The German Award "Schönste Bücher aus aller Welt" will be handed out in Leipzig on March 13. Of 704 books from 36 countries 14 books were awarded. The highest award went to Blexbolex, L'imagerie des gens (Paris) and the Gold medal to Vinex Atlas (Rotterdam). The criteria have to do with text and visual integration, the material choice (ink, paper, cover) and production qualities.
Jason Epstein, a book publishing authority and currently with On Demand Books, referred in a recent speech to the Espresso Book Machine (EBM). This high speed duplex printer produces library quality pocket books in seven minutes. The University of Alberta has one installed and prints about 100 books a day, seven days a week at a penny a page for consumables. Epstein sees great potential for the successor of Gutenberg as the cost of the hardware will eventually be comparable to that of an office copier. In his view the EBM can find its place in bookstores and other book selling outlets, as these stores do not carry sufficient stock.
I recently met Tom Kelley, the General Manager of the design company IDEO, and he mentioned how he wrote his most recent book 'The ten faces of innovation'. He refers to Tom Peters as his mentor for writing books. He taught him to use blank cards to jot down ideas. Kelley used a notebook system from Levenger (comparable to the Belgian Atoma notebooks). Levenger brings the story about how Kelley creates his book on their website. An interesting read for those who use longhand to write books.
Recommendations are key to consumer choice. Oprah Winfrey has proven so with her Book club. She has most certainly been driving the choice of what Americans are reading. Now she has also said some nice words about the Amazon Kindle - the e-reader. When Oprah says "I'm telling you, it's absolutely my new favourite thing in the world", watch what's happening. Adage provides an overview of what happened after she gave this praise on October 24.
Earlier this year I wrote about the correlation between the sales of e-books and hard copy books. The well-know New York Times technology columnist and "Missing Manuel Book" - writer David Pogue wrote in June an article on the this subject. His perspective has to do with copyright and pirated use of e-books and fits the discussion that creative work will sooner or later become freely available via the Internet. Paul Krugman wrote an interesting but much discussed article on this model already used by the Grateful Dead.
In considering free e-books Pogue refers to three possible relations that might exist: giving away e-books for free will boost sales of the print edition, selling e-books is the only legitimate way to buy electronic versions and e-books will kill income of printed books. Pogue refers to two interesting variables: the awareness of the author (less-known authors supposedly benefit more from the free exposure and attract new readers of the printed version), and the genre of the book (do you read science-fiction on a screen?). One of the people who reacted to the story was Kevin Kelly who suggested to have a test with one of Pogue's books. His prediction is that his e-books will not be duplicated as much as imaged and elevate, or at least not depress sales of the print version. Pogue's publishing company started the test this month and I'm curious to see whether the results will confirm what the National Academies Press concluded earlier this year.
This month much has been written about books. Most recently Amsterdam was announced the World Book Capital by UNESCO. The city thrives on a long history of freedom of expression since the start of the first book printer in 1506. Because of this freedom of expression and the fact that guilds were in that time open to foreigners Amsterdam became the center of books. Today for every 4.000 residents of the city there is one bookshop. The Amsterdam World Book Capital theme is therefore Open Book, using icons as Spinoza, Anne Frank and Annie M.G. Schmidt.
The city also hosts a beautiful exposition of 3.500 posters on how books have been promoted during the years. Worthwhile a visit.
A unique partnership between publishing houses, libraries and booksellers stimulates readership in The Netherlands. One of the activities is the Book Week. Since 1932 this event is organised, resulting in handing out a total of 25 mio free books. Last month during the Book Week 960.000 free books were handed out.
Despite the surge of the internet, books are selling well. In Flanders sales in 2007 increased with 8 percent, resulting in a total sales of 11 mio books. On average every family bought 4 books in 2007. (In the Netherlands this figure is 6,4 books). In the UK sales of books increased with 9 percent. The biggest increase was among the new titles published in 2007, 36 percent more titles came to market, more than ever before. And as Nielsen states Print-on-Demand is driving this growth, proving the Long Tail.
Quite some librarians have been dreaming of a World Library System. Organising all books in all libraries so that they would become accessible for everybody. This dream may come it bit closer to reality with the Google Books project. Google has agreements with several libraries in the USA, Japan and Europe to scan entire collections. Google will make all of these books searchable by word and will make it possible to link words or events with Google Maps.
The Bodleian Library of Oxford University for example contains 11 million books and each year the collection grows with 3 to 4 kilometer of book racks. Opening-up these huge collections via electronic versions, will learn us a lot more about the our history. Come the questions of copyright, and the commercial ownership of what is today in the public domain. Most of the libraries objective is to reach a broad as possible readership, but will that objective prevail on these questions?
One point divides then though; scanning is a time-consuming and therefore expensive task. Of older books every page need to be turned by hand before a picture can be taken. (The Dutch use an even more laborious system: they have Philippine ladies retype entire books as that is more reliable than current OCR technology). Sheetfeeding a scanner will be a lot cheaper (€10) than scanning by hand (€ 150) but would need books to be cut apart and thus destroyed. Book lovers will hate the idea as they appreciate much more than the content of the book. The paper used, the type of binding, the spine, the feel and the smell of the book is part of the reading experience. Will libraries allow this to happen, even when they to have to sacrifice a second copy of a book? Will learning the world win out cultural heritage? To be continued online and in your book store.
The US-based National Academies Press won the prestigious ISMS Prize at Wharton University. The publisher developed a model that took advantage of the growing number of orders for electronic books. Research showed that 65%-70% of visitors of the website came to view only one page. Visitors were split into online shoppers and buyers of a printed book opposed to who were browsing books that had a PDF version available. They determined that selling the electronic version of a book at 75% of the print price would generate the highest profit. With the book price at the same level and a bundle of print + electronic at an 18% mark-up, total sales rose by 10% (and web sales by 14,4%). In the meantime the electronic books sell at 85% of the print price demonstrating the success of the model.
In October 2001 the Mockingbird was the most discussed bird in Chicago. Not the animal but the book by Harper Lee titled To kill a Mockingbird. The book was selected to cultivate the culture of reading and discussion in Chicago and inhabitants were suggested to talk with friends, family and neighbours about the book. The idea was that everybody in Chicago would read the same book at the same time and discuss it.
This idea was picked-up by the Dutch and is now organised for the second year. Talking about this years book will not be too difficult with the title "De gelukkige klas". All public library members can receive a free copy like all fourth graders but on the condition that they read it. A total circulation of almost 1 million free books! (A luxurious copy is also available for € 10). Plenty of activities in 100 cities are organised to get people to read and discuss the book. The popular and sometimes clumsy news anchor Philip Freriks is touring with a theater show, 10.000 people can get a book with a blank cover that they can design and a nostalgic train will tour in Holland.
Last year 725.000 copies of the book "Dubbelspel" were handed out, over 1 million people participated in Nederland Leest and public library visits increased with 20%.
A great marketing idea to boost reading and using different media to announce and stimulate talking about literature.
The Frankfurter Buchmesse, that just closed its doors, revealed that the illiteracy level in western Europe and developing countries is perceived as one of the biggest threats to the publishing industry. Professional visitors listed the threats to the industry, the list also includes other media competition, over-publishing and piracy.
At the Buchmesse cases of new and traditional media integration were discussed. For example launching new children books via SMS and podcast. Creating a community of children and extending the experience of reading a book proved to help stimulating literacy.
Not taking any action could make this threat a self-fulfilling prophecy. Plenty of research indicates the declining number of young people reading printed information. It should become a task of the government, education and the media industry to develop programs to correct this evolution.
There is however also a positive side to this threat; internet savvy young people seem to be more interested in hard copy direct mail. At the DMA congress in Chicago research was shown that relates high internet usage and response rates to direct mail. It all comes down to the long-known advertising adage: surprise people by standing out.
Yesterday I picked up a free copy of the book from the Belgian Prime Minister Verhofstadt about his eight years of premiership. His liberal party printed 300.000 copies of the 194 pages book that were distributed via newspaper kiosks in Flanders. In explaining this surprising move -less than three months prior to the elections- the liberals argue that the budget of € 500,000 invested in the book is more effective than using for example large billboards. Having heard that I'm curious to know how they will spend the advertising budget in the weeks prior to the elections in June. (By the way the book includes some pictures of Verhofstadt with other glasses than his much discussed Gucci designer glasses he received from his wife).
