Corporate Publishing Booming on the Backs of Slave Wage Authors

Corporate Publishing Profiting
On Authors' Slave Wages

Sad to say, but, the corporatized publishing industry has no heart left! It apparently donated it to make room for balance sheets, algorithms, marketing deception and other faceless, detached, formulaic 'analysis-crunchers' to determine the probable success of an author's work. These so-called new tech 'advances' have replaced human, heartfelt, intuitive relationships between authors, agents, editors and other blood and flesh homo sapiens that actually considered little things like writing style, grammar, flair, character development, intuition, plot creativity and twists, etc., etc., etc. NOT TO MENTION the nurturing of newbie talent that can only take place between two humans who breathe and understand raw talent, creativity and their fulfillment through guidance, learning and experience.

I hate to say this, but it would be neat if ALL writers (from all fields) took a stand and ONLY self-published from now on!

Or, at least, until the true creators (product producers) get their rightful share of the profits! 

Tonight we will investigate the heartless, robotic state of modern corporate publishing and how its success is tied to the slave wages of authors. 

Tonight's research article “A Lament for Modern Publishing” was published in The Irish Times and written by Fiona O’Connor, a former Hennessy Short Story Prize winner. She lectures at the University of Westminster and is artistic director of St John’s Mill Theatre Company, Beaufort, Co Kerry

Key excerpts:

‘Publishing is a corporatised, market-driven, bottom-line privileging of the blockbuster, maintained by writers’ low-wage drudgery; in this case it is writers who toil for poverty-line rates with no security and few rights. Marketing is king, and critics absorb the advertising code: do not offend.’

‘In 2014-15 the British and Irish publishing industry turnover was £4.6 billion, up from £3 billion in 2013. Against this apparent boom the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society warns that authors’ incomes have collapsed. The median income of established professional authors is £11,000, down 29 percent since 2005. But the typical median income of all writers is less than £4,000 and declining yearly. Output of books is rising steadily: 185,000 releases this year in the UK and Ireland. The writer’s share of this Benison is about 2.8 per cent – that’s 28 cents on a €10 book.’

‘The Big Five publishing giants – Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin/Random House and Simon & Schuster – point to the techno revolution, evidencing their struggle with even bigger monoliths such as Amazon as the problem, rather than their own exploitative tendencies. But it is in the nature of corporatism to externalise costs wherever possible. The costs of living as a writer get passed on – writers teach, edit, review, ghost-write, cab-drive, put out in myriad ways so that they may write the books that support the global corporate entity that is modern-day publishing.’

Read the rest of the research article and learn more about the vast difference between a seemingly buoyant industry and third-world income-streams for those generating the product – this is deeply appalling, actually.

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Research article: http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/a-lament-for-modern-publishing-1.2292101

The Scant Economics in Book Publishing

So few bucks!

First of all tonight, I want to wish all my readers a very happy and safe Fourth of July celebration. Happy Birthday, USA!

In this post I want to discuss a topic that we all probably know a little about - at least in part: The cash flow (or lack of it) in the current publishing landscape.

I just LOVE IT when I hear someones first person experience in publishing their first book. Especially from an experienced journalist or writer.

This scenario allows us to relate and learn from another's first-hand endeavors and will, hopefully, encourage questions and/or recommendations from others depending on their own past experience and position in the publishing food chain.

This from Thomas Lee, a San Francisco Chronicle Business Columnist:

Are there brutal economics in book publishing? Let me tell you...

Writing a book was like disappointing my parents all over again.

Like many Chinese immigrants, they wanted their only son to be a high-earning doctor or lawyer. Instead, he became a newspaper journalist who valued career satisfaction over dollars and cents. (Don’t worry, Mom and Dad, I sometimes wonder if I’m related to you, too).

So to my surprise, my mom was unusually excited when I told her two years ago that I was taking some time off to pen a book.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “You make lots of money!”

I suspected she was confusing my project — a niche business book about retail and technology called “Rebuilding Empires” — with the work of J.K. Rowling: “Harry Potter and the Resurrection of the Big Box Store.”

Little did she know, there are some brutal economics underpinning the book publishing industry. As I would soon discover firsthand, most books — even those published by major houses like Random House, Hachette and Simon & Schuster — don’t make much money or any at all.

Blame it on a number of factors: the low-cost dominance of Amazon; competition with other entertainment venues like Netflix, cable TV and cineplexes; or the fact that I picked a niche topic in the business world.

In any case, an unknown first-time author like myself pretty much assumes nearly all of the financial risk.

I was actually one of the luckier ones — at least my publisher offered a modest advance. Many authors don’t even get that.

Not surprisingly, that advance disappeared quickly when I took a three-month unpaid leave to research the book. How else would I find the time to work on it?

Unless you’re independently wealthy, the choice comes down to begging your employer for a leave or not sleeping for the next 12 months. (Which happened anyway).

The publisher agreed to print about 5,000 copies, which it distributed to Barnes & Noble, Amazon and various independent bookstores and wholesalers. In order for the publisher to recoup its advance, “Rebuilding Empires” needs to sell 2,000 copies. After that, I get paid a percentage of the list price of each book sold, a royalty rate that gradually goes up the higher the sales.

That doesn’t seem so bad. But here’s the thing that most people don’t really know: Publishers have near-zero marketing budgets to promote your book.

It seems counterintuitive. To make money, you must spend money. Yet the author is ultimately responsible for spreading the word.

But maybe the book will build some momentum after positive reviews, right?

Think again. Outside major names like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, the media hardly reviews any kind of book these days — never mind nonfiction business books like “Rebuilding Empires.”

The publisher recently sent me some sales data: since December, net sales for “Rebuilding Empires” (that is, sales minus the number of copies retailers ultimately shipped back to the publisher) totaled about 1,500 units and 100 e-books. Those figures also include international sales, from Great Britain, France, Canada, New Zealand (of all places) and Japan.

I’m actually pretty pleased with the results. Despite the lack of marketing muscle, “Rebuilding Empires” is considered something of a success, selling about a third of its printed run in just seven months and about 80 percent of the target set by the publisher to recoup the advance.

All in all, “Rebuilding Empires” will probably turn a profit, though I really can’t say when.

Until then, my mom will have to temper her expectations.

Read Thomas Lee's original article (with comments) in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Writers Welcome Blog is available on your Kindle here :)

      

Research/Resource article: http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Are-there-brutal-economics-in-book-publishing-6363578.php

IDPF, The International Digital Publishing Forum, Discusses Book Discovery Tactics

How many of us have even heard about the IDPF? Well, this forum has been around for about 16 years and was part of the 2015 Book Expo America Conference that was just held 26 thru 29 May 2015.

'The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) is a trade and standards association for the digital publishing industry, that has been set up in order to establish a reliable and complete standard for ebook publishing.

This is the organization responsible for the EPUB standard currently used by most e-readers.

Starting from the Open eBook Publication Structure or "OEB" (1999), which was created loosely around HTML, it then defined the OPS (Open Publication Structure), the OPF (Open Packaging Format) and the OCF (Open Container Format). These formats are the basis for the common EPUB and Mobipocket ebook file formats (Comparison of e-book formats).

While the basic standards are now established (pages, hyperlinks, definition of table of contents, authors, etc.), some other standards intersect the hardware field, such as those for power and for features of the hardware reader devices, and are still undergoing change and evolution. Other standards for ecommerce (including Digital Rights Management protections), are tied to the way the ebook is sold or delivered, and are therefore controlled by the respective vendors.' - Wikipedia

The BEA's IDPF conference last Tuesday discussed ways/means and tactics of getting your digital books discovered in today's world of intense overload. There were a few golden book marketing nuggets thrown out at the conference. 

Tonights research source is from Publishing Perspectives and was written by Erin L. Cox and Edward Nawotka:

Where’s Waldo the Reader? Book Discovery Tactics from IDPF

Executives from Goodreads, HarperCollins, and Penguin Random House shared book discovery tactics in the age of overload at BEA’s IDPF conference last Tuesday.

When we talk about discoverability in sales meetings and publishing conferences, we speculate about how readers “discover” books, but, in actuality, readers are discovering, discovering, discovering all day.

A message that has been repeated throughout today’s IDPF conference is that readers are overwhelmed with content and media that they discover (just think of your last YouTube wormhole or the hours lost on Twitter/Facebook reading articles you didn’t know you would be interested in that were posted by friends), and books are no different. What publishers need to drill deeper into when they talk about discoverability is what Porter Anderson, Futurebook editor and moderator of “The Fracturing Book Discovery Landscape: How to Find Your Readers,” said, “[publishers] need readers to discover what we NEED them to discover.”

But, how and where and when do publishers do that to be effective? There doesn’t seem to be one answer to those questions. Instead, it depends on the book, the publisher, the budget, and the readers.

Amanda Close, Senior VP and Director, Consumer Marketing and Development & Operations Group, Penguin Random House said that publishers pick avenues to meet the reader either in a space where they might be thinking about reading or perhaps where they are not thinking about reading, depending on the book. “We really want to meet readers where they live and where they spend time and are thinking about other things. I think we are all thinking about how to get to readers and connect them with the brands, books and authors they really want to engage in,” she said.

Angela Tribelli, CMO, HarperCollins, said, “The most immediately valuable consumer for us has the highest intent to purchase. We need to know when to borrow audience, engage with the one that already is there, or whether to build our own. We might to think we are very close to that purchase intent. We want to reach all people who are reachable through traditional marketing channels. I’m interested in leveraging audience that we can reach on a day-t0-day basis.” As an example, HarperCollins created a partnership with the fast food chain Chipotle to feature quotes from more literary or philosophical writers such as Paulo Coelho, Barbara Kingsolver, and Amy Tan on the packaging of their food and also the partnership with JetBlue to feature their samples of their bestselling ebooks for free on the airline’s Fly-Fi Hub.

With the glut of content out there, curation is necessary for discovery, whether that be publishers working with a bookseller, media, or an individual reader recommending books to a friend.

Otis Chandler, CEO of Goodreads, best described the title of the panel — fracturing of the book discovery landscape — Goodreads now boasts 40 million users with 14 million books being marked as “to read” each month, many through recommendations from friends.

The focus for the company — which is owned by Amazon — going forward, will be focused on mobile. “What we are seeing now is ‘half-mobile.’ I have a challenge to try and never let a good recommendation get lost in the ether. We did a survey of our avid readers and found 48% are reading are reading on their mobile devices, and 80% were women. 1/3rd are using their mobile device as a backup device. That really opens up opportunities for marketers on how to drive into books.”

Publishers successfully tap into this audience of engaged, influential readers through print and ebook giveaways (though ebook giveaways tend to be less successful) and encouraging authors to share their recommendations. Chandler noted that authors are not leveraging their platforms enough. The core question is whether “people are people talking about books,” he said.

Can you define the quintessential influencers: micro-celebrities, authors, book bloggers and power users who have big influence in their respective genres. So, on the first ones, Bill Gates just released his summer reading list, “which is really interesting to our readers,” said Chandler, who also called out the work of Brian Johnson, an entrepreneur, who offers daily tidbits and tips on self-development from various books and other sources.

Much of what publishers tend to do is to tap into existing readers, but what of the “potential reader?” Peter McCarthy, Co-founder, Logical Marketing, advised publishers to look at the way people view their lives when they are not reading. Seeing that entirety of their lives will help define what books might be of interest to them that reading data points alone would not necessarily point to. “Reaching hardcore readers is more narrow-casting than broadcasting,” he said. “Digital media is about seeing the influence of the niche influencer — they have a big bat and when they swing, they swing hard. Look at something like programmatic advertising and other consumer goods and you find audiences who want what you have as soon as you publish it.”

The personal connection — whether that be through the recommendation by a friend or providing desired content in a space and format that a reader wants it — continues to be the best way to get readers to discover books.

Original article and comments in Publishing Perspectives.

The Writers Welcome Blog is available on your Kindle here :)

  

Will 'Amazon Prime Now' Be the Nail in the Coffin for Manhattan Bookstores?

Amazon either keeps innovating new technologies or reinvents old services to attract new business and customers.

One of the latest such 'reinvents' is the one hour book delivery service in Manhattan, NY. Now just how can this Seattle based giant pull this off in Manhattan? Why with the age old bike couriers, of course.

Did you realize that New York has had bike courier delivery almost since bicycles were invented, with Western Union telegraph boys zipping around the city delivering telegrams as far back as the 1890s?

It is interesting to revisit these history nuggets --- and especially when someone or some company can reestablish them in present day to deliver a better service.

Now this from Dennis Abrams of Publishing Perspectives:

Will Amazon Prime Now Hurt Manhattan Bookstores?

Amazon Prime Now, the Seattle giant’s one-hour delivery service, is now available in Manhattan, and the service includes books. How will it impact B&N and other bookstores?

Amazon has made its Prime Now one-hour delivery service available through all of Manhattan as of the end of last week. Now the question must be asked: will Amazon Prime Now be the nail in the coffin for Manhattan bookstores, who continue to battle sky-high rents?

In addition, Prime Now has also moved into Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Park Slope and Prospect Heights in Brooklyn — but currently, only two-hour shipping is available in those areas. This might be enough to allow the notoriously fierce and fabulous Brooklyn independent bookstores to breathe a little easier.

As David Lumb wrote at fastcompany.com:

“For its new one-hour delivery in Manhattan, Amazon will instead use an army of bike couriers—which means the company’s on-time reputation will depend on an entirely new infrastructure. That is, entirely new for Amazon: New York City has had bike courier delivery almost since bicycles were invented, with Western Union telegraph boys zipping around the city delivering telegrams as far back as the 1890s. Amazon has been setting itself up for today’s launch for some time. The company rented an office/warehouse space on 34th Street last year that allows it to control its own supply line on a scale just big enough for Manhattan.

“The one-hour Prime Now delivery is available only to Prime members, a limit that makes sense: Prime membership is where Amazon makes the big money. Prime members spend almost twice as much money annually on Amazon than non-Prime members, Quartz reports, and with each Prime Now order costing $8 per delivery, Amazon is set to rake in more cash while providing yet another service to boost the value of Prime membership.”

According to TechFlash, a portion of Amazon’s 470,000-square-foot leased space on 34th St will serve as a delivery hub for Prime Now.

Prime subscribers can get free two-hour deliveries (users select the two-hour delivery window) for free from 6 a.m. until midnight, with an additional charge of $7.99 for one hour delivery, covering not only books, but “essential” products such as paper towels, toys, and electronics. Customers make their purchases through a dedicated app.

Amazon plans to expand its Prime Now program not only throughout all of NYC, but into other metropolitan areas in the near future, but has declined to give any additional information.

So, how will Amazon’s fast delivery impact struggling bookstores, particularly Barnes & Noble?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

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Current Developments in Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Digital Loss Prevention Technology

Presently, there seems to be a split opinion on the value of DRM - especially in the eBook/book publishing sector.

Some feel DRM inhibits folks from finding new authors through eBooks that are able to be lent to them by friends (or given to them by said friends). Some group surveys have revealed that most of them had discovered their favorite authors, not by buying their books, but because someone had either lent them a book or given them one written by the author. People of this persuasion feel that DRM is rather stupid and some authors say that by giving away some books (especially the first book in a series, for instance), or even having them pirated in other countries, actually increase later sales; but, DRM prevents this 'stealth marketing' from occurring.

Others feel that intellectual property (IP) should be protected at all costs and that it is growing to the point that the pirated work represents a greater loss in sales than any offsetting gain in sales through the author's rise in popularity through pirated works.

'Rightscorp has developed digital loss prevention technology that tracks copyright infringement and ensures that owners and creators are rightfully paid for their IP. They developed extensive tracking analytics that allows them to see what content is being distributed through Bittorrent and file sharing sites and then goes after the people involved. In April 2014 they made the company decision to market their services to the publishing industry and actively go after eBook pirates.'

Tonight's research/resource article dives into the latest business figures and technology shaping the DRM and digital loss prevention arena.

Key excerpts:

- 'Business is booming for Rightscorp right now. The company has just announced that it has closed over 170,000 cases of copyright infringement to date, up 40,000 since November 2014, representing an approximate 30% growth within a 2 month period. They have received settlement payments from subscribers of more than 200 ISPs and has approval to collect on over 1.5 million copyrights.'

- 'Overall, the publishing industry is not really concerned with eBook piracy. Many of the top companies such as HarperCollins, Hachette, S&S and Penguin have told me that piracy is a minor blip on the radar and does not hamper sales to any discernible degree. They all admit it is an extreme minority of tech savvy individuals and statistically people who pirate eBooks tend to be the biggest purchasers of digital content. There has even been some notable authors such as Tim Ferris that harnessed the power of Bitorrent to promote his book, the 4 Hour Chef. He recently said “Torrent conversion is NUTS. Of 210,000 downloads earlier this week, more than 85,000 clicked through “Support the Author” to the book’s Amazon page. We all had to triple and quadruple check that to believe it.'

- 'PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates “consumer eBooks will drive $8.2 billion in sales by 2017, surpassing projected print book sales, which it thinks will shrink by more than half during that period.' 

Now, this insight by Michael Kozlowski in the Good E Reader:

There will be 700 Million Pirated e-Books in 2018

Many publishers often think their current Digital Rights Management solutions are enough to combat e-book piracy. This is why the vast majority end up using Digital Watermarks or Adobe DRM in order to make it hard to upload material you have purchased to file sharing websites. Rightscorp, likely the biggest anti-piracy player in movies, music and television shows told Good e-Reader that “we estimate that there were 500 million e-Books distributed in the United States on peer-to-peer networks in 2013 and this will grow to 700 million by 2018.”

Rightscorp has developed digital loss prevention technology that tracks copyright infringement and ensures that owners and creators are rightfully paid for their IP. They developed extensive tracking analytics that allows them to see what content is being distributed through Bittorrent and file sharing sites and then goes after the people involved. In April 2014 they made the company decision to market their services to the publishing industry and actively go after eBook pirates.

Business is booming for Rightscorp right now. The company has just announced that it has closed over 170,000 cases of copyright infringement to date, up 40,000 since November 2014, representing an approximate 30% growth within a 2 month period. They have received settlement payments from subscribers of more than 200 ISPs and has approval to collect on over 1.5 million copyrights.

We are firing on all cylinders and have been able to consistently generate growth on many of our operational metrics,” said Christopher Sabec, CEO of Rightscorp. “The latest count includes more than 1,000 cases closed on the Comcast and Google Fiber networks, which control the largest markets in the U.S. It seems clear that the entire industry is now beginning to recognize our solution as the most effective in preserving the rights of copyright holders – artists and content owners. We will continue to work hard to protect those who create and own intellectual property.”

Overall, the publishing industry is not really concerned with eBook piracy. Many of the top companies such as HarperCollins, Hachette, S&S and Penguin have told me that piracy is a minor blip on the radar and does not hamper sales to any discernible degree. They all admit it is an extreme minority of tech savvy individuals and statistically people who pirate eBooks tend to be the biggest purchasers of digital content. There has even been some notable authors such as Tim Ferris that harnessed the power of Bitorrent to promote his book, the 4 Hour Chef. He recently said “Torrent conversion is NUTS. Of 210,000 downloads earlier this week, more than 85,000 clicked through “Support the Author” to the book’s Amazon page. We all had to triple and quadruple check that to believe it.

Sales of eBooks reached $3 billion at the end of 2012, up from $68 million in 2008 according to a recent article posted onYahoo! Finance. The article also cited that Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon, said that “Kindle owners buy more books now than they did before they owned an e-Reader”. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates “consumer eBooks will drive $8.2 billion in sales by 2017, surpassing projected print book sales, which it thinks will shrink by more than half during that period.”

Rightscorp has not seen the traction in the Booke- space as they have with other media. The company has told me that “While Rightscorp has closed some cases with e-Books, we do not yet have large catalogs of e-Books like we have with movies, television and music.”

This goes to show that publishers believe in the power of DRM to such a large degree that they don’t really care to go after e-book pirates at this stage in the game.  They are more concerned with Amazon having too much power in e-book sales and distribution and trying to find alternative avenues to generate revenue, such as  e-Book subscription websites like Scribd and Oyster.

The Writers Welcome Blog is available on Kindle here

The Golden Age of Publishing is Upon Us - And Traditional Publishers Have to Become Technology Companies to Survive

There is a minnow of a publishing company among a sea of publishing whales that has ushered in a new chapter in the publishing industry. 

And this minnow is growing fast!

This 'so-called' publishing minnow is dubbed "Blurb" and was initially founded in 2006 by Eileen Gittins as a way to produce picture books. Blurb has expanded into and absorbed the intricacies of novel and magazine publishing and sees itself as the future of the industry – and a massive threat to traditional publishers.

In tonight's post, we will get into the new business model and some surprising business numbers of this San Francisco-based self-publishing house AND discuss what choices, layouts and distribution deals it offers its authors. 

This from business writer, Andrew Cave, writing for The Telegraph in the UK:

Book minnow opens new chapter in publishing

Growth of self-publishing company Blurb has surprised even its boss, who now believes it threatens traditional players, writes Andrew Cave.

Eileen Gittins doesn’t like to tell people she is chief executive of the world’s largest specialist self-publishing book company when she’s on a long flight.

“If I do that, they tell me about their book for the next three hours and I don’t get any sleep,” she laughs. “I don’t mind telling people on shorter flights.”

It’s not surprising that this would happen to Gittins, 59. Blurb, the San Francisco-based self-publishing house she founded in 2006 has now published 3m books.

At peak volumes, a new title comes over the servers every 2.1 seconds.

Developed initially as a way of producing picture books, Blurb has bulked up in novel and magazine publishing, and sees itself as the future of the industry – and a massive threat to traditional publishers.

“The volume we’re seeing globally is unbelievable,” says Gittins. “We’re entering the golden age of publishing.

“Back in Dickens’s day, everybody self-published, and it only became stigmatised when mass publishing came along and you weren’t picked.

“Even five years ago, there was a stigma attached to self-publishing. It was like it was too bad because you couldn’t get a book deal.

“That’s gone now. There are way too many stories now of people making books themselves. Now the audience can pick.

“Is there a lot of rubbish out there? Yes. Has there always been rubbish out there? Yes. But I view this as something that’s just beginning. It’s huge. We’re going through the roof.”

Funded through $19m (£11.8m) of investment by US venture capital firms Anthem Venture partners and Canaan Partners, which now own slightly more than 50pc of the company, Blurb was profitable in its second year.

It employs 125 staff, including 15 in London, and expects turnover of $90m this year.

Its online platform gives authors tools to input their copy and pictures and choose layouts, but the company outsources printing to seven contract commercial printers in the US, the UK, Australia and the Netherlands.

It has expanded from its bespoke photobook roots, now also offering offset printing for authors wanting more than 750 copies. Blurb, which this year bought magazine self-publishing platform MagCloud’s assets from Hewlett-Packard, allows authors to choose either print copies or ebooks.

It enables them to warehouse, distribute, sell and promote their books, and has distribution deals with Amazon and Apple.

Unsurprisingly, Gittins is gloomy about the prospects for traditional publishers.

“Traditional publishing is becoming a hits business like Hollywood,” she says. “They want to bank on box office, so if you’re a mid-list author, God help you if your last book didn’t sell a bunch, because you’re not going to get a deal.

“If you’ve never published before and are handsome or beautiful and 21 and have a big social network, they might take a flyer on you because your book could be the next Hunger Games.

“And if you’re a bestselling author, they’ll take you, too, because you’re the Brad Pitt of the publishing industry and people will just buy your book because it’s by you. But for everyone in the middle, good luck.

“That’s a huge population of people coming to Blurb now because they’ve had it up to here. They know they’re not going to get any marketing. There are no more advances so they’re not even making any money on the front end and they figure they’re going to have to do all the marketing anyway.”

She believes that traditional publishers will continue to go out of business, while others will merge or be taken over. “It’s inevitable,” she says. “Some won’t be able to adapt and get to enough scale.

“If they’re not smart about their distribution as bookshops close, if they’re not technologically savvy or decide to invest in becoming technology companies, it will be increasingly difficult. Publishers have to become technology companies.”

Before Blurb, Gittins worked at Eastman Kodak, then ran several start-ups including Personify and Verb. After selling Verb, she returned to her photographic hobby and wanted to produce 40 photobooks but had difficulty getting them published, so brought together desktop publishing, print-on-demand services and an e-commerce engine. 

Blurb’s idea was popular for photobooks, cookbooks and architectural books and novels. Then Hollywood studios such as Disney and Pixar started using it to make books about their films to give to crews at the “wrap” party.

The firm now prints books and magazines for brands including Lexus and Nike.

About 60pc of its business still comes from authors, but the greatest growth is in the commercial sector.

It has competition, both from independents such as Smashwords andLulu.com, and from Amazon’s CreateSpace print-on-demand publishing arm and from Apple’s iBooks authoring tool for ebooks.

However, Gittins is confident that no competitor replicates all the advantages of Blurb’s model.

“Our price includes our margin so whatever price you put on your book, you retain 100pc of the mark-up,” she says. “If the price of printing your book is £5 because you’re going to order a few thousand and you’re going to sell that book for £25, we literally would send you £20 every time somebody buys a copy.”

Blurb also allows authors to sell their books through the Blurb.combookshop and has a partnership to distribute its authors’ books through Amazon for a 15pc fee – much lower than authors could negotiate personally.

It also has 5,000 ebook titles on sale in the Apple iBookstore, and there’s an initiative to link authors with editors, ghostwriters, copywriters, illustrators and designers.

“We’re the YouTube of the publishing industry,” says Gittins. “We have a whole different model, all online, all very different but there’s a symbiotic relationship with the publishing industry. There are a number of Blurb authors who are getting picked up by traditional publishing.”

Will Blurb also get swallowed up that way? “There will be an exit,” admits Gittins. “Venture capitalists want to get paid eventually. Both options are on the table. We’re being approached by private- equity funds and also by strategic trade players who may have a Blurb-sized hole in their offering.

“We’re growing 20pc year-on-year so if we continue that, you could imagine that an initial public offering is not out of the question. My goal as the CEO is to create options.”

Gittins believes many people could one day have their own book, as well as their own Facebook page.

“It’s part of of your personal brand,” she says. “Entrepreneurs are known for telling a good tale but this is actually one where we’re overachieved. It’s grown faster than I expected.”

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Onix 3.0 - Retrofitting the 200-Year-Old Structure of Legacy Publishing

Upgrading/Retrofitting the Publishing Industry

First, click the following link for a short background on Onix (Publishing Protocol), ONline Information eXchang.

Standardization has greatly simplified, streamlined, cut costs and increased profits for all manufacturing companies in the past - and it has accomplished this globally which has further increased international trade. 

Standardization makes parts interchangeable to fit better. When you go buy a 60 watt incandescent light bulb, for instance, you take for granted that it will screw into the standardized electrical outlet. The same goes for auto parts, electronic parts, building material parts, etc.

And the same is becoming a reality for ALL sectors of the publishing industry in both print and digital. 

Tonight's post explains how.

Key excerpts:

"... Retrofitting a 200-year-old structure—legacy publishing—with new metadata standards to improve commerce in the digital age is, at best, a complex process. For example, the now-ubiquitous ISBN took years to become an industry standard."

"Chris Sayor, metadata specialist at the metadata management company GiantChair (www.giantchair.com) and head of a newly formed BISG working group on Onix 3.0, says that the new standard is the “Esperanto of global publishing.” He adds, “It is multilingual, making possible communication of the same messages both across the industry and across the globe, whether in China, the U.S., or Latin America, in Mandarin, English, or Spanish.”"

"Pat Payton, senior manager of publisher relations and content development at Bowker, notes that until the millennium—and in some cases, to this day—publishers, printers, distributors, retailers, and librarians exchanged information about products through a variety of means, including spreadsheets, texts, and even non-Onix XML."

"... All of the major players—such as Ingram, Bowker, B&N, and Amazon—used different formats for gathering the critical metadata. Today, with the advent of digital products and global sales opportunities, sharing correct metadata is critical."

"Although its birth was somewhat chaotic organizationally (not unusual for a global standard), Onix is now governed by an international steering committee representing 15 countries, with oversight provided by the collaboration of Editeur, BIC, Bowker, and BISG."

"Moreover, it levels the playing field for small- and medium-sized companies, which can now use the significantly expanded and disciplined Onix 3.0 to reach a truly worldwide marketplace and take advantage of a much broader spectrum of online retailers."

I believe that the Onix 3.0 standardization will also make marketing your books instantly easier by allowing access to global/international markets/retailers not available before --- and do it posthaste!

Jim Lichtenberg provides more detail about Onix 3.0 in this article from Publishers Weekly:

Can Onix 3.0 Create a Global Digital Publishing Industry?

Publishers and their partners are pushing for widespread adoption of the new standard

Standards are like plumbing: they are only noticed when they don’t work. And like plumbing, retrofitting a 200-year-old structure—legacy publishing—with new metadata standards to improve commerce in the digital age is, at best, a complex process. For example, the now-ubiquitous ISBN took years to become an industry standard. Moreover, senior publishing executives have rarely focused their attention on metadata, choosing to leave the discussion of such issues to people responsible for production or IT. Onix 3.0 may change this point of view. Ken Michaels, global COO at Macmillan Science and Education, observes that, with version 3.0, “Onix has the potential to be the critical communication format that helps bind a fragmented supply chain across the full spectrum of titles, information sheets, catalogue information, and promotional materials.” He further notes that “editorial and marketing departments’ specific ‘knowledge’ about the authors’ or the content objects’ intent can be retained and passed on to all channel partners to help streamline commerce [globally], reduce costs, and optimize revenue.”

Chris Sayor, metadata specialist at the metadata management company GiantChair (www.giantchair.com) and head of a newly formed BISG working group on Onix 3.0, says that the new standard is the “Esperanto of global publishing.” He adds, “It is multilingual, making possible communication of the same messages both across the industry and across the globe, whether in China, the U.S., or Latin America, in Mandarin, English, or Spanish.”

Begun in 1990, Onix (the Online Information Exchange) is a standard for the electronic transfer of rich product metadata about books across the entire supply chain. Pat Payton, senior manager of publisher relations and content development at Bowker, notes that until the millennium—and in some cases, to this day—publishers, printers, distributors, retailers, and librarians exchanged information about products through a variety of means, including spreadsheets, texts, and even non-Onix XML. Prior to 2001, Payton says, processes for getting data about each book from publishers to customers were inefficient because all of the major players—such as Ingram, Bowker, B&N, and Amazon—used different formats for gathering the critical metadata. Today, with the advent of digital products and global sales opportunities, sharing correct metadata is critical.

Despite difficulties in establishing Onix, everyone in the publishing industry is now at least aware of the standard. The first full version, Onix 1.0, was released in 2000, and different versions of the standard are currently widely in use throughout the book and e-book supply chains in North America, Europe, Australasia, and, increasingly, the Asia-Pacific region. Onix greatly reduces costs, as publishers no longer need to provide data in unique formats. In some cases, a single data feed is suitable for all of a publisher’s supply chain partners. And, by providing a template for the content and structure of a product record, Onix has helped to stimulate the industry-wide creation of better internal information systems, which bring together metadata needed for the promotion of both new and backlist titles.

As Firebrand Technologies’ website reminds its visitors, however, Onix is a format for transmitting data—it’s not the data transmitted using this format. More specifically, Onix is a standard XML format (a sort of digital bento box) that provides a consistent way to communicate among supply chain partners, allowing data to be exchanged between any number of databases. It is not limited to a single language, nor to the particulars of a specific national book trade. In fact, Onix gives publishers a standard format for the title, author, publisher, page count, pub date, even digitized cover art not only of books, but also serials (online subscription products, including e-books) and publication licenses. When used correctly, information is exchanged instantly once the Onix information has been entered, which diminishes the need for manual intervention and reduces human error.

Although its birth was somewhat chaotic organizationally (not unusual for a global standard), Onix is now governed by an international steering committee representing 15 countries, with oversight provided by the collaboration of Editeur, BIC, Bowker, and BISG. To some degree, each of these organizations still uses its own “flavor” of Onix, making it a useful standard... but not as useful as it could be. BISG has actively promoted an Onix certification program, and Payton estimates that Bowker receives “clean” data, using the current Onix 2.1 standard about 80% of the time.

The underlying problem facing the industry is that, with the onrush of new technologies (smart phones, tablets, sensors, social media, the cloud), Onix 2.1 structures have become too limited to handle new formats or marketing and promotional requirements. Thus, Onix 3.0—which began development in 2009 based on global user input—is a watershed for a number of reasons. It supports a wider range of data, including delivery format, DRM protection, pricing in different markets, rights and royalties information, as well as links to information outside typical book metadata (author videos on YouTube, etc.). Moreover, it levels the playing field for small- and medium-sized companies, which can now use the significantly expanded and disciplined Onix 3.0 to reach a truly worldwide marketplace and take advantage of a much broader spectrum of online retailers.

Curiously, larger publishers may be at a disadvantage when it comes to implementing Onix 3.0. As the number of people entering information into Onix in given company rises, inconsistencies occur more often, according to Payton. In addition, the sheer size of major publishers creates an even larger gap between those tasked with implementing Onix and those responsible for the strategy and direction of the company. This gap represents a vulnerability, especially as an understanding of technology becomes more critical to the formulations of strategic responses to changes in the marketplace. Sayor of GiantChair recalls that during a webinar organized by BIC and Booksellerthe last year, one of the publishers involved commented, “What we need is a metadata expert on the board of directors!”

In one sense, however, experience with Onix gives all of publishing an advantage. One of the most disruptive technologies in the coming decade will be the so-called Internet of Everything (IOE). Cisco, the tech systems giant, estimates that there will be some 50 billion “smart” things that can communicate with digital devices and each other by 2020. The IOE will make it possible for machines, processes, and disparate systems to be interconnected across any value chain, linking end users and creators through an integrated network. In a sense, Onix is a forerunner of this, allowing the publishing industry across the globe to maximize its many networks to create new service opportunities, product differentiation, and revenue. As Michaels at Macmillan warns, however, the “metadata being right, and communicated correctly,” remains the critical factor. “Onix enables [all these benefits],” he advises, “only if everyone in the supply chain does this.”

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