Google

It has been several months since Google’s preliminary out-of-court settlement with the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Authors Guild regarding Google Book Search, and the dust has yet to settle. The agreement’s true impact will only become apparent over time, as its terms are put into practice. The devil will be in the details of execution. This is a watershed event nonetheless and marks the beginning of a new era in content distribution. A few themes have emerged that will characterize this next phase.

Six Approximate number of titles HarperCollins expects to produce as video books, or v-books, which will be available for download on iPods and iPhones. The publisher released its first v-book, “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis, last month; the print version of the title was released in January. The “Google” v-book, which retails for $9.99, features a 23-minute video of Jarvis discussing the basic concepts in the book.
Source: paidContent.org, Feb. 3, 2009

$0 Amount Massachusetts-based, nonprofit Concord Free Press charges consumers for its books, including shipping. In exchange, the publisher asks readers to make donations to a local charity or someone in need in their community, and to pass on the book. Concord plans to publish two titles a year as part of its effort to “expand the definition of publishing and re-invigorate the book” (according to its Web site). Each book will be limited to about 1,000 copies.

When espresso was first popularized in America, in the 1950s, it had all the qualities of a fad—commanding a lot of attention, then quickly fading out. The drink roared back into popularity in the ’90s on the back of a killer app called Starbucks, proving itself indispensable among a digital generation partial to need-it-now energy solutions. Who today can imagine life without it?

Judging from the prognostications that Pat Schroeder remembers hearing at publishing conferences a decade ago, most people today ought to be reading e-books and regarding print as a quaint relic of the past. That hasn’t happened, of course, and the president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) sees that fact as a useful caution when trying to predict the future of the industry. It’s easy to identify key factors, but misjudge their effect; trends that seem vitally important now could fade into obscurity, and the course of publishing could be shaped by things currently on no one’s radar screen.

There is no doubt that the industry is in a period of significant transition. What can we expect 10 to 15 years from now?

One might think that all other problems fade into the background when there’s a recession, but for university presses, that’s certainly not true. Questions about changes in education funding and student habits rear up alongside concerns about preparing for the digital future; still, the country’s economic woes are plaguing university presses, and the stress is not likely to disappear anytime soon.

The trade association Book Industry Study Group (BISG) has released version 1.0 of its BookDROP technical specification, a new standard intended to support the search and discovery of digital book content on the Web.

Book publishers are up against tough competition for readers’ attention, and nowhere is this more evident than in a Google search. On a search results page, we not only compete against other book titles and authors, but we also compete with our own distribution channels, free Web content, video, news and even Google’s own scanned copies of our books. If you find yourself frustrated that you don’t rank in Google as high as you think you should, you’re not alone. So what’s a book publisher to do?

$100,000 The value of what is said to be the world’s most expensive book. “Michelangelo. La Dotta Mano,” which was recently published by Italy-based FMR, is a 62-pound, velvet- and marble-bound tome depicting the life and work of Michelangelo. It takes six months to make each book, and more than 20 copies have been sold.