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

Blogging Hiatus

It's been a while since I've posted anything. At first, I could 'blame' it on a vacation. It was a great one, too. Very little possiblity of internet access or cell phone service.

That vacation gave me time to think, and I came back with lots of ideas to share. But, for the past couple of weeks, I've been completely consumed by another project - the organizing of our first ever, user conference.

I'm extraordinarily excited by this conference, and our team has been putting a lot of time into its planning. As of this writing, we're closing in on 100 or so publishing professionals who have committed to joining us on April 8th and 9th in Newburyport, MA.

The themes of the conference are Community Building and Reinvention, and these themes really seem to have struck a chord with our customers, and several others who have signed up to come.

For more information about the conference check out this http://wiki.qsolution.com/index.php?title=2008_Open_House_and_User_Conference_Wiki

When a Good Idea Meets Good Timing

Just before Christmas, I sent out an email to many people in the QS community to announce that we were going to put on our first user conference on April 8th and 9th. This was just an informal ‘save the date message’, designed simply to let people know that we were planning something and to mark their calendars appropriately. The response was immediate and incredible.

Directly and indirectly we heard of people who were planning on coming to the event. Some people we haven’t heard from in a long time, and others who we have spent a lot of time with in recent months. All were excited, and all were willing to come way off the beaten path to Newburyport, MA.

In all my years in business, our ideas have either been way ahead of their time, or way behind. But with this user conference, it seems that we have hit the timing curve right on the button. When we initially came up with the idea, we thought that maybe 50 people – if we were lucky – would want to attend. Now its looking like 2 to 3 times that number are interested in what we have to say.

Since then, I put out another email about the conference, asking people to participate in a survey about what they wanted to accomplish during those two days. Again, the response was astounding. The response rate thus far is about what a surveyor might hope for; we are up to about 15% of those surveyed responding. Amazingly though, 86% of those responding to the survey said that they were planning to attend.

Now, it’s up to us to deliver. Our community has spoken. They have told us loud and clear that they want to be brought together and brought into the conversation about where we are and where we are going.

This strong, positive feedback is very invigorating. Everyone on the QS team is charged up and looking to put their best foot forward. I have no doubts this will be a memorable experience for all involved. So, when a good idea hits good timing, the results are more positive than you can imagine.

2008 is Going to be Great

Happy New Year, and welcome to 2008! I am very excited about the year ahead for our company, our customers, and the book publishing industry.

Michael Cairn's blog today lays out some interesting prognostications about our industry. While I'm not thinking at the same level as Michael in my exuberance, many of our thoughts dovetail. I particularly agree with the line, "In the not-too-distant future, we may look back on 2007 as a significant transition year for the media business." I made a similar statement in a post I made in December.

So, here are a few of my own prognostications:

• I think that 2008 will be a 'wildfire' year in terms of the use of technical devices (pc's, ebook readers, cell phones, pda's etc.) for the purpose of reading. I say that with my XO pc sitting next to me, and thinking about all of the children that will be introduced to technology who don't have access to printed materials. I think that in general, 2008 will be the year that ebooks go 'mainstream'.
• 2008 will be the year of infrastructure building for book publishers. The new digital paradigm requires a much different infrastructure than the traditional print paradigm. Most book publishers spent at least part (if not all) of 2007 creating strategies and figuring out what the infrastructure should look like, and 2008 is the year to make all that a reality.
• I agree with Michael that the 'squeezed value chain' from author to consumer is going to challenge many book publishers. But, I am very excited about what I see as potential opportunities in those challenges (more on that in a future post).
• In 2008, both Google and Amazon are going to do something that knocks our socks off. I have lots of ideas about what could happen, but I won't speculate here. I'm willing to bet that they both spent a lot of time in 2007 planning to release something big this year.
• In 2008, the killer app is going to be the one that helps consumers identify the content that they want to read and cull out the content they don't want. Peter Bloom used the term 'separating signal from noise' at the AAP Annual Meeting last year. There is so much content available to read, that even with RSS feeds, and subscriptions, there is too much to sift through. Software and people that provide that kind of service will surely hit the market in 2008, and continue to get better and better in the future. I especially see an important role in this for social networks, libraries, and bricks-and-mortar retailers.
• I think that blogs will continue to grow and improve in 2008, and will become an increasingly important aspect of online communication. Minimally, they will be used to keep ecommerce sites fresh with content, but more and more, you will see them used as instructional tools, and dialog starters. I especially like what Seth Godin had to say the other day about how it doesn't matter whether a blog only gets a few hits, as long as they are the 'right' hits. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find that entry again, so I can't link to it, sorry!)
• The lines between all forms of media are going to get blurrier and blurrier. 2008 will see a continued trend toward simplifying our abilities to move between (and interact with) audio, video, and text based medias. I expect many new types of hybrid products being experimented with in 2008.
• In 2008, I think that there is a real possibility that consumers will become overloaded by the amount of content pushed at them, and look for ways to eschew some technologies and simplify their lives.
• Unfortunately, I also expect that in this year of very rapid change, some of the more monolithic companies are going to feel some pain, and may even be toppled because they couldn't adapt fast enough. (I never thought I'd think of Microsoft as a monolithic company!) Publishers that don't get very entrepreneurial this year are going to find themselves in big trouble by 2010.

That's probably enough for now. Times of change are always good for Quality Solutions, and I am sure that the roles we play with our customers will only grow in both size and importance.

Here's to a great 2008!

I’m getting a Kindle, I’m getting a Kindle!

Last Friday night at our company Christmas Party, my team presented me with a ‘notice’ that they had purchased a Kindle for me. Shocked and excited, I must admit to a kid-like anticipation of its arrival. Of course, no one knows when that will be.

Now I’m hoping that Amazon’s ‘under promise, over deliver’ style is going to kick in, and the new Kindle will be arriving very soon.

Having seen one first hand, I’m very curious about using it for real reading. As stated in a previous post, I’m reading more now than ever, and I look forward to organizing my time around it’s use.

Thanks to all my friends at Quality Solutions for their generous hearts. This is a gift that I would not have bought for myself. It’s a little pricey for my blood, but getting it as a gift is a great thing!

On Kindle and e-books and much more...

On Monday, my friend, David Berlind, who is an executive editor for ZD-Net interviewed me about a pretty sweeping array of topics related to Kindle and the book publishing industry. He wrote in his blog today, and even published a podcast of our conversation.

For anyone who has been following this blog, it should be interesting. Thanks, David for saving me a ton of writing.....

Amazon’s Kindle: Much needed revolution or book industry power play? by ZDNet's David Berlind -- Like Apple’s iPods and the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) from which they can so effortlessly acquire content, the transparency of the automation and infrastructure that makes Amazon’s Kindle work so effortlessly with the Amazon.com Web site is a marvel in terms of the user experience. But the same technology under the hood that makes [...]

A Major Milestone

We, at Quality Solutions, hit what is for us, a major milestone this week - one that I couldn't even have envisioned just a few years ago. And, one, that would be simply wrong not to acknowledge in public.

This week, with the receipt of a signed agreement from Standard Publishing, we now have 50 direct, active, clients. The words 'direct' and 'active' are critical in that sentence. In 'active', I mean that these are clients with whom we have had payment for our services in 2007. 'Direct' is a little more complicated. As many of our clients distribute books for other publishers, the actual number of publishers we serve is well in excess of 2,000.

For those of you reading this, 50 may not sound like much. But, it is huge for us. Only seven or eight years ago, we had 5 direct, active clients. All of those were very large companies, and we were a bit of a puppet on a string. Our fortunes either soared or (more often) plummeted based on the whims of just a few people.

At 50, we are in a much more stable situation. This year we weathered a 'perfect storm' in that we had four of our clients got acquired by other publishers (and one more is in progress now). Fortunately, in all four cases we were able to either keep or expand our presence in the new parent organization, but for a while there, in each, it was touch and go.

I cannot begin to say how proud I am to be part of this team at Quality Solutions. It's just an incredible group of people who are completely dedicated to making our publishing clients more successful. Their hard work and dedication are certainly an inspiration to me.

Given our current momentum, the next milestone, 75, looks quite attainable. It's just a matter of time.

The Obscurity Problem

I just started my subscription to Shelf-Awareness, a very nice daily newsletter put out Jenn Risko, and PW veteran, John Mutter. One of the sections in Wednesday's edition was a listing of new titles that were coming out this week. This section, on the surface, seemed innocuous enough, but as I thought about it, I became more and more disturbed.

At first I noticed that none of my customer's books were there. Then I noticed that almost all of the 20 or so books listed were from the big houses - predominantly, Random House, Harper, and S&S. It made me wonder, did they pay for those listings?

So, I dug a little further, and checked our database to see what was publishing next week. I came up with a listing of over 900 titles! Well, that made me think, 'no wonder the list was so short, there is no way they could show all the titles out there'. As we have roughly 15% of the total active titles in the market in our database, if we have 900 publishing, then there must be on the order of 6,000 titles - throughout the industry - publishing this week!

In my role as the leader of Quality Solutions, I attend many different conferences. In many of them over the past couple of years, we have been hearing many people say that too many books are being published. We hear annual statistics so often that - and maybe this is just me - their impact is minor. But, when I found 900+ titles in our database publishing this week, I was truly amazed at the scale of that number.

How can so many titles be flooded into the market and hope to sell? This reminds me of when I was a little kid, learning about what happens when a dandelion sends out it's seeds. Some fall to the ground and get trampled, some get eaten by birds, and some actually find a conducive spot and grow. Is that what we - as an industry - are trying to do with our books? Throw out a flood of titles and let natural selection take over?

I know that every individual publisher we work with would disavow that assertion, but it is hard when you aggregate the numbers to ignore the issue. At the Google conference in NYC a few weeks ago, several of the speakers put a different spin on the issue. Their thesis was that it is not that too many books are being published, but that the volume is causing a problem of 'obscurity'. Each individual title is obscured because what might have been in the past, "15 minutes of fame" is now generally less than 15 seconds.

And, we are a people of many interests and many tastes. So there are markets for these titles, it is just that finding that 'fertile soil' is a rather large challenge - and maybe they are smaller markets than publishers would like.

I think that it is interesting how 'mass market paperback' retailers address this. They have limited shelf space, and every week or so they completely restock the shelves keeping only the hottest books and authors. Talk about natural selection!

In upcoming posts, I'll be visiting this topic repeatedly. If you have any comments, please email me ftoolan at qsolution dot com.

Slumbering Giants and Publishing Services

Maybe I feel some of the tectonic shifts in our industry more acutely than others, because our very existence as a company is so threatened by them.

Nothing illustrates this point more than the consolidation of the distribution market. From my point of view, this consolidation has been largely driven by the need to have a more efficient supply chain. This essentially means that retailers - large and small - have the tools they need to help their customers find what they are looking for and deliver it to them as quickly as possible. This is true whether it is the local corner bookstore or a behemoth online retailer.

To have a more efficient supply chain means to have the technology and industry standards in place for companies to have their computer systems talking to each other, and to automate as much of the process as possible.

This technology 'barrier to entry' in publishing is now at such a daunting level, that most publishers have realized its better to 'partner' with another company who knows how to manage the technology than to make the money and people investments necessary to do it themselves.

Fortunately, there are companies that have made all the proper investments along the way, and have built a formidable array of systems and technology services that make it easy for publishers to take advantage. Most of these companies are in the distribution business (as well).

For several years, distribution companies have thought of themselves in those terms alone - that they handled distribution. Now, most are awakening to the fact that they are really publishing services companies, and it just so happens that they are also distribution companies. Once awakened to this FACT, they start to realize that they are no longer bound only to those customers they do distribution for. Now they can start offering other services, like content management, content distribution, production management, or royalty accounting to companies they don't have any distribution arrangement with at all.

So why is this such a threat? Well, its two-fold for us. One is direct, and one is indirect. The direct threat is that there are now simply less customers for us, and for all other publishing systems providers. We, at Quality Solutions, are slightly immune to this as our systems help publishers with their core competencies - editorial, and marketing. However, the clock is clearly ticking, and it won't be long before the slumbering giants will be offering those services as well. And, while we're fortunate to have many of the large service providers as customers, our room for growth is very small.

The indirect threat is from other publishing software companies. Especially those who offer order processing and other back office systems. In a market where there were maybe 20 companies to begin with, we've seen several 'consolidations' just in the past six months. The last two being just recently - Vista and Ingenta, and the Cat's Pajama's and Media Services. These companies are swallowing each other to stay alive as their customers bolt to the larger 'publishing services' companies.

This is an indirect threat to us, because now those software companies are thinking that their future lies in what we do. This will only create more competition in an ever shrinking market, and will kill us all more quickly, as our services get commoditized. It sort of feels like the rats on a sinking ship seeking higher ground.

The only answer to this threat is to create new services! We've got several in mind, and in the coming months, we'll be announcing several in rapid fire succession. The creation of new services is often a risky business, and building things that publishers didn't even think they needed has been the hallmark of what Quality Solutions has done for the last 20 years. Stay tuned!

Blinding Flash of the Obvious

I criss-crossed the country last week talking to publishers about digital strategy. (Truth be told, I probably spent more time waiting for delayed flights in airports than talking to publishers).

During one of those conversations, the publisher was talking about his strategy for getting titles into the top 8 search results on Google when an individual typed in various search terms. We moaned about how books rarely, show up in the top 8.

This conversation dove-tailed with another about content distribution, and Google indexing PDF files. Suddenly, there was a very simple solution to get the book to come up more readily - put keywords right in the text! Two seconds later, it was obvious where to put them: the copyright page. What reader would ever feel the slightest bother of having Internet search words listed on the copyright page? None. After all, Library of Congress Catalog in Publication (CIP) terms are already there.

Here was an almost cost free way to help improve the ability for consumers to find these titles on the Internet.

We may all love our physical books, but here is an opportunity to link old school and new school thinking, and to help battle obscurity.

The only issue with this plan is that marketing needs to get involved with the book earlier in the publication life cycle than they normally do. But, that sounds like a good topic for another blog entry.