A university librarian organizes her reference shelf.

By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, @JDGsaid

Will librarians go the way of the soda jerk, telephone operator and travel agent? While libraries are today a vibrant part of the book-industry ecosystem, the extinction of those who run them professionally may be approaching.

According to a new study of the textbook market by Bowker, library information science textbooks generated about 30% less revenue in academic year 2011 (ending in Spring 2011) than in the previous academic year. It topped the chart of “declining” disciplines at this morning’s Book Industry Study Group higher education publishing event in New York.

“It has to be taken into context; it’s a single year,” said Bowker vice president of publishing services Kelly Gallagher, who presented the report. “Is this a long-term trend?”

Gallagher pointed out that students or professors in library information sciences could be making a choice to use fewer textbooks. The statistic was presented in order to give the audience – largely made up of executives at textbook companies – an idea of industry demand.

In a much-discussed May 2011 article in the New York Review of Books titled A Country Without Libraries, Charles Simic wrote, “All across the United States, large and small cities are closing public libraries or curtailing their hours of operations.”

The article sparked debate on blogs and in social media. Some defended libraries and their role in U.S. democracy. Others declared libraries “obsolete.” Many posts were nostalgia-filled looks at how libraries impacted the author’s childhood.

Even if libraries persist, which they certainly do today (there were 121,785 of them in the U.S. in 2009, according to the American Library Association, an industry group), will librarians persist along with them?

A 2010 paper by Moya K. Mason, a freelance researcher, suggested that librarians with master’s degrees in library sciences are being replaced by “paraprofessionals,” or those who perform the increasingly menial functions that automation has reduced many professions to today. The librarians themselves are training the paraprofessionals to do their jobs, a somewhat suicidal move from an employment standpoint, Mason wrote.

The trope of librarians as a “dying breed” is a familiar one. A Google search on the headline of this article reveals that, indeed, the article has already been written – in 2010 and in 2009, at least. Yet, libraries and librarians are still here, showing a resilience and necessity that the naysayers may not have accounted for.

The American Library Association, queried for an industry perspective on the issue, was not able to immediately respond to requests for comment before press time.

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By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, @JDGsaid

The book publishing industry is populated by intelligent, hard-working people, many of whom are delighted to have the opportunity to turn their passion – the printed word – into a paying job.

Those working at places like Random House, John Wiley, Oxford University Press and Penguin might be a bit more delighted than their colleagues at other publishers. Those companies topped our informal list of Best Publishing Companies to Work For.

Employees at the best-rated publishing companies like working there because of strong industry brands, good communication between layers of leadership and departments and the learning experiences available.

At Penguin, “people are empowered to do things,” said Paige McInerney, vice president of human resources at Penguin Group USA. “It’s the best place in the world to work. I’ve been here 20 years and there’s a reason for that.”

More on working at Penguin at Digital Book World tomorrow. Other companies on the list contacted for comment did not respond before press time.

The Best Companies to Work For list (below) was generated by Glassdoor.com, a popular employee-reviews website, in partnership with Digital Book World. Each company is assigned an overall rating by its employees who choose to do so on the Glassdoor website. Ratings are on a five-point scale with one being “very dissatisfied” and five being “very satisfied.” Companies with fewer than 10 ratings posted on the site by employees were not considered in the ranking.

There are hundreds of publishing companies in the U.S., many no doubt worthy of distinction as top employers, but, unfortunately, many did not have enough reviews on Glassdoor.com to be included in this piece. Further, there are companies in this ranking that aren’t directly competitive with each other, like Random House and McGraw-Hill, for instance. We included all of these companies on the list because though they may not be competitive in the marketplace, they compete for talent and, as a result, should be viewed side-by-side as employers.

The average ranking for companies on Glassdoor across all industries is 3.0. The average among the publishing companies in our list is 3.08.

Editor’s note: For the top four companies, we provided the name of the company, Glassdoor.com rating, a short company bio and both positive and negative comments about the company from Glassdoor users. For the remainder of the companies, we provided the same but not the company bio. The comments are from anonymous reviewers from the Glassdoor website and their comments should be taken with the appropriate caution. In some limited cases, the words of the reviews have been edited slightly for spelling.

Glassdoor.com and Digital Book World ranking of Best Publishing Companies to Work For.

Best Publishing Companies to Work For:

1. Random House

Glassdoor rating: 3.9

Bio: Founded in 1925, New York-based Random House is today considered the world’s largest trade publisher. The walls of its midtown Manhattan headquarters are lined with books by the legendary authors, like James Joyce and Philip Roth, that helped build the publishing giant. Random House is owned by German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG.

Sample positive employee review: “There is a positive exchange of ideas between editors, sales, and creative teams. If you are interested in the book industry and being a part of where it’s progressing to, very good learning experience working there.” – Random House Employee (location not available)

Sample negative employee review: “As is true in most publishing houses these days, the hours are long and there’s a changing, uncertain environment as the future of books and publishing turns more and more to digital publishing.” – Random House Employee (location not available)

2. John Wiley & Sons

Glassdoor rating: 3.6

Bio: Professional and academic publisher John Wiley & Sons, based in Hoboken, NJ, traces its roots back to a printing shop founded in 1807 by Charles Wiley. In its long history, the company – and those it has acquired over the years – has published the works of over 450 Nobel laureates.

Sample positive employee review: “Great place to learn from the ground up; great sales meetings in fun locations; invested in developing talented employees; and, corporate environment but not overly hierarchical,” – John Wiley & Sons Employee (New York, NY)

Sample negative employee review: “There are no clear guidelines for advancement, and after several years of flawless performance reviews I have received no opportunities to advance. Everything is very bureaucratic – you get the impression the company is run by automatons.” – John Wiley & Sons Employee (Hoboken, NJ)

(tied) 3. Oxford University Press USA

Glassdoor rating 3.3

Bio: Since the mid-15th century, Oxford University Press has been churning out scholarly work. The company claims to be the oldest, continuously operating university press. OUP USA, its U.S. arm, was opened in 1896. With all of its worldwide OUP arms, Oxford University Press claims to be larger than all American university publishing houses and Cambridge University Press combined.

Sample positive employee review: “Room for growth, developing as a company, strong position in the industry – respected brand, job security, intelligent coworkers, and generally positive work environment.” – OUP USA Employee (location not available)

Sample negative employee review: “Low pay, but what do you expect from a not-for-profit academic publisher? Also, publishing is a topsy-turvy field right now, but what isn’t?” – OUP USA Assistant Editor (New York, NY)

(tied) 3. Penguin Group USA

Glassdoor rating: 3.3

Bio: Penguin Group USA’s current incarnation is the result of a 1996 merger between Penguin Books USA and The Putnam Berkley Group. Readers worldwide are familiar with Penguin through Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys series as well as through authors as diverse as Saul Bellow, Joyce Carol Oates and the Dalai Lama. Based in downtown Manhattan, Penguin Group USA is the U.S. arm of the UK-based Penguin Group. The company is owned by international media company Pearson PLC.

Sample positive employee review: “A good place to get a foot in the door, strong house with great titles, feels like both a big and little company.” – Penguin Group Production Assistant (New York, NY)

Sample negative employee review: “Industry salaries are uniformly low, but entry-level salaries are SO low that we lose talent. Raises generally do not match the cost of living. No bonuses that I know of, except for upper management, and occasional discretionary corporate-wide bonuses ($500-600).” – Penguin Group Employee (New York, NY)

5. Hachette Book Group

Glassdoor rating: 3.2

Sample positive employee review: “Good benefits package; very central location; a few of the books and authors are interesting; most colleagues are polite, and only a few are obnoxious.” – Hachette Book Group Employee (New York, NY)

Sample negative employee review: “The management can be a little distant. David Young [Hachette chairman and CEO] is great, but generally the folks in the offices are a little inaccessible.” – Hachette Book Group Publicity Assistant (location not available)

(tied) 6. Cengage Gale

Glassdoor rating: 3.1

Sample positive employee review: “Great vacation time, 401k, salary, benefits, great management. If you work hard you will do good and be able to advance in the company.” – Cengage Gale Employee (location not available)

Sample negative employee review: “Nobody can make a decision! It takes meeting upon meeting to come up with a decision. Want everything and the moon on a product but won’t increase budgets to get them. Not much room for advance in some areas.” – Cengage Gale Editor (Farmington Hills, MI)

(tied) 6. McGraw-Hill Education

Glassdoor rating: 3.1

Sample positive employee review: “Great benefits, education opportunities internally, and college reimbursement. Advancement opportunities at corporate offices.” – McGraw-Hill Education Marketing Coordinator (Desoto, TX)

Sample negative employee review: “Going thru a lot of company reorgs now with the split-off, but it will settle. Professional development offerings could be more robust.” – McGraw-Hill Education Project Manager (Monterey, CA)

(tied) 6. Simon & Schuster

Glassdoor rating: 3.1

Sample positive employee review: “A leader in the industry, publishes bestselling books, filled with great people, has a great reputation, opportunities for growth and leadership, recognition.” – Simon & Schuster Employee (New York, NY)

Sample negative employee review: “Many cliques, promotions and raises are based on who you know. Very old staff here, so they are not use to change unless it is forced on them. Which is mostly through technology and not people.” – Simon & Schuster Employee (location not available)

(tied) 6. Thomson West

Glassdoor rating: 3.1

Sample positive employee review: “Fast-paced, good facility, good people, flexible schedule, ability to spend some time working remotely, many internal opportunities to change and/or advance career.” – Thomson West Lead Software Engineer (Eagan, MN)

Sample negative employee review: “There are many cons with working at Thomson West right now, primarily job security. On the sales side of things there tend to be corporate restructuring and downsizing at least once a year. The comp plans are constantly changed, and not in a positive direction. The general way to motivate employees right now tends to be through fear with very little positive feedback.” – Thomson West Sales Representative (location not available)

10. Pearson Education

Glassdoor rating: 3.0

Sample positive employee review: “In my experience, management is totally behind the “family first” concept and respects employees’ ability to balance work and life without requiring time-clock punching. The company also provides lots of personal education opportunities to employees.” – Pearson Education Employee (location not available)

Sample negative employee review: “Politics and complexity of this large organization. The management still retains a command and control approach which stifles innovation. Lots of territorial behavior at most levels.” – Pearson Education Employee (Boston, MA)

(tied) 11. HarperCollins

Glassdoor rating: 2.8

Sample positive employee review: “It is a very laid back environment and casual. They really let you have a great life work balance. It is predominately women except for upper management and the finance departments. There are also summer Friday hours.” – HarperCollins Financial Analyst (New York, NY)

Sample negative employee review: “There is a severe disconnect in some departments about the rest of the company; network across departments so you know what’s going on in the rest of the company.” – HarperCollins Publicity (New York, NY)

(tied) 11. Scholastic

Glassdoor rating: 2.8

Sample positive employee review: “If you are a self-driven worker, Scholastic offers great opportunity for you to get involved in a lot of different areas. People are generally pleasant to work with, although some senior management can be difficult to deal with. Depending on the division, Scholastic has provides a fairly good work / life balance. For women, Scholastic has extremely generous maternity packages. Compensation is in line with the rest of the publishing industry.” – Scholastic Associate Director (New York, NY)

Sample negative employee review: “This company is more siloed than many government organizations which is just shocking considering they are a publicly traded company. Ripe for a takeover by any well-run organization, especially with the publishing industry in the midst of another disruptive technology impacting the bottom line.” – Scholastic Employee (New York, NY)

13. MacMillan Publishers

Glassdoor rating: 2.6

Sample positive employee review: “Working in the Flatiron is cool to tell people, and people think it’s a prestigious company and industry (even though people confuse Macmillan with McGraw-Hill all the time and always ask if you work in academic publishing when it’s trade). Free books.” – Macmillan Publishers Sales Assistant (New York, NY)

Sample negative employee review: “Little room for advancement in a company that seems to feel and project that its era is rapidly dying out” – Macmillan Publishers Employee (location n/a)

14. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Glassdoor rating: 2.2

Sample positive employee review: “Don’t have to punch a clock and it is nice not being micro managed. Managers trust employees to get the work done on time. Employees are hardworking, care about quality and put a lot blood, sweat and tears into their work.” – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Technical Support Specialist (location not available)

Sample negative employee review: “Communication is abysmal, and senior management rules by fear–it doesn’t inspire loyalty or confidence.  The fact that they still have good quality products is due to the dedicated, under-recognized workforce.  Hats off especially to the Dublin tech office.” – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Employee (location not available)

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Is this what an Amazon.com store shelf would look like?

By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, @JDGsaid

E-tail giant and major bookseller Amazon may be headed to a neighborhood near you if a rumor published online proves true. Question is: Would it be good or bad for the book publishing industry?

In a blog post titled “Rumor: Amazon Retail Stores Coming & Predatory Pricing Channel Destruction,” Jason Calacanis wrote, “Just heard an interesting piece of gossip from a very credible source: Amazon is going to open retail stores and will start making its own branded merchandise.”

It’s the one thing that Amazon hasn’t tried in order to serve its customers better, points out David Streitfeld in a blog post at the New York Times. Amazon has relentlessly cut down on the time that most people have to wait between ordering something and receiving it. But, “Until we achieve the teleportation of objects, there is only one way to immediately get physical goods. It is called a store,” Streitfeld wrote.

Streitfeld went on to compare a possible Amazon.com bricks-and-mortar play to Apple opening its own stores in the early 2000s. A hi-tech company opening old-fashioned stores? It will never work, analysts crowed. Those same analysts later ate crow as the move has been one of the most successful in the company’s storied history.

According to reporting by FINS.com (a website for which the author was an editor), in 2010, Apple stores accounted for $10 billion of the company’s $65 billion in revenue. Its stores averaged $4,000 of annual sales per square foot, five times that of Best Buy. The Apple flagship store generated about $35,000 per square foot that year, double that of nearby Tiffany’s, the luxury jeweler.

Things are different with Amazon, however. The Apple store stocks and sells a limited kind of item: Apple electronics, software and accessories. The Amazon store would conceivably be Costco plus Whole Foods plus Barnes & Noble, but bigger.

Calacanis envisions many possible scenarios, including a show-room for goods (Consumer Reports meets the Apple Store on crack!”), an Amazon-branded Wal-Mart, a used book and DVD store or a library.

As publishers figure out how to sell and market their books in a world with fewer bookstores, a new nationwide books retailer could be welcome news. However, publishers, many of whom are wary of Amazon’s growing influence in the books business, may not wish Amazon to be the company to deliver that dream.

For Amazon’s part, a significant bricks-and-mortar presence could do much to give it leverage in the company’s most recent conflict with bookselling-rival Barnes & Noble, which said this week that it would not stock physical copies of any book that was exclusively sold electronically through Amazon. For its own part, Barnes & Noble executives are likely not excited about the possibility of Amazon taking the battle between the two companies to the street.

To be sure, it’s unlikely that this rumor will come to pass, reports Streitfeld, as Amazon analysts think that investing in physical storefronts would be a bad way for Amazon to derive good return on investment. Still, the same was said of Apple.

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By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, @JDGsaid

The Kindle Fire and third-party sellers helped Amazon reach $17.43 billion in fourth quarter 2011 revenue, a 35% increase over fourth quarter 2010 revenue, according to a financial statement from the company.

Net income for the quarter was $177 million, a decrease of 58% from its 2010 fourth quarter.

“We are grateful to the millions of customers who purchased the Kindle Fire and Kindle e-reader devices this holiday season, making Kindle our bestselling product across both the U.S. and Europe,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com in the statement. “Our millions of third-party sellers had a tremendous holiday season with 65% unit growth and now represent 36% of total units sold.”

For the full year, Amazon had $48.08 billion in sales, at 41% increase over its $34.20 billion in 2010 revenue. Net income decreased 45% to $631 million in 2011 from $1.15 billion in 2010.

Kindle unit sales, including the Kindle fire, increased by 177% over the nine week holiday period in 2011 versus the same period last year. Since it was introduced four months ago, the Kindle Fire has been the most gifted and most wished for product across all Amazon products, according to the company.

Amazon ramped up its headcount significantly in 2011, growing to 56,200 employees versus 33,700 a year ago.

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By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, @JDGsaid

As tablet sales surge and put downward pressure on dedicated e-reader ownership growth, publishers are pessimistic that tablets will provide readers with an enticing reading platform.

According to a recent Digital Book World survey, conducted by Forrester Research, 31% of publishers think iPads and other tablets computers are the ideal e-book reading platform, down from 46% a year ago. Only 30% of publishers think reading tablets like the Nook Color and Kindle Fire are an ideal reading platform. This question was not asked in the previous year’s survey.

In late 2011, book publishers representing 74% of U.S. publishing revenues were surveyed on a wide range of topics concerning digital books. The same survey was conducted in 2010.

“The devices [tablet computers] are capable of so many more distracting things,” said James L. McQuivey, Ph.D., vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, who conducted the survey. “If you have an iPad and 15 minutes to kill, are you going to do something more cognitively difficult like reading, or something brain-dead simple like going on Facebook or watching a YouTube video?”

Still, crossover devices like the Kindle Fire – not quite a full-sized tablet like the iPad, but with functionality far beyond that of an e-ink reader – may be a boon to publishers. Kindle Fire owners read e-books on the device more than any other activity. A recent survey of 216 Kindle Fire owners by RBC Financial Group found that 71% list reading e-books as one of the two activities they do the most on the device. “Brose the Web” came in distant second at 39%.

These data about crossover devices contrast greatly with data about the iPad – only 53% of iPad users read books at all on the device, according to a September 2011 survey by Forrester.

Publishers should continue to monitor the space closely. Tablet and e-reader ownership doubled in the U.S. over the holiday period, according to new research from the Pew Internet Project, a Pew Center project dedicated to providing research on how the Internet affects life in America. Nearly one fifth of all Americans now own a tablet computer or an e-reader, according to Pew.

Despite all of the positive energy around device ownership growth and device usage, publishers may have been shocked to find out that e-book purchasing growth may be slowing. According to data presented by the Book Industry Study Group and Bowker at the Digital Book World Conference last week, there was only 17% growth in the number of print-book buyers who also purchased an e-book; this was markedly less than the 25% to 30% growth people had reportedly hoped for.

But if people who buy devices still read books – in some cases, this is much of what they do – and device ownership is growing quickly, posited publishing consultant Don Linn, then why is e-book sales growth sagging?

The question has publishers confused. How should they proceed in a device market that is getting more complex?

“They’re just not sure what to make of it yet and they’re not committed business-wise,” said Forrester’s McQuivey. “That’s an issue for 2012: What do you do as a business when you’re not sure how it’s going to net out between these three categories of devices?”

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By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, @JDGsaid

Penguin, Random House, Hachette, Simon & Schuster and other publishing powerhouses were among the winners at the second annual Publishing Innovation Awards, announced tonight in New York City at the Digital Book World Conference and Expo. Rapper and producer Jazy-Z won an award, too.

The awards highlight the best in e-books, enhanced e-books and book applications in 12 categories, including best children’s e-book, best non-fiction app and best enhanced e-book. The awards are in response to a need to create best-in-class designations. Members of publishing’s elite mingled with cocktails at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers in New York to commemorate the honors.

“When publishers surprise and delight their readers, they gain advocates who will talk about, recommend, and discover more of their quality work,” said Matt Mullin, community relations manager for Digital Book World. (Disclosure: the Publishing Innovation Awards are owned and operated by Digital Book World, parent to this site.)

The 2012 winners of the Publishing Innovation Awards are:

Digital First Ebook Winner: Desserts (Allrecipes.com)
Finalists: I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Six’s Legacy (HarperCollins), L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories (Little Brown & Company), Mooon USA Travel Planner (Avalon Travel)

Ebook – Children’s Winner: Five Little Pumpkins (Harper Festival / Zuuka)
Finalists: Splat the Cat and the Duck with No Quack (HarperCollins), Why Do Puppies Do That? Enhanced Edition (Seymour Simon in partnership with Franklin Jr.)

Ebook – Fiction Winner: The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer and Cabinet of Curiosities by Preston & Child (Grand Central Publishing)
Finalists: The Rose Garden (Sourcebooks), The Virtuoso (Sourcebooks), Over Easy (Wouldya Publishing), Central Reservation (Xelsion Publishing)

Ebook – Non-Fiction Winner: AAA Las Vegas eTourBook Guide (AAA)
Finalists: Excellence Now (New Word City), Marathon: You Can Do It! (Shelter Publications), Cook For Your Life (Hardie Grant Publishing), Complete Gay And Lesbian Manners (Workman Publishing)

Ebook – Reference/Academic Winner: Meggs’ History of Graphic Design 5th Edition (John Wiley & Sons)
Finalists: Discover France (Lonely Planet), Using WordPress: Enhanced Edition (Que Publishing), Beginning Guitar Lessons – Progressive (Learntoplaymusic.com), Sao Paolo’s Atlantic Forest (WWF-Brazil and Sao Paolo State Forestry Foundation)

Enhanced Ebook Winner: Eva Scrivo On Beauty (Atria Books)
Finalists: Count, Dagmar! (Chronicle Books), Chaos: Enhanced Edition (Open Road Integrated Media), David Roberts’ Egypt (Atria Books), Debortees Islands & Streams (Telegram Forlag)

Transmedia Project Winner: Decoded by Jay-Z (Random House)
Finalists: Dark Eden (Katherine Tegen Books), One Child (EnThrill Entertainment), Cathy’s Book Part 3 (Running Press), Living Language Platinum (Random House)

App – Comics Winner: The Wormworld Saga (Robot Media)

App – Juvenile Winner: Cinderella (Nosy Crow)
Finalists: Millie & The Lost Key (Megapops), When I Grow Up (HarperCollins), Don’t Let the Pigeon Run this App! (Disney Publishing), The Monster at the End of this Book (Sesame Workshop)

App – Reference / Academic Winner: British Library 19th Century Historical Collection (Bibliolabs)
Finalists: DK Quick Cook (DK Publishing), DK The Human Body (DK Publishing), Gems and Jewels for iPad (The University of Chicago Press), Martha Stewart Cookies (Callaway Digital Arts Inc. and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia)

App – Fiction Winner: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (Penguin USA)
Finalists: Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: The Interactive Ebook (Quirk Books and PadWorx Digital Media), ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (Chuck Fischer Studio), Apocalepsy 911: the First Chapter (Unit 5 Entertainment), Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (Penguin USA)

App – Non-Fiction Winner: The Magic of Reality for iPad (Random House)
Finalists: Wreck this App (Penguin USA), Lights, Camera, Capture (John Wiley & Sons), Our Choice (Rodale)

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By James McQuivey, Ph.D., vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc.

Post republished with permission from Forrester. See the original here.

This week hundreds of us in and around the book industry will converge on Digital Book World Conference and Expo 2012 in New York. It’s a conference that has risen in significance because this industry has rapidly come to understand that it is uniquely susceptible to digitization — and poised to benefit from it — in a way that other media are not. (Disclosure: This site is affiliated with the Digital Book World Conference.)

This awareness has translated into relative optimism among publishers. As I’ll share with the DBW 2012 audience on Tuesday morning, we recently conducted a survey with Digital Book World of publishing executives whose companies together earn 74% of all U.S. trade publishing revenues. As we closed out 2011, 82% of publishing executives we surveyed were optimistic about the digital transition. That’s a large number, even if it’s smaller than the 89% it was a year ago. But when we take into account all the measures of optimism we threw at them — about the industry in general, about the fortunes of readers, and the importance of their own roles — most of them decreased somewhat and some decreased significantly.

Most tellingly, only 28% of these executives thought their own company would be stronger in the future because of digital compared to 51% who agreed with this sentiment the prior year. This suggests that publishers have started to do the hard work of making the digital transition and they’re finding that it is, indeed, hard work. It’s worth putting ourselves in the shoes of these publishing industry product strategists for a moment to consider just why they aren’t positive that their companies are going to come out better off. I see three reasons:

1. Physical book sales will decline significantly in 2012. A solid 54% of our respondents believe print sales will go down, though just 5% are willing to say they will “decrease significantly.” You can’t lose Borders in 2011 and not expect overall sales in 2012 to hold steady. But it’s not just Borders; even Barnes & Noble will be ordering fewer copies of fewer books as it reformats its stores to promote the Nook Tablet and all it has to offer — including nonbook experiences like movies and games. This decline will at best be distracting to publishers and at worst will cause them to stumble in their digital efforts as they swallow hard and adjust their product mix.

Related: Seven Advantages Barnes & Noble Has in the Bookseller Wars | Four Disadvantages Barnes & Noble Has in the Bookseller Wars | What’s Really Going on Inside Barnes & Noble

2. Amazon will go for broke this year. Executives think Amazon and other online-only booksellers will sell 41% of eBooks in 2012. But this does not even begin to describe Amazon’s ambitions — the company wants to control the future of books, movies, music, apps, shopping, and all of their inter-twinings. There are billions of dollars of value yet to be harvested from the unprecedented efficiencies that Amazon’s Kindle platform can create. To do this, the company will under-price all of those product experiences — you’ll get everything cheaper if you’re a faithful Amazon customer — and it won’t care if it permanently resets price expectations. Complain if you must, but this is called Econ 101 and it’s the reason Amazon has A to Z in its name.

3. Content will slip farther out of publishers’ control. Apple’s new book-authoring tools and NBCUniversal’s announcement today that it will become a publisher are just the latest in a long train of abuses launched by disruptive outsiders, startups, and discontented authors. From Kindle’s self-publishing platform that made Amanda Hocking the talk of the publishing world to Smashwords’ tripling author count and quadrupling title count. All the while apps no longer inspire enthusiasm for publishers — just 19% think apps could be more transformative than eBooks, down from 46% the year before.

Notice that I gave Amazon a whole paragraph but only barely mentioned Apple. That’s because Apple won’t win in digital publishing in 2012. And possibly not ever, not without a cheaper device strategy (explain that one to Wall Street) or a more inclusive distribution philosophy (iTunes as an Android app? Not likely). But the company’s mere presence on the horizon will spur Amazon to make its boldest moves, and that’s reason enough to give the company a nod. Despite all this, publishers need not fall into despair — and our data suggest they haven’t done so, at least not yet. As I’ll share tomorrow at the conference, people are generally optimistic still, even if that optimism is waning. But they do have hard work ahead of them, which is all the more reason to spend the next few days together trying to figure it out. I expect to see a lot of sleeves rolled up!

By Charlotte Abbott, DBW contributor, @charabbott

A novel approach for publishers interested in building their brands: Give away content for free.

Book publishers, imprints and brands should market themselves by using new media and social media channels to talk to their audiences about relevant areas of interest, according to a panel today at the Digital Book World Marketing Summit in New York.

Essentially, “content marketing,” as popularized in part by the efforts of the Content Marketing Institute, a Cleveland-based firm that helps marketers build their own media channels, is marketing that uses storytelling to help sell a brand. The Content Marketing Institute has built a community of companies that have revised their marketing strategies to focus on sharing content online – and substantially increased their marketing budgets in this area.

The strategy is to turn engaged readers into paying customers.

Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi spoke at the Digital Book World Marketing Summit in a session called Capturing and Dominating Your Market with Content Marketing. Pulizzi recommends that savvy marketers cede the territory of big niches to big companies – like Proctor and Gamble’s websites targeting adult women (HomeMadeSimple.com); adolescent girls (BeingGirl.com) and men between the ages of 25 and 50 (ManoftheHouse.com). Better to talk to people with a less popular topic of interested: Get “super niche” – like Workshifting.com, a site with information and blog posts for people who want to work from anywhere, created by remote work software companies GoToMeeting and Citrix.

One way to determine popular but underserved niches is to use the Google Keyword Tool, which allows users to research popular keywords and find ones with low and medium numbers of search results. Google Trends can also show which keywords are trending up.

E-books are also a key part of Pulizzi’s content development and distribution strategy. He developed his CMI Content Marketing Playbook over six months, involving more than 50 influencers in his community. While writing and producing the book, he repackaged parts of it as blog posts, and for sharing on sites like Slideshare, Facebook, and Linked In. Pulizzi generated high interest with a teaser for the e-book, Predictions: Social Media and Content Marketing – Predictions for 2012, when it was featured as the “slide of the day” on Slideshare.com. Including an excerpt from the book, contributor spotlights and embedded links, Predictions generated thousands of downloads and brought in several pieces of consulting work to CMI.

For publishers, who have long been in the paid content business, the trick is getting people to pay for something once they’ve been given a taste for free.

Write to Charlotte Abbott

By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, @JDGsaid

NBC News is launching a book publishing arm to capitalize on growth in e-reader and tablet adoption, the decreasing cost of e-book production and a backlog of over one million hours of video content.

NBC Publishing, as the business unit will be called, will be part of NBC News, a division of media conglomerate NBCUniversal, and will be based in New York at NBC’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

“Over the last two years, we’ve been looking at the tablet market and e-reader market and watching it develop,” said Michael Fabiano, general manager of NBC Publishing. “Consumers are getting more comfortable downloading books with video. None of this is slowing down any time soon.”

The company will produce enhanced e-books using both archival and new NBC video footage as well as traditional, print-based e-books.

NBC has hired several employees with publishing experience to staff the venture. Peter Costanzo, previously of F+W Media and Perseus Books, has joined as creative director (disclosure: F+W Media owns and operates Digital Book World). Brian Perrin, who comes most recently from New York-based magazine publisher Rodale, is joining as director of digital development.

The venture is also engaging two internal television employees, a senior producer and a senior editor and researcher. Prior to his new role as general manager, Fabiano spent five years at NBC in business development. There is no more hiring planned for the immediate future.

“We have a few folks from publishing and a few folks from the television industry,” said Fabiano. “We’re merging these two disciplines to create new multimedia experiences.”

NBC has already worked on joint book projects with Perseus Books, Penguin and e-publishing platform Vook, which is one of several technology vendors being looked at for a larger partnership with the company.

According to Fabiano, NBC Publishing will continue to work on book partnerships with outside publishers while also developing its own content in-house. He added that NBC Publishing will also behave like other publishers, working with outside authors and agents on traditional book deals.

E-reader and tablet adoption, the relatively low cost of building original products once intellectual property is secured and NBC’s vast reservoir of video content led the company to create the new venture.

“We have over one million hours of archival video content going back to the ’20s and a really low cost structure to edit it and put it together,” said Fabiano. The company has secured the rights necessary to repurpose its video content in e-books.

Much like other publishers housed within media conglomerates, NBC Publishing will promote its books through on-air promotions on its cable and broadcast networks and using its Web presence, which includes msnbc.com. The company will also promote its books through Comcast, the cable provider which owns NBCUniversal.

“We have an incredible marketing engine at NBCU, so we just have to utilize it in the right way,” said Fabiano.

The public relations and marketing departments at the company will also engage in traditional book publicity, a discipline that is relatively new to them.

“It’s a different beast, a product versus a show,” said Meghan Pianta, a communications professional at NBC News who will be working on book projects. “We have been supporting other book projects and we’ve seen great success.”

Write to Jeremy Greenfield

By Jeremy Greenfield, Editorial Director, Digital Book World, @JDGsaid

If content is king of the digital book world, then technology may be the divine right to rule.

Publishers, booksellers and authors who have made smart technology investments over the past several years have reaped the rewards. Erotic romance publisher Ellora’s Cave made early technology staffing investments that paid off. Amazon, for one, has captured huge market-share through making it easy for readers to access books through technology. And self-published authors have leveraged book production platforms and new-media sales and marketing channels (read: Twitter and Facebook) to sell books directly to readers.

Enter a whole host of technology vendors that never existed before: E-book production and distribution houses, meta data consultants, social media experts, and so on. With clients from big-six publishers to NBC to Google, Vook is prominent among them. Vook is a cloud-based e-publishing platform that offers those that want to publish their own books the technology to edit, format, publish and distribute e-books.

To get a sense of what’s going on in publishing platform technology, we sat down with Vook vice president of business development Matt Cavnar. The timing was prescient considering Apple’s announcement yesterday of its new self-publishing tool. How does a company like Vook stay competitive in the face of new daily developments in publishing technology?

Cavnar is a founding employee at Vook and as VP of business development, he finds new clients, new intellectual property and helps determine the product and business roadmaps for the firm. We spoke with him about Apple, the publishing company of the future and why people will read more – as soon as they get more comfortable with new technologies.

Related: Apple iBooks Author Tool Sets Stage for Showdown With Amazon

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Learn more about new publishing technology and the future of e-books at the Digital Book World Conference + Expo in New York City from January 23 to 25.

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Jeremy Greenfield: What a week in publishing. With the Apple announcement and the DBW conference coming up (admittedly, it’s our conference, but it is gathering much of the community together; apologies for the shameless plug). Good time to talk. So, what did you think of the Apple announcement?

Matt Cavnar: First of all, congratulations to Apple. They’ve been a great partner for us. Everybody would agree that textbooks are better off digital and this is going to speed that. It’s also really good because this is really a plug for e-books. This is not an app announcement, this is about e-books.

JG: As in, creating something fancy with bells, whistles, etc. as an e-book rather than a native app?

MC: Yes. Apple is putting weight behind the idea that e-books are the file format of the future.

JG: What else?

MC: We like the tools. We see some similarities in design in the Apple tool [and our tool] and that’s great to see. Great design minds think alike. Apple creates beautiful things.

The next part is the complication and the fact is that they’re introducing another proprietary file format [.ibooks]. Vook reaches the other 99% of the market. That [.ibooks] can only be delivered through one store front, one device. But when people release books, they want them to go everywhere. Using our tool, you can go cross-platform.

JG: Back to Vook. What’s the status over there? Revenue? Employees? Hiring?

MC: We’re keeping the number of employees under the radar, but it’s over 20.

We’re not sharing revenue right now.

We’re recruiting like mad. I’m recruiting for five rolls: Everything from engineering to marketing to customer support.

JG: You are backed by several investors, including venture capital firm Vantage Point and have received about $5.25 million in funding. Usually venture capitalists expect a big return for their investments. Book publishing is a famously low-growth industry. How do you expect to return on the investment? And when?

MC: This company is all about creating something that works. If you’re focused on a goal line, you’re going to run until your body collapses. What we’re focused on is creating a company that provides substantial value.

Digital publishing is not just book publishers. It’s the rapidly evolving world of digital content. Our tool can be the [Adobe] Dreamweaver of that experience. [Dreamweaver is a highly popular HTML creation tool.]

What we’re looking at is going beyond publishing companies. We’re looking to go to media companies that have an audience and tell them that they can create digital books and deliver them to that audience.

That’s why we think the future of Vook is unlimited, because we have a huge market of companies we can go out to. It’s not just publishing companies but the whole world of content.

JG: Is Vook the publishing company of the future? A technology tool that content creators can leverage?

MC: Vook is the publishing platform of the future. If you have a powerful enough platform, it can serve the needs of the original creator as well as an enterprise level organization.

We’re going to remove the pain and complications around the actual creation of the e-book because it’s actually incredibly vexed. Even some of the major publishers are having problems with digital conversion, so it’s a serious pain point.

It’s also about making a better looking e-book. It’s interesting, the designer’s role has become a hand-coders role. You have to hand-code them to make them look nice. That’s hard for a medium-sized publisher that wants to put out 400 titles but wants them to have a unique look. That’s why we have a styling tool. E-books don’t have to look like everything else out on the marketplace. You can make something that’s uniquely yours.

JG: Speaking of publishing companies, there has been debate lately about the relevance of publishing companies.

MC: Publishing companies are relevant because the creative capital they have is outstanding. They have gathered within their walls the smartest people when it comes to this kind of content. They are both the curators and producers. Curators say that you should read this; curator-producers say that you should read this and we made it for you so you can read it. And that’s very valuable.

The alternative is that you have the content creator saying “I think this is a good idea” and providing it directly, which is great, but then the landscape becomes more fractured.

People need editors. They need production, they need marketing teams. Publishers can solve the tricky marketing problems.

I’m really interested in the fact that so many young tech companies find ways to take existing intellectual property and chop it up or re-imagine it or put it on devices. None of the young technology companies are in the content creation business.

JG: One production issue that publishers have to think about right now is how they are going to prepare for more e-readers supporting EPUB 3. What should they do?

MC: They should be building sample EPUB 3 books. They should have someone on their team build it and test it. And then figure out how to implement a new workflow.

One of the interesting things about EPUB 3 is that it’s a richer experience and you can create richer things, but how do you integrate it into your workflow? Something we’re looking at doing is building a template of EPUB 3 enhancements and applying it to a range of content. You can’t test with just one thing because it’s too likely that you’ll hit an outlier. If you do 20 to 30 books, you have a basis to test how effective these enhancements are and you give the consumer an experience they can adapt to.

JG: Will people adapt to it? Will people read more or fewer books in the future?

In my own life, in my family, I have seen the amount of book consumption explode. My father walks around his kitchen now with his iPhone in front of his face reading books. He read more books in 2011 than in the decade before that.

Once people get over the hang-ups they might have reading digitally, they will purchase a lot more books. They will immediately pick up the next book in a series. They will read easier.

Publishers might not be optimistic, but I am enthusiastic because I see people that weren’t readers are reading all the time because digital makes it so easy.

JG: What are you reading and on what platform?

MC: I am reading The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq [Knopf]. It’s very funny, very humane and I’m reading it on my Kindle app for iPad.

Write to Jeremy Greenfield

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Learn more about new publishing technology and the future of e-books at the Digital Book World Conference + Expo in New York City from January 23 to 25.

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