Treasure or Trash? A fabulous conference from UCF

Publishing in the UK is undoubtedly rather London-centred. Just ask any recent graduate looking for a job in the industry. So sometimes I feel a bit isolated living on the coast. Don't get me wrong – it's very nice here. It's just that attending a publishing event normally means a late-night trip back on the last train from Charing Cross or St Pancras.

I was so pleasantly surprised, then, to be able to go along to a wonderful conference organised by the University Centre Folkestone (UCF) last week. Titled Treasure or Trash? Artistic freedom and quality control in a digital age, it was free to attend and boasted some excellent speakers, including the inspirational Chris Meade from if:book and Danuta Kean, whose insights into copyright certainly made me stop and think. There were also talks from a number of entrepreneurs who are starting to publish in truly innovative ways.

All too often, events such as this fail to live up to expectations. Not this one. Every one of the speakers clearly had a real passion for their work – an infectious enthusiasm that left its mark on me and, I suspect, many other delegates. The organisation was also superb, despite some major problems on the roads that held things up a little at the beginning. All in all, a fabulous event.

Perhaps I don't need to move back to London after all.

Fear: the proofreader's friend

Will the digital publishing revolution inevitably lead to a decline in editorial standards?

There are two reasons why I think it might.

One is connected to the notion of agile publishing, in which some people feel the focus should be on getting the product on the shelves (real or virtual) even if all the rough edges haven't quite been smoothed off.

The other is, frankly, about the fear factor.

The great thing about content published electronically is that it can be corrected easily and, for the most part, at any time. It happens with software all the time, and there's no reason why the typo spotted in your e-book shouldn't be corrected in just the same way.

But, of course, it's different if the book is going to print.

If you know that there's no turning back once the book has been sent off, it does tend to set the adrenaline racing when you do those final checks. The costs of having to pulp and reprint will be huge. No-one wants to be responsible for that! And it's rather nice to think that, in years to come, no-one will have to be.

But I do wonder if it gives copy-editors and proofreaders licence to be just a little less assiduous in their error-checking..?

The economics of regional book pricing

It's been reported this week that Waterstones is considering different book prices for different regions. This is nothing new in this in retailing, and in bookselling it's not unlike the difference in price between hardbacks and paperbacks.

It is, of course, all about selling more books, but it's not just about that.

It's also about finding each individual's price point and eliminating what's known as the 'consumer surplus'.

Essentially, we all have an upper limit on the price we'd be willing to pay for everything we buy. Every time we buy something for less than that price, we effectively get something for nothing - a bit of a discount if you like. That's the consumer surplus.

Retailers would love to be able to charge us according to our individual price points. But it's not that easy. Most don't have the option of sizing us up and switching their price labels as we enter the store.

So they opt for the next best thing. It's possible to work out profiles for people living in different areas, which then allow you to make educated guesses: the individual price point for book X for people living in area Y is likely to be around £Z.

The trouble is that once someone knows they're being asked to pay a higher price just because someone's worked out that they'd be prepared to, the willingness to pay that higher price is in danger of evaporating.

Manufacturers can get over the problem by repackaging essentially the same product and giving it a different brand - two very similar cars, made by the same company, can attract very different price points thanks to the badge on the front.

But if the consumer knows that their local shop is charging more for exactly the same product than is being charged in another area, you have to wonder what this will do for customer loyalty.

So perhaps a different approach is required for the publishing world. Now that the ebook revolution is gathering momentum, there's already talk of doing something a little different with printed books - of making them more beautiful - more a luxury item. And the answer in terms of differential pricing may be to take the hardback/paperback distinction a little further and to push the more beautifully packaged books in some areas, while offering cheaper, more basic, products in others.

Server-side ebooks - does publishing need to catch up?

Sony has recently announced the launch of a music streaming service, Music Unlimited, and I can’t help thinking that a similar model would offer far more to publishers of ebooks than the downloads we’re currently getting used to (along with all the associated readers and file formats).

For one thing, this kind of service is device independent. You can switch phone, iPad, reader or PC without worrying about how to access your files, since they’re all held on a central server. Of course, you do need to be able to access that server, but it’s getting cheaper and easier to get online wherever we may be. And the client-side data storage options offered by HTML5 should mean that temporarily losing an internet connection need not be a big deal.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of server-side ebooks, though, is in updates. This may save editors and proofreaders a few sleepless nights. If there’s a serious typo or if the wrong draft has been used, just the update the file – no need for every customer to download a replacement. It would even be possibly to notify only those customers who had read as far as the page containing the error – the others need never know.

E-ink + mobile phone = death of the e-reader?

Because the paper-mimicking qualities (and long battery life) of e-ink displays are just about the only thing that make dedicated e-readers worth having. Now that e-ink is being incorporated into mobile phone displays, I can't help thinking that this is the beginning of the end for e-book-specific devices. Samsung's Alias 2 and the new Samsung Zeal (http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/36688/samsung-zeal-e-ink-phone), for example, are starting to use e-ink powered keypads. And with a new colour e-ink e-reader just launched (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20022237-93.html), how long before we see this technology in mobile phones? And who will want to cart around an e-reader when a mobile phone will be capable of doing everything the e-reader does and more?

Of course, we're not quite there yet, and, as the capabilities of different devices converge, I wonder whether we'll see a series of hybrids, with consumers opting for whichever reflects their primary use. Do you want a mobile phone for e-books or an e-reader on which you can make phone calls?

When the ebook hype is justified

There is a lot to say for the argument that ebooks are getting a disproportionate amount of media attention given the fact that they have yet to make anything more than small inroads into sales of paper books.

And, despite recent growth, I think ebooks will continue to have limited commercial appeal until their full potential is realised. While the standard format for ebooks (epub) allows such things as hyperlinking and the embedding of Flash files (assuming your chosen e-reader can deal with them), its set of features is still rather limited, and most ebooks are in any case no more than electronic copies of their paper cousins.

It's as if we haven't quite yet begun to appreciate what more might be possible or, perhaps more accurately, what more might be marketable. Because no matter how many features you load on to your ebook, it won’t sell unless they are features people want. There's no point in developing new products and formats just because we can.

Nevertheless, we have a unique opportunity to redefine exactly what a 'book' is. Which is why it's exciting to see companies such as Macmillan taking a lead, as reported on the Bookseller website. This new range of customisable textbooks looks like a well thought out and well researched response to a clear set of problems and needs.