More Self Publishing Options: Pandamian
December 1, 2011
On November 19, Beyond Search published the post Good Content Wins Fans where I highlighted a recent article that addressed speculation regarding how the prevalence of e-books and easily accessible tools of creation, distribution and promotion of web content, will affect the quality of content being released.
The article concluded that regardless of how easy it becomes to publish content, the good will always rise to the top. After stumbling upon a recent product created by web-based book publishing software creator Pandamian, I’m beginning to wonder if this is true.
Pandamian has created what they refer to as “the easiest way to publish books online” which allows self proclaimed authors to: “write, receive feedback, and publish books” for free with the help of an easy to use Web interface that is similar to WordPress.
While this could be seen as another avenue of self expression, I worry that it may in fact just be another way for bad writers to clog the Internet with garbage. With Amazon putting up six figures for certain author’s work, Pandamian is another twist of the thumb screw on traditional publishers’ digits.
Jasmine Ashton, December 1, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Quote to Note: Role of Media and Search
November 30, 2011
Point your browser to “Max Mosley Sues Google over ‘Orgy’ Search Results.” The write up focuses on what media and search engines like Google should do. This is the woulda-coulda-shoulda logic which I find fascinating. The story concerns a “real” news story about a prominent figure, a court order, and the existence of pointers in indexes to the entities referenced in the information chain.
I don’t have a view of what is the appropriate response to the situation or the suggestions offered in the source document. Two quotes caught my attention, and I want to snag them before I lose track of the original.
Quote one:
In his written statement to the inquiry, Mosley [the individual attempting to clean up some improper references to himself] compared the internet to “a sort of Wild West with its own rules which the courts cannot touch”. He said that the “really dangerous thing” is that search engines like Google “could stop a story appearing, but don’t or won’t as a matter of principle”.
The “don’t or won’t” phrase struck me as interesting and heavy with a freight of implications. Exactly what should an algorithm centric system do? How will such a system “know” something is an issue? I sure don’t want the job of hiring editors—assuming there were enough qualified people to do the work and the money to pay them—to convert numerical recipes into tasty, more satisfying human results. Some traditional publishers would do the job if there were money in the work.
Quote 2:
Elsewhere in his Leveson [shorthand for the legal matter] testimony, Mosley reaffirmed his calls for newspapers to always warn people before publishing stories about their private lives…
I don’t know much about how the 20 somethings run newspapers and magazines, but I am not sure some of them are sufficiently well organized to inform one another about what is going on. When I read about the difficulties AOL has communicating with its writers and editors, I think that controlled chaos or no interaction is par for the course. Given the staff cuts and Twitter-driven world of journalism, who is going to inform whom of anything? AOL apparently was confused about a high profile executive’s investment fund. Now an outfit is going to have to get sufficiently serialized to put A before B and then do C?
Wow.
In Beyond Search, we rely on open source content for inspiration. We then offer comments. In this particular pair of quotes, we will remain silent. A gentle “honk” is the best we can offer.
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2011
Unfriendly Wikipedia
November 25, 2011
Interesting write up—almost a polemic–about Wikipedia as a closed resource. The notion of free and open once again collides with donations and sort of open. Which path is correct? “The Closed, Unfriendly World Of Wikipedia” raised a point I had not considered—a free, user-generated encyclopedia as “unfriendly”.
“Unfriendly”, in this case, does not mean a lousy interface. Wikipedia is dowdy and Sergey Brin plopped down $500,000 to keep the encyclopedia alive. The timing was interesting. Google slit the throat of Knol in its effort trim the ad supported airship, USS Google. Such paradoxes are not unknown in the world of encyclopedia making.
My partner Chris Kitze suggested this type of encyclopedia in 1993. After some discussion, we came up with a Web site review and classification service called The Point. Let’s see. That was 18 years ago. Encyclopedias are either the work of a slightly demented writer (maybe Denis Diederot?) or folks who have horses with hobbies to ride, marketers disguised as experts, or Kentucky students with a penchant for fabrication. We ultimately rejected the idea of a user supported encyclopedia as requiring lots of fiddling to get the content in, reviewed, and updated. Wise decision or dumb decision? We thought it was a wise one.
I worked for a while as an advisor to K. Wayne Smith, formerly an aide to Henry Kissinger, a general, and the top dog at World Book Encyclopedia. I recall his grimacing when I asked about the economics of an encyclopedia. He did not say anything. I do remember the grimace. Tough business still, so wacky user supported services are what seem to be one way forward. By definition, these services are slightly wacky. See my reference to the interesting M. Diderot.
Now let us look at the key point in the “unfriendly” write up::
It’s insane. It really is. And with respect to the many hardworking people who have created a generally useful resource, it’s not a friendly resource. It doesn’t have systems, as far as I can tell, designed to help it improve. It has walls, walls you believe (with many good reasons) are designed to protect it from being vandalized. But those walls themselves are their own type of vandalization of the very resource you’re trying to protect…Bottom line — I’ve gotten no indication that anyone at Wikipedia actually cares what a subject expert has to say on, well, a subject they’re an expert in. Instead, you drown in a morass of bureaucracy. It shouldn’t be this way.
My view is a somewhat different.
First, what happened to Know. I thought it obviated these Wiki-esque methods? Oh, Knol is a gone goose. Question: Why did not Knol, assisted by “real” experts not survive? I don’t have an answer, but if Knol is a gone goose and we have the “unfriendly” Wikipedia, isn’t the market telling me something?
Second, encyclopedias have been a tough nut to crack. These compilations require a Samuel Johnson or enormous sums of money. The revenue from print encyclopedias had as much to do with the books on a shelf as with reading their contents. The set of reference books helped prove that a family valued education, learning, or a pretense thereto. Today, what have we got, an iPad and a flat panel TV?
Third, I find solace in Cervantes’ The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. One idea is that a rational man does veer into interesting behaviors. I won’t bring up the windmill thing. Trying to create a system which prevents a free, user supported encyclopedia from becoming a warehouse of misinformation, marketing baloney, and worse is difficult.
Encyclopedia have been reinvented. The new reference service is a mobile phone which tells you what an algorithm wants you to know. If you visit a Web page, chances are that you will experience low precision and low recall content. The reason? Search engine optimization, slick and smarmy “experts”, and outright disinformation either for mercantile ends or for socio-political ends.
I am okay with the windmill joust. But no encyclopedia in a traditional or slightly modernized form can deliver problem free content in the age of mobile and filtered, ad supported search. Governance is a fancy word that does little to cover the wrinkles and warts of editorial policy.
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Good Content Wins Fans
November 19, 2011
Suddenly Webmasters are chattering about content. After years of tricks, indexing silliness, and down right misleading search engine optimization games—content is popular again.
With the increased popularity of e-books, and the easily accessible tools of creation, distribution and promotion of web content, there has been speculation regarding how this will affect the quality of content being released.
In the TechDirt article “Good Content Doesn’t Get Buried By Bad Content” we learned:
We have no doubt that much new content being produced is, in fact, pretty bad. I’ve never quite understood the argument, though, that bad content harms good content. You just have to ignore the bad content and follow the good content. What that means is that the world just needs good filters, and we keep seeing more and more of those showing up every day.
The write up asserts that, with sites like Amazon, fans are able to show their support for the good books that they love by writing reviews. This helps separate the good content from the bad.
There will always be skeptics out there challenging technological innovations. I would argue that while it may be easier to make your content available for public consumption than in years past, bad content won’t win over the fan base needed to make an impact.
Jasmine Ashton, November 19, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Will a Silver Bullet Save Sci-Tech Publishers?
November 11, 2011
I poked around my Overflight service and noticed a recent news release with the meaty title “Scientific Publisher Saving Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars with MarkLogic.” The subtitle was compelling as well: “New Mobile Applications Let Researchers Study in the Field.”
I thought a moment about the logic of the two statements. I am okay with the idea that a scientific publisher faces some significant challenges. The traditional markets for scientific and technical information in traditional journal form are under severe budget pressure. In response to some scientific publishers’ pricing policies, libraries and some not for profit outfits no longer renew certain journal subscriptions. Others have joined consortia in order to get better value for available budgets.
But STM (scientific, technical, and medical) publications have other issues with which to cope as well. First, technology may not be a core competency. Why would it be? Publishers get authors to write. Publishers package and sell. Technology is talked about but even giants like Thomson Reuters buy print publishing companies in Argentina. So much for embracing the digital revolution. Even more interesting is that some STM publishers often ask authors pay the journal typesetting, correction, and maybe some production costs. As headcount comes under pressure in research institutes and universities, some scientific publishers are finding that authors are either not willing to pay or not able to get a third party to pony up the money. In short, STM in the traditional mode is fighting for oxygen.
The mobile angle baffled me as well.
In my experience, many scientists work in what might be called “controlled environments.” In the pharmaceutical sector, certain firms operate the research facilities the way a South African gold mine superintendents monitor workers at the end of a shift. If this type of security does not resonate with you, you need to do some backfilling on gold and diamond mining security protocols. Think naked. Think weighing workers before and after a shift. Think requiring showers and filtering the gray water. You get the idea. Other types of research does require mobile devices; for example, cleaning up a gone-wrong nuclear reactor which is not a job for an outfit like AtomicPR, in my experience. Public relations “experts” write about radiation and often have limited experience with micro-contamination and chemical decontamination. The point? Mobile often has specific requirements which stretch beyond creating an “app for that.”
In a nutshell, here’s the nub of the news release from my point of view:
Taking research into the field has a new, literal meaning with the launch of new mobile applications built on MarkLogic that are helping scientists better understand soil and crops. MarkLogic Corporation, the company empowering organizations to make high stakes decisions on Big Data in real time, today announced the American Society of Agronomy (ASA) launched Science Pubs, developed for iPad, iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry devices. Science Pubs utilizes MarkLogic to give subscribers and non-subscribers the freedom to dig deep into ASA’s journals, magazines, and eBooks while conducting first-hand research and observations in the field.
The point is that a markup language makes it possible to do an app. Puzzled I plunged forward:
“MarkLogic will save us at least $150,000 per year. That is a lot of money for any publisher, especially a non-profit like the American Society of Agronomy,” said Ian Popkewitz, director, Information Technology & Operations, American Society of Agronomy. “We originally implemented MarkLogic to cut the cost of providing critical publications to our subscribers, but we quickly realized several intangible benefits such as speed, ease of use, and flexibility. The flexibility allowed us to focus on the deployment of Science Pubs. ASA is very pleased to be able to quickly launch these services for subscribers and non-subscribers, and we expect them to generate revenue.”
I understand. However, I want to offer several observations based on my modest experience in publishing. Note I did work for a newspaper that was once one of the Top 25 in the world, but the paper is a starved dog now. I also worked for Bill Ziff, mastermind of multiple empires and the magnate other New York publishers loved to loathe, which is what I learned when I was escorted from the New York Times’s president’s office when he learned I worked for the interesting Mr. Ziff.
First, publishers absolutely have to reduce their costs and in a big way. Saving $150,00 is great, but my question is, “How much does it cost to implement a cost saving system such as a MarkLogic or JSON solution (the fat free alternative to chubby XML), keep it up, and then running at a scientific publisher such as the American Society of Agronomy?” If a system costs $50,000, 100,000, or even $300,000, the publisher has to pay off the system, its maintenance fee, and whip out some products that sell. With revenues at many scientific publishers flat lining or shriveling, the savings are important and may light a fire under the agronomists to cope with a big expense in the name of cost savings. That type of race can be brutal. And it is one that I would be reluctant to enter.
Second, many not for profit organizations and “charities” in the UK are facing declining memberships. Unthinkable five years ago, professional organizations have to market to their members and then spend money to collect on slow paying professionals. Even the certification angle in the UK is not working as it once did. Unemployment among professionals is making it difficult for some experts to pay to be in a must-have organization. Faced with rising costs across the board and decreasing or flat revenue, some not for profit outfits are looking at a nuclear winter, not AtomicPR with a very short half life.
Third, the notion that scientific research has to be peer reviewed in a lengthy, antiquated manner. Also, the long publication cycles for some STM journals are out of step with the real time culture in fast moving fields. Not surprisingly, the no-cost or low-cost alternatives to traditional journal publishing refuse to go away. In some fields like mathematics and physics, blogs and even social media have become the important channels for dissemination of technical information and making or breaking careers. Even grants can be determined by a Facebook-type of presence. Quite a shift.
My take on this “news story” is that it makes a possibly compelling case that an XML repository can help reduce certain costs. But without the context of total cost burdens, I have a question, “Why not use JSON?” XML is darned useful, but so is JSON. My concern is that for many scientific, technical, and medical publishers, is JSON a viable option?
The ArnoldIT team is finishing a report about the outlook for a major publishing company. With more than $5 billion in revenues, this well known firm may be forced to sell its STM business to generate cash. Not even cost cutting can prevent the dislocations that some publishing companies face. The digital revolution has arrived and is now moving in new directions. Many traditional publishers face stark choices and very difficult financial challenges. Alas, no silver bullets today in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, November 11, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Open Access and Research Articles
November 8, 2011
Free the information! “Academic Publishing Profits Enough to Fund Open Access To Every Research Article In Every Field,” asserts Techdirt. Writer Glyn Moody points to some blog articles which analyzed academic publishing profits and insists that the companies make more than enough from publication fees to afford making articles freely available. Publication fees are most often paid by an author’s funding institution. After quoting his sources, Moody summarizes:
But those are just details; what really matters is the fact that collectively the top two or maybe three publishers take out of the academic world enough profits to pay for every research article in every discipline to be made freely available online for everyone to access using [the Public Library of Science’s] publishing fee approach.
I agree that, from researchers to medical professionals to businesses, open access would be a boon to every segment of society. The question is, how do we get the publishers to give up a segment of their profits for the greater good?
Are academic publishers getting closer to a collapse? Budgets are tight. Those responsible for negotiating deals are hearing talk but getting modest concessions from publishers? Young researchers are Web savvy? Will the subscriptions just give way like a damp paper bag with one too many tomatoes dropped in by a teenager bagger. Search may just be good enough to find low cost or free information via the Web or an app for that.
Cynthia Murrell, November 8, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Studying What Is Obvious about News Consumption
November 6, 2011
Sometimes studies confirm what observation and common sense should tell us. The results of two such studies were released last week.
In “Study: Tablet Users Love to Read the News, Still Reluctant to Pay for It,” Silicon Filter cites Pew Research Center’s Tablet Revolution study. There’s a lot more to this study than the bleak outlook for news organizations, but that’s the facet that concerns writer Frederic Lardonois:
Reading news sites and watching news-related video is about as popular as sending and receiving email, for example, and more popular than using social networking services. As the news industry struggles to find viable business models in this new world, though, one number that stands out is the fact that only 14% of U.S. adults have paid for news directly on their tablets.
The number is higher if you include the 23% who have a print subscription that they also access digitally, but the total is still somewhere around a third of users. Why buy the cow, after all?
Business News Daily also states the obvious with the revelation, “Facebook More Popular Than TV During Daytime.” Here, writer David Mielach cites this study from The Frank N Magid Associates. It’s no surprise that while folks, especially the younger generations, are stuck at a computer all day they are more likely to follow their Facebook friends than follow a soap opera. However, the data may prompt advertisers to focus more on social network marketing during the day and less on those pricy evening television ads.
By the way, the reverse was found to be true: during “prime time,” more people are watching TV than using Facebook. I guess some habits are more entrenched than others.
Cynthia Murrell November 6, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Free Tools Convert Documents into EBooks
November 4, 2011
It is Friday and something only tangential to search—eBooks.
Here’s an interesting idea: KillerStartups has listed “2ePub.com – Create Ebooks for Free.” EPub has become the most popular file format for reading devices, but that isn’t the only format to which this tool will convert your Doc or PDF document. Even Kindle’s proprietary format is covered.
There are actually several tools out there that will convert your file into an ePub document for free. A few other choices include ePubConverter.org, Online-Convert.com, and Lulu EPUB Converter. The last of these even promises to fix “pesky errors” for you.
The write-up describes what is different about 2ePub:
The site’s not only usable for free, it can also be used without having to sign up for an account first. All you have to do is to select the files that you want to have converted for the job to be done before you can even snap your fingers. And you can select as many as five different files at the same time, too.
This may or may not be the best option for you if you have the next Great American Novel just waiting to be converted into an eBook for all to read; check out several options.
The fact that so many options exist for converting files does emphasize how far down the digital road we have traveled.
Cynthia Murrell November 4, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
HighWire Press and TEMIS Hook Up
November 2, 2011
HIghWire Press, a hosting and web publishing platform service, and TEMIS, a provider of Semantic Content Enrichment solutions, announced recently that the two companies will be entering into a strategic business partnership.
What’s this mean? HighWire will be integrating the full suite of Luxid software within its ePublishing Platform, further enabling discoverability, leveraging the company’s relationship with Google. A press release from the company, “HighWire Press Partners With TEMIS to Semantically Enrich Publisher’s Content,” tells us more:
End users have become much more sophisticated in their online information requirements and are demanding easier and more efficient ways of locating the most relevant information. Furthermore, publishers need to strengthen and differentiate their value proposition in order to increase customer satisfaction and retention. They are looking for ways to increase the value derived from their content by creating innovative online products targeted at specific professional audiences. Semantic content enrichment has become the strategic means to achieve these objectives.
This will be a highly valuable tool for publishers who will be able to use the platform to develop new products and deliver them; the publishing community will expand with the use of semantics. Interesting concept, but do publishers constitute a “growing” market?
Our opinion? We think that publishers are likely to have even more search and content processing vendors sell them solutions which will revolutionize their business. One can only hope.
Andrea Hayden, November 2, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Books Evolve. Publishers? Maybe Not.
October 30, 2011
The publishing industry is one of the main fields that has changed drastically in recent years. With mobility leading the way in technology sales, this will only change more. Publishing Perspectives notes this trend in their article, “What Publishers Look For When They Buy a Company.”
This article chronicles the history of the industry. Acquisitions have been a profitable component of publishing businesses since the 1960s because they offered the ability to diversify and combine functions.
Since 2007, when the first iPhone was released in addition to the Kindle later that same year, the characteristics that publishers seek in a company have changed with the times.
The article shares the following inside information:
First and foremost, they are looking for another seat at the table. Every one of the top 20 companies has a strong technology component and are active buyers of independent companies with creative technology programs. Hundreds of smaller publishers use Constellation, a service offered by Perseus, to make use of electronic readers, digital book search, print on demand, and other digital formats.
Apparently some smaller companies looking to merge are holding out for the publisher who sees their long histories of profit in their specific niche. The current trajectory does not bode well for them in our opinion.
What it comes down to, historical context aside, is that publishers need companies that stand a chance in rivaling the big dogs like Google and Amazon who essentially may monopolize the current market. Disintermediation, anyone?
Megan Feil, October 30, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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