publishing

Oct 13, 2015 ∞

Axel Springer bans adblock users from Bild online

According to the report by Reuters at The Guardian:

More than 30% of Germans online use such software, many more than the 5% of internet users globally in 2014, according to Dublin-based analytics and advisory firm PageFair, which develops “ad blocker-friendly” advertising.

My basic position on ad blocking is that it’s a permissible response to shitty or intrusive advertising but whatever tool you use should have a whitelisting feature. I don’t know what the ultimate solution to this debate will be but I know that Bild.de publisher Axel Springer’s approach is unwise.

It’s so easy to find well-done news on the internet these days that Axel Springer is only hurting itself with the new policy. Instead of focusing on taking only high-quality advertisements that aren’t obnoxious or classless and minimizing the concomitant tracking, Bild.de is walling itself off from 30 percent of its native-language audience.

In short, someone at Axel Springer should be fired.

Dec 4, 2012 ∞

News Corp. Shutters The Daily iPad App - Peter Kafka

I know they’re not the same thing, but it’s interesting to watch News Corp. fail with The Daily while Marco Arment’s The Magazine is gaining altitude, despite production by a relative publishing newb and one other staffer.

One thing is clear: digital publishing does not belong exclusively (or even primarily) to the Old Publishing incumbents.

Oct 22, 2012 ∞

Amazon's "phantom" 20% VAT for UK ebook sales

Amazon’s “phantom” 20% VAT for UK ebook sales

Ian Griffiths and Dan Milmo of The Guardian, quoting ” a contract seen by the Guardian,” presumably between Amazon and one of its UK publishing “partners”:

If the base price exceeds the base price … provided to a similar service then … the base price hereunder will be deemed to be equal to such lower price, effective as of the date such lower price comes into effect.

That’s a good deal, especially coupled with the recent ebooks settlement.

The US antitrust regime is focused on protecting consumer interests. That means that as long as Amazon’s book selection continues to rise and their prices continue to fall, they’re unlikely to see any problems on the competition law front.

That’s probably not good for consumers in the long-run, especially given Amazon’s DRM and control over your devices and library. I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that Amazon will face some antitrust scrutiny of its own in the next year.

Aug 21, 2012 ∞

A Vision for the Future of Newspapers—20 Years Ago

Mark Potts, writing about his major part in what might be properly called the genesis of the first digital publishing strategy:

As someone said when they saw PostCard a few years later, “It looks like the Web.” Except that, in those early days of experimentation, the Web didn’t really exist yet.

Aug 18, 2012 ∞

How to Save the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News

Joel Mathis, writing at Philadelphia Magazine‘s blog The Philly Post, may have a point. But going online-only would require a serious modernization of the Philly.com brand and site design.

I don’t see the ownership having the vision to invest in either branding or a design refresh, and if they do, I’m not confident they’ll pick the right people for the job. I hope I’m wrong, because the only sure thing about Philly’s major papers these days is that something needs to change fast.

Jun 1, 2012 ∞

The danger of covertly-altered ebooks

"Philip," writing at his blog Ocracoke Island Journal about the ebook edition of War and Peace he bought on his Nook (emphasis below is mine):

As I was reading, I came across this sentence: “It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern….”

…

For the sentence above I discovered this genuine translation: “It was as if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern….”

That absurd find-and-replace decision was apparently applied to every instance of “kindle” throughout the ebook.

The publisher of this particular edition is hilariously called Superior Formatting Publishing. Their website is a Wordpress installation. That’s fine for weblogs of note, like this one, but unless you’ve hired a solid designer and/or developer, Wordpress probably won’t cut it for a publishing website.

The company fumbles even worse in basing the majority of the site’s content on Amazon API calls. Amazon has presumably updated something in their API since Superior Formatting Publishing (really, two -ing words in a row?) because most of the site says only “Whoops, looks like there was a problem get the book data from Amazon. Please try again in a moment” or simply “Amazon API Error.”

"Philip" makes the point that "the ease with which anyone can commit such jackassetry with an ebook and a simple, stupid "find and replace" function. He says:

It makes one wary of the integrity of any digital version of not only War and Peace…but any e-book.’

He’s right. Sure, people could always publish altered versions of a text in the past, but it’s far easier to do with digital content than the paper stuff. This instance involves what looks like a very low-budget “publisher,” but there are many such publishers out there, often with cut-rate prices.

I wonder how many others are find-and-replacing classic works of literature. Are all such changes merely stupid, like changing “kindle” to “Nook” in the hopes (I assume) of avoiding some automated removal from the Nook store? Or are there people out there making the dangerous, destructive changes about which Philip opines?

Apple still faces legal action from multiple angles on the ebook front, and most big publishers and sellers know that this is still a nascent market.

But that’s what worries me: will the continued growth of the legitimate ebook publishing market mean the continued growth of D-list wannabes like Superior Formatting Publishing? How can we address the potential for the sale of covertly-altered literature? Is it something for the Federal Trade Commission to look into, as they did with blogger endorsements?

I’m always wary of increased government regulation as long as there’s a way for the market to take care of itself, but I fear there may always be a market for dirt-cheap ebook editions of literary works, sold with or without the right authorization (public domain, licensing, etc.), and with or without the text as it was actually written by the author.

We should all be careful and discerning about which publishers we go to for ebook editions of the books we want to buy.

Hat -tip to Professor Zittrain, on whose site I first read about this