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The World of eBooks Exploded in 2010

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Update:

To follow my technology blog posts, please note I am now publishing weekly at 7x7.com.

My early posts include these:


The Day That Twitter Ate the Cookies

Innovation at Facebook Comes from the Bottom Up

From 'Wired' to Willy Wonka: TCHO Uses Technology and Ethical Sourcing to Make Great Chocolate

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Big Loser in Murdoch/ Apple Partnership: The NY Times

As the media world awaits the arrival of The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's newspaper designed specifically for the iPad, early next year, what's wrong with this picture?

Going back to the launch of the iPad in January, the main promotional images that emerged from Steve Jobs and Apple at that time displayed a prototype of The New York Times, not one of Murdoch's newspapers.

On his whirlwind tour announcing the new mobile platform, Jobs visited several media companies in New York, including the Times and News Corp.

It seemed obvious to all of us covering the industry that the most-favored media company on Jobs' list was then the Times, widely recognized as the best newspaper in the country.

So what happened?

Why is it that Murdoch has announced an iPad-based news product, while the Times remains silent?

Right from the start, details leaking out from the initial meetings indicated that Apple and the media companies remained far apart on the question of how content partnerships would work on the new mobile device.

As I noted at the time, "major sticking points...include(d) pricing, revenue sharing, and ownership of subscriber information — in other words, pretty much the entire business model that would underlie any content deals for the iPad."

So in order to proceed, someone had to figure out how to close the gap on those issues and that, apparently, is what Murdoch (reportedly with Jobs' active involvement) has now succeeded in doing.

The basic premise supporting a paid model on the iPad was recently clearly stated by the Times' own David Carr:

"When I am on a Web browser and I bump into a pay wall, I reflexively pull back unless it is in front of something I really must have. But when I’m in the App Store on an iPad, I’m already in a commercial environment: pushing the button to spend small money on something I’d like to see or play with doesn’t seem like such a sucker’s bet."

While there remain major questions about how Murdoch's initial $30 million investment in The Daily will reach profitability anytime in the foreseeable future, there is always a competitive advantage in being first*.

So that nagging question remains: Why wasn't it the Times?

* Billionaire Virgin Airways owner Richard Branson is said to have an iPad-based news project ready for launch also, so it is unclear at this time which wil be "first."

Recommended reading:

Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch Save Newspapers — Well, One, At Least

For Rupert Murdoch, There’s No Downside to His Tablet-Only The Daily

Rupert Murdoch's iPad experiment is unlikely to succeed

Old media tackle the challenge of tablets

Forget print and, oh, forget the web: Murdoch to launch iPad-only newspaper

Go Down Moses, Apple Unveils its Media Tabula Rasa

The True Test of the NYT’s Paywall Plan Will Be e-Readers

Juan Williams, Fox & NPR

A recent show, which I participated in.

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Crafting Effective Media Strategies Today: One Example is NPR

It shouldn't be surprising that there's been a great deal of confusion among existing media companies about the words "convergence" and "multimedia" over the past decade plus.

The proliferation of tools and platforms is confusing -- from a relatively static world of radio, TV, newspapers, and magazines to a new world of websites, audio clips, video clips, streaming video, citizen reports, social media, aggregated content hubs, ecommerce apps, sharing tools, blogs, and mobile platforms, just to name a few of the major developments that have affected media.

At a strategic level, however, it is less important what the various media forms are than how your company must be able to adapt to them.

If your core product was print, now you need to have a strategy for broadening your channels to include video and audio; if you were primarily a radio station, you now need video and print components; from a past in TV, you've had to integrate print and audio.

At various points in this process, companies may seize upon one thing -- maybe podcasts or Twitter feeds -- as a key part of their strategy, to the relative exclusion of others, but this isn't smart.

Rather, today's media companies need to have content strategies that are agnostic as to platform; social media strategies that aren't depending on any one source in a rapidly changing universe; and mobile strategies that can adapt as the market there shakes itself out.

At a high level, executives should not get stuck on any one platform or channel, because the one thing we can say about this environment is that it is going to continue to change.

When I hear Anderson Cooper of CNN these days stress that you can "follow us on Twitter," I cringe. First of all, even though what people primarily do with Twitter is follow other people, that does not necessarily equate into a smart public relations plan.

Integrate Twitter, of course, but don't necessarily make so much noise about it, that's using a sledge hammer to deliver a message better delivered by a tiny bird's call.

Over and over again, however, media companies make this mistake, overly promoting their websites, their Facebook pages, their blogs, their iPad apps -- whatever top execs have been told is the latest and greatest trend.

The problem is that by the time they are talking about it, the moment for promoting it has already past.

Properly formulated, a media company's overall strategy encompasses every tool and channel mentioned above as well as some not yet invented. The capacity for digital technologies to remake our workplaces and work styles is endless.

Start from that perspective, remain utterly agnostic about channel, and you'll be off on the right course.

Thus, one of my favorite companies to date has been NPR, which has recognized the need to become a source for print articles to augment its traditional audio offerings. NPR can compete in text forms as well as anybody; video offers additional opportunities.

In that regard, today's announcement that NPR is leading the effort "to develop a digital distribution network that will allow public broadcasters and web producers to combine, create, share and distribute their news and cultural content" is a move in the right direction.

The effort is a joint effort by five national producers: American Public Media, NPR, PBS, Public Radio International (PRI) and the Public Radio Exchange (PRX).

Rather than a collection of multimedia bells and whistles, what is badly needed in so many companies is an old-fashioned editorial strategy, which is the guts of any content strategy.

Know what stories you are good at getting, how best to get them, and which of today's channels provides the best first option for communicating them. Strong visuals imply video, naturally; complex stories require long-form print or documentary capability.

We've seen enough come and go now to predict the future. There will be more tools, more channels, more options. Fine, if that's the way it is to be, we never have to commit so fully to any one option as we did in the past.

Stay open, be experimental, embrace change.

Good advice in all avenues of life, actually, not just in media.

Two Growing Trends: "Delete My Facebook Account" and Google's eBook Store

Could it be that all the recent controversy over privacy at Facebook is having an impact on the social networking site's business?

Search Engine Land reports that in the "how do I?" category of search on Google, one fast-growing question is "How do I delete my Facebook account?"

Meanwhile, Kyodo News Service is reporting today that Google has "the support of almost all publishers in the United States for its digital bookstore expected to be launched as early as the end of June," according to unnamed company officials.

This report says that more than 25,000 publishers and authors have agreed to participate in the search giant's effort to distribute digital books online, which if true would amount to a very large new e-bookstore indeed.

The project is called Google Editions.

Roger Ebert and the Joy of Writing

Recently, I saw the great film critic, Roger Ebert, onstage at the majestic Castro Theater. He was in town to receive another award; he's the kind of person who could never win too many. He's America's greatest film critic, but that is not what impressed me most about him.

It was his indomitable spirit. He's frail from many cancer operations, can speak only through his computer, and cannot eat or drink anything at all.

Despite all of this, the most memorable part of the evening at the Castro was Ebert's beautiful smile, which never left his face during a long ceremony that featured tributes from a number of film's top directors.

He exudes joy. He repeatedly gestured to the audience, indicating that his sense of humor remains undiminished.

In fact, he was the happiest person in the place.

It's hard to watch someone who has been so ill that he has lost almost all of his former robustness, physically. But he's lost nothing mentally.

He writes now more than ever. His website and his twitter stream are among the most engaging in the country.

Roger Ebert is a great writer, and like many great writers, he just keeps getting better.

Here's what he has to say about the current state of film reviewing.

"This is a golden age for film criticism. Never before have more critics written more or better words for more readers about more films.

"Twenty years ago a good-sized city might have contained a dozen people making a living from writing about films, and for half of them the salary might have been adequate to raise a family. Today that city might contain hundreds, although (the Catch-22) not more than one or two are making a living.

"What the internet is creating is a class of literate, gifted amateur writers, in an old tradition. Like Trollope, who was a British Post official all his working life, they write for love and because they must."

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