Copyfight

Elsevier Loses a Big Name, Publicly

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:59:53 -0500

Elsevier took another shot to the face today, with the very public resignation of an associate editor of its journal Genomics.

Winston Hide, the now-former editor, is a teacher at Harvard School of Public Health, and his resignation reasoning centered around his feeling that Elsevier's high-priced model was not compatible with the needs of people in developing countries. Hide, who is South African, has some direct experience with trying to do research on the continent where, he says:

The vast majority of biomedical scientists in Africa attempt to perform globally competitive research without up-to-date access to the wealth of biomedical literature taken for granted at western institutions.

Hide now plans to devote his time to promotion of open-access journals. He also notes that being on the editorial board of a prestigious journal is an important career position and resigning may in fact impede his career advancement. I still believe that the one true way to break the lock that for-profit publishers have on this business is for the tenure- and promotion-review boards of major institutions to change their processes, and I'm not seeing any movement yet in that direction. But it's still early, and academe is slow to change.

P.S. The Cost of Knowledge petition is up over 11,500 signatories now. Just sayin'...

(h/t Donna Wentworth and Peter Suber of the Harvard Open Access Project for the original pointer. The Berkman Center hosts the HOAP as well as this blog but there is no direct affiliation.)

How The Harvard Book Store is Reinventing Retail Bookselling

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:07:02 -0500

Writing for Forbes last week, Phil Johnson profiles the modern-day re-creation of the venerable Harvard Book Store. When I moved to Cambridge in the pre-Web days it boasted more bookstores (and ice cream parlors) per square meter than any other place on earth. Awesome stuff. But over the years they've been dying out, like small independent and big chain bookstores everywhere. When the biggest of the lot went under it seemed like confirmation that nothing could compete with Amazon and other online offerings.

But lo, Harvard Book Store is back, under the direction of Jeff Mayersohn, who previously worked in high tech - Sonus Networks and BBN are both on his profile. And Mayersohn knows that Harvard Book Store has to be able to take on the Amazon challenge and win. So far, so good. Forbes reports "double digit sales growth month by month over the last year."

How's he doing it? Innovation and service. Innovation: he's using print-on-demand technology to satisfy customers' instant-gratification desires. "The Espresso Book Machine" as it's called has a built-in inventory of 5,000,000 titles and can be used for custom publishing. The output is high quality, and if you know what you want in advance you can even order your POD book on-line.

Service: you can get your POD book delivered locally by pedal-truck or bicycle, which appeals to the Cambridge-area green-conscious buyers. Know your customer is an ancient sales adage that Mayersohn has taken to heart. And if you go into the store you get:

fanatical attention to customer service with an unrivaled staff of passionate and educated booksellers.

I might have mentioned that idea a few times recently.

Quick adaptation, a multi-pronged sales strategy, and an eye for winning details. Maybe it really does take a technophile to save a brick-and-mortar establishment. Are any other sellers out there paying attention?

(h/t Emily L for the original pointer.)

"The Mongoliad" As Business Model

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:39:31 -0500

I recently got to hear Neal Stephenson talk at MIT. As usual, he was a pleasure*, and the talk ranged over a wide variety of topics, from why America is in a massive idea deficit to why we should all stand up more and sit down less. What he didn't really discuss, to my disappointment, was the Mongoliad. Fortunately, Mark Teppo's "Big Idea" post in Scalzi's Whatever gives a little hint of what's going on here.

The Mongoliad on offer here is a book - a collaborative work. But what's of interest to Copyfight is the structure and entity that produced this book. To quote Teppo:

[W]e formed a company whose goal was to realize a new paradigm in publishing methodology, and to promulgate an argument that transmedia empires could be built using small, highly agile teams that could shift direction quickly and efficiently based on customer need and reaction. Do more of what the fans like; less of what causes them to make the ‘meh’ noise.

This could be very interesting to watch. We're starting to see several individual names break out of the existing mold - Amanda Palmer obviously, but also look at Rowling's decision on how she wanted the Potter e-books handled. But these are all individuals. The obvious next step up is small groups of creative people, and seeing which parts of what business models scale.

*Though I was sad he utterly flubbed my question on design. He confused design aesthetic with implementation shoddiness. C'est la vie.

Village Person Terminates Cartel Rights

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:27:24 -0500

Way back in August of last year, I noticed that there was a storm brewing over so-called "termination rights" in music recordings. That storm appears to have had a first crash, with former Village People member Victor Willis reclaiming his rights in some of their hit songs.

To review quickly: a feature of the Copyright Act that went into force in 1978 gave record companies 35 years' worth of profits from albums, after which the artists would be allowed to reclaim their rights in the music. Several artists have done so, and the Cartel is fighting them. According to Larry Rohter's NY Times piece linked above, Willis's claim was contested by Scorpio Music and Can’t Stop Productions, who had sued to stop him exercising his termination rights.

As I discussed in the August entry, Scorpio and Can't Stop initially contended that Willis wrote works for hire, meaning that he would have given up all rights. Chief Judge Barry T. Moskowitz of LA's Federal District Court, appeared set to reject that claim so it was withdrawn. Now Willis has back "his share" of ownership in 33 Village People songs.

That "his share" phrase leaves a lot of wiggle room still because the judge has to determine what Willis's share is. There's going to be a lot of unpleasant tangles yet to sort on this one, but it remains significant as the first case to test termination rights and the work-for-hire theory.

(h/t to +Rowan McVey and +Network XXIII News for the original pointer)

Kindle Sales Dropping Already, Publishers Back Off IPad Apps

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Wed, 09 May 2012 08:36:19 -0500

Last month I noted that Charles Stross was giving the stand-alone e-reader 2-5 years, whereas I was betting that sales had already peaked and we'd see a decline after the holiday season this year. I might have been too optimistic.

Now comes Jon Mitchell on ReadWriteWeb, reporting that "Kindle Sales Plummet". He claims that sucks but I think he's exaggerating. Anyway, Amazon doesn't exactly report its sales of Kindles, so it takes a little bit of sleuthing to infer this. Mainly the inference comes from E Ink Holdings, which supplies the screens for Kindles, reporting that it had a quarterly loss due to a lack of orders from its biggest customer (aka Amazon).

What makes this double-interesting is that it appears that sales of Kindle Fires are also dropping, too. ISC reported that sales of all Android-based tablets dropped in Q1 2012, including Kindle Fires. This isn't hugely surprising to me, given both Apple's splashy announcements and that fact that Android tablets had a stronger-than-expected holiday season in 2011. It will be interesting to see how that holds up over the next couple of quarters.

At the same time, I'm interested to see that more publishers (of news, this time) are backing away from iPad-as-platform. As an MIT alum I got a notice from Tech Review that they are ditching their iPad app. The reasons are strictly financial - it cost a bundle and made no money - but it's a strong cautionary tale for people and organizations that are thinking about taking the Apple golden handcuffs. TR notes that the Financial Times also made a similar decision recently, and that both TR and FT have moved to a free/open model based off HTML5.

I feel like we're in the very early stages of a chess game - most of the things being moved are pawns, and people are just beginning to consider how they're going to achieve strategic objectives like "control the center of the board". I would not be surprised to see tentative moves and hanging back from most of the major players through the next 6-8 months as everyone waits to see how things shake out and what happens to early risk-takers.

What to Read When Not Here

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:23:37 -0500

Copyfight is getting comment-bombed again. I'm cleaning up as fast as I can, but things are sluggish. Apologies in advance.

Meanwhile, let me give you a couple of pointers to things I think are worth reading relative to the past week's stories.

Amanda Palmer wrote a guest post on techdirt about her successful Kickstarter, which is well on its way to being the biggest ever. As I mentioned last week, one of the few elements I see in common among all the new success models is relentless fan service and Amanda addresses that issue head-on. She talks about "all of that real human connecting" and how it has enabled her to do what she's doing now.

She's also emphatic about another point, which you can read on the Kickstarter site: we lead, the media follows. If you're going to be successful in the independent model of the early-21st century then you make the news yourself. You do it by networking, word of mouth, taking things viral, making info in easily accessible places, in easily reposted (unlocked!) forms, etc. One way to look at this is as a failure of traditional media; another way to look at it as an opportunity for new businesses. There should be people out there setting up companies that are devoted to helping people like Palmer do this because, really, you need some kind of management when your sponsor base is over 10,000 and growing.

I thought this bit was particularly apropos:

I've seen people complaining that this is easy for me to do because I got my start on a major label. It's totally true that the label helped me and my band get known. But after that, the future was up to me. It bought me nothing but a headstart, and I used it. I could have stopped working hard and connecting in 2009. If I'd done that, and then popped up out of nowhere in 2012 to kickstart a solo record in 2012, my album would probably get funded to the tune of $10k...if I was lucky. There are huge ex-major label artists (pointless to name names) who have tried the crowd-funding method and failed dramatically, mostly because they didn't have the online relationship with their fans to rely on.

Second, Cory Doctorow posted a piece in The Guardian on "Why the death of DRM would be good news for readers, writers and publishers." That's a real mouthful of a title but it serves its purpose: DRM is bad business and we need to get that message across much more widely and emphatically. Cory's column is reasoned and historical and it covers ground I expect most of my readers know.

I was sadly amused to revisit the column today in preparation for writing this piece and find on the page the notice that "Comments on this page are now closed." I'm trying to formulate a coherent response that is not laughing out loud at the foolishness and backward-thinking-ness of a site that would close comments on a column, let alone close comments on a column that's not even a week old.

Dear Guardian, comments are lifeblood. You want them. You need them. See above, where I spend my time weeding out spam comments? That's because I treasure the real feedback I get from readers. I love that my first tentative query about Createspace is one of the most commented-on pieces on this blog, over four years later. Do you think Amanda Palmer would ever close comments on something she posted? I think not.

Get with the program, Guardian. You're not doing yourselves, your readers, or your writers any favors here.

Amazon is Nobody's Darling Right Now

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:21:26 -0500

Consensus seems to be that the willingness of at least some publishers to settle the DOJ lawsuit rather than fight will put Amazon back in the catbird seat. Lots of people are reacting to that; herewith two that came across my screen today.

First, Target isn't going to sell Kindles anymore. The problem isn't the Kindle per se. It's that Amazon has been using physical retailers as its (unpaid) showrooms. Amazon has encouraged people to go shop in physical stores, then price-compare and buy from Amazon - even offering a discount for doing so. That may be a few bucks in consumers' pockets, but it's a big hit to the brick-and-mortar retailers who are losing customers right out of their showrooms.

Target is still a small fraction of Kindle sales, even though it's the biggest non-Amazon seller. So this mostly amounts to a symbolic middle finger to Amazon, since Target will continue to carry iPad and Nook devices. It's worth noting that both Apple and B&N have large physical presences and as such are much more careful about how the online and retail shopping experiences merge.

Second, Mark Glaser of PBS's Mediashift pointed me to a column by Barbara E. Hernandez titled "Can E-Books Succeed Without Amazon?" The heart of the issue seems to be Amazon's KDP Select program, about which I wrote in March. As I intimated then, the program is a hammerlock on an author and buying into it might not be the brightest move for any aspiring writer.

Hernandez paints a picture of Amazon as "heavy-handed" and notes that many authors are opting for smaller publishers who offer more freedom and leave the authors more in control, such as Bookbaby and Smashwords. Harkening back to the first story, Hernandez quotes Smashwords founder Mark Coker as saying

KDP Select [is] using self-published authors as pawns [in] a broader campaign to wage war against retail competitors

That's another bad move on Amazon's part, but they're still the 500 lb gorilla in the room. Authors ignore them at some risk. Let's just hope the gorilla decides to be better-behaved.

(full disclosure: a couple of my author friends have chosen to go with Smashwords, but I have no incentive to promote that alternative. As noted, I don't even own an e-reader yet.)

Scalzi on Palmer, Success, Sponsorship Model

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:15:49 -0500

In a Whatever blog entry today, John Scalzi gives his feelings on Amanda Palmer's latest Kickstarter project. He addresses in depth several of the issues I mentioned in my May Day follow-up post: Palmer's years of hard work to get to this point, her intense engagement with her fans, etc. Scalzi also notes that although Palmer has raised what appears to be a huge sum she's not going to pocket more than a fraction of it, and she'll have to work damned hard for that fraction.

UK Academics Move to Free Up Taxpayer-Funded Research

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:45:31 -0500

The Guardian reports that the UK government has engaged Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to help with a project intended to unlock taxpayer-funded research.

One of the little-reported aspects of the current situation in academic research publishing is that much (most?) of the work that is put into these very expensive academic journals is paid for by the taxpayer. In the US there are funding agencies like NIH, CDC and of course ARPA that funnel taxpayer dollars to researchers. In the UK and elsewhere there are similar agencies and grant programs that make this research possible.

Given, then, that the work was paid for by the public it seems a wholly fair question to ask by what rights are the fruits of that work concealed from the public behind expensive paywalls. Wales acknowledges that academic publishers bring value to the process of research publication. However, adding value doesn't equate to having a monopoly lock. Or at least it shouldn't. The effort, dubbed the "Gateway to Research project", has about two years, and currently about UKP 2 million to create an open access environment. They're working with several partners in the UK, including representatives from academia, librarians, and publishers.

There are a number of thorny questions to be hashed out - it's not just as simple as moving research papers from expensive journals to a free Web site. How will research be accessed? How will it be vetted? What processes are necessary for updating or outright retraction of research? What other research materials might be valuable in such a portal - personally I'd like to see the inclusion of things like molecular models, part descriptions, software simulations, data sets, data analysis tools and much more. But can anyone make head or tail of this if it all gets dumped into one portal?

All of these are good and tough questions. Now the next question we want to be asking is: why limit this to just the UK? Where is the US effort?

(h/t Donna Wentworth... yes THAT Donna Wentworth for the pointer)

May 4 is Coming Again - International Day Against DRM

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:26:52 -0500

A couple of Copyfight readers pointed me to Defective By Design's "Day Against DRM" scheduled for May 4th, a subsidiary of the Free Software Foundation.

Last year the event attracted little media attention (see PCWorld's coverage from that day) and, sadly, it appears that little notice will be given again this year.

As the site notes, there has been slow progress on the de-DRM-ing fronts of the past. In particular, much more music is available for download unencumbered now than in the past. But the new fronts that have opened up - particularly ebooks and streaming music/video - remain badly broken and un-free for legal, private uses because of DRM.

DRM is bad business, and bad user experience. Let's get some attention on the need to make it part of the past.

Two Follow-ups on B&N/MSFT and Palmer

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:51:54 -0500

Both of the stories behind yesterday's pair of posts are getting more commentary. Here are a couple quickies and thoughts to go with them:

Michael Marotta writes for the Phoenix on Palmer's choice to skip the major-label route. The Phoenix, being Boston's alternative paper, was one of the first media outlets to notice and publicize Palmer and the Dresden Dolls. Thus, she writes them from time to time.

In her letter this time she points out that even though the Kickstarter has blown the roof off its fundraising goal that still only represents a few thousand fans. Any major-label release that sold that few copies would be considered a flop, and the artist would make no money, never mind that a major label couldn't possibly manage to put out the kind of complex multi-pronged project that Palmer is fundraising for.

In response to yesterday's post, Luis Cruz asked the question of how well this model would work for someone who isn't already established with a fan base. It's a fair and unfair question at the same time. The answer is we don't really know - there are thousands of people trying to find their way through Kickstarter, maxing out their credit cards, busking, playing open mic nights, etc. A few will make it via each of these routes but most won't. But they don't have a lot of alternatives - the number of acts that will make it via the major-label last-century model is also minuscule.

Each year we see a few creative types that seem to break out (Jonathan Coulton, Felicia Day, etc.) and each has a unique path to present success. There doesn't seem to be a good general model, but I think we're starting to see certain elements in common. For example, intense fan service, a hawk eye on the business details, and a willingness to roll with the punches and adapt all seem to be necessary ingredients. Palmer's success didn't come overnight - Dresden Dolls formed in 2000 I think - which means she's busted ass for over a decade now. What she's doing now would not have been possible in 2000 but that says more about the Internet age than about Palmer.

On the Microsoft/B&N partnership, the blog entry by Tobias Buckell is typical of the reactions I'm seeing. Buckell's point, which I think is spot-on, is that this is not at all about a Windows 8 Nook. It's about the merging of two software ecosystems and the possibilities that opens up. And also that neither big entity seems to have concrete plans for how that's going to happen. Hell, they couldn't even figure out a real final name for their joint venture. This makes me think the whole thing was rushed and not necessarily well thought-out.

Above I mentioned "rolling with the punches." In particular I think a key element of this is being willing to re-invent one's self-conception. Day moved from doing standard television shows to running her own YouTube channel. Palmer has always had theatrical elements as part of her musical acts, but lately she's added spoken word, poetry, and art/photography. What makes me doubt that the MS/B&N merger will work is that I can't see either company pivoting quickly enough to re-imagine themselves in new ways. But a big bankroll buys you a lot, not least of it time, so I'm not willing to write them off entirely just yet.

This is the Future of Music

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:46:57 -0500

This is how we fucking do it.

In juxtaposition to the previous story, which is all about big companies sticking with last year's model, I bring you yet another Kickstarter from Amada Palmer, who chucked over a half-million dollar big-budget studio production in favor of getting to do it herself, if people fund her. And, she admits, maybe make some money for herself this way, even though you can get the entire album as digital download for a buck.

Everything about this project screams 'forward-thinking': it's crowd-funded (via Kickstarter). There is an option for patronage beyond what Kickstarter allows. The project involves multiple artists, all retaining control of their work. The product is multi-faceted (album AND book AND art tour AND maybe more). The experience is multi-layered - even tickets to the shows are exclusively on Kickstarter. The promotion is direct and from the heart - Ms. Palmer is not ashamed to say "fucking" nor is she ashamed to express her love for her fans.

This is the sort of thing you can't buy with astro-turfing. This is the sort of thing that will blaze trails for this century's creative artists. I confess I am not a huge fan of Ms. Palmer's music and her stage acts. But I admire the hell out of what she's doing.

(Hat-tip +Kee Hinckley for the original pointer.)

B&N/Microsoft to Compete With Apple & Amazon

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:55:01 -0500

PW has a story today about Barnes & Noble looking for deep pockets to help it survive against the Amazon & Apple juggernauts. The Nook maker is teaming up with Microsoft, which is putting in a bunch of cash and getting a first-out-of-the-box Nook for Windows 8 app.

This seems like a bad and backward-thinking way for B&N to go, to me. As we've been discussing this month, dedicated e-readers are going to die, including Nook. Tablets running things like Windows 8 will replace these devices. Of course B&N wants there to be a Nook app for Windows 8. But it also wants one for iPad and Android tablets. Microsoft's money might get them first place in the development line, but it can't possibly buy exclusivity. B&N is also probably being foolish to prioritize a Windows-OS version, in that Windows 8 has such a tiny user-base. A Nook app for either of the other big sellers would likely reach far more of B&N's customers.

The PW piece has a bit of puffery about how they're going to do unspecified other things, and combine assets and blah blah. It includes blather about B&N's physical stores, about which Microsoft cares not one whit, and has not one word about the one truly revolutionary thing to happen in e-books this year: Tom Doherty imprints' decision to dump DRM.

All of which tells me they don't have an actual business model. That's kind of a shame, actually, because I can think of at least two that would be absolutely rocking, given these two companies' expertise and current footprints.

SCOTUS Grants Cert for Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 06:15:42 -0500

Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is the case in which Wiley are trying to destroy what remains of First Sale Doctrine. The Copyright Alliance blog has a good summary of the issues, along with a link to the 2nd Circuit decision. There's not a lot of new news at this time, but I think this case is both extremely important and terribly under-reported in the mainstream press, so I wanted to highlight this. Perhaps the Supreme Court thinks it's important, too. (h/t Doug Pardee for the original pointer)

Why Break/Abandon DRM

Posted by Alan Wexelblat — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:53:43 -0500

Yesterday, when I linked to Charles Stross's later entry I should also have linked back to his earlier piece "What Amazon's ebook strategy means". This piece, published earlier this month, forthrightly declared that "DRM on ebooks is dead."

Stross has been careful to state that he had no insider view that Tom Doherty Associates - the publishers who put out the Tor, Forge, and other lines of books - were going to make a big move to drop DRM. But even without that knowledge, Stross put together what he saw as the business case for getting rid of DRM. Long-time readers here will know that I am a big fan of the creators should get paid viewpoint, but that we also share the view put forth by people like Cory Doctorow that the actual business effect of DRM is not to control illegal copying, but rather to hand the manufacturers of ebook readers a stranglehold on everyone and everything.

It's not going to surprise any of my readers that Stross concludes that the only way to break Amazon's stranglehold is to drop DRM. In a DRM-free world, you can buy a book that is readable on a Kindle and on a Nook and on an iPad. Thus, it doesn't matter if you buy that book from Amazon. It may be the case that Amazon offers you a discount, or a frequent-buyer program, or some other incentive. The publishers can't guarantee that Amazon won't be able to dominate the market by virtue of its strong competitive position, wide inventory of products, and other advantages. What they can guarantee is that their readers will no longer be locked into a Kindle.

Although Stross doesn't say this directly, I feel this also opens up a world of other direct-sale opportunities for publishers. I mentioned Emily Books a couple weeks back, who are trying to operate as independents. In a DRM-free world there's no reason that a big-name publisher can't do a deal with Emily Books or any of a thousand other small, high-value, curated ebook outfits. Get DRM-free versions of Emily Books on every device, with a publisher like Tom Doherty Associates lending its marketing and mass distribution expertise and getting a cut of the profits. I can think up at least six more profitable-to-the-publisher ways to build business in a DRM-free work. Stross's piece claims that dropping DRM won't lead to immediate revenue gains, but I think that's true only if you consider going DRM-free as a stand-alone action rather than part of a comprehensive business strategy.

I was also amused to see that Stross also predicts the demise of the dedicated e-reader, given that most people I talk to think I'm nuts when I say that. He's more generous than I was, giving the stand-alone reader "2-3 years possibly, 5 years probably" where I think that by this time next year everyone will be talking about the decline of the device as tablets ascend.

Lastly, I wanted to bring to your attention a fascinating piece that appeared yesterday on PaidContent, '"Why I break DRM on e-books”: A publishing exec speaks out.' In this column, Laura Hazard Owen tells the story of one (obviously anonymous) executive from the publishing industry whom she introduced to the common practice of unlocking a purchased book so it can be read anywhere.

Exec, as she dubs her story protagonist, admits to being influenced by Stross's writing. Exec realized that s/he had no control over the ability to do perfectly legal things with purchased ebooks. Exec isn't sharing the cracked books with anyone, let alone putting them out for general downloading. Exec just wants to be able to read the stuff, and has figured out that the sole purpose of DRM is to control the consumer. Sadly, even though Exec admits to a decision to break every DRMed ebook from now on it doesn't appear that Exec will do anything to change stupid corporate policies that put the DRM there in the first place.

Still, admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right? Maybe we should set up a 12-step program for all the members of the Cartel who are addicted to DRM.