What are E-Books really like?

I did say in the introduction to this blog that I was going to stay away from lofty issues such as the future of retailing, deep discounts and the issue of e-books, in favour of giving a less hyperbolic view from an editor’s desk of what publishing is really like.  That is still my mantra, but I am going to talk about e-books for a moment, and I will explain exactly why.

This week at work, we were each given a Sony PRS-505 to play with (or Sony Reader to give it it’s more user-friendly name).  The reason I have stayed clear of any e-book discussion up until now is precisely because, until this week, I wouldn’t have had anything meaningful to say.  It makes me laugh people have been getting very hot under the collar for a very long time about e-books before any technology has been launched to actually read the damn things.  If I had a pound for everytime someone has written a Death of the Book? article, I’d probably be considering a donation to the Tory party.

Once you start playing around with the Reader, you very quickly realise that this is a complimentary piece of kit, and not something that will replace the traditional book.  As someone very astutely pointed out not so long ago, the printed book is a great piece of technology.  It’s cheap, portable, highly user-friendly and has intellectual and cultural value way beyond its binding or format.  No one is going to let you into their house and invite you to browse their e-book library.

So, what is my experience so far of the Sony Reader?  It’s good, but it has distinct limitations.  What I like about it is that it’s light, portable, durable (so far), I can load manuscripts onto it so I don’t have to cart them around in my school-bag and frankly gives me the feeling of a smug early-adopter when I get it out on the train or in a meeting to show someone.  What I dislike about it is that it’s slow to use, lacks features that improve upon the printed book experience such as editing function or back-light, and for some strange reason orders the authors in your e-library by their first name – bizzare!

The six million dollar question is will e-books replace print?  Absolutely not.  You heard it here first, folks.  Many people have compared the advent of e-books to the development of the music CD and have consequently doom-mongered about the future of the publishing industry in general.  For me, the postulation is flawed.  The original format of music, the vinyl record, was great, but could be improved on.  Once music had made the leap from vinyl to CD, it was inevitable that an even better technology, in this case, MP3 files, would follow.  The other factor to bear in mind is that the format in which music is delivered also reflects the changing patterns of behaviour in consumer consumption.  I was quite shocked recently when I read a quote from a 14 year old who said ‘they couldn’t imagine listening to a whole album.’  But that’s the mindset of the next generation.  They have grown up with technology and sharing, slicing and dicing, and customization are part of their DNA.  Some publishing genres will face tougher challenges in adapting to the rise of new technologies than others.  For example, reference publishing can easily be converted effectively to digital opportunities.  Why buy a whole book on DIY when you just want the chapter on how to unblock the sink?  As far as I know, no-one, child of the digital revolution or not, wants to only read the last chapter of a crime thriller. For the business market, iRex are launching an A4 Reader with a 10.2in screen, ideally suited to displaying tables, spreadsheets and more complex business and financial information, with editing and text marking facilities.  Clearly there is more to come from the e-book.

E-books and e-Readers have their place, but it won’t be at the top of the publishing tree now or in the next ten years.  Before writing anything on e-books and e-readers I was determined to get hold of one and play with it, and avoid adopting a protectionist viewpoint just because I still want to work with print.  Now I’ve done that, I am firmly of the view that e-books for the most part will be a complimentary, not replacement format for the print book. The balance will change certainly, but there is life in the old book yet.

Merry Xmas everyone!!

This is my final post of the year.  Just to say, thanks to everyone who has seen, read and commented on my blog.  It’s been quite a year for all of us.  I look forward to 2009 and trust that there is some as yet unforseen great leadership around the corner which will take us out of the current economic mess and lead us to the promised land of honesty, stability and moral certainty.  (Btw, I’m not holding my breath).  I have loved every minute of my first year at Headline, and have been fortunate enough to hear from and say hello to, in passing, some of the finest minds and exemplars of how we should conduct ourselves, that are alive today:  Richard Branson, Malcolm Gladwell, Sebastian Coe, Bob Geldof to name but a few.

I wish you every happiness over Christmas and the New Year and look forward to starting afresh in Jan 09.

John x

Richard Reeves on the power of thinking

In my notes on what an editor needs in their toolbag to be successful, I made reference to the importance of thinking, as opposed to ‘just doing’.  In his final article for leading business magazine Management Today, author of the forthcoming Business Plus book 80 Minute MBA and new Director of think-tank Demos, Richard Reeves discusses the importance of thinking.  Richard underlines the importance of thinking that is allied to action, and of course he’s right; thinking without action is just an ineffective means of passing the day, and dangerously close to ‘blue-skying it’. We all know how painful that can be.

Read the article here at:  http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/search/article/849701/the-power-cogitation/

And for some diversion, watch this from Demos TV in the rise of the ‘video republic’:

I do like wednesdays. An audience with Bob Geldof.

Yesterday was another good day at the office for me, or out of it, to be more precise.  I went to hear Bob Geldof speak at the Indig02.  Sir Bob easily lived up to every expectation I had.  Despite having only got off a flight from New York 30 minutes previously, he was utterly engaging, erudite, witty, serious, funny and an inspiration to all of us sitting on our backsides listening to how a man got off his and changed the world.  If a list were drawn up, as it frequently is, of the most significant people of the modern age, Bob Geldof would be in there. among some illustrious company.

The thrust of Geldof’s speech was about commitment.  He memorably described the current economic crunch as ‘the great failure of leadership’.  I won’t spoil the rest, but if you get a chance, go and see him.  Sir Bob is easily the best speaker I’ve ever heard. I saw him courtesy of London Business Forum. I was lucky enough to meet him afterwards and got him to sign his autobiography. In fact, I enjoyed good company, a glass of wine and a great book.  What publisher could ask for more?

Book of the Month October 2008

I’m still reading this one.  I can’t say it’s a particularly light or easy read, but it is full of great insights into the new world of collaboration, co-creation and community.  One of the best chapters introduces the idea of Pro-sumers – that is, consumers who are also producers.  Lego were a company operating along the old-fashioned way of doing business, whereby they would come up with a product and send it out into the market to see how it fared.  A group of techno nerds got hold of one of Lego’s motorized bits of kits, took it apart and started modifying it for their own amusement.  At first Lego were horrified and tried to stop them, but then someone realised that actually you can’t buy this kind of consumer interaction, and Lego quickly moved to a more open, collaborative stance with this unlikely focus group.

If you are in business, you have got to get your head around the Facebook generation, or you are in serious trouble.  I’m planning to do a book in this area, so watch this space!

Book of the Month September 08

 First published in 2001, this is a book that will stand the test of time.  Serendipitous really, since the authors previous book was called Built to Last.  One of my authors recently described this book as one which ‘uses data, lots of it, and uses it really well.’  That’s an accurate description of what to expect.  This is a heavyweight book which had a research team of 18 people behind it, putting in an estimated 15,000 hours work between them.  Despite that, it is still pretty accessible because it gets the blend right between hard fact-crunching and illuminating stories.  One of the really interesting things the author and his team did when putting this book together is they let the data lead them to the facts, rather than allow a point of view to consider only certain detail.  Given that many business books start with an opinion and work backwards, this is a refreshing change.  As far as stories go, one of my personal favourites centres on Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest ranking US military officer in the infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ POW camp, where he was prisoner from 1965 to 1973. During that time, Stockdale was tortured over twenty times, and once beat himself with a stool and disfigured himself with a razor so he could not be used as a ‘well-treated prisoner’ in a propaganda exercise.  Jim Collins eventually met with Stockdale, and identified the reason for his survival as the combination of stocial acceptance of the brutal facts of reality, balanced against an unwavering faith in the endgame and a commitment to prevail. Hence the birth of the Stockdale Paradox.

The rasion d’etre for the book is apparently a conversation between the author Jim Collins and the MD of the San Francisco office of McKinsey & Company, Bill Meehan.  Bill pointed out to Jim Collins, not without a certain amount of exaggeration, that Jim’s previous book Built to Last was ‘useless’ because although it identified great companies and their characteristics, it didn’t offer any guidance to companies who were ‘good’, but not yet ‘great’.  And so, Good to Great was born.

Good to Great  is essentially a leadership book, which seeks to understand the role of great leadership in taking businesses to sustained success.  Many of the findings are counter-intuitive and surprising.  I won’t spoil it any more, but urge you to read it for yourself, and discover exactly what it means to be a ‘Level 5 Leader.’

Jag pratar inte Svenska. Do you?

If you do, you may enjoy this article I was asked to contribute to for Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden’s national daily newspaper.  Basically the article explores the current taste for books that combine business thinking with popular psychology and science (I think!).

http://www.svd.se/kulturnoje/nyheter/artikel_1622429.svd

Many thanks to the lovely Charlotta Lindell for asking me to share my thoughts.

ha en bra dag!

Book of the Month August 08

 Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.  I can’t praise this book highly enough.  This is business publishing at its very best.  It is written by Mark McCormack, once dubbed ‘the most powerful man in sport’, who founded the sports management company IMG.  You don’t have to be even vaguely interested in business, or MBAs, or business school to get something from this book.  Its an instruction manual to life as much as it is a guide to good business.

Mark sadly died in 2003, but this book, originally written in the early 1980s, will stand the test of time.  Every page contains a gem of advice, and its written in a down-to-earth, conversational style that is a rare treat.  Mark was clearly a very smart, well-connected and highly regarded man, but the tone manages to be authoritative and clear-sighted without ever being condescending. IMG started out representing legendary golfers such as Arnold Palmer and Gary Player and there are lots of great stories from that era.  One of my favourite stories involves the flamboyant golfer, Doug Sanders.  Doug was represented by IMG and on one occassion played a golf tournament up in Canada, making all the arrangements himself.  IMG would have been none the wiser had he not said anything, but a week after the match, a plain envelope arrived at the IMG office containing their commission – no letter, no explanation; just the cash.  Mark McCormack contrasts this with what he calls the ‘insincerity’ and ‘degree of phoniness’ he remembers from a chance encounter with President Nixon.  His point is about really knowing people, and trusting and believing in them.

Powerful stuff indeed.

Are You A Publisher or a Brand Manager?

 One of the really interesting things that has happened in publishing in recent years is how publishers have moved from being purely the purveyors of content to becoming managers of brands – the ‘brand’ more being either a celebrity author, media programme, consumer label or service (think Big Brother housemates, Michael Palin’s travel series or Hip Hotels). In the good old days, an editor would get a reassuring wad of proposals hit their in-tray on a Monday morning, and spend the rest of the week sifting out the wheat from the chaff. Not any more. Proposals are fast becoming a thing of the past, because more often than not the brand has no content to speak of, but represents a ‘publishing opportunity’. I’ve lost count of the number of times this year I’ve been asked to write a proposal for a brand. Increasingly, the publisher is expected to buy into the brand profile, and do most of the initial donkey work themselves – determining the brand appeal, its depth, its longevity etc. That’s not a gripe by the way. It’s just reflective of the fact that the so-called ‘authors’ are increasingly not the originators of the content. Obviously there are limits to just how far you can go with that. Katie Price aka Jordan allegedly asked J.K. Rowling at an Awards ceremony recently why she didn’t have someone write her books for her.  Katie has three autobiographies to her name, her Perfect Ponies series, as well as her alter-ego Angel Summer novels.  All have done fantastically well, although Katie still has some way to go to top J.K’s reputed 400 million worldwide sales of Harry Potter books.  There’s clearly still a market for both approaches, and yet ‘brand creep’ is definitely on the rise.

So what does this mean for editors and publishing houses?  If you are publishing a brand, you clearly need to know as much about that brand as possible – who it appeals to, how long it will last, and will its followers convert into book buyers.  Of course, some of these brands are fragile, having gained overnight popularity and can lose all goodwill just as quickly.  Witness, what happened to Jade Goody.  One minute she is ‘Britain’s favourite girl-next-door’.  The next minute her autobiography follow-up has been dropped by her publisher like the proverbial hot potato.  So, as much as publishers would probably like to think their cash buys them an ownership of the brand, editors and publicists are eyeing the newspapers nervously each day, hoping that their particular brand hasn’t committed a monumental faux pas on live television and destroyed its fanbase.

So, what are publishers to do?  One of the most important things is to show some caution, and separate hyperbole from fact.  Celebrity brands in particular can generate a media storm like no other, and the public is whipped up into a state of fervour that creates a feeding frenzy when a book is touted.  But, consumer taste is fickle and notoriously hard to second guess.  So, as Rudyard Kipling would say, while all about you are losing their heads, you need to keep yours.  If the brand has genuine appeal rather than just passing curiosity, it is obviously a much more attractive proposition to a publisher.  Secondly, a celebrity brand garner colossal attention through notoriety rather than genuine affection, yet it is usually the latter than will stand the all important vissisitudes of consumer taste.  It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Russell Brand (no pun intended) for example, probably holds more appeal to bookbuyers than Chantelle Houghton.  Although its an over-simplification to say ‘talent will out’, its not a dictat that should be altogether forgotten.

Lionel Shriver agrees with me!

I must have been on to something.  Writing in the Daily Mail Femail section today, Lionel Shriver sees the same juxtaposition between the publishing fortunes of Katie Price and J.K. Rowling (albeit from a slightly more acerbic viewpoint)…See my post ‘Are You A Publisher or a Brand Manager?’

Read this for more:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1052243/How-did-glamour-model-Jordan-best-selling-author-doesnt-write.html