Isaiah Thomas Invents the Bookstore Chain

We think of bookstore chains—Barnes and Noble, Brentanos, Walden Books, or the defunct Borders—as recent phenomena. But, the roots of franchised bookselling lie deep in American publishing history. A case can be made that late eighteenth century publisher-printer Isaiah Thomas, of Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts, was the originator of the bookstore chain. At his zenith, Thomas and various partners had eleven stores operating in a network reaching from Boston to Albany to Baltimore, with branches in New Hampshire and Vermont. Driving the Thomas publishing-bookselling enterprise was a form of vertical corporate integration of publishing services (all the way from papermaking to distribution of product) that would, under today’s antitrust laws be hard to justify legally. At the time, in the 1790s–1810, Thomas’s multiple interlocking businesses were, nonetheless, truly a bookman’s empire, with bestsellers like almanacs and textbooks leading the way.     

Selling American books in Japan

Publishers who wish to participate in the Japanese market may distribute their English-language editions, sell Japanese rights to a Japanese publisher, or set up a company in Japan. This article discusses the first and third choices. It describes the U.S. companies with Japanese operations and the basic rules for success in such endeavors. The export process—especially promotion and distribution—is also discribed. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A05BB001 00002     

Understanding the context of records creation and use: ‘Hard’ versus ‘soft’ approaches to records management

Current records management methodologies and practices suffer from an inadequate understanding of the ‘human activity systems’ where records managers operate as ‘mediators’ between a number of complex and interacting factors. Although the records management and archival literature recognizes that managing the active life of the records is fundamental to their survival as meaningful evidence of activities, the context where the records are made, captured, used, and selectively retained is not explored in depth. In particular, the various standards, models, and functional requirement lists, which occupy a vast portion of that literature, especially in relation to electronic records, do not seem to be capable of framing records-related ‘problems’ in ways that account for their dynamic and multiform nature. This paper introduces the idea that alternative, ‘softer’ approaches to the analysis of organizational functions, structures, agents, and artifacts may usefully complement the ‘hard’, engineering-like approaches typically drawn on by information and records specialists. Three interrelated theoretical and methodological frameworks—namely, Soft Systems Methodology, Adaptive Structuration Theory, and Genre Theory—are discussed, with the purpose of highlighting their contributions to our understanding of the records context.     

Book Distribution in the Arab World

Business opportunities in international markets are largely determined by accessibility, transparency, and legal frameworks fair to all parties concerned. Arab book markets in principle offer a tremendous potential with more than 300 million readers sharing one common language. Besides unsolved censorship issues, problems with money collection, and differing regulations, however, the lack of a uniform book distribution system is the most critical hurdle for the development of a common Arabic book market. Most importantly, there is no comprehensive database containing accurate content briefs, background information on authors, ISBN numbers, and publisher company information as well as all relevant commercial data such as book prices, weight, logistics terms, and availability. Authors and publishers are hard hit as they often need to organize book transportation, delivery, and invoice collection on their own. At present, “selling book fairs” in the Arab world—with the exception of Abu Dhabi International Book Fair—present themselves as crowded book bazaars rather than executive meeting points. The authors of the article, however, are anticipating change: New distribution initiatives will soon interlink regional Arabic markets and create unique growth and profit opportunities.     

What Underlies the False Consensus Effect? How Personal Opinion and Disagreement Affect Perception of Public Opinion

This study draws on a sample of participants in online groupsto analyze the interaction between individual-level and communicative-levelfactors that affect public opinion perception. We first assessthe association between individual views on several issues—thedeath penalty, gun regulation and teaching morality in publicschools—and false consensus, i.e., the tendency to attributeown views to others. We also examine whether the associationbetween individual opinion and false consensus is mitigatedby perceived disagreement with offline discussion networks andwith participants in online discussion groups. As expected,not only is there a correlation between personal and perceivedopinion, but also those who strongly favor the three policiesestimate public support to be higher than do those who are unfavorableor moderate. Multivariate models further show that encounteringdisagreement, online or offline, attenuates the associationbetween the individual opinion and false consensus. Theoreticaland practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Increasing the Value of Your Company Despite Difficult Times

In tough economic times, growing a business may seem like a daunting prospect. However, it is possible for entities to grow the value of their businesses while navigating a difficult economic period. This article examines the processes used to value a business enterprise and the factors which contribute to an entity’s value. It then suggests ways for a publishing company to increase its value.     

Convergence: An investment perspective

Conclusion  Convergence is a very exciting model and one that holds, unforeseen opportunities. However in the current economic environment, the investment community is hesitant to recommend that communications companies devote many resources in that area. The convergence mode must prove that it can generate revenue and profits. Yet, it is limited to an advertising-supported model—a part of the communications industry that has struggled during the past, year due to the recession. The increased advertising revenue that would be generated by the convergence model is tainted—most likely taking advertising share away from the traditional media segments that are supporting the model. Tied to the convergence model is a high dependency on the Internet. Internet advertising is not local. In addition, financial data clearly illustrates that the Internet has caused profit margins to decrease substantially, something that the traditional media company supporting the convergence model can not allow to happen. Finally, FCC deregulation with regards to television station cap restrictions, cable system operators owning broadcasters in the same market, and cross ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market, will most likely have a negative impact on the convergence model. If a communications company should decide to go forward with convergence, there are five rules that should be followed:

Direct-Response Bookselling: How it Died,Why it is Alive Again,and Why it will Become Even More Important in the Future

Direct mail, once the engine behind such successful bookselling businesses as Book-of-the-Month Club, Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and Time Life Books, was a major channel for marketing books as recently as 20 years ago. A victim of the growth of large bookstore chains and later of the Internet, direct response bookselling is no longer is regarded as viable. But many of the skill sets developed by direct marketers decades ago are highly relevant for modern book marketing—especially when one considers that the Internet itself is the best direct-marketing channel ever invented. And as eBooks continue to change the structure of publishing, publishers will find themselves under increasing pressure to embrace direct-marketing methodologies and connect directly with their readers, rather than reaching them through book retailers and other intermediaries as they have traditionally done.     

Corporate Tweeting: Analysing the Use of Twitter as a Marketing Tool by UK Trade Publishers

The rapid growth and popularity of the microblogging service Twitter has been one of the most recent phenomena of the Internet, which opens up opportunities for businesses in general and publishers in particular to do marketing in a dialogue- and consumer-oriented way. This survey analysed UK trade publishers’ use of Twitter with the specific objective of finding out what influence a publisher’s size has on its Twitter adoption, patterns of use and the content of its Tweets. Overall, the results suggest that a publisher’s size primarily affects its general Twitter use, while being less influential regarding its patterns of use and the tweeted content.     

Does e-government reduce the administrative burden of businesses? An assessment of business-to-government systems usage in the Netherlands

The reduction of the administrative burden on businesses is an important governmental policy objective. Electronic government is presented as a promising reduction strategy in many countries. Underlying assumptions and mechanisms are hardly ever made explicit and scientific evidence of successful implementations is scarce. This paper presents an assessment of business-to-government systems in use in the Netherlands. Results show that organizational characteristics are the most influencing factors of perceived burden reduction and implementation effectiveness. Whereas perceived organizational benefits positively relate to the overall confirmation of the former system adoption decision. Surprisingly the quantitative, usage related characteristics do not present any statistical relevance. These findings help us understand existing differences in appreciation between business and governmental representatives on the successfulness of e-government projects in reducing the administrative burden on businesses. Furthermore, research results can help to enhance the effectiveness of e-government policy and measurement instruments.     

Bibliographic standards

Among the standards most important to librarians and their clients are bibliographic standards, which focus on providing bibliographic data in machine-readable form to facilitate technical processing of acquisitions, cataloging, and sharing of these data among libraries. Beacher Wiggins discusses bibliographic standards in general and then focuses on the Cooperative Online Serials Program—CONSER—a cooperative program for bibliographic control that is now more than a decade old.     

How “A stress analysis of a strapless evening gown” became a bestseller

Crane, Russak & Company was a small, independent publishing establishment created in 1973 at 52 Vanderbilt Avenue in New York City. It was a creation of Ted Crane, a former head of VNR Publishing Co., and Ben Russak, then recently retired president/founder of the American Elsevier Publishing Company. Its opening-day list consisted of 400 British-import titles for which the founders had acquired U.S. rights. It was, through its short life, a tiny operation with only a few employees. Nat Bodian helped organize the start-up operation for Crane, Russak and during its early years wore most of the ‘hats’ in the company including marketing, publicity, promotion, and production. He served under Ben Russak, who was its active president. Ted Crane, at that time, was active with Boutwell, Crane, Mosely & Associates—publishing consultants—at the same address. Excerpted fromThe Joy of Publishing: Fascinating Facts, Anecdotes, Curiosities, and Historic Origins … about Books and Authors, Editors and Publishers … Bookmaking and Bookselling. By Nat Bodian. Published June 1996 by Open Horizons Publishing Co., P.O. Box 205, Fairfield, Iowa 52556. Approx. 250 pp., cloth. ISBN 0-912411-47-3, $29.95.     

Click-based evidence for decaying weight distributions in search effectiveness metrics

Search effectiveness metrics are used to evaluate the quality of the answer lists returned by search services, usually based on a set of relevance judgments. One plausible way of calculating an effectiveness score for a system run is to compute the inner-product of the run’s relevance vector and a “utility” vector, where the ith element in the utility vector represents the relative benefit obtained by the user of the system if they encounter a relevant document at depth i in the ranking. This paper uses such a framework to examine the user behavior patterns—and hence utility weightings—that can be inferred from a web query log. We describe a process for extrapolating user observations from query log clickthroughs, and employ this user model to measure the quality of effectiveness weighting distributions. Our results show that for measures with static distributions (that is, utility weighting schemes for which the weight vector is independent of the relevance vector), the geometric weighting model employed in the rank-biased precision effectiveness metric offers the closest fit to the user observation model. In addition, using past TREC data as to indicate likelihood of relevance, we also show that the distributions employed in the BPref and MRR metrics are the best fit out of the measures for which static distributions do not exist.     

The Power of Truth

Democracy thrives on journalism, and journalism thrives on truth. The subject is Truth—what it is, how we find it and why it’s important. In finding Truth, the internet is a rich and dangerous source. Nothing is better than a well-prepared, face to face interview. But Truth is not free. Journalism must find a way to elicit payment for all forms of disseminated Truth—print and online. One Truth seems clear: books and magazines will never disappear, be displaced or diminished to irrelevance.     

Historians’ procedures for handling plagiarism

Like the physical and life sciences, the social sciences are subject to fraud and ethical misconduct. The historical profession has focused its efforts to combat misconduct in the area of plagiarism. The procedures of the American Historical Association—the profession's most inclusive organization—are described, and possibilities for further action are suggested. He was history editor at Yale University Press from 1969 to 1971 and assistant executive secretary of the American Historical Association from 1965 to 1969.     

Rallying Point: Lewis Michaux’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">National Memorial African Bookstore</Emphasis>

Michaux’s National Memorial African Bookstore, Harlem, NY, was the epicenter of black literary life and bookselling, 1933–c.1975. Michaux migrated from Virginia to escape farm work and his brother’s evangelical church, opting instead—despite the lack of formal education—to become a trafficker in ideas, through bookselling. A self-styled Garveyite, Michaux advised Malcolm X, though he never joined the Nation of Islam or advocated revolution. The bookshop—with a huge inventory of books about black experience and spearheaded by the charismatic bookseller (known as “The Professor”)—attracted a loyal clientele, championed famous writers and artists, and hosted international leaders (especially Africans). A rallying point for political speeches, often delivered in front of the store, in its period, there was no other black bookstore in America with Michaux’s influence.     

Digital Publishing and its Impact on the Publishing Industry in the Arab World

The Arab print publishing industry is characterized by variety and complexity due to a combination of geographical and cultural diversity. This has resulted in Arab publishers facing a number of challenges, and this article aims to shed light on some of the most common problems faced by the industry—distribution, censorship and piracy—as well as examining the impact of digital books on this fledgling industry and how digital publishing can be used to overcome some of these problems.     

The audience product and the new media environment: Implications for the economics of media industries

Abstract

The issues currently facing the book publishing industry are profound and the resolution of these issues will ultimately affect how the industry is defined in the future. One of the most important issues that the industry faces is the emergence of a whole range of new media which have created important managerial tensions within the book publishing firms. These tensions include defining what a book is in light of the multi‐dimensional content available as well as the development of new modes of delivery; whether to remain focused on producing great content or become a more technologically oriented company; and the best organizational approach. While these tensions may be viewed as creating turmoil, they have been catalysts of change and are creating opportunities that will ultimately enable the industry to regenerate its businesses, reach a new generation of readers, and create an environment that is more conducive to innovation.     

Server selection methods in personal metasearch: a comparative empirical study

Server selection is an important subproblem in distributed information retrieval (DIR) but has commonly been studied with collections of more or less uniform size and with more or less homogeneous content. In contrast, realistic DIR applications may feature much more varied collections. In particular, personal metasearch—a novel application of DIR which includes all of a user’s online resources—may involve collections which vary in size by several orders of magnitude, and which have highly varied data. We describe a number of algorithms for server selection, and consider their effectiveness when collections vary widely in size and are represented by imperfect samples. We compare the algorithms on a personal metasearch testbed comprising calendar, email, mailing list and web collections, where collection sizes differ by three orders of magnitude. We then explore the effect of collection size variations using four partitionings of the TREC ad hoc data used in many other DIR experiments. Kullback-Leibler divergence, previously considered poorly effective, performs better than expected in this application; other techniques thought to be effective perform poorly and are not appropriate for this problem. A strong correlation with size-based rankings for many techniques may be responsible.     

North American Approval Program coverage and cost study 1998/99

Blackwell’s Approval Program Coverage and Cost Study details subject areas and list prices of monographs covered by our New Titles program for academic library collections. The Study reports on titles treated, not on copies sold—each title is counted once, whether it was purchased by one library or by hundreds. The Study presents information on numbers of titles treated and average list price, arranged by Blackwell’s subjects and then by LC class, for all publishers and then for university presses exclusively. It also includes a detailed report of all treated titles by NLM class. Additionally, the report includes a breakdown of the non-subject characteristics (e.g., language and format) of treated titles. Since most of Blackwell’s Approval libraries are not profiled to receive books for titles coded with the Non-Subject Parameters (NSPs) Popular works and Lower undergraduate texts, we exclude titles with these NSPs from the Coverage and Cost Study. This article appeared originally at http://www.blackwell.com/shelf/tools/cc.htm It is reproduced with the permission of the author.