The Future of Publishing

We are fully aware that we rant a bit on the subject of royalties for electronic media. Ranting keeps us young. Plus we think it’s the most important topic facing artists today — and, as evidenced by Saturday’s dinner with a fine, upstanding member of the Director’s Guild of America, we remain concerned that too much faith is being placed in “someone else.” This particular DGA member professed a vague idea that in the coming year, her guild will be going to battle on her behalf. She felt certain that the DGA will take care of everything, yet wasn’t quite […]

If we were the type to eat our words, we would be, yes, considering swallowing all of the things we’ve said about the publishing industry and their slow movement into the modern world*. Just this week, near the end of 2006, a mere dozen or so years after the dawn of the Age of Amazon, the industry has…wait for it…announced the release of a new digital book standard. Just in time for Christmas! As with all major announcements, this one came with tongue-ready acronyms: the Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS) and Open eBook Publication Structure Container Format (OCF) were released

Either or, either or, either…what is it about the world we live in that every move is giant step forward with the potential to surpass the leader with just a little more effort? Or is it just that journalists spend a little too much time reprinting press releases and not enough time thinking about the information contained in said releases? Microsoft is not stepping further into Google’s territory; they are just moving forward with an ongoing project. Two technology giants — Google and Microsoft — are currently engaged in major book digitization efforts. While their approaches differ (slightly), they have

As most of you know, a little Book Fair is happening right now in Frankfurt. What happens there will likely stay there, and much of the news trickling out of the event seems to indicate that the conference has a bit of a “same time, next year” feel to it. Especially when it comes to digital rights management. DRM. It’s a term you need to understand. Publisher’s Weekly reports that an entire session, thrillingly (and we do mean that sincerely) called “Publishers and Search Engines: Facing the Challenge” discussed an approach called Automated Content Access Protocol, or ACAP for short.

There is a saying that, if we recall correctly, suggests that closing the barn door after the horse escapes is rather foolish. Unless you are really trying to protect hay, in which case, you may ultimately be seen as practical. We are not sure the latest scheme initiated by publishers will be seen as practical, possibly because it does not seem to, oh, show an awareness of how the world works. Let us begin with a bit of positivity: creating smart “use” tags — a concept called digital rights management in the real world — to identify levels of content

We were intrigued by the idea that the publishing industry is essentially squeezing itself out of the backlist market — at first thought, it seems almost impossible. After all, aren’t the publishers producing all those lovely books? Surely they are making oodles of money. Of course they are. Such is the beauty of backlist. Advances are earned out (hopefully). Artwork and typesetting costs have been recouped. Sure, pesky little items like royalties and manufacturing costs remain, but those are manageable and predictable.

Last week (so long ago), we pointed you to a little piece from Engadget about the iPod and its possible future as an e-reader. Other than our fascination the weird phrasing associated with publisher compliance — “…according to a source at a major publishing house, they were just ordered to archive all their manuscripts — every single one — and send them over to Apple’s Cupertino HQ…” — we were mildly interested in this development. Let’s be honest, making text available on an iPod is a tweaking of technology. The story was picked up by Tom’s Hardware (yes, we know,

So, yeah, it’s 2006, and the Association of American University Presses (c’mon, you’ve heard of them) got together to talk about “Transforming Publishing”. It turns out this digital future thing is now and university presses need to get on board. Shouldn’t they have had this conversation back in, oh, 1996? But let’s let bygones be whatever and focus on the fact that university presses are facing unique challenges: large collections, low volume sales, and lack of infrastructure. It is our opinion that the universities would be wise to take advantage of the deep corporate pockets on the pants of Google

As we all learned with last week’s Britney Spears meltdown, it is important that you have people — those mysterious creatures who make life run smoothly — to halt the growing epidemic of foot-in-mouth disease. We believe that if John Updike’s people would simply step forward and whisper something like “John, you sound like an ass” in his ear, it would be very helpful. Because a revered American writer is sounding like a doddering fool. It ain’t an age thing — Kurt Vonnegut recently did a book tour and managed to sound like he’s in touch with the modern world.