Only a few weeks ago, the Cairo Book Fair was being welcomed onto the world stage and Egyptian book publishers forging new links with China and the West. Today, Aljazeera the major Arabic news outlet is banned across Egypt – including all of their writers and related book publishers, social media is banned, and Cairo is in flames. International press institutes and several christian book publishers have come out strongly against Egyptian authorities’ suppression of the media, following the withdrawal of Al Jazeera’s license to broadcast from the North African country.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned on Sunday the information ministry’s move to shutdown Al Jazeera’s bureau in the country.
The CPJ described the move as an attempt to “disrupt media coverage by Al Jazeera and calls on them to reverse the decision immediately”.
The official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported that the order was to take effect on Sunday, and transmissions originating from Egypt ceased within an hour of the announcement. Nilesat, the satellite transmission company owned by Egyptian radio and television stopped the transmission of Al Jazeera’s primary channel and others.
Reporters without borders added to the condemnation of Egyptian authorities attempt to quell the media.
“By banning Al Jazeera, the government is trying to limit the circulation of TV footage of the six-day-old wave of protests,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said.
“Thus totally archaic decision is in completely contradiction with President Hosni Mubarak’s promise of ‘democratic’ measures on 28 January. It is also the exact opposite of the increase in freedom sought by the Egyptian population.”
The Doha Centre for Media Freedom also criticised the move, saying it was following with major concern the Egyptian authorities’ obstruction of local and foreign journalists from performing their duties in covering the unusual events currently taking place.
“The DCMF considers the harassment a severe press freedom violation and urges the Egyptian authorities to respect international laws on freedom of expression and to allow Egyptian and foreign journalists to freely cover the current events there.” DCMF said in a press released issued on Sunday.
The withdrawal of Al Jazeera’s license came on the fifth day of protests that gripped the country and follows the authorities’ attempts to control the flow of self-publishing information after the internet and mobile phone services were suspended on Thursday.
Mobile services were partly restored on Saturday, though the CPJ says that 90 per cent of internet connections in the country remain disconnected.
On Friday, Reporters without Borders condemned the arrest of four French journalists and book publisher and around a dozen Egyptian journalists who had been arrested by authorities.
Digital World Book, known as the DBW is the key conference in the publication of books for publishers in the e-books. All the “big six” book publishers are present in quantities never before. Random House will have more than 40 participants, while fewer than 20 came from the publisher in 2010. The digital book world conference began quietly on Monday morning with three sessions focused for a long time, the official opening ceremony will begin at 17 hours, but despite the digital output cautiously DBW 2011 is just quiet – There are over 1,250 registered twice that last year 600.
Since book publishers are here at DBW, mainstream booksellers are also here. Who is here and what they are selling will be evident when the floor show begins 13:00
The session iPad / iPhone has provided an overview of applications and the Apple App Store. It was the kind of session that felt like it was presented to other audiences – do not publish specific, as the meeting of the e-book design and production. The meeting is followed very still ongoing as I write, shows an interest of people in book publishing companies. How they got out of it, maybe they acquired the interest in book publishing and literary agents and tell us later.
Sessions on the morning of Monday, three were in the design of e-books and production, online content strategy and the iPhone / IPAD strategies. It was the first, most of the screws and nuts, which was the subject key retailers were focused on. Speaking directly to the creators of books and production managers, the session included discussions on programming languages and workflow – which suggests that book publishers are now specifically and actively serious about integrating e-Books, e-book publishing, amazon kindle publishing etc into their business model.
Rubbishing those who hail the digital age as the end for books, book publishers industry players and best-selling authors on Saturday hailed a new dawn for publishing, with India’s voracious readers at its forefront.
Book sales have been squeezed in recent years by e-books and the huge success of Amazon.Com’s Kindle reader, but India’s booming book publishers market is proof of the physical book’s staying power, said participants at Asia’s largest literary event, the DSC Jaipur Literary Festival.
“You read something on Twitter and you know it is ephemeral,” said Patrick French, a best-selling historian and biographer who has written extensively on Asia. “Yet the book is a solid thing. The book endures.”
Regional language novelists and poets rubbed shoulders with Nobel laureates and Booker Prize winners at the seventh festival to be held in the historical pink-tinged city of Jaipur, the capital of India’s northwestern Rajasthan state.
Hundreds of book lovers attended a debate on the fate of printed books in the sun-drenched grounds of a former palace as part of the free five-day event.
“The idea of the book dying comes up all the time. It’s wrong. I think this is a wonderful time for books, to enlarge the audience of the book and draw in more readers,” said John Makinson, Chairman and CEO of the Penguin Group of publishers.
“Books matter more in India than anywhere else we publish them,” added Makinson, whose Penguin Group is one of the world’s largest English-language book publishers.
While book sales slip in most western countries, the non-academic book market in India is currently growing at a rate of 15 to 18 percent annually, as rapid economic growth swells literacy rates and adds millions to the middle class every year.
At the festival, schoolchildren from around the country chased their authorly heroes through the lunch queues to get autographs on newly-purchased books.
Makinson noted that the pressure on physical bookshops in countries like the United States — where bookseller Borders Group Inc is in talks to secure a $500 million credit line — doesn’t exist in India, adding that books have a key role to play in Indian society.
“In India books define and create the social conversation amongst christian book publishers and children’s book publishers. In China, the books that sell well are self-improvement titles. Popular books in India are of explanations, explaining the world. The inquisitive nature of India is unique.”
Indian critic Sunil Sethi, who presents India’s most popular television program on books, said the digital age presented an opportunity, rather than a threat, for printed matter. “Even before I finish my show, the authors are on Twitter to say they are on TV talking about their book. Technology is merging things, but the book is still at the center,” Sethi said.
French agreed that technology, if well-managed, could actually help win books new friends and wider sales.
“Digital e-books have created a space for discussion. Books now have websites and forums, and so reading books on electronic devices has created communities and interaction,” he said.
Nearly 50,000 writers, critics, publishers and fans are expected to attend the festival.
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Gayle Shanks has fought a sometimes frightening battle against national book chains (mainly in the business to sell and publish a book) for 36 years, so one might expect the independent Tempe bookseller would be overjoyed at news that the goliath Borders is in dire straights.
But that would be like judging a book by its cover.
Sure, Shanks figures the chain’s death would lure its former customers to her Changing Hands store in Tempe.
Yet she sees peril for bookstores, for readers and for the nation’s culture.
Michigan-based Borders is the nation’s second-largest book retailer and its large debts to vendors could take down small book publishers and hurt the surviving ones, Shanks said. That could limit what even the most independent-minded bookseller could offer adventuresome readers.
“I think my biggest concern, really, is what it means for the book publishing world and ultimately what it means for diversity and finding a marketplace that will be diminished,” Shanks said. “We will have fewer authors finding publishers for their books. We’ll find fewer books being published and that might in fact mean that only huge, commercially viable authors will find their books going to market. That worries me.”
Borders has stopped payments to some children’s book publishers, who have in turn cut off shipments of new merchandise. Published reports include speculation that Borders will be forced to reorganize under bankruptcy protection or that its declining sales, market share and stock value will doom it.
Border’s troubles became more apparent after the holiday season, Shanks noted, when it reported disappointing sales even as most retailers and rival Barnes & Noble saw small to large improvements. Amazon.com would likely benefit from a Borders’ failure, but Shanks finds that troubling, too.
“That’s just the best-sellers and one level below,” said Shanks, the store’s co-owner and book buyer. “Unless you know exactly what you want to read, it takes the adventure and the curiosity factor out of what’s involved with finding a new author.”
Borders was the chain that mostly directly challenged Changing Hands, a store Shanks helped found in 1974 in downtown Tempe. Her initial 500-square-foot store expanded multiple times on Mill Avenue, where, roughly a decade ago, Borders opened a 25,000-square-foot store three blocks from Changing Hands.
The independent store opened a second location on McClintock Drive and Guadalupe Road in 1998, closing the downtown one in 2000. Borders later shuttered the downtown store.
Shanks believes Borders’ woes are a typical example of a chain not keeping up with e-book publishing industry trends — especially electronic readers — and not a sign books are obsolete. She’s seen an interest in people reading, whether its books on paper or on e-readers. Even on a weekday afternoon, Shanks said, Changing Hands can be full of customers.
“We really have been doing fine and 2010 was close to a record year for us,” Shanks said.
Borders and Barnes & Noble overbuilt, she said, adding it’s impossible for them to sell the number of books required to pay rent on all the square footage they occupy in the Valley.
A Borders failure would leave three empty stores in the East Valley, at Superstition Springs Mall in Mesa, at a mostly empty shopping center east of Fiesta Mall in Mesa and at the Chandler Pavilions. By comparison, Barnes & Noble operates five East Valley stores.
It’s unclear who would win Borders’ customers – especially from
By: executivepublisher,
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A 76-year-old British writer has been jailed for six weeks in Singapore after the High Court found him guilty of contempt of court over a book that raised questions about the independence of the judicial system.
Alan Shadrake, who lives in Malaysia, had refused to apologise for the content of his book, Once a Jolly Hangman, which deals with the use of the death penalty in the island state.
Mr Shadrake had offered to apologise for offending the judiciary before being convicted two weeks ago, but Justice Quentin Loh ruled that his book had scandalised the court.
He said Mr Shadrake had shown “a reckless disregard for the truth” and “a complete lack of remorse”. The defendant had contended that the book amounted to “fair criticism on matters of compelling public interest”.
At a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Mr Shadrake was also fined S$20,000 (US$15,400) and ordered to pay costs of S$55,000. The prison sentence was lighter than the 12-week term sought by the prosecution.
M. Ravi, Mr Shadrake’s lawyer, had urged the court to censure the author rather than imprison him. “This is by far the most serious sentence [for contempt]. It is the harshest punishment so far [for this offence in Singapore],” Mr Ravi said.
Mr Shadrake was arrested in his hotel room after travelling to Singapore to publicise the book in July. The Singapore authorities have said that charges of criminal defamation are also being considered.
Overseas human rights campaigners condemned the proceedings. Phil Robertson, deputy director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Singapore was “damaging its poor reputation on free expression by shooting the messenger bearing bad news”.
The Singapore authorities have robustly dismissed claims that the courts discriminate against individuals on grounds of nationality, background or status.
Ministers are unapologetic about restrictions on free speech, however, which they say are essential to prevent conflicts between the prosperous island’s mainly Chinese, Indian and Malay population groups.
K. Shanmugam, the law minister, said in a speech in New York two weeks ago that Singapore’s “small society” could not withstand the impact of US-style media freedoms.
“For example, the faultlines in our society, along racial and religious lines, can easily be exploited,” he told an audience at Columbia University.
Singapore’s controls on expression include a state-supervised and mainly state-owned media, tough libel laws and restrictions on street gatherings of more than four people.
Mr Shanmugam questioned the objectivity of organisations such as Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based press freedom organisation, and Freedom House, a US group that campaigns for civil liberties.
RWB ranks Singapore 136th in the world for press freedom, below Iraq and Zimbabwe, while Freedom House has angered Singapore by ranking it below Guinea, where more than 150 anti-government protesters were last year killed during a rally.
“I suspect that our rankings are at least partly due to the fact that we take an uncompromising attitude on libel – and the fact that we have taken on almost every major newspaper company [in the world],” Mr Shanmugam said.
Singapore, with a population of 5m, also imposes heavy penalties on criminal offenders, including caning for violence and vandalism, and the death penalty for murder and drug trafficking. It has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.
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The bill, which is expected to pass the National Assembly later this month, would let book publishers set e-book prices. The idea is to prevent publishers from being undercut by the likes of Amazon or Apple.
The French Senate has passed the first reading of a bill that would allow book publishers to set a fixed price on e-books, in a bid to try to protect publishers and smaller retailers as the e-book market takes off.
But since the first reading on October 26, several objections have been raised – not least of which are whether the law is even legal.
An extension of a 30-year-old law
The law proposed by centre-right senators Catherine Dumas and Jacques Legendre aims to replicate the 1981 Lang Law, which prohibits the sale of physical books for less than five per cent below a cover price set by the publisher.
This law has proved popular in France, helping to maintain one of Europe’s best networks independent bookstores by protecting them from competition from large chains.Dumas and Legendre’s bill was the result of a year of consultations with writers, publishers and retailers, who are concerned that their revenues will be hit by the expanding online market. But for now, industry figures show that e-books make up less than one per cent of France’s book market, but that is expected to double in the next year.
“In 2011, we will see the beginning of a really strong market,” said Clément Hering, an analyst with Gfk, in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
“Till now, it’s been quite a tiny market because of the price of products, which is quite high in France, and the number of platforms that are selling e-books which is quite tiny too, but that is changing.”
According to Hering, the e-book market so far has been a way of generating extra revenue for publishers rather than something that erodes profits, but that could change. In the US, digital literature accounts for more than eight per cent of the book market.
Enforcability remains an issue
But as the Internet is international, it is difficult to see how this law will work in practice. There seems little to stop a French consumer buying a book from a website based in another country, unless the government decides to geo-block e-book retailer websites. Otherwise, a French consumer could just as easily buy the same title at a lower price from Belgium or Luxembourg.
Another more serious obstacle is the European Court of Justice - this protectionist measure might turn out to run contrary to the idea of a single European market.
The Court has dealt with similar cases, including ones resulting from the Lang law, by determining whether the rule would be discriminatory against imports.”If they would be discriminatory then, prima facie, they would be unlawful unless the state imposing the restriction would be able justify it in some way.” said Angus Johnston, an EU law specialist at Oxford University.
The protection of national culture can be adduced as a justification, but Johnston says it is difficult to argue that a country’s literary heritage is protected by allowing the country itself rather than the importer to set the price of a book.
“On the face of it seems it would be challengeable successfully under EU free trade law,” he added.
Slowing innovation
The French parliament will take up the debate again in the next few weeks, when an amended version of the bill will be brought before both houses a final time before it can be signed into law.
Another problem with the proposed law, industry watchers said, is that it may inhibit innovation in this relatively new marketplace. The bill doesn’t make a distinction between books that are distribut
Are apps marketing devices for authors and books, or a new revenue stream? This is just one of many questions book publishing companies are asking as they develop apps from their content. When PW approached large and midsize publishers to find out about their app programs, we discovered that many houses don’t have “programs” per se. Questions loom about what content is best suited for apps—though overwhelmingly it seems that reference and children’s are sweet spots—and how best to look at apps. Should apps be created with the goal of bringing in money independent of books, or as tools to market books and authors? And how do publishers define an app? Many said it was simply anything that could be sold in the App Store. This may soon change, as rumors have swelled that Apple will add restrictions on what can be sold in its App Store. (Currently, a book publisher can adapt an e-book and sell it in the App Store even if it doesn’t feature any content added to the original.) Right now, though, publishers are dipping their feet into this market slowly and, with the exception of a few houses, cautiously.
Random House
Random House has done dozens of apps so far. According to Nina von Moltke, v-p of digital publishing development, RH decides what books might make good apps by looking “at specific categories, brands, and titles for which an experience beyond e-book would provide a significant benefit.” The most obvious, not surprisingly, are children’s, lifestyle, travel, reference, and, occasionally, celebrity books. Asked how RH differentiates between an app and an enhanced e-book, von Moltke said an enhanced e-book could be an app, since anything sold in the App Store is considered an app. Speaking to notable apps in the pipeline, von Moltke said there are more apps to come from Fodor’s—there are currently five Fodor’s apps, mostly city guides, available in the App Store—as well as apps based on children’s books, including two from the house’s Schwartz & Wade imprint: Princess Baby and How Rocket Learned to Read. (In September RH announced a partnership with the digital media agency Smashing Ideas to create apps for its children’s titles.) RH is also prepping a bartender app and a number of language apps.
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster’s chief digital officer, Ellie Hirschhorn, said S&S is “learning a ton” from its app development. “Apps should be an extension of the book,” she said, so S&S apps mostly contain excerpts or links to books, whereas e-books “should be sold in e-bookstores,” due to differences in how apps and e-books are priced, marketed, and discovered by customers. S&S’s first app was the 365 Crossword Puzzles app, which was recently revamped for the iPad; since then Hirschhorn estimates S&S has done two or three dozen more apps in broad categories: apps for fans (such as Jodi Picoult’s, which lets readers follow the author through social networks, blogs, and other media); utilities (cookbook apps, The Klingon Dictionary, and Pimsleur 2Go language apps); and games (Bro to Go, based on The Bro Code). S&S does much of the front-end design for the user experience in-house, but usually outsources the back-end coding. Prices range from free for the Picoult to $11.99 for The Klingon Dictionary.
Sourcebooks
The difference between enhanced e-books and an app is simple, Sourcebooks CEO Dominique Raccah, said: “It’s interactivity; if the reader can do stuff with the content, it’s an app.” Earlier this year, at the Tools of Change conference in New York, Raccah outlined an ambitious plan to develop apps based on the Sourcebooks list, citing mo
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Book publisher Bloomsbury has hailed “resilient” second half trading as it toasts the success of this week’s Man Booker Prize for Howard Jacobson’s novel The Finkler Question.
Bloomsbury said the win was helping the book gain increasing worldwide fame, while it is also seeing popularity soar for Eat, Love and Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert following the release of the film version featuring Julia Roberts.
The group outlined a strong second half line-up that it expects will help offset a 48% fall in profits during the first six months.
Next month’s relaunch of the Harry Potter series designed to tie in with the keenly-awaited movie of the final book is expected to drive sales, as is an “exceptionally” strong programme for its professional titles amid a raft of Government changes to tax rules.
Bloomsbury said: “Overall, business is performing well for the group.”
However, it stressed the full-year result was “still dependent on the level of consumer and business-to-business demand between now and the end of the financial year”.
The group reported a sharp fall in interim pre-tax profits to £949,000 against £1.8 million a year earlier after a tough second quarter, dominated by uncertainties surrounding the general election and emergency Budget.
Analysts at Numis Securities believe the final six months will counteract the drop, forecasting a 4% rise in annual pre-tax profits to £8 million.
They also put faith in Bloomsbury’s expansion plans, with the book publishers looking to take advantage of the rise in popularity of e-books, as well as further acquisitions in strategically important areas.
Numis analysts said: “We believe that the group is both well positioned to benefit from structural change in digital publishing and, in the short-term, an uplift in sales from film releases of Bloomsbury titles.”
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Michael Serbinis likes to think of himself as a David, but on this recent evening he looks more like a Steve — Steve Jobs to be exact.
It’s a rainy night in Toronto and about two dozen members of the city’s book publishing companies and media circles have gathered in a basement theatre at a swanky Yorkville hotel to hear from Mr. Serbinis, chief executive of Canada’s e-publishing startup, Kobo Inc.
As he stands at the front of the darkened theatre clutching a can of Red Bull, Mr. Serbinis is trying to do his best impression of the Apple Inc. CEO. There’s even an Applelike air of secrecy to the event, with everyone in attendance being asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement on the way down in the elevator.
In typical Steve Jobs fashion, at a methodical pace he walks the audience through a series of eye-popping stats to illustrate Kobo’s growth over its nine-month history before taking a few subtle digs at his competitors.
Finally, he tops it all off with the unveiling of a new product: Kobo’s new wireless eReader, the latest addition to the company’s arsenal in the battle for control over the exploding market for electronic books.
“I know what you’re thinking, ‘Now I have to sign an NDA to go to a Kobo event? What is this, Fight Club?’ ” he says with a laugh. “Well, when you’re David and you’re fighting Goliath, every day feels like Fight Club.”
The Goliaths of which Mr. Serbinis speaks are indeed the titans of the technology industry and present a formidable challenge for the young company. Kobo’s eReaders and digital bookstore compete with Amazon.comInc.’s Kindle reader, digital offerings from Google Inc. and, of course, the iPad and iBookstore operated by Apple. But so far, Kobo is holding its own. Since launching in December, Kobo has attracted more than a million users to its service. Each week, its applications, which run across multiple smartphones, on book publisher websites and various e-readers and tablets, are accessed from more than 200 countries. There are now more than 2.2 million digital books available in the Kobo store. Its eReaders are sold in bookstores across North America and around the world.
When the company, which is privately run and does not publish financial details, launched it had just 20 employees; by the end of this year, Kobo’s head count will be close to 200, said Mr. Serbinis, who allows that net revenue is growing at between 300% and 500% per quarter.
What separates Kobo, whose parent company, Indigo Books & Music Inc., owns 60% of the Toronto startup, from its competitors is its singular focus on digital books and digital books alone, Mr. Serbinis said in an interview.
Unlike Amazon, the company doesn’t sell physical products — except its eReaders — and its devices aren’t multi-purpose machines such as Apple iPads.
“We’re the only pure play that’s in this game and from the very beginning we’ve focused on being global, being open and being the best partner for all the device manufacturers for booksellers,” he said. “Those three things combined with the fact that the market has just exploded, that’s a recipe for massive growth and scale.”
Digital books aren’t a new business, but the increasingly popularity of smartphones, tablet devices and Web-enabled e-readers such as Sony Corp.’s Reader — all of which support Kobo’s e-book store– is beginning to prompt book lovers to think about going paperless.
Sales of electronic books are rising at such a breakneck pace that they’re beginning to take a significant bite out of traditional and self publishing revenues. Mr. Serbinis said that when the company launched, it
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Beginning in the first quarter of 2011, Xerox will move into print-on-demand book publishing in a bigger way through an expanded relationship with On Demand Books, creator of the Espresso Book Machine (EBM), which has been described as an ‘ATM’ for books, allowing readers to wait for books they buy to be printed in a bookstore thereby transforming how books will be bought in the future.
The EBM channel is currently available to indepedent authors through Schiel & Denver Book Publishers. Learn more about the Espresso Book Machine (includes video footage):
http://www.schieldenver.com/learning-center/publishing-tutorials/espresso-book-machine.html
While the Xerox 4112 will continue to serve as printer for the EBM, the Fortune 500 company will now market, sell, lease, and service the rechristened machine, co-branded as the Espresso Book Machine, a Xerox Solution. The “solution” includes both hardware and On Demand’s EspressNet software that connects to the machine and enables it to print a library-quality paperback book at point of sale in a few minutes.
With its 4,000-person sales force, Xerox could significantly extend On Demand’s reach and its vision of making any book ever written available as a printed book for consumers. “Certainly they are going to take us to the next level,” said On Demand CEO Dane Neller, who is looking to Xerox to help On Demand overcome the chicken-and-egg problem faced by many startups.
Currently there are close to 50 EBMs in bookstores and libraries worldwide. McNally Jackson in New York City and Flintbridge Bookstore & Coffeehouse in La Cañada Flintbridge, Calif., are among the bookstores slated to add machines later this year. Schiel and Denver UK Book Publishers also offer access to the technology for authors.
“For independent bookstores, the EBM is an extraordinary technology,” said Jeff Mayersohn, owner of Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass. “And now the added value Xerox brings will help us secure new business while satisfying book enthusiasts instantly.”
In other news, On Demand is in the midst of readying a new edition, version 2.2. The fundamental self-publishing a book footprint will remain the same as that of its predecessor. But rather than being raised up, the printer will sit on the floor next to the machine.
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