All posts by Tarryn-Anne Anderson

Tarryn-Anne Anderson is our chief operating officer. She heads up our work with publishers, and manages our content systems.
Content

Cambridge University Press signs up

I was away for much of May (on leave) and back in the office on the 20th. Nevertheless, it was an important month. When I returned, I countersigned the CUP agreement and the Carroll & Brown agreement. We fixed some bugs on the site, completed the Mindset Learn upload, and facilitated the transfer of some Pan Macmillan titles (The Youngsters series to start with).

I also continued with LBF follow up, and general publisher followups on loose administrative ends, trying to nudge towards registrations that had been promised, fielding questions from wary publishers (usually regarding piracy and DRM). In the LBF wrap up, we also completed a reconciliation of expenses for the trip, and I sent content proposals out to publishers I’d met at the fair, and who were interested in registering.

This month was also the end of Philippa’s time with us. She left her internship at Paperight to take two successive ones at the US Trademark Offices and the Copyright Clearance Center in Washington DC

UPDATE: Don’t worry, this is not the last you’ll hear of her! She came back!

Publisher Registrations

  • SelfMadeHero (7/5/2013)
  • Pressque Publishing (8/5/2013)
  • Masimba Musodza (9/5/2013)
  • Oxford University Press (13/5/2013)
  • Ilex Omni Publishing (15/5/2013)
  • Pillar International Publishing (21/5/2013)
  • Author jonah Becker (21/5/2013)
  • Geko Publishing (21/5/2013)
  • Graceworks (22/5/2013)
  • Gail Iris Rosslee (27/5/2013)
  • Panmacmillan SA (29/5/2013)
  • theInkSword (30/5/2013)
  • Botshelo Publishing (31/5/2013)
Content, Finance, grants and awards

All’s fair in books and war, I mean, competitions

April’s main preoccupation was preparing for the Digital Minds conference startup innovation contest. It was the first time that anyone other than Arthur had presented Paperight to a large audience, and Oscar and I were planning on being a well-oiled machine by the time we got on stage. We wrote and re-wrote our respective speeches, and practiced until we were reciting the speech in our sleep.

In amongst that, we spent time chatting with Pearson Future Technologies about a meeting in London; Yazeed and I met with UWC library about incorporating Paperight into their library services; I met with Macmillan again; and we had a debriefing meeting with TWP to talk about the progress of Now What?

While I was at the Book Fair, and once it was over, the team was focused on processing of Mindset Learn materials, and sourcing missing content and cover images. Diann was working on ABC titles, Philippa and I on Mindset and College Campus titles, and updating of Matric Exam Packs (including uploading new PDFs and updating metadata), and New Africa Books. Oscar was in the process of mapping curated categories to Amazon categories, general curation duties, and updating of page extents and descriptions on content master, and content tagging.

On Sunday the 14th of April, Oscar and I arrived in London, only to find that they would only allow one of us to present on stage. We reworked the speech, and I delivered it solo at the Digital Minds Innovation Showcase – though Oscar’s presence still very much came through in his story, and it was good to see his reassuring face in the audience!. The showcase formed part of the Digital Minds Conference, annually held before the London Book Fair, and attended by industry leaders in digital publishing. Paperight was expected to offer a 4-minute pitch, against seven other innovative start-ups in digital publishing. We were selected as the winner of the showcase by popular vote.

After our win, everything else seemed easy! Oscar and I attended the fair from the 15th to the 17th April. Our aim was to build on existing publisher relationships and approach new publishers. Additionally, we were to pitch Paperight as part of the Digital Minds Innovation Showcase at the Digital Minds Conference the day before the fair.

Oscar’s trip was funded by the Department of Trade and Industry, as organised by the Publisher’s Association of South Africa. As part of the sponsorship, Paperight was given a table on the South African National Pavilion at the fair. This allowed us a place to meet with publishers, and a space within which to display Paperight-branded materials (our roller-banner for example).

The overall response to Paperight was very positive, and we signed our contract with O’Reilly Media at the fair: a fact that was reported in the show-news for the day.

Post Fair, I focused on follow ups and Base Admin, as well as completing a feedback report for the team, the Shuttleworth Foundation, and the DTI.

Publisher registrations

  • New Africa Books (2/1/2013)
  • Health and Medical Publishing Group (15/4/2013)
  • Do Sustainability (17/4/2013)
  • Cambridge University Press (17/4/2013)
  • HiSpeed Ltd (18/4/2013)
  • Eduskills Rainbow (18/4/2013)
  • Ses’fikile Press (19/4/2013)
  • Wide Margin (23/4/2013)
  • Granny’s Books Publishing (23/4/2013)
  • O’Reilly Media (24/4/2013)
  • On Target Publishing (25/4/2013)
  • By Light Unseen Media (25/4/2013)
  • Agang SA (26/4/2013)
  • MWS Media (27/4/2013)
  • CinnamonTeal Publishing (29/4/2013)
  • Ingrid Andersen (29/4/2013)
  • The Peacock Book Publishing (30/4/2013)
  • Ampelon (30/4/2013)
Content

Two anthologies start to take shape

March brought the first flood of anthology submissions. I triaged these from team email to Oscar, who then catalogued the entries. Once we’d received the influx, we set about organising an Anthology hack day to wade through submissions, read, and complete the first round of judging. While we’d have many sessions like this, I was only involved in the first few before I went to London, and then on leave.

In the spirit of writing competitions, we also met with Rachel Zadok to discuss Short Story Day Africa. Given that many of our team members are published or aspiring writers themselves, it was a project we were keen to be a part of. Paperight took on the sponsorship of the design and typesetting of the anthology, with the requirement that it be made available on Paperight after publication.

Our ongoing work with publishers included meetings with Cambridge University Press, Harlequin, Modjaji,  and Do Sustainability. I finalised my London Book Fair meetings. And we tried approaching publishers on ADvTech’s list of prescribed books (though we received no response).

We also worked on A Life, for New Africa Books. I finalised the epub and mobi versions.  Diann came in to do some freelance work.  I correspondence with Caitlin about her freelance work on the College Campus prep, oversaw Philippa’s CSV creation, and sourced missing information where necessary.

Publisher registration

  • Chris van Rensburg (7/3/2013)
  • Calm In Storm (18/7/2013)
Content

Updates to Content Master and Helpsite (and launch of Now What?)

now-what_together-we-pass-paperight_cover_low-res_20130228Once we’d received student feedback on Now What?, Nick began the process of editing and typesetting the book. We paid Paul Carter for his writing work, and made some last minute updates of our own. By the end of the month, we’d finalised the design of the book, uploaded it to Paperight, and launched it on the Together We Pass network.

Throughout this process we continued to work with Mampoer to get high-res covers for their titles, as well as with publishers, like PUO, P-Ridge Press, College Campus, and Hesperian, following their registration. I created a mock-up for Future Managers to show them what their books would look like in Paperight’s format. We met with Dylan Wray of Shikaya about finding a way to work together (we greatly admire the work that they’re doing, but couldn’t find a shared purpose in our current contexts) with Nelleke of NB Publishers to catch her up on progress with Paperight, and signed a contract with New Africa Books.

Plans for London Book Fair were well under way. We continued to work alongside PASA to get sponsorship for Oscar to join me at the fair, and I began researching attendees and sending out meeting requests.

We had previously been working with offline spreadsheets, but found the updating and version control to have become difficult to manage with a growing team. A Google Spreadsheet provided more piece of mind that the sheet was current, and there was less opportunity for confusion.

Philippa began working on the first draft of the new helpsite pages, and then we later went on to edit, upload and add screenshots to these posts. In the meantime, I revised the Content Master spreadsheet (metadata repository), and loaded this as a shared resource on Google Docs. We had previously been working with offline spreadsheets, but found the updating and version control to have become difficult to manage with a growing team. A Google Spreadsheet provided more piece of mind that the sheet was current, and there was less opportunity for confusion.

Publisher registrations

  • Hesperian (12/2/2013)
  • Bright Girl Books (19/2/2013)
  • AOTA Press (20/2/2013)
Building business, Content

Pricing revisions

We kicked January off by updating all the pricing on the Paperight site. One of our major pivots from the previous year was our decision to charge a license fee/service fee for all documents, and to have no free material available on the site (excepting, of course, those Creative Commons titles with a Non-commercial license).  This included charging a nominal amount for all Paperight editions and matric past papers.

Initially, we had imagined the free content as a draw card, that would result in people also purchasing paid content. We found that while the former was true,  the conversion was not happening. We speculated that consumers found the draw-card content valuable in itself, and that they would be willing to pay for it.

The balance between paid and free content on the site was skewed heavily in favour of free, and given that this content accounted for the majority of license purchases and downloads, we needed to ensure that we were making enough money to reach sustainability. Initially, we had imagined the free content as a draw card, that would result in people also purchasing paid content. We found that while the former was true,  the conversion was not happening. We speculated that consumers found the draw-card content valuable in itself, and that they would be willing to pay for it.

We met with HMPG about medical journals, and continued our follow ups with Jacana and other publishers with strong African Literature lists. One of the latter included PanMacmillan/Macmillan, who we’d only recently contacted.  We also began contract negotiations with Pearson, a process which would later lead to the revision of our standard contract for all rightsholders.

The month also included a lot of prep work, with continued work on Mampoer shorts, GetSmarter, and csv and document uploading — we had a bit of a backlog at this stage given all the prep work done by our freelancers (Caitlin and Craig).

Other work included my proofreading of the Paperight catalogue, organising with PASA for attending the London Book Fair, and overseeing authorship of Now What? By this stage its author Paul had drawn together a final draft and we’d sent it to nine Together We Pass affiliated students for feedback.

Publisher registrations

  • Thenosis Publishing (10/1/2013)
  • Mindset Publishing (15/1/2013)
  • College Campus (23/1/2013)
  • P-Ridge Press (29/1/2013)
  • Porcupine Press (30/1/2013)
  • PUO Educational Press (31/1/2013)

 

 

Content

Printing challenges and the state of content come December 2012

The high cost of colour printing was a constant challenge for us, especially when it came to children’s books, which were the primary priority for an organisation like The Shine Centre. Additionally, The Shine Centre needed us to get the price of each book under R35.00, which was easy when it came to monochrome printing, but very difficult in the case of colour.

Throughout December I continued communication with OUP about the potential for making their African literature list available on Paperight (a project that Oscar spearheaded), as well as following up with other publishers. We also sent printed product samples to The Shine Centre, a literacy organisation which we really like, and wanted to find a way to work with. The high cost of colour printing was a constant challenge for us, especially when it came to children’s books, which were the primary priority for an organisation like The Shine Centre. Additionally, The Shine Centre needed us to get the price of each book under R35.00, which was easy when it came to monochrome printing, but very difficult in the case of colour. We’re still working on this in 2014, and are hopeful that machines like the RISO ComColour will make a difference in this space.

many outlets don’t put posters up even when you’ve sent them the marketing materials, and need to be constantly reminded and chased

I facilitated the first Random House Struik file transfer and upload, and we experimented with a targeted RHS marketing campaign in select outlets. We learnt from the latter that many outlets don’t put posters up even when you’ve sent them the marketing materials, and need to be constantly reminded and chased. Once they had all put up the posters in stores (which took several weeks), we did not see great sales numbers. What we found was that the most productive way to generate sales early on is through organised bulk sales and school sponsorship deals, and not necessarily via more passive advertising.

now-what_together-we-pass-paperight_cover_low-res_20130228Another of our proposed content creation projects was Now What?, a guide for students who were studying through UNISA. We teamed up with Together We Pass to produce the booklet, with the understanding that we would manage the project management and costs, and in turn they would advertise the booklet and help to distribute it to their affiliated UNISA students. For us, the project was about showing UNISA that Paperight could be a useful mechanism for UNISA students. We began by having a general hacking session to decide on the outline and general structure, and then I drew all of this together into a detailed brief and content outline.

At the end of 2012, given the launch of Paperight 1.0 and that the content catalogue had to be rebuilt almost from scratch, I did an analysis of the listed content that we had put on Paperight since May. This had also shifted from primarily Creative Commons licensed and public domain works (on Paperight 0.5), to include titles from a total of 36 publishers who had since registered. We continued to have a large base of CC-licensed and public domain material, but this has been supplemented by contemporary African and South African fiction, academic work, study-guides, and teachers resources.

The graph below roughly illustrates, based on year of publication, the composition of the Paperight catalogue in comparison to that of the database in February 2012. It illustrates that we grew our proportion of contemporary, licensed titles. The drop in public domain titles here, is a result of the fact that some of our earlier public domain texts have not yet been processed for upload on Paperight 1.0.

Since February we had nearly doubled our acquired content, and had increased the amount of documents that have been processed for automatic download tenfold. As of December 20th, there were 1146 processed documents listed on the site, with 771 documents awaiting processing.

As of December 20th, there were 1146 processed documents listed on the site, with 771 documents awaiting processing.

The following data visualisations provide an overview of the percentage of books per genre. The second and third charts show the composition of sub-genres within two of the primary genres of ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’.

These titles encompass a wide range of themes in the social sciences, both of an academic and general nature. These include books on politics (political parties and parliamentary politics), history, civil society and  mass media. There is a also a strong collection of African biographies and memoirs, African poetry and plays, African literary criticism and a broad collection of books on conservation and environmental issues. There is also an incredible collection of books on higher education, especially in Africa. Some of the books in our collection (especially books on African philosophy, the biographies and seminal works by past and contemporary African intellectuals) are not as easily available anywhere else in South Africa as they are on Paperight.  There are also books on cellphone culture in Africa,  African popular culture, books on gender and a wide-range of popular and literary fiction.

Publisher registrations

  • Parktown Publishers (10/12/2012)

Content

Creating more of our own content

One of the great results of the book fair was insight into how other South African publishing-related startups operate behind the scenes. I spent much of my time at the fair with the Snapplify crew, and discovered that they use Base as a CRM tool.  On my return from the fair, I started using Base to track publisher follow-ups. There was some initial set-up work required: I had to migrate my contacts database and conversation histories from the wiki and email, but it made tracking follow ups much easier. On going follow-ups with very long lead times on actions (especially when waiting on a publisher’s in house legal team, for example) could be put on the backburner, without the risk of having these fall through the cracks.

I spent most of the month following up on new and existing relationships, particularly with Random House Struik, and Nali’Bali/Praesa. In ongoing content work, I briefed Nick on covers for GetSmarter and e-Classroom material, and continued to work on the processing of those files. Philippa started at Paperight on the 19th of November, so I also managed her training and induction.

The idea was that an anthology would be a great way to raise awareness about Paperight among learners, and would help us build useful relationships with teachers which we could build off of to increase sales of supplementary study material.

November 2013 was also the month we decided to run with the idea of the Paperight Young Writers’ Anthology. We came up with the concept while we were deciding that it might be good for us to start creating our own content for Paperight. The matric exam packs, our other main project of content creation was selling well, and publishers were signing agreements slower than we needed for a fast growth in sales. The idea was that an anthology would be a great way to raise awareness about Paperight among learners, and would help us build useful relationships with teachers which we could build off of to increase sales of supplementary study material. I had a meeting with Biblionef, about their database of schools. We were hoping that we could make use of this to inform schools about the Paperight Young Writers’ Anthology. As it turned out, their database was completely offline, and would have proved complicated and time consuming to sift through. Instead, Oscar drew together a database from scratch, using online resources.

Publisher registrations

  • Osiame Molefe (19/11/2012)
  • Fiona Ingram (22/11/2012)
  • Random House Struik (22/11/2012)
Content

Project 9: Frankfurt Book Fair 2012: closing report

Aim: Develop contacts and build team expertise by sending content manager to the world’s biggest publishing trade fair.

General report-back

Tarryn’s trip to Frankfurt was very productive in terms of building relationships and learning more about the international publishing industry. Her full report is attached at the end of this document.

Objectives achieved

Actions taken:

  • Travel to Frankfurt, attend the fair, meeting rightsholders and attending seminars.
  • Upon her return, Tarryn presented to the team, wrote up a report on what she learned, and put in place action points to follow up on the content leads she generated.

As planned, this has had a positive effect on Paperight’s effectiveness with publishers, and helped a  lot with the even more successful trip to the London Book Fair in 2013.

Objectives not achieved

We believe we met all our objectives.

Measures of success

Before: “We expect: Tarryn’s confidence and ability to correspond with international publishers is greater, and this rubs off on the team. We’ll learn as an organisation whether the investment in these kinds of trips is worth it, and what we need to do differently in future to increase that value.”

After: This definitely happened.

Before: “We would like: To see publishers abroad adding content to Paperight within weeks of meeting Tarryn at the fair. To see lessons learned from the trip directly affecting (or affirming) the way we approach publishers from day to day, from social messaging to direct pitches.”

After: No publishers put content on Paperight in the weeks immediately following the fair. During 2013, five of the publishers that Tarryn met in Frankfurt have signed up and put content on Paperight (Modjaji Books, Do Sustainability, O’Reilly Media, SelfMadeHero and Random House Struik). It was only after a second meeting at the London Book Fair that this happened (except for O’Reilly, who signed up after our win at Tools of Change in February). We’ve learned that signing up established publishers takes months and usually at least two meetings at trade fairs.

Lessons learned from the trip have directly affected and affirmed the ways we approach publishers.

Before: “We would love to see: We’d love Tarryn to be invited back at part of the Frankfurt Invitation Programme. (Arthur was on this in 2009, an excellent intro and training programme sponsored entirely by the fair, to bring young publishing people from developing countries to the fair. Arthur will set up a meeting for Tarryn with the organisers.)”

After: In 2013 the Invitation Programme did not accept applications from South Africa, seeking applications from elsewhere. We’re told applications will be open to South Africans again in 2014.

Budget

Original budget: R23680

Actual spend: R17180.35

Returned to pool: R6499.65

 

 

Item Budget Actual Return to Pool Comments
Flight 12000 10055 1945
Hotel 7200 2376 4824
Trains and Taxis 1000 1165.25 -165.25
Food 1980 2021.58 -41.58
Fair Registration 700 700.50 -0.50
Visa 800 832. -62
TOTAL 23680 17180.33 6499.67

 

Outputs and deliverables

A detailed report of meetings and seminars attended, and feedback from discussions about Paperight and related ventures in the industry: see Tarryn’s report attached below.

Learnings

The most important learning is that attending trade fairs on a consistent basis, and meeting with publishers there, is critical to building relationships that lead to distribution deals.

In addition, from Tarryn’s report:

  • “Having a stall ties you down as one team member has to constantly stay there. It also does not necessarily provide a strong ROI, as the people who we want to talk to are not usually going to be the ones walking up to stands.
  • Obviously, having more than one team member working the floor allows you to cover much much more ground – especially when these efforts are targeted and coordinated. The Snapplify team was able to generate 5x the leads that I was.
  • It is important to have a ‘hit list’ of publishers/people that you want to target, so you know who your big fish are. I did this to some extent, but could have done it better. I think this task is simpler when you have a clear idea of what the fair looks like, and who will be there, as well as a focused strategy around the leads you want to generate and nurture. This is something that I will work on for next year/time.
  • Info sheets would be useful to leave with publishers who you are talking to for the first time. A number of people actually asked me if I had an info sheet for them, especially towards the end when everything is mixing together in your brain, or when the decision makers have left and the minions cannot convey the ideas properly.”

Exit/Sustainability/Viability

We will definitely attend future trade fairs, and will need to fund each of these case by case. The DTI provides some funding towards this, and we will use project funding where necessary too.

Conclusion

Great trip, an important learning experience that has had a positive effect on the team and our business.

Next steps

We’re planning for the next trip already.

Frankfurt Book Fair 2012: Feedback Report.

I attended the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair with the mandate of developing publisher relationships and sourcing content leads for Paperight.

I attended seminars, workshops, and panel discussions given by industry professionals and leaders, with a view to learning more about the inner workings of the publishing industry. I was also able to get a sense for where the industry is, and where it sees itself moving in the future – particularly with regards to developments in the digital sector.

The publishers with whom I met broadly fell into three categories:

  • Those who are already making their material available on Paperight (in order to build upon an existing working relationship).
  • Those who we have already contacted about Paperight, and who are keen, but who have not officially provided us with material or signed contracts (in order to ‘close the deal’, and foster trust).
  • Those who are hearing about Paperight for the first time (in order to build contacts and establish relationships with potential rightsholders).

The following report offers a synopsis of the sessions I attended, a breakdown of discussions with publishers (as well as a schedule of follow ups to be completed), and some lessons learned for getting the most out of the fair in the future.

Seminars/Panel Discussions Attended

Data Insights with Bowker:

The seminar, given by Bowker’s Director of Client Solutions James Howitt, sought to answer the question of “how social media and social networks are changing the ways that readers discuss books” using data gathered through specific research studies run by Bowker for its clients.

The study monitored 6000 customers each month, taking account of their demographics, book choices, retailer choices, book awareness, and favoured formats. The numbers that resulted from the research were interesting, showing a reading population of around 49% in the US, with “power buyers” who purchase multiple titles accounting for more than half of the total book sales occurring. The numbers also show an increase in the purchase of ebooks in the US, with 25% of all books sold being consumed in digital form.

The downfall of the research is it’s incompleteness, only having been conducted in geographic areas and amongst populations that were of direct commercial significance to the Bowker client. Despite the limited relevancy of the findings in a South African/African context, the principles behind the project – namely of understanding who your user is and how they are becoming aware of your product – are applicable to marketing efforts. Bowker found that the primary influencer of people’s book buying behaviour was personal recommendation, noting that if one is able to identify and harness this, then one is able to achieve an “influence multiplier”.

Also fascinating was the finding that the readers of different genres obtain these recommendations from different sources. Romance readers, for example, receive these from blogs or via general web-browsing, while mystery readers will obtain recommendations from fan pages or forums to which they subscribe. [YA literature is often recommended via blogs, YouTube, and GoodReads – usually a combination of all three].

The team has conducted similar research in Canada, the UK, and Australia. Here he notes that they found that reading/buying behaviours were similar over different territories, but that there were significant differences in the genres that were favoured in those territories.

Lessons Learned in Digital Publishing:

The panel, hosted by Richard Mollet (CEO of the Publishing Association), consisted of Richard Charkin (Executive Director, Bloomsbury), Matt Hanbury (CEO, Murdoch Books), and George Lossius (CEO, Publishing Technology). Tasked with the job of considering what lessons we’ve learnt after 10 years of digital, they began on a positive note. “This industry has adapted remarkably… academic publishing is now 90% digital, with trade at 20 % and rising quickly”, Charkin said. “What we have not done is adapt our printing  systems to the new world”, Charkin noted that book printing remains complicated, with 24 handlings of a book existing between manufacture and purchase. What he asserted right from the get-go was the necessity of applying the lessons learned from digital to the core business of print” [an angle which may be relevant for marketing Paperight].

The other panelists lamented the external influences (and influencers) which have altered the ways in which content is delivered to the market. Lossius, while noting that digital giants like Amazon, as well as innovation and development of communications technology in general, has meant that more people can more easily access the books that they want, commented that the danger is that publishers have allowed themselves to be easily governed by big players. Hanbury agreed, saying that in encountering the digital world, devices have captivated the consumer market to the extent that the device becomes more important than the content. This power is what results in publishers massively slashing prices in deals with Amazon and Apple.

In light of Kindle’s domination of the market, the panel was asked their views on the successes of alternatives in the future. To this Lossius responded that while Amazon is successful now, their closed business models will be their downfall.

Other Coverage:

Book Fair Blog: http://bit.ly/TxLaKt

Publishing Perspectives: http://bit.ly/XxvLhB

Publisher’s Weekly: http://bit.ly/PeIzdb

A Comprehensive Approach to Mobile Learning – A Professional Solution:

Centering around the notion that “mobility is in our natures”, the education expert giving this talk began with the argument that humans are used to moving and inherently adaptable to change. Students, she noted, find standard education systems boring, and with the increased consumption of digital media (80% of US Students have smart phones) technology can change this.

Her view is that education practices need to be adapted to take account of the way that students interact with media. Lessons need to be shorter, she argues, due to the fact that attention spans are short, and repetitions, as well as breaks between these are important.

Yet merely “refreshing” teaching practices using new media, is not sufficiently “comprehensive” in my opinion to warrant the title of the session. She focused only on tablet and smartphone classroom integration in the US, with no insights given to mobility and education in developing and emerging economies.

The State of Piracy in a Post MegaUpload World:

Given by an organisation calling themselves “Guardian for Books”, the session covered a service that they offer as a complement to DRM by allowing for added protection of copyright material. Their presentation played into the fears of all the publishers present, and their argument was that the only way to combat “continuous piracy” is with “continuous disruption” (where disruption is a takedown notice).

A highly unimaginative and closed minded approach to piracy and the potential solutions. The only interesting thing that he mentioned was that after Mega Upload was taken down, P2P downloads increased by 30%.

Metadata Goes Global:

This was a fantastic 3 hour workshop on metadata as a tool for publishers, given by industry leaders Laura Dawson (Bowker), and Brian O’Leary (Magellan Media Partners). My ticket was complimentary, despite a hefty $300 price tag, because the key speaker (Laura Dawson) is a Paperight champion.

The workshop was divided into 3 segments:

Getting metadata right
1. Where are we today?
  • Currently metadata is an incredibly labour intensive, manual process – especially for publishers.
  • It requires constant re-inspection “downstream”.
  • It can often be inconsistent, and is difficult to revise or update.

Vendors today are not necessarily booksellers, which means that the rules change. To back up these three points, Laura goes through a research case study they conducted over 10 retailers/vendors, to see how quickly metadata updates occur after it is disseminated.

The findings showed that the industry standard was for updates to occur within 2-5 business days (at leading retailers). They also found that certain types of data were updated more frequently than others. In order of update frequency: Page count, price, subtitle, description, on sale date, publication date, author (the later two data types hardly ever get updated).

2. What needs to change in the current system?

These delays are a result of systemic problems in the way that metadata is created, and can be averted if clear communication is occurring between retailers and publishers as to what format the metadata should be provided in, and how to optimise metadata workflow in order to reduce the problems created by the ‘lag’ (i.e: duplicates of small updates/overwriting of more complete data).

  • The system is not built for speed.
  • Most updates only take place in week 2.
  • The problems and delays are not for lack of trying, but as a result of time-consuming workflow processes.
  • There is the potential that this could get worse with new entrants to the market. New sites do not create complete and relevant data, which means the waters are further muddied.
3. How do we get ready?

Process recommendations:

  • Use “book in hand” (physical product) to gather local inhouse feedback.
  • Strengthen sender-recipients feedback loops (i.e: clearly communicate with publishers).
  • Ensure that there are shared definitions for core fields.
  • Articulate when updates occur, and what gets updated (and what doesn’t) to the sender.
  • Discuss what metadata is changed, added, and deleted.

Future-proofing metadata:

  • Collaborate to automate data workflows and compress cycle times (take some of the work out of it).
  • Prepare for more frequent updates (marketing metadata – awards etc.)
  • Harmonise print and digital metadata workflows.
  • Better manage the use of style tags (either limit, or eliminate them). Not all retailers can deal with the HTML styling, so be sure to provide data as text only.
4. What might we be missing?

Context (metadata) rules on the next plateau.

  • Increasingly open, accessible, interoperable.
  • Using context to promote discovery: It’s easy to publish a book (there are currently 32+ million in print) so you need to be able to differentiate your product.
  • Readers need to be given tools that help them manage abundance.

What is the next plateau? (Three trends we may be missing out on)

  • Global (effectively visible everywhere)
    • Online access makes every book visible, but many (most) markets can see and not buy. This makes consumers frustrated and can lead to piracy.
    • Readers don’t understand things like territorial rights. This is an outdated concept which delay the time to market and results in lost sales.
    • Pricing needs to make sense in a specific territory/market.
    • Digital customers are being alienated when they have to wait for content to be made available to them.
    • New delivery options are becoming increasingly important: DRM free formats, subscription based models, component or short-format sales, and pay-as-you-go rights.
  • Integrated metadata (tied to the product it describes)
    • The value of metadata is in how closely it is tied to the product it describes. This is already an issue in digital product sales (where the metadata is created after the fact and thus not as integrated.
    • There is a growing issue with rights sales, where the people doing the sales are not also doing the metadata.
    • Without integrated, granular metadata, this can result in a nightmare when trying to sell components.
    • While epub3 has a great metadata component, publishers are reluctant to use it because they do not want the metadata to be locked in a file (as it changes so regularly). They prefer to edit a feed, even though this does not aid discoverability.
  • Evolutionary (continual revision and capturing of metadata)
    • Increasingly metadata supports how consumers find books. Recipients of the data (e.g: retailers) contribute much of the metadata after publication: awards, prizes, “bestseller” status, endorsements, book tour data, refined reading and grade levels, as well as marketing collateral.
    • It is important to monitor chatter on social media and book specific platforms, and to know what’s being said about a book, and then use that metadata as an opportunity for discovery.
    • The key is complete, relevant, and consistent metadata, including cover images, and enhanced with analytics and SEO.
Making metadata effective

There are four different kinds of metadata (bibliographic, commercial, transactional, and merchandising), and these come from many different sources. In order to make each of these effective in their specific role, we need to be using them as keys for discovery.

  • ISBN numbers are prioritized by Google. Similarly the soon to be adopted ISTC and ISNI numbers will also be given authority.
  • Search algorithms also prioritize BIC and BISAC categories, as well as Amazon keywords/categories. It is important here to use 3-5 of these keywords, in order of relevance/importance for the best results.
  • SEO and  Adwords Keywords tools are incredibly useful.
  • Price changes are frequent and incredibly important. Make sure that these updates are happening timeously.
  • It is also important to describe your book’s relationship to other books, films, comparative works, other formats (and use the opportunity to highlight why yours is better).
  • Have a metadata repository where teams creating each of the different kinds of metadata listed above can edit and adapt the metadata so that you maintain a relevant and up to date record.
What can Paperight do with this?
  • As we grow, we need to make sure that metadata updates of existing content is occurring within 2-5 days of receiving updated data from the publisher.
  • We need to communicate clearly with publishers so that they can provide us with data in a format which is appropriate for Paperight. We try to make it simpler for them, but this makes it time-consuming for us and means that metadata updates take far too long.
  • Paperight staff book reviews could be added to the metadata for a book. The more of the books we read ourselves, the better our descriptive metadata will be.
  • Metadata descriptions need to be compiled from a variety of sources, and honed carefully (i.e: complete, relevant, and consistent metadata, including cover images, and enhanced with analytics and SEO).
  • ISBN, ISTC, and ISNI numbers, as well as BIC and BISAC categories should be prioritized. Keywords describing the book should be provided in order of relevance or importance.
  • “Related titles” should be provided, and connections between content items made.
  • Metadata repository.

Paperight – Publishers Discussions

[Redacted because this section contains others’ confidential business information]

Other potential leads:

  • US Embassy – See conversations with Matthew Utterback, he mentioned that they could be a good lead Africa as they do not currently have a strong distribution network for that material.
  • Unisa Press – Attempted to set a meeting with them, but was unable to connect due to conflicting schedules. I did however get the contact details for Elna Harmse (Director), and Andrew Joseph (Managing Editor: Journals), which we can use to set up a meeting to pitch Paperight in the future.
  • Higher Education Press – These are publishers of Chinese-language educational materials.  I was around when Snapplify chatted to them about creating Snapplify apps for their material. She then asked them if they also do “print-on-demand” solutions, at which point I jumped in and said that Paperight did. I have her contact details, and will send additional information regarding Paperight.

Feedback/Take-aways:

  • Having a stall ties you down as one team member has to constantly stay there. It also does not necessarily provide a strong ROI, as the people who we want to talk to are not usually going to be the ones walking up to stands.
  • Obviously, having more than one team member working the floor allows you to cover much much more ground – especially when these efforts are targeted and coordinated. The Snapplify team was able to generate 5x the leads that I was.
  • It is important to have a ‘hit list’ of publishers/people that you want to target, so you know who your big fish are. I did this to some extent, but could have done it better. I think this task is simpler when you have a clear idea of what the fair looks like, and who will be there, as well as a focused strategy around the leads you want to generate and nurture. This is something that I will work on for next year/time.
  • Info sheets would be useful to leave with publishers who you are talking to for the first time. A number of people actually asked me if I had an info sheet for them, especially towards the end when everything is mixing together in your brain, or when the decision makers have left and the minions cannot convey the ideas properly.
Content

Frankfurt Book Fair 2012

October began with the revision of metadata, including adjustment of images on the site, and replacing the English language descriptions of Afrikaans exam packs with Afrikaans ones.

Later in October, I travelled to the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair with the mandate of developing publisher relationships and sourcing content leads for Paperight.

I attended seminars, workshops, and panel discussions given by industry professionals and leaders, with a view to learning more about the inner workings of the publishing industry. I was also able to get a sense for where the industry is, and where it sees itself moving in the future – particularly with regards to developments in the digital sector.

The publishers with whom I met broadly fell into three categories:

  • Those who are already making their material available on Paperight (in order to build upon an existing working relationship).
  • Those who we have already contacted about Paperight, and who are keen, but who have not officially provided us with material or signed contracts (in order to ‘close the deal’, and foster trust).
  • Those who are hearing about Paperight for the first time (in order to build contacts and establish relationships with potential rightsholders).

I developed a number of connections and potential leads, and learnt a lot about pitching the Paperight concept to publishers, and fielding their questions about the service.

Things I learnt:

  • Having a stall ties you down as one team member has to constantly stay there. It also does not necessarily provide a strong ROI, as the people who we want to talk to are not usually going to be the ones walking up to stands.
  • Obviously, having more than one team member working the floor allows you to cover much much more ground – especially when these efforts are targeted and coordinated. Our friends in the Snapplify team were able to generate 5× the leads that I was.
  • It is important to have a ‘hit list’ of publishers/people that you want to target, so you know who your big fish are. I did this to some extent, but could have done it better. I think this task is simpler when you have a clear idea of what the fair looks like, and who will be there, as well as a focused strategy around the leads you want to generate and nurture. This is something that I will work on for next year/time.
  • Info sheets would be useful to leave with publishers who you are talking to for the first time. A number of people actually asked me if I had an info sheet for them, especially towards the end when everything is mixing together in your brain, or when the decision makers have left and the minions cannot convey the ideas properly.

Publisher registrations

  • Delshande Trading (11/10/2012)
  • Masoka Dube (30/10/2012)

(The image at the top of this post is by munckster on Flickr, licensed CC-BY-NC-SA)

Content, Tech

Removing ad space on Paperight documents

Our latest website update now allows the option for watermarking documents with ads or without ads. This was our crucial first step towards product improvement. We found over this first year that outlet owners and managers were not inclined to subsidize the cost of paper by selling advertising on their documents.  As a result, we decided to remove the ad space we’d left at the bottom of every page.

Because many of our PDFs have been laid up to account for the ad space, this meant that the watermarking functionality had to account for documents either with or without ad space.  It also meant that the 900+ documents that were on Paperight would eventually need to be reformatted to remove ad space. We’d have to lay up the documents from scratch, with the text now able to take up more of the page, which improved readability. 

By the end of September a total of 1081 titles were listed on Paperight, officially surpassing the amount of titles we had on Paperight 0.5.

We began by reformatting matric exams, our most popular set of products.  We uploaded more Paperight Editions, including Shakespeare titles, now using the new format. By the end of September a  total of 1081 titles were listed on Paperight, officially surpassing the amount of titles we had on Paperight 0.5.

We did our first round of Rightsholder statements for sales on the new site. These had to be created manually, and emailed to each publisher.

I also conducted the first real set of enmasse follow ups to publishers that I’d contacted and not heard back from. And the team was joined by Oscar, who started his internship at Paperight with metadata related tasks. His main focus is on reviewing existing metadata, and improving it where possible.

The Shuttleworth foundation approved a project pitch to send me to the Frankfurt Book Fair, so I began preparations. This included setting up of meetings, research, and pitching preparation.

Publisher registrations

  • T&P Books (1/9/2012)
  • Disruptive Publishing (5/9/2012)
  • GetSmarter (11/9/2012)
  • A.R.B (12/9/2012)