TOC Publishing News: News from the Future of Publishing

Rethinking Libraries and Museums as "Living" Structures

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:55:39 -0500

The Living Library project flips the reader-book dynamic on its head by allowing library patrons to "check out" human beings, and then engage in a civil dialogue. Nina Simon from Museum 2.0 extends the Living Library structure to a reimagining of museums:

How could visitors' stereotypes about museum behavior and the kinds of activities available in museums be exploited to provide a radically different experience? In the same way the Living Library is organized around the frame of librarians, catalogues, books, and the action of checking things out, a theoretical Living Museum could be organized around exhibits, artifacts, docents, and the action of looking at things or moving through spaces. Imagine a museum in which Artifacts of a war are veterans, family members, and former enemy combatants. Or an exhibit on immigration in which you could check out Legal and Alien Artifacts for discussion based on labels identifying their provenance and status. A museum tour in which a docent "tours" you to a variety of volunteer artists who talk about how they create their work.

(Via Read 20 list)

Tor.com Woos Sci-Fi Fans with Free Ebooks

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:39:20 -0500

Taking a page from the Baen playbook, Tor.com, a division of Macmillan, is giving away 24 science fiction ebook titles through July 27. The ebooks are available in PDF, HTML and Mobi formats.

(Via News.com)

First E Ink Magazine Cover Coming in September

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:20:50 -0500

Esquire will use E Ink technology to declare "the 21st Century Begins Now" on 100,000 flashing copies of its September issue. David Granger, Esquire's editor in chief, discusses the first E Ink-driven magazine cover with New York Times:

... on its own, the magazine will run out of juice after 90 days. Mr.Granger knows some will see the cover as a gimmick -- but he says he thinks the technology behind it, which has been used for supermarket displays but never embedded in a magazine, speaks to the possibilities of print.

Update 7/23: Folio says Esquire's E Ink edition sell for $5.99, two dollars more than the usual cover price.

(Via Engadget)

What Authors Can Learn from Silicon Valley

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:53:13 -0500

Sramana Mitra of Forbes.com sees parallels between author Elle Newmark's grassroots audience development and Silicon Valley's software process:

In Silicon Valley, we do alpha and beta products -- small prototypes of our vision -- and recruit a small number of customers to gain early validation of the products' viability. These alpha and beta products, along with early customer validation, help us sell our ventures to investors and raise millions of dollars in venture money.

In Newmark's case, she spent less than $10,000 of her own money to "bootstrap" her self-publishing effort, she found customers online, and then she recruited William Morris agent Dorian Karchmar as her "investment banker," who then got her Simon & Schuster as a "venture investor." Newmark's deal with Simon & Schuster is widely rumored to include a seven-figure advance.

Opportunity Turns the Tables on Piracy

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:38:38 -0500

The Economist examines the underlying business opportunities created by piracy:

Piracy can also be a source of innovation, if someone takes a product and then modifies it in a popular way. In music unofficial remixes can boost sales of the original work. And in a recent book, "The Pirate's Dilemma", Matt Mason gives the example of Nigo, a Japanese designer who took Air Force 1 trainers made by Nike, removed the famous "swoosh" logo, applied his own designs and then sold the resulting shoes in limited editions at $300 a pair under his own label, A Bathing Ape. Instead of suing Nigo, Nike realised that he had spotted a gap in the market. It took a stake in his firm and also launched its own premium "remixes" of its trainers. Mr Mason argues that "the best way to profit from pirates is to copy them."

That this silver lining exists should not obscure the cloud. Most of the time, companies will decide to combat piracy of their products by sending in the lawyers with all guns blazing. And most of the time that is the right thing to do. But before they rush into action companies should check to see if there is a way for them to turn piracy to their advantage.

Budding Authors Use Espresso Book Machine to Publish

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:24:46 -0500

The future of print on demand might lie in personal expression. Customers at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT are using the Espresso Book Machine to produce their own titles. From Vermont Public Radio:

Since it was installed, some of the store's customers have been using the machine to produce hard-to-find books from a huge online database of titles in the public domain. But the store has discovered that the machine is most popular with would-be authors who want to turn what they've written into a book.

The full audio feature goes into more detail.

(Via Shelf Awareness)

Web Publicity + Free = A Fighting Chance

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:44:43 -0500

Sci-fi author Scott Sigler uses podcasts, giveaways and grassroots Web marketing to build interest in his work. We've covered Sigler in the past, but his recent interview with The Independent illustrates the value lesser-known writers can derive from Web-based brand building and free distribution:

Sigler's thinking -- and this is the revolutionary bit -- is that it's worth making commercial sacrifices to secure a fan base, because fans will always want physical copies of the books, even if they've already heard an audio version for free.

"The only way to get people's attention these days is to give them something for free," Sigler says. "If someone walks into a bookstore, why would they pick up a Scott Sigler when there's a Stephen King? They won't. So I give my content away, give readers a chance to try it for free. And if they like my stuff, then guess what: they'll go out and buy the book."

Free Ebooks with Embedded Ads Via Scribd-Lulu Partnership

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:47:16 -0500

Scribd and Lulu have joined forces to combine Scribd's iPaper format, a Flash-derived viewing technology optimized for bandwidth and speed, with Lulu content. From ReadWriteWeb:

Beginning this month on the self-publishing site Lulu.com, you will soon find a broad selection of some of the site's most popular free content made available via the iPaper format ... And thanks to iPaper's ability to embed [Google] AdSense ads within the documents, content creators will now have a way to offer free e-books that also have the potential to earn them an income.

Rumor: Two New Kindles Coming This Fall

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:27:15 -0500

Citing an inside source, CrunchGear says Amazon will release two new Kindles in time for the holiday season:

The first is an updated version with the same sized screen, a smaller form factor, and an improved interface ... The second new model, which is shaped like an 8 1/2 x 11-inch piece of paper, is considerably bigger than the current model.

The Web has a lengthy history of erroneous tech reports and Amazon is tight-lipped with all Kindle information, so chalk this up as rumor until formal announcements arrive.

Mobile Barcode Scanners and Retail Stores on Collision Course

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:01:30 -0500

Ilya Vedrashko points out a near-term future scenario in which retail sites are going to have to entirely rethink what integration into online services means:

The obvious future of in-store experience: you find something you like, reach into your pocket for a small device, scan the barcode, and the device tells you whether and where the same product is available for a lower price. Brick-and-mortar stores become little more than showrooms for merchandise bought elsewhere.

This future just got one step closer today [July 12] with the release of an iPhone app Checkout SmartShop, "a shopping assistant meant to help you find online and local prices when you're out and about shopping." For now, you still need to type in the UPS code; they are working on converting the iPhone camera into a barcode scanner.

Time Inc. Prepping Mix and Match Magazine Service

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:31:46 -0500

Time Inc.'s Maghound service sounds like the physical manifestation of an RSS reader. Launching in September, Maghound will allow customers to pick and swap magazine titles for a base monthly fee. From USA Today:

Customers will pay a monthly fee for home delivery of the publications they want. But unlike with subscriptions, which typically run for fixed terms, users can go online and swap one title for another whenever they want.

According to USA Today, baseline pricing will be set by the number of titles: around $5 per month for three titles, $8 for five, and $10 for seven. Some titles may incur higher charges.

In June, Folio reported that Maghound hopes to launch with 300 magazine titles.

Companies in the magazine space are showing a willingness to experiment. Barnes & Noble launched a digital/print magazine subscription service through BN.com in May, and MagCloud recently unveiled a print-on-demand system for magazine titles.

(Via Shelf Awareness)

Guardian Blazes New Media Trail with paidContent.org Acquisition

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:21:15 -0500

According to Kara Swisher, The Guardian Media Group has purchased ContentNext, publisher of paidContent.org, for more than $30 million. ReadWriteWeb says this acquisition and separate open-data initiatives have pushed The Guardian to the head of the media pack:

What do you get when you combine cutting edge tech openness with some of the leading new media publishers online? A kick ass publisher ready for the 21st century, hopefully. Meanwhile the rest of the newspaper industry struggles to survive attacks from Craigslist.

(Via Peter Brantley's read20 list)

Ebook Adoption Could Come from Mobile Apps, Not Hardware

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:55:52 -0500

Martyn Daniels speculates on the real breakthrough for Apple -- its store -- and the ramifications for ebooks; particularly, who is best positioned to take advantage of providing tools to the market:

Many have said that if Apple were to create an ebook reader then the market would take off. Others have agreed that the content and it[s] packaging would need to change also to fit the mobile demands. What is clear is that the mobile applications market is hoting and opening up and it may not be Apple who now has to create that magic connection. Interestingly it is not rocket science to understand that the reason that Adobe back[ed] the epub standard so heavily and developed the only DRM to support it today was to have re-flow text that can be rendered on the mobile platform.

Readers Already Picking Up the Interactive Slack

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:38:32 -0500

Harlequin announced this week the launch of Enhanced Edition ebooks, which link out to Net resources that augment the value and experience of the books. At Electric Alphabet, Kate Eltham notes that, in a way, this has already been happening by the readers, not by the publishers:

Last year I read Spook Country by William Gibson ... I remember Gibson saying in an interview at the time that "every text today has a kind of spectral quasi-hypertext surrounding it ... all of the Googled information that found its way into the book but which isn't available to the reader as a literal hypertext unless you're willing to be the animator of the hypertext process ..."

Blogs and social media are already making this spectral hypertext less quasi and more actual. But as Gibson predicted, other text was destined to follow.

Ebooks Abound in New iPhone Apps Store

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:28:11 -0500

Today my email inbox (and the twittersphere) is brimming with comments about ebooks comprising 8% of the currently available apps in the new iPhone Apps store. These are not all ebook readers, mind you, some appear to be individual public domain titles available for $.99. This may well just be low-hanging fruit for developers (packaging up text and/or html into an app is probably a great way to get your feet wet with the iPhone SDK), but it's still worth noting. There's already been some interesting activity around ebooks on the iPhone (like Readdle and TextOnPhone), but iPhone 2.0 may prompt a real surge in ebook activity on the iPhone.