Digging Deep

Many of you who know me know, I’m rather proud of my twin sons for their participation in Karate. This email came in over the weekend, and I found it quite inspiring:

Dear Dojo Family,


It's only been a couple of weeks since so many people gave themselves to long, sweaty, dusty hours to make our new dojo a reality. But already, circumstances have moved me to ask you all to mobilize yourselves to an even more profound undertaking.


You certainly don't need to me tell you about the massive humanitarian crisis going on just a few hundred miles off the shore of our country. The Red Cross estimates that as many as 50,000 people were killed by this week's earthquake in Haiti. In a country where daily existence was already a struggle for so many, an unthinkable amount of rebuilding will be needed for them to even return to that status quo.


What many of you do not know is that some very dedicated students of ours, the Groder family, run a mission in Haiti. Kevin Groder is Pastor to, and adminstrator of, Mission of Hope Haiti (missionofhopehaiti.net). In addition to providing thousands of pounds of food to families in need, Mission of Hope also runs schools that educate 1,000 children who otherwise would go without, and was in the process of building an orphanage. That planned orphanage now lies in ruins, along with a number of school buildings. Two teachers died.


Our Tokyo Joe's community can help Mission of Hope rebuild what was lost. So we are organizing a "kickathon" fundraiser that will give 100% of its proceeds directly to that undertaking. As of this writing, Kevin is on 24 hour standby for the next military cargo transport out of Springfield that has room for him. As soon as he is on the ground and able to assess the full scope of what's happened to Mission of Hope, he will give us a concrete project that can benefit from our efforts.


Think of this: if every student in our school can find ten friends, neighbors, relatives, coworkers or classmates to donate just five dollars; $10,000 can go to this rebuilding effort. And while that does not go too far (speaking from recent experience) in construction costs here in the U.S., it can make a mountain of difference in the impoverished nation that is Haiti. And as that money is put to work, you will be able to see it happening thanks to members of our community who will be there.


Here's how a kickathon works:


Starting Monday, every student will be able to pick up a pledge sheet, and begin gathering sponsors. Between February 15 and 19, each student will be given 60 seconds to throw as many kicks as they can. The participants can use any kick, and either or both feet. Feet must touch the ground between each kick, and the instructor who times the participant will have final say as to whether the kick meets the level expected of that student. Sponsors can either give a set amount of money per kick, or pledge an overall amount.


Caroline and I would like to extend our thanks for your participation in this by offering some incentives. Any student who collects $50 dollars receives a free patch. A total of $100 or more gets a special tee-shirt designed for this occasion. The top donations for each student in our Panthers, Dragons, Junior, Teen, Adult and Kickboxing levels gets $100 in "dojo dollars" that can be used for any item or service that we sell.


And the greatest prize: turning the horror and empathy that we feel watching the images that emerge from Haiti into concrete action, and watching as concrete results are achieved. I could not issue this call to action to a greater group of people.


Yours Gratefully,


Sensei K

All of us here at Firebrand have a few traits in common, one of them being that we try to help other people where possible. The devastation in Haiti is unbelievable. The numbers I heard this morning are tragic, estimates of 200,000 dead. About all I’ve been able to do is text “HAITI” to 90999 a few times, but who knows where that money really goes?


What was inspiring about this email for me was 3 things:


1. It’s a very specifically targeted place to help,

2. We can keep the money out of the hands of middlemen, and get it directly to the mission, and

3. With all the dead, there are probably a lot more orphans in need than there were before the quake.



What Firebrand is going to do is this: donate 2.0% of our top line revenues for the next 3 months to the Mission of Hope orphanage in Haiti.



This will be a strong challenge for us, but not nearly as difficult as many people are facing in Haiti. We have faith that our customers will support us during this effort. We also hope that our efforts on behalf of the Mission of Hope will inspire other friends and colleagues to find their own way to help.

Is BEA Reinventing Itself?

Lance Fensterman's blog post this morning came to my attention as I was writing this. It seems interesting to me that the people running the show are concluding that the show needs to change even as it is changing right before our eyes.

The industry is in transition - duh. The economy is down - duh. The internet is changing everything - duh, duh, duh.

BEA is a giant Sales Conference, why not just acknowledge it and take advantage of the venue to use it that way?

The past two months have been among the most interesting and exhilarating in my professional career. Via twitter, we have tapped into the collective energies of a whole new community of book enthusiasts who have never had a formal role in the industry before. Call them "lit-bloggers", call them "Social Media hounds", call them "twitterers", call them whatever you want, but they are a true force that just might #savepublishing! They have energy and enthusiasm about books and publishing at a time when all of the pundits are projecting doom and gloom.

For us, the signals of this new energy started with the planning of our Follow the Reader Blog at NetGalley.com. We had the fortunate opportunity to hire Kat Meyer (@katmeyer) and Charlotte Abbott (@charabbott) - a self described odd couple - to be our writers. Kat and Charlotte independently are conduits to both new-school and old-school publishing ideas. And, together on Twitter, have created a weekly conversation, called #followreader, which discusses issues related to the new publishing paradigms - that are literally being created before our eyes.

Independent of Follow the Reader, Kat took on the responsibility to organize a party for all these folks, called the BEATweetup, which has absolutely taken on a life of its own. We jumped on the opportunity immediately to help sponsor this after working with Kat on a similar adventure at the Tools of Change conference last February. The RSVPs for this party are now well over 300, and it seems like its a mini-BEA all by itself. In all deference to my friends at PGW, I think there is a new sheriff in town when it comes to BEA parties!

The latest signal came when we decided to offer some of our booth space over to "lit-bloggers" as a way to have them meet some publishers and some of their fans. What started out as a parody of the "author signings" so prevalent at every BEA, our "blogger signing" idea has threatened to overwhelm Firebrand's entire presence at the show. Three weeks ago, I leaned over to a colleague and said that I thought we would be doing well if 10 bloggers decided to take us up on our offer. Now we have 44 and we have a waiting list.

I would contend that these signals indicate that the show has already started to reinvent itself - without any help from the organizers. It is no longer (and hasn't been for several years) a show about selling books, as much as it has turned into a giant sales conference.

What is changing the most in our industry is the way that consumers are influenced to buy books (in whatever format). They are influenced by personal recommendations from people they trust. (Charlotte did a great job of describing this changing landscape in her post the other day). Publishers still need sales people to go into all of the traditional channels, but they ALSO need to coopt the 'new influencers'.

The BEA is the perfect mechanism to do this. Publishers should take note of all that will be going on next week and meet as many of these influencers as possible. Throughout the course of the year, they should cultivate these relationships, so that next year, BEA will have a strong and positive direction.

Time to Review our Mission Statements?

The pace of change in the publishing industry is almost as eye-popping as the changes themselves. The playing field is being re-leveled much more quickly than most of us ever believed it would. Every single day - sometimes multiple times a day - we're seeing the evidence of these changes... A newspaper or magazine stops printing, a new electronic reading device is announced, traditional roles that have been in publishing for decades are obsoleted seemingly overnight.

Some of these changes are painful to watch, and some are very exciting to watch. But, one thing is definitely true, we're in the midst of major changes. I don't think anyone can really predict where this all going. We all try, but we're all really guessing. Our predictions are all based on trend lines that don't have enough data points.

A blog post by Seth Godin about how trade guilds seem to be trying to defend the status quo, sent my head spiraling in a number of directions. (Thanks again, Mike, for the recommendation) Why is Mr. Godin correct? It seems to me that it's all about the missions of those organizations. They are in place to protect the interests of their constituents.

In a time of great change, that mission seems almost laughable, because the interests of the constituents are changing daily. How can a trade guild possibly keep up?

It was all the rage in the 80's and 90's to come up with mission statements for organizations that would last for years. It was a great concept, but during a maelstrom of change, it fails. In order to survive organizations need to react to both the opportunities and threats that present themselves. And, in publishing, they are presenting themselves every day!

At Firebrand, we reviewed our mission last year when we re-branded the company. I think it's time we review it again, to insure that it is still relevant to our constituents during this turbulent time.

NetGalley LLC

Today is huge day in the history of Firebrand Technologies! Today, in cooperation with Rosetta Solutions, we are formally announcing the formation of joint venture company called NetGalley LLC. For more information about this joint venture, please see our press release.

NetGalley is a product that was created by Rosetta Solutions to help publishers manage the 'galley' process in an electronic way. Galleys are books that are printed in advance of the formally published book. Generally, they are sent out to reviewers and key customers prior to their formal publication so they can be reviewed. NetGalley is a tool that manages this process electronically, by creating a secure environment where reviewers can either read or download electronic versions, or request a hardcopy of the 'netgalley' and then post their reviews online.

The product was formally launched last Spring during BEA. Since then it has garnered much attention, but has not made a significant impact in the market. At least not yet... We are definitely hoping to change that!

The concept of NetGalley is a very exciting one for everyone in the industry who recognizes how much wasted money there is in the current 'galley process'. Publishers waste significant money sending galleys out via the mail to people who either never get them or never read them. Reviewers are often inundated by publishers to review their books, and need to create makeshift tools to manage their workload.

To, me, there is a tremendous opportunity to help publishers save money in this process. The amount of money wasted on sending galleys to bad addresses is enough to make any publishing CEO wince! By providing reviewers with rich bibliograpic data (which of course is Firebrand's forte), they can choose to opt-in to either read a galley electronically, or have one sent to them. Savvy publishers will connect this system directly to their print on demand printer of choice and have a galley custom created for the review.

In later entries, I'll be talking more about this, and how we intend on:

• Making NetGalley completely integrated with Firebrand's Title Management and eloquence databases.
• Improving the workflow for both publishers and reviewers
• Changing the business model from a price per title to a subscription model

Stay tuned!

Amazon Honors Distributors

Today, Publishers Marketplace had a very interesting news item - at least to me! It is copied below:

Amazon Honors 3 Distributors
Apparently Amazon recognizes distributors of the year, and this year they are honoring Macmillan, Random House Publisher Service, and IPG. Criteria include "the shortest and most consistent receive lead times" for books, "actively growing" Kindle availability, using Amazon's print-on-demand, providing correct ONIX data, and strong search inside the book participation.Amazon books vp Russell Grandinetti says in the announcement, "By working together, we're able to improve the rate at
which their books are in stock on Amazon, lower prices through lowering
operational costs and help customers find, discover and buy great books....
We're proud to work with such great distributors on behalf of their client publishers."

What was so interesting (to me) is that Macmillan, and IPG are Firebrand customers and use our Title Management database to help manage lead times, and determine which books will be in the Kindle program, and the Search Inside Program. They are also eloquence customers, and eloquence is the service they use to create and distribute their ONIX data.

It's nice to be behind the scenes of an award like this!

The above news item was copied from Publisher's Marketplace because you need a password to have access to their content. Publisher's Marketplace is a great source of daily news about the book publishing world, and I would strongly suggest signing up (it's free), to get their daily emails.

A mission for 150 years

We've been hearing a lot about Google's mission lately - to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

In Louisville, Kentucky, there is another organization with a very similar mission, except for a rather interesting twist. The organization is the American Printing House for the Blind and their mission is to: To promote the independence of blind and visually impaired persons by providing specialized materials, products, and services needed for education and life.

Since 1858 the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) has been creating unique products for people who are visually impaired, blind, or deaf blind. APH products are designed for infants, preschoolers, students, and adults, both in education and in daily living.

In other words they are trying to organize the worlds information and make it accessible to the sight impaired. In some ways this task is easier than Google's, and in other ways, it is far, far more difficult.

This organization is a little hard to appreciate unless you go visit them. I was in Louisville today for a big status meeting (more on that later), but the more interesting part of the day was a tour of their "printing plant" and their museum. I have visited maybe 20 printing plants in my career, but I've never seen anything, and I mean not even close, to anything that resembles what I saw today.

APH generally (and lets be very liberal here, because they do lots of other products too) takes books that were published by other publishers and creates Braille and/or Large Print editions - on demand - for the sight impaired. Contractually, some of these Braille editions still need to be created on plates, and others can be done electronically. In either case, they need to be translated into Braille first before they can be printed - or I should say imprinted. Braille is essentially an embossing process for every character. Any production person I know will tell you how much embossing just a cover of a paperback book costs. Imagine every character. Each page needs to be printed individually from plates!

The plant is a strange combination of 19th century technology and 21st century technology. There are machines in that plant that I swear are more than 100 years old. All I could think about was the guy whose job it was to keep them running. There were machines in this plant that I have seen only in Antique shops. Yet they were still running, and being run by people who literally endangered their hands every second of their shift.

Then there were sheet fed machines that were were running side by side to create materials (again) one page at a time.

To appreciate this, I want you to imagine a 384 page text book with color illustrations - let's say a high school physics book. Imagine that the reader can't see any of the diagrams. The translator now needs not only to produce the textual translation, but also needs to try and literally interpret and describe the graph or picture. What an incredibly daunting task. I was told of a tragic story today of an AP Physics student who needed a Braille translation, but couldn't get it - and therefore couldn't take AP Physics - because they couldn't find a translator. It wasn't because it was going to cost $30,000 to translate that one book, it was simply that there weren't any translators available who knew physics and braille.

Now, assume that 384 page book could be translated. How many pages is that in braille? I have no idea, but I think a safe assumption would be at least 768. What an unbelievable mission!

This company labors on, under everyone's radar... since 1858.... doing what google has been doing since what? 1998?

We have had the great fortune of have APH as a client for about nine months now, and today we were able to preview the new Louis database portal (which we developed) as well as their new e-commerce site and Title Management database (again a Firebrand product), working together to help the people looking for sight impaired products - find them.

After seeing the incredible job APH has taken on for themselves, our little contribution seems like a pimple on the butt cheek of an organization with an incredible mission. To learn more about APH you can check out their website, or check out the "current" Louis database - but be aware it will be much improved probably around the beginning of next year.

Blinding Flash of the Obvious

Sometimes, it's a blinding flash of the obvious that makes your head spin with new insights.

Manga is arguably the fastest growing genre in publishing today. These companies are hot. Traditional publishers often druel openly as they watch the manga titles fly off the shelves, while theirs just sit (or worse, are returned). The conventional publishing wisdom says that manga's success is due to manga publishers creating the types of books that kids want to read, and that kids today have shorter attention spans and want more illustrated works.

OK, that makes a certain amount of sense when you look through the lens of a book publisher.

But, yesterday, near the end of a very quiet day at BEA, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jeremy Ross, the director of new product development at TokyoPop. And, as casually as you might ask about the weather, he threw out a nugget that took a moment to register in my brain. He said, "we are not a publisher, we are media company, who happens to sell books".

Later, when I was out to dinner with Doug , the implications of that simple line for our business and for publishing in general began to flood over me like a wave.

The publishers who have been successfully transforming themselves in the face of the new digital day, have gotten this concept to some extent, but I believe Jeremy's simple statement goes even further. At the PMA Graduate School on Thursday both Andrew Savikas, and Mike Shatzkin spoke to the publishers about building communities around their niche markets, and supporting their books by serving the reader with all they need, which might include the book, but might include other ancillary materials as well. All really good points, and as more publishers take those concepts to heart, they will transition into a new style of company.

However, in their hearts they will still be book publishers who happen to build communities, and not media companies who happen to publish books. It may sound like a fine line, but I believe it is one of the keys to why manga in general, and TokyoPop in particular have been so successful. They are not limited by the traditional publishing lens. Hence, they are not 'transitioning', they are just 'being' different.

Innovation - 5% Planning, 95% execution

Thomas Edison might not appreciate my application of his famous quote about invention, but I do think that invention and innovation are very similar concepts.

For the past two years, dozens of conferences like today’s BISG Making Information Pay (MIP) event and the ECPA Leadership Summit earlier this week, and our own event a month ago, have been focusing on the interesting changes being made in the publishing industry by a few key companies. Looking back now, it seems that those few have been very impressive on multiple fronts. Not only did they focus on an innovative idea, they acted on it, and made it real. The simple fact that they planned and executed the development of an idea seems to be the real victory. Virtually all of the speakers at MIP today were speaking about things that they had DONE, not things that they were planning to do.

And execution seems to be what separates the successful from the unsuccessful. In my estimation, successful companies have a culture of execution. They don’t just talk about doing things, they actually do them. And then, they review the results and improve the process. In today’s MIP event, Carolyn Pittis explained that this was certainly the case at HarperCollins.

Size doesn’t matter in this either. O’Reilly Media, self considered the third largest computer book publisher, is widely viewed as the most innovative publisher in the business. The reason isn’t because they simply talk about their ideas; it is because they demonstrate them! Michael Cader of Publisher’s Lunch and Publisher’s Marketplace showed in today’s MIP that very few resources are really necessary to create very innovative services.

Other publishers we work with like Island Press, The University of Chicago Distribution Center, the University of Nebraska Press, and Southern Illinois University Press, also have cultures of execution, even though they have limited resources. These companies continue to drive themselves forward, not worrying about whether others are or not. This type of self reliance is refreshing and exhilarating to be around, and I applaud these companies for their efforts. They are truly Firebrands!

What I think is so impressive about these companies is that execution of a new idea can be a nerve wracking and risky move. When we launched Firebrand, I was privately wondering right up until the night before the launch whether it was a good idea. Fortunately, by that time the plan had so much momentum that my private worries were overwhelmed. Now looking back, I’m very pleased that was the case!

The Facebook Experiment - Checkpoint #1

At our user conference a couple of weeks ago, we introduced to our friends and customers the idea of creating a community. At the conference, this idea was very well received, and I'm completely jazzed by the possibilities that exist not only for growing our business, but for growing the book industry as a whole.

The word "community", however, is a way over-used term in the tech world today. And it is one that has many subtly different meanings to people.

Our first experiment in the creation of Community, was to put a "Wiki Page" together for the conference. In the weeks leading up to it, we know that site got a very strong amount of traffic, and the feedback we received from it was very good.

Our next experiment was to put a "Group Page" together on Facebook. We even put a link to it on our new website. This page allows us to post articles, manage threaded discussions, post pictures, and even contact one another privately. A lot of nice functionality at no 'monetary cost'. But, the 'cost' is that you have to join Facebook, and put your 'real' self out there on the internet. I'm fearing that I may have underestimated that cost to some people.

As of this writing there are 47 members of the Firebrand Technologies Facebook Group. Not bad, but not that great either, when you consider that 16 of us work for Firebrand. I'm sure we can nudge that up in a couple of weeks as we start to post some videos and other things that we have planned. but that still doesn't get us into the numbers I was originally expecting.

But the numbers are really a secondary issue for me at this point. The numbers would surely rise if the page was used more by its members - and the discussions became as dynamic as I think that they can. Again, as of this writing, Doug and I are the only people who have posted anything out there. It seems like everyone who has joined, is watching to see what will happen. (We are, obviously, too). Doesn't anyone else have an opinion?

I guess we'll all keep watching.... I'll blog another checkpoint in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, the Firebrand Community Management Plan continues to be developed, and I'm extraordinarily excited by the possibilities. The issue is not what to do, but what to do first!

More to come on that in the next couple of weeks as well.

If anyone has any ideas, please comment here, or, better yet, join our group, and comment there!

Hot and Sour Soup

I'm back!

What a long, strange trip it's been....

As Doug Lessing so eloquently describes in his blog, 'Up the Mast', we have done it! We have re-branded our company as Firebrand Technologies. We've got a new website, we've got a new look, and we've got a new mission. Our mission now is to harness the power of the community of Firebrands that we are creating to move our entire industry forward. It's pretty ambitious stuff for a simple software company.

Not only have we re-branded, we pulled off an incredible conference here in Newburyport, and our development team launched a wholly new piece of software so flexible, that many of the big internet companies should be jealous (read salesforce.com). What an unbelievable couple of months!

Now that its all done, I was trying to think how to put into words, how I was feeling. Maybe because our family went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner last night, the metaphor that comes to mind is 'hot and sour soup'. (You might have to like hot & sour soup to appreciate this metaphor).

In that context, I would label my feelings, 'Pride & Humility soup'.

For me, hot and sour is a misnomer for the soup itself. The name leaves out the fact that there is something sweet and tangy intermixed with spices and tartness. This combination sends my taste buds in multiple directions at the same time, with the result being an extraordinarily vibrant and pleasurable experience.

In the same way, Pride & Humility soup is a misnomer. It leaves out the notion of a heavy smattering of Gratitude. This combination sends my emotions in multiple directions at the same time, with the result being an extraordinarily vibrant and pleasurable experience.

I am very proud of how our team, including our extended team at MicroArts, planned and executed our launch. I am humbled by the way everyone reacted so positively to everything that we did, and at what lies before us to fulfill our mission. And, I am grateful for all of the hard work, and participation that made it all go so smoothly.

I don't know when I'll get to taste Pride & Humility soup again, but now that I've had it, I guarantee it won't take 20 years for me to taste it again.

Thanks everyone - for everything. fpt