ePublishing Week in Brief – October 14th to 18th, 2013
ePublishing Week in Brief – October 14th to 18th, 2013
A new breed of B.C. book publishers rises to the revolution
The Douglas & McIntyre imprint was picked up by Howard and Mary White, the owners of Harbour Publishing; Heritage House Publishing bought the Greystone Books imprint; and New Society Publishing, which was always a separate company, is again operating independently.
Three former senior managers at D & M founded Figure 1 Publishing earlier this year, while two others have founded Page Two Strategies Inc. Another newcomer to the Vancouver publishing landscape is LifeTree Media, a hybrid company between traditional publishing and self-publishing founded by former Vancouver Sun Arts and Life editor Maggie Langrick.
Comic Book Publisher IDW Publishing Launches TV Entertainment Division
Publishing house also teaming with ‘Walking Dead’s’ Circle of Confusion to help with creative end of TV development
IDW Publishing has launched a new arm, IDW Entertainment, that is devoted to developing TV properties based on IDW’s catalog of comic books and graphic novels. David Ozer will lead the division.
Titles that IDW is actively developing for television include comic books “Life Undead,” “Brooklyn Animal Control” and “V Wars.” While networks are not attached to the projects yet, creatives have already boarded the development efforts, with Chris Pollack co-exec producing “Life Undead” with showrunner Paul Zbyszewski.
Circle of Confusion, one of the shingles behind AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” will oversee packaging and creative development within IDW Entertainment. (“The Walking Dead” TV series is based on a comic book series of the same name penned by Robert Kirkman.) Circle of Confusion will exec produce TV projects originating at IDW Entertainment, with Rick Jacobs spearheading those efforts.
Flipboard hopes to be the savior of the publishing business
Some publishers have pulled out from mobile news-aggregators like Flipboard because they don’t see any real payoff. But the company says it’s creating a program to help such smaller publishers earn more.
FORTUNE — In July of last year, the political news and opinion site Talking Points Memo proudly declared that it was “excited to announce that tablet and smartphone users can now read TPM on Flipboard,” a popular, magazine-style news-reading app for mobile devices.
Last week, TPM founder Josh Marshall informed readers that the site’s content no longer appears on either Flipboard or on the competing Google Currents app. The apps “are basically scams against the publishers,” he wrote.
Why the total change of heart? Because Flipboard takes whole articles from publishers and — in many cases, including TPMs — gives those publishers essentially nothing in return.
At least, that’s how Marshall interprets the situation. And as things stand for now, he’s essentially right. But Flipboard CEO Mike McCue says Marshall jumped the gun, and that he apparently doesn’t understand how Flipboard works, or how it will work in the near future. The two have never spoken, McCue says, despite his company’s several attempts to reach out to Marshall, who also has not responded to Fortune‘s requests for comment.
Flipboard displays the content of magazines, newspapers, blogs, and social media sites in a magazine-like format. Readers flip through the pages with a swipe. For bigger publications, full-page ads appear every few pages. Both the content and the ads are in a format that is in several ways vastly superior to reading on the web and many standalone apps — and in some ways even better than reading a magazine or newspaper. The ads sell for considerably more money than web ads sell for, according to McCue. “From the beginning, we have taken the tried-and-true principles of print and applied them online,” he says.
Publishers need to know their readers to survive in digital era
(Reuters) – Publishers need to get to know their readers and find out what they want if they are to halt the loss of market share to online powerhouses such as Amazon, industry figures say.
Until a few years ago, publishers wielded power over readers’ selection of books though in-store promotions and newspaper reviews.
Now readers increasingly order their books online or download them onto electronic reading devices, write their own reviews and get ideas for what to read next from peers online.
“With the shift to digital, publishers are confronted with an entirely new way of dealing with content and stories,” said Sebastian Posth, chief executive of Berlin-based Publishing Data Networks, which offers analytics to the industry.
Amazon and Apple have used terabytes of data on their customers’ reading and other habits to gain control of the market, leaving traditional publishers scrambling to find a way to get through to their readers.
Data analysis has become a necessary means for publishers to deal with the new digital era, Posth said.
“The publishing industry needs to learn this lesson if it wants to survive,” he said.
The music, television and film industries have already gone digital with software and platforms that tap into consumers’ demand for on-the-go media content for mobile devices and customize content based on users’ habits and preferences.
“Most folks in the editorial and content production areas of mainstream publishers are unable to give even the most basic metrics on who their actual customers are,” said Kristen McLean, Miami-based founder and chief executive of start-up Bookigee, speaking at the just-ended Frankfurt Book Fair.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/17/net-us-publishing-data-idUSBRE99G0LD20131017
Publishing startup Paperight claims two prestigious awards in one week
In Germany, the Contec Startup Showcase saw Paperight beat five other international finalist competitors as it impressed the judges with its technological innovations and the social mission to greatly increase access to books in South Africa and other developing nations.
“It’s been an extraordinary week, as well as an incredible and humbling vindication of our work,” said Paperight Founder and CEO Arthur Attwell.
PubCoder, a startup from Italy, was named the runner-up at Contec Startup Showcase. The event is held as a precursor to the Frankfurt Book Fair which is seen as the largest publishing industry event in the world.
Back in South Africa, Paperight was awarded the Apex award at the Accenture Innovation Index Awards. This initiative was launched to promote business growth and job creation in South Africa. FNB was awarded the Zenith award as it stands as an organisation with an annual turnover of R40-million. Attwell notes:
http://ventureburn.com/2013/10/publishing-startup-paperight-claims-two-prestigious-awards-in-one-week/
Kobo porn scandal: the end of self-publishing?
Kobo – the company at the centre of the self-publishing scandal that led to WHSmith being accused of profiting from e-books that glorify violent pornography, rape, incest and bestiality – has promised to clean up its act.
In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Kobo’s chief executive Mike Serbinis said that the company has a responsibility, as one of the stewards of the publishing industry’s transformation to digital, to ensure the quality of its catalogue.
It has had staff working around the clock since Saturday to remove offensive material that violates the terms and conditions of Kobo’s content policy. It is also conducting a thorough review of Kobo’s self-publishing catalogue, which includes several hundred thousand titles, to ensure that all authors and publishers are complying with its policies.
“Part of the responsibility has to sit with the authors, but we are absolutely ramping up our part, and that means increased manual review and sampling, new tools and technology that we’re bringing to bear in the content analysis, and increasing the role that we expect our publishers and our partners to play,” said Serbinis.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10384995/Kobo-porn-scandal-the-end-of-self-publishing.html
Evolving in the Changing Landscape of Scholarly Publishing
Syracuse University Press has a storied history of 70 years—and Director Alice Randel Pfeiffer expects a vibrant future with plans for a new series in geography and the development of a digital publishing center.
The scholarly press celebrated its 70th year in publishing this year with special speakers and events, while at the same time imagining the future opportunities in publishing.
“SU Press has recently announced a new series, Syracuse Studies in Geography, building on the strength of Syracuse University faculty to form the series’ editorial board,” Pfeiffer says. “We also envision collaborating with the SU Libraries to support SU faculty and students in the digital publishing realm.”
Another new joint project, between Syracuse University Libraries and SU Press, has been the launch of Public: A Journal of Imagining America, a hybrid multimedia e-journal and archive focused on the humanities, arts and design in public life, part of the national consortium Imagining America.
Public is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal using the open source software platform of Open Journal Systems, developed by the Public Knowledge Project, to manage submissions and peer review. It is the first open-access journal to be published under Syracuse Unbound, the new joint imprint of Syracuse University Libraries and Syracuse University Press.
http://news.syr.edu/evolving-in-the-changing-landscape-of-scholarly-publishing-88974/