digitisation

As readers of the Book Fair blog have by now ascertained, my beat certainly encompasses matters digital. And now we’re done with the Fair, the fog is beginning to lift and allowing certain features of the landscape to become more distinct.

All Will Change, Change Utterly (Again and Again)

First a warning, an admonition, really - a core organizing principle of our landscape is that it is now “emergent.” (In philosophy, systems theory and science, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.) Or, in relatively simple terms, each action by hardware companies, software companies, media companies, artists, writers, publishers, and retailers affects the landscape.

The falling of barriers to entry has increased the number of these actors operating on the landscape, and their degree of interdependence has grown. So not only will things continue to change, the rate of change itself is likely to increase.  We are not just in transition from one state or model to another state or model, we’re in transition to a state of permanent accelerated transition where the model is continuous rapid reinvention.

Publishing will never be stable again.

(Skeptics, remember: if Moore’s Law - which asserts that processing power will double every eighteen months - continues to hold up, and it has held up for 35 years, then 25 years from now the iPhone will fit inside a blood cell.)

Getting with the Reality-Based Program

So, with that caution in mind, let’s look at what the panels and conversations and announcements of the first half of the Fair suggest. My co-blogger Alex summarized a superb conversation Wednesday amongst a pretty much perfectly representative sample of companies facing the digital challenges: Victoria Barnsley (CEO, HarperCollins UK), Richard Charkin (Executive Director of Bloombury Publishing), Andrew Savikas (VP of Digital, O’Reilly Media), and Ronald Schild (MD of MVB Marketing). It was clear from the comments that for all the discussion in the industry of pricing in terms of “should,” ie. what should we charge for digital content, prices are going to be set by consumers, plain and simple.

To allay your skepticism, I should say that this was the trade publisher CEO, Victoria Barnsley, who was saying that. I chatted with Charkin after the event and he emphasized that regardless of where one stands on the law and philosophy of copyright, the business models have to reflect the reality that even if individual shouldn’t hack, copy, pirate, they can, and some will, so the models need to be predicated on that reality, not a fantasy in which some combination of automated takedown notices and digital rights management manages to eliminate illegal copying from the planet.

What this means is that we (publishers, authors, agents) are going to need to make decisions based on the world that is (people will make unauthorized copies, people will undercut your price), rather than the world we will wish for. Until recently, it was not clear that the publishing industry accepted this, but these statements by Richard Charkin, Victoria Barnsley and other industry decision-makers are powerful indicators that this approach has solidifed to the point of consensus.

There is no such thing as an eBook

This is not in fact to say there is no such thing as an eBook but to say that the digital transformation facing the industry is not one is which files downloaded to a reading device are replacing print books, but that digital information and entertainment over the course of the Fair various players offered phrases such as “a digital manifestation of what was a book” and “long-form narrative delivered digitally” and “story-telling” and “immersive text-only experiences” and it is cear that the reason for such a profusion of vague terms is not obtuseness but a recognition that we’re not replacing one static-priced unit (pBook) with another static-priced unit (eBook), but finding that our single massive unidirectional pBook supply chain is now just one component of a tremendously variegated set of producer-consumer relationships and each producer is therefore going to need to offer the consumer a range of  pricing models: subscription, rental, per unit download, advertising, serialization, fewer or more guarantees of ownership (as a opposed to personal license) rights. And other yet to be named or thought up!

The World is Your Oyster

There are a billion web-enabled cell phones. Lexcycle’s Stanza reading app has been downloaded 2.5 million times in 75 of the 80 countries in which the iPhone is now available. There will be 20 Android-based smartphones by the end of this year. This is not an American thing, or an Asian thing, this is worldwide. For example, the country-by-country breakdown shows that while the U.S. is the largest market for O’Reilly’s Snow Leopard OS Missing Manual app at 35%, Italy was second at 23%. China’s Shanda has 4 million people signed up to buy and read novels on their mobiles.

Not only, it turns out, are the readers of the world looking to buy our content if we can deliver it to them digitally, but the world’s leading hardware companies are looking to help us. Along with Sony, iRex, TXTR, and other dedicated reading device manufacturers exhibiting, presenting, and working the floor, two Apple executives were traversing the halls of the Fair to let publishers know all the opportunities that await them on that platform. (Let it be said: that platform, right now, is the iPhone. Not any other rumored device. Apple has not been in private discussions about a larger device and reports that they have are a hoax. But Apple does believe in the opportunity for the publishing industry’s content, contrary to the occasional snarky comment from Jobs.) Apple is working to improve the Books section of the App store to make it more browsable, and they are trying to help publishers find the right developers to work with.

The Takeaway

This year’s Fair has made clear that:

1. This is happening now, the future is already here.
2. Everyone can benefit, no-one is exempt.
3. The transformation is irrevocable, continuous, multivalent, and potentially asymmetric.

Much of the change will not be apparent in the tradition consumer print supply chain for a while, especially in countries with a protected marketplace and/or fixed consumer prices. Take advantage of that breathing space and do not take its longevity for granted - fixed prices are not fixed sales. Instead, use the cushion that that social compact has afforded you to continue the process of advancing the cause of literature in whatever format or experience your country’s reader might desire.

Randy Wilhelm

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this morning’s session in the Congress Centre but, as a mother of two, I was open-minded and hoping to hear how new innovative products and approaches might help teachers and learning in the classroom.  I certainly wasn’t disappointed.

The two-hour session was divided into four, with four different speakers presenting their own, very different, business models.

First up was Sebastian Gutmann, Managing Director of a company called Kids for Kids which is only 3 years old and based in Germany.  This is a multi-media, educational publishing house which specialises in teaching English as a second language to children.  Their product entitled ‘Discover English with Ben & Bella’ looked like it’s great fun to use.  Aimed at pre-school kids and their parents, everything is sound-based.

One fact we know is that children respond much better if they learn through play and by using methods that are enjoyable.  This product uses 3D technology to encourage the kids to really engage and to learn without really realising they are doing so.  For example, one of things kids can do is learn a song and dance routine whilst watching the DVD.

What they don’t realise is that by following the instructions, they are absorbing lots of new and interesting words, at the same time as learning how to articulate them correctly.  Kids for Kids have, by producing a box-set, provided parents and teachers with a one-stop shop.  The box-set includes story books, DVDs, CDs, activity books, a PC game, flash cards, and a guide books for parents, with picture dictionaries highlighting words in different colours.

As we all know with kids, the key to learning anything new is repetition and with kids you need to repeat a word 3 times for it to stick.  So all the DVDs and books tie-in together and you get exactly the same on the DVD as in the book.  An interactive game is also included to evaluate how the kids are doing as you go along.

Next to present was Randy Wilhelm, CEO and co-founder of a firm called netTrekker in the US.  The company was founded in 1999 and it specialises in internet development.  A leader in the delivery of digital K-12 educational content, it serves over 10 million students, teachers and schools worldwide.  It was the first to market with a standards-based educational search tool which delivers the rich educational value of the internet to every child in a safe, teacher-approved, relevant, easy-to-use format.

Their real goal is to get kids more excited about the things they are learning and to help teachers find the right tools to help individual students.  Education needs to be personal of course as no two students are the same.  netTrekker, which is subscription-based, is currently partnering with other third party companies to deliver the complete solution, for example with a company called Brainpop which gives video-based explanations and helps kids learn individual words in an entertaining way.

It also provides keyword searches, and everything they offer has a readability rating.  It also has the option to search and has an impressive list of different languages too.  The company’s motto is ‘Go do something good for kids’ which I liked - anything that helps children to learn has got to be a good thing.

Sudhir Singh Dungarpur, President and CEO of Q2A Media in India, followed.  This presentation demonstrated how teachers can use interactive whiteboard technology, using student response systems, for formative assessment to improve classroom instruction and student learning outcomes.

The company is a ‘one of it’s kind’ learning-based content provider, in both print and digital media, focusing on the children’s market (pre-school through to 16 years old).  It is the largest packager in the school and library segment and a key player in the primary and secondary school text book market in the US and Europe.  It has also developed its own interactive classroom product for elementary maths and science.  In order that we could understand how the product worked, we were taken through a typical lesson.

The clever thing about this business model is that, by asking students questions as you go along, it has the ability to assess how the students are reacting.  In other words it can check that they have understood the topic and can see where the gaps are.  And maybe the most important point to make here is that it’s adapted to the curriculum of each country.

In a Q&A session that followed, the presenter was asked how easy it is for teachers to understand the product?  It seems that it takes only around 30 minutes to get your head around it but the crucial thing, as with all new products, is to feel comfortable with it.  Many people have a fear of technology but once you are familiar with it, it’s easy to use.

Livescribe

Lastly, we came to Holly De Leon who is the Vice President for Sales of Livescribe Inc in the US.  For me this was the most exciting presentation of them all and was, although the smallest, in a way the most innovative.  The bottom line is that Livescribe’s Pulse smartpen simply revolutionizes the act of writing.  It gives learners all the portability, flexibility and ease of use of a pen with the functionality and power of a computer.  In other words, it records everything you hear and write, and makes taking notes and listening at the same time much easier.  A modern way of multi-tasking if you like.

We’ve all sat in the back of the room, trying to take notes at the same time as trying to work out what on earth the guy at the front is saying!

This device means that life in the classroom is going to get a whole lot easier.  Basically there is a computer in the top of the pen.  It captures everything that you are writing, but also captures the audio at the same time as well.  Both processes are then synchronized together using an infrared camera which takes 70 pictures per second. And, it seems, you can even have terrible writing and it doesn’t care.

You can choose to buy the product with one of two different memory capacities - either 2GB (which gives you over 200 hours of recording time and costs $169) or 4 GB (which gives you 400 hours and costs $199).  With a 3D recording headset, you can get really good audio - even in a big lecture hall.  In order to make it work, you need special Livescribe dot paper which comes in different forms and different sized notebooks.  The charge plugs into your USB port and you can then download all the information onto the computer.  The wonderful thing is that the pen can capture the whole of a teacher’s lesson, so if the student hasn’t fully understood it, the student can replay it as many times as they need later on.  You can share your work with others as you can easily email it to your fellow students or colleagues.  Alternatively, a teacher can email it to any absent students.

I wasn’t at all surprised to hear that the company works with a lot of special needs kids, as this device I’m sure could help a lot of children with learning difficulties, including dyslexia. The desktop software is free and we were told that in the near future over 5,000 aps are going to be available as well.  An amazing product that, in my opinion, deserves to be a massive hit around the world.

The impact of the Google Book Settlement, in whatever form it might eventually take, promised to be one of the most controversial panels at this year’s Fair and the participants, especially Prof. Roland Reuss, author of the Heidelberg Appeal, a vehement critique of the Google scanning project, did not disappoint. He denounced as “garbage of hysterical propaganda” the claims by Google that they were enhancing access, maintain that “if you want to finance production, you have to shelter the ones who produce,” not those that consume, and that moreover any student who is completely dependent on the Internet for “must be stupid.”

It didn’t begin quite as heatedly. The panel was moderated by Jens Bammel, Secretary-General of the International Publishers Association, who introduced the event noting how the controversy surrounding the Google Book Settlement (GBS), while enormously significant in itself, also betokens a much larger shift, that of the interdependence of all the players involved, both publishers and their partners. To launch the discussion, he invited Richard Sarnoff to discuss the factors motivating the Association of American Publishers’ (AAP) and Author’s Guild lawsuit against Google’s out-of-print scanning project, Google Library, and the proposed settlement. The strategy, Sarnoff indicated, was based on the following calculation. If they lost, they would lose control, not just over Google’s scanning activities but potnetially many other entities who might choose to digitally copy in-copyright books. Even, if they won, it wouldn’t affect digital copies that Google had already given to libraries, many of which are state institutions and under some laws shielded from civil liability for copyright infringement, and it would impede a universally desired goal, viz to increase availability and access to the world’s store of knowledge.

So their conclusion was to settle, in order to achieve two key objectives—choice and control. But is choice and control also what the Borsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (comprising both publishers and retailers) want, inquired Bammel of the Borsenverein’s Christian Sprang? They want opt-in, Sprang explained, rather than opt-out, for out-of-print books. In the original GBS, he estimates that 75% of books listed in the German equivalent of the Books-in-Print database would have been characterized as out-of-print and not commercially available (a problem that has since been corrected by the parties in the GBS). The German publishers are also concerned about monopoly—they would like to see a landscape similar to the physical retail environment with thousands of retailers and publishers, rather than only two or three large players. They do recognize the access deficit that Google seeks to correct and have been moving to try to address that themselves, through Libreka, a German eBook platform that has 120,000 books in print available for search, and 13,000 available for download. Notwithstanding the practical issues, though, he re-emphasized that they were fighting for the principle that copyright be opt-in.

Santiago de la Mora, Google’s representative on the panel, explained that the Partner program is opt-in and that the Library program focuses only on out-of-print so that a great deal of what they’re doing is not at all controversial and meets the Borsenverein’s concerns. Google is “part of the solution,” he offered, and Google in fact “wants more people to get involved,” and not be the only player.

Reuss was largely unmoved. “It has always been possible for scholars to get the information,” he said, “since the 5th century.” He believes that the focus on access is inappropriate, “fetishistic,” and that the true issue with scholarship is to produce, not to access.

(He added that since the Berne Convention on intellectual property explicitly prohibits affirmative registration for copyright, he believes that the Book Rights Registry contemplated by the GBS.)

Access does matter, Sarnoff maintained. There’s been a “market failure” in Sarnoff’s opinion.  An entire tranche of scholarship, almost all out-of-print works created in the entire 20th century were foreclosed from the public. IN response to Reuss’s objection that the GBS will ”cripple the publishing industry” Sarnoff noted that no publisher “is making a dime from out-of-print works.” In fact, the GBS creates revenue, for publishers and authors, where there was none before.

The Borsenverein sees truth on both positions, said Sprang, supporting the demand for accessibility, while feelings that it has to be the rightsholder’s decision. Otherwise the author will fear “if I write a book, Google will take it away from me.” Borsenverein also emphasizes the moral rights dimension—the right of an author to prohibit reproduction for expressive reasons. This is clearly one of the clearest sticking points as it is not a factor in American copyright jurisprudence. Sarnoff recognizes that it is possible that they cannot adequately represent the moral rights of all authors in the world, in this settlement.

A very robust audience discussion ensued—a particularly pertinent question from the audience concerned the problem of competition. Qualifying Sarnoff’s earlier assert that the problem of access to out-of-print works is a market failure, Sprang suggested it was as much a social failure, the refusal by society, by politicians, to make money available to accomplish the scanning activity Google is undertaking.

This clearly was not a panel in which the controversy would be resolved—Ruess’s position is quite categorical on the core question of whether what Google is doing is illegal (adding, for good measure, than an advertising-driven business model is itself “disgusting”), though there were clear signs that in additional to the ongoing discussions in the US on revising the GBS, Google and the various European publishing trade associations intend to engage in future discussions about Google’s book-related projects. So, perhaps in deference to the name of the conference room in which the panel occurred (”Entente”), some measure of detente could be seen, if not outright entente.

“Something happened yesterday,” says journalist and author Andreas Wirwalski, rather mysteriously. “What happened yesterday Jane?” To his left sits Jane Friedman, former CEO of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, and to his right is Jeffrey Sharp, an independent film producer (of Boys Don’t Cry and Revolutionary Road fame). What happened yesterday was the launch of Open Road Integrated Media, a new enterprise that Jane and Jeffrey will head.

Jane Friedman, Andreas Wirwalski, Jeffrey Sharp

Open Road Media is a content marketing company, financed by Kohlberg Ventures, that is making waves across the fair and appears all set to transform the e-publishing landscape and usher in the era of the integrated media company. “The e-book will be the centre of a multi-platform universe that will include film, video and other forms of digital entertainment,” says Jane.

The cornerstone of Open Road Media’s strategy will be what they call the ‘author branded backlist’. Jane expounds her mantra, “The absolute reality is that the author is the brand. We’re going back to the future, which I just love.” The plan is to market e-books through a proprietary online platform designed to reach consumers where they live, socialize and shop. Open Road Media’s e-books will be backed up by a world of premium audio and video content such as author profiles, behind-the-scenes features and mini-documentaries.

It isn’t just the conception behind the company or that the future of publishing has materialised in a big way that’s exciting. What’s equally impressive is the fact that Open Road Media’s launch titles will include the works of world famous authors like William Styron, Pat Conroy, Joseph Heller, and Dame Iris Murdoch. It won’t just be established writers who will join Open Media’s stable. New titles will be nurtured in their Studio division, as well as in Discovery, a premium self-publishing division. “We will also work with publishers, like Grove Atlantic, who own the rights to books by being their marketing arm,” says Jane.

“At Frankfurt this year it’s become obvious to me that publishers are understanding that digital is happening and that it’s happening fast,” says Jane. Jeffrey, who’s a first-timer at the fair, says that he’s always looked to the page for inspiration when producing films. “I always try to get authors to come to my sets. They’re a great resource and inspiration.” The genesis of his partnership with Jane, which seamlessly integrates the two industries they thrive in, lies in their collaboration on film adaptations when she was still at HarperCollins. “Both our industries, legacy publishing and independent film making, have been hit hard by the recession. So we were drawn to each other with the idea of taking things forward and starting something new,” explains Jeffrey. They both agree that the Berlinale Film Festival and the Frankfurt Book Fair have been crucial to the merging of their industries

Their vision is not to create a hybrid product, such as an interactive e-book, as much as it is a way to create a multimedia world around the e-book. True, Open Road Media will be better positioned to create film adaptations, as they’ll hold the rights to content for all media. But apart from these adaptations and mobile gaming, they’re an integrated media company in the sense that they’re marketing will encompass a variety of digital platforms. It’s a company that is “born digital” and will only print traditional books using print-on-demand technology. Jane says, “The idea that we send out a digital book and it isn’t coming back appeals to me. I’m done with looking at inventory.”

Earlier this year I was chatting with a journalist who covers media for a prominent online magazine when the topic of Jane Friedman arose. Did I know what her plans were? No idea. He’d been getting the same response from everyone he asked and was clearly bewildered. But, he said, one word did keep coming up: legacy. No-one would tell him what it meant though. Aha, I thought. The rapid conglomeration of publishing businesses from the 1960’s through the present, combined with the subsequent layoffs necessitated by the relative failure of the mergers to produce the anticipated profits had combined to eviscerate the institutional knowledge of the combined intellectual property. So while these companies did have licenses to vast amounts of quality content, there were very few people left who knew very much about what the damn content was. Jane, however, had a pretty significant repository of information—she was a one-woman institutional memory. So, I suggested, if I had that knowledge myself, one thing I might do is, to use a wee bit of jargon, “arbitrage those asymmetries”—exploit the gap between what I knew of the value of a given backlist book and what that book’s publisher knew.

Fast forward to this early afternoon in the Film & Media Center where Jane is sitting down to a chat with her business partner, the film producer Jeff Sharp. Delighted, I am, to note the format. A conversation between two knowledgable folks is really an ideal format for presenting new business models to a rather disparate audience. The programming folks at the Book Fair are very mindful of this in how they approach authors: the conversation, as opposed to the reading, is the classic format for authors being introduced to the Frankfurt Fair goers, and using it more on the business side of things would be wonderful.

That all said, it’s the content, rather than the format, that has engendered a standing-room crowd. Metaphorically, we know what’s coming, for her new company is called Open Road Integrated Media, and it’s clear Jane wants to hit the open road. But, in the classic brusque locution, show me the money!

In a four page press release, she duly obliges. Consider the following an idiosyncratic cheatsheet for wherever you find yourself this evening when the question of what’s Jane up to arises.

— Arbitrage the Asymmetries! Basically Open Road is going to monetize Jane’s relationships with established authors with significant backlists: Styron, Conroy, Murdoch (Iris, not Rupert), Heller…Crichton is a TK (copyediting speak for “to come”), “joining the Open Road down the road,” says Friedman. What’s the asymmetry? Well, for one, it’s trust. Publishing is a people business, after all, and authors and agents trust her.

— “The Author is the Brand” Open Road’s not shooting to brand itself but is going to offer a platform for all the aforementioned authors’ content in an author-centric platform. So the trust is being reinforced by Open Road’s willingness to make the author front-and-center.

— Rich digital media. A digital media development firm called Code & Theory is developing a proprietary platform that hosts ancillary bells and whistles—profiles, audio, mini-documentaries, and so forth. (Notwithstanding the digital cornucopia, “the eBook is the center of our universe,” Friedman clarified—the video is promotional, not living inside the book.) Both Sharp himself and a third principal Luke Parker Bowles (yes, son of), have a background in film and video and believe that the quality of the Open Road video will be above the average. This appears to be a major dimension of the day-to-day activity of the company as they’re going to have significant in-house production facilities.

— “Co-Marketing.” They’re taking their digital platform and their video production facilities and integrating it with business partners focused on niche content: Kensington’s GBLTQ list and African-American list to start with and also some Grove Atlantic titles (“literary” being the niche: Jim Harrison, Mark Bowden, P.J. O’Rourke announced thus far…) Given the business relationship is described with a rather fuzzy “co-marketing,” this falls for the moment under the rubric of “terms not [yet] disclosed.”

— Frontlist and self-publishing. The division that will handle this dimension is called Studio and run by Gotham Books’ founding publisher Brendan Cahill. Parallel to Studio is Discovery, and Discovery is a “curated” self-publishing wing—both operations benefit from the integrated digital marketing platform, and from print-on-demand (with possible subsequent conventional distribution or licensing). Unclear so far though are the terms of the self-publishing deal and how significant a component of the projected revenue it constitutes. Friedman indicated that Open Road would be absorbing marketing cost: “We plan to service every author in whatever way the author wants.”

Other stuff you should know:

— Their website OpenRoadMedia.com is not going to retail eBooks. It’s a general marketing platform for the Backlist, and the Studio and Discovery frontlist.

— Although this was barely discussed, the movie production aspect of this has to be one of, if not the largest revenue stream; Sharp currently has Styron’s “Lie Down in Darkness” in development.

— No advances.

— Profit share, numbers undisclosed.

— 750-1000 titles in Year One is the plan, but Friedman did not indicate the proprtions of that comprised by established author backlist, frontlist Studio, frontlist Discovery, and co-marketing agreements with Kensington and Grove.

—While their profit share terms apparently the current royalty offered by publishers for digital, Friedman is not intersted in competing on price. It doesn’t matter if other publishers match her royalty rate because, she says, she’ll do a better job marketing. “The secret sauce is the marketing platform.”

I’d love to give you a two cent opinion on how this all adds up but one has to be cautious. It is clear that Friedman has a wealth of relationships to monetize, it is clear that Sharp knows how to produce financial successful movies, it is clear that they can make a very robust digital marketing platform happen, and that at both the author and publisher level, that platform will be very useful. If that platform is to make money by generating unit sales of eBooks, sales will have to be pretty enormous, but if the platform is also being licensed on a fee-basis above costs of production for all that amazing video, it could be profitable fairly quickly.

O’Reilly Media, the golden child of computer book publishing (golden, in no small part because of how much more than just publishing they truly are), co-organized a one-day prequel shindig yesterday, the “value proposition” of which was implicitly articulated by O’Reilly VP, Andrew Savikas, in his closing keynote. In describing the remarkable geographical diversity of the appeal of iPhone app versions of their “Missing Manual” series, he observed that those data would be worth keeping in mind as the audience “engaged in the Book Fair itself in the coming days”—true for that data for sure, but also very much the pitch of the organizers and one which, to their credit, they very much lived up to.

For while the traditional Tuesday flurry of agent and editor and rights director pitch meetings proceeded apace in the lobbies and nooks and crannies of the Hofs Frankfurter and Hessischer, Tools of Change Frankfurt added, for this year at least, the Radisson Blu to the roster of reasons to fly out Sunday (though both your correspondent  and fellow Messe blogger Chad Post still chose to fly out Monday night and brave Tuesday’s activities on an hour of sleep.)

I spare you all the exhaustive report on panel after panel in this post, but expect nuggets of information and perspective from the panels and talks scattered throughout my posts in the coming days. But in the Tools of Change Frankfurt spirit of offering takeaways to keep in the back of your mind in the days to come, keep an eye out for these two themes likely to recur over the course of the Fair:

Partnerships. A great deal of what publishers need to do, digital and otherwise, is going to require finding more shoulder to put to the grindstone than any publisher has to hand.  Whether it is Granta partnering with the events newsletter Flavorpill to promote a user-generated content series of short films inspired by one of their books, or O’Reilly partnering on delivering three hundred iPhone apps in nine month with the assistance of Lexcycle (now owned by Amazon), the purveyors of the Stanza reading app, publishers who want to move fast, or want to move smart (going to where someone has already got the audience together), are looking for shoulders to add to the grindstone.

Flattening. Hierarchies are out. Communication can’t be done in a one-way, broadcast fashion any more. Openness, candor is critical. This applies to marketing interaction; this applies to ebook software vendors offering APIs and doing so in the least restrictive fashion possible; this applies to the sourcing of the published content itself, although, for  the moment, the “crowdsourcing” of content is restricted largely to professional publishing.

Keep an eye out for those themes—no actual prizes for finding them, beyond your own personal satisfaction!

I often feel as if I have parallel professional lives: 360 days of the years there is the regular world, and 5 days of the year there is Frankfurt. So Frankfurt 2009 begins, effectively, the day after Frankfurt 2008!

There is, to be sure, a “plus ca change” quality to Frankfurt. After all, it began in part to try to create a sense of cultural continuity after the cataclysm of World War Two. My first Frankfurt was 2001, four weeks after 9/11, an edgyness very much in evidence, long lines in front of Hall 8.0 for checking bags, a moment of silence on the one month anniversary, 11 October. (On my flight to Frankfurt, the plane was so empty the passengers were outnumbered by the flight attendants.)

Yet, upon successive trips, I’ve learned to memorize booth locations, escalator shortcuts, S-bahn schedules, all unchanging form year to year, and derived comfort from it, comfort which gives you the freedom to do what is most important, which is to connect with your international partners-in-crime. Frankfurt is the perfect suit—you can focus on the meeting because you don’t have to worry about how you look.

Yet, as I mentioned above, Frankfurt in its modern incarnation grew out of the ashes of World War Two, has withstood the airplane hijackings of 1970’s and the terrorism of the 9/11 era, had witnessed the corporate consolidation of the publishing industry, and is now toiling with the radical changes in all media engendered by technological change, and throughout it all Frankfurt has not sought to deny these realities but instead has incorporated them into itself—Ehrengast controversies and all! So in 2001 there were bomb-sniffing dogs and in 2009 there is the Tools of Change Frankfurt preview conference. Frankfurt has represented continuity amidst change and its genius, to me, is that it does not pretend that change is not happening.

So while I am still here, in the regular world, I’m poised on its edge, ready to make the switch, and anticipating that giddy thrill of re-entering Frankfurt. I’m looking forward, both to the familiarity and to the new, strange yet critical ideas Frankfurt will present in this coming week.

It’s nearly that time of year again. Take a deep breath. As many as you can I keep telling myself, because you might just be a little short on air for the next five days. One day before Frankfurt Book Fair ‘09 begins the halls are abuzz with activity and anticipation. Small independent publishers are bustling about trying to get their stands to look just right; while the ‘big boys’ supervise their hired teams doing the setting up. Towards the evening most of the stands are sorted out and the frantic pace slows down. There’s a little window of time for old friends to catch up and new ones to be made, before the show begins in earnest.   

What I really want to know on the eve of this years’ fair is how the attendees, old-hands and first-timers alike, expect the fair to go? Business as usual? Has the global recession dampened spirits and tightened purse strings? Is digital content on the verge of upstaging the printed word or does that moment lie in an uncertain future? Nobody really knows. I certainly don’t.

“The market for e-books, at least in Italy, is small for the time being. Readers still prefer paper, but when this changes it’s going to change fast,” says Guido Lagomarsino, a literary agent who runs Servici Editoriali, Milan along with partner Anna Spadolini. Anna acknowledges that the change has come, as they have already negotiated foreign rights contracts that clearly specify rights vis-à-vis digital formats. How are these rights defined territorially because unlike a physical book it’s far harder to control the spread of digital data, I wonder aloud. Servici Editoriali doesn’t have to deal with such issues, because Italian isn’t widespread outside Italy. But for an English or a Spanish language title there’s definitely some head-scratching to be done.

Guido Lagomarsino of Servici Editoriali, Milan

Guido has made his way to Frankfurt for the Book Fair every year for the last 36 years. He can recall a time when the entire fair was on two levels in Hall 4. He’s used to change, both in the short term and the long. Doesn’t mean he’s for it though. Guido believes that the growth of digital content will lead to a loss in the diversity of publishing, as smaller imprints can’t afford to keep up with the ability of big houses to invest in new formats. Anna is quick to disagree. She sees things more optimistically, “Different business models can be adopted for selling content. Publishers don’t have to make technological innovations. With lower production costs for digital formats, it might even be easier to bring out more titles.”

Much of the din surrounding digitisation is still speculation. The technological tipping point for e-books, like the Ipod was for the mp3 and the music industry, hasn’t arrived yet. If there is a device you would put your money on take on this mantle it would probably be Amazon’s Kindle, which is set to be released in over 100 countries shortly. In China - the Guest of Honour at this years’ fair - the future has, beyond any doubt, arrived. The turnover of the traditional publishing industry in the Middle Kingdom has already been surpassed by the digital publishing industry in 2008.

Is the recession still on or is it over? Has it affected the publishing industry in a big way? Gael Lynch, from the independent British publishing house Frances Lincoln, echoes Book Fair director Juergen Boos’ view that books are largely recession proof. “Rights sales didn’t slump at the Bologna Fair and I don’t expect them to here,” she says. “But it has been hard work just to stand still. Retail chains in the UK have been badly affected. We’ve been lucky because we have a diverse range of books and don’t rely only on high-street stores.”

What’s in store for the who is who of the publishing world gathered in Frankfurt? We’ll just have to wait and see how the next 5 days pan out. As for me, tomorrow couldn’t come sooner.

The first ever Tools of Change Frankfurt conference took place all day today, bringing together representatives from a number of different parts of the book industry to discuss opportunities for the future of the publishing industry.

Seeing as that my flight arrived at 7am this morning, I didn’t exactly make it to the opening sessions . . . and wasn’t entirely cogent during the panel that I participated on.

That said, the presentations I attended were pretty inspiring, especially the one from Michael Tamblyn’s “Your Reading Life, Always With You,” which employed a very “reader-centric” approach to contemplating the future of e-books.

Tamblyn–the VP of content, sales, and merchandising at Shortcovers.com, an e-book retailer launched by Canada’s Indigo Books & Music, Inc.–gave a very engaging and humorous presentation littered with real-life situations and the impact these situations should have on the future of e-books.

His basic goal was to demonstrate the readers would be willing to pay $14+ for an e-book–if there are enough useful features included. This might seem like a small point, but publishers have been collectively freaking out about the now-almost-standard $9.99 price point that Amazon.com has helped institute and that readers have cottoned on to. Remember the #9.99boycott of a few months back? This is supply meets demand meets value expectations stuff, and at the moment, what you get when you buy an e-book is only worth $9.99 to the vast majority of e-book users.

But Tamblyn things that can change. He pointed out a myriad of features that would entice readers to fork over a few extra bucks for an improve level of e-functionality.

For example, “longevity of the book” was an obvious starting point. A traditional book can be passed down from mother to son, generation after generation, until the book falls apart or goes missing. Tamblyn’s argument was the readers would pay an addition $.25 for an e-book with this feature.

Other potential e-book features Tamblyn thought readers would be willing to cough up a few cents for, included:

* “shared library,” the digital equivalent of what happens when two people move in together and start sharing books;

* “multiple platforms,” which would allow a customer to purchase the e-book, print book, and audio-book versions of a title for one low price;

* “loaning ability,” so that you can share your favorite books with someone and cultivate word-of-mouth; and

* “the social aspect of reading,” through which it would be possible to share information about what you’re reading or have read via all the various book-related social networks such as Good Reads and LibraryThing.

Tamblyn briefly touched on the technical side–claiming that all of the features discussed could be implemented almost immediately–but what he’s most concerned with is giving readers what they actually want. And getting other publishers to buy into this vision.

Personally, as a print book publisher and reader, I was actually swayed quite a bit by his presentation. With each example I could imagine how this would occur in my life and how I’d be much more tempted to invest in an e-reader if x + y + z were possible. It was also striking how well his ideas fit in with those found in Ted Striphas’s The Late Age of Print.

This need for publishers to be “reader-centric” when expanding their digital initiatives was a theme that ran throughout the Tools of Change panels, including the panel Richard Nash of Cursor moderated on the “Deconglomerated Publisher & the End of the Supply Chain,” (which is also the one I participated on) and Kassia Kroszer’s presentation on “Starting from Scratch” in building a digital publishing company.

Never having been to a TOC conference, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but the turnout was fantastic and the level of discussion extremely sophisticated. Great first year, and hopefully this will become a staple of the Frankfurt Book Fair for years to come.