I mention/rip-off these books here and in my report not just to jump on a bandwagon (shameless though I may be) but also because they mark an important and relevant milestone: Larsson is the first author to sell one million Kindle e-books (this includes all the books of the trilogy, not a single title, a milestone that has yet to be reached). Curiously, the first author to sell one million e-books in general (that is, in all formats) is James Patterson. Wha?

I suspect Larsson will remain silent on the issue (though one never knows), but the distinction illustrates one of the perennial problems that has plagued the e-book market: a multitude of formats and devices to choose from. But then, is that even a problem anymore? Conducting my unscaleable, unscientific, and probably unreliable “airplane” survey (that is, noticing how many people on airplanes or trains have an e-book reader of some kind) over the past several months has found Kindles, Sonys, Nooks, and iPads in roughly equal numbers.

One complaint that has been leveled at dedicated e-book readers like the Kindle is that is “only does one thing.” A curious remark; most of the things in our lives only do one thing. After all, no one complains that their steam iron doesn’t play music (although, who knows, Apple may be coming out with an iRon one of these days), or that their refrigerator doesn’t cook a roast. My blender doesn’t do an awful lot with video. (Some married folks I know would complain that their spouse only does one thing, but that’s a whole other issue.) And, in fact, a printed book really only does one thing. (Well, two, if you count the fact that a printed book can be used to swat insects; I just finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest and I think she kicked it into my basement, but I digress…) So I am not entirely convinced that the “single-use” aspect of e-book readers is that big a deal, at least for a lot of people, many of whom seem very happy with their devices.

In the report, I run down the latest hardware and software readers, a Sisyphean task not unlike the proverbial painting of the Golden Gate Bridge (is there a proverb about that?).

So, by mid-2010, we had Kindles, Sony Readers, Nooks, myriad mobile phone-based e-readers…

And then there’s Maude.

That is, the Apple iPad, which deserves a report all to itself (and will…), but is included in a special section of this e-book report. What is it, why is it important, and why is it a “game-changer”—and what game are we playing anyway?

I also took a unique approach to detailing the advantages and disadvantages of e-books vs. printed (or p-) books. In the original version of this report (which was published in May 2009, which may as well have been during the Pleistocene Epoch when it comes to e-book developments), I had a bunch of boring bulleted lists and tables. In the update, I framed it as a lively Platonic dialogue (well, not really; maybe if Plato were reincarnated as Christopher Moore), in which two characters debate the merits of print vs. electronic content. (This will sound eerily familiar to some people.)

For content creators, the report also includes a lengthy Appendix in which I actually try to make real actual e-books from two real actual printed books (my and Dr. Joe’s Disrupting the Future, and a self-published novel I wrote some years ago called Virus!), trying to export my original InDesign files to both Kindle and EPUB formats (the latter of which is required for many hardware and software e-book readers, most importantly the Apple iBook reader on the iPad). Is it easy? Is it a pain in the tuchus? How seamless is it? What additional software do you need? Is it for the faint of heart? How much XML do you need to know? One thing you quickly learn: when it comes to e-books, a “page” is a nebulous concept, unlike print or even the Internet. It does throw a spanner into many things we know about book design. And don’t talk to me about footnotes! Oy!

(A shout-out and thanks to my Kindle and iPad “beta testers” Cary Sherburne, Dave Zwang, and Jim Olsen!)

The report also includes the latest data on e-book sales, and other quantitative and qualitative goodies. And you don’t even have to speak Swedish to read it. Could this be the first WhatTheyThink report to sell one million copies? Ah, if only wishing made it so.

The site’s traffic has soared in recent days and its arrival has lit up the blogosphere. Gawker tried a transcript from one of the leaked Mel Gibson phone calls. The suggested author: Margaret Atwood.

The New Yorker found that an invitation to a birthday party was James Joycean. Many others were aghast to discover they wrote similarly to “The Da Vinci Code” scribe Dan Brown.

A terrifying prospect, to be sure.

But, I figured, I’m game for anything. So I tried it. According to I Write Like, Disrupting the Future: Uncommon Wisdom for Navigating Print’s Challenging Marketplace, which I wrote with Dr. Joe, is reminiscent of Isaac Asimov. Seems appropriate; the first book I read by Asimov when I was a kid was The Collapsing Universe, so there is a connection… Curiously, our previous collaboration, Renewing the Printing Industry, was likened to William Gibson. So we’re making progress.

My last Business Conditions Report for WhatTheyThink was likened to David Foster Wallace, so I am changing the title of the forthcoming Business Conditions Report to Infinite Jest II: Electric Boogaloo. The actual survey for the next Business Conditions Report was compared to Arthur C. Clarke. So forget Infinite Jest II; I think I’ll call the next report 2010: Quarter Two. My PrintCEO Blog post from Ipex? Also David Foster Wallace. It has been remarked that I have curious hair…

What about my fiction? Well, Virus!, a silly science-fiction comedy novel I self-published a few years ago (and which was heavily inspired by Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) was actually likened by I Write Like to Douglas Adams. And an as-yet unpublished novel called It Might Have Been, about a magazine publishing company’s employees during the late-90s dot-com boom, was likened to Charles Dickens. Methinks I like this I Write Like site. Whether being flattered that some strange computer algorithm compared me to my literary heroes is sad or not remains to be seen, but there is always the interpretation that my prose is terribly derivative of my influences.

What about the other WhatTheyThinkers?

Dr. Joe’s last Monday with Dr. Joe was also compared to Arthur C. Clarke. I think I see a pattern emerging.

Andy Tribute’s recent report from Shanghai also channeled the be-mutton-chopped one: I Write Like says he writes like Isaac Asimov.

Howie Fenton’s PrintCEO Blog post about cannibalizing offset also was likened to David Foster Wallace.

Sorry, Cary and Barb: both Cary Sherburne’s story about Agfa acquiring Pitman and Barb Pellow’s story about market positioning in a new media world were both likened to Dan Brown. Just remember: it’s only a Web site.

I entered Margie Dana’s latest Print Tip; she also writes like David Foster Wallace. As does Patrick Henry. And Adam Dewitz. Either I Write Like has a pretty limited database or Wallace was a frustrated printing industry writer and analyst, who had to settle for being “one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years” (LA Times). Perhaps that’s why he killed himself.

At any rate, you get the idea. The idea behind I Write Like is apparently to garner subscriptions to a newsletter to help people develop their writing skills, and the I Write Like site is a nice little hook for doing so. Whether aspiring authors can use its results in query letters to agents or publishers remains to be seen.

Oh, and for the record, this blog post?

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I Write Like sucks.

The world of publishing is changing faster than publishers can even imagine, and control is slipping away from them rapidly.  Where once the big publishers considered themselves the arbiters of quality for the written word and could control what hit the bookstore shelves, technology is rapidly changing that model.  Now libraries are jumping into the fray.  A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (online!) reports that “a group of libraries led by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library, are joining forces to create a one-stop website for checking out e-books, including access to more than a million scanned public domain books and a catalog of thousands of contemporary e-book titles available at many public libraries…Software renders the books inaccessible once the loan period ends.”

The digital project manager at the Boston Public Library, Thomas Blake, adds, “Instead of sitting back and waiting for the people to come back into the library, we want to meet our users where they’re living.”  Brewster Kahle, the founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, points out, “We’re just trying to do what libraries have always done.”

This is a major shift for the book publishing industry.  There are still many issues to be resolved (likely in the courts), including what can–and can’t–be digitized for inclusion in these types of programs.  But this is certainly a groundbreaking development.  Along with Google’s scanning efforts, this initiative willface some legal challenges, but in the end, both programs will mean more choice for readers–including both what is available and how those books can be accessed.

I hope book publishers are paying attention and considering strategies that offer the ebook options consumers are seeking.  Moves like Simon & Schuster’s announcement a few months ago that the company would delay ebook publication for four months after hardcover release of many of its top titles is the kind of policy that demonstrates how out of touch some publishers are as they struggle to preserve “business as usual” rather than adapting to the new market realities.

LP Records: It’s called denial. It’s tough to deal with at first.

Like Jonathan Swift’s 1704 satire, “The Battle of the Books,” J.A. Konrath’s equally barbed blog post, “Print is Eternal,” lets media speak bluntly for themselves. Read the rest of it here. Caution: some of the language is salty, and Konrath’s point of view is as acerbic as Swift’s. Konrath is an author of police thrillers and also of The Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, a handbook for writers.

Publishers have relatively recently adopted on demand printing for part of the book lifecycle, but these initiatives have largely  involved centralized printing from sources such as Lulu or Lightning Source, with book printed and shipped to order, or printed to limited inventories for distribution.  While this has made the book supply chain more efficient, the new Espresso configuration, which requires an installed footprint of about 9′ x 12′, brings another radical change to book publishers who are also struggling with how best to handle ebooks.

Dane Neller, CEO of On Demand Books, indicates that there will be nearly 30 systems installed by the end of next quarter, with about a third in university book stores and the remainder in libraries and retail (independent and chain) locations.

“From a Xerox perspective,” said John Conley, Vice President, Publishing, “the whole publishing model is going through tremendous change, and we believe fully distributed solutions will become an integral part of the supply chain.”

Neller added, “This is a transforming time, and content is increasingly being offered centrally with distribution and consumption being offered on a massively decentralized basis, along with personalization and easier access to self-publishing. This solution offers a new channel, eliminates out-of-stock conditions, and can deliver more sales per square foot.”

University book stores have shown particular interest in this solution, according to Neller, because it is seen as a greener solution, and because more professors are writing their own text books largely due to the high cost of textbooks and a desire to have more focused course content.  On Demand Books also has a relationship with Ingram which gives the Espresso access to Ingram’s massive library of digital books for distributed printing.

“This will also be a boon to self-publishers,” added Neller.  ”Combining Espresso with tool sets from Author Solutions, for example, an author can come to a location to get their book published, printed and sold.  This is truly transformative.”

For book publishers, wide Espresso adoption means they need to again examine distribution strategies as they work to make the supply chain more efficient.  The other community this solution could hugely impact is book manufacturers, many of whom are already struggling with the need to produce much shorter runs economically and quickly. For many books, Espresso may cut them entirely out of the manufacturing loop.

Conley adds, “To the extent that ebooks continue to grow, and I think they will, it will continue to force publishers to look at new models of revenue and distribution of content as well as to grow the amount of digital inventory.  This is very positive.  I can see a day when I can access a book on my iPhone, review snippets and then decide to have the book printed on Espresso.  It reinforces the theme of producing books at point of sale and gives you the largest bookstore in the world sitting in a 9′ by 12′ space.”

According to Neller, Dr. Jason Epstein, cofounder of On Demand Books, believes this is a worldwide trend.  Neller says, “Outside of the U.S., the supply chain is often much less efficient, and this is a perfect soltuion.  We need to get out of the parochial mindset that a bookstore is five minutes away.  Maybe there is no bookstore, or it is far away, or the books are not available in your preferred language.  This makes books ubiquitously available.”

“This is a solution whose time has come,” concludes Conley. “Xerox is doing this now because the time is right.  It is a new opportunity for us, a little different than what we have done in the past.  But with the changes in content creation and distribution, this is an exciting and untapped opportunity.  You don’t find many of those these days.”

The Christian Science Monitor – now published only electronically, not printed on paper anymore – published an excellent and intriguing piece on e-books and e-readers (including the images above and more).

At Print CEO, the debate has been going on for quite some time; today we get another look. Here’s what the Monitor had to say:

The year 2010 is widely seen as a tipping point when the e-book, once an avant-garde oddity, begins to supplant the hidebound codex. This transition, sweeping in scale, recalls nothing less than the move from stone tablets and scrolls to the bound volume.

Already, the number of electronic texts is expanding exponentially, changing the very way we interact with the written word. Sony sells about 100,000 e-book titles through its online store; Barnes & Noble, a million; Amazon, 360,000. Book Search, an initiative headed by Google, has scanned more than 10 million texts since 2004. The Dostoevsky canon can now be searched the same way you search for the nearest Chinese restaurant.

Here are just a few of the posts that have appeared on PrintCEO in the last year; read what our authors (and readers) have to say:

Delay eBooks by four months? What are they thinking?

Developments in the eReader Market

Students at Princeton Pilot Kindle in the Classroom

How Green Is My Media?

Fired Up by the Kindle

Being Content with Content

This has to be one of the most ridiculous corporate moves I have seen in a while, and there have been many (remember the corporate jet hoo-ha in the auto industry congressional hearings? Well, maybe this isn’t quite that bad … but still.).

The publishing industry took forever to grasp the concept of print on demand as part of the book life cycle, but now, due to the efforts of companies such as Lightning Source and others, publishers are realizing the value of print on demand and understanding where it fits in the book life cycle. In the conventional book publishing process, there is 40% waste in the supply chain. That is untenable in today’s world. Print on demand certainly helps eliminate a great deal of that waste. There is NO waste in the ebook cycle. Publishers seem to be looking at the top line, not the bottom line. Once an ebook is set up for publication, each additional copy sold carries little overhead. There is no shipping, no cost of returns, no remaindering. Sure, on the surface, selling a book for $9.99 versus the hardcopy price of $27.95 or more seems like a dramatic drop, but let’s get a grip here. With 40% waste in the conventional supply chain, you have already taken more than $11 off of the top line if you look at the supply chain holistically. Add to that the cost of printing and shipping the books, and $9.99 for an ebook sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

But more importantly, where is the consumer in this decision process? I love my Kindle and read just about everything on it now. There will always be others that prefer the printed version, whether hardcopy or paperback, and the printing industry thanks them. Me, I’m just going to preorder that next Jodi Picoult book for my Kindle and wait. The world will not end if I don’t read it right away. And what has Simon & Schuster accomplished? They have delayed cash flow and annoyed a lot of readers.

Another blogger pointed out that especially for nonfiction books, ebook first should be an option. It takes a MINIMUM of 6 months to get a printed book into the supply chain, and those rush publications carry a heavy cost. Six months is a long time in today’s world. There are many nonfiction books—and their readers—that could benefit from an ebook first strategy. For example, I was able to get Bob Garfield’s The Chaos Scenario for my Kindle more than a week prior to it being available in print. And he has been a genius with his marketing strategy. Take a look at the book’s site. My bet is he will sell a lot more paper books through this strategy than he would have using the conventional process, and this is an important book!

Simon & Schuster, I wish you luck with this strategy. It won’t work in the end and is likely to cost you a lot of good will. Be sure to include the readers in your market research. After all, without them, you have nothing. Perhaps an analysis of what happened in the music industry would be another good add to the research process. Oh, and don’t forget about newspapers and magazines. They didn’t pay enough attention to marketplace trends, and look where they are now. Seems to me that the whole sequencing strategy is old world and should be abandoned anyway. But that’s just me.

But though they acknowledged some benefits of the new technology, many students and faculty in the three courses said they found the Kindles disappointing and difficult to use.

One student interviewed in the article stated the Kindle does not work with his learning process:

“I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool. It’s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.”

“Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes and other marks representing the importance of certain passages — not to mention margin notes, where most of my paper ideas come from and interaction with the material occurs. All these things have been lost, and if not lost they’re too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the ‘features’ have been rendered useless.”

The article outlines the issues academia faces as more material is transitioned to digital formats: from annotations to citations to recollection of course material.

Read the entire article.

So I ran back inside the house to get a glass of water solely so I could return and do a spit-take. Okay: what was the carbon footprint of the phalanxes of door-to-door canvassers who drove their cars, quite probably rather long distances, to suburban neighborhoods like mine? Is the environmental impact of a print campaign worse than all their cars’ carbon emissions and other negative environmental effects (for example, ever wonder where the rubber that wears off tires goes? As “Ask Marilyn” pointed out many years ago, it settles as rubber dust on the sides of roads and elsewhere in the environment)? 

Granted, I don’t know for certain what these respective environmental impacts would be. But then I would imagine, neither did she. And there are far too many variables involved to quantify it with any reasonable accuracy. But it is by no means a clear case that print = evil. In fact, there is evidence that suggests that it may be quite the opposite.

I discuss this issue at length in a special WhatTheyThink report I recently completed called Printing Continues to Go Green: An Updated WhatTheyThink Primer on Environmental Sustainability in the Commercial Printing Industry.

I was reminded of this earlier today when Dr. Joe sent around a blog post from the New York Times that posed the question, “Are E-Readers Greener than Books?” citing the results of a Cleantech study that claimed that e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle have less of an environmental impact than printed books:

The report indicates that, on average, the carbon emitted in the lifecycle of a Kindle is fully offset after the first year of use. 

The report, authored by Emma Ritch, states: “Any additional years of use result in net carbon savings, equivalent to an average of 168 kg of CO2 per year (the emissions produced in the manufacture and distribution of 22.5 books).”

I did another spit-take about that.

First of all, we need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that pixels are somehow pure and and holy and that that paper is the spawn of Satan. (Although some mills do have a grade they refer to as Satan Uncoated, used for printing really evil documents like insurance forms and Ayn Rand novels.) Let’s be clear about this: electronic media do have a carbon cost. In fact, earlier this year, a Harvard physicist made headlines when he managed to calculate the “carbon cost” of a Google search. The BBC, among others, reported: 

US physicist Alex Wissner-Gross claims that a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g CO2. 

Furthermore:

The Harvard academic argues that these carbon emissions stem from the electricity used by the computer terminal and by the power consumed by the large data centres operated by Google around the world.

Oh, and a 2007 Gartner Group report warned about the “carbon cost” of all the servers that comprise companies’ intranets and the Internet in general:

The intense power requirements needed to run and cool data centers now account for almost a quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions from information and communications technology.

Then there are all the discarded computers, peripherals, cell phones, PDAs, pagers (does anyone still use a pager?), iPods, and so on. Says one of a brace of reports on the topic published in Scientific American in 2007:

Two years ago [2005], the U.S. generated an astonishing 2.6 million tons of electronic waste, which is 1.4% of the country’s total waste stream. Only 12.6% of this so-called “e-waste” was recycled. Worse, e-waste is growing faster than any other type of trash the EPA regulates, including medical and industrial waste. Unwanted cell phones, televisions, PCs (including desktops, laptops, portables and computer monitors), computer peripherals (including printers, scanners and fax machines), computer mouses and keyboards amounted to more than 1.9 million tons of solid municipal waste in the U.S.; of that, more than 1.5 million tons were dumped primarily into landfills, whereas the rest was recycled, the EPA says..

Still:

The EPA acknowledges that toxins in electronics are a problem, but says there’s no need to panic–at least, not yet. [S]ays Clare Lindsay, project director for the EPA Office of Solid Waste’s extended product responsibility program. “The presence of some toxic materials does not create a crisis. We believe that landfills can safely manage most of these waste products. Is it the best idea? No, the better way is recycling. But we haven’t seen any contamination of ground water associated with electronics discarded in landfills.”

Less than 20% of electronic devices discarded between 2003 and 2005 were sent to recycling facilities; the rest were dumped and mostly ended up in landfills. In 2005 about 61% (107,500 tons) of cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitors and televisions collected for recycling were exported outside the U.S. for remanufacture or refurbishment, the EPA says. That same year, about 24,000 tons of CRT glass—which is filled with lead to protect viewers from the x-rays produced by the monitor—was sold to markets abroad to replace damaged CRTs in various countries, and North American waste and recycling companies recovered about 10,000 tons of lead (meaning it was not placed into landfills or incinerated).

An added benefit of recycling electronic materials—be they copper, lead or silicon—is that we will not have to mine as much from the earth, says Bob Dellinger, the EPA Office of Solid Waste’s director of hazardous waste identification. “In essence, recycling stretches the raw materials we have available,” he says. A lot of energy is wasted in the mining and refining of raw materials. For example, only 4% of copper ore is usable, the rest is waste.

As for the e-reader business, yes, it’s becoming more and more common for print-based media to come under fire (fire which pollutes) for being environmentally irresponsible. I think it’s rather a silly argument; sure, paper cuts down trees, but trees are a renewable resource. It also bears mentioning here that one of the driving forces behind the various “Do Not Mail” bills coursing like a bolus through various state legislatures is the spurious claim that printed mail is environmentally unfriendly. See, for example, the ornery http://donotmail.org that claims that “It takes more than 100 million trees to produce the total volume of junk mail that arrives in American mailboxes each year.”

However, the paper and pulp industry plants 1.7 million new trees per day, which equals 620.5 million new trees planted per year, for a net gain of 520.5 million trees annually. That’s a lotta trees. So I’m not entirely certain what the problem is. And even vegetarians—and vegans—kill plants. I mean, who hears the cry of a carrot? (I do; is that weird?)

Let’s also not forget what is used in the manufacture of e-readers. And come to think of it, what is used in the manufacture of e-readers? And how many first/second-generation Kindles are going to end up in landfills in the next few years where, unlike paper, there is no possibility of their biodegrading (not that paper always does, but at least it’s physically possible). And depending on the batteries, they may also leach toxins into the groundwater. At least with printed books, all you really have to worry about is toxic prose (oh, but I kid Dan Brown).

I also love the line, from the New York Times post:

Cleantech’s measurement “takes into account the fossil fuels necessary to deliver to the bookstore and the fact that 25–36 percent of those books are then returned to the publisher, burning more fossil fuels.”

Well, you know, I used to work in book publishing, and I can safely say that nothing would please publishers more than reducing the number of books that are returned. In fact, what would eliminate bookstore returns? People buying more books!

My point is, all human activities have some kind of environmental impact. To single out print as being especially heinous is not fair, when an argument could be made that all media negatively affect the environment in one way or another. The decision to use any given medium is a function of a variety of decisions, and the transition from print to electronic media began long before environmental issues took center stage. For all the palaver about companies adopting digital media to be environmentally responsible, in most cases, it’s little more than an economic decision (i.e., e-media are cheap or free; print is expensive). There are also issues of timeliness, relevance, personal preference, and all the other usual suspects that drive media and communication trends.

But it’s the perception that print is environmentally irresponsible that hurts the most.

Here’s what The New York Times had to say about it:

TRAVELERS passing through London’s Heathrow Airport this week may be surprised to encounter, in the middle of its bustling Terminal 5, the writer Alain de Botton, author of popular books including “How Proust Can Change Your Life” and “The Art of Travel,” seated at a desk and tapping away at his laptop computer. His typing appears in real time on a screen behind him, and a placard explains — in what apparently is both a literary and aeronautic first — that Mr. de Botton is serving a one-week appointment as Heathrow’s “writer in residence.”

Perhaps the only way to encourage more readership is to bring writing to the people!

When I first turned on my Kindle, I was amazed at the screen quality.  It is about as close to paper as an electronic device can get.  Its “screen saver” uses a series of very high quality images (black & white) of classic authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Emily Bronte and even a Gutenberg Bible.  Books that are loaded on the system are easily accessible from the Kindle’s home page.  Although I did peruse the user’s guide, it is very intuitive to operate.  Some of the capabilities include reading aloud (choice of male or female voice and variable speed), searching within the book, and connection to resources such as Wikipedia.

I have now read several books on my Kindle and still find it delightful.  Although I cannot download books directly to my Kindle from my home (where Kindle’s Whispernet connection is not available), it is simple to purchase books and transfer them to my Kindle via my computer and Internet connection. In another interesting experience, I was walking through the Miami airport and saw a book by an author I sometimes read but don’t always think of, displayed in hardcover for a price of $27.99.  After perusing it and deciding I wanted to read it (probably only once), I continued to the gate, turned on my Kindle and purchased it in a matter of seconds for the standard $9.99 Kindle price.

eBook technology is still in its infancy and likely will be very different five years from now.  But even as a printed book addict and a proud member of the printing community, I have to admit that I am now officially a Kindle aficionado.   For publishers, eBooks are a win/win strategy since the costs associated with producing an eBook are nominal and there is no supply chain waste associated with them.  For book printers, however, this marks the beginning of a transition that is only going to accelerate as the world’s population shifts toward a majority of “digital natives”  and eBook technology continues to improve. Just like many successful commercial printers are adding marketing services that include production and distribution of electronic materials, book printers should be looking at how they can profitably get on the eBook bandwagon, adding this service for their publisher customers.

For more information about eBooks and ePublishing, check out the WhatTheyThink report, eBooks and ePublishing Primer, available in the WhatTheyThink store.  Whether you have a Kindle or not, I would love to hear from you on the subject.  What do you think?

So this is why I think it is so important that we move on from the textbooks. The textbooks are outdated, as far as I’m concerned and there’s no reason why our schools should have our students lug around these antiquated and heavy and expensive textbooks. California is the home of Silicon Valley. We are the world leader in technology and innovation, so we can do better than that.

That’s why I’m so excited about California’s Digital Textbook Initiative. Starting this fall with high school math and science, we will be the first state in the nation—the first state in the nation —to provide schools with a state-approved list of digital textbooks. Think about this. Traditional hardbound textbooks are adopted in six-year cycles, so as soon as they are printed, then the next six years you don’t get the latest information.

Schwarzenegger evidence of obsolescence is the states own red tape in approving new textbooks (a six year process) and cost of printed books over digital edition. And of course he played the green card:

And then, number two, I think it will help because you don’t have to cutdown as many trees. Think about that, how much paper is being used in those textbooks.

Using digital textbooks is greener if you don’t include the energy used by an electronic reading device and overlook the materials that go into make the reading device.

What I found most interesting in this announcement is no mention of what they mean by digital textbook. The only detail as to what the program will look like was Schwarzenegger’s comment:

Starting this fall with high school math and science, we will be the first state in the nation—the first state in the nation—to provide schools with a state-approved list of digital textbook.

There is no mention how these digital textbooks will be used or what type of electronic device will be required : a personal computer, an ebook device, iPod Touch, or something else? OR what kind of digital rights management will be in place. Can the books be printed on demand for students that prefer or need a printed edition?

Monday’s announcement was strictly a PR event, but with an initiative like this, the success is all in the details. I’m all for using technology in education and there is a lot of opportunity to use computing in the classroom. It will be interesting to watch how all the details are handled.

(Hat Tip to Michael Josefowicz)

The article states in part:  “Ingram Industries will consolidate its print and digital publishing services into one company called Ingram Content Group Inc., a move the company said would make it easier for customers in the publishing industry to find what they need. . . . The restructuring includes Ingram Book Group, Lightning Source Inc. and Ingram Digital. . .Ingram, which serves publishers struggling to define the future of the book in a digital world, has invested heavily in digital technology, including its print on-demand services and electronic book distribution.”

Other than the reference to making things “easier” for customers, the article does not discuss the reasoning behind Ingram’s move.  However, given the recent announcement by Bowker regarding the explosive increase in the number of on-demand and short-run books published in 2008, it seems fair to say that the boundary between “traditional” book publishing/distribution and “on-demand/short-run” book publishing/distribution may be blurring.

Editor’s Note: WhatTheyThink has published an interview with Lightning Source President David Taylor on the Ingram reorganization

 Alexander Besher‘s new sci-fi book…Manga Man…is available to read online for free. It’s not just a traditional print novel, but comes with a swathe of pictures, video and audio.

More unusually (at least by Western standards) is that the book is being published direct to mobile phones. Reading novels on mobiles hasn’t really taken off over here, but it’s all the rage in Japan, where the novels are sent in installments as text messages.

Gail Nickel-Kailing and John Perez, CEO, RPI

Yesterday in Part 1 of this interview, John Perez, CEO of RPI, filled us in on his path to becoming a “photo book printer” and talked about the manufacturing workflows needed to deliver millions of books on demand. Today John talks about how he is differentiating RPI from other digital printing companies offering print on demand.

Industry report after industry report tells us that printers of all sizes want to become photo book printers. Frank Romano and his students at RIT authored a report commissioned by Canon, The Insight Report: Digital Printing Directions, which indicated photo book printing is a key application for digital printers.

A visit to RPI opened my eyes to some of the most beautiful printing I’ve seen in a long time! I’ve been in plants that produce tremendous images; florals, jewelry, and scenery for catalogs and promotions.

This is the first time I’ve seen a flow of products – nearly each different from the next – where the contents were so varied and so personal. And where the layout template designers, the pressmen and women, and the bindery staff labor anonymously to deliver very special works of art.

WTT: According to Digital Printing Directions, everybody wants to print photo books. Students from RIT conducted interviews with 619 graphic arts companies around the world. Of the 160 in North America, 88.2% expect to derive revenue from photo books in the foreseeable future. How are you differentiating RPI from the “rest of the pack?”

JP: Yes, everyone wants to get into photo books; after all it’s the fastest growing segment in the market. This year we will produce 1.3 million photo books in our factory.

Towela Nyirenda, Bindery

There are number of barriers to entry; making books is a lot different than making commercial print products. RPI had a history of nearly 30 years in the print world; even with that background we were challenged early on to make books to a certain standard.

It’s a different process and technology; for example, there are issues of inks, color management, substrates, binding methods, gluing, and laminating. All of these things have to be well understood and managed, and you have to be able to control the manufacturing process so that you get the same result every single time.

Anybody can make a great product in a quantity of one if you focus all your energies on it. But make a million – and make them well – and it’s a whole different issue. I’m not saying it’s not something anybody with enough time or money can’t master, but we’ve been doing it now for nine years.

The manufacturing process is radically different from the standard print process. You get a request for 3000 of the same book; you quote the job, make your bid, schedule the work on the presses, get the materials, and it’ll be done next Tuesday. That is classic flow “print-ship” job manufacturing.

We don’t know from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, what products are going to flow in over the Internet and our manufacturing processes and systems are tuned to optimize our performance, given that reality.

Trang Nguyen and Trieu Nguyen, Materials Matching

Early on we decided that we don’t have customers, we have partners and we become part of their value chain. It’s up to us to interact, integrate and operate with each of our partners as though we were just simply an extension of their company. We just happen to be here in Seattle.

As a result, we’re engaged at a much more intimate level with each of our partners, we’re involved with their organizations at all levels. My CTO has a relationship with their CTO. My ops guy has a relationship with their ops guy. My product marketing person has a relationship with their product marketing person. We integrate at an organizational level with each one and we have a constant dialogue going on with them. We tell them about our product roadmaps in terms of what our capabilities are, and we tie into their product roadmap.

And as a manufacturer and as a participant in the market, we are looking at what sort of products need to be brought to market. Who can we partner with to begin making a business in these new or existing market segments?

WTT: Putting on your futurist’s hat, where do you see printing and social media going? Taking away print, adding print? Where is it all going?

JP: The first thing is that I fear for the current of online photo printing sites. The social networking sites like Facebook and Flikr all host a variety of digital media. People would rather spend their time on those sites and have access to things they want to do that might be photo-related, rather than going to Shutterfly.

Faile Kula, Bindery

We think that the social sites – because people are spending more time on them – will take traffic away from specialized photo sites. It’s not to say that Shutterfly or Kodak will go away. However, they’ve been on a big growth trajectory and that may not continue.

That’s why we are looking at the affinity market. People self-select; “I’m a NASCAR dad. I’d like to have a photo book with a NASCAR racecar branded on it.” Something interesting about NASCAR that I recently found out is that most of the NASCAR-related memorabilia is bought by women.

We think social marketing is a very fertile market for people to begin exploring. For example, I don’t think anyone has really cracked Facebook. Just because Facebook provides an application hosting environment, people are taking whatever applications they currently and putting them in there.

Think about it; who is the Facebook audience? It is the 17 to 29 age group. Are those people really into memory books? They’re into what we call “snack food” products. I was recently at Zazzle; they are entirely youth-oriented.

And yet, they were talking about a coffee table book that they got. A coffee table book for kids?!? It was graffiti. It was great!

Gail Nickel-Kailing and John Perez

That is the Facebook market; who in the current space is bringing out products for the people who are actually on the site?

We are; and it’s a very exciting place to be.

WTT: Thanks, John, for the tour and the discussion. You’ve got an amazing operation here; both the variety of products you produce and the dedication of your staff.

When asked, “Where do you expect to derive revenue in digital printing?” more than 88% of the respondents in North America said “photo books.”

John Perez, CEO, RPI

Today John Perez, CEO of RPI, fills us in on his path to becoming a “photo book printer” and talks about the manufacturing workflow needed to deliver millions of books on demand. Tomorrow, in Part 2, John will talk about how he is differentiating RPI from other digital printing companies offering print on demand.

While nearly every digital printer is looking to photo books for revenue, it’s not an easy business to be in. RPI, located near Seattle’s SeaTac airport, has perfected the process and will make more than $28 million this year selling 1.3 million photo books and more than 1 million units of stationery and greeting cards.

A visit to RPI opened my eyes to some of the most beautiful printing I’ve seen in a long time! I’ve been in plants that produce tremendous images; florals, jewelry, and scenery for catalogs and promotions.

This is the first time I’ve seen a flow of products – nearly each different from the next – where the contents were so varied and so personal. And where the layout template designers, the pressmen and women, and the bindery staff labor anonymously to deliver very special works of art.

WTT: Your background is software and you’ve been involved in a number of software startups here in Seattle. What made you decide to make a move into the printing industry? There is still the perception that printing is NOT a high tech industry.

JP: It’s true; you can still go into print shops and see an old world kind of craftsmanship. We have a digital printing partner that is also in the bookbinding business, actually the book repair business. They take old textbooks with worn out bindings and rebuild them.

There you see the craftsmanship that you would expect in a print shop that makes books. There’s even an old fellow with a white beard sitting in a corner who repairs expensive antique books. It looks like things haven’t changed in 150 years.

And yes, I had that picture of printing in my mind when I came here.

But in the world of digital printing, everything’s computerized and automated from the time that Suzy Q in Oshkosh clicks her mouse on the SnapFish or Blurb website to order her photo book, until the last page of the book block rolls off the press, no human hand touches it. We have the ability to interface in real time with our partners’ websites so we can transfer orders, preflight, and prep the files automatically, and send them directly to our press queue.

Kenny Jordan, Saba Ali, and Adrian McAdory

In our shop, our workflow is built on a proprietary publishing platform, PrintFlo, which we developed internally. There are about 14 steps in the manufacturing process and computers monitor every step.
Every element of every book is barcoded and we track each product through each step of the process to ensure that the item is manufactured correctly and to our quality requirements.

In the end, the finished package has its own barcode and the shipping label is automatically generated; we’re done.

We couldn’t do our business without such a high degree of automation and we’ve dedicated resources to make that happen. Ten percent of our staff are software/hardware people that are managing day to day operations and constantly enhancing our platform. To move to an even higher degree of automation we’re talking with a European company about building a robotic factory.

WTT: There is another company that we could describe as “a leader in automated, mass-customized manufacturing and fulfillment,” and that’s VistaPrint. How is RPI similar to and different from VistaPrint?

JP: We’re very similar from the manufacturing perspective. We are both highly automated print-on-demand manufacturers that make customized products.

Jamal Harris, Bindery

Where we are certainly different, is that you will not see an RPI branded website out there. We are, and continue to be, a B-to-B company. On the other side of that equation is our B-to-C partner. Another difference between us is that VistaPrint primarily sells to small businesses, though I’m sure they sell to some consumers too.

In the broader view, we’re very similar to VistaPrint. We didn’t wait for someone else to have a good idea; we took an idea and ran with it. We used to be the kind of printer who waited for someone to have a good idea and get something going. Then we would sidle up to them and say, “Can we print for you?”

We are both working to grow a new market and to do that RPI has moved beyond simply being a reliable backend printer to providing complete end-to-end solutions for our partners. Our solution offering includes product designs, marketing and software in addition to our fulfillment and logistics services.

WTT: Your website describes your company in a most unusual way. It’s not often that words like “high tech digital,” and “Internet-based social expression and personal publishing services” are used to describe a company that is a printer at heart. Your thoughts?

JP: Rather than just looking for customers to provide printing services, we say, “What is going on in this market? How many places could our core skill as a manufacturer be of use?” And then, to pursue specific opportunities, we wrap our product design, marketing services and software capabilities around that core skill of manufacturing to enable new partners to sell into this market.

Olga Sirotinsky, Quality Control

We partner with companies like ArcSoft and MediaClip, who have product creation software because that is part of an overall solution that we are now able to offer to new partners. Instead of waiting for someone to build their own B-to-C website – another Snapfish to appear – we have developed a broad enough view of the market and where it’s going that we can create a partner who is in an attractive segment of the market.

For example, we recently signed with one of the world’s largest social networking sites. The site targets the 35-and-older audience and the site’s 9 million members upload more than 2 million photos every day.

We approached them about converting those photos into printed products, and have now completely rolled out that capability for them. We’re providing the product designs, the production, and the distribution.

This is an example of the type of market we are targeting, and the range of services that we are now able to offer a partner. We are no longer passive; we are not waiting for a partner to come to us.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to the fact that I want to have my presses running 24/7, all the time. The business challenge is: how do I get there? This is a very seasonal business; 50% of our revenues come in the fourth quarter. Our factory runs below capacity nine months of the year, then we have this incredibly stressful period where everything must work perfectly.

It’s a crazy business from that standpoint. That’s one of the reasons that we’re looking at new markets that are less seasonal. We are trying to look at people’s “life events.” Wedding books are more of a summertime thing. Social networking happens year ‘round. Scrapbooking has no season.

The fourth area of focus we call affiliates; organizations that have an affiliated membership or subscriber base like NASCAR fans, Disney vacationers, or gardeners. These are folks that share a common interest around which pictures are taken.

We offer an end-to-end solution and can help organizations get to market quickly with a really good product. The solution is branded for them and it creates new revenue streams for both of us.

WTT: Join us tomorrow, in Part 2, when John will talk about how he is differentiating RPI from other digital printing companies offering print on demand.

From the description:

Tech journalist Pamela Pfiffner explores the rich history behind the modern publishing revolution, as seen through the lens of one of its most important players. In the past 20 years, Adobe Systems has become synonymous with great design tools, and the company’s impact on how we work in publishing, graphic arts, and on the Web is unmatched. Join Pfiffner on a colorful journey from the roots of the desktop publishing revolution through the rise of the Web and interactive design. Along the way, you’ll witness the birth and evolution of PostScript, the explosion of the Photoshop market, the realization of the paperless office, and other events that have shaped the way we communicate.

Inside the Publishing Revolution is not one of those dull historical tomes you know and loathe from high school. Pfiffner packs its pages with lively, insightful interviews with world-class designers and illustrators, as well as personal insights and recollections from John Warnock, Chuck Geschke, Jonathan Seybold, and other publishing luminaries. Richly illustrated and beautifully designed, the book features galleries of historically significant work by leading artists and rare photographs from the Adobe archives. For added perspective, Pfiffner walks you through an illustrated timeline of the publishing revolution. As with history, the final chapter of the Adobe story remains to be written, so the book ends with an eye toward the future: an exclusive overview of the company’s vision of publishing in the next decade.

You will need the free Adobe Digital Editions application to read the book. If you don’t have Adobe Digital Editions, you will be promoted to install when downloading the book.

Hat tip to Professor Michael L. Kleper.

“‘W,’ you might ask, ‘TF’? To what end this dead-tree blogroll? Is this a sincere attempt to explain the blogging phenomenon – which some estimate is, in its current form, more than 15 years old – to off-the-grid grandmas across America? Or is this compilation a cynical ploy to cash in on free content?

“Boxer seems sincere in her quixotic quest to find a handful of blogs that she says she loves for ‘the writing, the thinking, the drawing and the photos.’ In her introduction she assures us that in her book ‘everything is bloggy to the core.’

“So why put them in a book and strip them of the very things that make them ‘bloggy’?….”

While the crack about “off-the-grid grandmas” cuts somewhat close for comfort for this poster, Mr. Braiker scores a few pertinent questions about a project he terms “slightly absurd,” insofar as it includes, among other entries, an online serialized version of the Diary of Samuel Pepys, a 17th-century English naval administrator and member of Parliament, whose musings originally were published as a book. “Dizzy yet?,” Braiker asks.

According to Braiker, Boxer’s book raises at least as many questions as it attempts to answer about the nature and workings of the blogosphere:

“[The author] has gone out of her way to seek out content that can make the leap from one medium to another. But the question remains, is it a leap forward, backward or sideways? Sure, she has succeeded in reducing the boiling cauldron of the blogosphere to 27 worthwhile reads. Imagine how much garbage she must have sifted through to find these gems. Imagine the gems she was forced to leave out. In the end, the beauty of the book is that if you discover any bloggers that absolutely thrill you, chances are they’re still online doing their thing. Which is exactly where they belong.”

Spinebreakers.co.uk is Penguin’s pioneering online book community for teenagers, run by teenagers themselves. Editorial control of the site is in the hands of a core editorial team of nine teenagers aged between 13 and 18 years, supported by a large network of contributing teen editors from across the UK.

Working with journalists, authors, editors and web designers, the teen team will produce a wide variety of multi-media content including video and audio reviews, alternative book jackets and endings, soundtracks, author interviews, podcasts, blogs, short stories and much more.

Spinebreakers.co.uk launched in September 2007 and is the UK’s first online book community for teenagers, giving them the opportunity to discuss, debate and interact with Penguin’s rich source of publishing from contemporary titles such as Meg Rosoff’s Just in Case, Nick Hornby’s first book for teenagers Slam, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation to classics such as J.D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.

Jeremy Ettinghausen of Penguin Books noted on the Penguin Blog, “in internal meetings, at publishing industry conferences and on this blog we’ve long wrung our hands over the young readers we lose to video games, youtube and myspace and finally some of the folks here have tried to do something about it.”