to kick off an ongoing research project! what a ticket!

sell corporate publishers rope to strangle themselves!

while you’re at it, sell ‘em an x.m.l.-based workflow,
and have ‘em hire extra people as “project managers”
who are skilled at doing sound and video production.

because the farther and faster we can push these jokers
into debt, the sooner they’ll go running from the scene.

-bowerbird

this is our focus for 2011, and our conference (where you are keynoting) is intended to kick off an intensive 6 month research project into how to capture rights information systematically.

the biggest problem in my mind is one of semantics. There are too many definitions for the same words. What is a publisher? what is a distributor? what is a territory? what is a work?

i don’t think that until we have definitions for elements like this (and many others) that we will ever get anywhere. The other problem with rights is that there is nothing to limit what goes into it. A publisher or author or rightsholder might license a right given any set of conditions, that might not yet be foreseen by our systems designers.

there is alot of work to do!

your contrast of “an assemblage of assets” with
“an assemblage of pointers” is a first pass at the
mammals taking over. now extend it, such that
the pointers are defined as _user-configurable._

this is what “mash-up” eventually comes to mean,
that the end-users exert a large degree of control
over the state of the story, choosing the materials
that are used to comprise the individualized tale…

-bowerbird

I take your point about no-one necessarily being well positioned in this transition.

also, although, i agree with you that publishers haven’t wrapped their heads around the increasing complexity of digital rights in a multi-media world, i’m not so sure movie or game companies are much further along. in both cases, although they have more experience with the full spectrum of media rights, like publishers, their experience is in tightly binding those rights to a specific property. i don’t know of any industry which has really figured out how the landscape changes as we shift from an assemblage of assets to an assemblage of pointers.

first, amazon — like any retailer — is gonna demand “most favored nation” pricing…
that’s perfectly understandable, and thus there’s not much anyone can do about that.

so get over that.

the big6 publishers cried like little babies when amazon tried to establish a _ceiling_
of $9.99 on e-books. but nobody seems to have made a peep to protest the fact that
amazon has established a “floor” of $2.99. that ploy just flew underneath the radar…

oh sure, authors can still price d.t.p. e-books at less than $2.99, but they only get 35%
if they do, as opposed to the 70% if they observe the $2.99 floor that amazon wants…
(nor is this new; even before 70%, amazon would never discount a price under $2.99.)
amazon wants to make sure that they make at least $.90 on every sale that they make.

_that_ is bad for authors, and for readers too. but it’s certainly not the end of the world.

(some people might even argue that a “floor” is _good_ for authors, simply because it’ll
prevent them from engaging in a mutually-destructive “race to the bottom” on pricing;
i don’t agree with that particular argument — lower prices sell more books for authors,
there’s no room for argument about that — but thought it worth mentioning in passing,
because it’s obviously the case that _amazon_ thinks that a floor is in _its_ self-interest.)

as for the fact that amazon has reserved for itself the right to experiment with pricing,
that’s a good thing. amazon has become tremendously skilled at doing experimentation,
meaning that they make more profit. but since their profitability is positively correlated
with the author’s profitability, that means their experimentation helps out authors as well.

in the end, authors will make lots more money if they let amazon experiment with pricing.
nobody knows more about book-pricing than amazon; let their expertise help your wallet.
(this is why those agency5 are fools; they want to control pricing yet they know _nothing_
about the reality of it; amazon subsidized them and their “suggested list price” fantasies.)
amazon’s experimentation will find the optimal points for the pricing of _your_ books too.

in sum, it’s a _mixed_bag_ when it comes to all of this, at least for authors and readers…

until you consider the kicker, that is…

the kicker is that, if amazon is making the sale, that customer is an _amazon_ customer.
they’re not _your_ customer, even if they are buying _your_ book. this is very important
for every author to remember… what you need to do is to make them _your_ customer…
specifically, you need to entice them to come to _you_ in order to buy one of your books.

every time you get ~$2.09 from amazon on the sale of one of your $2.99 books, you need
to _realize_ that you just paid $.90 to amazon because you were using _their_ customer,
and that — if you had enticed that customer to come to you _directly_ — you could have
gotten the entire $2.99 from them. the web lets you connect to your customers directly,
and that’s what you need to do. simply put, you need to cut out amazon as a middleman.

by charging you their fee, amazon is doing you a _big_favor_ — consider it a _reminder_
that they are the middleman-obstacle to a direct relationship between you and your fans.

_use_ amazon — and apple and all the other retailers — to pull in _new_audience_, but
then _convert_ that new audience into fans who come _directly_ to you to get your books.

authors _and_ readers will benefit the _most_ when they remove all of the middlemen, so
consider amazon’s pricing policies to be a constant reminder of that simple basic reality…

at any rate, as this discussion shows, the simplistic notion that amazon’s pricing policies
“are unfortunate for authors, and ultimately, for readers” is so simplistic that it’s wrong…
the situation is much more complicated than that. more research, peter; more thinking.

-bowerbird

p.s. i must mention one more thing, out of fairness. the 30% that amazon takes is for
handling the money-exchange, and dealing with the customer if unhappiness results…
this is _not_ a huge charge for dealing with those two unappealing tasks, it’s really not.
and the reason amazon takes more for foreign sales is because of currency differences,
which — if you have never dealt with them — can be a particularly troublesome thing.
maybe someday a competitor will underprice amazon for performing these functions…
but in the meantime, it’s hard to begrudge amazon for their 30% cut. i’m just saying…

i’m not “anonymous”. (indeed, if you ever want to talk to me,
live and in person, call me any time you like at 310.980.9202.)

and i don’t work as a librarian. (i don’t work at all, i’m “retired”.)

but i can tell you how i think libraries should be run…

first and foremost, the world needs a global cyberlibrary.
it’s exactly what it sounds like — a website that contains
every edition of every book that has ever been published.

every edition. of every book. that has ever been published.

with a webpage for every page of every edition of every book.

here’s an example of one page of one such edition of a book:
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp123.html

as you can see, that includes a page-scan and the digital text.
and, of course, each page is linked with its neighboring pages…

and the digital text of the full book is contained in another file.
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myant.zml

that .zml file can create high-quality output in the form of .pdf
or .html files (which can be used to create other output formats).

what’s important: the cyberlibrary has every book in the world.

it also contains every journal — scientific, academic, literary, etc.
again, every page of every journal, linked with neighboring pages,
and of course with every issue linked with its neighboring issues,
just as these issues sit right next to each other on library shelves.

with all of this material available 24/7 to anyone in the world who
has an internet-connected machine. available at absolutely no cost.
(creators will be paid by society via various compensation schemes.)

libraries contain more than books, of course. extend the thinking to
music, movies, art, photographs, and tomorrow’s multimedia messes.

oh, and one more thing. don’t tell me why it cannot be done. just do it.

***

does this mean the end of _libraries_ — those _buildings_ that now stand
as beacons of hope in our neighborhoods and on our university campuses?

heck no.

we need those buildings — those _community_sharing-centers_ — as much
as we ever did, and probably a whole lot more, once we come to realize it…

first, just because every book will be available online does _not_ mean that
people won’t want to have paper-books. a paper-book can be very “handy”.
(that’s not a pun; it’s recognition of the haptic qualities of the paper-book.)

so the most important piece of machinery in the library building will be the
print-on-demand machine. (i don’t call it the “espresso machine” because
that brand is _much_ too expensive, no offense meant towards mr. epstein.)

likewise, the library will be the place which owns other “communal machinery”
that’s too expensive for people to own individually, but still needed by them.
(note that, at present, even computers and printers find widespread usage.)

individual libraries will also be active contributors to the global cyberlibrary,
digitizing assets unique to their location (e.g., local maps, blueprints, etc.).

when you create something, your conduit for placing it into the cyberlibrary
will be your local library, who will ensure it is input and catalogued correctly.
(for text, this will be easy, of course; but a piece of sculpture, for instance,
would need to be scanned in 3 dimensions, and get other special handling.)

libraries will also provide space for doing research, holding meetings, etc.

***

none of this is “revolutionary”. none of this is even remotely surprising.
it’s just common sense. nothing more, nothing less. and yes, of course,
when you start talking about “every book ever published in the world”,
the scale seems _huge_… but really, it’s the only way to go about this…
if you’re thinking on any kind of scale _smaller_ than this, you’re wrong.

if you don’t have enough vision for this — no matter what your age is –
you don’t have enough vision _period_, and you must get out of the way.

***

so i’m looking for librarians who’ll start preparing society for this reality…
who’ll agitate to bring it about, and stop all of the foot-dragging going on.

-bowerbird

that’s ironic, peter, because i felt exactly the same way when i read
the schedule for the “books in browsers” meeting you are sponsoring.

> http://reading20.posterous.com/ia-books-in-browsers-2010-agenda

most of the people in that circle chat up each other every day on twitter, and
have probably already had a handful of face-to-face meetings so far this year.
times must be flush if you can write off all the expenses for so many meetings!

-bowerbird

Rather than generating an “Us vs. Them” battle within our profession based on who’s old and unwilling to change the status quo and the young “get out of our way” generation, perhaps we’d be better off figuring out how we can all increase our presence and influence within higher education at large, because up to now academic librarianship and what we have to contribute has too often been ignored when the decisions about the future of higher education are being made. And if we’re not at that table, then our petty squabbles about who’s creating change and who isn’t aren’t going to matter much.

ARL is a different kind of group – more like the Big10 or other sports conference based on institution … but ALA, ACRL, LITA, PLA, AASL, our state associations, etc. – these are OUR ASSOCIATIONS as individuals. Anyone can join and “play” in this league. As members we have a voice and a much more powerful one than some may realize. As an over-quoted but still valuable saying goes – one can “be the change you want to see.”

I’m most familiar with ACRL so let me focus there for a second. Any member of ACRL can bring an action item to the Board. From such member-initiated action items came the Information Literacy Immersion Program, the Scholarly Communications initiative, and many other transformative efforts. But, these didn’t come to be because someone had an idea and hoped others would carry it out. They came to be because the people with the idea were passionate, dedicated, and found the resources (through ACRL and sometimes through grants securing with ACRL) to make the difference they saw was needed. After garnering the resources, they made it happen through hard work, long-term commitment, and building a community around the project. Personally I’d argue that Immersion and the SC initiative are indeed transforming academic libraries but that’s a lengthy essay for another time; however, I think the evidence is there and compelling.

I suspect we can find parallel stories in ALA, AASL, PLA, etc. If you are an ACRL member and think ACRL is the home for your passion, I’ll be happy to talk with you about process, procedure, accountability, oversight, etc. And, yes there is some of all of this – it is how we steward our collective resources responsibly and are accountable to the membership. If there is an ACRL group already working in this area, I’ll introduce you to the people who are making things happen. If not in ACRL by your own thought or because there isn’t a right home for it, I’ll do my best to connect you with the right people in the other organizations.

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
ljanicke at illinois dot edu

P.S. And, though I am ACRL President, I also need to be clear and up-front that the President doesn’t make the decisions about what ACRL supports, etc. alone. The ACRL Board works as a group and my vote is equal to everyone else’s on the Board. So, this post is an offer of my personal assistance, informed by my experiences and knowledge. Nothing in my post should be seen as committing ACRL as an organization – to do so would violate the collegiality of our professional association and that I am of course not willing to do!