On NBNi's Summer 2010 Expansion Project

This post first appeared on the NBNi web site earlier today, where it was the inaugural post on the blog we have launched in order encourage the exchange of information and ideas with our industry colleages about how to meet changing cusotmer needs.

If you are distributed by us or if you buy books from us in any quantity, you almost certainly know by now that NBNi is expanding into larger, more modern distribution premises in Plymouth this summer (the main switchover between locations takes place this coming weekend). Over the months we have been preparing for and running this project, many clients, customers and colleagues in the industry have been asking us: "If the future's digital, why are you taking more space?" It's a simple question with a simple short answer, and a not-quite-so-simple long one. Today I'm going to focus on the short answer (the longer one will follow in a separate post). The key words are service, efficiency, turnaround times, customer expectations, quality control, communication, people.

We've been running our business from premises designed over thirty years ago when the book industry supply chain worked at a much slower pace than it does now. We’ve also more than doubled in size in the past six years, and we can’t continue in the same premises. When our old warehouse was built, just-in-time ordering was an unknown phrase; Amazon wasn't even a twinkle in Jeff Bezos' eye; customers were used to waiting for books to come into stock in their local bookstore, and most publishers thought of the "customer" as the buyer in the bookshop, library supplier, wholesaler - not the ultimate user or consumer of the book.

Everything's different now. Internet retailers have been the dominant force in changing the supply chain for some years, and more recently in the UK the centralisation of Waterstone’s has also engendered change. The Internet resellers have incredibly high expectations of both data and physical book supply, and each one works to a slightly different model with its own service needs and priorities. Amazon needs consignment supply, The Book Depository needs daily actual stock data, Boffin requires direct-to-consumer supply, to name but a few. In the meantime some of the difficulties Waterstone’s have experienced at the hub have driven us to invest in new technologies that enable us to ensure and prove accuracy of supply.

On top of all of that, far more specialist publishers are now engaged in direct-to-consumer activities, with email and web-based marketing campaigns replacing traditional direct mail. What’s certain is that whatever route the customer is ordering through, they now have far more choice, and wield far more power than 30 years ago. And that's not just choice of books - but choice of what to do with their time, period. If the book isn't available when they want it, there are plenty of other ways to engage with ideas and text on and offline. Our changed consumer culture demands a different level of responsiveness from those of us still engaged with supplying physical books to resellers and end users. And to provide that responsiveness, we need to be working from premises designed around the new paradigms of book supply, where we can communicate with each other and our clients and customers more effectively, and where we can work faster and more accurately.

Most of our clients still rely on print books as their primary source of revenue. And the best way in which we can support our publishers through the present turbulent and unsettling times is to ensure that the experience of obtaining those physical books is as simple, and enjoyable as possible for the customer. Whether they are a wholesaler, a librarian, an independent bookshop in a German or Italian university town, a consignment distributor in the Far East, or an individual ordering via a vendor or publisher web site - people need to like ordering from us.

It is with all this in mind that we are going through the pain of relocating 3.4 million units of stock; a pressurised process that hasn't always been smooth. With thousands of active isbns, some of which sell only a few units of stock a year combining the process of a move, with keeping everything available for order and continuing timely supply has been a huge challenge. And of course it is not just books that we are relocating; our staff are also moving over to the new premises. No-one has to move house as our new warehouse and offices are less than a mile from the old ones. But people will be working in a new environment. It's a much better-planned, safer work space. (For example the new picking face is completely separate from the hi-bay storage, so there will be far less interaction of people and fork lift trucks). On balance our teams are excited to be working for a company that is so obviously investing in expansion and the future at a time when much of the economic news is doom and gloom. But even good change causes disruption and we’ve all had to retain our senses of humour at times.

We're deeply grateful to all of our publisher clients and to all of our customers for the support and encouragement we've received during the course of the project. Our objective is to reward you for this support with faster service, greater efficiency, better communication, greater accuracy and above all to be a company that you want to work with and want to buy from, staffed by people you really enjoy communicating and working with.

With thanks to my colleagues at NBNi for permission to re-post here.

The technology of reading: a long view (ii)

My second eureka insight arising from Casson's Libraries in the Ancient World centres around the question of "who makes money from books?". Whilst we are accustomed to the norm that (some) authors, (most) publishers and (most) booksellers are able to make money out of words, it's salutary to note that this was certainly not the case in the ancient world. In all of the ancient societies reading and writing were high status activities, and anyone who was anyone sought to write down and disseminate their works. If we stop to think, we know this: after all the writings of Julius Caesar are still taught in those (largely private) schools that still have Latin and other ancient languages on the curriculum. And just as publishing one's thoughts was an indication of power, insight and status - so was ownership of and access to texts. It's interesting that one of the love gifts from Antony to Cleopatra (possibly the world's first celebrity couple) was a library; the 200,000 volume collection in the library at Pergamum to be precise. Casson comments that this could have been a shrewd cost-control measure on Mark Antony's part - the funds required to maintain such a resource were enormous. Nonetheless it's hard to imagine such a gift exchanging hands between twenty-first century A-listers as a token of esteem and devotion (although it's a fair bet that a few iPads have).

It seems the only people in the ancient world who made money from texts were booksellers and librarians. Authors received not a penny for their efforts (their rewards were indirect, on the way up the intellectual, social and political ladder). Most authors completed a master copy and employed scribes (usually slaves) to make a limited number of presentation copies which were then bestowed upon those individuals the author held in high regard (or wanted to ingratiate themselves with). Thereafter the text was considered to be in the public domain and anyone could make a copy. Indeed the earliest booksellers ran scriptoria - copy shops using human labour in place of any form of mechanised duplication. By the last century B.C. it was possible to buy most of the acknowledged "classics" from Rome's booksellers. Even if Cicero bemoaned in a letter to his brother that "For books in Latin I don't know where to go; the copies sold are so full of errors." Q.A. issues have obviously beset our industry from the outset.

Librarianship gradually became an valued occupation, sometimes carried out by highly educated slaves who were often manumitted for long and devoted service, and also by freemen. Indeed in Rome stewardship of the city's libraries became one of the recognised stepping stones on the fast-track civil service ladder to high office. So those who curated texts and those who organised the reproduction of texts were the only people who actually made a living from them. There were no agents brokering deals - and the author and the publisher were one and the same (unpaid) person.

In the West, the invention of the printing press in 1440 was what made publishing as a financial enterprise viable - and for centuries thereafter the printer and the publisher were one and the same (and sometimes even printer, publisher and author). Sir Walter Scott was one of the first writers to pen his way out of bankruptcy, and he is amongst those authors who had a financial involvement with his printing company. Even in the twentieth century, authors and Bloomsbury Group luminaries Virginia and Leonard Woolf established The Hogarth Press which (ironically given the current e-royalty furore) was eventually subsumed into Random House upon the purchase of Chatto and Windus in 1987.

All of which takes us full circle. No-one in our industry has an automatic right to make a living out of what we do. It is not enshrined in law (state or economic) that authors, agents, publishers or booksellers can and shall make a living and run economically viable businesses. We can only do so if we know exactly who values what we have and what we do; if we know how much they are prepared to pay, and this price is one that covers the costs of our activities. As Brian O'Leary (content work flow guru and founder of Magellan Media Partners) observed in a blog post today - what we really learn from the conflict between The Wylie Agency and The Random House Group is about the supply chain - and the fact that Amazon is entirely customer focused (which might explain the phenomenon a marketing director I know calls "the Circle of Hell known as Vendor Central"). Amazon understand that in a consumer society, serving the customer is where there's money to be made. Like those first bookshop owners in ancient Rome.

The technology of reading: a long view (i)

I'm currently enjoying reading a (print) copy of Lionel Casson's Libraries in the Ancient World (Yale). It's a great read for anyone interested in the cultural heritage of literature, information, authorship, book selling and publishing. When I first picked it up in Topping's Ely bookshop (more of which in a later post) I did not expect illumination for the many puzzles that beset me in my professional life, but that's precisely what it has provided. The conventional axiom is that Gutenberg and movable type were the point at which books and technology began to merge - but I'm now reminded that this isn't true. The technologies of reading and publishing have entwined and evolved since writing was first invented - often in response to the available resources and the cultural pressures in play as societies have changed. So over the next few days I'm planning a sequence of short posts on some of "eureka" moments I've experienced while reading the book.

Let's start with publishing formats. Casson describes the formats known to have existed in the Ancient world - starting with wood and clay tablets, and graduating through papyrus and parchment scrolls to the codex (bound volumes). Each one of these technologies had advantages and disadvantages for their manufacturers, readers and librarians. In his discussion of the shift to codices, Casson shares some statistics using archaeological finds from the dry sands of Egypt, as base data:

"Over 1,330 pieces of Greek literary, scientific and other such writings have been discovered that date to the first and the second centuries: all are on rolls save less than twenty, a mere 1.5 percent, on codices. In the third century the percentage rises from 1.5% to about 17 per cent; clearly the codex was gaining favour. Around AD 300 the percentage has climbed to 50 percent - a parity with the roll that is reflected ins some preserved representations which depict a man holding a roll next to one holding a codex. By A.D. 400 it is up to 80 per cent and by A.D. 500 to 90 percent. The roll still had centuries of life ahead of it, but only for documents; what people read for pleasure, edification , or instruction was virtually all on codices."

After describing the manufacture of codices, Casson highlights a remarkable exception to their gradual adoption over several centuries. He points out that all eleven earliest surviving copies of the Bible date from between the end of the second century and the early part of the third century and all eleven are codices. Yet the evidence previously quoted suggests that in the same period as these codices were manufactured, the vast majority of non-Christian literary, scientific, historical, philosophical and spiritual texts were still produced on parchment and papyrus rolls. The codex was not yet the preferred format.

Casson comments that there could be a number of contributory factors that led to the Christian preference for the Codex ranging from the fact that Rome - where Christianity was quick to take hold - is where the codex format seems to have begun, to the fact that the codex was free from the cultural connotations attached to Jewish parchment scrolls and pagan papyrus scrolls. Moreover, he suggests that Christians used their scripture as a manual for living - rather than simply a sacred document - and the codex was much more suited to this utility.

All of which set me thinking. It seems that the most significant change to the format in which text and information was disseminated from ancient times to the advent of the eBook was driven by a coalescence of technological development (aka human inventiveness), emotional and cultural sensibilities and sensitivities, and utility. Or to put it another way, the drivers for change were the needs and preferences of the user or consumer of the text. It was all about what the customer wanted.

On (i)Tools and (i)Toys

We have all known have we not, Dear Reader, that the events of yesterday have been inevitable for over a year? The Caxton branch of the Bounford family finally bowed to fate and become a household possessed of (and obsessed with) not just one, but two ipads.

So yes - along with the Victorian music cabinet (a recent ebay purchase collected yesterday evening) it's been an eye-wateringly expensive weekend in this corner of England. But already my only regret is that I didn't bite the bullet earlier. I recall blogging last year that my reluctance to part with cash for a Kindle lay in the fact I couldn't use it for anything other than reading books bought from Amazon. Whereas I wanted one piece of kit I could read from, purchase my groceries on, watch films, view photos, IM with the children from. And here, in the ipad is something that does all that and more. I haven't yet rigged up a camera so I can spy on the chickens via it - but I'm pretty sure it would be possible.

Here I sit, therefore, in the garden blogging on the ipad with it docked into a lovely little portable keyboard (that would also work with my iphone). And I know I've fallen in love - in a way I never did with the Kindle (still defunct on the dresser - looking hopelessly old world and analogue next to this shiny new toy) or even my iphone which - useful as it is - never grabbed me in the way this has. Thanks to Project Gutenberg and the ibooks app I sat in bed last night grazing on Marcus Aurelius, Huckleberry Finn, Shakespeare (mugging up on The Comedy of Errors so I can answer the children's questions when we see it at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park next Saturday). Today I reluctantly went down-market and loaded Dan Brown's Angels and Demons - which Felix was half way through on the ill-fated Kindle. We couldn't find this book on ibooks so loaded the kindle app for free and bought it that way.

So why two ipads? I've been a parent long enough to know that if I'd only bought one - I'd never get a look in. And also Hannah was due a laptop. She'd been eyeing up a Hewlett Packard with a swivel screen (at significantly greater cost than the ipad). And I had an epiphany. There's just no point buying her a laptop, when she will get so much more out of this. Docked to the keyboard she can write essays, while she surfs content online and in books. Through Project Gutenburg she has instant access to the classics and the staples of world literature, culture, philosophy and religion. Not to mention Angry Birds, Facebook, Hotmail, Gmail, YouTube, and all the other mandatory requirements of the modern 14-year old. She has resources at her fingertips I could not have dreamed possible when I was the same age. And moreover all rolled into a bit of kit that's totally seductive and as cool as it comes. Libraries were never this sexy.

I've heard educational and children's publishers talking a lot since the arrival of the ipad about the blurring between books and games that is beginning to take place. I think the change is more fundamental than that. In this instance it's not about the content it's about the kit. Just as interactive whiteboards have changed the classroom, the ipad has crossed a social Rubicon in a way smart phones, kindles, laptops and net books have never quite managed in being both a tool that is necessary and/or useful to achieve constructive work - and a toy that brings entertainment, pleasure, creativity and play. Smart phones nearly got there - but the screen size was always going to inhibit them. When I first saw Steve Jobs proudly holding the ipad aloft - like many others I sniggered that all Apple had done was create an iphone on steroids. But now I'm using one, I'm embarrassed by that cynicism.

Yes, I'm concerned that the infinite variety on offer has a detrimental effect on concentration and self discipline - my own let alone Hannah's. But something in me tells me that in this - and the generations of technology that will follow hot on its heels - there is a blended-experience future for our industry and probably our culture. Unless we want to go the way of the Amish and become a tiny, quaint minority, we have to address the inherent problems through engagement, use and experience - not through abstention.

Publishing in Future: Not an Oxymoron

On my way back over Atlantic airspace I am digesting lessons learned at this year's AAUP Meeting, and mapping out how I shall be using them in the coming weeks. Apart from connecting in person with some great contacts made online via Twitter (more of this later) my highlight of the meeting was, without doubt, the first half of the final plenary session: Digital Humanities is Not an Oxymoron - a provocative presentation from Alexander C. Halavais, Associate Professor of Interactive Communications at Quinnipiac University.

Halavais was an excellent choice of speaker for this audience. He is from the Academy (which most AAUP member presses exist to serve) and yet unafraid to challenge either the institution or the processes of scholarly publishing - or of scholarship itself. There can be few individuals brave enough to confess - in front of an audience of 500+ publishers - to having systematically destroyed thousands of books in his ownership (to scan them for personal use). Coming - as I do - from a professional life in the independent publishing sector I have always been somewhat mystified by a deep reverence for scholarship over profit (or at least break-even). It has always seemed to me that independent-mindedness is only truly independent if it is fiscally self-supporting. Therefore Halavais' ability to speak radically within the vernacular of his audience was illuminating to me. He used an iron fist wrapped within the most eloquent and witty of velvet gloves - and I'd recommend that anyone with an interest in the way text is used in the digitally connected academic world read the draft of his presentation available online. Unfortunately the sublimely subversive accompanying slide show is not there - but it would undoubtedly fall flat without the live narrative, which was a sequence of riffs improvised around the themes laid out in the written draft.

Halavais was full of pithy observations, one of the most striking of which was "publishing isn't about what you make - it is about what you do" (like all the best epigrams, a construction of elegant simplicity in its perception and accuracy). It is a phrase that all publishers would do well keep in mind through the turbulent times ahead of us.

It was clear from the discussions going on in and outside of sessions that for all of the angst that surrounds the future of printed books (and most particularly in this forum, printed scholarly books), many medium-sized American university press publishers are significantly ahead of their UK independent counterparts in embracing e-book formats. Three aspects of this situation struck me forcibly. Firstly, e-book distribution, particularly to libraries, brings with it actual usage statistics. And what those statistics reveal about (the lack of) usage of monographs in particular is - if not surprising - shocking. The fact that monograph publishing exists to support tenure and the structure of academic employment is an inconvenient truth that can no longer be glossed by either the Academy its associated University Presses. At some point the Academy is either going to have to stop expecting University Presses to fulfil this need, or find a more honest and transparent way of funding it. After all, publication by the for-profit sector (Wiley, T&F, Continuum, Rowman & Littlefield to name but a few) is as valid to academics for resume purposes as publication by a not-for-profit. And moreover if the likes of Wiley et al are willing to publish - it suggests that the book is meaningful enough for at least a few copies to be read within a year of publication.

Secondly, although e-books are firmly established in the academic publishing environment in the US - there seemed to be little discussion of the opportunities that this creates. The e-book is a new format largely bolted into an old business model. There was little talk of what can be learned from consumer data - and the opportunities for publishers that are created by the shortening of the supply chain to permit two-way publisher-consumer information flow.

The third (and related) striking aspect of these University Presses' relationships with e-books was that, by and large, there seemed to be an acceptance of the e-book as merely an electronic reproduction of the printed text. I heard virtually no discussion of enhanced e-books - or the unleashing of numerous possibilities for innovation that accompanies shifting text from the printed to the digital environment. And therefore no mention of the potential for creative new blended revenue streams that could be facilitated by the liberation of ideas from ink. I understand that there was a session "Designing in the E-book Era which did address some of these issues (to a packed crowd) - but I had chosen another of the concurrent sessions (thinking that this was a design and production session rather than a business strategy session). I am certainly hoping that next year's meeting in Baltimore might consider taking a look at new business models in more depth.

To revert to the discussion of and on Twitter - this meeting was undoubtedly enhanced (for those of us who tweet) by the #AAUP10 tweetstream- which provided subtext and counterpoint to the formal presentations, not to mention a great deal of good natured teasing of this year's programme organiser, the urbane, charming and seemingly ubiquitous Greg Britton, Publisher at the Getty Foundation. (Indeed the AAUP owes a great debt to Britton and his program committee colleagues for picking up from last year's deeply gloomy recession-hit Philadelphia Annual Meeting and making a huge success this year.) I've been an intermittent Tweeter over the past few months - but the experience of #AAUP10 - and of meeting up face to face with tweeps such as @KatMeyer of #followreader and O'Reilly's Tools of Change, @brianoleary of Magellan Consulting and @susanmpls - all of whom I first connected with via Twitter - has reminded me of the extraordinary global connecting power of online discussion and networking. Certainly the AAUP's use of Twitter from Salt Lake City this weekend was more edifying than that of Utah's Attorney General, Mark Shurtleff, who controversially used the medium to tweet his decision to give the go-ahead to an execution by firing squad (the first execution to take place in the state for many years). One could find few more startling snapshots of the sheer diversity of preset-day American culture.

A final takeaway from this year's meeting comes from Richard Brown of Georgetown University Press (with whom I have the privilege of working in my day job). Richard made a characteristically poised and thoughtful speech when accepting this year's AAUP presidency. "We are organisations in transition," he said. "And that's not going to stop. From now on perpetual transition will become as natural as the air we breathe." Publishing is an activity that has evolved at a leisurely pace since the invention of movable type and Brown's words summarise the challenge and the opportunities we all face whether we work in the scholarly sector, or elsewhere in the publishing industry.