November 10, 2005

Lorem Ipsum Books:About:

The Idea: Custom-build software to streamline bookstore operations and pricing.

The idea behind Lorem Ipsum Books is simple: start with a conventional used bookstore that maintains the bookstore experience, but operate it with a sophisticated inventory control and pricing system that dual lists inventory for sale on popular Internet used book sites, such as Half.com, Alibris and Amazon.com. Certainly other bookstores are doing this already, but with significantly more labor involved per-transaction. Our “secret sauce” to minimize the pain involved in transitioning to a changed retail environment is our soup-to-nuts bookstore management system.

This inventory control system, written by Lorem Ipsum, serves to both
manage in-store supplies, shipments, and processes as well as to
determine an accurate, real-time market price.
Conceivably this duality represents the key to the survival of used bookstores–sell the commodity product at market prices through the Internet’s global reach, while promoting the experience of the book and catering to local needs in-store. For most of us this reduction might be a too surgical view of the business of bookstores, however we believe it is healthy to be intouch with the realities of today’s changed retail environment.

Borders built its own state-of-the-art inventory software thirty years ago starting here in Ann Arbor and revolutionized the book world. (Yay.)

Is Lorem Ipsum the logical successor?

If you’re curious, buy their software and start a bookshop. Or wait ten years and see if everyone else does.

A nice profile of competitor, colleage, and fellow prequel visionary David Shugarts. I thought his SECRETS OF THE CODE was excellent. Hard to escape the feeling, reading below, that, like me, Shugarts must struggle sometimes with the inclination to consider Dan Brown a factadaisical scam artist.

The Newtown Bee

One thing leads to another in research, says Mr Shugarts, and it was research for the latter two books, which attempt to separate fact from fiction for readers of the wildly successful Dan Brown novels The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, that have led him to author a book unusual in that it is actually a prequel to a sequel.

Secrets of the Widow’s Son, published in September, is a guide to Dan Brown’s yet unpublished novel tentatively titled The Solomon Key. In it, Mr Shugarts delves into the mysterious world of Freemasonry and the lives of our country’s founding fathers, both of which Mr Brown has indicated will be prominent themes in his next novel.

The point of Mr Shugart’s novel is not to spoil the plot of The Solomon Key, but to engage the reader ahead of time, so that they are better able to discern for themselves how much of the novel is fact and how much of it is fiction. With the publication of The Da Vinci Code, says Mr Shugarts, “Dan Brown has triggered a lot of wonder in people’s heads.”

Mr Shugarts, a resident of Newtown, where he lives with his wife, Judith DeLuca and son, Andrew Shugarts (The couple has two other sons. Jonathan Shugarts is a senior at University of Connecticut, and Nicholas DeLuca is involved in international trade and finance in Washington, D.C.).

He is a 36-year veteran of journalism. He is also the owner of Azimuth Communications, a business that aides in all aspects of publishing. It is his experience as an aviation journalist, though, that has led him into the secret world of Dan Brown.

In 2004, Mr Shugarts, like millions of other readers around the world, sat down and began to read The Da Vinci Code. He found the theories set forth by Mr Brown in the novel compelling, but his eyebrows raised when he came to a section describing a particular turbo plane with which he was familiar. It was incorrectly identified in the novel.

Further on, he came across yet another glaring aviation error.

“In the novel, [Mr Brown] has the jet turned in the hanger. That could never happen with that jet,” he exclaims. He realized that the average reader with no aviation background might not catch those inconsistencies, yet he began to wonder if the other information put forth in the book was as factual as it was presented.

Mr Shugarts mentioned the aviation errors to associates of his in the publishing business. Dan Burstein just happened to be editing a book entitled Secrets of the Code, and he invited Mr Shugarts to contribute to the book through research into plot flaws. What Mr Shugarts found after a page by page, painstaking review of the many facts and theories set forth in the novel, was that “In all details, [Mr Brown] seemed to adopt a philosophy of small details not counting. For example, the characters go down roads the wrong direction in Paris. Or the GPS dot he hides in the soap and tosses into the back of the truck - it is not pill size. It is a transmitter about the size of an invisible fence transmitter. It wouldn’t fit in a bar of soap.”

These, again, he admits are somewhat trivial errors, but what bothers him is that many of the errors and plot flaws he came up with (and which are revealed in Secrets of the Code in the subchapter The Plotholes and Intriguing Details of The Da Vinci Code) are facts that could easily have been checked, if the author had cared to do so. “In every field, he makes these little inaccuracies,” Mr Shugarts asserts.

The 2d edition of UNIX in a nutshell was one of my favorite books of all time and still proudly graces my shelf of reference books that must be within arms’ length.

It is hard to overstate how cost-effective this purchase will be if you have any reason at all to use or learn UNIX. Worth $34.95? More like $3495.

All the energetic discussion about the legal and moral pros and cons of Google Print misses the point why Google Print is ineffective as a revenue-generating medium for publishers.

The fundamental reason is that Google Print is a fire-and-forget system, unlike Google Adsense, which allows extensive tweaking and testing to improve ad revenues.

With Google Print, publishers must dump their content into the system and wait, sometimes endlessly, for Google Print to load the content. I have six titles; two of them have been loaded since February, the others are still waiting.

Google Print provides the publisher with two possible revenue streams: Buy This Book click-throughs to the publisher website, and advertising clickthroughs. Your BTB and Ad CTRs are what they are, and there is nothing you can do to change them, because Google controls the layout of the Google Print pages.

(Terminology note: Google Print does not refer to its Ad service as AdSense, because it’s not AdSense. It’s dumbed-down! It’s also telling that they do not calculate eCPM, even though it is a $ per impressions business.)

The only thing you can do to improve BTB revenue is to improve the effectiveness of your target page. And there is nothing you can do to improve Ad CTR–the ads’ position on the page is controlled by Google. So your ad revenue it is strictly a function of Google Print’s total search volume and the current demand for keywords related to your content.

After the Nov. 3 publicity events around Google Print, my total impressions per day increased by a factor of 2.5. My BTB CTR and Ad CTR stayed the same, and keyword demand didn’t change much, so my revenue increased by a factor of 2.5. Yay!

Based on this model, I can estimate how much Ad revenue my other books will bring in by looking at the Google search volumes using the AdSense keyword tool. Of course, search behavior on Google Print will be somewhat different than on regular Google, but I’m guessing it won’t be that much different. Based on this keyword analysis, I estimate that the other four books that aren’t live yet will together generate about 60% of the revenue as the two that are already live. So having Google make those books live will be nice, but it’s not going to dramatically change my business picture with Google Print.

The problem is, there’s nothing I can do to “reinforce success” — all I can do is sit and watch the system operate under Google’s direction. The good news is that Google Print’s total search volume should rise relentlessly over the years. As total Print search volume rises, my revenue should increase in direct proportion. The bad news is that the demand for “my” keywords will gradually decline over time and new books will be added to Google Print that will compete for the keyword traffic.

So I am looking at a fairly predictable revenue stream — my guess is that Google Print revenue will increase by, say, a factor of 5x over 5 years, while my books will gradually lose keyword market share by perhaps the same factors over time. Bottom line: I may never make a whole lot of money from Google Print, and the process is almost entirely out of my control. Not an appealing place to invest my energies.

What’s needed, I think, is a Google Print API that allows publishers and, perhaps, third parties, to display Google Print results within hosted websites that can be tinkered with. Unfortunately, as long as Google is struggling to get Google Print accepted, they’re not going to stick their finger any further into the electric socket of publisher paranoia by offering an API.

Update: this points out that there is still plenty of room for Microsoft to execute better in the Ray Ozzie advertising space.

Publishers Marketplace reports

Film rights to Malcolm Gladwell’s BLINK, optioned to Universal, in a major deal, for seven figures, for Appian Way to co-produce along with Stephen Gaghan (Traffic), who is also writing and directing, by CAA and Tina Bennett at Janklow & Nesbit.

Blink: this is a bad idea.

The book is non-fiction, and there is no unifying “Erin Brockovich” storyline.

Blink: the rich get richer.

Does Malcolm Gladwell really need a 7-figure movie advance?

Blink: the last thing the world of book-lovers needs is another movie celebrating the virtues of the short attention span.

Still, I could be wrong …

Publisher to reissue I. Lewis Libby’s novel:

NEW YORK — The indictment of I. Lewis Libby has had one unintended benefit for the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney: The resurrection of his once forgotten literary career.

Used copies of his 1996 novel, “The Apprentice,” a thriller set in Japan that includes references to bestiality, pedophilia and rape, have been offered for as high as $2,400 on Amazon.com. Now, publisher St. Martin’s Press has decided to bring the book back into print, announcing a new run of 25,000 copies.

“There has been an overwhelming response from the marketplace and from booksellers who want this book,” Sean Desmond, a senior editor at the St. Martin’s imprint, Thomas Dunne Books, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Desmond acknowledged that he had not alerted Libby or any representative about the reprinting, but said the publisher was legally entitled to do so. Asked if he would still reissue the book should Libby object, he declined comment.

…

Interest in Libby’s book mirrors curiosity about another novel by someone close to Cheney: Lynne Cheney, the vice president’s wife and author of “Sisters.” Published in 1981, “Sisters” is a historical romance that features brothels, attempted rapes and a lesbian love affair. The book sold little when first released but became a cult item after Dick Cheney was elected vice president, in 2000.

New American Library, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), was going to reprint “Sisters” last year, but stopped after receiving a call from Lynne Cheney’s attorney, Robert Barnett, who said at the time that she had only learned about the reissue from the media.

Libby, unlike his boss’s wife (boss-in-law?), is under indictment, and has just created a legal defense fund. Why would he object? He’s probably busy signing his old author’s copies and putting them on E-bay.

Sorry, couldn’t resist sharing this one.

‘Fred’: the Secret for Beating Stress

NEW YORK, Nov. 10 /PRNewswire/ — In the ongoing war against stress, Americans may find themselves turning to a rather unlikely source for relief: Fred.

Author David L. Mocknick has tapped into what he describes as the “magical and comical” powers of the name “Fred” to create a comprehensive system for relieving stress. “Human beings are like time bombs,” Mocknick said. “When we get stressed out, all types of physical ailments can result. But we found that by ‘Fredding,’ you can actually relieve stress.”

The system was born accidentally, when Mocknick was out with friends. Whenever a person would say a word that rhymed with “Fred,” someone would shout out “Who’s Fred, Ha!” The little exercise produced plenty of laughs, but Mocknick was intrigued by how completely this phenomenon changed the moods of the participants, so he dug deeper.

He found that according to Teutonic Mythology, Frederick means Peace Ruler, and that the name has been used in various societies - often producing a kind of comical, magical effect. From that point, Mocknick created an entire stress relief system using the name Fred.

For example, whenever you’re feeling stressed, Mocknick encourages you to close your eyes and repeat the name. “Visualize people you know named Fred, say it aloud, then yell ‘Who’s Fred, Ha!’” he says. “Almost immediately, you’ll feel the tension slip away.”

Mocknick has developed all types of ways to make the system fun, including Double Freds, Multiple Freds, Duo Fredding and Group Fredding. He has published a book and created an audio CD that details all the many Fred variations. “It’s a complete verbal system for beating stress and the only limit is creativity,” he said.

To learn more about the book and audio CD “Who’s Fred, Ha!” visit http://www.clearbrookpublishing.com/.

New York Daily News - News & Views Columnists - Lloyd Grove’s Lowdown: Austen flick irks those with Jane addiction:

There’s a spot of bother brewing between fledgling Brit director Joe Wright - whose movie version of “Pride and Prejudice” opens tomorrow - and members of the Jane Austen Society of North America.

I’m told that in a National Public Radio report, also scheduled for tomorrow, diehard fans of the 1813 novel voice a litany of complaints about Wright’s mushy, souped-up version - the latest in a long line - of the precise and elegant Austen.

Wright responds with an impolite suggestion.

“They can go jump in a lake,” Wright, I’m told, advises NPR L.A. correspondent Kim Masters for her piece on “Morning Edition.”

My sympathies are entirely on the side of the Austen fans.

Author trusted Redford with novel - Columbia Missourian:

After Guest, who lives in Minneapolis, wrote “Ordinary People” in 1976, she received a hand-written letter from “R. Redford.” Guest thought Redford’s letter was just fan mail, but it turned out he was interested in turning the book into a movie.

Guest soon found herself dealing with a lengthy contract. Not everything in the contract was to her liking.

“The thing that bothered me the most was the 13-episode TV show with or without my help,” she said. “I couldn’t sign my people away; these are my people.”

But after thinking it over for a weekend, Guest signed the contract.

“I thought I could sacrifice my integrity, because it was Robert Redford,” she said.

Fair enough. I’m glad she did trust him.

“Ordinary People” is a movie that’s even better than the book.