E-books and e-publishing by Samuel Vaknin (essential reading .TXT) 📕

and transaction auditing, and a single, periodic payment.

Yet, having said all that, content intermediaries still over-charge their clients (the content creators) for their

services. This is especially true in an age of just-in-time

inventory and digital distribution. Network effects mean that

content brokers have to invest much less in marketing,

branding and advertising once a product’s first mover

advantage is established. Economic laws of increasing, rather

than diminishing, returns mean that every additional unit sold

yields a HIGHER profit - rather than a declining one. The pie

is getting bigger.

Hence, the meteoric increase in royalties publishers pay

authors from sales of the electronic versions of their work

(anywhere from Random House’s 35% to 50% paid by smaller

publishers). As this tectonic shift reverberates through the

whole distribution chain, retail outlets are beginning to

transact directly with content creators. The borders between

the types of intermediaries are blurred. Barnes and Noble (the

American bookstores chain) has, in effect, become a publisher.

Many publishers have virtual storefronts. Many authors sell

directly to their readers, acting as publishers. The

introduction of “book ATMs” - POD (Print On Demand) machines,

which will print

every conceivable title in minutes, on the spot, in “book

kiosks” - will give rise to a host of new intermediaries.

Intermediation is not gone. It is here to stay because it is

sorely needed. But it is in a state of flux. Old maxims break

down. New modes of operation emerge.

Functions are amalgamated, outsourced, dispensed with, or

created from scratch. It is an exciting scene, full with

opportunities.

E(merging) Books

By: Sam Vaknin

A novel re-definition through experimentation of the classical

format of the book is emerging.

Consider the now defunct BookTailor. It used to sell its book

customization software mainly to travel agents - but such

software is likely to conquer other niches (such as the legal

and medical professions). It allows users to select bits and

pieces from a library of e-books, combine them into a totally

new tome and print and bind the latter on demand. The client

can also choose to buy the end-product as an e-book. Consider

what this simple business model does to entrenched and age old

notions such as “original” and “copies”, copyright, and book

identifiers. What is the “original” in this case? Is it the

final, user-customized book - or its sources? And if no

customized book is identical to any other - what happens to

the intuitive notion of “copies”? Should BookTailor-generated

books considered to be unique exemplars of one-copy print

runs? If so, should each one receive a unique identifier (for

instance, a unique ISBN)? Does the user possess any rights in

the final product, composed and selected by him? What about

the copyrights of the original authors?

Or take BookCrossing.com. On the face of it, it presents no

profound challenge to established publishing practices and to

the modern concept of intellectual property. Members register

their books, obtain a BCID (BookCrossing ID Number) and then

give the book to someone, or simply leave it lying around for

a total stranger to find. Henceforth, fate determines the

chain of events. Eventual successive owners of the volume are

supposed to report to BookCrossing (by e-mail) about the

book’s and their whereabouts, thereby generating moving plots

and mapping the territory of literacy and bibliomania. This

innocuous model subversively undermines the concept - legal

and moral - of ownership. It also expropriates the book from

the realm of passive, inert objects and transforms it into a

catalyst of human interactions across time and space. In other

words, it returns the book to its origins: a time capsule, a

time machine and the embodiment of a historical narrative.

E-books, hitherto, have largely been nothing but an ephemeral

rendition of their print predecessors. But e-books are another

medium altogether. They can and will provide a different

reading experience. Consider “hyperlinks within the e-book

and without it - to web content, reference works, etc.,

embedded instant shopping and ordering links, divergent, user-interactive, decision driven plotlines, interaction with other

e-books (using Bluetooth or another wireless standard),

collaborative authoring, gaming and community activities,

automatically or periodically updated content, ,multimedia

capabilities, database, Favourites and History Maintenance

(records of reading habits, shopping habits, interaction with

other readers, plot related decisions and much more),

automatic and embedded audio conversion and translation

capabilities, full wireless piconetworking and

scatternetworking capabilities and more”.

INVASION OF THE AMAZONS

By: Sam Vaknin

The last few months have witnessed a bloodbath in tech stocks

coupled with a frantic re-definition of the web and of every

player in it (as far as content is concerned).

This effort is three pronged:

Some companies are gambling on content distribution and the

possession of the attendant digital infrastructure.

MightyWords, for example, stealthily transformed itself from a

“free-for-all-everyone-welcome” e-publisher to a distribution

channel of choice works (mainly by midlist authors). It now

aims to feed its content to content-starved web sites. In the

process, it shed thousands of unfortunate authors who did not

meet its (never stated) sales criteria.

Others bet the farm on content creation and packaging. Bn.com

invaded the digital publishing and POD (Print on Demand)

businesses in a series of lightning purchases. It is now the

largest e-book store by a wide margin.

But Amazon seemed to have got it right once more. The web’s

own virtual mall and the former darling of Wall Street has

diversified into micropayments.

The Internet started as a free medium for free spirits. E-commerce was once considered a dirty word. Web surfers became

used to free content. Hence the (very low) glass ceiling on

the price of content made available through the web - and the

need to charge customers less than 1 US dollars to a few

dollars per transaction (“micropayments”). Various service

providers (such as Pay-Pal) emerged, none became sufficiently

dominant and all-pervasive to constitute a standard. Web

merchants’ ability to accept micropayments is crucial. E-commerce (let alone m-commerce) will never take off without

it.

Enter Amazon. Its “Honour System” is licenced to third party

web sites (such as Bartleby.com and SatireWire). It allows

people to donate money or effect micropayments, apparently

through its patented one-click system. As far as the web sites

are concerned, there are two major drawbacks: all donations

and payments are refundable within 30 days and Amazon charges

them 15 cents per transaction plus 15(!) percent. By far the

worst deal in town.

So, why the fuss?

Because of Amazon’s customer list. This development emphasizes

the growing realization that one’s list of customers -

properly data mined - is the greatest asset, greater even than

original content and more important than distribution channels

and digital right management or asset management applications.

Merchants are willing to pay for access to this ever expanding

virtual neighbourhood (even if they are not made privy to

the customer information collected by Amazon).

The Honour System looks suspiciously similar to the payment

system designed by Amazon for Stephen King’s serialized e-novel, “The Plant”. Interesting to note how the needs of

authors and publishers are now in the driver’s seat, helping

to spur along innovations in business methods.

Revolt of the Scholars

By: Sam Vaknin

http://www.realsci.com/

Scindex’s Instant Publishing Service is about empowerment. The

price of scholarly, peer-reviewed journals has skyrocketed in

the last few years, often way out of the limited means of

libraries, universities, individual scientists and scholars. A

“scholarly divide” has opened between the haves (academic

institutions with rich endowments and well-heeled

corporations) and the haves not (all the others).

Paradoxically, access to authoritative and authenticated

knowledge has declined as the number of professional journals

has proliferated. This is not to mention the long (and often

crucial) delays in publishing research results and the shoddy

work of many under-paid and over-worked peer reviewers.

The Internet was suppose to change all that. Originally, a

computer network for the exchange of (restricted and open)

research results among scientists and academics in

participating institutions - it was supposed to provide

instant publishing, instant access and instant gratification.

It has delivered only partially. Preprints of academic papers

are often placed online by their eager authors and subjected

to peer scrutiny. But this haphazard publishing cottage

industry did nothing to dethrone the print incumbents and

their avaricious pricing.

The major missing element is, of course, respectability. But

there are others. No agreed upon content or knowledge

classification method has emerged. Some web sites (such as

Suite101) use the Dewey decimal system. Others invented and

implemented systems of their making. Additionally, one click

publishing technology (such as Webseed’s or Blogger’s) came to

be identified strictly to non-scholarly material: personal

reminiscences, correspondence, articles and news.

Enter Scindex and its Academic Resource Channel. Established

by academics and software experts from Bulgaria, it epitomizes

the tearing down of geographical barriers heralded by the

Internet. But it does much more than that. Scindex is a whole,

self-contained, standalone, instant self-publishing and self-assembly system. Self-publishing systems do exist (for

instance, Purdue University’s) - but they incorporate only

certain components. Scindex covers the whole range.

Having (freely) registered as a member, a scientist or a

scholar can publish their papers, essays, research results,

articles and comments online. They have to submit an abstract

and use Sciendex’s classification (“call”) numbers and science

descriptors, arranged in a massive directory available in the

“RealSci Locator”. The Locator can be also downloaded and used

offline and its is surprisingly user-friendly. The submission

process itself is totally automated and very short.

The system includes a long series of thematic journals. These

journals self-assemble, in accordance with the call numbers

selected by the submitters. An article submitted with certain

call numbers will automatically be included in the relevant

journals.

The fly in the ointment is the absence of peer review. As the

system moves from beta to commercialization, Scindex intends

to address this issue by introducing a system of incentives

and inducements. Reviewers will be granted “credit points” to

be applied against the (paid) publication of their own papers,

for instance.

Scindex is the model of things to come. Publishing becomes

more and more automated and knowledge-orientated. Peer

reviewed papers become more outlandishly expensive and

irrelevant. Scientists and scholars are getting impatient and

rebellious. The confluence of these three trends spells - at

the least - the creation of a web based universe of

parallel and alternative scholarly publishing.

The Kidnapping of Content

By: Sam Vaknin

http://www.plagiarism.org and http://www.Turnitin.com

Latin kidnapped the word “plagion” from ancient Greek and it

ended up in English as “plagiarism”. It literally means “to

kidnap” - most commonly, to misappropriate content and wrongly

attribute it to oneself. It is a close kin of piracy. But

while the software or content pirate does not bother to hide

or alter the identity of the content’s creator or the

software’s author - the plagiarist does. Plagiarism is,

therefore, more pernicious than piracy.

Enter Turnit.com. An offshoot of www.iparadigms.com, it was

established by a group of concerned (and commercially minded)

scientists from UC Berkeley.

Whereas digital rights and asset management systems are geared

to prevent piracy - plagiarism.org and its commercial arm,

Turnit.com, are the cyber equivalent of a law enforcement

agency, acting after the fact to discover the culprits and

uncover their misdeeds. This, they claim, is a first stage on

the way to a plagiarism-free Internet-based academic community

of both teachers and students, in which the educational

potential of the Internet can be fully realized.

The problem is especially severe in academia. Various surveys

have discovered that a staggering 80%(!) of US students cheat

and that at least 30% plagiarize written material. The

Internet only exacerbated this problem. More than 200 cheat-sites have sprung up, with thousands of papers available online and tens of thousands of satisfied plagiarists the world

over. Some of these hubs - like cheater.com, cheatweb or