Archive for March, 2010|Monthly archive page
Bloomsbury Academic Broadens Range of Formats for Mobile Reading
Filed under: Mobile Internet, Open Access, Publishing | Tags: EPub, CC, Bloomsbury, Lexcycle, Calibre
Leave a Comment Attending a seminar at Oxford Internet Institute about network neutrality I got to know about Christopher T. Marsden‘s recent book “Net Neutrality: Towards a Co-Regulatory Solution“. All four speeches at the event were very compelling, and I am looking forward to reading Marsden’s book, which was offered with a 40 per cent discount at the event. A bit tight on budget I also was pleased to hear that the publisher, Bloomsbury Academic, offers a digital version of the book. Although the e-book is available for free under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial (CC NC) license it is offered in a PDF format only, so far.
Therefore I was thinking I would kill three birds with one stone combining my interest in the book, my passion for reading on my iPhone as well as getting an assignment done for the Digital Media Publishing course at Oxford Brookes University. So, I asked the author whether he would mind if I produce a professional EPub version. EPub has floatable text capability and can be displayed on many devices such as Sony’s and Barnes & Noble’s e-readers as well as on smaller screens such as the iPhone.
Christopher Marsden let me know that it wasn’t the first request of this sort and he put me in touch with the publisher. A representative of Bloomsbury Academic immediately responded, not exactly encouraging me, but with some interesting feedback. The publisher will be producing an EPub version of the book along with the launch of its new website in April or May. The CC NC license obviously allows producing an EPub version of the book if it is not used for commercial purposes. This said, the representative stressed the fact that a free EPub version would undermine the company’s business model, which includes charging for EPub versions for various mobile devices. I was recommended to watch a presentation about CC business models given last month at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference in New York. The presentation (24 min.) also gives a good impression on the publisher’s innovative Open Access approach.
Interestingly, Bloomsbury Academic’s new platform will have plain CC licensed free content in HTML format on its core. The CC version will be subsidised by revenues made from layers on top of it. The EPub versions and print editions will be charged for, and there will be a layer of “enhanced e-books” with extra functionality, extra content and extra metadata. The Bloomsbury Academic Digital Cafe offers collaboration features and an experimental lab. Also taxonomic classification, role-based navigation and tools available to allow readers to cite, email, print and share titles will be implemented. “Bloomsbury Academic will be plugged into the world beyond the site itself, with connections to blogs, podcasts and webcasts to accompany and enhance the world-class content inside.”
However, in the first place I didn’t understand the publisher’s reasoning that a free EPub version would “clearly” diminish sales while the PDF version already is freely available. Given the facts above and by spending quite some time trying to get an acceptable EPub version by using converting tools I learned that, after all, the reasoning does make sense. In fact, converting PDF to EPub turned out to be less seamless and results are even more unsatisfactory than I expected. I tried six different tools and four of them failed miserably, although I have to admit that I still went through them very quick – pretty much as a customer would when demanding to read a book, not on his desk, now.
The process I underwent after creating the EPub file to get it on my iPhone was the same for all six tools, although there are other ways to do it. Reading the Lexcycle’s FAQ section was very useful, and led me to the cloud content management provider Box.net, which enables storing books on a remote server to then download it to your iPhone. On the iPhone I use Stanza, an electronic book reader and book sharing software offered by Lexcycle which was acquired by Amazon last year. Stanza is a native iPhone app, and beside tools for setting bookmarks and taking notes, provides an extra section for showing the table of content (TOC) and for directly jumping to the respective chapter.
The first converter I tried, EPub2Go, was conveniently usable online, but didn’t provide an EPub file with chapter navigation on the iPhone. This makes the result useless unless one doesn’t need this kind of navigation or wants to set his own bookmarks for chapter navigation. This might be a frustrating process as finding the right text passages within around 2000 iPhone pages (according to 320 PDF pages) without any anchors is difficult.
The second tool I tried was Stanza Desktop offered by Lexcycle. It is a tool free to download for converting and also reading EPub files. The result after the conversion was slightly better having at least chapter navigation. Unfortunately the chapter names in the TOC were a mess. By the way, I don’t write about all these ‘minor’ errors, such as having redundant dates and other metadata within the text – it appeared within all conversion results mentioned in this post.
The third tool, Calibre, also recommended by Lexcycle, provides better results than Stanza. It is also free to download and offers “the one stop solution for all your e-book needs” including e-book management, reading e-books and format conversion. Although also having incorrect formatting and literally no navigation before and after the actual text chapters, with the Calibre version it is convenient to navigate to the beginning of each chapter, and I could start reading a specific chapter straight away.
There are opinions floating around in forums that converting to Mobi, RTF or HTML first and than to EPub using Calibre would bring up better results, but after trying the Mobipocket desktop app and getting frustrating results again I didn’t follow up these tips. Generally the non-proprietary Mobi format generated by Mobipocket is nevertheless very useful as it is compatible with the dominating Amazon Kindle e-book platform and an impressive array of mobile phones. Next I turned to proprietary conversion software hoping for a nice ready to go EPub e-book file.
PDFtoEPUB by DNAML Software offers free trials for up to six e-books to convert and it looks promising in the preparation process. For example you can set a frame which allows you to exclude page numbers, header and footer text to make text seamless where in the PDF file there is a page turn. After six files the software would cost $150. The results though didn’t turn out to be satisfying and again there was no chapter navigation.
The last one I tried, a converter from Dongsoft, offering up to 15 items to convert for free and charging $40 beyond this didn’t make me happy either. Also InDesign doesn’t work terribly well with EPub without having prepared the text manually in advance. Another possibility to generate EPub files out of PDF would be to generate a simple XML first and go for the EPub conversion from there.
Summarizing it can be said that the only tool automatically generating a (barely) ‘good enough’ EPub version for the mentioned PDF e-book is the Calibre solution. Although I know there are more tools available (such as this one), and there might be better results achieved spending more time with the mentioned tools, in fact a proper format for reading Marsden’s book on small screens is literally not existing to date.
Therefore offering a professional EPub version for free indeed would reduce Bloomsbury Academic’s sales figures – at least concerning sales of EPub books after its platform launch. What actually is sold with the EPub versions is convenience and additional functionality particularly for mobile reading. By making a plain HTML version of all books Open Access losses from ‘cannibalisation’ will be balanced out by attracting new readers and enabling value added services based on easy to implement interconnection and integration of the publisher’s content.
The new Bloomsbury Academic platform also shows how publishers are focusing more on technology and services rather than paid content business models – and hurdles such as not being able to read a book on the device one prefers will sound pretty stone-age very soon.
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IHS Shows Where STM Value Goes
Filed under: Diversification, Open Access, Publishing, Semantic Web | Tags: disruption, IHS, STM, value shift
Leave a Comment Triggered by Michael Nielsen’s blog post about disruption of scientific publishing and value migration away from publishing companies, in this post I will briefly summarize acquisition activities of IHS, Inc. (IHS), one of the leading providers of science, technical and medical (STM) information, to examine whether these activities substantiate a broader STM market trend also described by research firm Outsell as “using technology to move up the value chain” (Bousfield & Outsell, Inc. 2009).
IHS provides information and services such as decision-making support for customers in four areas: energy, product lifecycle, security, and environment. IHS achieved $844 million in revenue in 2008 which equates to 3.6 per cent market share of the primary segment STM. With 22.6 per cent in 2008 IHS had the strongest total growth among the top ten companies of the segment. (Outsell, Inc. 2010).
“The data is obtained from public sources, third parties, and IHS’ own proprietary databases, and are then combined with proprietary and third-party technology to create graphical user interfaces and search and navigation tools. Year-to-date 2009 organic revenue growth was 4% overall and 10% for the subscription-based portion of the business. Acquisitions added a further 18%.“ (Bousfield & Outsell, Inc. 2009).
Early embracing the Internet IHS acquired at least 37 companies since 2004. According to the assumed trend mentioned above most of these companies are rather focused on technology than rest upon a classical (paid) content business model.
In 2005 IHS acquired the content and data services business of I2 Technologies Inc., a developer of client/server-based decision support software. John S. Herold, which provides in-depth analyses and key financial and operational data on more than 400 global oil and gas companies, was acquired by IHS in 2007. Herold’s annual product license agreements provide clients with enterprise-, division- or location-wide access to herold.com online research, databases and tools as well as onsite and webcast training, and analyst presentations.
Furthermore in 2007 IHS announced acquisitions of Jane’s Information Group (Jane’s), EnvironMax, Exploration Data Services (EDS) and The McCloskey Group.
Jane’s is a leading provider of information to the defence industry and governments while EnvironMax provides client/server and web based Environmental Management Information System (EMIS) software. EDS, specialized in mapping, exploration scanning, bookmarking and metadata capture of technical reports and data, is the major supplier of open file (public domain) oil & gas exploration data for Western Australia basins and the Timor Sea area. The acquisition of EDS complements to purchases of Geological Data Services and Geological Consulting Services IHS made earlier in 2007 (IHS, Inc. 2007a). The McCloskey Group, world leaders in coal information, keeps its customers informed via eight print and online publications, and annual conferences and consulting offerings (IHS, Inc. 2007b).
IHS continued its pushing strategy in 2008 with the acquisition of two environmental information companies, Dolphin Software, Inc. and Environmental Software Providers (ESP). Dolphin provides Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) management, chemical inventory management and environmental reporting services. ESP’s services include greenhouse gas management, air, water, and waste management and internal and regulatory compliance assurance.
Later in 2008 IHS acquired a 50 per cent stake in Lloyd’s Register-Fairplay Ltd., a maritime information company, and JFA International, a provider of an analysis and decision support tool, which supports oil industry business development, planning, portfolio management and communication (IHS, Inc. 2008).
Reservoir Visualization Inc., a provider of exploration and reservoir management consulting services, was acquired in July 2008 and IHS completed the year by acquiring Documental Solutions, Divestco USA Inc. and Global Insight.
Documental Solutions provides the leading market analysis tool for strategic planners, business developers and analysts within the commercial defence industry. Its assets will be integrated with and managed through Jane’s Information Group. Divestco is a developer of geological data and application software, and Global Insight offers comprehensive financial, and political coverage and, according to IHS chairman and chief executive officer Jerre Stead, is recognized as the most consistently accurate economic forecasting company in the world.
In 2009 IHS acquired the remaining 49.9 percent of Lloyd’s Register-Fairplay whose information products and services are unique to the shipping industry. After about one year without acquisition activities IHS in September 2009 bought LogTech, which caters for the oil and gas industry with a comprehensive suite of services, data and software designed to manage exploration risk and optimize production.
In the same month IHS reported that it had acquired Environmental Support Solutions, a leading provider of Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) and Crisis Management sustainability software. After IHS also bought Prómiere, a bundling of service and tool offerings for management decisions in the electronics industry, IHS’ latest acquisition so far was directed at Emerging Energy Research (EER) in Februar 2010. EER offers clients advisory and consulting services as well as market studies about emerging technologies.
In some areas IHS also responded to the increasing demand for more open ways to purchase and use data. “Data is becoming an enterprise solution that needs to be vetted through a series of in-house and third party tools to get maximum benefit” said Tim Crago, Valtus vice president and general manager. IHS and Valtus are cooperating to distribute Valtus Orthophotos while realigning to an open access distribution model.
Summarizing it can be said that the majority of companies acquired by IHS in the last five years are technology companies with competencies in software, management and workflow solutions. Significant investments also have been made in ‘raw’ data and data services as well as consultings. On the other hand IHS’ motivation to invest in ‘long’ text content was very limited.
IHS’ M&A strategy and its success underpin the assumtion of a trend toward a data and service centric STM information industry. Nielsen’s claim that value is migrating away from media and publishing companies toward technology companies, as well as Outsell’s assertion that publishers are moving up the value chain by investing in technology is widely supported by IHS’ activities.
Considering also the rising significance of open APIs and public domain data, these trends are unlikely to be reversed, and value will be increasingly generated by mining, processing, filtering, aggregating and enriching of abundant data. Revenues will be derived from dynamic and hightly customised information subscription services rather than from classical paid content models (Brown & Boulderstone 2008).
Whether these trends apply only for data intensive, fact focused and time sensitive sectors such as STM, or eventually, with ongoing disruption of paid content and advertisement business models, will affect all publishers remains to be seen.
References:
Bousfield, D. & Outsell, Inc., 2009. Scientific, Technical & Medical Information: 2009 Market Forecast and Trends Report, Outsell, Inc.
Brown, D. & Boulderstone, R., 2008. The Impact of Electronic Publishing : The Future for Publishers and Librarians, Müchen: K.G. Saur. Available at: http://books.google.de/books?hl=de&lr=&id=lpr0EV0JvzwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR15&dq=%22The+Impact+of+Electronic+Publishing+%22+autor:David+autor:J+autor:Brown&ots=0_KAZ1MN3N&sig=jg_RdLEHMo2wjcYDH-Lz1vTIrOk#v=onepage&q=&f=false.
IHS, Inc., 2007. IHS Acquires Exploration Data Services Assets. Available at: http://www.ihs.com/News/Press-Releases/2007/IHSacquiresEDS.htm [Accessed March 7, 2010].
IHS, Inc., 2008. IHS Acquires JFA International, an Energy Industry Services Firm. Available at: http://www.ihs.com/News/Press-Releases/2008/IHSJFA.htm [Accessed March 7, 2010].
IHS, Inc., 2007. IHS Online Pressroom: IHS Acquires McCloskey Group, a Leading Coal Markets Research Firm. Available at: http://press.ihs.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=4118 [Accessed March 7, 2010].
Outsell, Inc., 2010. Outsell Inc. :: Company Profile – IHS, Inc. Available at: https://www.outsellinc.com/data/companies/profile/4987 [Accessed March 7, 2010].
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