During summer’s first month, the much debated future of publishing was, well, debated some more at venues across the country. The much-reported O’Reilly Tools of Change conference in San Jose, featured an array of stellar presentations running the gamut from “the book is dead,” to “the book is gloriously alive!”
Back east, software producer Klopotek offered eight majors the opportunity to pitch their wares and their services in the form of the much ballyhooed DADs (Digital Asset Delivery) and MUMs (Mechanism for Unlimited Metadata) to a wary bunch. Notwithstanding expansive programs and promises, all agreed that the future was a big unknown even as they geared up, dispensing dollars and technology in all directions. But comments from mid-sized publishers such as Norton indicate a watch and wait posture.
The New York Public Library’s Science Industry and Business Library, celebrated the installation of the first Espresso Book Machine (EBM), an ingenious print on demand system. Walk right up, present your credit card, and zippity-do-dah (when it works), it prints the book you requested in about the same time it takes to make a latte. This machine is the product of On Demand Books, founded by legendary publisher Jason (“A rattle of Pebbles”) Epstein and his partner Dane Neller, and has been the subject of much discussion on industry blogs.
Another technology, radio-frequency identification (RFID), was the subject of an SRO session at the ALA annual conference just concluded in Washington, DC. A unusually broad set of issues, from the harmonizing of international standards to the “launch and learn” enthusiasm of the Maricopa County library system, held the crowd’s attention. A young Dutch PhD student had eyebrows raised recounting all the security dangers that “might possibly” affect RFID. Her conclusion, however, was that libraries should certainly embrace the many benefits of RFID: just make certain that their system is reviewed by a security expert.
Meanwhile, at a luxury Manhattan hotel earlier in the month, members of the publishing community participated in a morning conference devoted to the “world of premium publishing,” hosted by SAP, the giant German software company. The morning provided a platform for speakers from Disney, Courier Corporation (both printer and publisher), Adobe and Pearson, to talk about first steps in “living in an intellectual property economy.”
Marianne Nebel, Disney’s director of IT was, like the other publishing presenters, modest in her assessment of their accomplishments to date. While Disney is ramping up its online licensing, she noted that these are really early days. Similarly, Mitch Grossman from Pearson described his company’s still measured approach to digital content delivery. When asked whether Pearson was considering a digital ‘warehouse’ such as those of HarperCollins and Random House, that would protect their digital works and serve up ‘snippets’ to satisfy Google (and other search engines) inquiries, he replied, “We have no agreements with Google. We aren’t working with them.”
Vince Benenati, Houghton’s Director of Demand Planning and Inventory Management, and Kevin Flannery, VP Technology Strategy at Pearson were also among the several senior publishing executives in attendance.
SAP’s David Lipsey explained that the company has ramped up its efforts to serve the media community, offering smaller, more flexible packages based on “mySAP” Business Suite solutions.
Readers will know that much blood, sweat and ink has been spilled, over the past decade, as SAP systems were installed by large book publishers. Now in its R3 version, SAP software was originally designed for large-scale manufacturing businesses like Mercedes Benz and Coca Cola. In 1996, both Pearson and Random House first installed major elements of SAP packages in the hopes of creating an efficient, enterprise wide software backbone to support their major business activities and thus resolve the “data nightmare” caused by too many legacy systems–the detritus of a spate of mergers and acquisitions.
If there is a silver lining for publishers in being able to enjoy the benefits of such enterprise software systems, it may come thanks to Adobe. The company seems to have ‘tamed’ SAP software by integrating familiar functions of PDF into Web-based SAP applications. Last year, the CEOs of both companies met to review how Adobe had internally adapted SAP software, and to explore how these adaptations–that look, feel, and work more like things publishers do–could be offered to the media community at large.
Instead of a “one-size (which never) fits all” approach, the Adobe-based SAP Interactive forms are being presented as adaptable to each company’s own business processes. The proof of the pudding, of course, will be in the eating.
Taken together, what these (and other) events portend is that book publishing is NOT facing an either/or future. On the contrary: Print on Demand, and other technologies such as RFID, not only inspire new products and services, but also endow legacy products with new capacities that make them “better, cheaper, faster” in the marketplace, allowing them to remain competitive with the new. Not so fast digital, the book still has legs.
Most important, it’s beginning to look like publishers will in the future be able provide the customer with exactly what he or she wants, needs, or desires, from the most traditional of books to the most rich and strange of digital concoctions. Your cake, and eat it.
Who knows, the future may be a lot closer than anyone realizes.
