multimedia / all media - Frankfurt Book Fair

Editorial

Frankfurt Academy Quarterly

Issue #03, April 2012 Three is a crowd

MULTIMEDIA / ALL MEDIA

On the vanishing borders among the creative industries, the drive to be international, and the trade in intellectual property.

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Insiders on multimedia publishing

How social media is changing publishing

A technology start-up‘s view on publishing

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Three is a crowd

The Frankfurt Academy was launched last year in Frankfurt with more than 3,000 participants from over 50 countries. The Mind Network is expanding this year and the Academy is becoming even more international, with the result that you can also meet all of the interview partners featured in our FAQ issue at our forthcoming global Frankfurt Academy conferences: In Beijing at the StoryDrive China Conference; in New York at the Children’s Publishing Conference; in New York and San Francisco on the Tech Tour; or in Buenos Aires at TOC Latin America.

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Holger Volland

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Enjoy your read of our third issue of the Frankfurt Academy Quarterly – and join the discussion on our Frankfurt Academy Blog!

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Our “Serendipity” section is all about outsider perspectives and chance encounters. Start-ups currently leading the digital revolution will be the highlight of the Tech Tour, which is being organised for June 2012 by the Frankfurt Book Fair’s New York office. Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis is convinced that “no industry is riper for the picking” by venture capitalists than the publishing industry. Especially in these global times, he finds that location is everything: “If you’re a technology start-up, you need to be in Silicon Valley”.

Holger Volland is VP Media Industries at the Frankfurt Book Fair and head of the Frankfurt Academy

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In “Trending Topics”, we’ll take a look at the world of social media publishing, because if multimedia content is increasingly becoming one thing, it’s interactive. It’s creating a world of user generated content that startups like Sourcefabric are putting to good use. For the Czech-German company, the resourceful support of professional journalism is a greater priority than profit. And not to mention, this global company has created publishing tools that make Sourcefabric one of the biggest players in open source software.

Three is a crowd

Three publishers, three opinions on multimedia content. Do they find that the publishing business is becoming more international? Who are some of their new business partners? How is the rights business changing? How do they (really) earn their money? Which books would they like to read, listen to and watch in multimedia form? We’ll answer these questions and more in our “Three is a crowd” section, featuring three international industry experts – Gus Balbontin of Lonely Planet, Nils-Holger Henning from the games manufacturer Bigpoint and Deborah Forte of Scholastic Media.

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Welcome!

FAQ talked to three insiders to get their perspectives on multimedia publishing: Gus Balbontin from Lonely Planet, Nils-Holger Henning from Bigpoint and Deborah Forte from Scholastic.

Three is a crowd

1: “The biggest challenge is mindset and culture”

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Three is a crowd

Interview with Gus Balbontin, Director of Transformation, Lonely Planet By Siobhan O’Leary

FAQ: In your opinion, what has changed the most about the process of publishing travel guides in recent years?

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We have enjoyed a few decades of publishing improvements driven mainly by efficiency and effectiveness (better layout tools, better writing tools, better transport, better stock management, etc). We are now entering a world of change driven by customers accessing and using content in different ways. This latest shift is much more fundamental and comes from advancements in telecommunications, the internet, devices such as phones and tablets, and so on.

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Gus Balbontin is a strategy and innovation expert. He specialises in leading complex cross-business transformation initiatives that require significant operational restructuring with minimum disruption to the business. He has a knack for incubating and integrating new products, market opportunities, platforms and technologies into existing businesses. Gus is playing a lead role in Lonely Planet’s transformation from print publisher to multiformat publisher.

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Gus Balbontin, Director of Transformation, Lonely Planet

Gus Balbontin: These days it’s easier to think and work internationally. Publishing an e-book in various territories, for example, is as simple as uploading it and ticking a few boxes, while in the past you needed people in each territory with relationships that sometimes took years to build. Your question was how important it is. Well, this depends on what type of publisher you are, where are your customers, etc. It isn’t important for everyone. Lonely Planet has its customers spread all over the world. They need solutions to problems they face before taking off, while they are on the road and when they come back, so for us to be global, collaborative and so on, is critical.

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FAQ: How important is it to think and work internationally when publishing multimedia and multiformat products, not just in terms of licensing, but also in terms of co-production, collaborations, etc.?

FAQ: How has the publisher-author relationship changed, if at all?

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The biggest challenge is mindset and culture. The rest is no different than any of the puzzles businesses solve regularly, i.e. cost, margins, profits, etc. Is it true that in the publishing industry we’re all a little out of sync with the market (i.e. the cost of making something vs. the price people are prepared to pay)? Yes, but again, these are puzzles businesses are relatively good at solving. On the other hand, changing mindsets and the culture of a place is much harder.

Three is a crowd

FAQ: You are responsible for managing innovation and change at Lonely Planet. Can you name some of the biggest hurdles you face in the transition to multimedia and multiformat products? Do some of the challenges relate to the cost of producing such products and the price customers expect to pay for them?

The Frankfurt Book Fair and O’Reilly Media, Inc. have teamed up with the Feria Internacional del Libro de Buenos Aires to bring the most important conference on publishing innovation to Latin America. On 20 April, TOC Latin America will focus on standards, global digital publishing trends, case studies of innovative publishers in Latin America, consumer habits, and much more. It will introduce you to the local and international entrepreneurs who are sowing the seeds of digital development in the heart of Cono Sur. To register, visit: http://toclatinamerica.com/ registration/

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The information a traveller needs to solve his or her problems remains relatively unchanged. How a publisher gets this information – who they get it from and how they get it – is certainly changing. For example, do you contract an author to write a book, or to write about a place that may end up on a website, an app and an e-book? Do you get all the information from an author or use some UGC [user generated content]? As a publisher, do you stand between authors and travellers (the readers), or do you become a platform to enable a direct relationship?

TOC Latin America 2012

They aren’t yet, really. Some of the more social guides like Wenzani will be able to get you to places that you may have missed before. But the way people travel is more impacted by wars, economic changes, etc., than by the actual travel guide itself.

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FAQ: How are multimedia travel guides changing the way we travel?

FAQ: How do you envision the future of multimedia publishing, particularly in the travel category? There will be a huge shift once the cost of roaming on phones and tablets decreases and more travellers start consuming their travel content live, on phones, tablets, laptops and books! Travellers will be able to combine great, rich content from a variety of providers to solve their problems seamlessly.

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FAQ: Do you look to other models in publishing or other creative industries for inspiration? Where do you learn about the latest trends in publishing and beyond?

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Yes, all the time. My RSS feed is built with tech updates, media related news, financial news, and more. I look at the gaming industry, music, TV and even car manufacturing for clues and inspiration.

FAQ: Do your primary competitors come from the traditional publishing industry or other industries? Primary competitors still come from the traditional publishing industry… still… but not for much longer.

FAQ: If you had to compare Lonely Planet’s (or the overall industry’s) level of multimedia publishing development to a human growth stage, would you say we’re in the baby phase, or the terrible twos; are we toddlers, teenagers, or adults?

Meet gus balbontin

Baby phase… definitely.

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You can meet Gus as a speaker at Tools of Change (TOC) Latin America 2012, at the Feria del Libro de Buenos Aires, Argentina

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The main difference between us and the rest is that we are independent (we take no commissions for adding information to our guides), and we know because we go (we still send authors every two years to survey the world). MairDumont are our foreign partners in Germany. They translate and publish our guides for the German market.

Three is a crowd

FAQ: What distinguishes Lonely Planet from foreign publishers in the travel field, like MairDumont, or from others in your domestic travel guide scene? 

20 April 2012, 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. http://www.book-fair.com/en/academy/ http://toclatinamerica.com

Or contact Gus on twitter @gusbalbontin or LinkedIn

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Deborah Forte is President of Scholastic Media, and Executive Vice President of Scholastic Inc. She is highly regarded as an expert in children‘s media, and is an award-winning creator and producer of children‘s movies, television programming, websites and interactive games, amongst others the „Golden Compass“ and the „Goosebumps“ series, planned for big-screen adaption in 2012. Deborah Forte is responsible for managing Scholastic‘s media businesses and serves as the group‘s lead creative and business executive. She formed Scholastic Entertainment in 1997 with the goal of creating high quality children‘s media that could reinforce literacy. She created the only full-scale production company in the children‘s publishing industry that successfully develops, produces and markets children‘s movies, television programming, and interactive programming.

Three is a crowd

By Dennis Abrams

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2: New E-Book Platform Storia: Reinventing Reading for Kids Means Redelivering, Reimagining Content

Deborah Forte, President of Scholastic Media

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“Children’s publishing innovates more quickly because it has to”, says Deborah Forte, President of Scholastic Media and Executive Vice President of Scholastic Inc. It is in children’s publishing, she believes, that the future of digital publishing can first be seen. “Because children are reading for enjoyment and for learning, it’s all in the delivery of the content,” she explains. “It’s in their DNA to look at a screen to find out something and to expect to see the things they love and to be able to communicate with each other and it’s much more their language to be screen-centric.” But it’s not only their use of digital technology that puts children at the forefront of the digital revolution; it’s the way they purchase the material, as well as their ability to learn new applications as quickly as they’re developed. “That

What makes a children’s book great? How and what will children be reading in 2020? Children’s and young adult publishing remains one of the industry’s most profitable growth areas. But what lies ahead for this unique segment? Organised by Publishing Perspectives and sponsored by Scholastic Inc., the half-day conference “What Makes a Children’s Book Great?” on May 31, 2012, will offer informed insight into the present and future of this fast-evolving area of publishing. The event will bring together leaders in the field of children’s publishing in the run-up to BookExpo America to discuss some of the most compelling and timely issues for print and digital publishing. http://publishingperspectives.com/ childrens-books-conference-2012/

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It’s a major step forward for the company, which has been criticized for being slow to go digital. E-books currently account for 5 per cent of sales for Scholastic children’s books, a fraction of the percentage many publishers report for adult books. Forte argues that the initial investment costs of a Kindle or Nook e-book reading device, even as the price for some models drops below $100, is a reason why few kids currently own them, adding that the typical e-reader is not designed for young people. “To date, the adoption of e-books for children has been slower than for adults, but we know that over time, more children and families will want to have access to quality children’s e-books,” Forte says. “By creating Storia, an e-reading system for children that works across multiple platforms, Scholastic can offer thousands of e-books for kids of all ages

Children‘s Publishing Conference

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Scholastic is promoting Storia to both teachers and parents, and has designed the app to appeal to two different age groups:  Books are grouped in a 3 to 7-year-old range and 8 to 14, with customers able to download the free app at scholastic.com (and on iTunes later this month) and choose titles to place on their own personalized “book shelf.” Five free books, including two multimedia selections, are included with the download. Prices for books range from $1.95 to $20. The design of the books will be retained and make it simple for readers to turn the digital pages. As an added tool, parents will be able to track which books their kids are reading, how long they read them, and which new words have been learned.

Three is a crowd

To wit: following 18 months of development – and its initial revelation at last year’s Frankfurt Book Fair – Scholastic has begun beta tests for Storia, its proprietary digital platform for selling and distributing its own trade titles as well as e-editions of other children’s houses. The beta version became available on 8 March for teachers and families who buy through the Scholastic Book Clubs and other Scholastic sales channels. It features 1,300 titles, the vast majority published by Scholastic, and makes such classic picture series as “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and “Ready, Freddy!” available in digital format for the first time. Forte says she expects Storia to have more than 2,000 books available when it launches for the general public in the fall.

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audience is buying and using content on screen fairly robustly”, she adds. “And with the introduction of the iPad, even very young children are able to use new apps in a way that speaks to the need for children’s book publishers to innovate.”

on whatever device they already own and continue to encourage kids to learn and love to read.”

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Meet the scholastic team

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Scholastic is hosting Publishing Perspectives’ Children’s Publishing Conference on 31 May in New York City, running from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Scholastic Headquarters, 557 Broadway, New York, NY. The title of the conference is: “What makes a children’s book great?” Scholastic’s CEO Richard Robinson will be amongst the speakers.

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“Business models are going to change, as is the way that content is packaged, but I can’t tell you how. What’s not going to change is the necessity for real good stories.” From Forte’s perspective, children’s publishing in all forms is transforming before our eyes, making this one of the most exciting times in publishing ever: “Publishers are so fortunate to have so many opportunities to redeliver content.  It’s a time of great and fabulous challenges – challenges in strategy and business.”

Three is a crowd

Of course, the need to innovate means more than just launching new technologies. It refers to the whole way of viewing digital publishing. “We have a unique perspective – of course everyone thinks that – but from my perspective there’s all this attention being paid to what publishers refer to as ‘disruptive publisher’ – book apps, games, etc. – and selling them as a form of electronic book. It’s interesting to me because of where I’ve lived for the last couple of decades. My job has been to translate books into media, and keeping others’ vision intact, but working to recreate it as a satisfying and stimulating media experience.” The key, Forte says, is, indeed, a matter of translation. Instead of simply porting a physical book and making it digital (not unlike the process of turning a hardcover into a paperback), what is essential is reinventing what the experience can be using digital.

31. May 2012, New York City 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. For more information please see http://publishingperspectives.com/

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FAQ: What role do “stories” play in the games sector? Is there a growing trend in the sector for stories – for a depth of storytelling that’s similar to books? The triumph of free-to-play (F2P) browser games poses new challenges for the developers, because the players now have the same high expectations of quality and story for online games as they do for the more traditional console or computer games. That‘s why online games have to be entertaining and interesting from the

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Nils-Holger Henning: For us, the Game of Thrones online game is an exceptionally exciting project because we‘ve seen the incredible potential of this intellectual property for a successful online game. We work very closely with HBO and George R.R. Martin, who are giving us tremendous support to make sure the game reflects the fantastic, multi-layered plot as accurately as possible. George R.R. Martin is enthusiastic about the project and is helping us a lot.

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FAQ: Game of Thrones is based on the book series, „A Song of Ice and Fire“, (A Game of Thrones is the name of one of the books in this series), by George R.R. Martin. The related TV series became a hit on HBO. What was it like working with HBO? Did you also have any contact with George R.R. Martin or his publisher?

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By Nina Klein

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Nils-Holger Henning, Chief Communications Officer

Nils-Holger Henning joined Bigpoint GmbH as Chief Communications Officer (CCO) in 2005 to establish the finance department and build up the company’s vast network of media partners. He is also active as a company spokesperson and regularly gives keynote addresses at major international industry conferences, such as the Games Convention Asia in Singapore, the European Game Developer Summit in Mallorca, the MIPCOM in Cannes, the Casual Connect in Kiev and in Hamburg, and the Browser Game Forum in Frankfurt. Before joining Bigpoint, Henning worked for a number of well known companies, including AOL, Whirlpool and Sport Voswinkel, a sports goods company based in Germany. In his free time, Henning is a passionate art collector who travels internationally, not only for business reasons, but also to indulge his deep personal interest in foreign cultures. As an enthusiastic amateur scuba diver, he prefers to spend his free time exploring the depths of the oceans.

Three is a crowd

Interview with Nils-Holger Henning, Bigpoint

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3: Browser games are tapping into the Chinese market

For more information, please see http://www.book-fair.com/pdf/fbf_ exclusive_game_peking_2012.pdf

Bigpoint was one of the first to understand the significance and the potential of media partnerships. At the moment we‘re concentrating above all on international expansion. Besides the USA and South America, Italy, Spain, France and the UK are particularly important for our business development. And book publishers are also becoming increasingly interesting to us. Internationally successful novels like Stephenie Meyer‘s Twilight and Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins show us where the trends are moving and what the next blockbuster movie is likely to be.

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or meet Lei Ren, Director Media Industries Asia, Frankfurt Book Fair contact: Lei Ren, Tel. +49 (0)69 2102-161 E-mail: [email protected]

FAQ: Bigpoint has entered into partnerships with a whole range of media companies, such as NBC Universal, Viacom (MTV Europe), Pro7/SBS, Bertelsmann (RTL, M6), Orange, and Telefonica. What are you hoping to gain from these partnerships? Which of them do you find specially interesting? What is the role of book publishers in this context?

Three is a crowd

„Exclusive Games“ Business Trip for Professionals 28 and 31 May 2012 Beijing, China. Parallel to the conference StoryDrive Asia, the Frankfurt Academy will host “Exclusive Games”, an organised trip for international representatives of the media and games industries. The trip is intended to familiarise the participants with the Chinese games and media markets, while providing access to new business contacts.

very first moment. The online games sector will keep on getting closer and closer to Hollywood. It‘s borrowing more and more themes and storytelling techniques from film and literature in order to create an effective and exciting world for the gamers.

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Accompanying the StoryDrive China conference:

FAQ: After opening offices in Sao Paulo, San Francisco and Berlin, you recently set up shop in Paris and London. What is it that makes the games business so international? How do you respond to the different tastes of your customers in different countries?

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The Chinese market is one of the most important growth markets in the world. For us to exploit the potential offered by Asia more effectively, we have to push ahead with the formation of partnerships. But another reason we‘ll be at StoryDrive Asia is because the book industry is going digital at an ever faster rate. Authors like Amanda Hocking, who released her work digitally on Amazon‘s Kindle after failing to find a publisher, are sometimes earning well over 100,000 dollars a month. The trend toward digitisation is going to get even bigger, and it‘ll give rise to new synergies.

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FAQ: You will soon be taking part in the multimedia conference StoryDrive China in Beijing. What interests you specifically about the Chinese market?

All human beings have a basic need to play, regardless of their origins and cultural background. The best games hold players in a constant state of “flow”, where the level of difficulty isn’t too high, so the game doesn’t become frustrating to them. Games are entertainment and as such they’ve risen to become a mass phenomenon. You succeed by finding the highest common factor. Where the factors are smaller and less convenient, that’s what our localisation department and community management are for – the ones who adapt our games to the local markets.

FAQ: Bigpoint is one of the world’s biggest makers of browser and online games. How do you earn your money? What, in your view, is the most successful business model for using online content?

I’d love to read Avatar as a series of novels – and to play it. Suzanne Collins’ “Hunger Games” trilogy would also be a good choice.

Meet nils-holger henning You can meet Nils as a speaker at the StoryDrive China Conference, running from 29 – 30 May in Beijing, during the China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), at the Auditorium, 3rd Floor, China National Convention Centre (Beijing)

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FAQ: What book would you like to see, read and play in a multimedia form?

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Our business model, for which we are the pioneers in Europe, is called free-to-play. Our games don’t cost anything to use and you can play them in your browser, without any boring downloads or expensive purchases. That means the entry threshold for the players is extremely low and we reach a much broader audience. Once you’re playing, you can buy certain additional functions, to help save time, for example, and progress more quickly through the game. Around ten per cent of our players are willing to do that. I’m convinced the digital future will be played out online; it will be for free and accessible everywhere. Ultimately, for the customers, the only thing that counts is the convenience.

StoryDrive China is the first all-media platform in Asia dedicated to exploring new forms of collaboration and business models across media boundaries. Leading minds from all around the world will look in detail at the future of media and entertainment. They will share their knowledge as well as the tools you need to optimise your business and exploit crossmedia and transmedia potential. StoryDrive China is a part of China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS). CIFTIS is an international comprehensive service trading platform, hosted by the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China and organised by the People’s Government of Beijing Municipality. http://storydrivechina.com/en2012/

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Of course, science fiction is a classic genre in the field of games. Especially with the online games, space themes have worked very well. That was mainly due to the generally male target group, but it was also because of the graphical and technical constraints on depicting people’s bodies in motion, compared with static objects. In the last few years, technological advances have done a lot to improve the quality of the graphics.

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FAQ: It’s often been said that science fiction is the most fitting literature for the internet. Is that also the case with games?

29 – 30 May 2012, Beijing

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Sourcefabric, one of the world’s largest open source providers of publishing tools, shows how user generated content, communities and more are reshaping the world of publishing.

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Sourcefabric: How social media is changing publishing

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By Siobhan O’Leary

Adam Thomas, Communications Manager, Sourcefabric

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Adam is originally from the UK and now lives in Berlin. He has managed projects at some 20 international media, art and film festivals throughout Europe. He joined Sourcefabric when it was just starting and is now part of its communications team, where he is primarily responsible for talking directly to the fast growing Airtime and Newscoop communities. He also organises many of Sourcefabric‘s events and oversees publishing on the website and beyond. The rest of the time Adam can be found touring Europe with his experimental music project or putting his MA in World Literature to use by writing novels that he never seems to finish. 

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Social media are a big part of Sourcefabric’s strategy for harnessing the reach of mobile, tablet and e-book technologies. As Berlin-based communications manager Adam Thomas points out, “Sourcefabric is all about bringing together communities around both open source technology and news. Social media, for us, represent the space in which this happens, which extends to both Facebook and Twitter, but also includes our forums, Sourceforge community and Freecode.” The firm’s social media strategy is primarily determined by its Berlin office, but most of the international team is actively involved at one level or another.

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The Prague-based, non-profit start-up, Sourcefabric, is all about communities and aims to support independent professional journalism. With branches in Berlin and Toronto and representatives in Minsk, Guatemala, Warsaw, Belgrade and Cluj, Romania, it is also quite international in its scope. Sourcefabric was originally founded in 1998 as the new media arm of the Media Development Loan Fund. In 2010 it was launched as an autonomous organisation with private funding, and today Sourcefabric is one of the largest European open source projects for news and media. One of its products is Booktype, an open source publishing platform that produces engaging books formatted, within minutes, for print, Amazon Kindle, iBooks and almost any e-reader. Its software is downloaded over 10,000 times a year by people who want to create books of their own or together with others through a web interface, and who then build a community around it and engage new readers using a variety of social tools.

10 – 14 October 2012, Frankfurt Book Fair

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“Dynamic page elements are not just environments to point at, swipe and drag in; we need to create an environment that helps people to think,” Thomas says. But the company also takes its inspiration and direction from its own team on the ground. “That’s the great thing about social media; we’re all influencers.”

You can also meet the Sourcefabric team on: Facebook FriendFeed identi.ca Tumblr YouTube Vimeo Flickr LinkedIn

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Sourcefabric’s general philosophy on interactive media is very much in line with the latest things being said by innovators such as Bret Victor. (Check out Victor’s Brief Rant on the Future of Interactive Design here: http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOf InteractionDesign/)

Or contact Adam Thomas on Twitter @sourceadam, @Sourcefabric or follow his blog http://dichterischefragmente. blogspot.de/

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But can Booktype users incorporate multimedia elements? “One of Booktype’s core features,” says Thomas, “is its ability to manage the output of books to all formats – print, e-book, tablet, mobile and more. We’re working on a design environment that will allow us to use interactive elements like interactive, time-based and dynamic media. Where it gets really interesting,” he adds, “is when it comes to the print output side of things. What does a video look like in an ink-andpaper book?”

Meet the Booktype team at the Frankfurt Book Fair, 10 – 14 October.

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Describing the Booktype model in detail, Thomas explains, “It specifically provides for a social production platform around print and digital books. Any number of people, anywhere, can become editors, authors and proofreaders via the web, with simultaneous editing, live chat and internal messaging tools.”

Meet the booktype team

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Users and developers get together in Sourcefabric’s online forums and a variety of social media platforms to discuss ways of improving its products, and to shape ideas for new solutions. As Thomas says, the top priority is to provide a “focused, friendly and useful community based on conversations. Knowledge is more important than numbers.” In addition to building communities, Sourcefabric’s tools – which include Booktype, Newscoop and Airtime – are about connecting these communities and blurring the line between content creator and consumer. They’re about “turning readers into journalists and listeners into broadcasters,” says Thomas.

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By Peter Brantley

FAQ: There seems to be a flourishing community of start-ups in publishing now. What do you think makes that possible? To what extent are publishing start-ups reliant on older publishing organisations, e.g. for content?

Matt MacInnis is founder and CEO of Inkling, an iPad textbook app company. He will be part of the Tech Tour 2012, which will bring together publishers and technology start-ups from New York City and San Francisco in June 2012. The tour is being organised by the German Book Office New York. If you are interested in taking part, please contact Thomas Minkus at [email protected].

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FAQ: In which areas do you think start-ups are flourishing most? Technology & services, marketing, content, or communities?

Matt MacInnis, CEO of Inkling

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Most start-ups rely on incumbent publishers for content, which is scary and frustrating but also pretty typical of these types of shifts. The record labels haven’t gone away, the movie studios haven’t gone away, and the large publishers won’t go away, either. I think start-ups like us will continue to partner with existing players, all the while cultivating smaller folks to pave the way and take risks in showing the bigger players what’s possible.

Interview with Matt MacInnis, CEO of Inkling

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Matt MacInnis: The digital publishing revolution is unique in that it requires a set of complex, coordinated technologies. There are opportunistic plays around distributing basic content; there are products like Kindle and iBooks that take a technically simple approach to serving a specific market (mostly fiction); and then there are audacious plays like Inkling. We’re taking on the toughest technical challenges in the hope of building a scalable future for the whole industry.

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A technology start-up‘s view: No industry is riper for the picking than publishing.

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Chance encounters are often the most fortuitous. At least that’s what many people say when they talk about the Frankfurt Book Fair. That’s why we’re going to try to simulate a “chance encounter” in every issue of FAQ in the form of a surprising perspective on the publishing industry. In this issue, we’ll take a look at Silicon Valleybased technology start-up Inkling.

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If you’re a technology start-up, you need to be in Silicon Valley. New York is fast catching up in terms of access to capital, talent and networks. But, for now at least, the Bay Area reigns supreme.

FAQ: New publishing companies are different from the sort of companies business angels or VC investors usually support, yet it seems Inkling had no trouble obtaining funds. What’s made it possible to “sell” Inkling and other new publishing companies?

FAQ: Inkling recently introduced an authoring platform called Habitat. Can you briefly describe what it is, and how it works?  Does it produce redistributable content? Inkling Habitat is a cloud-based production environment for interactive content. Anyone anywhere in the world can sit down at any web browser, log in, and see the state of every project they’re working on. They can modify the code, push previews to their devices, and treat books like databases that they can search for different media objects. They can then publish it instantly to Inkling for iPad and, soon, Inkling for Web, with other platforms on the way.

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When investors see what Inkling has already achieved in just over two years, it’s not a hard sell. They understand why what we’re doing will likely be of value to myriad customers, partners and acquirers, and they want to be a part of it.

To register, visit: http://publishingperspectives.com/ tech-tour-2012-nyc-san-francisco/ tech-tour-2012-registration/

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Angels and venture capitalists want to be at the leading edge of change. VCs, especially those focused on education, look for opportunities to invest in companies that are disrupting established industries. Virtually every company that succeeds in a big way has upended a traditional model, and no industry is riper for the picking than publishing.

For further information, please contact Thomas Minkus at  [email protected]  or +1-212-794-2851.

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Fundamentally, I believe the shift in publishing to be a technology-focused shift, and so it doesn’t matter if your company is building that technology or your company is just using it for the first time; being here helps.

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FAQ: When it comes to the success of a start-up, what is the significance of the region or network in which the firm is located? Do you think being in New York or Silicon Valley aids a start-up?

The Tech Tour explores the fast-changing digital landscape of the United States and gives exclusive access to an elite group of the world’s leading media and publishing companies, select start-ups and entrepreneurs at the vanguard of technology, and notable thought leaders shaping the future. Organised by Publishing Perspectives and the Frankfurt Book Fair, this trip offers participants a behind-the-scenes look at the next wave of production, distribution, and sales and marketing tools for content creators, giving them an invaluable business advantage for years to come. Topics covered by the tour will include the future of publishing, business development in the midst of change, start-up culture, venture capital finance, global branding strategies, and sales and marketing innovation. Fore more information, please visit the website http://publishingperspectives.com/ tech-tour-2012-nyc-san-francisco/

Three is a crowd

We need to innovate around new content, new processes, new technologies and new business models, all at once. That’s pretty daunting, but it opens up a world of opportunity to start-ups like Inkling. I think the big winners will be in technology, but there will be content start-ups that succeed, too.

Tech Tour 2012: New York City & San Francisco

Editorial

This publishing revolution requires new underlying technologies that make HTML a viable language for publishing, creating predictable cross-platform experiences, enabling real-time updates, and making it easy to re-purpose content. The “book” is a well-understood concept, but the iPad, iPhone, Android devices, and web browsers are much less well understood as information portals. That’s especially true when the user cares about both the fidelity and integrity of the content.

You can choose to build tools for individuals, or you can choose to build tools that support the complex, multiperson workflows of publishers. Apple chose to do the former with iBooks Author, and we chose the latter with Inkling Habitat. It’s hard to do both at the same time.

The underlying technology in every Inkling title is HTML and CSS. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Anyone who strays from this basic foundation will fail, and I think the industry has recognised that value in EPUB.

Meet matt macinnis You can meet Matt as a speaker on the Tech Tour 2012, scheduled for 25 – 29 June 2012, in New York City and San Francisco. Contact Matt on Twitter @stanine or LinkedIn.

Serendipity

FAQ: Inkling Habitat supports tablets, like Apple’s iPad, as well as web-based books. Do you think it will be common for some time, for sites to support both outlets? Do you think the web will support open standards while tablet-based apps will need enhanced editions for proprietary software?

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Over time, you’ll see iBooks Author and other desktop publishing tools become more sophisticated, but because they’re on the desktop they’ll be limited in their ability to support the inherently global workflows of modern publishing. You will also see Inkling Habitat becoming an increasingly easy option for smaller and smaller organisations to build more sophisticated mixed-media works.

EPUB, in some incarnation, will be an important file format for a large subset of the world’s content. But there will always be use-case-specific technologies and formats that serve certain needs better. I don’t see that going away, although the need for it will shrink over time. As it stands today, there isn’t a single EPUB 3 reader worth using, nor is there a scalable infrastructure to produce the content itself. While open standards will matter later on, today it’s about building something that works.

Three is a crowd

FAQ: Authoring platforms for mixed media projects seem to be increasingly important. Do you think these tools are becoming easier for the average author to use, or do you think publishing companies will still be needed to assist in the production of content?

Innovators have two choices: continue to innovate ahead of the open solutions, providing ongoing differentiation in the same technology areas, or embrace the open standard and be the firm that makes the open standards work best. Nascent technologies begin proprietarily, and open up over time as people consolidate around specific approaches. In virtually every technology shift, there’s a player who’s out in front with a proprietary technology that works better than anything made from disparate open parts. Over time, the open components get better and the differentiation provided by the proprietary solution fades. People then shift to cheaper, open options.

Editorial

We believe that Inkling Habitat is the world’s only scalable environment for producing high fidelity content at scale. And because it completely discards the notion of a page, and is completely free of desktop software, it’s an entirely new model for the publishing industry at large. And we’ve only just begun!

25 – 29 June, New York City & SF tech-tour-2012-nyc-san-francisco/



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FAQ: How important do you think open standards are in the technical and textbook markets to ensure a competitive market for books and readers?

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The problem is less about open standards than about whether you can whittle down the world of possibilities supported by HTML and CSS (which are essentially infinite) into a controlled workflow that supports enough use-cases to be useful. And that requires a tool chain, a distribution infrastructure, a predictable consumption environment (like an iOS app or a WebKit-based web browser) and other pieces to make it work.

Editorial

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Three is a crowd

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