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"Content, Content, Content"
Delivered to EBOG Digital Publishing Conference,
Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen, May 2008
Digitization is a complex publishing issue and is not unlike
climate change in that we all know that it’s happening and we
all know the impact is going to be significant, however, no one
knows when, by how much and what the result will be. Like
climate change it also has its dome mongers, prophets and
analysts and wild predictions.
Today we see a relentless bombardment of press and media
coverage on the digitisation of the book. The book is dead, the
book is digital, the book will survive. Penguin is doing this,
Hatchette is doing that, HarpeCollins is adopting this,
Cambridge University Press that. Amazon has bought this, Sony
has launched that.
As one who writes on publishing digitization issues, it is
often hard to distinguish the news from the noise, the public
posturing, from the real initiatives. It is not surprising
therefore that the press often gets it wrong and those that get
the biggest headlines are the major publishers and often the
news is mere noise.
So will the book die? No, unlike music it is already the
content, the format and a reader. It will be the major format
for many years and represent the major sales revenue for all.
However there are two issues.
Firstly, the book has joined together a number of different
sectors into one. As we digitize then these differences will
become more distinct and the various sectors will diverge often
in different directions and at different speeds. This in turn
will create a further challenge to distinguishing between news
and noise.
Secondly, we all love and are comfortable with books. Authors
love to write them, editors love to edit them and readers love
to read them. We have been educated with them and have grown up
with them. If asked to describe a book many would describe its
size, even the number of pages and authors the number of words.
All books consist of front matter, content and end matter.
I would suggest that the form has always dictated the content
format and its creation. Some would argue that the bound book
has been a straightjacket to creativity in that it has dictated
what many write even how they write. Have creators adapted to
it? Yes. Have some great works been created in it? Yes.
However, digitization now creates the opportunity to explode
the spine of what we have known for the last few centuries and
present content differently. Will it replace the book? No. Will
it help redefine it and how we develop and sell it – most
definitely? Will the digital book be the same as the physical
one. I hope not otherwise we will have fallen into the same trap
as we did between the hardback and the paperback and to a lesser
degree the audiobook.
In removing the straightjacket we also start to potentially
express ourselves differently. Look at some online reference
works, at what travel publishers are now starting to do with
their content and what authors such as Kate Pullinger are doing.
There are many examples we could quote as reference and some
will work and others will not. But the common thread and enabler
is digitization.
Is that wrong or right? Who cares? Creativity and expression
is not a book nor is it a blog or anything between. Dickens
wrote in instalments as did Stephen King when he wrote ‘Riding
the Bullet’ and some Japanese authors are doing similar today in
their writing for mobiles. You can’t squeeze multi media in
between a cardboard jacket nor create it as an afterthought.
So what of this digital landscape? We have ebooks, audio
downloads, kiosks, online, social sites, print on demand and
what appears to be a new device every year. But this is where we
have to understand that digitisation is not about ebooks, audio
downloads, online, podcasts, blogs, widgets etc. these are
merely the delivery and marketing formats. It is about the
creation, development and distribution of content, the
development and distribution of the contextual information that
supports and helps qualify content and rights that are acquired,
developed, produced, marketed, sold and read. It is also about
the changing roles and relationships rights across the life
cycle from Author to Reader.
It is about Publishing and digital publishing being
publishing. It is about the three words that are publishing;
Content, Content, Content
When you look at the current roles within the publishing life
cycle We see the Author as the content creator, the publisher as
the content Manger, the retailers and libraries as the content
portals and the readers as the content consumers. When we look
at it this we have to ask what it means to manage content and is
it different from managing books. What does it means to be a
portal and is that different from a bookshop or library.
When I wrote the Brave New World report there were many
changes that we recognized impacted the digital environment.
Time doesn’t permit me to go through them all but here are three
which you may wish to consider.
First. When we read we all read differently according to the
role we play the criticality of he content and what we want from
it. If you were to place an academic book in front of a student,
a researcher, a lecturer, a librarian they would probably use
and digest the content differently. This doesn’t matter when
they are all reading the same book but when the content is
digital these differences can become marked. Therefore when
content is presented digitally we now need to understand the
demands of the audience reading it. We also need to respect that
the audience may have different demands and may not all wish to
digest the same way. Which audience do you build your content
for, or do you build the flexibility to accommodate all?
Secondly the world is now consumer centric. Digitization has
broken down the communication barriers that once existed in the
old world and has created ‘My World’ and social networking. This
has even extended to consumers contributing to as well as
commenting on content. The reader now can communicate
effectively with the creator and the creators communicate
directly with their audience and fan base. They no longer need
an intermediary or interpreter. So do publisher provide the
total platform and experience or merely the content and leave
others to build the relationships?
Thirdly, the value chain between the creator and the reader
changes when the transaction and communication goes online. In
the pure physical world readers value the selection of the
bookseller, the quality of the content provided by the publisher
and access to what they need on the high street. In the digital
online world irrespective of whether the readers want a physical
or digital rendition, the value flips. They now seek
aggregation, search and discovery, authentication and relevance,
and trusted and reliable management and fulfillment. This change
is both significant and can influence the channel to market.
So I have talked about the issues raised in the Brave New
World report but what about the publisher and their part in the
life cycle? I would like to offer some considerations you may
wish to review in developing your digital strategies.
Fist is where do you start? Here we split the publisher’s
part of the life cycle into composition (the development and
production of the content), conversion (the transformation of
the content from one format to another) and distribution (the
presentation and fulfillment to the channel). Where does the
publisher start to digitise?
Do they start at the beginning of the process, or the middle
or in several places? Many to-date have taken their back list
and converted it to digital content. This means that they are
not impacting on their editorial and production processes and
that they can focus on converting the winners so reducing
investment. Others have taken the opportunity to start at the
typesetting stage, effectively digitally typesetting for editing
in XML and rendering into PDF for print. Others have now started
to go back to the manuscript and change the previous analogue
process and make it digital all the way through. Irrespective of
the route adopted the key is to hold the content once and not
build DAM, DAR and DAD silos.
Today we produce textural works and if we want to add any
multi media it is often as an afterthought or at the end of the
process. To produce media neutral output you have to be able to
process all media through the process and thereby accommodate
media neutral input. It is not about text and books but media
and content.
We talk about content but associated with every piece of
content is rights and what I refer to as context, the
information that describes content and enables you to qualify,
value and purchase it. Time does allow me to talk about rights
in the digital world but to say they grow in importance, have a
different emphasis and present opportunities in their own right.
What I would like to point out is that content, context and
rights all coexist across the life cycle and that probably 85%
of all context is drawn directly from the content itself but
today is often held in different silos and is administered by
transaction orientated systems. Viewing the three together one
can see new opportunities that do not exist in today’s analogue
world.
The final consideration is the most obvious. It demands that
digital repositories are built to accommodate the total
organization and not just part of it. The rights, editorial,
production, sales, marketing, publicity and fulfillment people
will all want different views of the same content, context and
rights. It’s like looking into the same house but through
different windows it’s the same house but we all see something
different. It may be interesting to know that in the last 18
months I have sat down with many publishers and publishing
boards and covered a wide spectrum of digital issues but only
once have I met a Rights Director. Publishing is a rights
business and they are integral to digitization but appear not to
be visible in the strategy.
You may now start to understand why I believe Digital
Publishing is Publishing
So what is happening and what are some of the changes taking
place today. The following examples are drawn directly from our
experience.
Editorial and production potentially offers much. We are all
familiar with the editorial production flow from the author to
the printer. The process may vary but the basic tasks exist and
as we are all aware the flow will always involve reiterations
and these can be sometimes complex. This complexity increases
with the number of people involved and also the complexity of
the product. Two major publishers HarperCollins and Cengage
Learning decided to collaborate on a series of English-language
dictionaries for non-native speakers. HarperCollins was in the
UK and Cengage was in the US.
HarperCollins produced the A-Z standard text while Cengage
was to produce the boxed ‘features,’ used to explain words and
their usage to non-native speakers. Thousands of entries were
being updated continuously, with features sprinkled on every
page of the book. Some 15 dictionaries had to be produced on a
very tight schedule. Content and style changes to these features
meant accessing several hundred files at a time. And integrating
these features within the A-Z text of the main dictionary
presented additional hurdles and stretched the time and cost to
produce the finished books.
Web-based collaboration editing was introduced with built-in
workflow features which advised each user what they need to work
on next at a fragment level. All communication was also fully
integrated between the system and email. While editors work
within a familiar rich-editing Word-like WYSIWIG (what you see
is what you get) environment, the content is actually stored in
XML. Any editor can ‘render’ an entry, or page, and generate a
PDF to see what it looks like on demand in real time. In another
publisher we enabled both automatic rendering into both PDF and
HTML.
All comments, emails, documents, are stored allowing everyone
to see the portions of the project relevant to them and roll
back and forward can be performed by those authorised. At
publication time, content can be automatically generated into a
particular publication and transform it into a format that can
be easily imported by HarperCollin’s production and composition
systems.
Cengage Learning achieved a cost reduction saving of 90%
reducing the cost from some $10,000 to around $800. Productivity
improved, replacing the old time-consuming
‘author-composition-proof-circulate-review-comment-correct-back-to-composition’
circle, ‘Time to market’ was radically reduced and much more.
Collaborative Editing isn’t the only digital Editorial
opportunity. Taylor and Francis have developed and adopted a
XML-first workflow which goes back the manuscript. This
effectively automates the decomposition of the manuscript into a
series of quality steps and automated XML tagging which is
managed by exception by the copy editor. The result is that the
editor can then copy edit the pure text and once finalized can
then activate an automated process that re-composition the work
and produces a fully typesetter ready file.
The effect has been to greatly reduce the cost of producing
structured content, particularly compared to XML-last workflows.
It also has dramatically reduced time to market and improved
productivity. We now are migrating the software onto a different
platform with Taylor and Francis and will be deploying it in the
market. We have also deployed XML First services with many other
clients where the process has given them up to 40% cost savings.
Marketing has seen an explosion of digital opportunities. You
only need to open up any trade paper to read about the exciting
new marketing materials and initiatives aimed at increasing
sales. Podcasts, videos, first chapters, reviews etc.
Digitisation is enabling people to see more contextual
information than ever before. I remember when Amazon first
started to demand jackets and the wholesalers started their
‘book in hand’ programmes. The world has moved on and the jacket
is now da facto and no longer enough.
We are building the digital warehouse and infrastructure to
support Gardners Books, the UK’s largest wholesaler. Today we
have to deal with every conceivable digital file you could
imagine. One major publisher had over a thousand author video
clips.
No one can be immune to the rise of the mighty widget. In
less than a year it has clearly made an impact and given
publishers the opportunity to share a limited part of the book
itself with the consumers. It may be the first 10 pages, the
first chapter or any combination of the total work. It offers
full search inside and the also the ability for the consumer to
copy the widget to friends or post it on a web site or blog.
The widget we have developed is built on our online reader
and is being deployed by Taylor and Francis, CUP and Gardner’s
publishing clients. We will be deployed over 20,000 in the
coming month and producing them as standard to all our clients
as part of their deliverables.
We must remember that widgets will sell both physical and
digital content. This next diagram is about the difference
between widgets and inspection copies. Widgets are for mass
market and are deployed as samplers to all and sundry.
Inspection copies are about reviewing titles for adoption and
are prevail in the academic world. They are more direct
targeting mailings are critical in some sectors. It is estimated
that somewhere between 6 and 12% of print runs are given away as
gratis copies.
We are working with a number of publishers to develop an
online inspection copy service that not only will reduce the
cost of inventory and postage but also enable publishers to see
who actually reads what, potentially capture and share
annotations, bookmarks and recommendations and even help create
ecompile™ customised works that can be used by the reviewer or
sold to others.
Many are looking at the same issues but merely replacing the
physical with digital copy. They miss the prize of developing
closure relationships, understanding their clients and closing
the marketing loop. If we save only 50% of today’s waste it will
be good but if we increase sales and adoptions as well then it
is not an opportunity to be missed.
Finally one of the exciting opportunities - Digital Drop
Ship™
When I embarked on digital drop shipment some 2 years ago, I
was amazed that no one had really thought this out. To me it was
simple and logical. Why distribute all your files to everyone
when you can retain them, hold them once and distribute them
when someone buys one. Digital drop ship enables the publisher
to retain control, ensure DRM standards are applied and that
they know exactly what has been sold. They can literally enable
anyone to sell their titles and only need to agree the
commercials. Importantly it mirrors the highly successful drop
ship model used in the physical world and therefore if
implemented in parallel enables physical, digital and audio to
be bought in the same basket.
The model is now real within Gardners Books where thousands
of files are being deposited today by publishers. The likes of
Taylor and Francis and others are retaining their files
separately in their own repositories but are connected and can
respond and distribute files when sold via the service. The
service is therefore truly inclusive allowing all to
participate. Gardners are now busy rolling it out to their 1,500
internet accounts which range from Play.com and Tesco to
independent bookstore and enabling them all to offer customers
digital content. But digital drop ship is not just about
Gardners. We have also developed a further feature which now
enables Taylor and Francis to sell on line subscriptions within
the drop ship model. The first store to sell these will come on
line this month and will promote the subscription, manage the
consumer, handle the transaction and control subsequent access
and authentication. We will just service up the subscription for
their individual’s term.
This enables Taylor and Francis to sell subscription through
any outlet and obviously potentially generate more sales without
incurring any more cost.
We also have gone live with a UK publisher who were unable to
enable their web site to interact with the drop ship messages
but are taking drop ship orders on the phone via their customer
service desk. The service operator merely enters the details on
a web service. The distribution of the file from somewhere else
is totally transparent to the consumer and importantly retailers
who would be unable to participate in the digital world, now
can.
Unlike climate change, it is not time to defend ourselves
against the threat but it is time to engage with it and as Gail
Rebuck eloquently said in her speech last month, see it as a
glass half full and offering all new and exciting opportunities
for all.
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