Spring reading from FT.com; “Libraries were never warehouses of books ... They have always been and always will be centres of learning"

This week's blog post is just a link to a nice essay from the Financial Times of London on the future of book.  If you love books it's a great read.

Image permanence for HP Indigo digital presses

As photo consumers move more and more toward alternatives to silver halide (photographic) output like digital photo albums from folks like Apple and Shutterfly and photo-intensive books like those provided by Blurb and A&I, many have questioned the longevity of these new printing options.  After all, most of us have had the box of photos or old stick-in photo books from our youth that we stumble across every few years.  Or maybe a Carousel or two (or 10 or 50) of slides, the old school prosumer and creative pro weapon of choice.  So it makes sense to ask the question that in addition to the naturally unstable nature of the new digital photo environment (so, how long since you have backed up your iPhoto library?), what will those books I'm making today look like in 20 or more years?


To that end, we received some very good news this week.  Henry Wilhelm  co-founder, president and director of research at Wilhelm Imaging Research, who I worked with in my Corbis days after we acquired the Bettmann Archive and the Sygma Collection when we needed to quickly resolve the issue of decaying historical photographic films, released a report last week that is sure to make HP happy but also let those of us who are photo enthusiasts sleep a bit easier.


According to Wilhelm, HP Indigo printing actually exceeds the image permanence of the best-rated silver halide product, Fuji's Crystal Archive.  Wilhelm rated Indigo output on Kromekote paper at 45 years, more than twice as long as the rating for Kodak photo paper.  In addition, the dark storage rating, which is more appropriate for photo book applications, is greater than 100 years.


“The permanence ratings from WIR provide an important validation for the use of HP Indigo in consumer and professional photographic markets as well as in the fine art world,” said Wilhelm. “Good display permanence combined with excellent long-term stability, as well as freedom from yellowing for images that are in albums or are stored in other dark locations, are essential to preserving the value of historical photographs, art works and photo books.”


So your photo books aren't a replacement for backing up your digital photo archive.  But it does mean that when you come across your "Burning Man 2009" book in 30 years, you'll still recognize yourself and your possibly questionable choices in wardrobe and friends.

Sign of the times--digital vendors overtake offset at Ipex 2010

The folks at Ipex 2010 rolled out their Media Summit last week in London with presentations from Canon  Europe, CP Bourg, Domino Printing Services, Fujifilm Europe, Oce, Pitney Bowes, Red Tie,  Ricoh, and Xerox.  You can get the gist of what they are planning to show here, but the real news was in some of the comments about the show from Trevor Crawford, event director for Ipex.

If you've been to Ipex or Drupa in the past, you know that these shows are defined by the huge presence of folks like Heidelberg and MAN Roland.  This year's biggest exhibitor?  HP, with a stand over one-third bigger than they had at Ipex 2006 at 32,000 square feet.  Not an offset press to be found there.

Digital vendors will occupy 38% of the show floor this year compared with 26% for offset--exactly reversing the numbers from four years ago.  Heidelberg alone is downsizing by half its presence on the show floor.

Apple and the agency model for books

The big news of the last couple of weeks is not really the much ballyhooed iPad (my personal jury is still out on if I see it fitting in my bag of electronic tricks) but it's really the new model Apple is launching for selling eBooks.  It's an agency model, which is defined as projects funded as a fee-for-service by clients, who either use or re-sell the content, is the model currently used by Apple's iTunes App Store, where Apple takes a 30% cut on all sales made.  This, of course, allows the publisher--either of an app or a book--to set their price and Apple abides by this and just takes their pound of flesh.

I've always thought that Amazon's Kindle eBook model was just the old wholesale model in disguise.  But rather than having to share a significant portion of of book revenue with others in the supply chain, Amazon just took all that was left after the publisher and the author's cut, which left them a 50% share.  When Amazon was the only game it town they got to write the rules.  Amazing how having a new player in the market can change things.

While I hardly blame Amazon for getting maximum return for eBooks on the Kindle for as long as they could, I do think they were a bit short-sighted to think that embracing an old wholesale model could last.  Now they have publishers like Macmillan very ready to call the bluff and Amazon blinked last week, and appear to be ready to let Macmillan set their own price for eBooks.

When I first got into the publishing marketplace, I was quite surprised by a model that allowed retailers to buy and then return books that don't sell for full credit.  It's not only a hard model to sustain, it's also environmentally flawed, allowing for large percentage of books to be warehoused and, eventually, repulped instead of sold.  But buying lots of copies in large, single runs, is the way to keep costs low and that's why it's the right model for best selling authors.  But in a new world of publishing those are the only folks who will be getting the volume benefit, with the rest of industry going POD more and more often with companies like Blurb, Author Solutions, and Lulu.

When Blurb launched our Set Your Price program, we recognized this shift in thinking.  We allow authors to keep 100% of the markup on the production price of the book, allowing authors to set their price at whatever the market will bear.  But the model is not perfect in a world that rich content, color books still cost too much to create.  As Michael Norris, Senior Editor and Analyst for Simba Information's Trade Books group told Publishing Business, people still think ink-on-paper books cost too much in general.  And that's one of our big goals at Blurb--to continue to influence the supply chain to enable more and more fledgling authors to get their works in the hands of an eager public.

We take this idea of "democratizing publishing" very seriously.  We live it every day.  And moving the industry to more of an agency model is what will keep the industry healthy for years and years to come.

Technology for technology's sake...why I dislike transpromo and personalization

I joined a little company in 1993 called Continuum Productions, which became Corbis Corporation.  We were scanning a lot of materials, primarily photos, assuming we would find a market for them as the world was going increasingly digital.  Our first real product was an award-winning CD called "A Passion for Art", which was a virtual tour of the Barnes Foundation collection.  For the mid 90's, believe me, this was a pretty cool little project.  Why haven't you likely heard about it?  Because while it was engaging as a new technology it wasn't really the best way to experience art and the museum experience. We had content looking for an audience, a medium looking for a reason to exist.

That's kind of how I feel about transpromo stuff I get in the mail.  Just because you can put my name into some selected fields does not mean it's a good marketing experience for me.  And I don't know exactly why I hate it so much, but I think it's because it feels lazy to me.  As if a software program can actually "know" me.  If you are a company that wants to get my attention, figure out a compelling reason for me to consider your product, don't just fill my name in the blanks.

On Demand Books' Espresso Book Machine..the next big thing?

Back in 1999, when POD was barely a three-letter acronym,  Jason Epstein was trying to figure out how to get the great backlist of books easily into the hands of the public via localized, automated printing and binding machines.  So like any good entrepreneur, he sought out like-minded folks to make his vision a reality.  He found inventor Jeff Marsh and a partner in Dane Neller and On Demand Books was born in 2003.


Move forward to the 2009 London Book Fair.  On Demand Books was heralding the new world of book printing via a partnership with Lightning Source and Wiley.  The only problem was every time I went by their booth on the show floor the machine was out of service with a service guy busily working to get it up and running.  I never did see it run during my day at the show, but I saw enough to understand that there still was some ways to go before this technology could run without significant service support.  I saw this as a potentially lethal problem since they were selling the idea of having these machines in third-world countries, where the idea of a bookstore with significant inventory was only a pipe dream.


The issue as I saw it was that this clever machine looked to be mostly standalone parts (laser printer, cover inkjet printer) tied together with a rather complicated perfect binding system.  I had a lot of questions.  Who is going service this thing?  Epson, who made the cover printer? Hardly.  Kyocera, whose printer was used in the model I saw at LBF?  Doubtful. What's the expected up time?  What sort of data line will be needed to stream content to the  system or will there be a server version available?  Lots of questions.

Well, I haven't gotten all of my answers but I can say that On Demand Books has gone a long way toward making this a viable, global product by announcing their partnership with Xerox earlier this month.  This is exactly the sort of move they needed, in my opinion, to begin to reach the promise of those early days of the company.


According to the press release,"Xerox and On Demand Books will jointly market and sell, on a worldwide basis, the Xerox 4112 Copier / Printer together with the Espresso Book Machine - a fully integrated solution that prints, binds and trims books with full colour covers on demand in retail locations and libraries."  So that gives ODB an already baked sales and service organization, which I think is key to its success.  Also, rather than pushing the Espresso as an opportunity to move into new global markets, they are targeting bookstores and libraries, which I think is a very smart move.


This is another in a series of recent good moves by the company, including the hiring of Lightning Source and Lulu veteran Andrew Pate as SVP of Biz Dev.  He knows the publishing and POD marketplaces well and was a savvy hire.


Neller says that there will be around 30 systems installed by the end of Q1/10, including one in my vicinity at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, WA.  One-third of the installations will be in university book stores, which looks like a sweet spot to me. The new partnership with Xerox can only help to make the installed base grow even more.


As Xerox's VP of Publishing John Conley said in an interview with Print CEO, "[The Espresso Book Machine] reinforces the theme of producing books at point of sale and gives you the largest bookstore in the world sitting in a 9′ by 12′ space.” Game changer?  May be.  But no doubt that the ODB folks have doubled down and are ready to see just how far they can take their invention into the print marketplace.

A print industry co-op that works--Dscoop

I blogged last fall about my opinions of Print 09 and on the future of trade shows in general.  My point then was that in the Internet age the real value of these kinds of events has really become the opportunity to interact with your colleagues and suppliers rather than doing research and purchase, as was the experience of the past.  With that in mind—and with the trade show season at hand—I’ve been asked of late which events in 2010 do I think are of value and worth the time and money to attend.

This year I’m planning to head to Birmingham for IPEX, Köln for Photokina, and NYC for PhotoPlus.  But the event I’m really looking forward to, and the one I think gives the most bang for the buck, is Dscoop5 next month in Dallas.

For those of you who are not familiar with Dscoop (Digital Solutions Cooperative), it is a co-op between HP and the users of its Indigo presses.  It evolved out of the old Indigo Customer Exchange (ICE) group and I feel it is one of the best investments of time an Indigo printer can make, whether you are a large installation like the facilities that print Blurb books worldwide or a smaller, one or two press shop.  It boasts membership by over 50% of Indigo installations.

First off, this is a co-op in the best sense of the word.  HP has made a strong commitment to the group and each year sends its most senior managers to the annual event.  David Leshem, an Indigo veteran from the earliest days of the company in the 90’s, has been a board member since it’s outset (he’s retiring from the position this year) and this year attendees can expect to hear presentations and rub shoulders with folks like Alon Bar-Shany, GM of Indigo Worldwide, Chris Morgan, new VP Graphics Solutions Global Business, and Jan Riecher, VP and GM Graphics Solutions Business – Americas.  For me, the trip to Dallas will be worthwhile just to renew these acquaintances. But there is much more to the Dscoop program.

With a goal of promoting more business and efficiencies for Indigo users large and small, Dscoop provides several tracks of conference sessions that are created to inspire, educate, and help attendees better understand the current POD marketplace and how to benefit from the current economy and continued evolution of the Indigo printing platform.

I attended my first Dscoop last year and the most impressive part of the trip was talking to the multitude of PSP’s (print service providers in HP lingo) and seeing how open and cooperative they really were as everyone, while at times competitive, were looking for ways to grow the opportunities for all.  Part of the three-day event is a very targeted trade show where you can meet the major players in the paper, supplies, and finishing market along with hands-on experience with the newest technology from HP Indigo.

For a guy that travels a lot I’m careful to only book events that I feel will give great return for Blurb and for me personally.  Dscoop is one of those events.  Find out more at www.dscoop5.org.