to offer content free can be a gateway to drawing eyeballs like flies to pop-up ads pre-targeted to qualified prospects. Cheering him on, the wisdom of crowds says that content should be free in the first place.

Global search disseminates knowledge to the widest audience – now a metaphor for the library of the universe. Because it has brought together at virtually no cost markets as small as one, not to mention markets of millions, and has empowered us with instant access to new knowledge, the wisdom of crowds says it is fair use to copy anything for search and from search regardless of the creator's wishes.

Rachel Donaido writing in the Sunday Times Book review on April 27 observes that "everyone has a story – and everyone wants to tell it." Hence, according Bowker, she reports, "a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the United States in 2007, up from 300,000 in 2006."

This huge addition to the global archive of information and ideas is staggering in its dimensions. Book reviewers, librarians, booksellers and researchers despair at the challenge to seek out those titles worthy of referencing and spending time with.

So what does all this mean? We still have a collective memory (first-hand or passed along) of the analog era of the printed word when a publisher's imprint meant that some entrepreneur had put their assets at risk to bring out books they though were worthwhile.

Relying on a marketplace to validate their judgements, this was a form of self-screening quality control. Editors, reviewers, librarians and researchers vetted manuscripts and fact-checked each other in a process that could take many months to many years. There is the feeling that this process yielded up more literary merit, screened out the unfounded and properly labeled the opinionated.

Well, those of us who have been paying attention, know that it was also a process that excluded the unnoticed, unseen and unappreciated, and edited out the unpleasant or undesirable – with little transparency that needed to withstand the wisdom of crowds. In the realm of education and opinion it nurtured as much mythology as it did what we consider the truth of the matter.

What I come to in this brief musing on knowledge and power is to observe that because the power of knowledge drives all human judgement, understanding what we call knowledge and how we arrive at it is paramount to our survival as a species that needs to master its circumstance if it is not to be overcome by it.

Because we are all of us subject to error and mis-judgement, it is better to have many ways in which our findings and opinions can be challenged, as well as many ways by means of which people can bring their versions of things into the arena for examination.

Placing the dissemination of knowledge in the hands of professionally trained and credentialed gatekeepers who earned their position by education, training and marketplace forces has the benefit of enabling us to rely on easily identifiable authority to validate the information and ideas we depend on. But it also true that while these gatekeepers could more easily control what found its way into the market, they were also highly visible and it was possible to check out their sources and validate them.

The wisdom of crowds replaces these well-identified knowledge sources with a vast uncertainty as to the source of that wisdom – but because it is so much more diverse and readily challenged, untruths are more readily exposed and quickly become subject to challenge by those same crowds – and more new truths find their way into the marketplace.

The problem and the challenge as I see it is not 400,000 new books a year of uncertain credibility or the subjective wisdom of crowds passing judgement. It is that we are in a marketplace of ideas and information in which the challenges of absolute dogmas, fundamentalism, and made up realities are not being met by an equally persuasive reliance on reason and philosophy as a means of arriving at truth and judgment and by a willingness to advocate for the importance of reasoned judgment arrived at independently,

The value of crowds is not to determine the truth, but to challenge its advocates to make their case without needing a crowd to validate it. Without advocates there is nothing for the crowd to challenge – so it creates its own truth by its sheer numbers and the lack of, or suspension of independent thought by individuals among its numbers.

Knowledge, to my way of thinking, comes about because of independent thought and reasoning. It is a cognitive function which, when applied is enormously powerful because it activates our creative and purposive faculties. And those faculties brought to bear in the coalescing of crowds now possible in cyberspace es muy poderoso - is very powerful indeed, if I have that right.

A New Look at Amazon: Threat or Opportunity?

2008-04-24T08:12:18.8465479-07:00

For the past three weeks or so a lot of digital ink has been spilled weighing the pros and cons of Amazon's announced decision to require publishers to store POD titles with BookSurge if they want Amazon customers to rely on 24-hour shipment for fulfillment on demand rather than from inventory.

Let me say at the outset that there is a lot more here than meets the eye – and in my opinion under-utilized market forces that can restore confidence among publishers are still alive and well, and need to be dusted off and activated. Amazon's move may represent opportunity rather than threat.

What is clear so far is that conglomerate and mid-range publishers are not seriously affected by the Amazon move since very few rely on POD for book-at-a-time fulfillment; rather they follow demand printing and short run strategies. Nonetheless it is known that Amazon had been pressuring and/or negotiating with selected publishers to commit their pod lists to Book Surge.

It also seems to be the general consensus that along with this requirement publishers are having to negotiate unfavorable arrangements and uncertain quality without the option of a competitive choice or else place titles, at addtional expense, with more than one POD printer to gain the distribution advantages that might accrue.

Those who are – or will be – affected are smaller publishers, self-publishers and author-publishing services who have relied both on not having to maintain inventory and also on the shorter discounts they could offer, making it possible to keep their retail prices competitive or to increase their margins while absorbing the increased unit cost of print on demand. Of course, at this writing I have no idea who is in or out. Many are complaining, few are talking.

For the demand publishing community the wake-up call is that there are other online channels and retailers to which they can direct their customers – Barnes and Noble is probably the best positioned because of their full service B&N.com web site as well as their network of stores.

B&N provides the same transparent 24-hour shipping service to its online customers for any titles placed with the Lightning Source. POD publishers who no longer have the "order now" status with Amazon can be referring customers to B&N instead of to Amazon. Other retailers have an opportunity here to step into the breech.

There are at least a half dozen viable online retailers in addition to Amazon who can also create "in stock" arrangements with Lightning Source. There are at least a half dozen other significant digital demand printers who also serve as repositories for the title libraries of demand publishers or for long tail lists of conventional publishers. Online retailers should also offer sales fulfillment arrangements with these other POD printers.

In my opinion the publishing industry trade associations – PMA, SPAN, ASJA, Authors Guild, AAP, AAUP,ABA, BISG – should create a working committee to develop a best practices code for keeping the internet marketplace open to POD fulfillment and to facilitate for other online retailers and digital demand printers who want to open up sales opportunities similar to the one that Amazon had been offering.

I think it would be a more efficient expenditure of funds for legal advice to activate such a group than going to court to sue Amazon.

There is no doubt in my mind that Amazon is improperly bundling its wholly owned printing service by limiting non-inventoried 24-hour POD shipment to publishers who place titles with Book Surge – especially as it is commonly known that they are doing this selectively and that they continue to drop ship direct from digital printers anyway when they need to.

I also think we don't have a fair trade situation in the retail distribution of POD titles generally. I am told that different kinds of deals are being negotiated with different publishers by Amazon that are not justified by variations in cost or other logistic considerations. Whether that is in fact so is hard to verify since there is no communication here. Nonetheless it is the demand printers like Lightning Source who determine the efficiency of service, not the small one-title or mid-range many-title publisher.

While Amazon remains opaque and elusive after a brief effort to explain itself and respond to the explosion of negative reactions from the publishing community – I do not believe they are immune to market forces nor to the benefit of maintaining good relations with the people who produce the books they sell. (Of course I don’t have any evidence of this at the moment, since from what I have been able to discover they have been cherry-picking their publishing targets for BookSurge and make no plans public.)

For the moment they have the upper hand, earned by their success in building a fabulous marketing and sales channel for books, although they have been wielding it crudely and unilaterally. With the major exception of bundling their own printer selectively, their moves are within their rights to determine who they will do business with, what discounts they are willing to pay, and now they will ship.

The most efficient antidote is to activate immediate market alternatives such as I have suggested above. There are also longer term strategies. For example, Michael Cairns writes on his blog (April 1 http://personanondata.blogspot.com):

"Perhaps it is time for publishers to be more aggressive in becoming retailers as well as content producers. If so, it’s not as simple as setting up a store front that looks like a mini-version of the Amazon bookstore (obviously) since no one would switch. However, publishers do have the direct relationship with the author and can use this exclusivity to build a more robust presentation of the content. On Amazon you get the Buick version but on the Publisher site you get the Cadillac. None of the added or supplemental content would be made available elsewhere. What that extra content would be I don’t know. Maybe every author is twinned with an additional writer and site designer that builds/creates websites focused on the authors work but with far more expansive material about the works, process, background details, audio, video etc., any of which could be purchased by a consumer. This becomes the new marketing and promotions approach or the way to spend money that is traditionally allocated to print advertising, book tours and launch parties."

As Tim O'Reilly said recently, "Amazon has, so far, created huge value for the publishing ecosystem. Now, as they become more powerful, they need to be especially watchful that they don’t irreparably damage an industry on which they, too, depend."

In the past three weeks or so I have spent a fair amount of time networking with trade association people, industry analysts, distributors, wholesalers, publishers, digital demand printers and, yes, a few go-rounds with Amazon's Director of Corporate Communications, Patty Smith (psmith@amazon.com), until she fell silent.

In fact, falling silent seems to be the default position for the main actors in the demand printing and distribution chain. Until now, Amazon's powerful presence and occasional arbitrary moves had by and large been viewed in the industry with tolerant appreciation for the value it has added to the reach of booksellers and the search of readers.

The new silence is a self-imposed defense by major players in the distribution chain who have just seen how Amazon can wield its power at will and threaten the many business models built around its marketing gateway. Amazon sees it differently - as a reasonable move to improve efficiency and customer service.

Our trade organizations should rise to the occasion and collectively seize the initiative to activate marketplace options for an industry that seems for the moment frozen in fear, anger or frustration.

Amazon: The Digital Warehouse and Distributor of Choice?

2008-04-14T07:42:15.8822055-07:00

A guest blog by publishing attorney Lloyd Jassin

NOTE FROM EUGENE: I have been gathering background on the recent Amazon change in POD order fulfillment policy and will be doing my own report on it next week. Meantime, I asked Lloyd Jassin, a publishing attorney and Chairman of the Executive Committee for the NY Center for Independent Publishing, for comments on the current debate concerning Amazon's new policy. He has provided the following as a private citizen-professional, and not in his capacity with the NYCIP. He can be reached at Jassin@copylaw.com.

As the market changes and we move from traditional distribution options to digital distribution options, I find Amazon's move both troubling and exciting. They want to be active all the way along the supply chain from production, to marketing to distribution. As Amazon gets more involved in digital production and distribution, it's not long before they figure out that there should be an Amazon-based publishing company. Well, on the audio side, they've already figured that out. That's the troubling part.

It's a brilliant move. You have to admit. By force of will, Amazon has become the digital asset warehouse and distributor of choice. And, how many digital asset warehouses / distributors do we need? This gives Amazon the ability to manage digital files for POD, ebooks, mobile phone devices, etc. The exciting part is that when Amazon takes this next step, it will create new revenue streams for smaller presses.

While it doesn't look like the cost of gaining access to the number one online bookstore has gone up, I'm concerned about their monopolistic tendencies. Their claim that they are not seeking exclusively (i.e., requiring POD titles be printed exclusively through Book Surge), seems to be a subtle bit of specious reasoning. Amazon's gain is the ability to monopolize the POD market. They are offering a single printer option. Your email makes that clear.

If I were a publisher, I'd look hard at the current industry model. You have the potential to get squeezed on both ends. For example, you've got the Barnes & Noble - Sterling combo with an increasing number of book sales being titles self-published by B&N. Same deal with Amazon and Audible, both of which are actively going after new product to self-publish. See Amazon's Createspace. To the extent publishers covet virtual shelf space at Amazon (with one-click ordering), Amazon's move makes them the leading POD publisher. Of course, there will also be a plethora of other digital opportunities, including e-reader, iPhone and other selling opportunities, that they should exploit for those whose files have been entrusted to them.

Their virtual warehouse of digital files can now be accessed for all manner of digital derivatives. If Amazon remains committed to the indie press segment, which has been allowed to grow to its present size due, in large part, to Amazon, that's great. Their favoritism to Book Surge, is a slippery slope that can easily decrease diversity. They are steering consumers to books that are produced by their owned and operated press.

So, as a general proposition, I think vertical integration is a bad thing. Perhaps, the market will correct itself, as publishers move over to B&N, and other digital asset distributors pop up. Likely, that won't happen. Book distribution is not sexy enough.

If I had to prognosticate, I'd say in the next 24-months Google buys Ingram (Googlegram?) and out-Amazon's Amazon, by creating the ultimate digital warehouse - distributor in the sky.

If Google were to exhibit digital favoritism, it would steer book buyers to its wholly owned Lightning Source. Amazon owns the store. Google owns the web. Amazon merchandises books. Google sells them contextually. Balance is restored to the planet.

-Lloyd Jasssin

Is Google the Next Stage of Evolution of Life on Earth?: A Guest Blog from Michael Cook

2008-04-03T08:59:19.8230000-07:00

Note: The impact of Google on the way we do business is really a by-product of much more significant culture change in the evolution of human society. Michael Cook, a Managing Director at AG Asset Management, a money management firm in New York City, who is also an essayist, gave me permission to share his thoughts with you. He can be contacted at mcook@ag-am.com.
—Eugene G. Schwartz, Editor at Large

Life as we know it depends on DNA to transmit information from one generation to the next. Until the appearance of the human race, this was the only way favorable adaptations were retained. Thus, only those adaptations that were genetic in nature drove the progress of evolution. With the invention of language, however, a new type of evolution could occur—what Julian Huxley termed “psycho-social” evolution. The DNA of this evolution is language, and with language came the ability for humans to transmit information from one generation to the next linguistically, as well as genetically. This meant that adaptations innovated by individuals not only could be continued and built upon, but also that individual learning could accumulate from generation to generation. This sped up the pace of evolution immeasurably.

The accumulation of social knowledge brought with it new dilemmas. After a period of time, the traditions and knowledge of the human species became so vast that storing it efficiently became difficult. Oral tradition depends upon memory, which is limited. The art of memory systems was developed by the Greeks to extend the range of human memory, and the poetry of Homer used rhythms, rhymes, and other patterns to aid the memory so that it could retain vast amounts of cultural information. But these techniques were limited: ultimately the problem of storing what we could loosely refer to as the psycho-social “genome” became serious. This problem was solved by the invention of writing systems.

However, to be useful, information must not only be stored, it must be retrieved. Fairly recently in human history it was possible to have every book ever written on your bookshelf. The invention of the printing press was a watershed event in the technology of writing, which ensured that this could not remain true for long! Nevertheless, the retrieval of information from the general store was still something that could be done in a fairly straightforward manner. Of course, centers of learning—monasteries, universities, libraries – developed to manage the growing base of human knowledge. But at some point, it started to become clear that the problem of information retrieval was becoming a roadblock to the continuing development of knowledge. It also became clear that computer technology was well suited to addressing the retrieval issue.

In 1965, J.C.R. Licklider wrote Libraries of the Future, which summarized a project he had undertaken at Bolt Beranek and Newman. In his book, Licklider predicted that all human knowledge would be available on a “fast, random access computer” by the year 2000. His vision seems to be coming true. In December 2004, Google announced a project in which the libraries of five of the world’s leading academic institutions are to be digitized and made available for search and reading online.

But still, even if everything is “available” online, how can relevant information retrieval be effectuated? This is the key problem that Google addressed, and its successful solution to it, although just a beginning, essentially created the “search” industry. Google’s initial solution is called the PageRank algorithm. It was the breakthrough that started delivering search results that are relevant to the user’s search. Before Google, this had really not been the case. Their insight was to use the link structure of the web—the fact that web documents “point” to other web documents - to measure how popular sites were, and to then trust the “wisdom of crowds” by using a site’s popularity as a measure of its relevance. This, in conjunction with the appearance of search terms on the site, proved to be a surprisingly effective ranking mechanism, and the first algorithm that consistently gave users results they found useful.

At present the search industry is evolving very fast—everybody seems to have incorporated Google’s insight into their algorithm, and the race is on to understand what users mean, and what they are intending with their searches. Google’s PageRank algorithm does not address semantic content: indeed, this is part of the genius of the solution—the way it neatly sidesteps this very difficult problem. The next generation of Web Search is yet to come! But the major breakthrough that made search results relevant was invented and engineered by Google.

So here’s the progression as I see it—the thumbnail sketch of the evolution of life on earth: DNA, language, writing, printing, computers, the Internet, Google’s search algorithm.

This is why I say that the future of search is the future of life on earth, and that Google’s algorithm represents a watershed event, analogous to the invention of writing, or the invention of the printing press.

Am I overstating my case? Perhaps. But I don’t think so.

—Michael Cook

When is a publisher a publisher?

2008-03-20T08:39:39.0480000-07:00

Conventional, self publisher, author services, subsidy press, or vanity press?

We are once again challenged to define what makes a publisher a “legitimate” publisher by the recent dust-up – as yet unresolved – created by the Romance Writers Association’s disqualification of Tsaba Press authors for its award competitions. It did so because it decided the Press is a “subsidy” house.

This writer is satisfied beyond doubt that Tsaba is the archetype of a small independent commercial publisher that fulfills all of the requirements for such a classification. It is neither a vanity, self-publishing or author-services enterprise. It does not charge authors a fee to be published. It is accepted by the Library of Congress for cataloging in publication (which does not accept subsidy publishers), and it is distributed by STL, the largest Christian publishing distributor in the U.S.

So, what is the problem? It may rest in the democratization of the industry due to technologies that have made it easy for thousands of new publishers to come on line each year and hard to identify their business standing.

There was a time, say twenty five years ago, when the book industry recognized in the main three kinds of business models: conventional publishing, self-publishing and vanity publishing. These in turn could be grouped as top tier commercial publishers (the “big ten” with revenues of over $500 million in today’s dollars) , second tier (the next 750 with revenues of over $50 million), and some 10,000 independents, non-profits and vanity with revenues from $50,000 to $50 million.

Vanity publishing was a no-no, and still is, as far as the commercial book industry is concerned: a no-no because the business model exploits authors who seek a commercial market by implying commercial outcomes that they can’t deliver, and by requiring large investments in pre-press and first printings with no screening for literary merit or prospects of reaching any market.

Self-publishing was, and is seen by some to be in a gray area of legitimacy because of the lack of an arms-length risk investment by a third party entrepreneur and of an editorial quality-control gateway that will critique an author’s manuscript without fear or favor.

The up-side that tilts self-publishing on the side of legitimate commercial publishing is that the self-publisher often engages professional editorial and design outsources, risks an investment and takes on promotion and marketing with the intention of commercial success, or the expectation of absorbing losses, and with full knowledge that it depends on his own promise . Occasionally a self publisher will also build a diversely authored publishing list around his or her titles.

Both self-publishing and vanity publishing are variants of “subsidy” publishing, along with author investments and partnerships that otherwise conventional, third-party publishers will occasionally make to bring costly works with limited sales potential into the market. These “subsidy” models, however, do involve host publisher risk, as they require the full devotion of the publisher’s infrastructure, and they also reflect upon the quality of the publisher’s overall list.

Now, in the era of electronic and demand printing, the barrier to entry has lowered substantially – it is possible to bring a title into print electronically with virtually no infrastructure investment or inventory – sell first and print later.

As a result, a significant industry niche has emerged in the form of author services or author-driven publishers such as Author House, iUniverse, Lulu, Book Surge, Infinity, XLibris, to name but a few. Their business models offer authors a complete publishing service at low cost, using the sell first print later model. They do provide a legitimate marketing and internet distribution model which is not exploitive. They have provided logistical backbone to the thousands of aspiring author/publishers who enter the lists each year, using professional outsource consultants and services, and joining PMA, SPAN or the many regional independent publishing groups for support and education.

They contribute to the flood of some 200,000 or more new titles published each year. (As staggering as this figure may be, good books do emerge and often later get picked up by conventional publishers. They also win book awards from time to time.)

So, one imagines that the Romance Writers Association, as sponsors of the RITA and Golden Heart awards, for published and unpublished writers respectively, would be concerned over how to screen in advance whether candidates had passed professional muster in the industry.

The RWA criterion for entry is that “Books must be published by a publisher that is a non–Subsidy, non-Vanity Publisher. An eligible entry must meet these criteria:” With so many new and therefore relatively unknown publishers entering the lists each year, an entry’s provenance may not be self evident relying simply on the entrant’s claim. So, in the case of Tsaba, RWA asked for backup demonstrating they Tsaba was, indeed, not a vanity of subsidy publisher.

Tsaba submitted a copy of its boilerplate contract which included the traditional provisions requiring authors to cover the costs of any artwork or additional manuscript copies, indexes, author changes to proofs, and revisions to a new edition if the author was unable or unwilling to provide the revision.

RWA classified Tsaba as a subsidy publisher on the basis of these provisions. A quick trip to the Authors Guild Model Trade Book Contract and Guide would have confirmed that provisions such as these are part of every standard publication agreement.

Tsaba’s grievance, beyond having its romance authors disqualified from competition, is that to be deemed a subsidy publisher by a reputable professional organization is demeaning to its business standing and its ability to recruit authors. As I have shown, given the way “vanity” or “subsidy” publishing is viewed by the industry, RWA clearly has good reason to impose its filter. Having exercised that right, RWA also has a responsibility to exercise it prudently and fairly. It does not appear, on the surface, that they have done so.

Various appeals have been made to RWA to reconsider its designation of Tsaba as a subsidy press, including one by this writer in behalf of ForeWord Magazine. It will be interesting to learn of their response when it is forthcoming.

OUR WORLD IS CHANGING – WHERE IS IT GOING? The new era of utility computing and free sharing

2008-03-03T07:26:20.0249715-08:00

If you wonder whether the publishing industry is riding a current of uncertain destiny, it is. This uncertainty resides in the forms in which ownership and access to what we know as intellectual property will be re-shaped by the next stage of utility computing and the many ways, as a consequence, in which intellectual property will be accessed and freely shared.

"What happened to the generation of power a century ago is now happening to the processing of information . . . .Computing is turning into a utility, and once again the economic equations that determine the way we work and live are being rewritten."

Anyone in the book business who reads this and how the author backs it up in Nicholas Carr's new book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (Norton, 2008. 978-0-393-06228-1) will come away with a profoundly useful understanding of the forces at work in our world of intellectual property . . . or will decide this is just another blue sky thesis with doom at the end of its rainbow.

I am in the former camp. Maybe I missed the obvious until now, but I was so blown away by the insights in the book and their explanation of why businesses from Google and Amazon to Salesforce.com, Wikipedia and You Tube are forever reshaping our forms of social, political and economic organization that I read it in a 24 hour cycle spanning two days – which for me, the chronic slow word at a time reader, was a tour de force.

Think of free applications, utility computing, world wide computer, universal computing grid, virtualization – all terms that describe the inexorable transfer to the world wide web of computing power from packaged and distributed software on networked work stations and scores of thousands of corporate servers all performing the same functions on replicated software for their fire-walled in-house enterprise.

What makes it inexorable are the economic imperatives. And keep in mind that in the digital and internet world e-books are analagous to distributed software products.

To think of an analogy: tracking the explosion of technologies in the digital age has been for me like being out on the high seas propelled by currents of unknown origin and destination whose secrets were known only by others, and then, with this book, being handed a chart and compass that enables me to steer my course. It doesn’t guarantee that I will choose the right course, but I at least have some idea of what I am dealing with.

While reading the book I came to realize that letting go of my traditional concept of possession will open me up to a higher order of ownership of my time and my human potential. But of more immediate value, I have begun to understand what is happening in our book business – the incredible opportunities that lie ahead as well as the unsettling threats to our well-ordered notions of intellectual property and of what it means to publish.

On a global scale Carr takes us through a description of the dozens of "server farms" that Google has set up around the world. In each of these facilities are scores of thousands of simple hard drive server computers stacked in frames, grouped in clusters that in turn are managed in each center in a way that links them to what in effect is a single global computer that can perform the millions of simultaneous tasks in nanoseconds that yield up the search results we see on our screens. If one ore more of these servers blows out, there are 500,000 others to take its place.

The leap beyond the obvious is that these farms (as with many smaller but substantial computing clusters in other enterprise computing centers) are designed to handle whatever the conceivable peak load demand might be at one time or another – which means that most of the time there is excess capacity lying idle.

That excess capacity is what makes it possible for Google, Amazon and other computational giants to offer their storage and computing capacity as an outsource more economically than any single company can manage on their own. (Google Apps, Amazon Web Services).

At the other end of scale, smaller and more focused operations can use virtualization to "rent" capacity to many independent computer systems.

Now you know why Microsoft, also building its own server farms, is going after Yahoo. Carr quotes an October, 2005 memo from Bill Gates, "The next sea change is upon us. . . .The broad and rich foundations of the internet will unleash a 'services wave' of applications and experiences available instantly . . .services designed to scale to tens or hundreds of millions [of users] will dramatically change the nature and cost of services deliverable to enterprises or small businesses."

Major corporations have begun to outsource their utility computing by renting computer capacity and computer system services distributed to thousands of terminals that themselves do not store programs or hard drive data.

Carr also takes through the many ways any consumer can build complete audio, graphic and video files and productions using swift and sophisticated high end tools on line at no cost (i.e. no more off the shelf purchase of software). His archetype consumer moves from a cameraphone video to upload on You Tube, accessed on his own blogsite (from Wordpress), sharing photos on Flickr and retouching them on Phixr. Using Last.fm that monitors his music playlist his top 10 are automatically tabulated and shared with his blog site friends in a widget provided by another service. Finally, MyBlogLog enables him to track his visitors, and through an account with Feedburner set up an RSS syndication for blog visitors who click the subscribe button they provide.

This growing universe of free software applications and services, the social networks and communities of interest that can move into action almost instantly, are forms of empowerment that new generations are taking for granted – they threaten the old formats of print and analog media to the extent that the latter become increasingly irrelevant to the way people actually communicate on a day to day basis.

Carr's comparison of the evolution of the computing industry with the growth of the electric power industry since the days of Thomas Alva Edison and Samuel Insull at the turn of the last century is carefully measured so as not to mix apples and oranges – but holds up in their economic fundamentals. Each is what economists call a General Purpose Technology (GPT) – "best thought of not as discrete tools but as platforms on which many different tools or applications can be constructed." If their supply can be consolidated, "they offer huge economies of scale."

In the early days of electric power at the turn of the last century, Edison's model called for local generating plants serving small neighborhoods, and individual plants powering each manufacturing facility. Insull, once mentored by Edison, realized that with the replacement of DC current (efficiently transmittable only for relatively short distances) with AC current, economies of scale could be realized in large central power plans that served homes and industries in large regions.

It took a number of years to persuade businesses to give up control of their own power generation – to get out of the energy business and concentrate on their manufacturing business. Ultimately this began to happen at an accelerated pace as industry saw that the central services were in fact more reliable, relieved them of the need to have specialized technicians on their payrolls, and that hooking up was a competitive necessity.

Behind the headlining of Microsoft's reach for Yahoo and Google's relentlessly expanding digitization of the universe of knowledge lies this inexorable transformation of information processing. from the distributed redundancy of the same software utilities on billions of computers, to networked connections to leased, protected and backed up data storage and computer power residing in bits and pieces in stacks of computer drives housed in server farms around the world.

There are other aspects of global computing and the tracking and serving of consumer interests that have disturbing implications that Carr discusses in some depth that I will leave for another occasion. As a general proposition it has to do with driving people further and further into their social, economic and political safety zones through preference tabulation and reinforcement. The huge amount of diversity served by the internet and wireless communication is not necessarily bringing everyone together unless deliberate efforts are made to re-create the concept of the "commons" on a global scale.

I don’t believe that what we know as books in the printed form will disappear in lifetimes to come– but how they will be made, and what other electronic forms will complement them are in some ways out of our hands. Disruptive technologies and business models are on the way.

Carr closes with an engaging observation about how despite the universal use of electric energy to light our homes, streets and businesses – the revolutionary candle wick that once brought illumination from the unwieldy cave wall torch to the table top remains in use nonetheless – as a safety and emergency device, and as a way for us to scale back into the elegant and relaxed associations it provides.

If we are lucky as well as smart, one or another of us will catch the wave. Creativity – known as content – will not disappear – but the packaging and serving of content will more quickly fall into the channels of "free" and the utility formats of search, repurposing and sharing.

What kind of business models – what ways of making a living will emerge?

Meantime, I wonder from time to time about what will happen when the Big Switch loses power, or gets turned off. It is a great science fiction thought.

Bookbuilders West Book Show Inspires and Innovates

2008-02-14T07:16:50.2692995-08:00

"If you don't have anyone to tell what is in your heart, it is bad. Man needs food and water, but is satisfied only when he expresses something." This paraphrase of the words of a Nepalese wise man appear in a moving short documentary presented at the Bookbuilders West 37th annual book show, awards luncheon and conference at the Oakland Convention Center on January 31.

The documentary is about "Room to Read," a program with which BBW has developed a partnership. Its mission is to establish schools, libraries and other educational infrastructure throughout the developing world. It was founded by John Wood, who cashed in his Microsoft stock options and has since helped build 1300 libraries throughout Nepal. The little kids eagerly engaging with books brought the soul of the book business into the room. (www.roomtoread.org)

It is a transforming Bookbuilders West that hosted more than 250 attendees at the event What had grown in previous years to an elaborate social occasion with a sit-down dinner and drawn-out presentation ceremony with entertainment, has been replaced by a conference format, with a thematically focused morning panel, luncheon awards and ample browsing time to view the books.

The award winners in seven categories (plus product catalogs) were chosen by a jury of 12 art directors/designers, production managers, editors and printers from among hundreds of submittals by Western states publishers. As in the past the show is populated by a good profile of university presses, independent trade publishers, and school and college publishers.

Books you may want to feature

The 36 winners included the following Judge's Picks (comments are from posted reviews):

Children's Trade: Marcello the Movie Mouse, by Liz Hockinson (KO Kids Books. 978-0972394628). Tiny Marcello Mousetriani loves movies and dreams of making a film of his own
Professional Trade: The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book, by Martin Evening (Adobe Press. 978-0321385437). Photographers will find The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book an indispensable tool in their digital darkroom.
Reference and Scholarly: New Perspectives on Pottery Mound Pueblo, Edited by Polly Schaafsma (University of New Mexico Press. 9780826339065). Contributors revisit Pottery Mound for new insights into inhabitants' regional interactions, migrations, and trade during the Pueblo IV period--
School Publishing: Biology, 8th Edition, by Solomon, Berg and Martin (Thomson Higher Education. 13: 9780495107057). Often described as the best text available for learning biology. Filled with resources.
Special Trade: Dona Thomas. Discovering Authentic Mexican Cooking, by Schnetz, Savitzky and Wille (Ten Speed Press. 978-1580086042). Delicious dining has turned Doña Tomás into a destination for happy patrons to sample chef Thomas Schnetz’s authentic Mexican cooking.
Trade, Image Driven: The Art of Korea: Highlights from the Collection of San Francisco Asian Art Museum, by Kumja Paik Kim (Asian Art Museum. 0-939117-38-x). More than 100 highlights of the collection, along with detailed commentaries by the museum’s emeritus curator of Korean art.
Trade, Text Driven: East Wind Melts the Ice, by Lisa Dalby (University of California Press. 978-0-520-25053-6,). "Dalby triangulates among the cultures and weathers of Berkeley, China and Japan, and presents a wealth of information

Browsing the books entries on the display tables, the following three caught my eye for elegance in design and interest in treatment:

Reading Writing , by Julien Gracq (Turtle Point Press. 9781933527024). A subjective history of fiction and poetry and a personal meditation on the links between literature and two visual arts: painting and cinema.
The World of Jules Verne , by Gonzague Saint Bris (Helen Marx Books. 978-1885586421). A magical passport into the extraordinary, visionary world of Jules Verne. Evocatively illustrated by Stephane Heuet.
Essentials of Italian , by Michele Scicolone (Williams Sonoma. 978-0848731205). The book reveals the secrets that regional Italian cooks have known for ages for preparing simple, flavorful meals.

New features and a Green Initiative highlight

With the intention of enhancing and providing focus to the show, the awards were presented by four industry professionals: Nancy Aldrich Ruenzel, Publisher, Peachpit Press; Mark Hertzog, Group Publisher, North American Publishing Company; Pat Soden, Director of the university of Washington Press; Debra S. Hunter, President, Jossey Bass; and Todd Sotkiewcz, President-Americas, Lonely Planet.

Two other features introduced at the show reflect an increasing interest by book professionals in the spirit and purpose of the businesses they are in.

The main event, was a two-hour presentation and panel discussion on "Green Initiatives: A Passing Fad or Essential Principles for a Healthy Earth?" Moderated by Vincent Caminiti of STI Books, the program opened with a presentation by Tyson Miller, founder of the Green Press Initiative.

Miller reported to a rapt audience on the increasing momentum among publishers for the adoption of goals for the use of recycled paper as well as for use of Forest Certified Paper. Soon to be issued by the Book Industry Study Group this spring will be its first Environmental Trends Report. Also in formation and to be announced at Publishing Business Expo in NYC in March is a new industry group, the Book Industry Environmental Council. (www.greenpressinitiative.org).

He was followed by Richard Walker, Ph. D., author of The Country in the City, The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Washington Press. 978-0-295-98701-9).Walker gave me a copy of his book, which I read and skimmed on my flight back..

The book is beautifully and evocatively written (design-wise, it would be worthy of the book show). For anyone interested in how civic engagement works below the national radar – beginning with the early national park (Muir), wilderness, city parks (Olmstead), and local preservation movements, the book is a fascinating compilation and narrative of the people and movements who launched what is now a national green awareness.

Walker is an avowed Marxist who writes, "my red side tells me I should have been more critical of everything and everyone, but my green side wants this to be an upbeat lesson in the art of the possible," and he advocates for using the levers of popular democracy to reign in the excesses of market economies. Considering his cheerfully acknowledged bias in the book, he exercises an admirable restraint and objectivity in his richly informative narrative and appreciation of how each of us can contribute to exercising responsible stewardship over our natural environment.

Richard Bowles of Intel Books and Bob Ernest, of Toyota Motor Manufacturing were the other members of the panel and discussed corporate environmental initiatives.

The New Bookbuilders West

I learned about the transformative plans for Bookbuilders West (www.bookbuilders.org) from Michele Bisson Savoy (Quebecor World), President, and Stephen Thomas (STI Books and Media), who will be assuming the duties of Executive Director under the aegis of Bookblock, a management company with whom BBW has contracted for management. This move will transfer much of the shirtsleeve administration from the shoulders of volunteers on BBW's board and committees.

BBW also sponsors its popular crash courses in book production, is scholarship program and education seminars. It has spawned a new offshoot that draws a number of the smaller publishers in the area, Bookbuilders West of North Coast "growing in leaps and bounds" that has monthly meetings and educations in Mendocino.

Also committed to outreach across the country, this year's book show had exhibits of winners from the Book Builders of Boston and Chicago Book Clinic. Together with the Bookbinders Guild of New York, the foregoing and BBW are vigorous organizations of professionals devoted to the making of books, who rest on the legacy of the traditional printed book and its design and manufacturing technologies, that are exploring ways to transform themselves as the stewards for crafting "content" in all of its new forms and technologies – and who are opening themselves to let some soul in.

When Joe Gonella, Barnes and Noble inventory management vp, several years ago started opening Book Industry Study Group meetings, of which he was then Chair, with poetry readings, I realized that then that the boiler room was connecting with the pilot house, so to speak – the business side and the art side of our industry (as Al Goodyear used to put it) coming into alignment.

What is the Library of the Future?

2008-02-07T07:59:06.0871250-08:00

In my last blog, I responded to a Library Journal piece by John Celli, former chief of the Library of Congress CIP Division, in which he challenged the library community to break out of its path and re-visit how we define the nature and purpose of the library. He also questioned whether current library establishments are in a position to take the intitiative. I suggested that individual libraries could do so anyway. Here is Celli's response to me. What are your thoughts?

-----Original Message-----

From: John Celli
To: Eugene Schwartz
Subject: Response to ForeWord letter

Dear Gene:

Maybe you are right and the library of tomorrow will spring from the initiatives of one of our public or academic libraries. But I think it's unlikely that we will see major innovation from the bigger institutions. Size per se does not incapacitate innovation. In the private sector, big firms produce break out products. But these large firms have the resources to invest in innovation and generally have significant R&D units. This is not the case with large libraries. They have declining budgets and are more inclined to focus on cost savings than innovation. And when they do launch a new initiative, it's generally ove! r burdened with committee planning and documentation.

The smaller or medium size libraries probably stand a better chance of creating a new concept of librarianship. They are also experiencing budgetary constraints, but are generally encumbered with less bureaucracy and consequently may be more agile. Ohio State University was the seed bed for OCLC--not the Widener Library, not the Library of Congress. In the private sector, some of the most innovative technologies were developed in small shops and non-shops by people charged with excitement about some loony idea. Driven by compulsion, they just tried things, and as they did, they learned, evolved their ideas, and, bingo, finally got it right.

But, big or small, I don't see anything really innovative coming out of any libraries. Like you I have recently had chance to visit a number of new and upgraded libraries. The libraries I have visited are in Vietnam where I am currently traveling, but your summary of observations of U.S. libraries lines up with what I have seen in Vietnam
--glassed walled conference rooms, shelving for audio and video media, books (though in Vietnam much fewer in number than in U.S. libraries) and comfortable reading area and, I would add, lots of terminals and wi-fi connectivity. But none of this constitutes a library renaissance.   Despite the well thought out space, the nice
light, the comfortable seating, ample automation, and Internet access, this does not constitute a leap into the future.

Invariably when we think of building a new library or upgrading an old library, we think of constructing or upgrading a library building, and as soon as we do that, we have shackled ourselves to 19th century thinking. Why a building? Because we need some place to put the books. Why the books? Because the books contain the information and creativity that the user wants. But what if the content is not contained in a physical medium? What if much, if not most, content is electronic, then what?

I am not saying that we don't need buildings. But I am saying that we have for much of our history correlated libraries with library buildings because of the dominance of books. From time to time we have tried to democratize the way we treat the various media in our collections, but this has resulted mainly in changes to cataloging rules--not a matrix shift in thinking--not a genuine recognition that we are in the content business, not the container business.

More and more content will be electronic. I think this is obvious to all of us. Consequently, when we build new libraries we would do well to think first of the library as an electronic platform rather than a building. If we start with this premise, we are more likely to rethink our concept of library service and to consider notions like a "push" service or a PBS model and so much more. The library of the future is neither a Carnegie like monumental temple of knowledge nor a sleek glass and steel testament to modernity. The library of the future is a cluster of automation equipment, applications, and connectivity designed to generate products and services that meet the information and entertainment needs of t! he community.

Once we rethink the library as first and foremost an electronic platform then the other important elements, like the building --its use, its design, size, perhaps, too, its location, can be reconceptualzed--and, very likely, reconceptualized in ways vastly different than our 19th century thinking allows us to contemplate today.

Best wishes,
John

Breakout Ideas for Libraries: An Open Letter to John Celli

2008-01-22T09:13:20.5680000-08:00

Note: John Celli is recently retired Chief of the Library of Congress CIP Division

Dear John Celli:

I thought some of your ideas in "CIP on the Moon" in Library Journal's "Net Connect" (Winter 2008) to be so promising that I want to share my enthusiasm over them with my blog readers at ForeWordMagazine.com in this open letter to you.

As a publishing industry trend-watcher and columnist I have taken to stopping in at small town and city libraries in the past year or so to get a feeling for what is going on as I travel around the country on other business.

In the main I come upon buildings newly built or in process of upgrading, wide area spaces or glass-walled conference rooms being used quietly or collectively to some reading, computer or discussion purpose, and lots of evidence of audio, cd and video on media shelves. And, yes, plenty of books and spaces to sit an comfortably read them – including floor areas in nooks and crannies.

When I visit, I also see libraries used as community centers and repositories of civic information resources. They are also entertainment centers –and I think that the notion you advance of adding to the stated library mission " to inform and entertain" is one of the several out of the box ideas that struck me as promising. Any teacher can confirm that learning takes root most effectively when inspired teaching viewed as a performance [entertainment] art. And as you note, "much of what we provide is clearly entertainment – novels, movies, music, etc."

Three of your other breakout ideas seem to combine well: (1) providing a content "push" service to patrons (as does the LOC to its Congressional patrons), (2) having certain key libraries, following the PBS model, serve as nodules that produce service programming that could be pushed out through a network of libraries to service a national subscriber audience, and (3) exploring with content providers ways in which libraries "might play a large and more active role in providing users a full range of content (including current releases)."

I think also in testing out new ideas for the distribution of copyrighted and licensed content, new business models could be tried. The library circulation model would especially lend itself to anything from pay for use to, what I think would be most promising, subscription based access to a prescribed range of content. Such usage based purchasing by libraries from publishers properly structured might enable libraries to better allocate their collection development funds.

You close your imaginative piece concerned that library systems as "all too well established" institutions might "respond to challenges with "endless debate;" and that "our leadership will not bring us to a new city on a hill by applying the same skills that maintained the old institutions."

As you also recognized, however, the majority of libraries are publics or academic institutions and are distinguished in their "core uniqueness" from mass media. Therein, I think lies the "city on the hill." Any library or library system, or informal consortium, that can bring together the "seed" resources can seek to build a nodule with a solely owned or collaborative service that could then be syndicated to other libraries. I suspect that many publishers would be eager to partner in such initiatives.

The journey to the city on the hill can begin in the hands of any librarian who wants to pursue it and can enlist the support of their on local director or library board. Hopefully your article shot an arrow into the air. . . .

Posted by: Eugene G. Schwartz

Is it Intellectual or Is It Property?

2008-01-07T08:24:20.6690000-08:00

In this era of the explosion of "content" and of ease of access to it, copyright law and publishing practice in the dispensation of rights to excerpt, anthologize and quote is actually creating barriers to creative literary expressions and academic writings in new forms of anthologies, collections and analytical works.

It has become increasingly evident in recent years that major aggregators of "content," (that is conglomerate book publishers who have amassed huge collections of backlist titles, or newspapers or magazines whose back issues reach back into generations of narratives), have begun to decouple the two parts of "intellectual property," in their business models.

Major publishers are abandoning the "intellectual part" -- their obligation as the trustees of our cultural archive of ideas and knowledge to facilitate its continued discovery, access and application. "Content," and the dispensation of rights to excerpt and collect it in other works and anthologies, are now seen increasingly and exclusively as a profit center –the "property" part.. Licenses are issued based on arbitrary assignments of value that have no relation to the capacity of the intended use to generate the revenue that would make it economically viable to re-use, or to make possible benefits to the advancement of knowledge and the arts.

By demanding unrealistically high prices (from hundreds to thousands of dollars) to use a paragraph or a page or two, a short essay or a news article in another work is creating a paradox – publishers are erecting barriers too costly to scale. Authors and other publishers cannot afford to take advantage of "the enhanced analytical methods and techniques of information science," that is providing "a changing map of knowledge as a source of books" made possible by the "electronic transition" that Peter Dougherty, Princeton University Press Director, wrote about in ForeWord's most recent eWord supplement.

The issue is highlighted in "What We Owe the New Critics," an article by Marc Bauerline, a professor of English at Emory University, in the December 21 issue of The Chronicle Review in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Although its primary thrust concerns compilation of a new selection of essays on the formalist study of literary language, the author devotes half the article to what are to me infuriating difficulties that the compilation's author, Garrick Davis, founder of the Contemporary Poetry Review, had in assembling the work, Praising it New: The Best of the New Criticism (scheduled to be published in 2008 by Ohio University Press in partnership with Swallow Press).

Bauerline gave me permission to cite from his article, and here are some examples of fees for permission to use essays: (1) on the manageable side -- $50 to $100 from New Directions, Kenyon Review and The Nation;(2) not likely manageable if not the exception -- $300 to $550 from University Press of Kentucky and Charles Scribner; (3) and then, the outrageous:

"He [Davis] asked Harcourt Inc. for permission to reprint an essay by Blackmur entitled 'A Critic's Job of Work,' and Harcourt came back with the outlandish price tag of $2,350. That sum was 23 times what New Directions had asked for a Pound essay. That must be a mistake, he thought. Blackmur's essay has no commercial value, and, as far as he knew, no for-profit press planned to reissue Blackmur's works. The Ohio press is small and will be happy if the volume sells a few hundred copies a year.

"Davis replied with an indignant note about the out-of-sight fee and asked for a reduction. Harcourt replied curtly and refused to negotiate. 'Because of the amount of material contained in the essay we are not willing to reduce the fee to what you are able to pay,' Christine Smith, paralegal, wrote. 'I have canceled the agreement and am sorry you will not be able to include it in your anthology.' She didn't explain what she meant by 'amount of material contained in the essay,' but her phrasing seems to refer to simple word count."

Upon appealing for a reconsideration, Davis received the following reply (sort of in the class of a form letter from the IRS), clearly from someone schooled by a system invented by a book publisher to be indifferent to scholarly or literary purposes:

"Because, as you were informed, the Blackmur agreement has already been canceled you will need to reapply if you care to use that material. Your previous e-mail was forwarded to Kent Wolf, Adult Subsidiary Rights Manager in our New York office."

Back in the days when I handled permissions as director of production at the Prentice Hall subsidiary, Goodyear Publishing Company, we charged permissions fees on a nominal page rate or on the basis of the use's prorated percentage of total text in the book multiplied by estimated revenues from the planned printings. It was a form of courtesy, as we expected the same consideration in return. When the use was not for profit or educational, we gave permission with the understanding of the limits on its use.

It is true, of course, that a publisher's most valuable asset is its intellectual property – more accurately, the rights that it owns to publish that property in various media, formats and languages to markets throughout the universe (as contracts now assert).

These rights do not appear on the balance sheet, except as they are reflected in advances or purchases. Most often, however, those costs have been long since amortized for back lists (or back issues in the case of periodicals), and they reside in the latent potential for commercial application or repurposing (e.g. creating a selection of out of print short stories by various authors.)

If the publisher has another profitable use (and by extension the author), of course they should exercise their right to publish in any form, or to withhold publication for a more propitious time. But arbitrarily withholding publication or holding out for arbitrary fees regardless of the intended use or its profitability to the user really shames the publisher for being so bound by the Property Mission as to have abandoned its Intellectual Mission's redeeming social purpose for existence.

The now 95 year span of copyright law (life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier), retrospective as well as prospective, when it was recently extended, is a far cry from the 14 years plus renewal that held until 1909, and 28 plus renewal years till 1978. It has exacerbated the negative effects of this practice as it can place some content out of reach for creative repurposing and analysis for generations.

In another blog I will discuss why the concept of intellectual property (which I believe in), gets abused when authors and publishers take for granted the culture on which they depend in order for intellectual property to have value in the first place.

What's on your mind?

Posted by: Eugene G. Schwartz