New Chapter

Personalized Newspapers- lets wait and see

Liam Chambers — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:50:48 +0000

The concept behind http://www.niiu.de/ is a personalized newspaper delivered to subscribers daily. You pick the sources they deliver it printed and packaged to your front door. it does have a certain appeal and beats having to read the freebies at the station. Its a great combination of information architecture, outsource production methods, with the promises of hight targeted advertising to come.

All the details in English covered here by editorsweblog.org

The E-Reader Wars April 14, 2010

Liam Chambers — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:09:30 +0000

from biliofuture

From hype to hero

Liam Chambers — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 09:40:21 +0000

Ebooks and iPads are about all I have read written or talked about over the last few weeks. My view, they are important, its a new channel and relatively easy to get to if your content strategy is right and the cost of production is near utility.

And here is why US Trade Wholesale Electronic Book Sales

Quarters	Revenues	Quarters	Revenues	Quarters	Revenues
Q1 02	$1,556,499	Q1 06	$4,100,000	Jan + Feb 2010	$60,800,000
Q2 02	$1,258,989	Q2 06	$4,000,000	Q2 10
Q3 02	$1,329,548	Q3 06	$4,900,000	Q3 10
Q4 02	$1,649,144	Q4 06	$7,000,000	Q4 10
Q1 03	$1,794,544	Q1 07	$7,500,000
Q2 03	$1,842,502	Q2 07	$8,100,000
Q3 03	$1,789,455	Q3 07	$8,000,000
Q4 03	$1,917,384	Q4 07	$8,200,000
Q1 04	$1,794,130	Q1 08	$11,200,000
Q2 04	$1,887,900	Q2 08	$11,600,000
Q3 04	$2,460,343	Q3 08	$13,900,000
Q4 04	$3,477,130	Q4 08	$16,800,000
Q1 05	$3,161,049	Q1 09	$25,800,000
Q2 05	$3,182,499	Q2 09	$37,600,000
Q3 05	$2,310,291	Q3 09	$46,500,000
Q4 05	$2,175,131	Q4 09	$55,900,000

not many publishing manager that can ignore this growth curve?

Books outnumber games in the iphone app-store

Liam Chambers — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:44:24 +0000

According to mobclix books now outnumber games in the appstore.

Its another tipping point and validates the case that publishers now really need to transition to single source to remain competitive.

On that topic Aptara have made a useful video outlining the five things to think about when considering ebooks. While we would naturally advocate an XML route to single source production there are multiple options out there.

Give us a call if your thinking about production and want to discuss options

How Open Source Frameworks for Social Publishing Eliminate Web Content Management System Shortfalls

Liam Chambers — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:06:31 +0000

Some interesting Drupal webinars coming up this one caught my eye 8 am on the 18th.

Guest Speakers:

Geoffrey Bock, Senior Analyst for The Gilbane Group
Jason Hibbets, Project Manager in Brand Communications + Design for Red Hat

Time: 1:00 PM ET, UTC/GMT -5
Register Now

The editors at Ziff Davis Enterprise invite you to join Geoffrey Bock, Senior Analyst for The Gilbane Group; Jason Hibbets, Project Manager in Brand Communications + Design for Red Hat; and Bryan House, Senior Director of Marketing for Acquia, in a conversation about how social publishing is disrupting the Web Content Management (WCM) and social software markets. More specifically, speakers at this eSeminar will tell you what platforms are required for IT and marketing to engage communities of contributors with managed content to deepen customer relationships and drive innovation on the Web while reducing their development and maintenance costs.

You will learn:

What trends are driving the need for an enterprise open source framework for social publishing
Which features are mission-critical for the enterprise when creating a platform for building a brand with community engagement How social publishing as a competitive advantage transforms business operations Why Red Hat used Drupal and Acquia services to launch the new community site opensource.com

Paywalls and public service broadcasters

Liam Chambers — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:53:00 +0000

The move to putting content behind paywalls is gathering force. It struck me that if newspapers etc move in this way the role of sites such as the BBC and here in Ireland RTE will become even more important.

Now don’t get me wrong I have spent most of my career putting professional content behind pay walls of one form or another and have no problem with the concept, subscription models are good profitable and are a powerful form of aggregator for committed communities of interest.

But the cynic in me wonders if all of the attacks on the BBC in the past two years were really cynical attempts to reduce it to an ersatz state when you might then have to revert to an alternative commercial service for news.

I wonder what impact it may have on developments such as the “iplayer”. Perhaps less episodes of eastenders and more news and public service content is in order, but there are some tricky cost issues there to be managed.

The Ebook Hype curve?

Liam Chambers — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:49:49 +0000

A sew BISG Survey Tracks Book Consumers’ Behavior Toward and Preferences for E-Books. The initial (Part one of three) Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading survey also found that the majority of print book buyers rank “affordability” as the #1 reason they would choose to purchase an e-book rather than a print book of the same title. Of less consequence when it came to their purchase decisions was the extent to which an e-book was searchable or environmentally friendly.

Other findings:

Roughly 1/5 of survey respondents said they’ve stopped purchasing print books within the past 12 months in favor of acquiring the e-book editions.

Most survey respondents said they prefer to share e-books across devices. Only 28% said they would “definitely” purchase an e-book with Digital Rights Management (DRM); men were more likely than women to say they would not buy an e-book with DRM.

Survey respondents indicated a clear preference for e-reader devices used as of November 2009, with computers coming in first (47%), followed by the Kindle (32%), and other e-reader devices at roughly 10% apiece.

Although certainly growing, 81% of survey respondents say they currently purchase an e-book only “rarely” or “occasionally.”

Full story

Bill Amendments go Mainstream?

Liam Chambers — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:00:11 +0000

For those of us who are interested in the legislative process bill amendments are part of the lifeblood of democracy a who did what, proposed what, and what happened process. The process is not always visible outside the legislature, so I was interested to see today that Slate Magazine is now tracking every amendment to the US Senate’s health care reform bill.

According to Slate “they are presented (here) with sponsors’ names, plain-English descriptions, links to texts and summaries, and roll call votes, with the most recent at the top.”

Its nice to see the process out in the open and the information getting disseminated. Shame its all PDF, some amendment RSS would be nice but its a step in the right direction

Jisc Ebook Observatory Report Summary

Liam Chambers — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:45:10 +0000

JISC have released the findings of their study on ebooks in Libraries. Its pretty detailed based on 52,000 responses but a quick summary would be:

Popularity is increasing.

Lack of standards and common experience is a problem for users.

E-text books are popular around exam time and are a good stop gap for library flash floods.

The cheaper the better as all round text book spending is falling.

Read the full report here

Undiscoverable = undiscovered?

Liam Chambers — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:36:22 +0000

If you are not engaged in your business you will not be in business and all business is about conversations. You might cynically think that Rupert Murdoch sledging Google is simply good business, look at the profile of the last couple of days – easy to get if you own a lot of media.

The thing I dont get is if your business is news you need to be in the news, retreating behind a pay wall and making your content “undiscoverable” cannot make much sense.

I am no CEO expert but I believe it is possible to not allow Google index your content, but why would you want to?. What the industry has failed to do is to find any additional value propositions to develop new income streams while clicks grow yet subscriptions and purchases fall.

It’s a bit like the reaction in the UK to the BBC expanding its reach to cover local news and provide video last year, they wanted to do it because no one else had and someone could or should. So the BBC got blocked and no one did anything, why all it would have done was created a bigger market for local news.

If the spat is really about advertising revenue, and it probably is, round one to Mr. Murdoch, I bet he gets a sweeter deal!