Mar 2, 2010

Shirky at NFAIS: How Abundance Breaks Everything

Posted by Ann Michael under Authors, Business Models, Experimentation, Reading, Social Media, Sociology, Technology, World of Tomorrow | Tags: , , , , , |
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Clay Shirky

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Clay Shirky was the opening keynote at the NFAIS Annual Conference this weekend.  According to Shirky, the fact that our customers are connected matters, but the fact that they’re networked matters even more.

As an illustration of his point he told us a story about HSBC, a UK bank that instituted a no-penalty account targeted at UK college students and recent graduates. After attracting customers to these accounts, the bank decided to institute a £140 fee for overdrafts.  As we all would have imagined, in the age of Facebook and social networking, account holders didn’t take this lightly.  In fact, they organized online and were in the process of organizing an in-person demonstration when HSBC gave in.

As Shirky pointed out, unhappy customers may get some attention, but unhappy networked customers can quickly impact your business. The proliferation of technology that helps us connect to each other, publish, and share information may be wreaking havoc on our traditional publishing ecosystem, but these aren’t new problems.

The printing press enabled books to be reproduced 300 times faster than they could with a scribe.  Aside from the obvious impact this had on the availability of information, it also had a less obvious effect on the Catholic church.  Contrary to popular belief, the first items printed on the press in great number were not just Bibles, they were indulgences and, as a result of the speed at which they could be reproduced, indulgences proliferated.  This lead to the excess that prompted Martin Luther to write the Ninety–Five Thesis, ultimately sparking the Protestant Reformation.  What initially looked like it was going to strengthen the existing environment (by increasing access to the Bible and indulgences) ultimately up-ended it.

Abundance breaks more things than scarcity does.  Society knows how to react to scarcity.

Think about that statement for a minute. “Society knows how to react to scarcity.”  We know how to ration, save, and preserve when we need to do so.  It’s much harder to set priorities and find our path when information abounds.  We may drown.  We may get side-tracked.  We may shut down.  But, in any case, abundance confuses and distracts us more than scarcity does.

While there were many more insights offered throughout this keynote, the other statement that caused me to pause was this:

It’s easy to say “preserve the best of the old and combine it with the best of the new,” but in revolution, the best of the new is incompatible with the best of the old. It’s about doing things a whole new way.

Perhaps there are ways in some cases to incrementally adjust what we’re doing.  But when true revolution is required, can the old be preserved as anything more than a memory?  Can it do anything more than inform?

Does this statement apply more to process and models and less to mission and vision?  Or, in some cases, are our missions defined too narrowly, specifying how they must be accomplished, rather than broadly framing the impact we want to have on the world?

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Feb 1, 2010

Where Is the Money in Custom Publishing? Your Answer Depends on How You Define It

Posted by Ann Michael under Business Models, Experimentation, Research, Social Media, Technology, Usability, World of Tomorrow | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |
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Last week at the Software & Information Industry Association’s Information Industry Summit, I attended a panel discussion on custom publishing moderated by Gregory Brown, Senior Director, Strategic Development at DataStream Content Solutions. The panelists included:

One interesting fact is that the average print run for a title on a Lightning Source, an Ingram platform for print-on-demand, is 1.8 books. According to Skip Prichard, “technology is getting cheaper . . . [the] business model is changing . . . custom publishing has to be core instead of a way to make a few dollars on the side.”

But “custom publishing” is a term still being defined. In fact, if you define it one way, you see some opportunities and miss others.

Matt Turner had a broader definition of custom publishing, one in which print wasn’t necessarily an outcome.  He spoke about products like McGraw-Hill’s Create (currently in beta) and Wiley Custom Select, which are “taking custom publishing, in the broadest sense, digital.”  In his opinion, “custom publishing is pervasive in almost everything people are doing now (books, research, newsletters, etc.) and it isn’t all print.”

And what did the panelists think about the future of custom publishing?

Steve Alpern: “People know what they need and what they’re willing to pay for, and the better you can serve that need, the better it will be for your business.”

Matt Turner: “More people from the top down are talking about re-monetizing content  – everything is personalized.  It’s the  overall trend for the future.  The direction is being set that there is nothing but custom publishing.”

Skip Prichard: The upcoming “entitlement generation” is going to set customization as the trend.  “Content has to be targeted directly to them. They expect  you to know the paper they’re working on [and this expectation] will move from the student to the professional world.”

Matt Turner was the one thinking big.  He left the group with an interesting thought:

What if I could open the doors a little to my own content and package it up for someone else.  Users may find it.  Users may customize it.  There’s a whole business around allowing others to customize [content].

And, in my opinion, custom doesn’t just mean working with the content as-is or the content of only one publisher.

Now that takes custom publishing in a whole new direction.  User-generated content, user-generated data about content, and user-generated compilations of content within and across publishers is really the ultimate in custom publishing.  It’s a far cry from bundling up chapters from a few different books, articles from a journal, or content from just one source.

The future of custom is all about rich, discoverable content and a model that puts the user’s hands on the steering wheel.  Until we get there, publishers will always be trying to anticipate user’s needs, and we will never be able to do so completely.

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Jan 27, 2010

From the SIIA: Four Executives Describe the Past and Look Into the Future

Posted by Ann Michael under Business Models, Newspapers, Research, Tools, World of Tomorrow | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |
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Bloomberg terminal
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Traditionally, the first day of the Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) Information Industry Summit (IIS) ends with a panel of executives looking into the future.  This year, Jim K0llegger, CEO of Genesys Partners, moderated a panel that included:

The panel covered all of the major topics: business models, advertising, user behavior, device convergence, and a bit of history.  Jim started the discussions by asking Dick Harrington how he came to the conclusion that he should sell off Thomson’s news business in the late 1990s (when it was still able to fetch a price of $4.4 billion).

According to Dick, they made that decision in 1997 but “it took a year to get nerve up to tell the board we were selling news.” Dick and his management team saw the potential for Web-related advertising to erode their business.  They also looked at eBay and felt it would impact classified advertising sales in such a way that Thomson could not compete.  Dick reported to the board that content was no longer king and that Thomson needed to drive everything toward an electronic model.  The real story would be information, software, and solutions.  “We needed to focus our business . . . [on] activity-based workflows and the content and tools that could drive that.”

Andy Lack’s experiences at Bloomberg were quite different.  Andy described a “journalistic army” of thousands of reporters that feed the 300,000  global professional subscribers to Bloomberg terminals. Content is most definitely king at Bloomberg.

In yet a third, and very different situation, David Eun described how he has been charged with working out a business model for YouTube.  At the time it was acquired, YouTube was losing $500 million a year related to servicing its ever increasing volume. To put that volume into perspective, David quoted some statistics: 1 billion views a day, 20 hours of video viewed every minute, every two months more video is uploaded to YouTube than has been broadcast by the top three US television networks in the past 60 years.

The first order of business was securing the infrastructure and making sure YouTube continued to be accessible and easy to use.

Now, it’s time to figure out a business model that “stimulates the ecosystem.  We want to get money into people’s hands so that they can produce more content.”

Mark Anderson was definitely the futurist of the group.  He started his introduction with the question, “If you ask your kids if they are you going to pay for media in the future, they’ll say no.” Admittedly, you could feel the audience cringe at that.  He went on to say that those kids will get to the place in their lives and work when they’ll have a different attitude about paying.  As they come into the workforce, they will pay for value. At least, that’s what many publishers are betting.  He went on to say that we’re now witnessing a move from free to paid. “The trend is unmistakable – it’s a way from free.”

David had a slightly different view.  Ultimately, he said, everyone pays “either with your money or with your time – your attention.”  He believes that advertising can work, and that the opportunity is there to put the right ad in front of the right person at the right time.

David even commented on the fact that there are different cost structures and different business models.  Organizations need to allow a choice of what content falls under which business model.  It could be that one content offering is free to the user and supported by ads, another version is available for rent for a certain period, and still another version is available for direct purchase or as part of a subscription. There are no easy answers.

The panelists seemed to agree that the real key to a business model is that you have to have the right product to service the segment.  Once again, in what appeared to be the unspoken theme of the day, this panel came back to customization — give me what I want, when and where I need it, and be able to anticipate those needs accurately.

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Oct 30, 2009

Google Wave: When More Is Too Much

Posted by Ann Michael under Experimentation, Social Media, Technology, Tools, World of Tomorrow | Tags: |
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Google Wave was built to answer the question, “How would email look if it were invented today?”  But Wave goes far beyond email-like functionality and tries to get to the heart of communication in all the forms that we’ve come to know.  Wave is part email, part IM, part Wiki, and part document management, to name a few.

I’ve been experimenting for a couple of weeks now.  After a slow start in almost complete isolation, I connected with a very active user, John Blossom.  John had already amassed quite a following.   Seeing how an active group is using Google Wave proved fascinating.  There were blogs that had been transformed into waves,  personal profiles constructed as waves, public waves instructing others on how to get started, and waves that identified known bugs and workarounds.

However, finding people is quite difficult.  You must either know someone’s exact login ID or happen to see them on a wave.  Since many users do not have pictures and use ID’s that are not readily identifiable as them, this is exceptionally frustrating.  There is no way to search for users and no integration with email or other apps.  Wave isn’t even integrated with Gmail. I actually found several of the people with whom I’m connected through Facebook, Twitter, and blogs where they mentioned they were on Google Wave and offered to connect with others.

Once you have connected with others, if you don’t use Google Wave continually, you have no way of knowing that someone has added you to a wave or tried to interact with you in any way.  Again, there is no integration to IM, email, or any other applications, not even Google applications.

Another frustration is that it is very difficult to get started.  Google Wave is a cacophony of functionality that doesn’t even try to reveal its value or purpose to the user. You have to be determined to use Google Wave in order to make it work for you. Even then, since it’s a “preview,” the functions you try to use don’t always work.  Being a new user you are left wondering if the function doesn’t work or if you’re just not doing it right.

What could make it more useful?

  • Integration with email clients, contacts, and other collaborative spaces (Google applications would be a great start: Google Docs, Spaces, Gmail, IM, etc.)
  • A more intuitive user interface that works in all browsers equally as well
  • The ability to easily find others
  • Configuration options that allow a user to more precisely structure their view
  • Some pre-configured views that optimize screen layout based on what the user is trying to accomplish

All that being said, there is the potential for intense collaboration on Google Wave.  As it is now, it’s just too vast and complicated to be useful. It’s currently a drain on productivity, not a boon to it.

Steve Rubel put it well:

So definitely get excited about Wave. It is way cool. It is real time – where the world is going. But, for now, it does create more problems than it solves. Let’s see if Wave 2.0 fixes that.

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Sep 24, 2009

John Wilbanks: It’s the Customer, Not the Container — SSP IN Keynote

Posted by Ann Michael under Business Models, Copyright, Education, Research, Society for Scholarly Publishing, World of Tomorrow | Tags: , , , , , |
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John Wilbanks, Creative Commons

John Wilbanks, Creative Commons

Fifteen years ago would anyone have imagined that Apple, a dying computer company, would come back to life by gaining control of the music business?

Why did that happen?  They focused on the customer.

John Wilbanks, VP at Creative Commons, and leader of their Science Project, was the morning keynote at SSP IN.  His point with the Apple example?  Traditionally, publishing has focused on the container not the customer: the article, the book, the journal.  It’s time to shift the focus to the consumer.

Unfortunately, many in scholarly publishing, and publishing overall, are incrementally innovating around the container.  While commending Elsevier for their R & D efforts, Wilbanks observed that even the Article of the Future looks a lot like the container of the past.

The problem with focusing on the container is that the network is commoditizing the container, which will be digitized and copied.  In fact, digital technologies are constructed for distribution and copying. Concentrating on the container puts publishers in the business of spending time and money attempting to prevent copying.  Ironically, in a network economy, it’s the proliferation of copies that makes content more valuable. But this shifts the value from the content layer to surrounding layers:

When a layer gets commoditized, value is created through proprietary services in adjacent layers.  Clay Christensen

Focusing on the article misses the shift away from the article.  It’s coming, Wilbanks believes.  The article is a representation of the scientific process from which it resulted.  All of the content around that process, the data on which the process relied, and the interactions of those involved represent the true value.  In fact, the publisher that enables the integration, annotation, and federation of those sources may find themselves creating the most value and the most success.


It’s the Customer, Not the Container

View more documents from john wilbanks.
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Jul 7, 2009

Playing Two Ends Against the Middle

Posted by Ann Michael under Authors, Books, Business Models, Controversial Topics, Experimentation, Social Role, World of Tomorrow | Tags: , , , |
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The old "cut the polar bear in half"...
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As Kent Anderson mentions in his post Gladwell & Nielson: The Fixed Costs of Fixed Ideas, Malcolm Gladwell’s review of Chris Anderson’s forthcoming book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” has sparked some intense debates.

Many of the arguments have been captured on this Squidoo lens started by Seth Godin.

What strikes me about the debate is that, like most debates, it’s occurring at the logical extremes of the scenarios (it’s all or nothing).  Yet, when the dust settles on most debates, reality usually falls between the extremes.

Let’s turn the clock back to the late 1990s–Y2K was coming, and the Internet boom was in full swing. The mantra then was that brick and mortar was a thing of the past to be replaced by the dot coms.  Late in the “dot com era” some started to see holes in this theory, stating that blending the models would be more likely than one model replacing the other.  In fact, some started to think that online-only retailers would be at a disadvantage to brick and mortar retailers that had an online presence and effectively integrated the customer experience.

Then a funny thing happened right around the turn of the century–for lack of a business model (sound familiar), most online only ventures (with notable exceptions like Amazon and eBay) started to crumble.

Now, back to the subject of paid content. It seems logical that several pricing scenarios (free, paid, sponsored, hybrid, not yet discovered, etc.) have a place in the new economy. The problem is that we don’t have the rules, guidelines, or models that predict how consumers may behave given the many variables that impact their decision making.

In essence, our established markets have reverted back to behaving like emerging markets.

What do you do in emerging markets?  Make many small bets and keep experimenting until the trends start to become clear.

As more information becomes available about how our customers are behaving, I’m willing to bet “free” will be a significant part of the landscape but will not be the only pricing model in the market.  I also doubt that many of the paid models that exist today will survive unscathed.

So, if your business is selling content, I would highly recommend that you don’t put all of your eggs in either the “all free” or “all paid” basket.

Instead, keep an open mind, and keep experimenting.

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Jun 9, 2009

The Pseudo-Mathematics of Attention

Posted by Ann Michael under Authority, Business Models, Controversial Topics, Experimentation, Marketing | Tags: , , , |
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Last year, Joe Esposito published an article in the Journal of Electronic Publishing that still resonates with today’s publishing challenges. However, one of his first assertions left me wondering if there wasn’t more to explore:

Attention is the scarce commodity; any service that makes those 24 hours more productive is welcome. A service that winnows through the huge outpouring of information and says (with authority), Pay attention to this; pay less attention to that; and as for that other thing, ignore it entirely—such a service is well worth paying for. The name of that service is publishing.

Is attention a scarce commodity? How is it expended? What factors into it? Is it finite and determined? Or is it malleable? And, if so, are publishers the only ones capable of obtaining it, expanding it, and rewarding it?

I wanted to think this through, and decided to try some simple mathematical statements.

The amount of attention or concentration a consumer is willing to devote to a resource is a function of the time they have available and the perceived relevance of the resource being consumed.

Attention = Time x Relevance

As the relevance of a resource increases so does our willingness to devote attention to that resource, even if our available time remains constant.

Time = Attention/Relevance

The amount of time we spend exploring a topic is a function of the attention we devote and the relevance of the resources we discover.

Relevance = Attention/Time

The more attention we give a subject, the more likely the resource is highly relevant (relevance increases).

When discussing this idea with Kent, he brought up the concept of literacy (fluency).  Fluency is our level of expertise within the subject matter being explored.  The more fluent we are, the more likely we will quickly identify and digest relevant resources (time will decrease).

The form of information can also determine the time given. A confusing presentation of interesting information can increase the time needed to decode and understand it, while a coherent display of information can shrink the time needed to comprehend it.

And in our digital age, hyperlinks can create an information power function, as users hop from one relevant source to another, either on the same subject or on a related subject.

Defining attention with time is an interesting approach, and potentially problematic. We may choose to devote time to a highly relevant resource (which is good) or we may be forced to devote time because of irrelevant resources.  I’m not sure how to reflect the difference.

Discoverability is also a factor that is not directly related to relevance, but does impact time and, therefore, attention.

In looking back at Joe Esposito’s quote, the underlying assumption to a publisher’s value seems to be consumer trust (brand promise).  If a consumer trusts the publisher’s assessment of value, then it’s likely they will devote more attention to the products that publisher produces.

A service that winnows through the huge outpouring of information and says (with authority), Pay attention to this; pay less attention to that; and as for that other thing, ignore it entirely—such a service is well worth paying for. The name of that service is publishing.

I’m not sure the name of that service is publishing.  If it is, then there are more entities that can be defined as “publishers” than ever before.  In some cases even an individual author or moderator is the brand, the source of trust.

So what?

The more publishers (or any entity that is creating, aggregating, or disseminating content) can add focus to resources and assist consumers in discovering those resources, the more likely we are to attract consumer attention and increase their investment of time and, potentially, money in our products.

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May 28, 2009

Publishing for the Google Generation

Posted by Ann Michael under Controversial Topics, Education, Experimentation, Social Media, Society for Scholarly Publishing, World of Tomorrow | Tags: , , , |
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Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
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Immediately following Adam Bly’s keynote, Joy Moore, also from Seed Media Group, moderated the panel, “Publishing for the Google Generation.“  The speakers included Vikram Savkar (Nature), RichPirozzi (Wiley Higher Education), and Ryan Jones (Pubget).  While all of the speakers were excellent, I’m going to focus on Vikram Savkar.

Vikram acknowledged that to some degree we’re all the Google generation.  Our habits and expectations concerning information have changed and continue to change as a result of Google, YouTube, Twitter, and other applications that teach us to interact with information differently than we have in the past.

However, he specifically defined the Google Generation as people under 25 who have grown up shaped by search, crowd-sourced content (like Wikipedia), and free information.  His premise was that these people have a radically different way of viewing information.

The Google generation expects:

  • Parallel versus structured access to information (information should be one step away and not require structured navigation)
  • Punchy rather than sustained information (if content doesn’t grab them in seconds, they move on)
  • Convenience (with crowd-sourced content, like Wikipedia, information about anything is available at some depth)
  • Information to be free (they see open access as their birth right)

In my opinion, regardless of “generation,” these attributes are already virtually universal customer expectations – or they are quickly becoming universal expectations.

While this might seem like splitting a hair, it isn’t.  If there is a generation “coming” that does not represent the current client population today, we would be wise to meter the release of products and features that cater to them.  That would allow us to preserve revenue as this transition in our client base takes place.

Conversely, if this change in our customer base has already occurred, and we don’t have the products or services that meet or exceed these expectations, we’d better move a lot faster.

I’m sure that there are cognitive differences in those that have grown up as part of the Google generation.  However, I have yet to hear one attribute ascribed to them that doesn’t seem to be something taking root in the population over all.

Have you?

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May 8, 2009

Announcing the SSP’s “IN” Conference

Posted by Ann Michael under Experimentation, Housekeeping, Research, Society for Scholarly Publishing | Tags: , , |
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The SSP's "IN" Meeting

The SSP's "IN" Meeting

For many of you, the Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Meeting and the Top Management Round Table are events with which you’re familiar.

But this year, there’s going to be a change.

The SSP Annual Meeting is going on as scheduled, May 27-29th at the Marriott Baltimore Waterfront Hotel, but the Top Management Round Table has been replaced with a new event, the IN Conference.

Interact, Inspire, Innovate: The first IN Conference will be held at the Hotel Providence in Providence, RI, on September 23-25, 2009.  The conference is designed to engage all attendees in small group discussions focused on some of the key challenges and opportunities in scholarly publishing.  Participants will have a unique opportunity to interact with colleagues, think critically about approaches to problems, and will leave the conference with ideas and strategies that can be applied in the context of their organizations.

The event planning committee is working on small group discussion topics this week.  Richard Newman (VP, Business Development at the American Medical Association) and I are co-chairs for the event.

During the months to come, I will occasionally ask you for your feedback on the topic descriptions, conference layout and approach, and speakers.  I hope you’ll be willing to share your opinions either here, in the comment box, or through email.

In the mean time, please look for any member of the IN planning committee at the SSP Annual Meeting in a few weeks.  We’d love to tell you more about IN and hear what you have to say!

Planning Committee:

  • Kathey Alexander, Consultant in Scholarly & Professional Publishing
  • Michael Clarke, Clarke Publishing Group
  • Lettie Conrad, Sage Publications
  • Ray Fastiggi, Incoming SSP President
  • Rebecca Jensen, JAACAP
  • Ann Michael, Really Strategies
  • Joy Moore, Seed Media
  • Richard Newman, AMA
  • Zsolt Silberer, WK Health
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Apr 7, 2009

Custom “Membership”

Posted by Ann Michael under Business Models, Marketing, Social Media, World of Tomorrow | Tags: , , , , , , |
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Members Only
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How can membership business models, based to some extent on the concept of exclusivity, flourish in an environment increasingly driven by collaboration, openness, and participation?

The prevalence of collaboration tools, social networks, and search capabilities combined with the proliferation of accessible content, has made maintaining membership rolls challenging.

To make matters worse, potential new members often have expectations that conflict with those of existing membership.

How can a membership organization meet the competing needs of different groups and still sustain itself and serve its larger mission?

Could we pull non-members into the planning and execution of events or activities in which they may be interested, giving them a connection to the organization, the mission, and the existing membership before they’re faced with a decision to “join”?

In some cases, could providing interaction with non-members increase learning opportunities for our current members?

Could we offer non-members features, like credential verification and access to credentialed online communities, for free and then offer them opportunities to pay for additional products or services they want to consume?

Could ideas like this be the basis of “custom membership,” where different levels of interest or affiliation are offered at different price points?

Perhaps we could use a model based on flow.  The flow of people through an organization over time where their relationship with the organization changes as their needs change.  Payment models could also vary based on their consumption and contribution.

Is membership a sustainable concept at all in the era of open participation?

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