Jazzwise

Jazzwise is now in our magazine shop.

• Table of Contents
• Japanese pianist Hiromi
• Saxophone Summit
  

Scrapbook

Scrapbook joins the shop:

• Lots of links and post codes.
• Table of Contents
• Scrapbook of the Year competition.

The iPhone Goes Both Ways

Much recent chatter about the promise of the iPhone for book publishers to which we have contributed. See BookSquare, Brantley, PersonaNonData, Digitalist, TeleRead, amongst others.

But there is another side to this: what if the iPhone gobbles up text as easily as it gives digital access to published works? The iPhone has a camera, is a capable computer, is well connected to the web, and a lot can happen when you put a web service at the disposal of millions of people with hand-held computerate, camera-scanners. This paragraph from Scoble caught my eye:

.....visited Evernote, which makes a great note-taking app. This is the most useful app I’ve loaded on my iPhone so far (which has more than 30 apps loaded on it). Really killer thing? Take a picture of something with text in it. Say a sign, or a business card. Or a newspaper ad. Or a bill you received. Save it. Then, search for something on that bill. Wow. It turned all the text in the picture into something you could search for. This is the coolest thing. iPhone Developers have a blockbuster weekend

That sounds a bit primitive. He does not say that it can digitize the editorial pages of Newsweek (sounds as though it can capture the ads). But you can see where it is going. Sooner, rather than later, you will be able to point your iPhone at a book/magazine, flip the pages, upload it to some web app and have a 'searchable' version of the publication and a good scanned copy at your fingertips.

The likely availability of distributed, low cost, intelligent, OCR-scanning will put print publishers in pretty much the same boat as the music industry. Digital copying of text will be as easy and as useful as digital copying of recorded music (until recently digital copying meant copying the dumb image, not capturing the textual information in the typography. Google Book Search changed that).

I point this out not out of a desire to "put the frighteners on" print publishers, but to suggest that there is still time enough for print to get out of the hole the music business has dug itself. Get licensing those digital editions! Provide legitimate low cost access to everything for which you have a PDF file and valid title! There is no point in hanging back, publishers must build those digital markets before your customers start mode-shifting your content -- its a business imperative. The iPhone creates great potential for publishers, but if they dont seize it, they will find they have lost much more than a new opportunity.

Cover Disks on the Way Out?

Music magazines and technology magazines make a lot of use of cover disks (CD's packaged up on the outside of the cover). This is quite messy, expensive and environmentally unfriendly.

We have tended to steer clear of 'cover disks', not wishing to make life more complicated than it need be for ourselves or our publishers. But our new addition PC Utilities has used our platform in a very neat way to produce a general solution.

One of the tricky complications is that the 'cover disk' carries premium info that the magazine publisher does not want to give away for free, otherwise it would be possible to post the data/programs/music on the magazine web site and let all and sundry come in for it. Simple, but it undermines the premium quality of the cover disk. The PC Utilities publisher saw that they could use the fact that we provide real time data on new subscriptions, to provide a check list, on those who would be entitled to download the cover disk contents. Provided that your email address matches with the list of subscribers to the digital edition you get into the FTP area to harvest your goodies.

This publisher's solution is a very good example of the way digital editions can be used to complement the work of the magazine's web site. Once the cover disk becomes merely virtual the publisher saves money, and also has the possibility of creating a much more valuable archival resource for his subscribers.

PC Utilities

Issue 90

Page 26

Gmail is Superb

But did you realise that it is still in Beta?

Perhaps it is Google's modesty that keeps such a wonderful and functional service in perpetual beta (or, dreadful thought, perhaps they will turn it into a paid for subscription service when it comes out of Beta).

Google has lots of services, many of them fabulous. But some of them deserve the 'beta' classification more than others. Google Book Search is still very definitely beta. The mooted Google Knol appears to have gone into an invisible beta phase, and I would not be surprised if it stayed there indefinitely. In spite of (and perhaps because of) the hype with which it was launched last year. Google's Knols were meant to be a challenger to Wikipedia -- or an authoritative complement. Wikipedia may have the last laugh on this, its entry on Knols is perhaps more authoritative than Google's Knol on Wikipedia will ever be. A'knol' is meant to be a unit of knowledge -- Google has many outstanding computer scientists, but it may be leaden when it comes to epistemology.

Merging and Emerging

Lulu, the pioneering self-publishing site, has entered into an alliance with Scribd (news from ReadWriteWeb via Brantley's Read20 list). This is interesting because they are two of the coolest companies experimenting with user-generated publishing, and their collaboration covers potential weaknesses on each side (Lulu has a better distribution model with a successful track record in actually selling content, Scribd has the more innovative and interesting content platform: Scribd, in case you havent seen it, is aiming to be a YouTube for PDF documents). They both have a strong user-generated content focus and I wonder if they will potentially exhaust the space which lies beneath the attention-span of conventional publishers. I suspect that something quite promising could emerge from this alliance.

Whether or not anything important does emerge depends really on the initiative and the ambitions of the many users who are already dabbling with Scribd and Lulu. That potential to unlock new audience-generated innovation is the attractive and unpredictable part of the 'alliance'.

Dozing at the Wheel

Kassia Kroszer thinks that book publishers are missing a great opportunity. The new iPhone has appeared and there appear to be hardly any books available for it. Surely there should be lots of best sellers and front list in the App Store?

Call me crazy, but I’d expect an industry that salivates over moving 150,000 units to be all over the potential for reaching seven million “mobile is the future” customers. Are you not out there, listening to readers, gauging their interest? They want, you have, and you’re still hiding the goods. I get this isn’t the largest market you have, but is that an excuse to sit on the sidelines? Sittin' Here Watching the Market Go By

Kassia is right to expostulate. The iPhone is great for publishers (whether of books or magazines) because it facilitates subscriptions and sales (the system is comparable to iTunes) but it is also great for advertising backed publishing -- because the Geo-location adds significant potential to the rate card. I dont know why publishers are being so slow, but I do not think that Kassia's explanation is right. She says:

If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say most publishers are waiting for someone to offer them a pre-packaged solution that somehow fulfills the crazy DRM requirements that publishers use to keep legitimate customers from easily accessing content while doing so very little to stop genuine piracy...

DRM is not the issue, most publishers have got over the DRM hangup. I think a more probable explanation is simple eBook fatigue. The promised golden age of eBooks has proven to be a false dawn so many times, that most publishers are taking a very 'wait and see' attitude. They will need convincing market feedback before they rustle up those PDF files and sign up to the distributor deals. Not so much dozing at the wheel, as whistling in the breeze with barely one hand on the tiller.

But somebody will soon leap into action and show the crowd how it is done. The iPhone is going to knock the Kindle for six.

PC Utilities

• Times are changing when a PC magazine runs a regular Linux workshop.
• Also Vista, of course
  
• No Macintosh but Safari for Windows
• ToC

Classifying Books which from a long way off look like flies

Tim Spalding of the Library Thing has announced an ambitious project to develop "the Open Shelves Classification (OSC), a free, "humble," modern, open-source, crowd-sourced replacement for the Dewey Decimal System." The comments on his posting show that this is a topic which can arouse an emotional response ..... bad temper, hurt feelings, wounded pride.

Tim is a shrewd and industrious character, but I wonder whether his project is not somewhat Quixotic. Dewey, with all its limitations, was meeting a challenge which no longer arises. Namely: a reasonable and extensible way of ordering any book, and any forthcoming stream of books on to a set of bookshelves, so that two libraries would agree on the order in which the books were placed. Dewey is linear (and arguably impoverished) through and through, to its decimal core. Libraries will not want such linear systems in the future. Books when they are digital will go on as many shelves as their users or librarians can countenance.

The best classification systems of the future library will embrace as many coherent classification systems as can be found. Everything from arbitrary user tagging, to the Dewey decimal system and back, via the Human Genome, the Appellation d’origine contrôlée, copyright status, Linnaeus, Wikipedia, Mozart's Koechel numbers and of course FIFA World Rankings.

Borges quoting his (fictional) Chinese Encyclopedia the 'Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge' should have the last and completely permissive word on this subject:

In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

The iPhone and is it tilting the table?

The iPhone is great and I will probably soon go and get one (distinctly envious of our Technical Director who has one, but one of the old models. So now is my moment!). But it looks as though I may be too slow off the mark for this month....

There is an interesting post at SiliconAlleyInsider about what will not be coming into the AppStore. There will not be an Amazon MP3 Store, a Skype, an Adobe Flash plug-in, or another browser (no Firefox), so Apple are tilting the table. They have created a great way of accessing the web, but they want to keep some competitors out. It will be an Apple-shaped web. Lots of talk about there being a market for an eBook reader on the iPhone, but I don't yet see it. Surely somebody will come through soon with one, but I doubt that it will be Amazon. They are trying to tilt the table with their own Kindle, and a Kindle emulator on the iPhone would be a monstrous thought.

If you want an eBook reader (or a digital magazine reader) on the iPhone, all you need to do is to subscribe to one of the publications on Exact Editions. The Exact Editions platform works fine on the iPhone. Clicking on a live phone number in one of our magazines will initiate a call. That could be quite important.....

Philosophically, I am resistant to the idea that one should 'tweak' a web application for some specific hardware solution. It surely is a mistake to create an eBook reader that only works on the iPhone. But there are ways in which the Exact Editions experience on an iPhone could be enhanced, so maybe we should be doing a bit of table tilting on our own account. Apple are very much at the cutting edge....

On Getting Organised

Very frequently when we talk to publishers they show little interest in selling digital subscriptions. In the case of magazine publishers this is truly weird, because their business has always been about selling subscriptions. The apparent reluctance to sell subscriptions among book publishers is in one way more understandable. Book publishers are not really used to selling subscriptions. They are mostly versed in the practice of outright sale of the book.

Mind you, book publishers, if they keep their eyes open, should realise that selling subscriptions has been hugely profitable for the publishers of academic and scientific journals. Publishers of academic books really ought to be cognisant of the fact that their books would be much more useful, and much more used by universities if they were available digitally.

It ought to be a bit of a 'no brainer'. If the books are offered as digital resources they will be bought, they will be used. Nor is it at all likely that digital sales will impact print sales in the short term. Since many libraries will wish to have a printed volume as well as digital access.

But we do find it odd that publishers of books and magazines are still often surprisingly reluctant to move to offering a digital edition. They really are, most of them, being very slow. One of the most common 'explanations' of why the publisher does not want to try offering a digital edition at the moment is that the web site is currently being, or is just about to be, redesigned/improved/rethought/re-engineered.

Whenever a publisher says this, I have to restrain myself from saying that they will always be redesigning and improving the web site and that this will never be a reason for not seeking a new sale. "You really dont need to improve your web site in order to offer digital editions", but I dont usually say that, since it is possibly impertinent and one should never contradict one's potential client. In fact 'offering' digital editions can happen with any significant changes on a web site and no more impacts on the design of the web site than building a new warehouse. Come to think of it offering a digital editions is more like building a new warehouse or opening a new sales channel, but of course it costs practically nothing to do so (unlike most new warehouse, or web redesign, projects) .......

Yesterday I had an interesting variant on this 'explanation' from a publisher (I will leave it vague whether of magazines or of books) who said that she would really rather not consider this topic of digital editions until they were better organised. "'Better organised'? So perhaps we should talk again in two months?" I cheekily ventured. To which she replied: "Yes call me again in two months when we are better organised." I think I prefer that to the "I am waiting for my web site to improve" explanation, but it made me smile. I like the idea that we will be better organised in two months. But in my experience it usually takes a little longer. Which of course is a reason for starting to sell digital editions now. We are selling more than ever. It isnt yet an avalanche but it is building up very nicely.

Charkin Blog in book form

The Charkin Blog went silent 8 months ago, and there have been rumours that it will soon appear in print. The rumour was confirmed when we received a request for permission to include a snapshot, originally taken from our web site, so that the thumbnail (of a Berkshire Publishing reference work) could appear in the book publication. The email requesting permission was very polite and of course we promptly granted permission. This is how the project was described.

"In September 2008 Pan Macmillan will publish Charkin Blog: the Archive, by Richard Charkin, an edited print-on-demand version of the blog he published at http://charkinblog.macmillan.com/default.aspx while chairman of the company."

and they asked for blanket permission in all territories. But there was no mention of digital rights, so does this mean that there will not be a digital edition? I hope not, since I am a great believer that anything that is worth printing is worth having in digital format. On the other hand I am more of a believer of exact editions where the digital editon exactly matches the print edition: can an exact edition go in the other direction? How can one compensate for all the missing links, the immediacy of navigation etc? We intend to buy the book to find out.

The Charkin blog was a very good read while it lasted, it will be interesting to see if it can work in volume form. Of course, Macmillan as a large publisher would take the permissions issue very seriously, but can you imagine how many permissions emails they will have had to generate? It is a reminder that blogs just could not exist if every blog re-usage required permission. Publishing and blogging on the web thrives because the reins are a little bit looser. Publishers who insist that copyright issues must all remain 'opt in' (ask before you use) rather than 'opt out' (if you object I will take down) are living without the web.

VAT on books and magazines

At present printed books and magazines sold within the EU are VAT exempt (in most countries). It is odd that digital versions of those same books are taxed for VAT as though they were cars or carpets. According to the Bookseller, reporting on a proposed EU directive, audiobooks will soon also be VAT-exempt. Fedrico Motta Chairman of the Federation of European Publishers expresses the hope that this will soon mean that digital books (and presumably magazines) will also soon be exempt.

It would be very strange if they were to continue to be treated differently. Especially since digital editions have a much smaller carbon footprint than the printed alternative. It really is very odd that they are taxed when the eco-heavy versions are tax exempt. It is also bizarre because it places EU digital publishers at a disadvantage compared to their American or Mexican competitors.

Bush on Berlusconi --- OK so what would you say?

George W Bush has to apologise because his team produce a background briefing note which says some very rude things about the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi:

[Berlusconi is] "one of the most controversial leaders" of a country "known for governmental corruption and vice"........ It refers to the Italian prime minister as a man "hated by many but respected by all at least for his bella figura (personal style) and the sheer force of his will"........ It says Mr Berlusconi was said to be "regarded by many as a political dilettante (amateur) who gained his high office only through use of his considerable influence on the national media". (from BBC report, Bush sorry over Berlusconi insult)

Apparently the briefing note reproduced in full 4 pages from Gale's Encyclopedia of World Biography.

The briefing given to White House press corps was lifted, administration officials said, from the Encyclopedia of World Biography, and put in a briefing pack as though it represented the views of the administration. (Guardian)

I guess that the White House would have made several hundred copies of this set of briefing notes and I wonder whether they would have paid any necessary reproduction fees to Gale (part of Cengage).

If the White House press staff have to produce background briefing notes on every rascal that the President might meet they have got a real problem. Perhaps a link to wikipedia would suffice. Mind you the wikipedia entry on Silvio Berlusconi is pretty devastating, though the language is perhaps more neutral. What can an honest briefing note say about Sr Berlusconi? I think the Gale encyclopedist may have the last laugh.