Good news for publishers delivering to Kindle---in December, Amazon will increase the revenue split so that publishers can earn 70 percent of the retail price for each issue sold in the Kindle Store, minus delivery costs. That’s a reversal from Amazon keeping as much as 70 percent of retail revenues.
Read the full story here.
Over the next few weeks, we're sharing snippets from "A Blueprint for Book Publishing Transformation: Seven Essential Processes to Re-Invent Publishing" by the Gilbane Group, a division of Outsell, Inc. The report truly is a must-read for book publishers but other types of publishers will also gain value from the trends and research the study has collected.
Today, we share the overview from the report:
It truly is a whole new world for book publishing. Publishers know this of course, as do their partners, vendors, and, of course, their booksellers. There are the obvious signs – the Kindles you see in friends’ hands and on the subway and the lines at the Apple store when the iPad was introduced. For industry observers, there are also the daily headlines about Google, Sony, Apple, and Amazon. PW Daily, the Monday-Friday e-mail blast from Publishers Weekly has e-book-related articles in almost every edition; we have counted more than one edition in the past year where every article was about e-books.
After the devastating economy of late 2008 and early 2009, book publishers are seeing more numbers that are positive. The revenues for digital publishing – and e-books specifically – are very strong and promise to continue to grow. Some segments of book publishing, including STM (scientific, technical, and medical) and professional, reached the digital revenue tipping point long ago. Some research from our Outsell colleagues, summarized later in this report, suggest other segments will start to tip in the next year or two.
These larger forces are creating significant pressure inside of book publishing. The goal of this study was to look at how publishers are adapting their traditional processes – many decades old and older – to adapt to digital publishing. Since these processes are usually aided by technology, the study took aim at the tools and systems publishers have been using and are starting to use.
The excitement of the marketplace is tempered by some of our analysis. While there are many bright spots – production and digital printing jump to mind – other process areas lag, are too nascent, or are waiting for industry standards and best practices to coalesce. What makes the landscape particularly challenging for book publishers is the rapid-fire addition of new channels and business models and the need to codify these models in their internal processes and systems even before they can fully evaluate how valuable some of these channels and models are.
Still the big picture for book publishers is very positive. The revenues are there, and growing. Readers are excited by the new devices and are demonstrating their excitement in fast-growing device and e-book sales. Publishers are moving ahead quickly across a broad front of process improvement and technology investment.Our case studies point to some of the smartest bets publishers can make in the near- and medium-term. We expect that a look at these process areas in another year would show steady improvement in most areas and marked improvement in those areas tied most directly to revenue growth and e-book promotion.
Stay tuned for more information from this report or download your own copy here.
The Google Books Partner Program and Google Editions is growing and evolving at an astounding rate. Come hear keynote speaker Andrew Littell, strategic partner development manager for Google, share his insights and vision of Google Books Partner Program and Google Editions. He'll detail what publishers need to understand now and plan for the future.
Come join over 100 publishing executives at the RSuite CMS User Conference on October 20, 2010 in Philadelphia to hear more RSuite success stories and network with industry leaders - http://www.rsuitecms.com/2010userconf.htm
ASTD is making remarkable strides at improving its internal publishing workflow and content management with RSuite. In this spotlight session, Anthony Allen, director of digital media at ASTD, presents the workflow expansion framework he has developed to publish content for print outlets, the iPad, Kindle, Nook, and websites. He’ll show how RSuite enables ASTD to produce custom training material for sales staff within 1 hour.
Come
join over 100 publishing executives at the RSuite CMS User Conference
on October 20, 2010 in Philadelphia to hear more RSuite success stories
and network with industry leaders - http://www.rsuitecms.com/2010userconf.htm
The Gilbane Group's web-based survey of book publishing professionals has just gone live.
The survey is one of the research mechanisms for Gilbane's upcoming study: A Blueprint for Book Publishing Transformation: Seven Essential Processes to Re-Invent Publishing.
The survey takes about 10-to-15 minutes to complete and seeks to gain a clearer picture of ebook and related digital publishing efforts underway among the full spectrum of book publishers.
All participants will have full access to the full-length study, which will be published in June.
This survey is for high- and mid-level book publishing professionals.
Don't let anyone tell you there is no such thing as a free lunch...(in fact, we have them once a month at the office but I digress) or in this case...a free eMedia Professional Certification.
IDEAlliance just launched its eMedia Professional Certification (EMPC) program. This program is offered in four distinct blocks of courses. Each block comprises a series of webinars that covers a range of topics related to eMedia Publishing, including
This program runs from March through November. All classes will be recorded so publishing professionals can join at any time.
The entire session costs $1800 but Really Strategies is raffling off one free pass to any individual who provides the most compelling reason why he/she should win. Yes this is not at all scientific but that means you can be as creative as you want to be.
Either submit a comment below, including a valid email address so I can contact you OR send me an email with your contact information.
More info on the program is located here.
Even when I was in the thick of it as a production, developmental, and managing editor, I always thought that 9 months (or longer) to produce a book was simply too long. Yes, I do understand the work involved but when one considers that human gestation and book production are about the same, it seems like an outrageously long time for a book. Don't you agree?
Thus, it will be interesting to watch Tina Brown's latest venture: Beast Books.
Read the whole story here.
Flurry, a mobile application analytics company, has compiled some interesting facts about the soaring growth in eBook applications. Interestingly, it appears that the iPhone has become more significant for reading than eReaders.
Check out this consolidation/review of the latest stats.
On July 2, three inventors from Amazon filed two patents for including advertising in Kindle ebooks. Not that this is too surprising. I guess that's the compromise for all the benefits of ebooks: advertisements and marketing. I'll take my classics old school: hardbound and ad free.
What do you think about this?
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