Ten Years of Flip Paraty

July 4-8, 2012 marked the tenth annual Flip (“Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty”), the literary festival held every July (except for World Cup years when it is held in August) in the Brazilian resort town of Paraty. Although attendance has grown from 6,000 to well over 25,000 every year, Flip itself remains roughly the same as when it started in 2003: Every year, 40 authors (twenty from Brazil, twenty from other—largely Anglophone—countries) are selected by the Festival’s committee to come and participate in about 20 round-tables or panels in front of members of the public. Big ticket international names this year included Jonathan Franzen (who, by all accounts, was not a hit with Brazilian audiences), Jennifer Egan, Ian McEwan, and Syrian Nobel Prize-nominated poet Adonis.

When speaking of what Flip has done in the past ten years for Brazilian literary culture as a whole, most people point to the way it’s functioned to put Brazil on the (global) “literary map.” The strong international flavor is unsurprising, given that Flip’s founder, Bloomsbury Publishing co-founder Liz Calder is herself a foreign—although frequent—visitor to Paraty. Flip’s half-Brazilian, half-international program has guaranteed a steady stream of big-name foreign authors who might never have otherwise had personal exposure to Brazilian audiences. In addition, points out Cassiano Elek Machado, Former Flip Program Director and Publisher of the publishing house Cosac Naify, Flip offers Brazilian authors an unparalleled chance to connect with prominent authors from around the world without leaving their own country.

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The Chattering Classes Transformed to Tweeting Tribes

With this post, PublishingTrends.com continues its regular column in which it reviews, explicates and excerpts books that we think will resonate with people in the business of publishing and media. 

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The Tao of Twitter by Mark Schaefer  (McGraw-Hill) is coming out on August 3rd, and in the year since the first edition was published, much has changed.  More people and businesses are tweeting; more ancillary tools have been developed to aid tweeters in finding followers, people to follow, and ways to get your message out; and Twitter has become a competitive sport for huge swathes of the global population – 500 million worldwide, with at least 140 million of those in the US.

Schaefer got on the Twitter bandwagon early, and as a professional marketer, has found ways to capitalize on that:  He has a respectable 43,000 followers, he has written two books about social media (the other is Return on Influence, which is about Klout and the importance of quantifying how influential a person’s social media presence is), and he claims he has met friends, business prospects and new colleagues through his interactions with followers and fellow tweeters.  He believes that  at its heart, Twitter is a business networking tool and this book is both a exhortation (tweet till you drop) and how-to.  While there’s not an enormous amount of material that an aspiring tweeter couldn’t get by nosing around the  site, and by googling for help (though Schaefer would say that asking fellow tweeters for help is the most effective way), there is enough to make this book useful.  Schaefer’s argument is that this particular social medium is focused on “Authentic Helpfulness,” and that’s what makes a Twitter user come back for more, so he’s practicing what he preaches here.

Beginning with the basics – what to tweet, what certain terms mean (eg. #FF or Locking – though Twitter itself has a good glossary), who to follow, and how to build up a following – Schaefer takes the reader through the benefits of the medium, as well as some of the (seemingly few) pitfalls.  He also suggests lots of tools that help a user find tweeters in categories and geographic locations that are of interest (eg. LocalChirps, TwitterGrader), how to reach those people with germane information and then, how to measure relative success in measuring and improving the user’s social media metrics.

What is most useful to business book readers is 18 Ideas to Toast Your Competition (it was only 16 in the table of contents, so obviously this is a work in progress) – which has some useful methods to promote, products, services and companies in ways that are not blatant advertisements.  Google, for instance, now picks up tweets, pushing a business’s profile up to the top of the page.

What a tweeter will most appreciate about this book, perhaps, is Schaefer’s recognition that Twitter is a potentially huge time sucker.  So he gives the user ways to both cut back on extraneous chatter (create lists; use tools like TweetDeck, where you can use filters to pinpoint subjects), and to focus on relevant chat, googling categories listed in “twitter chat schedule” that might be of interest – as well as maximizing those tweets by connecting LinkedIn and Facebook to the Twitter account.  At the end  of the 24/7 day, though, Twitter – and this book – is for the dedicated social media wannabe. . . you know who you are.

More Than One Way to Make a Book: Book Printers Go Digital

When asked what single biggest trend R.R. Donnelley has noticed among its book-publishing clients of late, President of Publishing Services, Rick Marceaux answers, “We have seen a broader set of publishers’ priorities grow with regard to what they look for…across the breadth of the supply chain.” Even as the volume of traditionally manufactured books (defined as off-set printed and traditionally bound) decreases, the variety of services demanded of book manufacturers has (ironically) never been greater. Everyone in both publishing and printing is quick to emphasize that the printed book is still a huge part of business, and, in fact, has learned some new tricks of its own in the form of variousdigital printing technologies. But in an effort to keep up with clients’ need to “manufacture” ebooks and apps as well, many traditional printers are trying to add these services to their repertoire. While shrinking print volume is a concern, perhaps even more significant is the question of what it will take to keep up with the growing variety of ways one can “make a book” in 2012 and beyond.

The industry being what it is, very few book printers don’t make some mention of the ebook services—or even app development—that they offer or will offer soon. But, points out Tim McGuire, VP, Production at W.W. Norton, ebook conversion simply does not bring in as much revenue as print book manufacture, whether off-set or digital. So even if an enterprising printer were to whip together a fully functional, high-volume ebook conversion and development department and manage to take in as many man-hours of ebook conversion as were lost in print operation, this still wouldn’t bring in as much money as is being lost in declining print income.

There is also growing recognition that ebook production needs to start shortly after acquisition. Without a dramatic overhaul ofboth their own internal structures and workflows and how they interact with clients, most printers are too far removed from this initial point to offer all the ebook services publishers need. Enzo Reale, Regional VP of Sales at Quad/Graphics, emphasizes this point, but also believes that, no matter what services a printer is providing, the manufacturing process has to be viewed as being “multi-channel, from the very start of the process.” In order to help printers do this, Ricoh Production Print Solutions (a manufacturer of both printing equipment and software) held its first book-industry focused summit for printers in Denver this past March. Joe Caruso, Global Business Development Manager at Ricoh, says that in addition to the summit (more of which are in the works, including one in Europe this autumn), Ricoh is also teaming with BISG on several studies about workflow. The aim is to help clarify publishers’ multi-channel needs for printers so that they can better understand where they fit in. Fortunately, a printer’s stakes in the non-printing sectors of book manufacture needn’t be all or nothing. Quad/Graphics currently handles front-end ebook development for a few clients, and Courier Printing is taking advantage of the fact that, at the moment, publishers’ backlists usually exist only as print files—creating a significant demand for scanning and conversion services.

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Anything You Can Do: One-Upmanship in the Ereader Competition

This month, there seemed to be a good amount of back-and-forth between ereader companies with new products or services announced just as another company gains some footing. The competition in international markets continues. Waterstones, though it recently announced it would be selling Kindles this year in its stores, admitted that if other devices had the same traction in the UK as Amazon did, that it would be open to selling alternative devices as well. Meanwhile in Asia, Kobo announced its plan to release touch devices in Japan next month – unsurprising considering the company’s ownership by Rakuten.

Back on American soil, the Nook has been recognized as having surpassed the Kindle in web traffic impressions, still lagging behind the iPad, though the Apple tablet’s web traffic has decreased as well. Still, Kindle is on the prowl with rumors already swirling of a new version of the Fire to possibly be announced at the end of July, right on the heels of an expected announcement of a new $199 Google tablet. Also worth mentioning in the world of ereaders is this recent article in the Wall Street Journal, detailing how ereader capabilities are allowing for company/publisher data collection about consumer reading habits. While Amazon declined to comment on how they’re using their data collection to enhance their offerings, Barnes & Noble said that their analytics were a driving force behind “Nook Snaps,” short nonfiction works available in the Nook Bookstores.

So who is getting the last word in this ereader competition? Read on to declare your own winner.

“Earlier in the talk, [Waterstones m.d. James Daunt] said: ‘Clearly we will be selling Kindles in the autumn, which are sold by Amazon who is our deadliest foe in all other respects, hence a certain amount of disquiet among publishing colleagues and booksellers, to a much lesser degree, and the general public.’ On opting with Amazon and the Kindle, Daunt said it had been a choice between other devices ‘which have very little traction in this country’, and developing a Waterstones’ own device, which Daunt said the company had had ‘a highly limited’ chance of doing. He said: ‘Effectively we felt we had very little choice but to do this.’”

Charlotte Williams, The Bookseller (6/6/12)

“I wouldn’t consider either of these [Kindle or Nook]  tablets to be work horses; if you want to use your tablet for business, get an iPad or netbook. But for entertainment value, I’d definitely choose the Kindle Fire.”

Cool Mom Tech (6/11/12)

 “Aside from the traffic drop experienced by the iPad, the most notable finding was that the Nook had overtaken the Kindle Fire in Web traffic impressions. Compared with an earlier study of tablet traffic, the Kindle Fire maintained its 0.71 percent market share, while the Nook surged past the Kindle Fire with a 0.85 percent market share.”

Steven Musil, CNET (6/14/12)

“Rakuten’s $315 million buyout of Kobo will bear some e-reader fruit come July. The e-tailer’s CEO and chairman, Hiroshi Mikitani, announced plans to release the Kobo eReader Touch Edition in Japan next month for 10,000 yen (on par with its $130 US sticker price).”

Alexis Santos, Endgadget 6/22/12

“On the eve of the expected announcement of a new Google tablet that takes aim at Amazon’s Kindle Fire, a leak from within the online retailer revealed that a new version of its slate will be announced by the end of July.”

John P. Mello Jr., PCWorld (6/26/12)

People Roundup, July 2012

PEOPLE

Dan Farley, former President and Publisher of Macmillan Children’s, and subsequently EVP Business Development at SwoopThat, announced that the company and its newly launched HubEd, have been acquired by Rafter.com.  As a result, it will move to the Bay Area and, says Farley, “I will not be going forward with the new venture.” He may be reached at dhfarley1@gmail.com

In late June (but before the NewsCorp  spinoff of the publisher with the educational and newspaper holdings) HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray announced changes to the sales department “to better integrate marketing, sales and analysis.” His statement was followed up details of those changes including news that: Jeff Rogart, VP, Director of Distributor Sales will retire at the end of August; Ken Berger, Mike Brennan, Mark Hillesheim, Kathy Smith and Jeanette Zwart, will be leaving the company on July 20.  Dan Holod, VP of Customer Service and Gail Kunda, Director of Customer Service, are also both retiring, on July 13. Frank Albanese has moved over from operations to the sales department as SVP, Market Insight and Sales Operations. He and Dan Lubart SVP, Sales Analytics and Pricing now report to Josh Marwell, though the former “will continue to be responsible for the Supply Chain group and report to Larry Nevins in this capacity.” Doug Jones assumes the role of SVP, Group Sales Director for General Books. Brian Grogan SVP, Sales and Andrea Pappenheimer, SVP, Children’s Sales report to him and continue in their roles directing the day-to-day print and digital sales effort  And Grogan will also become the main sales liaison with the publishing and marketing teams at Avon Books, and Mary Beth Thomas, formerly VP, Distribution is now VP, Deputy Director of Sales, reports to Grogran while Kerry Moynagh, VP, Deputy Director Sales reports to Pappenheimer.

Perseus Books Group, which moved to 250 West 57th Street at the end of June (see below), announced it is phasing out Vanguard Press imprint and has made management changes at Running Press. Vanguard publisher Roger Cooper will be staying to publish the fall hardcovers and trade paperbacks and then will become a Senior Consultant to the Perseus Books, while Running Press Editorial Director Greg Jones will leave and Jennifer Kasius has been named Editorial Director of the adult side of the business.  Kristen Wiewora  has been promoted to Senior Editor and Jordana Tusman to Editor, continuing to report to Kasius. Frances Soo Ping Chow, who had been heading up the children’s publishing is now Design Director for the whole imprint.

Katie Freeman has joined Riverhead as Associate Director of Publicity on July 2. She was most recently Publicity Manager at FSG.

Melville House has hired Claire Kelley as Director, Academic and Library Marketing. She was most recently Marketing Manager at Free Press. Dustin Kurtz, previously General Manager and Buyer at McNally Jackson, has been named Marketing Manager.

Lyron Bennet is new Business Development Manager at Sourcebooks.  He was Key Account Manager at Tribeca, a consumer electronics company. Read More »

2012 National Museum Publishing Seminar: Institutions in a Digital Space

Hard on the heels of the AAUP (covered below) came the biannual National Museum Publishing Seminar (June 21-23), which also took place in Chicago, bringing with it questions of how effective museum publishers’ efforts have been in the digital space.  Every two years, museums and other arts and university presses gather for programs addressing publishing concerns of organizations across the country. Attendance was at an all-time high with 271 registered, and  panelists came from institutions like the Seattle Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and National Gallery of ArtIt is a particularly collegial meeting of participants who share the same issues facing art book publishers, and who often collaborate on projects.

Bedevilled as museums are with how to make illustrated ebooks and apps and what to do about print sales when Amazon out-discounts and outsells everyone, they must also deal with the challenge of attracting younger visitors. This has resulted in partnerships  with bloggers, web designers, producers and other consultants, in an effort to personalize  the voice of the museum, a mission that requires a great deal of work but doesn’t always return the requisite or anticipated income.

Christie Henry, Editorial Director for Science at the University of Chicago presented their experience with creating their app Gems and Jewels, a joint venture with Touch Press and The Field Museum. Derived from the book Gems and Gemstones (“Jewels” was added to the app title to appeal to a “tradier” audience), they sold 6400 apps at $13.99.  The app was even named iTunes App of the Week, a difficult honor to earn. The print edition sold about 5400 at $45 and based on Henry’s calculations, the production required 348 hours of staff time, a one-time $3000 fee for the rights to a Marilyn Monroe sound track (guess which one?), and they recouped 90% of their costs in a little less than a year.  The impression given, however, was that it was a lot of work for a store as non-book-friendly as the Apple App Store, and they were frustrated by the limitation Apple put on the number of review copy apps permitted — an unusual state of affairs for publishers, who are used to review copies being the most cost-effective promotional tool for their titles.

Certainly museum PR staff has been increased, much as in trade publishing, and Kristi McGuire, New Media Manager at the University of Chicago Press gave an elaborate accounting of her average day online that astonished many in the audience. Nevertheless it’s unclear whether digital outreach in the form of blogs and podcasts such as Bad at Sports (with 500,000 page views per month) are actually increasing the number of visitors to museums.

The panel dealing with museum stores had conducted a survey of stores via SurveyMonkey and presented its somewhat surprising results.  25% of retail sales were reported to be books, and the gross profit on museums’ own publications is the same on average as their other merchandise. Sharon Gallagher, Executive Director of Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.  reported that the 12.5% to 16% of her sales to museum stores was unchanged in the 22 years she’s been in business.

AAUP 2012: Coming Full Circle

The AAUP’s annual meeting (held back-to-back with the biannual museum publishing seminar in Chicago) on June 18-20 was not only lively, but oversubscribed following two dismal, gloomy years, and all attendees were in good spirits.  As Jennifer Howard described in her coverage for The Chronicle of Higher Education, “The numbers created some logistical hassles but gave the meeting energy, too, tempering nervousness about how to feed the growing e-book market and how to convince budget-obsessed administrators that presses are assets, not liabilities.” This particular meeting also marked the organization’s 75th anniversary, as well as an opportunity to fete Executive Director Peter Givler who is retiring at the end of the year.

As with most “content” conferences these days, the digital departments dominated the attendee list, even with a bookstore panel titled The Changing Bookstore Landscape and moderated by Bruce Joshua Miller of Miller Trade Book Marketing. Still, tech was a popular discussion with panels ranging from International Sales in the Information Age to Tackling the Unthinkable: Digitizing the Backlist.  (“We’re going to come full circle — from indie to chain back to indie,” Bruce Joshua Miller remarked).

The universities and their presses confronted the issue of “open access” in a way that for-profit publishers do not, notwithstanding the plea for “free” from an ever more vociferous public.  Panels addressing ways in which textbooks can be delivered to students for nominal fees sounded suspiciously like smoke and mirrors unless coupled with the ever-present Mellon Foundation —  and other nonprofits funding these initiatives — picking up their slack, as in one panel featuring a report on patron-driven acquisitions.  Declaring the Pearson/McGraw/Wiley models to be broken — but aren’t they all?? — proponents of free content were adamant as they spelled out their future (discounted) agenda, for advanced learning.

One of the final sessions, IGNITE!, was a sort of speed dating roundup of sales/marketing/publishing/design ideas created to shake publishers up in their thinking about their publishing and sales. Jonathan Eyler-Werve from Community Media Workshop and in-house humorist at Groupon, a representative from the newly launched The Chicagoan, Christina Kahrl from Baseball Prospectus, Tanner McSwain from Uncharted Books, Hal Pollard from Laureate International Universities Publishing, and Tony Sanfilippo, Assistant Press Director and Marketing and Sales Director of Penn State University Press with his own ideas of the traditional bookstore of the future, all performed in front of a display of slides which changed every 20 seconds, requiring all to move much more rapidly than they would have done under different circumstances.  (Afterwards, a numbers of Sales execs thought this might be a very useful format for editorial presentations at sales conferences — such as they are these days.)

On the digital front, one side was represented by Yale‘s David Schiffman and his panel looking beyond the ebook and “reflowable formats,” while the ongoing impact of “chunking” was explored in a panel overseen by Michael Cairns. Meanwhile, the often overlooked rights departments sang the praises of selling their antiquated downloadable PDFs, and their ability to garner income for the presses. The deplorable state of metadata was also lamented by Joe Esposito on the patron-driven acquisition panel.

As long as copyright exists in some fashion or another, clearing rights for all digital uses will remain a major earner in a business with seemingly less and less opportunities for making money.  (A couple of independent booksellers bemoaned the fact however, that they can perfectly able to sell academic titles to their customers and would do considerably better if they could improve on the short discount, and if trade paperbacks were not priced at $29.95!)

People Roundup, Mid-June 2012

PEOPLE

Stefan von Holtzbrinck has announced a reorganization of the Georg von Holtzbrinck organization, effective July 2.  The group will now be composed of three divisions: Global Trade, Global Science and Education, and Holtzbrinck Media.  The global trade division, managed by current Macmillan US CEO John Sargent, will consist of all the consumer book publishing operations of the Group, including all the US, German, UK and Australian houses. The global science & education division, managed by Annette Thomas, will consist of Nature Publishing Group, Macmillan Education, Macmillan Higher Education and Palgrave Macmillan and will also include Digital Science, Digital Education and Macmillan New Ventures

Basic Books Group Publisher John Sherer has been named Director of the University of North Carolina Press.  Several related moves were announced on June 15: PublicAffairs Publisher Susan Weinberg has been promoted to the newly created position of Group Publisher, Basic Books, Nation Books and PublicAffairs.   Lara Heimert, Editorial and Publishing Director of Basic Books, has been promoted to Publisher of Basic Books.  Clive Priddle, Editorial Director of PublicAffairs, has been promoted to Publisher of PublicAffairs.  He and Heimert will report to Weinberg in her new role and will become members of the company’s senior leadership team.  Avalon Publisher Bill Newlin will also take on a broader role and Westview Press Publisher Cathleen Tetro who had reported to John Sherer will now report to him.

Random House CEO Markus Dohle announced that Madeline McIntosh has been named COO, while continuing her duties as President, Sales, Operations and Digital. McIntosh first joined the company in 1994 and, after a brief stint at Amazon, rejoined in 2009.

Andrea Sheehan has founded, and will become CEO of Rock-it Global.  She was VP Digital Publishing and Product Development at Random House.

Gretchen Young has left Hyperion, where she was VP, Executive Editor, to join Grand Central Publishing.  She will hold the same title, and will report to Deb Futter.

Just in time for the annual AAUP meeting in Chicago June Derek Krissoff has been named the new Editor-in-Chief for the University of Nebraska Press. He has been a Senior Acquisitions Editor at the University of Georgia Press since 2006.

Jordana Vincent has been named Ebook Marketer at 3M, working from Colorado.  She was most recently  eContent Specialist – Collection Development Librarian at Douglas County Libraries and was named a Library Journal “Mover & Shaker 2012.”

Cristi Hall has rejoined Penguin as International Sales Manager, Europe and US exporters (excluding PMG). She was most recently International Sales Manager at S&S.

Brady McReynolds has joined JABberwocky Literary Agency as head of its foreign rights department. Previously, he was a Publicity Assistant at NAL/Penguin.

Maureen Cole has joined the S&S publicity department as a Senior Publicist. She was most recently a publicist at Portfolio/Sentinel at Penguin.

Publishers Lunch reports that KC Smythe will retire on June 15 from his position as national account manager at Hachette Book Group, after 10 years with the company. Prior to Hachette, he spent 17 years at Ingram, mostly in the buying department, and 6 years as a retail bookseller at B. Dalton and Nashville’s independent Mills Bookstore. He can be reached at smytheville@att.net.

Michele Murphy has been named Associate Publisher, Marketing, for Prevention magazine. Murphy was previously at the National Geographic Society, where she worked as VP of Global Marketing, overseeing National GeographicNational Geographic Traveler and National Geographic Kids.  She had previously worked at Rodale from 1996 to 2005.

Stephanie Bowen has joined Sourcebooks as Editor. She was most recently an Assistant Editor at DoubledayNicole Villeneuve joins Sourcebooks as Senior Publicist in the New York office. She was Cambridge University Press and Atlas and Co.

Chronicle Books has hired Ryan Hayes as a children’s book designer. He previously worked at Running Press.

At Chronicle, Rachel Geiger has been promoted to Director of Trade Sales, and Holly Smith moves up to Associate Director of Sales.

Danielle Lynn has joined Rodale Books as Publicity Manager. She was most recently a Senior Publicist at S&S.

Kirsten Hall has been promoted to Managing Agent at Bright Group International, the company’s first full-time agent based in the US. Read More »

Paying the Way: Reading John Howkins’ The Creative Economy

With this post, PublishingTrends.com continues its regular column in which it reviews, explicates and excerpts books that we think will resonate with people in the business of publishing and media. 

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With lots of comments lately about books being defined more in terms of “content” in the face of new digital media, the role of creativity in the publishing industry has become increasingly important for both creating content for products and inventing new types of products. In John Howkins’ updated edition of his well known book, The Creative Economy (Penguin, 2007), Howkins, who recently gave the opening keynote at OnCopyright 2012, discusses the dynamics and shifts in the creative economy over the past decades and the effects that digital innovation will have on creative goods in the future. Through his evaluation of current industry, as well as how the value of the author has evolved over time, Howkins presents challenges that current copyright laws pose on ever-changing creative products, with books, music, and films being particular areas of focus.

In the book, Howkins evaluates the current conundrum of the creative economy:

Two trends are interwoven. Creative people and organizations are becoming more businesslike; and business is becoming more dependent upon creativity. Both produce more copyrights and register more patents, and often push for privatization of what was public.

Much of what Howkins traces throughout his book is the idea of “intellectual property” and the movement from the tangible to the intangible. Should people be able to control creative output as concretely as physical property? Howkins explores responses to this question through people from Andrew Wylie (who believes authors should own their works) and Disney (who has more ownership/control over their properties through the trademarking of their company) to fifteenth-century European society (which believed that artists’ work belonged to the community) and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow (who believes relationships will be more powerful than possession in the digital future). Howkins argues that perspectives will inevitably need to shift, however, in the face of digital innovation. He describes the creative market as moving away from necessarily dealing in terms of goods and more as services – that we are moving from a society of buying to one of renting. As he quotes Release 2.0 author Esther Dyson, “The likely best defence for content providers is to distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationship.” In the book, this idea is exemplified by Gillette selling its razors for well below cost while charging high prices for its blades, but an obvious comparison can also be drawn to ereading devices and the ecosystems through which ereader users purchase their books. Read More »