Is augmented reality a way to add value to publications – or a passing novelty?

You know those Smirnoff ads where people look through the lens of a bottle and see strange wonders? I’ve never quite understood what the marketing message there was supposed to be – “get off your face on vodka until you hallucinate”? Well, you can now have that experience with a magazine and an iPhone. So long as the magazine is Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, the first magazine to use augmented reality browser Junaio. Watch this video to see some of the truly astonishing effects of looking at the magazine through a smart phone.

Is this the future? Is this what people want? It looks fun, and it is adding something to the experience. But it seems another step along the way to me, a proof of concept for something better to come. Do you want to read a print magazine with your iPhone on standby, hovering over it like a Victorian magnifying glass? Would you prefer an all-digital magazine, like the well-received Wired magazine for the iPad? Or are we still waiting for the Minority Report Moment, when we can trade our slightly clunky Star Trek style iPads and ereaders for something that behaves more like paper? Paper with ever-changing content, graphics, video and audio. Paper that knows where you are.

Any new technology carries with it a search for its own purpose. Just as digitizing printed books and making them available on an ereader or smart phone doesn’t make the most of the possibilities of the medium (unless you also add multimedia elements), I’m not yet convinced that the best use of augmented reality is looking at a printed page through an iPhone – interesting as it is.

Applications that also make use of your geographic location, such as Nearest Tube, make more sense to me, and augmented reality travel book apps add more value to the content. The augmented reality Rough Guide apps previewed at this year’s London Book Fair Digital Conference seem to me an obvious and happy union of device, content and purpose. But however the new and emerging technologies are applied, the next few years are going to be interesting.

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With the launch of Odyssey Editions, has Andrew Wylie turned publishing on its head?

Is this a tipping point? Did publishing power just shift a little in favour of authors? Are agents publishers now?

Über-agent Andrew “the Jackal” Wylie – no doubt with his little finger at the corner of his mouth, Dr Evil style – has hatched an audacious plot. Or maybe he has just seen the future. Either way, he has disintermediated the publishers he works with – for ebooks at least. With last week’s launch of Odyssey Editions, his Kindle-only ebook imprint, a range of his authors are now available digitally for the first time. And we’re talking some pretty big names here: Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, Evelyn Waugh, Oliver Sacks, V.S. Naipaul, and Martin Amis are among 700 authors and estates.

To me, this seems inevitable. Many authors and their agents get the new digital realities – and, more importantly, the opportunities – while too many publishing discussions still focus on a protectionist response to the ‘threat’ of digital. If publishers won’t grasp digital, authors and agents will. Ebooks are increasingly maintream, with Amazon now selling more ebooks than hardbacks. Publishers can be slow on the uptake with ebooks, while consumers want to read them. Publishers have a vested interest in holding on to traditional print publishing models – while agents have a vested interest in the success of their authors. This is where the battle lines will be drawn in the coming war of the business models.

It is no surprise that the big publishers don’t like this. They don’t like it at all. Random House disputed the deal. And Macmillan CEO John Sargent was quick to respond on his blog:

This is smart retailing, and a great deal for Amazon. But it is an extraordinarily bad deal for writers, illustrators, publishers, other booksellers, and for anyone who believes that books should be as widely available as possible. This deal advantages Amazon, which already has the dominant share in this market.
JOHN SARGENT, CEO of Macmillan, 22 July 2010

Is it really a bad deal for writers? The comments say it all, such as this one from Richard Askenase:

Sounds like a VERY sound business deal to me. First, Wylie probably got about 70% royalties for his company/author. Second, the sale price of the ebooks are reasonable (unlike so many of your company’s prices). Third, if you wanted to publish these books, why didn’t you do so already? The point is, Wylie acted for his clients in dealing with the present/future and getting them very good money. MacMillan et al? They sat on their hands and overpriced them, with LOW LOW royalties to the authors.
RICHARD ASKENASE, commenting on John Sargent’s post

The Authors Guild described the move as ‘weird’. But added that: “This sort of weirdness will only multiply, however, as long as authors don’t share fairly in the rewards of electronic publishing.”

You may recall, at the London Book Fair Digital Conference this year, there was palpable eye-rolling in the room when agent Ed Victor asked why, if there are no warehousing costs, no manufacturing costs, no distribution costs, and no bookshop returns, did agents have to drag publishers kicking and screaming to 25% of net receipts? This is not a question most publishers like to engage with.

But the harsh truth is: it doesn’t matter whether publishers engage or not. Those publishers who don’t engage will be cut out of the loop as the world rolls on regardless. It doesn’t even matter whether they decide to pay fair royalties or not. Ultimately, it’s not their decision any more. The economics of the new publishing are open to all. Publishers no longer have the monopoly. Anyone can play. And if someone chooses to take their ball away and play a different game with someone else, what, exactly, are you going to do about it?

To a large extent, publishers have brought this on themselves. This storm has long been gathering. Literary agencies have refused to sign e-rights deals for countless backlist books with traditional publishers, even though they and their clients, no doubt, see real benefits in having a single publisher handle the print and electronic rights to a book. Knowledgeable authors and agents, however, are well aware that e-book royalty rates of 25% of net proceeds are exceedingly low and contrary to the long-standing practice of authors and publishers to, effectively, split evenly the net proceeds of book sales.
AUTHORS GUILD statement

The Authors Guild also estimate that author income from ebooks will be 300% higher under this deal than under traditional publishing contracts – 60%-63% of retail price rather than 25% of net receipts. What’s not to like?

The big publishers may rage against the dying of the old business models. They may even delay the inevitable. But they won’t prevent it. As ‘Skip’, a commenter on John Sargent’s post put it: “John is worried that in a few years nobody will want to buy his buggy whips any more, so he’s doing anything he can to stop those new-fangled automobile things.” Welcome to the 21st Century. Adapt and survive, or disengage and die. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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Which digital format is best for authors? Tom Evans considers some of the options.

Well I never thought I’d ever buy Knitting for Dummies. But I just got a copy via the Amazon Kindle Store to read – or is that to watch? – on my iPad.

So am I taking up crocheting iPad covers? No, I am just checking out how embedded video and audio in Kindle books for the iPad and iPhone works.

Somewhat ironically perhaps, the video and audio doesn’t work on the Kindle. Is this a sign that Amazon are moving away from hardware – or preparing a son of Kindle?

So what should authors and publishers do? Here are just some of the current options:

• Print – not going away in a hurry
• Publish for the Kindle and iPad via the Amazon Digital Text Platform
• Publish for the iPad via the iBookstore
• Publish via a third party ebook app like Stanza
• Publish via an aggregator like Smashwords, Lulu, Myebook, Issuu

Well, before you make a decision, note that almost certainly Apple will be bringing out an ebook format based on HTML5 – and hopefully some book creation and publishing software.

In 2011, we are bound to see an end to end solution from them with Apple aiming to do for books what it did for music in the last decade. It opened the iTunes store in April 2003 and by the end of the decade they dominated the music download market.

ePub2 perhaps – Betamax and VHS – here we go again.

If you are an author however, my advice is to write, create accompanying audio and video assets and by the time you are ready to publish, there will be more than one route open to you.

There are also differences in margins between Amazon and Apple – and if you are non-US a couple of hoops to jump through which should be sorted shortly.

Smashwords and Lulu don’t necessarily allow multimedia embedded at the moment. Note that they also take a little margin but this is just a sign of how a new Pie Chart will look for books in the coming decade – will blog about this soon!!

Myebook does do embedded multimedia and may well come out with a route – worth keeping an eye on – see my sample ebook www.wordlube.com to see what you can do today – for free!

P.S. Actually this knitting malarky looks kinda fun …

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Is Second Life still useful for authors and publishers? It depends how you use it, argues Adele Ward – who has recently used virtual contacts to make her new publishing business a reality.

I’ve probably tried as hard, or harder, than anyone to find out how useful Second Life could be for publishers and authors. There are serious obstacles that most publishers and authors are finding, and I’ll talk about them at the end. However, I’ve just started a new publishing company called Ward Wood Publishing together with business partner Mike Fortune-Wood of Cinnamon Press, and I have to admit that it wouldn’t have happened without Second Life putting us in contact.

Apart from getting me and Mike together, Second Life also led to a working relationship with the London School of Journalism (LSJ) who asked for my advice when they started their island. Now the LSJ have helped Ward Wood by financing our website, www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk, and I expect they’ll work with us more in future. So Second Life has been a greater asset than I was starting to think it could be.

This story probably shows how Second Life can work in quite unique ways. I could have ‘met’ Mike Fortune-Wood on other social networks like Facebook. But would we have got to know each other in a way that would have led to us working together? It’s hard to imagine that we could have achieved that. He lives in Wales and I live in London so we were extremely unlikely to meet face-to-face and learn what we thought of each other as potential work partners.

The difference on Second Life is that it really does feel like meeting somebody and even working with them. So you can get a good idea of the level of their professionalism and how compatible you are as working partners. I met Mike when I was organising free space for publishers and writers as I’ve always felt Second Life would work best if publishers, writers, publications and writing projects were gathered together. The writers bring traffic to an area because they like to have regular events, such as open mics, and the publishers can then offer tips and advice on submissions with interactive signs in their stores. This interaction leads to interest in the publishers’ displays and links to their websites.

Whereas in the past publishers invested in whole islands and created impressive builds to attract traffic, they seem to be realising that a small display with the right information in a busy area and the right target audience seems more effective. Although most send marketing people on to Second Life, there are smaller publishers with editors who come on, attend open mics, and have even offered publishing contracts. The standard of writing on Second Life is high. International contacts can also be made between publishers and authors.

Mike Fortune-Wood took one of the spaces I offered near two popular open mic and performance venues and we have got to know each other over a long period. We have both had a chance to see how the other one works, and we must have liked what we saw. I’ve sat with Mike in a virtual café and he has given me extremely useful advice at times about financing my own freelance writing work.

When Mike heard that I wanted to start a publishing company he contacted me immediately with an Instant Message on Second Life and said he would like to join me. He had already set out ideas on how he would like the company to run and told me all of them. As Mike’s skills complement my own I was interested immediately and went away to think about his approach to publishing.

I’ve worked for more than thirty years in writing and editorial work as well as press relations and had thought I would need to learn more about the production, distribution and financial side of the business before starting a company. Mike is expert in these sides of publishing and likes to work with an editor as he doesn’t want to be involved in that side. It was a perfect match, and I must admit that I have Second Life to thank for it.

We signed our partnership papers weeks ago and the website went live on the 4th of July, very apt as our first book will be launched in September and is a novel called A Clash of Innocents by American author Sue Guiney. We then have poetry collections coming out in October and November from Ann Alexander (previously with Peterloo and a poet with an impressive set of competition wins) and Mike Horwood who is also previously published. Social networks helped me to find the authors and to see that they needed a publisher, so I value them all, but Second Life worked in a different way to bring me and Mike together as business partners.

I’m not overly positive about Second Life. It has proved extremely difficult for publishers to use it as a sales tool as people don’t tend to buy books there. It’s also hard for businesses to justify the time it takes to do anything, even to build a fairly small display and update it. It’s almost impossible to attract traffic so it’s essential to locate yourself on an area with the right target audience coming to regular events near your display (they don’t move far from the stage or event venue). I think, most of all, the findings I’ve made show that it doesn’t work in the expected ways.

It’s best for the activities other social networks can’t manage – in particular interactive voice events like open mics, performances, talks, disussions and even classes. Added to that it lets you make contacts in a way that feels face-to-face no matter where you both are in the world, and can lead to a kind of networking you can’t initiate easily on other social networks where you need to know the people you approach with friendship offers.

Jon Reed is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Publishing Talk, and author of Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing. Follow him at @jonreed or @getuptospeed.

There are natural advantages to being a small, independent publisher when it comes to social media marketing. So are the big publishers too big to use it effectively?

I spoke at the Inpress Digital Conference at Foyles bookshop in London this week, a one-day digital conference for independent publishers run by Inpress, the sales and marketing agency for independent publishers in the UK and Ireland. The conference included: an industry overview of the digital future from Benedict Evans of Enders Analysis; a report on ebooks from Julie McNair; Julia Kingsford, head of marketing at Foyles, on how the company has diversified into selling ereaders and ebooks – including the revelation that Faber and Transworld dominate ebook sales simply because they bother to include bibliographic data; and Inpress MD Rachael Ogden on the explosion of book apps available for the iPhone and iPad and how to get involved.

It was great to see a room full of independents getting to grips with digital publishing. I was speaking on social media marketing for publishers (of course), a two-hour workshop session with plenty of practical advice on creating social media marketing plans, and getting the most out of a range of social media tools.

The independent advantage

I think this is one area where it is actually easier for small, independent publishers to succeed than their corporate counterparts – something I’ve previously written about in The Deal. Why? Because:

1. Social media is a personal medium where things like personality, tone of voice and authenticity matter – things that are much easier to achieve if you are a small business. Last week the Huffington Post identified who it considers the best publishers on Twitter. It is telling that six of the 11 chosen were independents; two were imprints and the remaining three were big publishers. When it comes to engaging people on Twitter, it helps to have an independent voice. Find out more about how two of those publishers, @AAKnopf and @AlgonquinBooks use Twitter for community building in this week’s Huffington Post article Does Twitter Sell Books? Yes, It Does.
2. You can punch above your weight. Because the tools are – mostly – free, you can use them without a huge marketing investment. Indeed, this is why social media is so widely used by independents – they have no choice but to use these tools since they have little or no marketing budget. The investment may be in time rather than money – but they have the commitment to put in the hours.
3. Social media levels the playing field. Independents have the potential to reach as wide a market with these tools as big corporates – especially since some of the big publishers are still not really engaging with social media.
4. Social media is about relationship building – something independents have always done well.
5. You can just do it. No need to worry about getting your corporate comms strategy through a series of committees and approved by a manager who doesn’t get it. Independents are nimble and agile, and adopting a new strategy isn’t like turning a battleship around. If you’re small, you can just do it.

One advantage that big publishers historically had was the resources to create rich media such as podcasts or video, or to terraform islands in Second Life. But now you don’t need expensive equipment or recording studios – just use AudioBoo to create a podcast, or a Flip or Zi8 camera to record video. Everyone has abandoned expensive brand islands in Second Life – though there are still plenty of low-to-no cost opportunities for independent publishers and authors ‘in-world’. Bigger is not necessarily better.

Big or small, there’s a social media marketing strategy for you. Just keep it appropriate to your type of organization, make sure you engage your audience, and go for a personal voice – whether that is you and/or your authors.

What is the iPad for? Is it just an expensive toy? Or a valuable tool for writers?

So I’ve had an iPad for three weeks and loads of people have asked how I use it and what I’m using it for – or if it’s just a bit of a toy. Well I’ve discovered using this new type of tablet (and watch this space for the clones) ushers in a whole modus operandi.

In short, it’s brilliant – especially for writers, designers, entrepreneurs, inventors and creatives.

And this new way of working merits the introduction of a new word – iPadivity.

noun [n] :

1. the phenomenon of increased creativity and productivity when using an iPad – and activity while doing the same
2. the generation of new ideas using an iPad
3. profitability from generating and using iPad apps

Now I have to say everything I’ve been able to do I could do with a combination of iPhone or laptop. Some of it admittedly even with paper and pen. While the iPhone scores on portability, it lacks screen real estate and typing is slow (this whole blog incidentally was written at speed using the iPad on screen keyboard).

The laptop is just so much heavier and I have always felt a bit nerdy to get out on a commute and certainly in a coffee shop. It also takes too long to boot if you just want to do something quickly and acts as a barrier in a business meeting. The 3G enabled iPad delivers a useful synthesis of both devices which is better than both – plus I have to say it looks cool !!

This Mind Map tells the story of what I am using it for … of course generated on the iPad as were all the graphics in this blog.

The first iPadivity gain is really good use of “dead time” – those times in the day when you would have been waiting for something can now be used to process email, do a tweet or two and check out news or write a blog.

The second iPadivity benefit is being able to read, listen to or watch pretty much anything – either online, in iTunes or your own archive.

The third iPadivity capability, and to me the most important, is being able to write stuff. Here the lightness and specific functionality of the apps comes into its own. For example, before writing each chapter of my new book, I’ve taken a hint from artist Cat Bennett and I am drawing using Brushes an image that encapsulates the concepts I am about to write about.

I am working to a master Mind Map structure for the whole book but I’ve also started mapping each chapter before eventually writing it in Pages.

This has lead me down several new avenues I simply wouldn’t have explored.

Now could I do this on the laptop or desktop – absolutely – but not when the Muse takes me – and certainly not with as much ease and FUN !!

Add to all of this, the ability to browse on a whim for research and dip into the brilliant Wikipanion app, my iPadivity is probably up 400-500% of where it was just a fortnight ago.

I’ve also used the iPad in several client sessions. Again, its unobtrusiveness is the key. It’s like having a paper notebook but where you can email the notes instantly. In the sessions I did last week, this included a colour-coded Mind Map of actions arising and a wireframe for an iPad app I am designing, using iMockup – example only below as the real one is subject to confidentiality at the mo.

This of course points to an amazing iPadivity – the ability to encapsulate your knowledge and wisdom in an iPad app which you can share with other and generate profitability from… watch this space!

So if you’ve got an iPad, or are getting one, I’d be interested in your thoughts….

Self-publishing is easier than ever. But how can you do it well – and make your book look as good as a traditionally published one?

Self-publishing your book is now easier than ever. Self-publishing your book well, however, can still be a real challenge. You will often hear mutterings in the publishing spheres that, “You can always spot a self-published book just by looking at it”. And in all fairness, it’s not too surprising, especially if you have chosen to do as much as possible yourself. I’m going to hazard a guess that it is unlikely that as an author, you have also trained and worked as a designer, typesetter, editor, proof-reader and marketer in between writing your book!

It’s undoubtedly going to be hard to get the same effect as a publisher who has spent thousands on a book’s production. However, there are some basic things that you can do that will make your life much easier and help your book blend in with the best.

1. Learn to use Microsoft Word

This probably sounds rather patronising, but Microsoft products have the problem of being a lot like icebergs to the majority of their users – there is a huge amount of depth to them in terms of the functionality available but most users only see and use the surface. There are some really useful tools built in that writers and self-publishers can take advantage of, particularly if you don’t fancy investing in and learning the professional packages such as InDesign and Quark.

Firstly, make a copy of your manuscript (or a chapter) and then give yourself at least a couple of hours to just play around with it. Get familiar with the following things:

• Inserting page breaks – handy to make sure that your chapters always begin on a fresh page.
• Creating paragraph styles – a great way to ensure consistency throughout the book (here is a helpful guide from Snowbooks).
• Document map – really useful for jumping between chapters (find out more about the benefits on Write for your life)
• Adjusting margins and page sizes – you will probably need to do this if you need to upload your manuscript to a self-publishing website. Adding in page breaks prior to this will save a lot of time (and pressing of the enter key).
• Changing the line spacing – adding some extra space between lines can make the text much more readable
• Adding headers, footers and page numbers
• Using tracked changes  – for when you send to other people who would like to edit.

2. Study the page, not the words.

If you’ve already nailed all of those tools in Word, that’s great. The next stage is to apply this to typesetting your manuscript. Look at the pages in books that you own that are in a similar genre/category to the one you have written. Scrutinise the typeface, line-spacing, layout, chapter headings etc. and choose the style that you like best, and then try and emulate that.  Sometimes it will say in the front of the book the typeface used which can be pretty handy. The important thing is not to get distracted by what the words say – focus on what the page looks like.

NB – always save copies of your book at various stages of formatting. You will probably find that for some eBook formats you need to strip out lots of the formatting that you have done for the print version (because they don’t translate well). It’s often easier to do that with an earlier, simpler version.

More advice on typesetting and formatting your book.

3. Become an expert in ‘packaging’

Book covers, even for online books, are very important. Again, if you are going to do the design yourself  you really need to go into a bookshop (or even just browse online) to get a good idea of how books that are in a similar genre to yours are represented. Choose some favourites and go away and base your cover on a similar style. Look at the text on the back cover – how big is the text? What does it say? This is what you are aiming for.

Don’t fall into the same traps as one year’s The Apprentice contestants did when they designed packaging for a children’s breakfast cereal (you might remember the episode better if I use the word ‘Pantsman’?) One team decided to create something very different to anything currently on the market and chose a bright green colour scheme. The judges rightly said that the box looked like it would be much more at home on a gardening shelf with the weedkiller! So, the lesson is don’t be too creative. Remember, the book cover is, essentially, the packaging, so it needs to convey the contents of the book to the reader. Looking very different rarely works in your favour when it comes to packaging a product that already has consumer expectations attached to it.

In addition, you’ll probably need an image or two for your book – be careful of relying on your own photos which may be a bit on the dark side. Fotolia is a handy website for low cost professional images.

4. Be flexible

If you go into publishing with a very particular end product in mind, you can make life difficult and expensive for yourself. Keep an open mind in terms of the size, format and methods you use to publish your book. Being flexible will mean that you can take advantage of the lower budget options, or you can get a premium product at a more reasonable price.

If you limit yourself to having a rare size, unusual binding method and a special type of cover, you could end up having to do a much larger print-run to be able to justify the cost.

So, if you are self-publishing, particularly on a tight budget, then it is worth taking some time out to consider these four things. It’s amazing the difference it can make.

[Image ©iStockphoto.com/MiquelMunill]

Publishing is full of innovative people who love content. Mix that with a culture of collaboration and the future is bright, argues Rich Holman.

Hello, so first of all *disclaimer* I used to work in publishing (eight years in Macmillan as a web developer) and during that time worked with Jon. I currently work in a leading social business consultancy – Headshift. We help a range of organisations (BBC, British Airways, BP, NHS, Anthony Gormley’s One & Other) across all sectors and realise and build technologies in this ever-changing landscape. I have been there for two and a half years now, so feel I have a good historical understanding of the challenges facing publishers as well as a unique view of the differing cultures of both traditional publishing and a technology start-up.

I recently read a previous post, London Book Fair Digital Conference, with interest, and thought a lot of good points were made. I agree there is a lack of skills in the publishing industry to deal with new emergent paradigms. In fact, one of the reasons I left publishing was so I could emerse myself in an industry and culture that is purely concerned with thinking and building future applications online. I felt some of the post’s sentiments needed to go further, as it’s not just skills and structure that are lacking but culture and attitude. In a period of accelerating change we need vastly more efficient methods of developing new concepts: there is simply too much disruption to plan and build websites as we would plan and print books.

Our structures need to be more speedy. Speed used to kill now lack of speed kills. Lets have organisations that can iterate quickly and empower its folks to make decisions. Percolating decisions up and down an organisation makes little sense
VIVAKI’S RISHAD TOBACCOWALA

In this post I want to share some thoughts about some of the changes that would be required for publishers to become more agile, generalist and collaborative in an age where we are all becoming publishers, authors, creators and consumers and as such all have a voice and opinion as well as the ability to implement our own ideas. At the end of the post I will talk about a small project myself and a colleague ran to illustrate the speed and agility that such a cultural change could provide.

But first… an agile approach

Marty McFly: Doc, we better back up. We don’t have enough road to get up to 88.
Dr. Emmett Brown: Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
BACK TO THE FUTURE

Maybe just a film quote, but it illustrates a major problem when trying to consider future directions: it’s based on current knowledge and as such potential solutions are limited by current understanding and restrictions. What is required is a cultural shift and with regards to development we should be thinking more like start-ups, small, non-hierarchical agile generalist teams of creative, talented individuals of which there are increasing amounts as people tinker with the emerging web (such as that developer in the basement).

I’ll use my experience at Headshift as a small case study on how we approach new projects. Firstly, a project team of anywhere between 2 and 10 people is formed from the skills required to deliver the project. These will generally include:

• A project manager whose role is to manage client/stakeholder communications and ensure the project hits budget and/or schedule as well as meets client expectations (i.e. is it good?)
• A consultant (one or more of technical/general or user experience) whose role is to speak directly to project stakeholders and end-users to really define the scope of the project and the nature of the problem the project is trying to solve (i.e. question what you are really trying to solve not just what you think you are trying to achieve). Technical and user experience consultants are involved to ensure the project requirements are grounded in sound thinking and can be achieved within the timeframe / budget and match client expectations.
• A designer/user experience consultant to make sure the product not only looks good, but works well. A designer’s role is to ensure the application or website is easy to use and the end-user not only likes the look of the website but enjoys the experience and successfully completes tasks. Good visual/interactive solutions to complex problems can be more than half the battle.
• A developer(s) to realise the combined output of consultants and designers. It is essential they are involved in project planning and foster a close relationship with the designer/consultants. They are essential in realising the eventual product, as such they need to be heavily involved with the whole project team, early and often.

You may find that people will take on one or more of these roles. I myself have performed consultancy, design and development on one project. Project management and consultancy may also be combined. The generalist can be very important here in creating nimble teams.

Generally for most of our projects we approach them iteratively (build often and early) while checking back with the stakeholders with early test versions and regular staged releases to ensure that expectations are being fulfilled and to avoid the awkward situation when perceived outcomes differ massively. Generally we build projects against the methodology known as “Agile”, not so much a process as a philosophy that:

…values individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software (aka outcome) over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan. It’s not that there isn’t value in the latter, just that the former has more value.
NEIL PERKIN, Agile Planning

This approach requires that all people involved in the project work very closely together to ensure that end result is greater than the sum of the parts, by enabling project team members to have more control over the outcomes of a project indivual knowedge and creativety can add much more value to a project.

Projects are built around trusted, motivated individuals who are given the environment and support they need. Documentation is kept to a minimum, with face-to-face communication preferred, and a focus on simplicity – maximising the amount of work not done.
NEIL PERKIN, Agile Planning

This requires a major shift in the way projects are currently ran in most publishing houses, as many projects tend to be about writing a 400 page spec based on current business models and expected outcomes and then passing that to a software development house or to an in-house development team. In the more agile approach projects can be built around solving a problem iteratively and collaboratively, as well as questioning whether that problem even needs to solved (or indeed is this the correct problem). This is all achieved by actually working with, talking and listening to the people that will be affected by the eventual system, including end-users and stake holders, not just as a requirement of a business model.

Publishers in general have lots to offer in aggregation, quality control and understanding the needs of the end users. However in defining both the problems and the solutions they need a different approach, an approach that has been developing in Internet start-ups for over ten years and has a proven track record in delivering fast, smart, and useful applications not always based on a need but based on the simple fact that we can.

A delicious book – an example of building fast

So to illustrate what small, agile teams can do when not bound by process and business models a colleague (Felix Cohen) and I built an application to print our own books. The generation of the idea was no more than Felix’s desire to ’scratch an itch’ that was caused by our often cited problem of never getting round to reading long format articles on websites (based around the same reasons that many people reference, bright screens, distractions etc.)

The resultant application takes a list of websites and converts them into a styled PDF ready to print via a service such as Lulu. The list of websites is created by using an online service called Delicious – effectively an online version of a browser’s bookmarks, with the added benefit of being accessible from anywhere (and from a development perspective accessible to an application such as this). The outcome is a printed book based on bookmarked websites. The application goes though each link and pulls out the main body of content – and it is clever enough to strip out banner ads, links, navigation leaving only the article’s actual content, formatted and separated from styling. We then apply our own custom styling optimised for a print layout. The entire project took 8 hours to develop, and we can now create a custom typeset printed book in seconds. The code and the printed book is not perfect but it illustrates what can be done very very quickly given the right conditions.

We have released the code for this project so anyone can build and share the concept. Firstly we wanted to engage with people over the benefits of utilising a more innovate way of building projects as well as the obvious copyright issues in trying to commercialise such an application.

As Felix ends his blog post over on the Headshift blog (Ruby on Rails is the coding language Bookler is built on):

What is significant, though, is that ease. Neither of us are part of the Ruby on Rails team here at Headshift, but were able to pick up enough Ruby to build it in Sinatra (a very simple, very great framework for this kind of app), and find enough tools to make it fast, easy and ‘good enough’. The generalist skills and assumption that this would not be a hard problem, however, do seem important.
FELIX COHEN, Technical Consultant

If you wish to check out how and why this was built, as well as get access to the code see here.

This illustrates the need for cultural shift as well as some potential solutions and approaches. It’s pretty exciting to be able to build something like this so quickly just with modern tools, technologies and a “because we can” attitude. Simply employing a few geeks is not going to change much, if publishing is going to be part of the solution to the current problems then fostering the culture where ideas can be realised quickly and easily is essential.

Also, believe me when I say many many of my peers still love print (check out the Newspaper Club). They also have the ability to publish their own material, curate others and build applications to produce solutions for their own needs and desires. My experience working in publishing is of a dedicated, innovative, interested bunch of people who love content and delivering readers and authors a great service. Mix that with the abilities of people who can realise those qualities in a collaborative way (this is essential), and the future is not necessarily the dark place some assume.

I was lecturing at Birkbek yesterday, on digital publishing, social media marketing – and men in their pants in Basingstoke. For this was the key takeaway message for me at this year’s London Book Fair Digital Conference, which I attended and live-tweeted last weekend: if publishers don’t produce digital content, such as apps, there are plenty of men in their basements in Basingstoke in their pants who will.

This industry doesn’t owe publishers, authors, agents or bookshops a living. We need to find a useful service in the space between authors and their readers. We need fewer people in publishing who are English graduates called Jocasta. But why would developers be attracted to publishing? If we don’t produce digital content, there are plenty of men in basements in Basingstoke in their pants who will.
KATE WILSON, Nosy Crow

In a Book Fair blighted by volcanic ash, this seemed to be one event the volcano couldn’t spoil. With only three last-minute speaker replacements, and grounded delegate spaces back-filled from the waiting list, there was plenty of  lively discussion from the platform and the floor. And it was the first digital conference I’ve been to for a long time that wasn’t dominated by Digital Rights Management (DRM) and protectionism, and left me feeling more positive about the future of publishing.

I should clarify something here: I feel positive about the future of publishing – not about the future of the publishing industry. An important distinction. Digital publishing opportunities are huge. Publishers are not necessarily the ones who will benefit.

Speakers included game developers, app developers and mobile experts as well as traditional publishers who are doing digital, plus one author, Alison Norrington, who has been experimenting wildly with social media, and presented her experiences to the slack-jawed amazement of publishers. All positive stuff for a digital conference, since publishers can learn a lot from other industries who have engaged sooner with digital – and from authors, who are often way ahead of their publishers. As Kevin Shrapnell of EA Games pointed out: “The lines between books, ebooks, websites, games are blurring”.

The real asset publishers have is their content – yet they are not really set up to capitalize on the digital economy. David Miller of Rogers, Coleridge & White (@drearyagent) said: “Publishers don’t have the structure to choose whether to publish their content as a hardback, paperback, ebook, website or  app – they need to invest in staff and skills to make that possible.”

Publishers don’t have the structure to choose whether to publish their content as a hardback, paperback, ebook, website or  app – they need to invest in staff and skills to make that possible.
DAVID MILLER, Rogers, Coleridge & White

I think it is even more serious than this. While publishers agonize over business models and skill sets and which direction they should go in, the world moves on regardless. It is not just men in pants to watch out for – it is authors. As the stigma and barriers to self-publishing continue to drop, authors are not only doing their own marketing with social media, they are disintermediating their publishers with the online self-publishing tools that are also available to them.

The Profit Imperative

Conference chair Richard Charkin said in his opening remarks that there are no shortage of books – but we should be concerned not about volume but value: “Please, please, in the digital age let us price at a sensible level and not underprice to gain volume”. Profit is the real issue in the industry. That suggests to me premium pricing – something difficult to achieve in a digital world where we expect things for free or cheap.

One attempt to maintain the print price of a book in the digital space is with ‘enhanced’ ebooks. Peter Collingridge revealed an interesting new business model for his company Enhanced Editions: no upfront costs for app development (though these are costed and shown to the publisher in advance), and then revenues are split 50/50 with the publisher after development costs have been earned out. This reduces risk and means you don’t need to be a big budget publisher to get started. I would go further and suggest that, to use services such as these – which are proliferating – you surely don’t even need to be a publisher.

I can see enhanced ebooks really working for certain genres: children’s, textbooks, illustrated non-fiction; any sort of ‘how to’ material such as cookery books; and travel books that use augmented reality. I’m less convinced by their potential for fiction – unless you want to avoid carrying around a massive tome – which is the reason I downloaded the app for a book written by a neighbour of mine called Hilary Mantel. I don’t want to read Wolf Hall in the bath, but I’d like to read it while waiting for the bus. I did buy it for a discounted £3.49 though. Would I have paid the full £6.99? I don’t know. But with such a massive market for the iPhone – much bigger than the Kindle – low pricing can surely work in this market. Premuim pricing isn’t the only way to make a profit – mass distribution is another.

It’s not about creating books any more – it’s about creating content.
JOHN DUHIGG, Dorling Kindersley

Simply transferring a printed book to an app – even if it is enhanced with a bit of add-on video – seems less of a value proposition to me than creating something specifically for an app in the first place, such as Jamie Oliver’s hugely successful 20 Minute Meals. Some publishers are doing this. Kate Wilson said: “We’re not interested in transfering books to apps. We commission for apps, and some of them spin off into books.” John Duhigg of Dorling Kindersley previewed the augmented reality iPhone apps they are experimenting with for their Rough Guides, such as an augmented reality version of the Rough Guide to London which ovelays tags of nearby restaurants onto the image of the London street in front of you. And Fionnuala Duggan of Random House introduced their Nigella Quick Collection app, which was produced in-house.

Those publishers not doing this – well, your author can do it anyway and disintermediate you. Jamie Oliver went to a software developer called Zolmo to produce his 20 Minute Meals app. Are they his developer – or his publisher? I see app developers, in the publishing ecosystem, not as service industries operating in the space between publishers and readers but as publishers in between authors and readers. I know not everyone has the profile or resources of Mr Oliver. But, to varying degrees, we can all do this.

A QR Code

Ways of selling cheaply were explored by various panelists. Agent David Miller floated the idea of using technology to enable people to buy books, such as by selling ebooks for £1 or £2 and including a QR code as a voucher that could be used to redeem the cost of the ebook against a printed book. Mobile expert Tony Lynch of Spoken Group Ltd suggested selling ebooks cheaply but making them expire after a certain time, like library books. He also pointed out that mobile networks see books as a major content category in the next five years, and are trying to create a buying culture on their networks – partly through giving books away for free.

But who pays for ‘free’? Someone has to work to create the content in the first place, right? I was pleased to see agent Ed Victor on form, asking sharp questions of the publishers on the panel, as he often does at these conferences. He asked them to explain: “If there are no warehousing costs, no manufacturing costs, no distribution costs, and no bookshop returns, why did we have to drag you kicking and screaming to 25% of net receipts?”

If there are no warehousing costs, no manufacturing costs, no distribution costs, and no bookshop returns, why did we have to drag you kicking and screaming to 25% of net receipts?
ED VICTOR, Literary Agent

Obviously there are costs associated with the production of digital content – but not everyone is going to spend tens of thousands of pounds or dollars on a Jamie Oliver style iPhone app. What if you’re just transferring a printed book to an ereader? I’m a publisher turned author, but even when I was a publisher I think I’d have had sympathy with Ed’s point of view. Despite palpable eye-rolling in the room, this is a fair question that deserves an answer.

If publishers charge too much for digital content, they are at risk of piracy. If they pay authors too little for creating it, their authors will self-publish. And self-publishing was tacitly agreed upon as ‘A Bad Thing’ in the room. But the new digital economy requires new business models – not new ways of holding on to the old ones.

Anyone can do it

It’s great that publishers are engaging in a more open way with digital, making it part of their publishing, and exploring the models for doing so – rather than using these conferences to reassure themselves that everything will be OK, we can protect ourselves with DRM, and it’s still business as usual. But I can’t help thinking that they are still not being radical enough. The problem is that publishers no longer own the publishing industry. When the cost of producing and delivering digital content is minimal, anyone can do it. Where does that leave publishers?

I say anyone. I mean anyone with some creativity. As Kate Wilson said: “Publishers have always outsourced creativity. It’s called authors.”

Richard Charkin concluded the conference with a Jerry Springer style closing thought: “Publishers used to be generalists a few decades ago. They used to have a fiction division, a children’s division, an academic division and so on. We also used to have a single, unified sales medium – called a bookshop. Publishers gradually specialized into more and more niche areas at the same time as they reached more readers with direct marketing. Today we once more have a single, unified sales medium – called the Internet. Perhaps it is time for publishers to become more generalist again?”

Perhaps. In the digital age, there may be opportunities for publishers to publish anything they like and find a market for it online. Trouble is, those same opportunities are open to all. Anyone can be a publisher.

Overall, this conference successfully moved the debate on, and the tone was more of a wake-up call than an invitation to lock the door and have a lie in. More engagement with what is happening than squishing the new digital realities into old business models – what David Miller called “putting new wine in old bottles”. The problem I still have with all of this is that, while publishers are still receiving wake-up calls, the rest of the world has Carped the Diem, been to the gym, had breakfast, taken a few calls and is on the way to a lunch meeting. The world has moved on.

I have some sympathy with Jocasta, the English graduate. She went into publishing to publish books, not develop apps and monetize content. Unfortunately for Jocasta, the market is always right. Responding to what the market wants – how people want to consume and pay for content – is what is needed, rather than reacting to the ‘threat’ of digital.

Is the future as hard to predict as a volcano? Not really. It’s already here.

Catch up on the conference tweets at @publishingtalk. Were you at the conference? Let us know your thoughts.

Related articles

• Mobile Opportunities: The London Book Fair Digital Conference (futurebook.net)
• London Book Fair Digital Conference Digest: “Take Risks, Fail, Learn, and Try Again” (publishingperspectives.com)
• Publishers must become ‘fleet of foot’, depleted LBF conference hears (thebookseller.com)

The publishing Twitterati were out in force at the London Book Fair last night, for London Book Tweet – the official tweetup organised by the London Book Fair and Publishing Talk. Despite a little ash-depletion, 50-odd publishers, authors, agents, journalists, trade association representatives and other book trade folk squeezed a bit of tweeting-up in between ligging drinks at various stands and going on to the Canongate party. Many thanks to all who came, and to those who made it all possible with their creative contributions.

The evening started at 5.30 with drinks at the Market Focus bar, and an announcement of the winners of the Author Blog Awards 2010 – followed from 7pm onwards by cocktails and the Latin sounds of Jonathan Davis and Ernesto Priego who took to the decks at Eclipse in South Kensington.

Plenty of Twitter veterans who attended previous book trade tweetups #tweetmas and #twinter came along, but for many it was their first – hopefully the first of many. Tweetups are curious experiences where you walk into a room full of people you’ve never met and are greeted like an old friend. People feel like they know each other from their 140-character updates, where they’ve made connections based on shared views and interests – pure content, unencumbered by social interaction or hierarchy.  The thing I like about book trade tweetups is the real mix of authors, publishers, agents and other bookish folk who would otherwise never meet socially. From industry leaders and famous authors to those new to publishing or writing, all are welcome. In the sometimes insular world of publishing or isolated profession of writing, no one can hear you scream. With social media, everyone has a voice. And we like to meet in real life too.

Author Blog Awards 2010

Following over 500 nominations in the last four weeks, Jon Slack and Anna Lewis announced the winners of the inaugural Author Blog Awards in three categories: Best Author Microblog, Best Unpublished Author Blog and Best Published Author Blog. The winners were:

• Best Author Microblog: Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself)  / Runner-up: Richard Jay Parker (@bookwalter)
• Best Unpublished Author Blog: Sam Starbuck (copperbadge.livejournal.com) / Runner-up: Jane Alexander (exmoorjane.blogspot.com)
• Best Published Author: Emily Benet (emilybenet.blogspot.com) / Runners-up: Cleolinda Jones (cleolinda.livejournal.com) and Jackie Morris (drawingalineintime.blogspot.com)

As luck would have it, Emily Benet was at the tweetup – congratulations, Emily!

The Author Blog Awards highlight the power of social media to offer a more level playing field for authors who are willing to interact with their audience online, and gain exposure for their work in the process.
ANNA LEWIS, CompletelyNovel

You can hear the Awards announcement, plus a few words from Emily, on the AudioBoo, read more about the winners at CompletelyNovel, and see Emily’s thank-you video on her blog.

Party at Eclipse

Festivities continued at Eclipse, with Jonathan Davis (@canadiancat) and Ernesto Priego DJing and spinning some Latin/salsa/soul sounds (there’s an AudioBoo for that too), and Toby Rhind-Tutt  (@the_rts)doing the photographic honours again. See his photos on his Twitpic page. If you have any photos of your own from the night, add them to our Publishing Talk Group Pool on Flickr to see them automagically appear in the sidebar of this site.

More Tweeting Up

This was the first London Book Fair tweetup – but there are more Publishing Talk events and more booktrade tweetups to come this year. #twicnic has already been mooted as a summer booktrade picnic in London. Why not organize a booktrade tweetup in your part of the world? Let us know and we’ll list it in our Events section. Meanwhile, carry on tweeting!

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