Elisabeth Sifton, in a long article that merits reading (“The Long Goodbye?" May 20, 2009), writing in the Nation with many years of experience in book publishing behind her, does a superb job of synthesizing and providing a chronology for the history of book publishing as a literary enterprise in the past century. She has shown how the manuscript selection and vetting process worked competitively and creatively through numerous independent publishers and booksellers, and she traces its decline along with the consolidation of publishing in the hands of major conglomerates. She writes with the feeling and caring of one who loves books and has enjoyed a long career giving them life.

She then brings us to the present when she writes:

“as we know, all retail businesses collapsed in September, failed to recover during the Christmas season and have been weak ever since. Book sales continued to drop in the spring, but then, they've been stagnant for years. It was in 2001, when the dot-com bubble was beginning to burst but before the shock of 9/11, that I first heard a morose sales director use the catch-phrase 'flat is the new up.' Book publishers and sellers were overextended and had grown careless, like everyone else, in the go-go years, while the digital reading revolution continued and business worsened. In the past six months, layoffs and shutterings have become commonplace.”

She concludes that “It is a confused, confusing and very fluid situation, and no one can predict how books and readers will survive. Changed reading habits have already transformed and diminished them both. I, for one, don't trust the book trade to see us through this. Wariness is in order.”

I have no quarrel with the facts cited in Sifton’s industry review. I do find myself regretting the bleakness of her conclusions.

It is true that the gradual acquisition and absorption of the independently founded publishing houses and booksellers is a sad story of literary loss, but it also echoes the growth of mass market economies in the 20th century. These economies brought other benefits to many people as a tradeoff, providing mobility, abundance and access to diversity, lifting them out of poverty and disease. Was it worth it?

The article implicitly discounts the capacity of humankind—and in particular our own society—to become the master of its technologies and to bring the qualities of thought, art and expression that had been the historic function of book publishing to new media and new modes of communication.

Our experience with ForeWord provides a window on the shrinking of economically viable mechanisms to support the functions we perform. At the same time we are also a window on all of the creative energy relentlessly seeking and finding outlets for its expression. And the empowerment vast numbers of people now enjoy.

Sifton also writes:

“the entire world of American retail business is veering toward obsolescence. Must books now find their way in cyberspace?  This prospect is even more alarming than the crisis threatening brick-and-mortar stores, for the World Wide Web is an ocean with few buoys to mark navigable channels of meaning. The channels we navigate on it are mercantile channels, designed to be lucrative—but not for us”

This won’t last forever, assuming that is the case to begin with. Amazon, Google, Apple, et al, will hold the lock on the distribution of books and content they built until alternatives come about as surely as they also had built on the advances that preceded them.

And as for entrepreneurs cashing in on intellectual and creative property, that has always been the trade off for authors and artists. Short of command and other forms of directed economies, or the unpredictable outcome of viral word of mouth—gatekeepers providing guidance (reviews) and access (distribution) will always be thepartners which any but the most enterprising author or artist will need in order to reach their audience—and without which their audience—all the rest of us—will not  be able to efficiently find the books worth spending time with.

At the same time the most confounding and exciting alternative to these gateways is the "wisdom of crowds" phenomenon—social networking—useful not only in spreading the word but in taking down imposters and empowering revolutions. How far can this go before becoming a danger in itself? How will the much needed gatekeeping functions emerge again? How will they be paid for?

People of taste and discernment will find a way—but it will have to emerge from and be congenial to the media of the times. It will be less likely to happen in the face of pessimism or despair.

Meantime, where is it written that enterprising risk-takers won’t take advantage of opportunities and run with them?

All is not lost.


Posted by: Eugene G. Schwartz, Editor at Large

Libraries are here to stay in good times and bad. Under the radar of digital trend-spotting and independent bookstore declines, librarians soldier on—passionate about books, enthusiastic about their work and their communities, optimistic about the future—even in the worst of circumstances.

Although the foregoing was not their intended message, I came away reinforced in that thought after listening to two big city librarians at an AAP panel on April 22 describe the paradox of library acquisitions and trends in an era of economic uncertainty, transforming technologies and new consumer reading behaviors. The paradox is increasing demand and expansion of libraries, along side tightening budgets, shrinking hours of service and the gradual displacement of print by digital media.

Barbara Genco, Coordinator of Special Projects and Strategic Planning at the Brooklyn Public Library, and Christopher Platt, Head of Materials Acquisition for the New York Public Library both pointed to increasing circulation demand while library budgets were being squeezed.

At the same time, panel moderator Nora Rawlinson, co-Founder of EarlyWord.com, a content preview service for librarians, also pointed out that new libraries continue to be built to augment the some 16,000 library buildings now serving a population that is increasingly at first searching through library holdings on line.

A former librarian herself, as well as a past editor of Publishers Weekly, Rawlinson reported that "circulation in libraries is climbing like crazy." Contrary to the fears of librarians after the Cleveland Pubic Library system first posted its catalog online that the internet would cut down on patronage, experience has shown the opposite.

Most interesting was being reminded that, despite all of the buzz about e-book sales and the Kindle and Sony Reader, circulation acquisition and management is still very much print-based, and acquisition decisions are made by librarians based not only on patron interests but also very much on the merits of the book. And the latter is less a matter of the format than of the content.

Whether print or electronic, what influences the buyer is who the publisher is, who represents them in the distribution channel, and first and foremost the credibility of the author as evidenced by reviews as well as reputation. It was nice to see that ForeWord Magazine was on their list of preferred reviewing media that included also PW, LJ, Kirkus and Choice.

At the same time, as Barbara Genko observed, “we are the long tail,” and books for which there is backlist demand are always being replaced or, even purchased for the first time. This is especially true for children’s books.  Librarians are always on the lookout for books that satisfy the special needs of their neighborhoods—so that ethnic concentrations, occupational demographics and parent interests influence selections. In that sense, because who comes into the library is very much a product of location, so are its collections—and the library as we know it remains a real time individual and community experience—the internet and e-Books notwithstanding.

For many small and medium book publishers with trade markets, bookstores on the ground—and in many cases on line—have become loss leaders for a large share of their titles. It is the library market that provides a reliable and profitable distribution channel. And this market appears to have a future grounded in their communities—uncertainties notwithstanding.

Posted by: Eugene G. Schwartz, Editor at Large

The transformative possibilities offered by social networking and Web 2.0 for independent publishers of every stripe can revitalize any publishing venture.

Young people starting out in the job market, the unemployed seeking the new, parents of children at any age, workers in mid-career, students and teachers, people in distribution, sales, health services—are also constantly on the go. They make up the mobile culture and marketplace connected to the lifeline of iPhones, Blackberrys and plain-Jane cell phones—with texting and other features, including download e-readers, images and video.

These historically new behaviors provide the foundations of new marketing models. Social networks connect people with common interests in real time through mobile devices and lap and desk tops in addition to the traditional coffee shop and living room commons.  These networks fuel Web 2.0—the development of products and content shaped by user input and user interest that comes about through blog, list-serve, forum and discussion group exchanges. Publishers use them to develop new product offerings both in print as well as in enhanced online (premium) services.

The new publishing business model and strategic vision views the packaged print or e-book program (though it be 95% or more of revenue) as an accessory to a social network and digitally driven value proposition. In truth, of course, publishers have always been at the center of a social network among their authors, professionals and readers. Yet many are still monetizing their social network outreach and Web 2.0 feedback using yesterday’s business models in the 21st century networked world.

An adjustment in strategic thinking can transform a publishing company by stretching the outreach of its expectations and its content expertise exponentially, once the viral consequences of new forms of content distribution and networking take hold. This does not mean abandoning print formats. It does mean placing them as one spoke in a wheel of media and formats through which the central interests of the members of its network are reached and all of which are linked together interactively in real time.

Many are fond of saying that it all begins with FREE—which in a way begs the question. But it does describe the honey that attracts the bee to the flowers, to switch metaphors. The flowers are the mutual interests satisfied when readers and professionals land on your site and identify with the common concern they are exploring.

The social network is implemented in two ways. First, by providing web pages with blogging, commenting, forums, networking and resource-linking features that are continually refreshed by its users. Second, by reaching out through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social sites and networks, RSS feeds, daily lit and e-book libraries readable with Stanza and other content aggregators and re-purposers. The person on the run or away from home base can access time value information, cover some long form reading, or reach a fellow networker without making phone calls for whatever purpose. Counselors can aggregate clients, and teachers their pupils for continuing connection, in-reach and out-reach.

The publisher’s presence in some content, sponsoring or linking fashion provides opportunities to direct those network members to premium services for pay (subscription based info feeds come to mind) as well as to core product catalogues and book and author pages. It also enables aggregating larger numbers of visitors to the site who, in registering for free services also expand the publishers’ promotional list—indirect promotions that come about through notices that contain additional free advisories.

These things happen best when grown organically, but intentionally, out of existing on-line or event-driven networks the publisher already has going—so a big splash is not what is needed, but some risk of failure to breed success and a little skin on the table is required. I see it around me as the new social and professional glue in our culture—every publisher should be organizing forums and outreach on their web sites.

By starting out with FREE, new monetizing opportunities for these sites can be developed, both externally (Google ads, for example or associate alliances with other services), or internally (premium service offerings), or both.

One thing is clearly certain: selling books is the least of it.


Posted by: Eugene Schwartz, Editor-at-Large

An underlying issue in the Google/Authors Guild/AAP settlement concerns copyright, fair use, and the concept of intellectual property. There is a widespread premise among many professionals in the library community, as well as among some publishers that while they support copyright laws for practical reasons, they do not see intellectual property as enjoying the natural protection of real property. I differ with this view.

Reviewing the basics, Jonathan Kirsch in his Handbook of Publishing Law writes, “An idea, according to the old common law, belonged to no one. And for that reason, the law simply did not recognize any ownership in mere ideas, no matter how clever, or original or marketable . . .” He quotes Louis Brandeis: “The noblest of human productions—knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions, and ideas—become after voluntary communication to others as free as the air to common use.”

Kirsch also observes, “Still there is something deep in the heart and soul of an author that prompts her to regard her ideas as something rare and precious.”

In the early decades of the many years I have been working with “intellectual property” in some form or other of the printed word, the notion of copyright was treated by writers, publishers and courts alike with the respect accorded to something “precious” and valuable. With the advent of electronic content and the internet, the peaceful coexistence was upset between the moral underpinning for the concept of intellectual property as something “precious” and that of intellectual property as a commodity created by copyright law.

My sympathy for intellectual property as a natural and moral right is not out of disagreement with the legal and historic differences between real property and intellectual property, both in law and in fact, as highlighted by Kirsch. It has to do with our natural understandings of honesty and integrity in human relations—qualities that we do not need laws in order to recognize and to deservingly assert At the same time, while I consider that there are rights and ethics derived out of a “natural law,” I do not consider that in a civil society natural law is “above the law.”

Of course, as Kirsch points out, copyright doesn’t protect ideas as such, but “only the particular expression of ideas and information.” And the legal standing of copyright as a creature of law and not inherent right is beyond reasonable dispute.

My thinking is actually grounded in Kirsch’s passing observation about what resides “deep in the heart and soul of an author.”

We prosecute plagiarism and we shame the misappropriation of the creative works of others as much because we morally recognize those acts as the theft of something that truly belongs to someone else as we do matters of law– that is, disguising the origin of the work’s authorship and the fraudulent cashing in on someone else’s work without permission. (Of course, without law plagiarism cannot be prosecuted.)  

We all know that in the act of thinking, writing, rendering and composing, a single human being has worked at it (or several beings)—in fact we call it a “work” And we expect that such work will be compensated for, as would any form of property or labor, by agreement between a willing seller (hence, owner of the property right) and a willing buyer. To willingly do otherwise is rightly considered theft in my opinion.

As has been compellingly argued, however, there is a societal interest –the intellectual rights of others, as Brandeis described. And the law sets up a balance—one that has been abused, in my opinion, by the continued unreasonable extension of copyright law in an affront to the popular culture, composed as it is as an amalgam of the voluntarily disseminated creative expressions of all of humankind—but that is a subject for another time.

The Google settlement (yet to be affirmed by the court) addresses the societal interest in not only the access to, but the use of creative works that have entered into the culture. Of particular interest are those works that are still in copyright, but whose ownership is uncertain and untraceable—those “orphan works” that have not yet fallen out of copyright and that have come into print prior to the Google settlement. Moreover it provides for an orderly process under which digital copying and distribution of literary works can be compensated.

The premise behind the settlement in my view recognizes the “property right” that is morally attached to a literary work in providing for means of compensation and for the author or publisher to control its use during the period of copyright. At the same time it legitimizes Google’s (and any one else’s) right to build a digital search archive available to the general public, and to make money at it.

There are many details of the settlement that are subject to dispute—not the least of which is the major premise that a class action suit in court can be used as a means to do what many believe is a public policy area reserved to the legislative branch. Of course, as a practical matter the likelihood of a coherent policy coming out of the Congress in our lifetimes is not promising.

Because of the rapid adoption of electronic forms of expression and distribution, it is better that the courts mediate a rational settlement agreeable to the major interests than to have none at all. And it is the force of copyright law as well as the moral acceptance of intellectual property to back it up that Google doesn’t want to undermine, for good business reasons, that will make possible an agreement in the interest of both intellectual property owners and the general society..

Posted by: Eugene Schwartz, Editor-at-Large

The news of  Publishers Weekly’s staff cuts—letting go of, among others, Sara Nelson, its Editor in Chief, and the iconic Daisy Maryles, Executive Editor (without whom it is hard to imagine PW as the reviewing medium we have all taken for granted for the forty years she was there)—was understandable on the face of it as a business choice to retrench. Nonetheless it came as a surprise to me and also left me with a sense of personal loss and a journey into reflection on how this came to pass and what the future holds.

I thought back four years ago when Sara Nelson replaced Nora Rawlinson, an editor of whom we had become very fond at ForeWord, and who seemed then to embody the literary enthusiasms and editorial integrity of the industry’s flagship periodical voice. A magazine’s persona and that of its editor(s) eventually merge as one in the hands of an editor for whom their interests and those of their readers and industry sector are in harmony—intellectually, spiritually and viscerally—and Rawlinson and PW seemed inseparable that way. At least they were seen by me that way—and so in my eyes Nelson came aboard as an interloper. And, of course, nothing rankled more than PW’s decision at that time also to create a frontmatter logo of its own out of “Foreword”—the mark of our own identity.

Nonetheless as time went by, I began to appreciate that Nelson had brought with her a distinctive persona effective in its own way, and in sync with the new look the magazine had adopted as it tried in print to be more interactive, multi-tasking and graphically arresting in keeping with the media transformations of our day.

As I traveled the circuit of industry forums, expos and conferences, Sara Nelson appeared increasingly as an informed and lively champion of books and authors. She also began to speak at independent publishing and trade organization venues—such as IBPA Publishing University, Bookbinders Guild, and Center for Independent Publishing. As the voice of PW she gave it a refreshing flavor and provided insights out of the trenches that were often spontaneous and humane as well as hard-headed.

When Daisy Maryles spoke at the NYCIP’s Poor Richard lifetime achievement Award reception for Newmarket’s industry veteran Esther Margolis last December, I thought I was seeing the past and the future joined in the event—a sort of passing of the guard. In the audience, Sara Nelson was radiating appreciation for this recognition of one yeowoman by another. It took place in the Society for Mechanics and Tradesman building, across the way from the historic Algonquin Hotel. (If you are in the New York City area and haven’t yet been in the NYCIP headquarters building on W. 44th Street [www.nycip.org] you should visit).  

So, I came to expect that Sara Nelson would be showing the flag at industry events, and even though she quite candidly shared with audiences the uncertainties of PW’s future, she also presented herself as the captain in the pilot house reassuring the crew that the ship would weather its storms.

Well, why this excursion into nostalgia? I am prompted to dwell on the fact that we are an enterprise populated by true believers of all kinds. And though we may be competitors in the marketplace, we are all animated by a love of the business and of books—and can wish each other well and admire each other’s skills. At the same time, I am also reminded that nothing stands still—that change comes about whether we vote it in,  or whether the marketplace renders the familiar obsolete—and time and nature alter circumstance no matter how much we wish things would remain the same.

Well, the marketplace, time and nature are altering circumstance for industry trade magazines these days. ForeWord is no less challenged than PW or the NY Times Book Review by the state of our economy, the changes in the technology of communication and the shifts in reading and advertising habits in our society. It is alluded to by Heather Shaw, our own editor-in-chief, in her blog. It was addressed directly by our publisher, Victoria Sutherland, in a recent letter to the many publishers whose books we review and who increasingly no longer advertise in print. We see it in the number of newspaper book review sections being folded—in a New York Times Book Review section that now appears from time to time with nary an ad from a book publisher.

Readers have not gone away. Books—in print and digitally—Web 2.0 content in non-traditional formats, mash-ups, audio and video  are making of “reader” a term inadequate to the task of describing the receiver of information and story-line authoring and transfer.

As someone who has been a part of, as well as writing about this industry for many years, all of this is rendering obsolete that which for me has been the familiar. I not only yearn for the familiar, but have in some ways may have become part of the familiar. Nonetheless I see the changes taking place around us as creating new opportunities  as a consequence of new realities, and the familiar will become a piece of history to be treasured and celebrated.

For book reviewing and reporting media, the business model that relies on advertising is no longer working. Publishers of books and of content generally are reaching their “readers” in other ways. They can’t afford print advertising. Yet the need for reviewing and targeting information about information, as Heather Shaw suggests in her blog remains. And, immutably, it needs somehow to paid for. “Free” is a great concept—but it doesn’t pay the rent.

The “liberating” of Sara Nelson and Daisy Maryles—icons of the future and the past—is emblematic of the fact, in a highly visible way to those of us in the trade, that our current business model days are numbered. The “trade” however is here to stay in new forms and modes—our job now is to figure out how to remain a part of it.

Posted by: Eugene Schwartz, Editor-at-Large

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

A few weeks ago there appeared in my mail a review copy of a wonderful little book, Nicholas in Trouble, by Renee Goscinny and Jean Jacques Sempe (a New Yorker cover artist). It is published by Phaedon (978-0-7148-4813-6).  It caught my attention immediately with a tastefully stamped cloth cover, without jacket, featuring a foil-stamped and embossed vignette in color of a little school boy, quaintly illustrated, with a smile of inner anticipation, on his way somewhere with a briefcase in hand and searchlight pointing the way.

Before I proceed I must urge upon you to go to what is one of the most ingenious, entertaining and—if you or your children start playing one of the games—potentially absorbing web sites I have seen  (http://www.phaidon.com/nicholas).

Since reviewing books is not my assignment for ForeWord, I rarely get review copies, and when I do, I generally send a cordial thank you note and direct the originator to our editorial offices in Traverse City, Michigan, some 780 miles from my home-office in the Hudson Valley, which is 40 miles south of Albany, NY.

As you may have surmised from my opening paragraph literary merit is not what first caught my eye—but bookmaking did—and that led me inside to read through a series of charming and cleverly line-illustrated stories about a French schoolboy who is known as the “Dennis-the-Menace of France,” and whose “adventures and travails of a cheeky and charming little French boy,” were first told over forty years ago. This volume is the fifth and final book of the series translated into English by Anthea Bell.

Visiting the imaginative and interactive web site, complete with animation, get acquainted click-throughs to all the characters, interactive games, downloads, a blog and contact opportunities, also reminded me of how the reach of a book—whether fiction or non-fiction—has been broadened from the limits of our own imaginations and from a dialog between reader and author to  come alive in multiple media, formats and customized applications.

The applications and the potentials are almost dizzying in their siren calls and challenges as well as in their practical and entertaining benefits. I saw this in full force at the three day O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference at the Javitz Center in September. More than 6,500 people—many from abroad—showed up at this event which is primarily focused on the technologies and supply chain of web services, but has also expanded into marketing tracks that should be of great interest to book publishers who are still cautiously exploring the digital universe as more than a marketing tool—but also as a content extension.

Tim O’Reilly, founder and president of O’Reilly Media, is a far-sighted thinker and intellectual innovator, who has developed and advanced the concepts and applications of Web 2.0 which he defines as using the Internet as a platform, information businesses using software as a service, harnessing collective intelligence and user-generated content. It is worth a trip to his web site (http://tim.oreilly.com/) to read his 2005 Web 2.0 article and his 2006 Open Business interview.

There is probably no media industry equal to book publishing that rests on foundations more resistant by their nature to what is taking place in the market place of ideas, communication, information and entertainment. The whole idea of user-generated content runs counter the concept of packaged intellectual property. Yet, we are moving rapidly towards interactive forms of publishing and repurposing original content.

The strong Creative Commons movement (creativecommons.org) and the foundational support for Google’s Book Search project by major library systems provide some of the evidence of challenges to the rigid barriers to accessing intellectual property. The recent benchmark agreement between Google and the AAP and Authors Guild points the way to striking a balance between compensation for intellectual effort and broadening access and application of intellectual property.

While no one is ready to admit they are making any significant money on e-book publishing (outside of the reference and journal market), the success of e-ink and its application in the Kindle and Sony readers and the emergence of the e-Book as a basic format along side the hard bound and paperback editions of books is putting more and more content out there in forms that can be re-purposed into anthologies, mashups, downloads, demand printing drivers for the Expresso Machine’s on site book production utility—and all the customized customer driven applications that will flow from these formats and media

Ultimately, however, all of these new forms of the “book” will simply amplify the reading experience and blend it more seamlessly with interactive and multiple media experiences

The web site for Nicholas in Trouble is a reminder that the distinctive charm and story-telling that an author and illustrator bring to a work are at base what makes all else possible—and the Phaedon web site is only a slice of what is possible in our new Web 2.0 world.

Posted by: Eugene Schwartz, Editor-at-Large