booktwo.org

I’ve wanted for some time to create a simple infographic of where a book’s cover price goes, and the Observer published a nice one in their Book of Books a few months ago. The figures made sense, so I’ve created a similar one here, in colour.

The Observer’s figures were based on a notional £20 hardback book, from which I’ve extracted the percentages, which in my experience hold fairly true across standard formats for traditionally produced books in the major bookshops. So for a £10 paperback, the retailers will take anything between a 40% to a 60% discount (and guess who’s trying for more), and the author can expect to see about a quid, depending on their terms.

I think this illustration serves a number of purposes, not least to illustrate the mark-up taken by the retailers. There’s some justification for this by bricks-and-mortar stores, with huge overheads, but I’m yet to hear a decent one for internet retailers, who don’t have shop rents to pay - their motivation, of course, is simply to undercut the high street. Publishers are giving away huge sums in their failure to compete on direct sales - and they’re going to struggle to justify high ebook prices too.

Imagine a book that told a different story every time it was opened. The story might change depending on the gender of the reader, or the sex. It might depend on the location of the reader, or the position of the book in time; the time of day, or time in years. Centuries might pass before the book tells the same story again.

The nature of the web makes such a book possible. Immediately, a simple reading of the user-agent to determine the reader’s operating system and browser could be used to present each with a different version, breaking the narrative along several general pathways. Sections could be hidden or revealed by simple manipulation of the layout.

Secondly, parsing the IP address of the reader would reveal their rough geographical location, or the institution they were calling from. In the first instance, sentences could be run through rough online translators, translating passages into - or out of - the reader’s assumed language. Different nations could be offered different political perspectives on the narrative. In the second, those from academic institutions would find appended a wealth of sources, some true, some false, while government agents might find the entire pages reduced to Xs and punctuation marks.

Finally, simple randomisation could alter the meaning of certain words, their tense or number. Names would be changed, emphasis misplaced. But random number generators are no such thing, and each has a pattern. A one time pad.

The final stage attempts to preclude the existence of a master copy.

O’Reilly’s Tools of Change for Publishing blog has a nice series of posts on books as ebooks as applications:

• Linking Books with the Web-Way of Thinking
• Treating Ebooks Like Software
• A Big Boost to Books as Apps?

I just want to voice something that has been bothering me a little about this (and given some current projects, may come back to bite me):

Books are not applications, or software. They are words.

I think there’s a danger inherent in regarding books as something to be run rather than something to be read. This argument is a bit hazy because a lot of book apps (such as booksinmyphone’s Java apps) are really just wrappers for the text.

But by creating multiple versions of books - rather than agreeing on a single format (e.g. but not necessarily, ePub) and building separate software to display that - we’re heading down a road of locked-down, device-specific book technology that is antithetical to the nature of the medium, and costly to publishers. If only those publishers that can afford to spend the time (not necessarily money, the time alone has a cost) creating huge ranges of different applications can get their books onto the marketplace, it won’t be the rosy future for niche literature that some versions of the ebook story predict.

The sheer replication involved - reproducing the same lines of code over and over again for each book in a library - bothers even my low sense of efficiency and programmatic elegance too.

Of course, this development is not of the choosing of anyone in books. It’s a short-termist, technological hack, to get books onto closed platforms like the iPhone and other smart phones, and in large part it’s caused by the development of the App Store, which provides us with a sneaky way of getting book texts onto phones while there’s no equivalent of the iTunes Store for text files. But I’d much rather see a Book Store selling files to be read by standalone ereader apps than this glut of mini-apps.

Such a path would not prevent publishers building their own, branded and self-promoting, ereader apps, as I’ve previously suggested, but it would massively widen the interoperability of ebooks and ereaders, which readers will only thank us for. Perhaps we should be looking at some other hacks instead?

Faber Finds is the new print-on-demand (POD) offering from Faber. It’s a classics list made up of old Faber titles, with the intention (I believe) of extending to a wider range of ‘forgotten classics’.

Slowly, the larger publishers are coming round to the view that much smaller publishers (such as Salt) have had for a long time: POD offers great benefits for publishers, mostly through doing away with the old and horrifically wasteful system of printing thousands of copies up front without any real idea of whether they’ll sell or not. This increasingly outmoded system is the root cause of much of the mid- and backlist malaise currently affecting the industry.

Publishers have traditionally looked down on POD as the domain of vanity publishers and cranks, largely due to the unacceptably poor quality of the final product. This disdain is no longer justified, and POD lists are starting to appear. I’ll declare my interest now: I’ve been working on a POD project for some time, the fruits of which will be available soon.

However, I don’t think many of these publishers have really got it - including Faber Finds, and the recently announced PFD list - and I’ll explain why.

Publishers have been at pains for some time to stress that what matters in their books, after the quality of the writing, is the production and presentation. The book as a premium object, well-made, lasting, and respectable. This is why they’ve stayed away from POD, and, to a large extent, ebooks, for so long. Leaving aside the fact that many, many current paperbacks produced by ‘traditional’ methods don’t really stand up to this, it has been the statement.

So what are Faber’s aims with the Finds list? They claim to have have spent a long time looking at the various POD offerings from printers, and they’ve gone with Antony Rowe over the US-owned Lightning Source (these two are the only real possibilities at the current time). At a glance, the books look good (they do on the website too), but both my editions arrived in substantially less-than-pristine condition. Both are heavily marked with dirt and even a large thumbprint - more obviously than these photographs show - a recurring problem with white-covered books, and surely one Faber could have anticipated. Far less forgivably, the Newby edition is badly cut, with jagged edges.

Dirt aside, I like the front covers, I really do, but there is little more to appreciate in these editions. They have generic back covers trumpeting not the book but the Faber Finds list. They have no introductions, nor any signs of individual craft or attention. Worst of all, they are both - and I expect the whole list is - photostat editions: straight reprints of previous editions without regard to consistent typography or the book format they are printed in. The result is acres of white space as an old edition is shoehorned into the new. POD printing costs by the page, so it’s no wonder they have to sell lots of copies before they make any money.

All of this seems to fatally undermine the publishers’ insistence on the premium object. Both of these books may technically have been ‘out of print’, but the Conrad is easily available in a much nicer edition from Amazon, and Abe Books has plenty of old editions of the Newby, all for far less than the £10 - £15 asking price of Faber Finds. So with no added extras, who is expected to buy them?

POD does offer a huge opportunity for publishers, but these current offerings from Faber and PFD appear to have more to do with hanging on to the rights to these works than any genuine desire to see them prosper. The rights to books that are out of print for a particular length of time revert to the author, and while the new technologies have muddied this issue somewhat, the lack of care and attention given to these reprints smacks of opportunism rather than any genuine benefit to readers or the authors’ estates.

We’re all for publishers using new technologies to create new markets for old as well as new books, and applaud any move in this direction, but these shoddy POD titles, coupled with the recent spate of lazily-designed, ill-conceived and just plain broken websites, suggest that publishers have a long way to go before they understand the workings of the new market.

“The blogosphere has been buzzing since the App Store launched over last weekend with comments about ‘dozy publishers’ who have missed a great opportunity to make their books available on the iPhone. But apart from a few digital PR points scored against competing publishers, there doesn’t seem to me to be any huge value in first mover advantage here for publishers, unless we want to make the decision to become software developers.”

Sara Lloyd has responded over at The Digitalist to the many comments (including ours) on this issue. She strikes a note of caution, and suggests that publishers adopt a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude - in some contrast to her excellent, and must-read, book publisher’s manifesto for the 21st Century.

But what I’m interested in is the suggestion that publishers are not in the business of developing software. I think there’s an interesting discussion here, and a couple of points to be made.

Firstly, publishers - particularly Macmillan - are already in the business of developing software. Macmillan’s MPS Technologies division built the software, BookStore, which runs key parts of many publisher’s businesses, including their own. Indeed, they even launched ebook delivery sites based on this technology, although these appear to have gone offline. The big publishers employ developers for the web, for their IT systems, for much else, most of the time.

Secondly, who better than publishers to craft such software? Most ereader technologies are built by techies who put the technology before the reading experience: the combined skills of typesetters, print designers, editors and technologists that only publishers possess could, with the right direction, produce a far superior ereader app than any we’ve seen so far.

The development of the book has always been driven by publishers. Bookselling is a business, and while I’m far less convinced of the ‘death of the book’ than appearances may suggest, a terminal attitude of ‘wait and see’ does not indicate a healthy, growing industry. Publishers have the tools at their disposal. Why not use them?

So the iPhone 2.0 is here, and with it a slew of reading apps. There are two approaches here: create a standalone ereader that can be used to read ebook files, or create standalone apps for each book.

The former is definitely better, and the reader of choice so far appears to be Lexcycle’s Stanza, an open epub reader that’s loosely tied to FeedBooks, enabling you to pull down a bunch of free ebooks directly, or search for a whole lot more. Getting ebooks (or any other files) onto your iPhone/iPod Touch is not easy however, which is where the standalone books come in.

AppEngines currently have a whole bunch of these in the App Store - the usual assortment of out-of-print classics and weirdness. They’ve swamped the Entertainment category, in fact, to the extent that they’ve posted an apology on their site: “We share your concerns that our ebook applications are taking up too much space in the App Store. … We will not submit any more books until the situation is resolved.”

No such apology from ZappTek however, whose Legends series of books are also highly visible in the App Store Entertainment category. But wait, closer inspection shows that all these books are by one author: Michael Stackpole.

So what’s happened here is that a single author (or friend of) has got a stranglehold on new, accessible literature on the iPhone. The iPhone is currently the most sought-after piece of tech on the planet. It stands a very good chance of leapfrogging the frankly rubbish Kindles, Iliads and Sony Readers of this world to become the default ereader of choice. And one man has seen that, and done something about it. It’s the literary equivalent of shouting FIRST! in the comments. I think he kind of knows it too.

Anyway, for chutzpah, genius, foresight: booktwo salutes him.

… and wonders why if it only takes one guy to craft a pretty good ebook delivery system *in time for the App Store’s launch* and get it out there, how long before some publisher fulfills their responsibility to the authors and readers, and does something similar? We want to read people, and while I have a lot of respect for Mr Catchpole, Serpent on The Station isn’t really my thing, but, as Peter’s noted, what else is there?

Just a quick note to say that, after a long hiatus, one of my favourite pieces of data visualisation is back*: LibraryThing’s Tag Mirror.

The Tag Mirror shows what everyone on LT thinks about your books. And what lovely runs of expression! “drama drugs dystopia economics elephants”. “postmodern programming prostitution psychiatry”. Oh my!

The data crunching involved makes my head hurt, but as someone who doesn’t bother to tag my own books, it’s a wonderful sight to behold, and a great start for reading explorations. Cheers Tim!

* Actually, it looks like it’s been back for a couple of months. But I only just noticed. Still.

London Lit Plus, the literary festival I set up last year, kicks off for the second time tomorrow. I’d love to see you there.

After a slow start, we’ve gathered up a bunch of really fantastic events. There’s a great string of events for classic London authors like Derek Raymond and Chris Petit, walks across the territories of Patrick Hamilton and W.B. Yeats, live readings and poetry from Liar’s League, Spoonful of Poison, Legend Press (at Speaker’s Corner!) and the Stuckists, a great kids and comics event from the DFC, and the infamous LL+ Pub Quiz. And much more besides.

Please do spread the word - mainstream attention is very hard to come by, and we’d love all the links we can get so as many people as possible get to experience the extraordinary wealth of London lit life in this brief two week period.

FTW (”For The Win”): An enthusiastic emphasis to the end of a comment, message, or post. Sometimes genuine, but often sarcastic. Originated from the game show Hollywood Squares where the result of the player’s response is expected to win the game. [Urban Dictionary]

The term ‘Win’ and its antonym ‘Fail’ have outgrown their origin in FTW. In (extremely) current slang, they are used to denote all aspects of success and failure, and have been both adjectivised (“Incredibly win”) and quantified (“Full of fail”): the ultimate accolades of the emergent argot.

I’m not going to apologise for the ephemeral nature of this subject: the increasingly digital domain of our discussions means that real-time speech - the best indicator of current thought and opinion, is increasingly index- and search-able. The Oxford English Corpus, which is used to create and update our dictionaries, is a collection of texts of written (or spoken) language currently totalling over 2 billion words of 21st-Century English.

A strength of the corpus is that it contains not only published works in which the text has been edited (and made to conform to standard spellings and grammar) but also unpublished and unedited writing like emails and weblogs. Some of the most inventive uses and deliberate exploitations of language, not to mention common-or-garden mistakes, start out in this kind of informal and unselfconscious language, so tracking them is an essential part of tracking the language as a whole.

That definition again: “unpublished and unedited writing like emails and weblogs”. Some might find an argument here.

Slowly, the internet becomes the corpus. With projects as diverse as Google’s Books and Scholar, and Summize, we are indexing everything.

Win and Fail are inherently digital concepts: there is no grey area here, only the TRUE/FALSE dualism of 1 and 0. So they are the natural interjections of the techie. Stephen Pinker says:

I’m very interested in language because it reflects our obsessions and ways of conceptualising the world. Swear words are a window on to the domains of life that arouse the strongest emotions: bodily secretions, powerful deities, death, disease, hated people or groups and depraved sexual acts.

It’s likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical removal of the left hemisphere can leave people with no articulate speech other than the ability to swear, spout cliches and song lyrics.

What this implies to me - and I am not a cognitive scientist, although I did study in this area - is that these ‘taboo’ words are not ‘mere’ words, simply labels for things. They are inherently emotional terms, carrying with them not only the thing itself, but an entire web of meanings and associations. ‘Win’ and ‘fail’ are ejaculations shorn of their taboo aspects - politically correct, but also precise and targeted.

Trends over time can be microsearched. What happened at 22:10 on June 27th to cause that brief triumph of fail? Almost exactly two days later, ‘win’ spikes again.

Failure, while undesired, is also funnier. Schadenfreude has its zenith in the latest lolcat-variation: the Ship of Fail and its attendants, or in the much-maligned, but equally celebrated Fail Whale. Luckily, Win seems to be winning.

P.S. On the images: I love visualisations, and Twitter is a rich data source (bkkeepr owes its existence to them and it, of course). An honourable mention should go to Twistori, which, lovely as it is, lacks win/fail categories.

Attempting to bypass a creative block today, I started photographing objects around the house. I noticed the texts that cover most consumer goods, the sheer wealth of them, and how they are so often hidden, turned away. I started making them visible.

I’d just been reading an extract from Felicity Lawrence’s Eat Your Heart Out in Saturday’s paper. She describes how breakfast cereals are one of the top advertising-led products, despite their almost total lack of goodness.

“The risk is, if you take the salt out, you might be better off eating the cardboard carton for taste.”—Kellogg’s spokesman.

These essays on packaging - blurbs, lists of ingredients, “nutrition information”, suggested servings, recipes - crowd out the visual space and supply some innate (and statuary) requirement for information, yet they say very little, and frequently lie.

I’ve been thinking a lot about language recently. How did we get from scratching on stone and wax tablets to this endless, 10 point scrawl on everything?

“This is not a story. You can read it if you like. It’s not about anything.”—label on a can of tomatoes in Grant Morrison’s Invisibles.

Just as when starting a new book the characters are ciphers to me, or when studying a new discipline I must take the time to learn the meanings of new concepts and classifications, so now ‘Aliphatic Hydrocarbons’ and ‘Nonionic surfactants’ are equally mysterious. I have no vinyl furniture. Why do I even possess this product? How have I accumulated all these meaningless texts?

“Word salad is a mixture of seemingly meaningful words that together signify nothing; the phrase draws its name from the common name for a symptom of schizophrenia… When applied to a physical theory, “word salad” is a derogatory description that labels the theory as senseless or utterly devoid of meaning.”—Wikipedia

I remember when I was a child I used to read the labels of all the products in the bathroom. A compulsive reader, if I found myself without a book, I read whatever came to hand. Still do.

‘Texts’ set on Flickr.