Here are a few of the publishing stories from that caught my eye this week.
B&N looks at spinning off its Nook
Barnes & Noble made a few ripples in the news this week when it announced the sale of its Sterling Publishing arm. But news that it might also spin off its Nook business caused a bigger stir.
Publisher’s Weekly took a look at the Nook’s numbers, noting that Nook device sales overall were up 70% year over year during a nine-week holiday period, with the Nook Tablet exceeding expectations and the Nook Touch falling short. The PW post also outlined the planned revenue streams of the proposed Nook business:
The new Nook group would be comprised of four revenue streams: devices; digital content, including e-books, subscriptions, apps, textbooks; accessories; and warranties and extended service plans. While e-books and other digital content sales would be made through BN.com, those sales would become part of the Nook business.
MarketWatch said there’s not enough data to determine the profitability of B&N’s ebook business on its own. Losses are expected to exceed expectations for 2011:
[Barnes & Noble] said it expects digital content sales to total about $450 million for the fiscal year ending in April — which is about 6% of the total revenues estimated for the company for that period. The total Nook business, including hardware, content and accessories, sold about $448 million in the nine-week holiday period, up 43% from the same period last year. But its investments in the business — along with a shortfall in sales of its E-Ink-based SimpleTouch reader — will crimp the bottom line for the year, bringing in a loss that is deeper than Wall Street had been expecting previously.
In an interview for the MarketWatch post, analyst Scott Tilghman said a Nook spin-off could be good for investors: “My sense is that the brick and mortar booksellers and related valuations are such that a spin of a more highly valued (in the eyes of investors) asset could boost overall shareholder returns.”
Others, however, are arguing that the move signals B&N is closer to bankruptcy. In any case, the Publisher’s Weekly post pointed out that “B&N said it was not a certainty that it would go ahead with the spin off.”
Ingram Content Group Inc. is the world’s largest and most trusted distributor of physical and digital content. Thousands of publishers, retailers, and libraries worldwide use our best-of-class digital, audio, print, print-on-demand, inventory management, wholesale and full-service distribution programs to realize the full business potential of books. Learn more at ingramcontent.com.Newspapers look to capitalize on aggregators
Twenty-nine news organizations, including the Associated Press (AP), The Washington Post Co., and The New York Times Co., banded together this week to launch News Right, a news rights clearinghouse that, according to the AP story, will “measure the unpaid online use of their original reporting and seek to convert unauthorized websites, blogs and other news-gathering services into paying customers.” The AP explains how it will identify the use of news:
NewsRight encodes original stories with hidden data that includes the writer’s name and when it was published. The encoded stories send back reports to the registry that describe where a story is being used and who is reading it. The technology can even locate stories that have been cut and pasted in whole or in part.
Edmund Lee at Businessweek compared the venture to the way the music industry manages — and polices — rights:
The larger aim for NewsRight is to capitalize on interest among digital enterprises that want to legitimately use content, much the way the music industry manages rights through ASCAP [American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers] , which helps musicians get paid for their songs played in public.
NewsRight isn’t just a policing move, however. Newspaper analyst Ken Doctor pointed out in the AP story that the data gathered will be a selling point for advertisers, too, and could help them “measure the audience they want to reach more effectively.”
Apple rumors fire up: Will iBooks support EPUB 3?
Straight out of the gate is as good a time as any to get the Apple rumors milling in 2012. Apple (probably) won’t be announcing an iPhone5 (so, I won’t be able to put my 3GS to rest just yet) or the anticipated Apple TV, but “sources close to the situation” report that “Apple is planning an important — but not large-scale — event to be held in New York at the end of this month that will focus on a media-related announcement.“
Many are presuming the event will center around Apple’s publishing arm, including its iBooks platform. Chris Foresman at ArsTechnica highlighted Apple’s recent offering of a free ebook version of “The Yellow Submarine” to show off the platform and said, “based on information from our own sources, we believe the announcement could likely involve support for the EPUB 3 standard.” That would be welcome news, indeed.
Related: