Over the past couple of years it has been a privilege and a pleasure to write for the Digitalist (and I expect you will still find me skulking about).  The Digitalist really is an open talking shop – unlike so many corporate communications channels the Digitalist really is just what we as a team have been chatting about. That spontaneous, open and, I hope, honest feel has always driven the blog and long may it continue. For all those who have been reading do feel free to get in touch when I start at Profile – I’m always interested to hear about peoples thoughts, ideas, conferences and symposia.

When I first joined Pan I came from a literary agency. The publishing landscape in mid-2007 was very different. Digital was, if not a full on dirty word, then something by turns feared, mistrusted, scorned and derided.  As the content industries around it had been transformed trade publishing, for the most part, was not particularly interested, concerned as it was with the usual rounds of advances, sales, editing, rights, covers and, occasionally, reading.

Nothing changed overnight.

Sometimes in digital the hype gets too much and people expect the world to transform, to wake up one morning in a digitopia draped over the country like an unforeseen covering of snow. This doesn’t- and didn’t- happen. A line endlessly trotted out at digital conferences is William Gibson’s brilliant observation that “the future is already here; it just isn’t evenly distributed”.  That is why digital doesn’t happen as fast as people think. Technologies move at bewildering speed, but habits, prejudices, knowledge, skills and desires often do not.

Nonetheless we are in a totally different world. The web 2.0 bubble came and went. A major retailer started selling ebooks before everyone jumped on board and another even created its own device and changed the game in the process. Then was the iPhone; the explosion of Twitter; the creation of a digital infrastructure of DADs and warehouses and conversion specialists and aggegators. There was the coming of age of Google Book Search and latterly the Settlement and Editions. There was, for the first time, real revenue from digital products. We went from a dearth of ereaders to an abundance. Even the idea of the ereader seemed under threat from mobiles and tablets, stymied by a fickle gadget buying public, perhaps before even hitting their stride, possibly to join the ghostly presences of the Betamax and the Minidisc player in the fabled Garden of Redudant Technology. (I don’t actually believe that will happen by the way, but it is an arresting image). Digital departments became a permanent fixture on the staff of virtually every publisher. The media couldn’t stop talking about ebooks. So a lot has changed.

A defining moment for me came a few weeks ago when I happened to be watching the adverts on ITV at prime time on a Friday (which I can assure you is a rare event). Suddenly there flashed up an advert for the Sony Reader, and lo, they did feature three ebooks, and one of those ebooks was Andrew Marr’s The Making of Modern Britain, one of “my” ebooks.  I confess to a surge of excitement and pride. Beyond the personal though, adverts for ebooks on TV seemed to really signify that ebooks have arrived; ebooks are for real and people are really picking them up.

So much for the past. Earlier in the year I predicted that mobile would be the big event of 2009. Along with Amazon and Google, I think that has certainly been the case, in hype if nothing else. Above all it was the iPhone that changed not just digital publishing but pretty much everything, ever. Reading OMG there’s an app for that! stories on the Guardian has almost become a bore. A few days ago it was announced there was a military app for making war, which rather prompts the question of why anyone would take their mobile into battle, a question immediately answered by the fact that no longer is the iPhone a humble telephone but is, in fact, a deadly combat machine up there with Sherman tanks and the T-1000.

Anyway.

What about 2010? One word sums it up: access. This is something I plan on discussing in much more detail next year, but broadly I think access models of one form or another are going to be hugely transformative. I’m thinking Google Editions, Kobo Books, Spotify, a plethora of devices, shifting patterns of ownership and cultural engagement, the benefits of the Cloud, workable solutions that bypass DRM and its attendant issues. Watch this space.

Of course should 2010 herald the long awaited arrival of the Apple tablet then we all expect something if not quite of the iPod/iPhone magnitude, then something still sufficiently massive to rock the publishing world as the music and telecom industries were rocked before us.

Look forward to catching up then and in the meantime have a great Christmas and New Year. Signing out, MB.

From Youtube: “This collaboration between The Wonderfactory and Time, Inc. is an excellent example of how tablets will enable the creation of innovative, addictive experiences by publishers, media companies, and advertisers. ”

Don’t even try telling me you don’t want one. And this comes at a time when five major publishers announce a new download platform. The Day of the Tablet is nigh!

Kindle currently dominates the US ebook market, and is likely to have a similar impact wherever it goes (Amazon recorded strong profit growth this year driven by the Kindle). The iPhone has a real but still emergent ebook market that will be exploded with the expected arrival of an Apple tablet device next year. And Google has Book Search and the forthcoming Editions, which could rival Amazon and Apple in terms of book downloads. The playing field is set – in her recent presentation Sara has a magnificent analysis of how this field breaks down.

However regarding Google most of the strategic thinking and recent commentary, of which there is acres, has focused on either the legal controversies surrounding the settlement or the plans regarding Editions. Google is seen in terms of discovery and retail. Perhaps, though, there is another story going on here.

Mobile has been the buzzword of ereading in 2009; you practically can’t turn around without being hit over the head with another statistic about how many people have smart phones and how mind boggling the potential for expansion is, and how seductively convenient it is to have convergence on one handy device. Moreover we’ve seen the maturing of the space – Stanza, Scroll Motion’s Iceberg and Eucalyptus are all excellent readers, there is a healthy Books chart on the App Store and fine developers like Missing Ink Studios and Enhanced Editions are beginning to truly prise open the potential for books on a phone.

So it all looks great. Only, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s all on the iPhone. And all of sudden people are making noises about the iPhone, and not especially pleasant ones. Inevitably when something is successful and universally adored, people will find reason to dislike it. This is just how the world works.

Which brings us back to Google. In the whole discussion of ereading somehow we largely forget about other phones, in particular the Google owned Android OS. My case is that Android has been hitherto underestimated and may end up equaling Apple and Amazon in it’s own right.

Let’s not pretend: if there was an iPhone vs. Android fight right now then the iPhone would win, in terms of users, user experience and reading. To a certain extent this is not Google’s fault as such, seeing as they don’t produce the hardware, marketing or apps for the phones, but still, no one can deny the iPhone remains far ahead. As for other competitors like Windows Mobile, the revamped Nokia with it’s oddly named Ovi Store etc etc in the end they will probably converge with Android due to the sheer madness of proliferating mobile dev standards.  So the iPhone wins, and whats more, with the handsets being unchained from their sole carriers and Apple amassing an eye watering, earth shattering $34bn the growth prospects are very good indeed.

However there are also signs to suggest that Android may start picking up. Firstly it has an inherent ability to grow more widely as it can be used on any number of different manufacturers handsets. Secondly the quality of those handsets is improving all the time – the HTC Hero is gaining traction (Full disclosure: I have one, it’s good but I’ll admit that the 3GS is a bit better) and the Motorola Droid, to name just one other, promises to be massive. Thirdly the App Marketplace remains weak in comparison to the App Store, but is also growing fast, as Google developers and UX people plus a ton of backing make it better, has a growing audience and has none of the problems sometimes associated with the submitting to the App Store. Fourthly, in publishing terms, there has been a dearth of books or reading software on the Android which is only now being rectified. Look at the burgeoning Comics section of the Marketplace and Aldiko, who want to do for Android what Lexcycle did for reading on the iPhone.

Widespread reading on Android may therefore not be that far away.

There is a further strand to the story. Over the past couple of months it has sometimes felt the trickle of new reading devices has morphed into a full on flood. It’s impossible to keep up – everyday Engadget runs a new story on some boutique new ereader. Amidst this torrent however a few things have become clear. Phones were touted as good reading devices because they came with multi-functionality and it was assumed people only wanted a single device for all their communication and media needs (to speak in press release jargon). From here the idea of the tablet or the multi use e-ink mixed display gained traction.

In order to make the devices better people needed a robust, web friendly operating system and quietly waiting in the wings was Android. Witness just two of the recent crop of readers, the Nook from Barnes & Noble and the Alex from Spring Design (currently locked in a legal battle). Both use Android as their OS, and this is just the beginning (there are other examples). Needless to say that Android has the potential to become the default operating system for many readers, and is a strong candidate for being the OS that eventually becomes dominant for reading. Google could end up with a hefty share of the mobile reading and tablet device reading markets, initially in terms of software but who knows, maybe one day even in hardware.

Ultimately Google could be in a position where everything in the book chain, from finding the book on GBS to producing the object you hold in your hands, is part of its empire.

Balanced against this though are the other two big beasts, both unquestionably expert and successful in their fields who no doubt will fight their corners with tenacity and elan. We shouldn’t forget Android though, nor it’s possible role in digital publishing.

Bundled with the book is a cd that includes an animated version of the story, games, activities and extras. The idea is to find new ways of getting kids involved with the content and to start expanding traditional content in ways that will amaze and delight both adults and offspring; it is about recognizing that when parents have iPhones, computers are everywhere and even televisions are highly interactive the picture book has to evolve. By having the extra material as a cd though it keeps things within the established model of packaging audio cds with children’s books; however downloads will soon be are already available.

One of the extras allows to kids to build their own stories within the world.  Over the past couple of years there has been much discussion of bringing more of this user generative, reactive “choose your own adventure” style story telling and this is an interesting example.  Children perhaps relish – and have the energy for – creativity more than adults so will hopefully have lots of fun with the tool. The package is also an example of how publisher IP is extremely important for games development.

Produced by Pat and Pals it looks and feels great, so we wish it every success. Attached below is a press release with more info should you be interested.

room-on-the-broom-press-release

hitchhikers-on-the-iphone-press-release

Our guide to the galaxy finally arrived at the office having navigating the vagaries of space travel! Bearing a marked resemblance to the Sony Reader, it must be said…

Anyway at the risk of raking over old coals I thought that their story highlights some interesting points about the move into digital in a fairly neat and comprehensive way. There are two strands to this:

1.) No record company wanted them. It was just too weird, different and didn’t fit into any of the neat demographic slots and sounds beloved of record A&R. It certainly didn’t seem to have mainstream appeal. Faced with blanket rejection the band decided to set up their own record label, Ambush Reality. Unlike massively well established Radiohead, or even the Arctic Monkeys who promptly got snapped up by indie label Domino Records (although there was a controversy about EMI distribution), Enter Shikari were just a bunch of guys no one had heard of. They realised that all it would take to get them going was the web, a bit of nous, hard gigging and decent tracks. As the risks in publishing new writers grow, and so do complaints that publishing is becoming an ever more closed shop, then the lesson is clear: get out there and make your market. The internet allows authors as much as bands a space and the tools to have their writing seen (Authonomy, Scribd, blogs, etc etc). Enter Shikari now have a major deal with Warner Music in the US, but retain their independence in the UK. And they have sold a shed load of records. Increasingly, I think, first novels and albums will be found outside the mainstream, with successful examples then getting picked up.

2.) My relationship with this band has often orientated itself around free content. At first I would listen to the Youtube videos, then also on Last.fm and latterly Spotify. When the new album came out the band gave away a download of one of the singles; the music was free to listen to all over the internet, including on the bands own website. I never would have gone and bought the cd of the first album, but I knew the tracks well. Enter Shikari have always made sure their music is seamlessly available everywhere on the web. With no marketing spend, no big reputation and nothing to lose, they had to.  After consuming all that free content I was primed for the new release.  As well as the basic cd they also released a special bundle comprising premium cd, a signed DVD and a t-shirt for £25. In the knowledge that I will never ever live this down I’ll fess up: reader, I bought it. From £0 to £25 via a load of free content. This surely is now the business model of the record industry in a nutshell, be it from ticket sales, t-shirts or a drunken session on iTunes.

In short Enter Shikari can be seen as emblematic of the new music industry. Existing both within and beyond standard business, giving tracks away yet still selling very well, this represents the future of content where everyone ultimately gains.  Surrounded as we are by Friday Project style books of blogs and handsome new special editions rolling off the presses what seems like more and more, we in publishing are already well advanced on this journey.

Picture copyright manu_el_o_matics!

Unfortunately when I came into the office this morning it was to see that DRM was once again in the news. When I wrote the piece I was perhaps slightly self consciously swimming against the tide. However all that is made a mockery of when something like this happens – faith in the system is, well, annihilated and the issues of trust that came up are starkly thrown into relief.

Apparently the problem was a rights one and somewhere down the line the wrong books got into the system in the wrong way. Everyone was re-imbursed and the books are widely available. Does this make any difference to the body blow of seeing 1984 automatically deleted from people’s devices?

No, and I’m not sure what can be done in the wake of this.  Responses at Boing Boing and the Electronic Frontier Foundation elucidate the whole range of ways this is not a good thing.

Lets just say if this had come out last Monday, I don’t think the blog posts on DRM would have got written.

- My position: personally I think DRM is a pain and try and avoid it as much as possible. Professionally I recognise that as a publisher we are obligated in some instances to use it. Before everyone beats us up too much, can I just point out there aren’t many publishers actually selling non-DRM ebooks and actively promoting them, or even embarking on a discussion like this. What I am saying is that I have a lot of sympathy and affinity with the anti-DRM position and strongly support open licences so am not droning out some unthinking policy.

- Andrew Savikas makes a good point when he says a pirated copy is not a lost sale. In a related point Cory Doctorow argues that the viral possibilities of a non-DRM means that it can have more blockbuster potential. I agree with both of these points. However just because a pirated copy does not necessarily equate to a lost sale, it does not mean that it doesn’t all the time.

Margins are tight. On big titles agents will ensure advances are calibrated to the max. That means publishers have to hit very high sales targets to get any kind of return. A 5% loss of sales across big titles over a few years will greatly damage publishers ability to publish big books. So even if there are many new readers being added even a relatively low number of book buyers lost could cause a lot of damage. The thing publishers should learn is not to hit the panic button at the first whiff of piracy but to have a more considered response that doesn’t alienate everyone involved.

As for Cory’s point I think this is true for some works but not all works (as JEB points out). So I agree that having no DRM works exceptionally well for Little Brother (a brilliant book), as indeed it did for NIN and Radiohead. There have now been numerous instances of publishers giving a non-DRM file away, and this leading to a boost in print sales. My argument isn’t with the effectiveness of this, but rather with a) there are some authors for whom this will not work as there audience isn’t right and b) this isn’t really a solid foundation from which is build a range of digital products. As a model I do think this will become more and more prevalent (all good) but also that it has the potential in the long term to undermine that which it currently supports.

- Regarding paper and DRM: I think this is a good metaphor for the expectations we have when we own a book. We expect a degree of control, but we don’t expect to be able to do absolutely anything. Paper/digital isn’t what it is about, rather I am saying that there should be some consistency across how we approach a book and freely acknowledge that present DRM is not doing this.

- A common argument here is that DRM doesn’t work as it doesn’t stop piracy therefore whats the point, lets get read of it. This is like saying the police neither deter nor solve all crimes so whats the point, lets get rid of them. Just because something is not absolutely effective, does not mean it is absolutely ineffective.

- Sean Cranbury calls my final comment “disingenuous”. All I can say is that it was not written disingenuously at all. I am trying to strike a balance that favours readers compared to what exists now! This is about saying, well given that we are not in a position to scrap DRM for all our ebooks (technically impossible under existing arrangements) what can we be doing to improve things?

- To the many points about how DRM can make life difficult for ordinary readers, I agree and always have agreed. My reasoning for DRM not being 100% bad is that it can help mitigate risk. However we can all, I think, acknowledge that, bluntly, a lot of existing solutions suck. Cory Doctorow made many interesting points about the difficulties in creating a more humane DRM system to which I don’t have an immediate answer. What I can say is that these should not stop us from trying even if it is hard, and I would be happy to get involved with standards bodies to fight for a better consumer experience re DRM. It might be challenging but we should give it a shot anyway – better to have tried and failed etc.

- Gary Gibson (a Pan Mac SF author whose non-DRM ebooks are available on the website) made a brilliant suggestion that some kind of digital escrow account is what we need. I could see this being run by an independent body like the IDPF or the BISG in concert with publishers. Such a project might offer a workaround to those objections that focus on the concentration of DRM in the hands of a few big players and the added cost burden DRM places on digital products by being a non-profit. This would also get round many of the difficult scenarios presented by Cory Doctorow. David Smith’s point about a rental model being a good way of getting round this is exactly what I mean when I say we need to be open to new business models. A subscription/library style service could work for everyone.

I realise that saying something positive for DRM is not going to win me any friends (in public at least). Most of the objections to DRM are fair and publishing will no doubt follow a path similar to the record industry. Equally though blanket condemnation of DRM without an acknowledgment that it can play a role in maintaining the lifeblood of content industries is telling only one part of the story. I’m not saying the current IP framework is perfect, just that elements of it are important.

Given that the weight of industry opinion demands DRM for our files, isn’t it better to try and make sure that DRM is as inclusive, flexible and consumer oriented as possible, instead of just going with the flow?

Many of the questions here seem to be about what the concept of “ownership” is in the digital age, and these are not fully resolved yet. I certainly don’t pretend to have all the answers!

Lets face it. DRM can be a nightmare – confusing, fiddly, prohibitively sensitive to basic uses of media. A couple of weeks ago I was setting up a friends Sony Reader and forgot quite how dis-orientating an experience setting up an Adobe ID can be. Ok, so most of us used to the web will not struggle. But what about all those other readers who get by without Twitter and Adobe IDs? No doubt, DRM isn’t perfect and makes life difficult for people legitimately using files they have paid good money for. Worse, it can lead to those files becoming unusable (a situation which is inexcusable).

However the anti-DRM lobby, as vocal as it is appealing, makes DRM sound like some cultural apocalypse. Culture, the argument goes, thrives on being shared and the modern mass media is a recent aberration that cuts against the grain of creativity and the natural flow of cultural production. Advocates like Cory Doctorow and Larry Lessig make a case that is compelling, persuasive and important. Yet in the hands of many acolytes this is converted to a simple outright denunciation of any DRM and the assumption that the presence of DRM provides a moral carte blanche for piracy. Google might not be evil, but DRM sure is.

The whole DRM debate is hardly a new one but it’s time someone in publishing said something positive for DRM. Yes, it often sucks, but it’s not evil. Why?

Firstly because paper is a form of DRM. If you buy a book you can lend it out to a few of your friends. Can you send it to all of them? No. You are inherently limited in the spread of that book. We don’t assume that it would ever be possible to distribute that book to everyone we know, only that we can do with it what we want. This is both sensible and sustainable.

Secondly and more significantly because mass culture relies on a mass business model undermined by piracy. An argument against DRM is that the web will engender a liberation and proliferation of culture free from the corporate bonds currently suffocating it; get rid of the suits and we end up in a grass roots web driven artistic utopia. This might be true. However in this scenario there will be no more Hollywood blockbusters, huge epoch defining albums and tours, door stopping bestsellers and all the other accouterments of mass culture that rely on a company infrastructure.

These require scale, a corporate scale, which requires direct and secure revenue which to date has existed in the form of unit sales. Last.fm, Spotify et al are pointing the way to a fantastic new business model, but alone it is not enough. DRM is one of the only tools available to prevent catastrophic loss of revenue.

My argument here is simple: if we want Harry Potter- the books, films, computer games, the whole phenomenon – then DRM has a role. While some of the web elite could happily do without this kind of mass market stuff, and while I believe the web is important in promoting material antithetical to it, I think most of us would not want to see it go away.

We all know that DRM is far from infallible and can be hacked. DRM is never going to be a final guarantor, rather it is a basic protective mechanism.

So DRM is not great, but neither is it evil. There are a few things that need to be done by publishers and others to ensure though that DRM really isn’t evil. People do hate DRM. We have to make this better. My suggestions:

- interoperable DRM is a must. Seriously, until we have decent interoperable DRM then it will always be a huge and unnecessary barrier to adoption of new technologies. Getting this in place should be a priority for everyone in the content industries.

- more flexible DRM. I should be able to lend my file to people – just not torrent it at will.

- more choices and granularity of DRM available. As a publisher we don’t always want to slap the heaviest DRM on all our titles. Yet this is what we have to do. Some titles could have lighter- or no- DRM while others have more restrictive controls.

- more social DRM. Watermarking and the like could be very effective, but as far as I am aware this technique is not yet widely used.

- an acknowledgment of the different uses and situations people might find themselves in. This means recognising that an inherent give in the system will make peoples experiences better.

- giving something back. If we are going to use DRM then we have to make sure that what we are offering really is great. This means harnessing digital delivery to add content and experiment with new forms of content to really make the offering attractive.

- be open to new business models. We cannot cling to just DRM; at the same time we should start earnestly evaluating other alternative means of distribution.

This might not make everyone turn round and start liking DRM, but it should make life easier for the most important people of all: our readers.