Drupa is held, Olympics style, every four years in Düsseldorf, Germany. This year’s drew some 400,000 visitors, and what they saw will make POD look like a mimeograph machine.

“This year,” writes The Guardian‘s Mark Piesing. “visitors will see a number of rival technologies launched, each of which promises to deliver a ‘second digital revolution in printing’ that will allow the digital printer to kill off the offset press for commercial printing, and may even allow the printed page to compete with the iPad in terms of visual quality and individualization of content.”

As readers of this column know, we have often said that there is nothing wrong with print books – it’s the way that they are distributed that has placed the book industry in jeopardy. (See Publishing 3.0: A World Without Inventory, Part 1 and Part 2) Publishers must accept that the future of book distribution is POD. The unpretentiously-named drupa conference may bring that future closer.

Details in Rivals launch a printing revolution that could be as significant as Gutenberg

Richard Curtis

Since I have been living in Latin America, and working as a journalist and small publisher primarily in Mexico, as well as being an author and small publisher of print and ebooks “at large,” I’ll confine my remarks here to Mexico. A few unrelated anecdotes might hint at what I’m talking about.

– The first time I showed my Kindle to a bookseller in downtown Tijuana (he sells English and Spanish titles on the sidewalk) he had never heard of it, but immediately started thinking out loud. My favorite of his conclusions: “So paper books are going to be tossed away in the USA and I can get them cheaper to sell here.”

– I published a graphic book by a Tijuana artist. I was busily formatting it in my usual “Kindle uber alles” way when he brought me to understand that nobody in Mexico owns Kindles. But a lot of Mexicans, especially those with the taste and income to be readers, own iPads or other tablets. So I went to “ePub/SmashWords-friendly” formatting priorities.  It’s kind of like ereading here has skipped ahead a generation. They never owned eInk readers and have been ready for color and apps all along. And the kids are dying to see it spread more to phones and glasses. A further twist, I had intended his “graphic short story” to be a $0.99 ebook loss-leader from the start, but ended up producing a paper version for $4.95 so I could get them to reviewers. He bought a dozen of them and sold them for an average of $8.95 in a matter of hours and ordered thirty more.  Several local comix shops snapped them up to retail for twice what they sell for on amazon.com.

– Speaking of phones and Amazon, there  is no reliable mail service in Mexico. So anything downloadable has more field than anything physical. This is very common throughout the free world. Furthermore, TelMex, the once-monopoly phone company (owned by Carlos Slim, often cited as the world’s richest individual, and sometimes as the most corrupt) was so unworkable that cell phones ate up the market. Any taco stand will have a cell phone. But there are few ebooks in Spanish for cell phones. Mail order is useless, bookstores are close to useless most places…but everybody has a phone.

– Only 3 percent of Mexicans read novels. A print run of 5,000 is impressive for national publishers. This is not uncommon in Central America and much of South Asia. But Mexicans who do read literature are very proud readers used to paying twice American prices from similarly corrupt, government-interfered publishers. The percentage of people in that readership with tablets is very, very high. Most coffee houses in Tijuana will have at least two pads visible at any time.

Okay, Mexico is a small country and nobody’s idea of a book marketing treasure chest.  And one way you could read these little observations is as a colorful travelogue of lands where things are different. But it’s also a kind of “gateway country” to the Spanish-language reading market. Book publishing in Latin America and even Spain is a soft underbelly. And yet few are filling a wide, arms-reaching market there.

Mexico is also a gateway to First World technology. Typically scarce foreign gizmos are resisted by the masses but idolized by the young, who grow up to casually own and use them. But maybe not in the way we think they will or hope we will or bet money that they will.

If you’ll permit another random glimpse, in Cuba  internet and emails are monitored and restricted by the regime and nobody can afford them anyway, so the main medium of communications for “underground” content or concepts is by duplicating USB memory sticks passing them from hand to hand.  When I go there I always take as many as I can stash and they are gobbled up at once by people who don’t own computers. Pocket drives weren’t intended as “publishing” or social media, but they can do the job that more standard methods and products don’t.

I won’t attempt to generalize these vignettes from Mexico to the rest of the third world, but I get around a bit and feel that this sort of situation holds true more frequently than the model we generally address as understood or default when discussing ebook market and technology, which might also be a tricky thing to generalize. This may have nothing to do with US publishers’ marketing or production plans but I think it’s worth thinking about the idea that there are often other models in operation that we’re not aware of. We ought to keep in mind that we might not be on the only path, or maybe even the best one in the long run. There was a time when “publishing” meant certain models and nobody spared a thought for little clumps or geeks reading things off pdf and exe documents out there.

Aztec image via Shutterstock

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

The cookbook business just got a little more digital.

For the first time in its 26-year history, the James Beard Foundation will open up its cookbook awards to digital entries.

For the 2013 edition of the New York-based non-profit’s annual awards show, judges will consider print and digital cookbooks in each of the twelve categories – from “cookbook of the year” to “beverage” to “focus on health.” There will be no separate e-book category and it’s conceivable – though perhaps not likely – that all the winners could be e-cookbooks.

“The time has come to be on the forefront,” said Yvon Ros, who oversees the James Beard Foundation awards as director of sponsorship and special events. “We want to make sure that we’re giving everybody the opportunity to enter who should be getting the opportunity.”

The James Beard Foundation will formally announce the change in late June or July, according to Ros. The change was made on the recommendation of the book awards committee.

Digital entries will only be accepted in an e-format that does not require the purchase of a specific device and will likely be submitted to judges on flash drives, said Matthew Sartwell, chairman of the James Beard Foundation book awards committee and the manager of Kitchen Arts & Letters, a specialty bookstore that focuses on cookbooks in Manhattan. So, no iOS-only (read: Apple’s iPad) books will be legal to enter.

“We had been discussing this for three-to-four years because we knew it was a fast-growing area and we wanted to be early so that we could grow with it,” said Sartwell.

It is indeed the early days of digital cookbooks. According to a report by the New York Times, in the first quarter of 2011, about 6% of cookbook sales were digital – small but growing: that number increased to 8.5% in the second quarter.

Traditional cookbook publishers are diving in. Kansas City-based Andrews McMeel’s digital-first strategy is validated by the James Beard Foundation’s move to allow digital entries into its awards show, according to the company’s president and publisher Kirsty Melville.

“People are reading and experiencing books as e-books, so they [the foundation] should be putting a stake in the ground in that area,” said Melville.

By opening up the awards to digital entries, the show ensures that it will stay relevant, said Adam Salomone, associate publisher at The Harvard Common Press, which produces digital cookbooks. The Boston-based publisher would not enter a digital book into the James Beard Foundation awards, however.

“Digital should be considered and I’m all for it on a theoretical level,” said Salomone. “Any book where we would be considering entering the book in the first place, we would enter the physical book.”

Salomone touches on the challenge that the foundation will face when administering the awards this year. How exactly will the foundation ensure that digital books are considered fairly? How will print products be judged against digital ones? How will publishers ensure that judges see the best version of their work?

Melville has yet more questions, “Which version are you going to be talking about – on the iPad? Are you judging the format or the content? I’m really interested in what the criteria are.”

They haven’t yet been determined, said Sartwell, but those that apply to print books still apply to digital books. Submissions are accepted in the Fall until mid-December and consist of multiple copies of each book. Judges have to complete recipes from within the pages of the finalists. Each entry costs $100 and the award winners are announced at a gala in New York in May. The foundation got about 350 entries for last year’s awards.

Aside from the rule about judges not needing to buy a specific device to engage with the book, the only other rule that has been determined so far is that publishers can only enter one format of each book – either the print or the digital. The rest of the rules are still being hashed out but the mission of the organization remains the same.

“Our primary purpose is in recognizing good work and to encourage more of it,” said Sartwell.

Related: Are Digital Cookbooks Ready for the Next Level?

Write to Jeremy Greenfield

Old cookbook photo via Shutterstock

Blockbuster Author Dean Koontz And Auryn Release Second eBook App In The Award-Winning Trixie Dog Series

LOS ANGELES, May 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Auryn, Inc., the most award-winning digital publisher of interactive children’s stories for the iPad and other tablet devices, today announces the availability of Trixie and Jinx, the second ebook app by blockbuster author Dean Koontz.

With the release of the award-winning I, Trixie Who Is Dog app late last year, Auryn and Koontz brought the author’s beloved golden retriever Trixie to life on the iPad. Together, they have now released the second Trixie ebook adventure, just in time for children and families to enjoy it on summer vacations. Again, Koontz will be donating his proceeds from the app to Canine Companions, a charity he has long supported that trains service assistance dogs for adults, children and veterans with disabilities.

Giving readers another fun, lighthearted glimpse into the imagination of Trixie with quirky narration and irrepressible spirit, this app will delight readers young and old. This app details the story of Trixie who longs for her buddy Jinx the dachshund when he goes on vacation. Lonely Trixie tries to find new friends, but discovers that spiders have no sense of humor and mice just can’t appreciate a good tail-chase; no one can compare to Jinx.

“Auryn’s adaptations of these two books are wonderful. Reading them, playing with them, I am a child again,” says New York Times’ best-selling author Dean Koontz.

Trixie and Jinx is now available on the iTunes app store for $3.99 at http://bit.ly/trjinx

Key features of the storybook app include:

Personalization of picture, voice and text:
- Children can double up as illustrators of this book app by coloring Trixie herself, the background layouts, and other elements in every page using bright vibrant colors.
- Children can become their own narrator or listen to their parents narrate the book.
- Interactivity allows kids to personalize the sentence, create new action words and sharpen their vocabulary skills.
Image and word association vocabulary builder – when an image is touched the associated word is spoken and the written word displayed.
Karaoke effect – when a word is spoken during narration then the word is highlighted.
Touch a word to hear it being spoken.

Trixie and Jinx is offered three ways for kids and families to enjoy:

“Read to me” – Listen to the narrated story while the text is displayed Karaoke style. After the narration finishes on a page the child can interact with objects until they are ready to move to the next page.
“Read myself” – There is no narration but the child can touch a word to hear it being spoken aloud.
“Auto Play” – same as “Read to Me” except the page advances automatically once the narration is finished. Useful for those long car rides when you want the child to have a complete book experience.

About Auryn, Inc.

Founded by Academy award-winning visual effects experts from Hollywood’s top movie studios, Auryn Inc. is the most award-winning digital publisher of storybook and creative apps for the iPad, iPhone, Android and other tablet devices. Uniting leading technologists and creative artists, Auryn’s patented technology enables the company to produce ground-breaking interactive content for the new emerging tablet medium.  Recognized by the Producers Guild of America and Variety magazine as the Digital 25 top innovator in Emerging Media and winner of more app awards than any other digital publisher, Auryn is paving the way in digital publishing and fast-becoming the leader in children’s storybook apps. For more on Auryn, visit www.auryn.com and follow on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest at: www.facebook.com/appsbyauryn, www.twitter.com/AurynApps and http://pinterest.com/appsbyauryn/.

About Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz is a prolific New York Times bestselling author whom the London Times has called “a master, a literary juggler.” His books have been translated into 36 languages and have sold more than 450,000,000 copies. He also served as the “editor” of books by his golden retriever, Trixie–Life Is Good, Christmas Is Good, and Bliss to You–and writes children’s books about her. Dean lives with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever Anna, and the enduring spirit of Trixie in southern California. For more on Dean visit http://www.deankoontz.com, http://www.deankoontz.com/trixie, and follow him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/deankoontzofficial.

Tune in on June 12, 19 and 26 from 1:00 PM PM ET / 10:00 AM PT to learn about:

The latest metadata practices at publishers, distributors and booksellers as Brian O’Leary gives attendees a first-ever look at the results of the BISG’s report on metadata (June 12)

The return on investment publishers can expect from improving the quality of their metadata and metadata practices (June 19)

The latest developments in ONIX 3.0, the industry standard for delivering metadata (June 26)

For more information on the individual sessions, go to BISG.org

Cost to register for the full series (Webcasts 1 – 3):
BISG and/or DBW Members: $99
Non-Members: $199
BISG/DBW members should request a coupon code from info@bisg.org before registering.

Register for the Evolving Metadata Practices: Research, ROI, and ONIX 3.0 webcast

Imagine if a hardcover book hitting a retailer’s store shelf displayed a different cover than it did when it left the printer. Although strange to picture, this mismatch of content and cover image is a real problem for books published and sold digitally.

Even as our industry moves digital, some things remain the same: the effectiveness of book publishing continues to rely extensively on consistent preparation and use of product metadata. Literally tens of thousands of publishers create metadata for an estimated 275,000 frontlist and two million or more backlist book titles. This metadata can then be modified, enhanced, corrected, or even disregarded by wholesalers, retailers, online booksellers, and others. The result is an industry wide game of “telephone,” with original metadata often garbled by the time it reaches a consumer.

Over the past three decades, the number of new and in-print titles has multiplied, increasing the importance of metadata in tracking content assets and improving the likelihood that they will be discovered. Some organizations have instituted programs to encourage publishers to maintain high-quality metadata, and BISG has worked to document best practices among trading partners. While these programs have been helpful in improving metadata quality, opportunities for closer collaboration between trading partners on the development and use of product metadata have never been greater.

Attendees Will Learn

1. How publishers are currently using metadata and what the pain points are
2. How to get the best ROI out of metadata investments
3. The latest ONIX 3.0 developments
4. The future of metadata

Speakers

Brian O’Leary, digital publishing consultancy Magellan Media, who authored BISG’s report on metadata

Jonathan Nowell, president of Nielsen Book, which tracks the publishing industry through the BookData, BookNet and BookScan brands

Graham Bell, chief data architect at EDItEUR, the organization that maintains ONIX

Moderator

Angela Bole, deputy executive director of the Book Industry Study Group

Who Should Attend

– Book publishers
– Book marketers
– Booksellers
– Workflow managers

Register for the Evolving Metadata Practices: Research, ROI, and ONIX 3.0 webcast

Diesel eBooks Takes on Role of Freedom Fighter with Launch of Mobile Products Suite
The Universal eFreedom app is available from any device with an internet browser and pledges to liberate device-tethered customers.

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Richmond, Virginia (PRWEB) May 22, 2012

Diesel eBooks has just rolled out a suite of new mobile products designed to deliver more choice and freedom, and to counteract what it sees as a totalitarian eBook environment which tethers customers to specific devices and eBook Stores.

“Our customers have increasingly shared their frustration with eBook devices being isolated to a specific store,” said L. Scott Redford, Founder and CEO of Diesel eBooks. “In response, we’ve built the eFreedom app which can be reached from anything with an internet browser. It’s essentially an optimized eBook Store for mobile devices built using HTML5 technology – it never needs downloading or updating.” HTML5 is a blanket term used to describe all of the internet technologies used to engineer websites, including CSS and javascript just to name a few.

The new Diesel Reader software can be downloaded from the Apple and Android app stores and lets customers consolidate eBooks from public libraries and other eBook stores onto one reader. http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/static/educz-welcome/1.html

“As eReader agnostics, we feel an eBook Store shouldn’t shackle you to any one reading device and vice versa,” added Redford. “That’s why we’ve purposefully refused to narrow in on a single eBook Reader and instead built our store with freedom in mind so that our customers can read their eBooks on whatever device they want.”

Diesel eBooks
One of the world’s largest independent eBook retailers, Diesel eBooks was launched in 2004 and serves millions of readers across each continent via its 3 million plus eBook catalogue. Diesel believes in an open eBook environment with customers un-tethered to any specific reading device and allows users to transfer eBooks from other booksellers between multiple devices. Our eBook platform is compatible with iPhones and iPads, Android phones, web browsers and many supported eReaders. Diesel recently introduced its’ new Android and Apple IOS apps as well as an HTML5 “eFreedom App” enabling customers to browse the Diesel catalogue from any device with an internet connection. Diesel is unique with its customer reward program and bundling technology which enables virtual packaging of six digital eBook files by series, theme, characters, time period or author. http://www.diesel-ebooks.com

Pretax profit at the publisher rose 13.6 percent to 4.8 million pounds ($7.6 million) for the year ended February 29, while its operating profit margin before adjustments increased to 12.4 percent from 9.1 percent last year.

The share of Bloomsbury’s sales contributed by e-books doubled to 6 percent from 2011, as sales of the digital form more than doubled to reach 5.7 million pounds from 2.2 million pounds in 2011.

In the UK, Bloomsbury’s main market, e-book sales remain a small part of all countrywide sales for the firm – just three percent, compared to the 23 percent of U.S. sales made up of e-books.

“We anticipate most markets will reach the US level of e-book sales in the near to medium term future,” Bloomsbury said on Tuesday.

Read more at Reuters.com.

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

By partnering with Amazon to sell Kindle devices and e-books in its bricks-and-mortar bookstores, Waterstones, the UK’s largest bookstore chain, could be sacrificing its digital future for a short-term gain, say industry observers.

Waterstones announced today that it would partner with Amazon to sell Kindle devices in its stores as well as provide wi-fi access so readers could buy e-books in-store. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it has been reported that Waterstones will get a piece of the revenue from selling the devices as well as from selling e-books within its stores. Waterstones will also offer its readers special in-store e-book deals.

While it is unknown whether money is changing hands between Amazon and Waterstones at any other point in the process, the arrangement as described above could be bad news for Waterstones.

“In the best case scenario, Waterstones will get devices sales, but they won’t get the sales later on,” said Eoin Purcell, editor of Irish Publishing News, who has followed the Waterstones-Amazon deal.

Meaning, once a reader leaves Waterstones with a new Kindle and decides to download books from the privacy of their home – or anywhere else, for that matter – the revenue stream for Waterstones dries up.

According to industry consultant (and DBW partner) Mike Shatzkin, “The difficulty in making deals around a reading device and supporting ecosystem is that the sales of content subsidize the sale of the devices.”

The Kindle Fire, for instance, reportedly costs more to make and distribute than Amazon charges consumers to buy it; it’s the content sales that the company hopes to profit on.

As Waterstones customers transition from bookstore-shoppers to Kindle e-book-buyers, Waterstones will lose future book-sales revenue to Amazon. Barnes & Noble may provide an instructive example.

When Barnes & Noble released its Nook e-reader in late 2009, it made an effort to sell the readers to its existing bricks-and-mortar customer base and converted many of them to e-book readers.

According to industry consultant Thad McIlroy, when this happened, growth in the retailer’s physical bookselling business halted. It could be that many of the heavy readers that once bought print books from Barnes & Noble were now buying e-books on the Nook.

“Barnes & Noble stopped growing overall when it became aggressive selling Nooks,” said McIlroy, who has written for Digital Book World about Barnes & Noble.

If this is true and Waterstones is set to lose many of its bookstore customers to the digital bookstore world, one wonders why the bookseller would enter into such a deal in the first place.

Waterstones general manager James Daunt has said repeatedly that the deal is about giving customers what they want – digital reading experiences – and that Amazon is the best partner for doing so. According to Daunt, a vast majority of customers will still want what Waterstones mostly gives them now – print books – once the dust settles on the e-book revolution.

When asked today on BBC radio what percentage of book-sales revenue will be digital in the end, after giving a disclaimer about such predictions, he said, “The number I would pluck out is about 25%.”

According to the Publishers Association, the UK trade group for book publishers, 8% of all sales were digital in 2011. The raw number, £92 million, reflected a 366% increase from the previous year. According to a recent study by Bowker, the UK is fairly in line with other countries around the world, including the U.S., when it comes to attitudes toward e-books and e-reading.

In the U.S., e-book sales are already approaching 25%, according to multiple reports, and many observers think they will hit 50% in the next few years. By comparison, Daunt’s prediction seems wishful thinking.

Write to Jeremy Greenfield

Digital books concept via Shutterstock

Free Press Summer Fiction Sampler

Now Available as Interactive App and in ebook

www.freepressfiction.com

(New York, NY – May 21, 2012)  Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., announced today that in celebration of five powerful, original new novels coming this summer, it will release a promotional fiction sampler as both an interactive app and in an ebook edition.  The Free Press Summer Fiction Sampler app will include extended excerpts and extra content including videos, photos, and more from The Folded Earth by Anuradha Roy, Shelter by Frances Greenslade, Some Kind of Peace by Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff, Gone to the Forest by Katie Kitamura, and The Other Half of Me by Morgan McCarthy. The free interactive app is available now for the iPad and will soon be available in editions for other tablet devices.

The app was created in-house with Adobe®    Digital Publishing Suite, using the Folio Builder and Overlay Creator tools in Adobe InDesign®, which allows for rich, interactive elements such as video, audio, slideshows, pan/zoom images, Web content and more to be built into the app.

With behind-the-scenes content interspersed throughout, the sampler will transport readers to gorgeous landscapes around the world, from the foothills of the Himalaya in The Folded Earth to the wilds of British Columbia in Shelter, from the icy shores of Sweden in Some Kind of Peace to a colonial settlement in Gone to the Forest, and the Welsh countryside in The Other Half of Me.

In addition to the content included in the ebook, the fiction sampler app offers additional, exclusive insight into the books through exciting features, including:

·         Book trailers and other videos

·         Audio clips from author interviews

·         Photos of the settings of the novels

·         Character sketches

·         Live Free Press Twitter feed

·         Original introductions by the authors

·         Bookseller quotes

·         Interactive visuals

“Free Press is always looking for innovative ways to promote our authors and reach new readers.  These five novels represent a wealth of talent and entertainment.  We hope this app will showcase our authors in a new way and broaden their audience,” said Martha K. Levin, Free Press Executive Vice President and Publisher.

“Readers on tablet devices and e-readers are increasing exponentially,” said Claire Kelley, Free Press Marketing Manager who designed and created the app. “Our fiction sampler interactive app and ebook will introduce readers into the worlds of these five wonderful novels, and we hope that engagement in this way will inspire them to buy the full book.”

Adobe Digital Publishing Suite is the industry-leading cross-platform solution that enables publishers worldwide to publish, distribute and monetize digital publications and magazines created with Adobe InDesign across tablets and smartphones. Digital Publishing Suite is used by more than 850 publishers worldwide, who want to bring their print offerings to the digital environment or create new and unique experiences across mobile devices.

“Within a year, Adobe saw over 1,700 apps and more than 25 million publications published using Digital Publishing Suite,” said Nick Bogaty, director of business development, Digital Publishing at Adobe.  “The Summer Fiction Sampler app is a great example of how publishers are able to promote and monetize their content in new and unique ways across a broad set of devices.”

To learn more about each of these novels and how to download the ebook and app, please visit www.freepressfiction.com.

The announcement that Waterstones, the nearestUKequivalent to Barnes & Noble as a bookselling chain, will be selling the Kindle in their stores came as somewhat of a shock.

There had been rumors that B&N was closing in on a deal to partner with Waterstones on the Nook.

Read more at The Shatzkin Files.