Giants in the Room

When Gregory the Great sent Augustine to Christianise the inhabitants of this dank isle in 597 ("Thank you Holy Father. What exactly did I do to annoy you so much?") he settled at Canterbury as being a nice spot. I imagine him choosing it rather as I choose a place to lay out the picnic rug - largely random, but with some logic (like less molehills).

Seven years later the diocese of Rochester was founded, a fact of which they are very proud, and I was there this week to look at the Textus Roffensis, one of the earliest extant books of law, and the one which apparently sets out the concept of financial compensation for injury rather than corporal retribution. A fact for which ambulance-chasing lawyers the world over must be very thankful.

In the meeting I was sitting next to an elderly conservator, who spoke slowly and with some difficulty, and occasionally seemed to veer somewhat off-topic. At the end of the meeting I knew more about limp vellum binding and alum-tawed hide than I thought likely to be useful, but not much about the conservator.

Talking to Claire Breay and Alixe Bovey afterwards and then googling him, I discovered Chris Clarkson is the godfather of modern conservation.

Summoned dramatically to Florence in 1966 he rescued thousands of books from the devastation of the flood, working in a temporary conservation studio in the power station.

From there he was recruited by the Library of Congress to set up their first conservation studio with a budget of $6m "And in 1971", as Christopher told me  "$6m meant something". He went on to work in many places, eventually coming back to the UK and now consults for a select group that includes my friends of the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage.

It's often my privilege to sit in meetings with learned and erudite people, many of whom wear their learning and reputations on their sleeves. It's a delight then, to stumble into someone who has genuinely changed the face of a profession and who's main concern was making sure his sat-nav could get him out of the Rochester one-way system.

When Developers Become Publishers

For almost 20 years now, we've been building websites and applications for libraries and museums. Fairly heavy code too, some of it. We won the British Computer Society, Best Web Technology Award a couple of years back for some 3D C# craziness.

So, when ebooks emerged we took a look and jumped in, leveraging our clients existing assets to generate a little revenue for them and us. At the same time, I started reading lots of blogs and articles, as I knew nothing about publishing, either the industry or best practice. I found myself in a very alien world. Undoubtedly lots of very smart people battling with sudden tectonic shifts. But some things that I took for granted seemed to complete blindside or outrage publishers and authors. So here are some of the glaring differences I've seen as we've tried to straddle what are (for now) two industries.

1. Change is normal. The practice of publishing doesn't seem to have changed much from Wynkyn de Worde to the present day. From the outside, change (until recently) seems slow. Even meetings are scheduled months ahead. In software development, change is very rapid. A year ago Flash was the default choice for rich internet applications. Now it's being shunned by all and sundry. The iPad turns up and everyone needs an app. As an industry, you need flexibility built in, as well as good antennae telling you what's coming next. As publishing and software development merge, publishers need to be able to react fast.


2. Expect conflict. Right back from when Netscape was battling with IE, we've had to deal with conflict. Code something for one browser, and it won't necessarily look good in another. Build a Flash version, and you'll likely need an HTML version for disability-compliance. Build a regular site, and you'll need a mobile version too (although these are now conflating). I hear regular cries of "when will there be one ebook standard?". I can guess at "never", and I know that developers accept this as just the way it is. Those late nights in the studio with take-out pizza? Testing and bug-fixing on all those platforms.


3. The code isn't hard. The codebase that makes up ebooks is not hard. Javascript, CSS, XHTML etc are pretty basic tools. Finding developers who are competent is a whole lot easier than finding good Objective-C people to code your next app.


4. International Rights. Coming from software, international rights variations for ebooks seem like a piece of legacy nonsense. I can release an app into the wild, why not an ebook? If someone can strip the DRM and mail an ebook to their friend on another continent, why can't I just sell them a book?


5. It's the beginning of the end, or maybe the end of the beginning. Either way, it's early days. Publishers are still finding out whether apps work, what the best price points are for ebooks, how to market them, what sort of sales volumes to expect from each platform and are still defining workflows. Me, I'm still waiting on epub3 adoption, the Kindle Fire, Nook and KF8 formats to arrive in Europe (we're over here, turn right at New York and keep going till you hit Ireland...), Apple to fix discoverability and the secret of a really good flat white. At this stage in proceedings, I expect things to be messy. And they are. In web terms we're at about 1995.


6. Disintermediation happens.There are still lots of web design agencies out there, but since the advent of Blogger and Wordpress, many individuals and companies have cut them out of the loop and just built their own web presence. Wordpress now powers 22% of all new domain registrations. It may not be as good as a bespoke site, but it isn't £30,000 either. As the tools emerge to create and market ebooks, writers of all sorts will seek to cut out middlemen. iBooks Author is the beginning of this, but expect something similar from the Microsoft/Nook deal.


7. Users decide. If a website or blog or Facebook page goes up, there's no quality control or screening from a third party. It's success or failure is determined by the community, and it's all there in black and white in the log files. Traditional publishing moves the gatekeeping upstream ("We really liked the manuscript, but..."). eBooks are undoubtedly going the way of the web. People will publish books because they can, and the world will decide. There's an interesting piece in the Harvard Business Review stating that Amazon reader reviews are likely as good as professional reviews. If that's the case, then they're probably, in aggregate, as good as publisher's opinions.


So, after 9 months or so, I still don't know much about traditional publishing. But the interesting thing is, I may not need to.

42 - Don't Panic

In the latest, and very excellent Pew study on e-readers habits, published here, one fact jumped out at me amongst the data.


42% of people consume ebooks on a computer.


Almost half of all reading of ebooks is done not on Kindles, iPads, iPhones, Android phones, Android tablets or Kindle Fires, but on the humble and ignored PC. It's like there are legions of ebook contrarians going "You know what - the old PC suits me just fine."


But what's really going on here. Maybe 5 things.


1. Tablets/e-readers are expensive. People love free and many of the ebooks read are free, not least the Project Gutenberg collection. If you're in to classic literature, this trove is a godsend and has the benefit of being free. Download the Kindle for PC (or Mac) app and you're good to go. For the thrifty or cautious this route is perfect and good enough.


2. Notebook computers are pretty small too. An 11" MacBook Air is a pretty small device with a great battery life. For the sofa-use that the iPad/K Fire fits in to so well, a tiny notebook PC is a close second in terms of form factor, and you may either have one lying around, or figure picking up a cheap one makes more sense than a dedicated device. And you may well be right.


3. Reading at work. I think Mike Shatzkin picked up on this. In those dog-day afternoons before the bell goes, why not download the Kindle app and sneak a few books on to your work PC, fingers hovering over ALT-TAB in case the boss shows up? 


4. Try before you buy. Downloading an e-reading app is a nice way to try before you buy. If it works for you, you might then take the plunge and get a dedicated device. This is as much about behavioural change as cash. Any books you bought can then just be synced over.


5. Reading wherever you are (ie outdoors or on the train) isn't such a huge deal.


What are the implications of all this though?


The first is that I think there is big pent-up demand for e-readers. Using a PC is definitely a sub-optimal way to read ebooks, but people are putting up with it. The try before you buy brigade will soon start buying, and the price points and choice of devices is falling, which will encourage that.


Screen quality is not such a big deal. Most PC screen are pretty lame, yet people put up with them for reading eBooks.


Apple have nothing to offer for this constituency with iBooks. They can only therefore address a little over half the market. The same survey says only 23% read on tablets (in early 2012 tablets = iPads).


I'd seen Kindle for Windows as a sideshow. It's not.


Consumer behaviour is malleable, but not as plastic as we thought. Print=>PC=>Tablet looks like the progression (assuming dedicated e-readers are not long for this world).


So all the noise over devices has been masking the stories about behaviour. I think we need a "marketing noise" filter in this industry.

The Very Personal Business of Publishing

For almost 20 years now I've been developing applications and websites for mainly libraries, museums and galleries. Gun for hire, the usual agency thing - client needs a project done, puts out an invitation to tender, we win the tender, build the app, walk away with a cheque. This is still a big part of our business, and I love this kind of deal: it's a partnership whereby we help our clients to solve problems, and money changes hands to make it happen.


When we started our digital facsimile imprint, eBookTreasures, I knew it would be different, but not like this. It's got very personal.


Because we sell these facsimiles online, we have a slew of data every day, every hour even. Here are the ones I look at most days:
- sales in iTunes Connect (daily and historic, including territories and taking into account present and past promotions)
- chart positions in iTunes (both overall charts and specialty charts)
- Facebook likes and reach
- Twitter follows and retweets
- Google alerts
- email enquiries
- Google analytics for our site


On one hand it's terrific. We can do a promotion and monitor it's effect in near real-time, reach out and tell people what's coming next and see what channels work best for us, what price points and what sorts of books.

But on the other hand it's all suddenly got very personal. 


Books I love don't sell. A new title launches and no-one tweets about it. For no reason, we put on 50 Facebook followers over a weekend. Sales tank or boom. It's all there in hard numbers, the various meters oscillating up and down hour by hour. My mood rising or falling with the numbers ("They like it - how wonderful!", "Facebook's a waste of time...").


The etymology of "publish" is "to make public". Perhaps I should have thought about that before getting in to publishing.

Slightly sNOOKered

To the Nook developer event yesterday in London, full of anticipation. The Nook team were coming to London to address developers - they must have something to say, right? Wrong.

The Nook is a US-only device (you need to have a US-registered credit card to buy one and then buy content), so has zero appeal outside of North America. Barnes and Noble and Nook as brands also have no resonance outside of the US. So the team gave us their best marketing spiel, with lots of slides of smiling Americans, without understanding that this is an insanely long bet for UK developers or publishers.

I'd guess that most UK developers/publishers have a strong UK constituency they need to keep happy, even if it's just in the boardroom. Developing just for the US requires a deep breath and deeper pockets.

But it's the same story with the Kindle. You could develop for the Fire, but it's not available outside the US, and the Kindle apps haven't been updated to support KF8 titles, so enhanced ebooks and apps are out. Effectively there's been no progress on the platform for years, unless you live in the US.

Apple, meanwhile has been charging ahead with iBooks 2 and the App Store and a nice authoring tool, but doesn't have the market share to make it viable as your only channel, so, if you love iOS, it's the app store for you.

It feels like an epublishing log-jam right now in Europe if you want to do enhanced or fixed-layout titles. The market-leaders haven't made it to Europe and Apple are neglecting to promote their platform.

All we can do is wait and see, assets to hand, ready to jump when we can.

The model we use to do this a repository system. Build an asset repository and re-purpose when the metrics make sense.

iBooks and KF8 - Learning about Apple and Amazon

The last ten days have seen the release of the new iBook Author program from Apple and a new version of KindleGen from Amazon, each producing eBooks to their own proprietory standard, iBooks and KF8.

How they've gone about this though, reveals much about the companies and their approaches to this market.


Apple launched iBooks almost two years ago now with some ballyhoo, but have never really made a dent in Amazon's market share. The Nook might have done, and Kobo has nibbled a piece here or there, but Apple? Not so much.


So they flipped the strategy with iBA. Keep the lockin (iBooks only available and readable through Apple devices/channels), but provide better tools for publishers/authors and target a different market - textbooks. Instead of trying to convince the consumer, they're deciding to convince the supplier. It's the "killer app" strategy.


And you have to say, the samples they've put out are stunning. The EO Wilson "Life on Earth" really does redefine textbooks. By all accounts iBA is also a great tool. The backlash has been about the Apple walled garden and restrictions about the sale of works produced by the tool. I don't really understand much of this reaction - Apple is a business, not a university or library. If the Library of Congress produced a proprietory tool, then I'd get the outrage.


So, if you want to play Apple's game, there is now a compelling workflow from production to distribution, with QA thrown in along the way. Slick, if you can live with the terms.

Amazon launched KF8 then in to a market it dominates, working from a position of strength. But the KF8 launch has been confusing. The specs were announced in October, and missed elements like audio and video, present in mobi files as well as Apple's iBooks. The Fire launched in the US in mid-November, with some books being demo'd that had been made to the KF8 standard, so some publishers had access to the tools. Then last week, the tools were announced, but the guidelines were incomplete (since updated), but the Fire is still US-only and the Apps haven't been updated. So, although we now have the tools, there's nothing for us to target and test on outside of the US. And even there, do you just want the Fire as your entire potential market?


So it feels like a mess. Simultaneously late and rushed.


What these two launches tell me is that Amazon is not a technology company. Sure, it uses technology better than almost anyone, and it even re-sells spare capacity in a way that has changed the technology landscape (EC2, S3), but a real technology company understands developers.


And make no mistake, if you're in the business of ebook production, you're now a developer.


Amazon has the market right now, but, as Steve Ballmer memorably once said "It's about developers, developers, developers!". He may, at that point, have thrown a chair.

10 Great Things About iBooks

In the last post I outlined 10 things Apple need to fix in iBooks. Who knows, maybe tomorrow at DBW, they'll tick off some of my list.


But in the meantime, here are 10 things I love about iBooks.

1. Technical

The way I see it, Apple read the epub3 specs ahead of time and cherry-picked some cool bits they liked for the iBooks specification. It's epub with a twist. So, for 6 months now we've been selling books made up of CSS, HTML, Javascript (even JQuery). We can animate and transform and bring our books to life. KF8 doesn't even come close. Check out the Yellow Submarine iBook if you haven't seen it.

2. Quality

Being able to drop in 2 million pixel images means we can get fantastic image quality in our books. Add in the slick page turns, the freedom to view landscape, portrait, big or small, and whatever we make as an iBook looks great.

3. Fixed width

We make digital facsimiles of rare books, so this is a deal-breaker for us.

Apple were the first to do this. Without this we don't have a business.

4. Audio and video

iBooks handle video really slickly. Tap to play anywhere in your page. Bring it up, full width, rotate the screen to landscape and you've got a 720p video playing. Tap to stop and the video resizes back down into it's slot on the page and you pick up where you left off. Elegant.

5. Apple people

The people I deal with at Apple want us to succeed. They're helpful (within their constraints) and smart. They know how the deck is stacked and are trying to make things better. I don't get a re-hash of unhelpful documentation I just read online.

6. Unified platform

It's hard to over-stress the ease of developing for a unified platform. Compared to the apocalypse that developing an Android app must be (x different OS versions, y different screen resolutions, z different processors) or even Kindle (Fire, iPad App, iPhone App, Windows App, Android App etc etc) we can test and release in hours. Sure Apple's walled garden approach has some downsides, but this is the reason iBooks (and apps) look consistently great.

7. Growing fast

When you publish a print book, you're releasing into the wild a product with a fairly finite market. Our universe is much smaller - just those with iOS devices. But it's growing at a breakneck pace. Maybe 32m iPhones last quarter, 11m iPads. Our potential market is doubling every year or so.

8. Great devices

People love using iPhones and iPads. They come at the top of consumer satisfaction surveys. Having our books run on great devices means we have happy customers. Imagine if we had to support all those buggy $99 e-readers that are made of tinfoil and glue. That bad hardware experience rubs off on us.

9. Some UX aspects

Despite my criticism of the iBooks UX in the last post, some of the iBooks UX works well. The navigator is great, multiple table of contents views is great, and the integration with dictionaries and notes is cool. We're really not there yet, but the foundation is solid.

10. Ongoing improvements to IBooks

This seems to come in fits and starts. The first 6 months from release didn't see much action, then we seemed to rocket from 1.0 to 1.4 with all sorts of improvements. Then a hiatus and recently some more changes. It seems like Apple have some resource to throw at this, and there is a commitment to improve the platform.

So tomorrow will be interesting. 

It really feels like the future of publishing belongs to those who can make the numbers work for content-creators. That means self-publishers, lean indie publishers and legacy publishers who can reinvent the business model and articulate their value.

I wrote my first multimedia app using Hypercard in about 1991. Right now our tools aren't even that mature yet. All of us could do with better tools and a bigger market. Here's hoping...