Ted Treanor

By Ted Treanor

Publishing predictions for 2010 abound. As a digital publishing pioneer and visionary, Ted Treanor has been well positioned ahead of the curve, with a unique vantage point to see what’s in store for the industry. At this tipping point, publishing convergence of print and digital has collided with mainstream. Let us know what you think of these predictions.

Let’s see if 13 predictions will be lucky for publishing.

1. New eReading devices will proliferate. The market is responding like the California gold rush.  Not only will there be new companies launching in 2010, but big electronics firms will have their products. CES will be a haven for digital reading, which will astound everyone.
2. Pricing experimentation will take center stage.
3. Digital sales channels both retail and distribution will grow rapidly.
4. The ePub standard (IDPF.org) will strengthen as an international industry standard. ePub will compete with PDF for the top format for commercial content.
5. The big surprise this year will be the number of large recognized companies that will strategically target the digital publishing eReading and content space. At least one major communications infrastructure company (possibly wireless) will stake a claim through a publishing partnership. Other prime segments will be computer manufacturers and printer manufactures.
6. Trade associations will scramble to stay relevant in their attempt to lead members through this time of convergence of print and digital.
7. Content workflow using XML technologies will become standard for single source production to multiple print and digital editions.
8. Publishers will attempt to build direct relationships with their reader customers…not very successfully in 2010.
9. Technology and services companies will further enable authors for self-publishing and in their sales goals. At least one big name author will experiment in self-publishing in 2010.
10. eCatalogs will become a standard tool in selling content to booksellers, librarians, etc..
11. Digital galleys will gain in popularity.
12. E-content will be grafted into print in innovative ways.
13. New ebook data reports and ebook directories will become ‘must-have’ resources. Gilbane Group has a series of three publishing transformation reports planned in 2010.

Follow me on Twitter @ ePubDr

ted (at) tedtreanor dot com

The list of the top 20 publishers in the world shows a profoundly changing landscape in book publishing. I offer my analysis on the state of the industry and its future. Some publishers are fairing much better economically, while others are steadily sliding downward in revenue and in their global standing. The changing dynamics between the professional information, education and trade sectors has affected this year’s ranking.  The good news is that publishers that have reinvented themselves (responded to market demand by listening to the customer) have done much better than most…

by Ted Treanor
Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/tedtreanor/

This post is from my reply to another post at http://su.pr/2dEhw4.

I find Twitter to be compelling for many reasons. To answer your question about unusual ways to use Twitter…well, everything about Twitter is unusual. It is a new communication channel, that has more potential impact than email. From my tweets, I am picking up people with special interests that I don’t even know. Now that’s amazing…connecting, marketing and influencing a rapidly growing group of people of common interest to ‘me’, that are ‘following’ my assorted rantings, thoughts, promotions, recommendations and useful information.

I am using Twitter to help others get to know the REAL me. It is actually scary to be transparent to everyone that chooses to follow. Ok, so being real to strangers isn’t so bad, even if it is uncomfortable some times to be vulnerable to others. See, look how I’m bearing myself to you. It’s getting easier and people discern ‘real’. Perhaps what Twitter is doing for us is creating personal brand and trust, building corporate brand by building communities of interest.

What is your purpose on Twitter?

by Ted Treanor
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TedTreanor

So what’s Amazon up to? Let’s follow the money trail.

In 2005 I remember becoming acutely aware of their strategy when they bought BookSurge and Mobipocket in one month. It was a clear message to both the digital and traditional book publishing industry that Amazon was investing in their vision of the future of book publishing.  They were putting their money on future growth areas in the book industry committing to digital books and print-on-demand technology and services.

Here is an awesome link to a visualization of Amazon’s entire history of investments in buying companies across all industries. Many of their acquisitions and investments are in technology infrastructure that supports their book business and other industries as well.

Bookpages (announced April 27, 1998) – Bookpages was one of the largest online bookstores in the United Kingdom. It became Amazon’s online UK store.

Telebook (announced April 27, 1998) Telebook, operating through its ABC Bücherdienst subsidiary, was Germany’s number one online bookstore –It became Amazon’s German online store.

Audible.com (announced Jan. 31, 2000) An investment of millions of dollars, for 5 percent ownership, which featured content from newspapers and magazines, and books on audio. For promoting audio.com, Amazon would receive $30 million over three years.

BookSurge LLC (announced April 4, 2005) BookSurge print-on-demand book printing and fulfillment from Charleston, South Carolina with growing global relationships.

Mobipocket.com (acquired April 2005) – Mobipocket, a very popular French ebook company that specialized in ebooks for mobile devices, with both reader and server software.

Brilliance Audio, Inc. (acquired May 23, 2007) –Brilliance Audio is one of the largest audiobook publishers in the USA.

Shelfari (acquired August 25, 2008, Shelfari book based social network site from Seattle. Amazon originally was an investor in Shelfari in February, 2007.

Audible.com (acquired April 2008) Audible is the online audio-book provider was purchased by Amazon in for US$300 million and assumption of liabilities.

AbeBooks (acquired Dec 2008) Purchased for between $110-$120 million. AbeBooks is an online marketplace for books, with over 110 million primarily used, rare and out-of-print books listed for sale by thousands of independent booksellers from around the world.

-Bookfinder.com (subsidiary of AbeBooks, acquired Dec 2008)

-LibraryThing (a 40% share) (subsidiary of AbeBooks, acquired Dec 2008)

-Justbooks (subsidiary of AbeBooks, acquired Dec 2008)

-IberLibro.com (subsidiary of AbeBooks, acquired Dec 2008)

-Gojaba.com (subsidiary of AbeBooks, acquired Dec 2008)

- FillZ (listing-management service, subsidiary of AbeBooks, acquired Dec 2008)

Lexcycle Inc. (acquired April 27, 2009) This is the company behind Stanza, an electronic book reading application for the iPhone and iPod.

Booktour (Seed capital investment in April, 2009) The Chairman of Booktour is author and journalist Chris Anderson, who is the editor in chief of Wired Magazine, and the writer of the book The Long Tail and his 2009 book, Free. The company lets authors create profile pages where they can communicate with fans, and provide a schedule of events.

You can bet that there will be more investments to come…

There are many other Amazon investments in customer enabling technologies, and to improve the customer experience for any product or service through the ever reaching and growing Amazon.com. It is not just B2C, but B2B relationships, too, such as hosting and in the cloud computing services. They are building a comprehensive online shopping platform for entire verticals and horizontals and they make money selling directly to the consumer, or helping merchants sell to their customers, and more recently by supporting supply chain relationships. No small vision here.

Whether you see Amazon as a friend or a threat will depend on your market position. It will also depend if you and your company have a strong vision and an ongoing commitment to investment in the future. Where do you weigh-in?