NYT Explores New E-Book Projects

Like other newspapers and magazines, The New YorkTimes has struggled to find fresh revenue sources to replace dwindling advertising sales and print subscriptions. In a new two-pronged effort, the paper hopes to leverage its formidable reporting depth to sell short e-books on a variety of topics ranging from business and health to sports and entertainment. If it works out, other publications will no doubt follow suit.

The Times has previously attempted a number of online publishing business models, with limited success. This time it’s partnering with digital startup Byliner to co-publish as many as 12 e-books per year, each about 10,000 to 20,000 words.

The content will be original, although in some instances the topic may build off reporting in the print edition or on its web site. The first e-book is about a group of skiers hit by an avalanche; the e-book debuted Dec. 17, the same day a much shorter article about the incident appeared in The Times.

In a corollary program that also launched Dec. 17, The Times is using the Vook platform to assemble articles from its extensive archive into themed e-books. Twenty-five titles have been produced so far, with “many more expected to come in 2013,” according to a press release.

Both Byliner and Vook products will be sold through Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and the NYTStore.com, with retail prices starting at $1.99. Byliner will also sell the titles it co-produces.

Lessons from the magazine industry

The NY Post recently featured an article about the decline of magazine sales.

In 2011, overall newsstand sales of magazines declined by 10 percent, capping off three straight years of decline. Magazine publishers are currently faced with a shrinking industry, and many are indeed turning to digital sales. 45 percent of magazines titles are now in digital format.

 

One quote in the piece caught our attention in paticular.  It reads, “If you’re not thinking about how to creatively destroy your business and recreate it, you’re in trouble because someone else is thinking about it.”  It is a good lesson for college stores to hear and consider.

The magazine industry is undergoing transition and upheaval as organizations try to bridge the gap from traditional paper to new electronic formats -- formats that are still somewhat "in development."  The changes reported in the story are not unlike those facing other industries along a spectrum:  the newspaper industry, the music industry, and the college textbook industry or publishing in general.  The traditional core products and revenue generation models are changing and those wishing to survive must learn to adapt.

Apple and News Corp to create digital newspaper for iPad only

According to a posting on Mashable.com, Apple and News Corp are preparing to launch The Daily, a news publication that will only be available via an app on the iPad. The publication is expected to launch in early 2011 and could provide consumers with a new type of reading experience that incorporates video and utilizes the iPad’s sophisticated technical capabilities. This could give the publication capabilities beyond what other newspapers and websites currently offer.

New research finds consumers favor digital but do not always trust the internet

An interesting report by the Center for the Digital Future at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California analyzes current trends and finds that people are quickly moving away from print in favor of digital. The report, released late last month, includes many interesting statistics about the practices and preferences of internet users. According to the study, internet reliance is reaching a new peak; the internet is now used by 82 percent of Americans.

Amongst the findings are statistics that illustrate the continuing decline of newspapers: "Eighteen percent of Internet users said they stopped a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they now get the same or related content online, and twenty-two percent of users who read newspapers said they would not miss the print edition.”

However, while most people rely on the web as an important source for information, a much smaller percentage feel that the information is reliable. According to the report, “In the year 2000, 55 percent of users said that most or all of online information is reliable; in the current study, 39 percent had the same response – a new low level for the Digital Future Project.”

The report also covers many other topics including: internet users’ perception of website advertisements, social networking, and online shopping.

A full overview of the report can be found here. In addition, a recent New York Times Bits blog article discusses the report.

Access to free wi-fi and content at Starbucks locations

Beginning July 1, Starbucks will offer free wi-fi access in all of its U.S. stores. In addition, beginning this fall, consumers will be able to access free content from The Wall Street Journal and other exclusive material.

British Library to digitize thousands of newspapers

According to a recent press release, the British Library has entered into a 10-year partnership with Brightsolid, an online publisher, to digitize 52,000 local, regional, national, and international newspapers. Within the next two years, a minimum of four million pages of newspapers will be digitized and within ten years, it is hoped that 40 million pages will be digitized.

In addition to the out-of-copyright newspapers, the partners are seeking to digitize in-copyright material after negotiations with rightsholders. The project aims to “build a critical mass of material for researchers – particularly in the fields of family history and genealogy.”

The digitized material will be available for free to users while on-site at the British Library.

Newspaper of the future

The Digital Reader Blog has an interesting posting about a newspaper concept that was designed by students at the Art Center College of Design. The concept displays the news on foldable, bendable, weather proof “smart paper” which has not yet been invented. The posting includes a few videos to demonstrate the concept.

Report predicts e-readers will be a major disruptive technology

A new report from research and advisory firm mediaIDEAS says that e-readers are set to become “one of the major disruptive technologies of the 21st century.” In an interview with Publishing Executive, Nick Hampshire, author of the report, discussed some of the key findings and predictions for the market over the next decade. Hampshire expects that within the next year, the number of e-reader devices on the market will double from the 40+ that are available today. Next year, we will likely see flexible e-readers hit the market and flexible color magazine e-readers could be available in 2013. By 2015, Hampshire expects that, “e-paper e-readers will be employed to display virtually any form of printed content from monochrome text heavy office documents and newspapers to high quality full color magazines and brochures with audio and video components.” By 2020, Hampshire says that the e-reader market will be divided into four categories: e-readers for e-books, foldable e-reader communication devices, e-readers for newspapers, and e-readers for magazines. The first two categories will feature devices with 9-inch displays or smaller while the newspaper and magazine e-readers will have displays over 9-inches.

As for sales, it is predicted that e-reader sales will increase to 6 million units in 2010, to 115 million units in 2013, and then to 446 million units by 2020. Hampshire also commented on how e-readers will influence publishing within the next 10 years. Hampshire said, “With the arrival of high-quality color, low cost, large-screen e-readers within the next few years, we are looking at these devices becoming as ubiquitous as today's cell phone. Whilst people will still be buying and reading content printed on paper in 2020, the bulk of the market for magazine content will be for digital publications primarily viewed on reading devices.”

Digital Happenings

Here again this week, are some links to articles that you may find interesting:

• The Wall Street Journal is reporting that demand for Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader is stronger than expected. New pre-orders will now ship on December 11 rather than November 30. B&N will also make the devices available in some of their college bookstores.
• According to an article from Reuters, newspaper circulation continues to sharply decline. Average weekday circulation at 379 daily newspapers fell 10.6 percent to 30.4 million copies. This percentage is up from 4.6 percent last year. Sunday circulation for 562 newspapers also fell 7.5 percent to 40 million copies. This percentage is up from 4.9 percent last year.
• According to the Kindle Review blog, Amazon announced that the Kindle is its bestselling product in both unit sales and revenue, and it is also the most wished for and most gifted product on Amazon.
• An article from eSchool News says that the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University will not buy any more Kindle devices until the devices are accessible to the blind. Both schools recently purchased Kindles for campus pilot programs but the devices do not feature audio menus to enable blind users to navigate the menus.
• A new e-reader from iRiver called the Story Ebook Reader has been released in Korea. The reader includes a 6-inch E Ink display, 2GB of internal storage, as well as support for PDF, ePub, and office documents including PowerPoint and Excel.
• According to a posting on Engadget, Wistron, a manufacturer of computer and consumer electronic products, has acquired Polymer Vision, the maker of the flexible Readius e-reader. Wistron plans to launch a device similar to the Readius in 2010.

News Corp to offer an e-reader and begin charging to access the news

A few recent reports indicate that News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and many newspapers across the world, is looking to offer its own e-reader and begin charging to access the news, in an effort to fix the “flawed” business model which lets consumers access content for free online. According to Electronista, last month, Chairman and CEO of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch commented, “We’re investing in a new device that has a bigger screen, four-color, and you can get everything there.” Another report says that Murdoch has set up a global team that is “looking at hardware” that will deliver the content in a “user-friendly way.” The team is said to be in discussions with publishers and content providers outside of News Corp. In addition, the team is looking to develop a model to charge for access to their newspapers. An article from Guardian says that Murdoch believes that the online subscription model will work given its success with the Wall Street Journal and in a recent interview he commented that News Corp could begin charging for access to newspapers within the next 12 months noting that “the current days of the internet will soon be over."

What we can learn from the decline of the newspaper industry

This week’s issue of The Chronicle features interesting commentary by Kevin Carey that discusses how technology could impose a similar threat on the higher education industry as it has on the newspaper industry. He explains that the industries are threatened by technology because they are both in the business of creating and communicating information and technology is making this easier than ever before. He goes on to say that what is happening now to the newspaper industry was actually predicted in the 1990’s when the internet was introduced so newspapers had time to prepare for the digital future but the temptation to cling to the old ways was too great. However, it is not too late for higher education, the industry still has more time to embrace technology, prepare for change, and move to a more sustainable cost structure. It would be a mistake to believe that accreditation will be enough to protect universities because with the economy in decline and tuition on the rise, the number of students taking online courses is growing by hundreds of thousands each year. If higher education decides to hold on to the past like the newspaper industry did, “then someday, sooner than we think, we're going to be reading about the demise of once-great universities — not in the newspaper, but in whatever comes next.”

Thinking the Unthinkable

There is a great posting on Clay Shirky’s blog titled, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable” that provides an insightful analysis on the past, present, and future of the newspaper industry. All college stores, publishers, and book retailers should read this piece because as one of our members noted, one could easily substitute “textbooks” for “newspapers” in several places. In the posting, Mr. Shirky explains that the problem that the newspaper industry is facing is not due to lack of preparedness for the internet, in fact, in the 90’s, many plans were created to deal with the internet. The real problem is that all the plans were based on the idea that the newspaper just needed a “digital facelift.” He explains:

“Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know ‘If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?’ To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.”

Mr. Shirky goes on to say that nothing will really replace what we are losing with the demise of news on printed paper but through experimentation we can find a way to preserve journalism. “Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as Craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did.” It is in retrospect that these experiments are considered turning points.

Mr.Shirky’s advice can also be applied to the college store industry. As the old publishing models are broken, experimenting with digital initiatives on campus is imperative for defining the future. One experiment may not be the answer but a collection of experiments can help to preserve the important role of the college store on campus.

Clay Shirky's posting is a must read for all college stores.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper moves to digital version only

Earlier this week, there was another signal that the tipping point from print to digital is approaching. According to an article from the Associated Press, on Monday the Seattle P-I became the largest American newspaper to announce that it will move to an online version only and on Tuesday the newspaper produced the final paper edition after 146 years in print. This announcement follows the recent closing of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain News and this Saturday’s scheduled closing of Arizona’s Tucson Citizen. The Seattle P-I’s move to digital will likely be closely watched as other newspapers seek to find a way to survive as the industry struggles. Additionally, this move could put additional pressure on the Seattle Times which had a joint operating agreement with the P-I and will be the only mainstream daily newspaper in the city. Steven Swartz, president of Hearst’s newspaper division explained the move to digital and the hope to capitalize on the P-I’s existing web traffic, “We clearly believe we are in a period of innovation and experimentation, and that’s what this new SeattlePI.com represents. We think we’ll learn a lot, and we think the Seattle market, being so digitally focused, is a great place to try this.” In recent months, other large newspaper companies have sought bankruptcy protection including the owners of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Future of the News

An interesting posting on the Wired Blog discusses how the New York Times is working to create a digital future for the news through research and development. Recently, Nick Bilton, design integration editor and user interface specialist at the New York Times R&D lab spoke about the efforts at the Emerging Technologies conference. We also had the opportunity to see him present about a month ago at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference and were intrigued and impressed by the technologies in development. Some of the most interesting technologies include a prototype called "CustomTimes" which is a digital version of the traditional newspaper machine that will allow users to select certain content to be printed via print on demand, “smart content” which keeps track of the stories that users have read across their devices so that when a user picks up their mobile device a story that was read on their computer appears grayed out, and a Times mobile application that can sense when a user is traveling in their car and delivers the news in audio format. While these advanced technologies are likely five to ten years away, the transition to digital is inevitable for the newspaper industry, and as Bilton points out the newspapers and news organizations can still thrive in digital format, “Paper is dying, but it's just a device. Replacing it with pixels is a better experience.” What can other industries, such as course materials, learn from the shift to digital in the newspaper industry?

Hearst Corporation to introduce large screen e-reader

Last week, Hearst Corporation, owner of many popular daily and weekly newspapers as well as magazines, announced that it will launch a large screen e-reader designed to meet the needs of publishers in the declining market. According to an article from The Wall Street Journal, the e-reader initiative is part of the company’s “100 Days of Change” program which seeks to review the longstanding newspaper business practices to define a new cost structure and business model for the future. Another article in Fortune magazine explains that the e-reader is likely to debut later this year in black and white and may even be foldable. The company plans to sell the e-readers to publishers and take a share of the revenue acquired from selling magazines and newspapers on the devices. Additionally, publishers will be able to develop their own branding and payment methods. A third article from Information Week explains that Hearst’s move into the e-reader market is definitely risky but also necessary because even if Hearst is not successful in making money at first, the experiment could eventually lead to a solution to help boost subscriptions and revenues. Michael McGuire, analyst with Gartner’s media consulting business explained, "This is absolutely the kind of thing they have to be doing – experimenting. There are no set answers anymore." The same can be said for college stores. The market is changing with technology and the future is not clearly defined but experimenting with digital initiatives on campus can help lead to a solution for the future.

How The New York Times could cut their printing costs in half

The folks at the Silicon Alley Insider came up with a very interesting comparison to show just how expensive printing the newspaper can be. The posting notes that it currently costs twice as much to print and deliver The New York Times as it would to send each subscriber a brand new Amazon Kindle. The posting describes the calculation and explains that the printing costs could actually be even higher than the numbers used in the comparison. When you consider this comparison along with relevant factors such as the economy and environmental concerns, its makes you wonder how far off the tipping point for e-readers really is.


BTW -- Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Christian Science Monitor to end print edition

According to an article in The New York Times, after a century in publication, The Christian Science Monitor will be the first national newspaper to discontinue its weekday print edition and move to online only in April 2009. John Yemma, The Monitor’s editor explains, “We have the luxury – the opportunity – of making a leap that most newspapers will have to make in the next five years.”

This development provides another signal that digital forms of reading are gaining ground and other newspapers are sure to track The Monitor’s success as they determine the future of their publications. Last year, in an interview with Arthur Sulzberger, owner, chairman, and publisher of The New York Times, he suggested that they too could move to online only in five years. Sulzberger said, "I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either.” Sulzberger later clarified his statement by saying, “So let me clear the air on this issue. It is my heartfelt view that newspapers will be around—in print—for a long time. But I also believe that we must be prepared for that judgment to be wrong. My five-year timeframe is about being ready to support our news, advertising and other critical operations on digital revenue alone ...whenever that time comes."

The change to online only versions of newspapers could disappoint faithful subscribers but as John Yemma explains the transition is inevitable, “Longtime readers love coffee and a newspaper. So do I, there’s nothing like it. But everyone, sooner or later, is going to have to make the transition, and that’s recognized.” The same can probably be said of textbooks and course materials. If the shift to digital is inevitable and if it begins to have an impact within the next 3-5 years, will your store be ready for the transition?