best of toc 3e analysis and ideas about the future of publishing full

Taking a Page Out of ESPN’s Playbook Pay for one, access all Building talent franchises Memorable quotes Perceptive Media: Undoing the Limitations of Traditional Media How does Perceptiv

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1 Introduction

2 Innovation

How Agile Methodologies Can Help Publishers

What is an agile methodology?

How do agile methodologies apply to publishing?

Taking a Page Out of ESPN’s Playbook

Pay for one, access all

Building talent franchises

Memorable quotes

Perceptive Media: Undoing the Limitations of Traditional Media

How does Perceptive Media work, and are there privacy concerns?What driving factors are pointing to the success of this kind of

storytelling platform?

In the early days, Perceptive Media is being applied to broadcast

technology What potential applications for Perceptive Media do youenvision in the publishing industry?

Kindle Fire vs iPad: “Good Enough” Will Not Disrupt

How disruptive is the Kindle Fire to the low-end tablet market?

Is Amazon a threat to Apple?

What role do you see Apple playing in the future of publishing — andwhat current trends do you identify as driving factors?

Don’t Build Social — Thoughts on Reinventing the Wheel

Services, APIs, and the Complex Web

Publishing focus and third-party opportunity

Startups and Publishers: It Ain’t Easy

If you sell a product publishers don’t want, who is to “blame”?

Solutions to solve future problems

Where to next?

The risk of ceding the future to other players

In the end, readers will drive the change

It’s Time for a Publishing Incubator

Roadblocks

People have been thinking about this for awhile

The publishing incubator

The Slow Pace of eBook Innovation

Putting a Value on Classic Content

Reading Experience and Mobile Design

Mobile design?

Five convergence points for mobile design & reading system designSerial Fiction: Everything Old Is New Again

Why should you be interested in serial fiction?

Frequency, engagement, and experimentation

It still comes down to great writing

3 Revenue Models

Getting the Content Out There Isn’t Enough Anymore

In what contexts does content aggregation create the most value?

How about paywalls — is anyone doing this properly? What is the bestway to make this model work?

24Symbols is based on a subscription model Since your launch, have youhad to change the model to make it work?

Amazon, eBooks, and Advertising

New Life for Used eBooks

In-Book Purchases

Why a Used eBook Ecosystem Makes Sense

What are some guidelines authors should follow when considering

interactive features for content?

How should one decide between building an ebook and building an app?

Is there a tipping point?

Are eBooks Good Enough Already?

5 Data

Transforming Data into Narrative Content

What does Narrative Science do and how are you applying the technology

to journalism?

How does data affect the structure of a story?

What kinds of stories lend themselves well to this type of system andwhy?

What kinds of stories just won’t work — what are the boundaries or

limitations?

In what ways can publishers benefit from Narrative Science?

In what other industries are you finding applications for Narrative

Science?

Book Marketing Is Broken Big Data Can Fix It

What are some key findings from the Bookseer beta?

What kinds of data are most important for publishers to track?

What does real-time data let publishers do?

How would you describe the relationship between sales and social media?Will Retailers Start Playing Big Brother with Our Content?

6 DRM & Lock-in

It’s Time for a Unified eBook Format and the End of DRM

Platform lock-in

The myth of DRM

Lessons from the music industry

“Lightweight” DRM Isn’t the Answer

Kindle Remorse: Will Consumers Ever Regret eBook Platform Lock-in?Neutralizing Amazon

Kindle Serials Is the Next Brick in Amazon’s Walled Garden

7 Open

Publishing’s “Open” Future

Content access via APIs

Evolution of DRM

Apps, platforms, formats, and HTML5

Let’s open this up together

Free and the Medium vs the Message

Free as in freedom (and beer)

Information and delivery

Creating Reader Community with Open APIs

Reading is more than a solitary activity

The new era of data-driven publishing

The consequences of walled gardens

Buy Once, Sync Anywhere

The problem — a fragmented content ecosystem

The proposed solution — an API to share a user’s purchase informationWhat would the access permission API look like?

Concept basis of a specification

A common data transfer medium

The future

What are some of the key ways authors can connect with readers?

In marketing your book Cooking for Geeks, what were some of the mostsuccessful tactics you used?

What advice would you offer to new authors just starting out?

The Sorry State of eBook Samples, and Four Ways to Improve ThemHow Libraries Can Help Publishers with Discovery and DistributionHow to De-Risk Book Publishing

Selling Ourselves Short on Search and Discovery

The 7 Key Features of an Online Community

Book Communities

The Fundamentals

Conclusion

9 Direct Sales Channel

Direct Sales Uncover Hidden Trends for Publishers

Direct Channels and New Tools Bring Freedom and FlexibilityDirect Channels

Evolving Tools

It’s the Brand, Stupid!

NY Times eBook Initiative Could Be So Much More

10 Legal

Fair Use: A Narrow, Subjective, Complicated Safe Haven for Free SpeechHow is “fair use” defined and what is its legal purpose?

Does the breadth of the fair use guidelines cause confusion?

What are some best practices people should follow to stay within theguidelines?

What are the most common fair use abuses?

What kinds of content aren’t protected by copyright or subject to fair use?How would someone know if something is in the public domain or not?What’s your take on Creative Commons licensing?

eBook Lending vs Ownership

A Screenshot, a Link, and a Heap of Praise Are Met with a TakedownNotice

11 Formats

Portable Documents for the Open Web (Part 1)

What’s up with HTML5 and EPUB 3? (and, is EPUB even important in

an increasingly cloud-centric world?)

The Enduring Need for Portable Documents

Portable Documents for the Open Web (Part 2)

Portable Documents for the Open Web (Part 3)

Graceful eBook Degradation

IOS 6, Android, HTML5: Which Publishing Platform Prevails?

Responsive eBook Content

HTML5, EPUB 3, and eBooks vs Web Apps

Your mileage may vary, especially on the Nook

Distinguishing apps from ebooks

eBooks as Native Apps vs Web Apps

Distinguishing ebooks from apps

Closing the gap between HTML5 and EPUB 3 support

Books as Apps Deserve Serious Consideration

12 Pricing

Piracy, Pricing, and eBook Hoarding

Page Count, Pricing, and Value Propositions

The Future Is Bright for eBook Prices and FormatsPricing

Formats

13 Production

The New New Typography

Browser as typesetting machine

The power of CSS and JavaScript

Ease and efficiencies

BookJS Turns Your Browser into a Print Typesetting EngineEbook Problem Areas that Need Standardisation

What’s the hold up?

So why is this really interesting to publishing?

WYSIWYG vs WYSI

A Kindle Developer’s 2013 Wishlist

1 Add support for embedded audio/video to Kindle Fire

2 Add KF8 support for MathML

3 Add a Monospace Default Font to Kindle Paperwhite

4 Add more granularity to @media query support

5 Add a “View Source” option to Kindle Previewer

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Chapter 1 Introduction

2012 was quite a year for change in the publishing industry Throughout theyear we used the TOC community site to provide insightful analysis of thelatest industry developments And since ours is a community site, the articles

we publish aren’t just from the TOC team; we also feature perspectives frommany of the top innovators and publishing experts

It wasn’t easy, but we hand-picked the most noteworthy articles from 2012for inclusion in this Best of TOC collection We think you’ll agree that themore than 60 pieces featured here represent some of the most thought-

provoking dialog from the past year We’ve arranged the articles by category,

so whether you’re most interested in marketing, revenue models, production

or innovation in general you’ll find something to get your creative juicesflowing

And since we’re all about fostering community at TOC we hope this

collection will encourage you to add your voice to the discussion Since each

of these articles is taken from our website you can add your comments bysearching for the headline on toc.oreilly.com

Chapter 2 Innovation

How Agile Methodologies Can Help Publishers

By Jenn Webb

Agile methodologies originated in the software space, but Bookigee CEOKristen McLean (@ABCKristen) believes many of the same techniques canalso be applied to content development and publishing workflows She

explains why in the following interview

What is an agile methodology?

Kristen McLean: An agile methodology is a series of strategies for

managing projects and processes that emphasize quick creative cycles, flatself-organizing working groups, the breaking down of complex tasks intosmaller achievable goals, and the presumption that you don’t always knowwhat the finished product will be when you begin the process

These types of methodologies work particularly well in any situation whereyou are trying to produce a creative product to meet a market that is evolving

— like a new piece of software when the core concept needs proof from theuser to evolve — or where there needs to be a very direct and engaged

relationship between the producers and users of a particular product or

service

Agile methodologies emerged out of the software development community inthe 1970s, but began to really codify in the 1990s with the rise of severaltypes of “lightweight” methods such as SCRUM, Extreme Programming, and

Adaptive Software Development These were all rolled up under the umbrella

of agile in 2001, when a group of developers came together to create the

Manifesto for Agile Software Development, which set the core principles forthis type of working philosophy

Since then, agile has been applied outside of software development to manydifferent kinds of systems management Most promote development,

teamwork, collaboration, and process adaptability throughout the life-cycle ofthe project At the end of the day, it’s about getting something out there that

we can test and learn from

How do agile methodologies apply to

publishing?

Kristen McLean: In relation to publishing, we’re really talking about two

things: agile content development and agile workflow

Agile content development is the idea that we may be able to apply thesemethodologies to creating content in a very different way than we are

traditionally used to This could mean anything from serialized book content

to frequent releases of digital content, like book-related websites, apps,

games and more The discussion of how agile might be applied to traditionalbook content is just beginning, and I think there’s an open-ended questionabout how it might intersect with the deeply personal — and not always

quick — process of writing a book

I don’t believe some of our greatest works could have been written in an agileframework (think Hemingway, Roth, or Franzen), but I also believe agilemight lend itself to certain kinds of book content, like serial fiction (romance,

YA, mystery) and some kinds of non-fiction The real question has to do with

what exactly a “book” is and understanding the leading edge between

knowing your audience and crowdsourcing your material

Publishing houses have been inherently hierarchical because they’ve beenorganized around a manufacturing process wherein a book’s creation hasbeen treated as though it’s on an assembly line The publisher and editor havetypically been the arbiters of content, and as a whole, publishers have notreally cultivated a direct relationship with end users Publishers make Usersbuy/read/share, etc

Publishers need to adapt to a radically different way of working For

example, here’s a few ways agile strategies could help with the adaptation of

a publishing workflow:

Create flat, flexible teams of four to five super-talented individuals with acollective skill set — including editorial, marketing, publicity, production,digital/design, and business — all working together from the moment ofacquisition (or maybe before) These teams would need to be completelyfluent in XHTML and would work under the supervision of a managingpublisher whose job would be to create the proper environment and

remove impediments so the team could do its job.

An original creative voice and unique point of view will always be

important in great writing, but those of us who produce books as tradeobjects (and package the content in them) have to stop assuming we knowwhat the market wants and start talking to the market as frequently aspossible

Use forward-facing data and feedback to project future sales Stop usingpast sales as the exclusive way to project future sales The market is

moving too fast for that, and we all know there is a diminishing return forthe same old, same old

[This interview was edited and condensed.]

Taking a Page Out of ESPN’s Playbook

By Joe Wikert

If you missed this recent BusinessWeek article about ESPN you owe it toyourself to go back and read it ESPN is so much more than just a sportsnetwork and their brilliant strategy offers plenty of lessons for publishers.Here’s just one important indicator of their success: While the average

network earns about 20 cents per subscriber each month ESPN is paid $5.13.That’s more than 25 times the average!

Pay for one, access all

Of course ESPN isn’t just one channel It’s a family of channels (e.g., ESPN,

ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Classic, etc.) If you’re a subscriber to any one of those channels you’re able to watch all of them online via the free

WatchESPN app That means no matter where I am I can catch anything onthe ESPN network on my tablet, even those channels I don’t get via cable.Think about that for a moment That would be like buying one ebook butgetting access to the entire series it’s part of That’s unheard of in book

publishing It’s also pretty unusual in network broadcasting but ESPN isahead of its time When I stream those channels on WatchESPN they’recommercial-free; a static logo appears during commercial breaks That’sbecause ESPN hasn’t sold the advertising rights to the streaming broadcasts

… yet They’re willing to stream everything now, even without advertisingincome, to build a nice solid base to lure those advertisers to the table Smart

Building talent franchises

The article talks about Bill Simmons and how the network has turned himinto a superstar So when Simmons had the idea to create Grantland he

brought the concept to ESPN to see what they thought Rather than watchingSimmons go off on his own and create something that might compete withthem they launched Grantland with him using their ESPN Internet Ventures

arm

When this scenario plays out in the publishing world it usually ends with theauthor taking the idea somewhere else, often to a self-publisher It’s clearESPN is willing to take more risks than the typical book publisher, even if itmight lead to cannibalization As the saying goes though, it’s better to eatyour own young than to let someone else do it

multi-channel world ESPN is pioneering.

Think this advice only applies to the world of television? If so, look at howRosenfeld Media is reinventing and repositioning itself for the future

What’s your opinion? Do we need to think more like ESPN? And can youname any publishers who are breaking away from the pack and creating somereally innovative, multi-channel products?

Perceptive Media: Undoing the Limitations of Traditional Media

By Jenn Webb

Recent research indicates a clear desire for interactive engagement in

storytelling on the part of audiences Researchers at the BBC are pioneeringthe concept of engagement and content personalization with their PerceptiveMedia experiment The Next Web’s managing editor Martin Bryant took alook at Perceptive Media and its first incarnation Breaking Out earlier thissummer He describes the experiment’s concept:

Essentially, it’s media — either video or audio — that adapts itself based on information it knows about individual viewers So, if you were watching a game show that you’d never seen before, it might show you an explanation of the rules in detail, while regular views are shown bonus,

behind-the-scenes footage instead … Other smart ideas behind Perceptive Media include the idea that TV hardware could automatically recognize who was watching and tailor the content of TV to them automatically.

I reached out to BBC R&D researcher Ian Forrester to find out more aboutPerceptive Media and the potential for the concept Our interview follows

How does Perceptive Media work, and are

there privacy concerns?

Ian Forrester: Perceptive Media takes storytelling and narrative back tosomething more aligned to a storyteller and audience around a fire However,

it uses broadcast and Internet technologies in combination to achieve a

seamless narrative experience

Our Breaking Out audio play at futurebroadcasts.com takes advantage ofadvanced web technologies [to adapt the content], but it’s only one of many

ways we have identified [Editor’s note: BBC writer Sarah Glenister wrote

about her experience working on the Breaking Out audio play experiment

here ] The path we took means there are no privacy or data protection issues.

Other paths may lean toward learning from what’s being customised (ratherthen personalised) using a more IP-based solution

The BBC has a rich history in this field, with the likes of BBC Backstage,which I was the head of for many years Big data is the trend right now, but

in R&D, I’m more interested in implicit data that comes from us and

everything we do

What driving factors are pointing to the

success of this kind of storytelling platform?

Ian Forrester: As an R&D department, its very hard to say for the

broadcasting industry, and we have even less experience in the publishingindustry However, our research on people’s media habits tells us a lot aboutpeople in the lean back and learn forward states We use that research andwhat we have seen elsewhere to gauge market acceptance

At the BBC, we don’t look at advertising, but every other company we’veseen interested in this type technology/experience/media is thinking advertsand product placement

In the early days, Perceptive Media is being applied to broadcast technology What

potential applications for Perceptive Media do you envision in the publishing industry?

Ian Forrester: We have only scratched the surface and do not know what

else it can be adapted toward In BBC R&D, we watch trends by looking atearly innovators It’s clear as day that ebook reading is taking off finally, and

as it moves into the digital domain, why does the concept of a book have to

be static? Skeuomorphism is tragic and feels like a massive step back ButPerceptive Media is undoing the limitations of broadcast It certainly feelslike we can overcome the limitations of publishing, too

[This interview was lightly edited and condensed.]

Kindle Fire vs iPad: “Good Enough” Will Not Disrupt

By Jenn Webb

With its recent release of the new Kindle Fire HD tablets, some have argued

that Amazon has declared war on Apple and its iPad But how serious is thethreat? Are the two companies even playing the same game? I reached out toanalyst Horace Dediu, founder and author of Asymco, to get his take Ourshort interview follows

How disruptive is the Kindle Fire to the end tablet market?

low-Horace Dediu: The problem I see with the Kindle is that the fuel to make it

an increasingly better product that can become a general purpose computerthat is hired to do most of what we hire computers to do is not there I mean,that profitability to invest in new input methods, new ways of interacting andnew platforms can’t be obtained from a retailer’s margin

Also, there is a cycle time problem in that the company does not want toorphan its devices since they should “pay themselves off” as console systems

do today That means the company is not motivated to move its users to

newer and “better” solutions that constantly improve The assumption

(implicit) in Kindle is that the product is “good enough” as it is and should beused for many years to come That’s not a way to ensure improvements

necessary to disrupt the computing world

Lastly, the Amazon brand will have a difficult time reaching six billion

consumers Retail is a notoriously difficult business to expand internationally.Digital retail is not much easier than brick-and-mortar You can see how slowexpansion of different media has been for iTunes

Is Amazon a threat to Apple?

Horace Dediu: Amazon is asymmetric in many ways to Apple Asymmetry

can always be a threat because the success of one player is not necessarily tothe pain of another Thus, the “threat” is unfelt, and therefore it’s less likelythat there is a response in kind However, it’s important to couple the

asymmetry with a trajectory of improvement where the threat goes fromunfelt to clear and present That’s where I’m having a hard time puttingAmazon on a path that crosses Apple’s fundamental success I’d say it’ssomething to watch carefully but not yet something that requires a change instrategy

I would add one more footnote: Apple TV is a business that matches Kindleperfectly in strategy Apple TV is a “cheap” piece of hardware that is

designed to encourage content consumption It is something Apple is doingwith very modest success but is not abandoning Apple is exploring thisbusiness model

What role do you see Apple playing in the

future of publishing — and what current

trends do you identify as driving factors?

Horace Dediu: I think Apple will put in a greater effort at the K-12 and

higher ed levels I think the education market resonates strongly with them,and they will develop more product strategy there The main reason is thatthere are more decision makers and less concentration of channel power

[This interview was lightly edited and condensed.]

Don’t Build Social — Thoughts on Reinventing the Wheel

By Travis Alber

For the publishing community, social reading has been the hot topic of theyear Since 2008, in fact, social features have spread like wildfire No

publishing conference is complete without a panel discussion on what’s

possible No bundle of Ignite presentations passes muster without a nod to thepossibilities created by social features I understand why: in-content

discussion is exciting, especially as we approach the possibility of real-timeinteraction

Granted, I’m biased Running a social service myself, I think all this interest

is great The web should take advantage of new paradigms! Social discussion

layers are the future! However, there is one important point that all the

myriad new projects are ignoring: unless it’s a core feature, most companiesshouldn’t build social

That’s right Unless social discussion features are the thing you’re selling,don’t build it from scratch What’s core? Your unique value proposition Areyou a bookstore or a social network? A school or a social network? A writingcommunity or a social network? A content creator or a social network? Thedistinction is often lost on a highly-motivated team trying to be all things toall users For all these examples, the social network is just an aspect of thebusiness It is an important piece of the experience, but most of the time it’snot worth the incredible investment in time and manpower to build it fromscratch

Services, APIs, and the Complex Web

We’ve seen this happen again and again on the web If you’ve ever heard of

Get Satisfaction or UserVoice, you’re familiar with the evolution of customerservice on the web Ten years ago companies built their own threaded

bulletin board systems (and managed the resultant torrent of spam), so thatthey could “manage the user relationship.” There were some benefits — youcould customize the environment completely, for example But it took thegreater portion of a week to build, and a lot of work to maintain Today thatkind of support can be up and running in an hour with third party solutions.Just ask forward thinking companies like Small Demons and NetGalley, whohave embraced these services

The same can be said of newsletters For years newsletters were hand-coded(or text-only) and sent from corporate email accounts Unsubscribing wasdifficult Getting email accounts blacklisted (because they looked like spam)was common Today everyone uses MailChimp, Constant Contact, Emma, or

a similar service Even if you hire an agency to design and manage a system,they’re likely white-labelling and reselling a service like this to you

Companies no longer build a newsletter service Now you just use an API tointegrate your newsletter signup form with a third-party database Designyour newsletter using one of their templates, and let them do all the heavylifting for email management, bounces, unsubscribes, and usage stats

There are other examples Who stores video and builds their own player?Instead we upload it to Vimeo, Brightcove or YouTube, customize the

settings, and let the service tell you who watched it, handle storing the heavyfiles, push player upgrades frequently, etc Even web hosting itself has

become a service that people sign up for - in many cases setting a project up

on AWS (Amazon Web Services, essentially cloud computing) is faster andeasier than acquiring a real hardware server and configuring from scratch.The rise of these third-party solutions are a testament to maturity and

complexity of our digital world Specialization makes systems more stableand dependable Sure, any time you partner with a service there are risks ButI’ve seen so many publishing projects with social features miss their launchdeadline or trash their social features before launch because they found theycouldn’t get it built, that it’s hard to watch them spin their wheels over aperceived need for control That’s a mess of work for something that isn’t the