Informa post half year results (Press Release)Resilient profit performance – adjusted operating profit growth of 0.6% to £160.1m; 0.3% on an organic basis Improved margin – adjusted operating margin 25.8% (H1 2011: 25.1%)Strong cash flow – cash conversion rate increased to 76% (H1 2011: 56%)Revenue decline of 2.4% (organic decline of 1.2%) – proactive reduction in marginal product.Statutory loss...
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Friday, July 27, 2012
The Flamingo Las Vegas 1971I was in Las Vegas last month and purposely went over several images from my fathers trip their around 1971. There's another I've posted here which I named Caesar and the Pinto and was taken across the street from Caesars Palace. My thought was that I could revisit these...
Thursday, July 26, 2012
News that Pearson has purchased the self-publishing roll-up Author House reminded me of this post from September 19, 2007 which I wrote just after Author House acquired iUniverse.com. My thought this week was what took so long for a large established publisher to make this acquisition. The news that Author House and iUniverse.com were merging was not entirely unexpected, but it is interesting...
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Copyright issues in Canada may not be top of most people's list of interesting news items but Canada may be on the cusp of legislating new copyright reforms and the reason may be a recent set of rulings from their supreme court. The courts ruling covered several media formats and distribution methods and could generally be construed as a win for consumers. That would be 'free-loaders'...
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs are really getting some people excited and the sheer numbers are amazing - although is this a fad and or a function of supply? From the NYTimes an interview with Anant Agarwal of MIT who's first class enrolled 150,000 students (NYTimes)Did you expect so much demand? With no marketing dollars, I thought we might get 200 students. When we posted on...
Friday, July 20, 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
The BISG will release their updated annual survey of the publishing industry next week but their press release today offers some tidbits of information of interest to many who track the industry.The overall US publishing market contracted 2.5% to $27.2Billion down from $27.9 in 2011 however the results suggest changes in the product mix or general deflationary pricing since volume was up 3.4% year...
Monday, July 16, 2012
An interesting report on the development of library publishing services was published in March (LINK)Here is a description of the survey and report:Over the past five years, libraries have begun to expand their role in the scholarly publishing value chain by offering a greater range of pre-publication and editorial support services. Given the rapid evolution of these services, there is a clear community...
UK is about to open up academic publishing. (Guardian):Though many academics will welcome the announcement, some scientists contacted by the Guardian were dismayed that the cost of the transition, which could reach £50m a year, must be covered by the existing science budget and that no new money would be found to fund the process. That could lead to less research and fewer valuable papers...
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Several weeks ago I was invited to speak at the annual Association of American University Presses (AAUP) meeting on a panel discussing the ‘chunking’ of educational content. My inclusion was appropriate given my current involvement with educational and academic publishing companies that are looking at ways to monetize the selection and packaging of ‘chunked’ content. Increasingly, faculty...
Monday, July 9, 2012
From The Nation a look at the evolution of search in the Amazon.com bookstore (The Nation):The glory soon faded, because the high print orders shrank when the returns came in. Only a few of the remaining superstores—alas for the Borders that once graced Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square, a monument of civilization—still offer recondite books, as opposed to their 100,000 usual suspects. But Amazon...
Sunday, July 8, 2012
v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} From their announcement Product metadata is the connective tissue of the book industry, binding publishers and authors to data aggregators, retailers, and others. But...
Friday, July 6, 2012
Yes, if you look closely there is a person in there and it's me. Sitting in row 2; approximately, and just about to depart the plane which is on the tarmac at Tehran International airport. Over the northern summer in 1972, I got to travel with my Dad back to the UK (from New Zealand) where he left...
Monday, July 2, 2012
Julian Barnes writing in the Guardian about his life as a bibliofile:By now, I was beginning to view books as more than just utilitarian, sources of information, instruction, delight or titillation. First there was the excitement and meaning of possession. To own a certain book – one you had chosen yourself – was to define yourself. And that self-definition had to be protected, physically. So...
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