Rowling Returns With a New Book, This Time for Adults

J.K. Rowling, the British author whose “Harry Potter” fantasy series ignited a passion for reading for millions of children around the world, has emerged from a five-year publishing hiatus with a new book: this time for adults. Little, Brown and Company, part of the Hachette Book Group, said on Thursday it had acquired the rights to publish the book, whose title and publication date was not named.

“Although I’ve enjoyed writing it every bit as much, my next book will be very different to the Harry Potter series, which has been published so brilliantly by Bloomsbury and my other publishers around the world,” Ms. Rowling said in a statement. “The freedom to explore new territory is a gift that Harry’s success has brought me, and with that new territory it seemed a logical progression to have a new publisher. I am delighted to have a second publishing home in Little, Brown, and a publishing team that will be a great partner in this new phase of my writing life.”

30 Clients Using Computer-Generated Stories Instead of Writers

Forbes has joined a group of 30 clients using Narrative Science software to write computer-generated stories.

Here’s more about the program, used in one corner of Forbes‘ website: “Narrative Science has developed a technology solution that creates rich narrative content from data. Narratives are seamlessly created from structured data sources and can be fully customized to fit a customer’s voice, style and tone. Stories are created in multiple formats, including long form stories, headlines, Tweets and industry reports with graphical visualizations.”

The New York Times revealed last year that trade publisher Hanley Wood and sports journalism site The Big Ten Network also use the tool. In all, 30 clients use the software–but Narrative Science did not disclose the complete client list.

…The Narrative Science technology could potentially impact many corners of the writing trade. The company has a long list of stories they can computerize: sports stories, financial reports, real estate analyses, local community content, polling & elections, advertising campaign summaries sales & operations reports and market research.

Here’s an excerpt from a Forbes earnings preview story about Barnes & Noble, written by the computer program:

While company shares have dropped 17.2% over the last three months to close at $13.72 on February 15, 2012, Barnes & Noble (BKS) is hoping it can break the slide with solid third quarter results when it releases its earnings on Tuesday, February 21, 2012.

What to Expect: The Wall Street consensus is $1.01 per share, up 1% from a year ago when Barnes & Noble reported earnings of $1 per share.

The consensus estimate is down from three months ago when it was $1.42, but is unchanged over the past month. Analysts are projecting a loss of $1.09 per share for the fiscal year.

The company originated with two electrical engineering and computer science professors at Northwestern University. Here’s more about the company: “[It began with] a software program that automatically generates sports stories using commonly available information such as box scores and play-by-plays. The program was the result of a collaboration between McCormick and Medill School of Journalism.

To create the software, Hammond and Birnbaum and students working in McCormick’s Intelligent Information Lab created algorithms that use statistics from a game to write text that captures the overall dynamic of the game and highlights the key plays and players. Along with the text is an appropriate headline and a photo of what the program deems as the most important player in the game.”

This, to me, is more game-changing for the publishing industry than all of the innovations in e-books and e-readers combined. Think of genres (like bodice rippers and some sci-fi or children’s books) could be written with some basic narrative inputs! Think of sports recaps or breaking news stories that could easily be generated with a few inputs! 

I’m not saying this is ideal, because I can certainly see there would be a large margin of error with any program like this (not even touching on the whole job loss issue and fact that these stories would lose the “human” touch of writing and much personal opinion), but it’s interesting to see how programs like this will play out in the future.

NBC News Launches Digital Imprint

NBC News has launched a new eBook imprint called NBC Publishing. The imprint will release enhanced eBooks with videos inside.

The launch follows the media company’s success in the eBook business. Last year NBC worked with Penguin and The Perseus Books Group on various enhanced eBook titles including: JFK: 50 Days, Roots, D-Day:The Battle for Normandy and Berlin 1961.

Traditional books, dressed to kill…

The immediate future of the book is clear. E (electronic) is for easy; P (print) is for posterity. Book readers today are leading double lives. We are faithful to our libraries at home, but stray towards the delights of digital the moment we board a plane, train or automobile.

The pleasures of E means downloading the new book we fancy, from reviews, word-of-mouth or plain curiosity. The satisfactions of P come from acquiring lovely print editions for our bookshelves. In due course, but not quite yet, the world’s writers and their agents will work out how fully to monetise this double market.

One unintended consequence of this irreversible trend has been to give the hardback a new lease of life. If the ebook is all about ease, and short attention spans, the ink and paper book must satisfy not just the thrill of reading, but the deep aesthetic pleasure associated with owning, holding and even scenting a favourite text. Already, there are signs that some publishers have cottoned on to this.

Not since the palmy days of late-Victorian publishing has so much care and attention been lavished on the hardback. Go into any bookshop now and you will find piles of brand-new hardbacks sporting coloured endpapers, scarlet silk bookmarks, heavy, deckle-edged paper and elaborate laminated boards. If Stevenson, Kipling or Conan Doyle were to wander into Waterstone’s today, they would feel quite at home. Selling to high-end readers, admittedly a smaller market, allows the publisher to charge £35, even £40, for the new edition destined for the library shelf…

The e-publisher’s riposte to beautiful books has time and technology on its side. This is also the age of the book app. 2011 was a milestone year in lots of ways (Arab spring, death of Bin Laden, English cricket revival), but never more so than with Faber’s launch of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land as a book app.

Even the most devout print-conscious bibliophile could hardly fail to be impressed by the possibilities of reading, and listening to, this great poem in many different formats, including two recordings by the poet himself. Agreed: this treatment works especially well with a long poem, but Jamie Oliver also understands, and is profiting from, the market for the book app.

In every Darwinian struggle there must be a loser, an injured beast that slinks away into the undergrowth to die, alone and forgotten. Amid the celebrations for the brave new world of E, we should not forget that other kind of P, the trashy, mass market paperback. That’s where the future’s murky, and where the corporate publishers are really worrying.

I agree with most of McCrum’s stance on the relationship between ebooks versus print books, but I would also add that the mass market paperback may be dying in print, but it is certainly surging in the ebook market.

Libraries are the best counter to piracy

In 2002, almost 10 years ago, Tim O’Reilly penned a famous essay entitled “Piracy is Progressive Taxation” in which he discussed O’Reilly Media’s decision to release ebooks without DRM, and O’Reilly’s belief that piracy was not a significant threat to their sales or reputation. Tim ends the essay by quoting from Star Wars’ Hans Solo: “Give the wookie what he wants!” — in other words, by filling demand in as many places, and as many ways as possible, the incentive for e-book piracy is dramatically reduced. Whatever piracy remains is likely inevitable: hardcore users who will resist proffering any payment for content under any terms. The majority of readers seek an easy, straightforward means of purchasing what they want. In fact, by allowing “freeniks” to pirate, price setting can focus solely on customers from whom revenue is expected, generating higher income across the demand curve.

Such analyses appear not to matter to Big 6 publishing, which has endorsed on a draconian effort to control the access to their content on the network: a strategy that, as Cory Doctorow recently observed, is ultimately an attack on general purpose computing and networking:

[i]f you think of protocols and sites as features of the network, then saying “fix the Internet so that it doesn’t run BitTorrent”, or “fix the Internet so that thepiratebay.org no longer resolves”, then it sounds a lot like “change the sound of busy signals”, or “take that pizzeria on the corner off the phone network”, and not like an attack on the fundamental principles of internetworking. …

[w]e don’t know how to build the general purpose computer that is capable of running any program we can compile except for some program that we don’t like, or that we prohibit by law, or that loses us money.

Instead of heeding Tim O’Reilly’s 10 year old lesson that making content available in desirable places under terms that users accept is the most profitable path, publishing has implicitly decided to attempt to control something they have no adequate understanding of, and can never really control: computing and the internet. They’ve shot themselves in the foot.

And what I find most darkly amusing is that they weren’t content to stop there. The one place in the book distribution ecosystem where piracy is most efficiently defeated, where users have access to content for free but under carefully controlled circumstances, have been libraries. Libraries have always been the best counter to piracy. And instead of cementing a relationship with libraries that works to the benefit of all parties, publishers have steadfastly withdrawn the ability of libraries to provide free content, even when it is available for only limited borrowing periods, or only a restricted number of titles, with severe constraints on sharing and copying. Instead, they have indicated an interest in the commercialization of libraries by encouraging rental models.

And so, having shot themselves in one foot by trying to control piracy through technically inappropriate means even though it is a manageable risk, they’ve looked around and noticed that books remain available for free at another location, libraries, and so they’ve taken aim and shot themselves in their other foot. Someone needs to buy them steel-toed boots before they decide to aim higher.

Because I feel I haven’t ranted enough recently about my hatred of DRMs and how the big publishers “just don’t get it.”

Amazon To Publish James Franco's Novel

Now he’s announced that he’ll be penning a second book, “Actor’s Anonymous,” which, according to “The Observer,” will be a “fictionalized version of Mr. Franco’s experiences as an actor (and grad student?)”

But here’s the kicker: he’s decided to forgo the traditional publishing houses, and has signed with Amazon.

Amazon Sets Up $6 Million Royalty Fund for Lending Library Authors

Amazon has set up a $6 million annual royalty fund designed to encourage self-published authors and publishers to do two things: Make their work available exclusively in the Kindle Store for the first 90 days it’s published and include their work in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library…

Before now, independent authors and publishers were not eligible to participate in the Lending Library. Notably, the terms are less favorable for self-publishers: They only receive money if their books are borrowed. Thus far, traditional publishers have been paid simply for including their books in the lending catalog, whether or not those books were then borrowed.

Selling Books by Their Gilded Covers

Even as more readers switch to the convenience of e-books, publishers are giving old-fashioned print books a makeover.

Many new releases have design elements usually reserved for special occasions — deckle edges, colored endpapers, high-quality paper and exquisite jackets that push the creative boundaries of bookmaking. If e-books are about ease and expedience, the publishers reason, then print books need to be about physical beauty and the pleasures of owning, not just reading.

“When people do beautiful books, they’re noticed more,” said Robert S. Miller, the publisher of Workman Publishing. “It’s like sending a thank-you note written on nice paper when we’re in an era of e-mail correspondence.”

For Their Children, Many E-Book Fans Insist on Paper

As the adult book world turns digital at a faster rate than publishers expected, sales of e-books for titles aimed at children under 8 have barely budged. They represent less than 5 percent of total annual sales of children’s books, several publishers estimated, compared with more than 25 percent in some categories of adult books…

Children’s books are also a bright spot for brick-and-mortar bookstores, since parents often want to flip through an entire book before buying it, something they usually cannot do with e-book browsing. A study commissioned by HarperCollins in 2010 found that books bought for 3- to 7-year-olds were frequently discovered at a local bookstore — 38 percent of the time….

Some parents do not want to make the switch for even their school-age children. Alexandra Tyler and her husband read on Kindles, but for their son Wolfie, 7, it is print all the way.

“Somehow, I think it’s different,” she said. “When you read a book, a proper kid’s book, it engages all the senses. It’s teaching them to turn the page properly. You get the smell of paper, the touch.”

There are many software programs that profess to help children learn to read by, for example, saying aloud a highlighted word or picture. Not all parents buy in; Matthew Thomson, 38, an executive at Klout, a social media site, has tried such software for Finn, his 5-year-old. But he believes his son will learn to read faster from print. Plus the bells and whistles of an iPad become a distraction.

“When we go to bed and he knows it’s reading time, he says, ‘Let’s play Angry Birds a little bit,’ ” Mr. Thomson said. “If he’s going to pick up the iPad, he’s not going to read, he’s going to want to play a game. So reading concentration goes out the window.”