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Content Services 2012: Journal Production Services: Changes, Trends and Future Directions
In the past 15 years, much has changed in journal production services, the first segment outsourced to India. New technology, publishing models, and workflows have created a demand for ever more automation and faster production. And for Bangalore-based MPS Limited, the pioneer in journal services, tracking the segment's shifts and trends is standard business.
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Publishing in Russia 2012: Piotrovsky and Bookselling in Perm and the Urals
Perm, Russia's 14th most populous city, with around one million people (called Permyaks), is home to the two-year-old Piotrovsky Book Store. Named after the city's first bookseller, Yuseff Yulianovitch Piotrovsky of the 19th century, the store was the brainchild of four friends: a historian (Denis Korneevsky, director of Perm's inaugural book fair last year), a philosopher (Dmitriy Vyatkin), a philologist (Mikhail Maltsev), and a poet (Sergey Panin).
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Vendor Selection 101: Content Services in India 2012
Onshore, offshore, hybrid, oh, my! Vendors are coming up with various collaborative methods to serve you better without shaking your comfort zone. But it is natural to feel jittery about outsourcing. After all, there is nothing simple about transferring your content (i.e., asset) to another person who is tens of thousands of miles away. So take a deep breath. Here are 12 practical steps to get you started on your vendor selection journey.
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PW Talks with Jan Barsnes: Content Services in India 2012
Most content services vendors are after the big game, aka the U.S. market, which usually brings in more than half of their business. This tends to be supplemented by several major accounts in continental Europe, mostly from Germany, where the STM and journal segments are established and mature. Only a few are tapping into the Scandinavian market, despite its reputation for having avid readers and prolific authors. PW talks to Jan Barsnes, co-owner of eBokNorden and Prograph in Norway, about the Scandinavian e-book industry and how he goes about outsourcing his projects.
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Ongoing Coverage of the Content Services Industry
In conjunction with the Content Services in India 2012 print report (published on April 23), PW will be adding new articles every other week on the state of the content services industry. Check back here regularly for interviews with content services vendors, product developers and publishers that will unveil new services, solutions and technologies.
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‘The Hundred Year Old Man’ Adds More Countries
Spain’s fiction list, which placed newcomers in the top three spots in March, saw Kate Morton’s The Distant Hours take the top position. The book, published in the U.S. by Atria, received a starred review from PW back in late 2010, stating the revelatory secrets in the book “will stun readers.” Spain’s #3 book, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, has also seen success in Germany, where it’s been in and out of the top spot since January. The book was first published by Piratförlaget in September 2009 in Sweden, where it was the bestselling book of 2010. A Swedish film adaptation is expected to begin in summer 2012, and Hyperion will publish the book in the U.S. in September.
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Product Showcase: Content Services in India 2012
Messy source files? Check. Short turnaround? Definitely. Complex work flow? That goes without saying. Multiple deliverables? Double-check. (And, really, do you need to ask?)
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Market Transformation Equals Challenges and Opportunities: Content Services in India 2012
In 2006, when PW released the first report on the content services industry in India, the topics centered on XML, PDF, and e-deliverables, and conversations revolved around print- vs. content-centric work flow.
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Publishing in Russia 2012: Vladimir Grigoriev on the Russian Book Market
Twelve years ago, Vladimir Grigoriev left Vagrius (the publishing house he founded in 1992) to join the Russian Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communication, or FAPMC. Much has changed in the country's book market since then. PW catches up with the dynamic deputy director and indefatigable champion of the Russian publishing industry for some insights and news.
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Publishing In Russia 2012: Independent Children’s Book Publishers in Russia
Children’s book publishers in Russia come in different sizes and specializations. Rosman Group, publisher of Rowling, Pullman, Paolini, Funke, and Stine, is the biggest, ranked #7 in the Russian publishing industry. Meanwhile, small indie publishers, spurred by market demand for new authors, unusual topics and unique translations, have sprung up and are growing fast.
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Publishing in Russia 2012: The Agents’ Dozen
No one knows Russian authors better than literary agencies. After all, they have been poring over these homegrown talents’ works, promoting them, and negotiating and signing deals for them. So “PW” asks four agencies—Banke, Goumen & Smirnova; Elkost; FTM; and Galina Dursthoff (covered in “The Rights Side of Business”) to recommend 12 contemporary authors that might represent the new Russian voice, in alphabetical order.
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Publishing in Russia 2012: Charting the Bestsellers
Gauging reader preferences and taking the pulse of the market is on every book industry player’s must-do list. And this task of deciding what will work and what won’t often involves analyzing bestseller lists.
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Publishing in Russia 2012: The Rights Side of Business
The rights industry in Russia has grown much more professional in the past five years, according to Julia Goumen of Banke, Goumen & Smirnova Literary Agency. “The interaction between publishers and agencies, as well as scouts, has improved tremendously as our publishing industry becomes better connected to the international book community. Previously, it could take up to a year for new trends, big titles, or major events to reach Russia. These days, Russian publishers are often among the first to acquire rights to major works of fiction.”
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Publishing in Russia 2012: Shifting Retail Landscape
Back in 1990, there were nearly 8,500 bookshops in Russia. By 2009, however, the number had plunged to no more than 2,500, according to the Russian Book Union. Even Top Kniga, Russia’s largest book chain, had shrunk from 700 to 450 stores, and is now teetering on the brink of bankruptcy yet again.
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Publishing In Russia 2012: Here Comes Pubmix.com
With Russia’s online book market growing about 30% annually, more households having Internet access, and consumers becoming increasingly comfortable purchasing and paying online, it is logical to see print on-demand coming into play.
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Publishing In Russia 2012: Growing the Digital Side of the Business
Amazon.com is the model that most online bookstore entrepreneurs want to adopt (and, hopefully, replicate its success as well). But tweaking it to fit the Russian book industry—that is easier said than done.
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Publishing In Russia 2012: Publishers in a Changing Industry
Despite the economic gloom, the number of titles produced annually in Russia continues to grow. The country is now #3 in terms of book production (approximately 125,000 new titles per year), after the U.S. and China. It also saw more than 20 million e-book downloads and some one million reading devices sold in 2011.
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Jaber Wins Arabic Fiction Prize
Rabee Jaber won the 2012 International Prize for Arabic Fiction on Tuesday night for his novel The Druze of Belgrade, at the Rocco Forte hotel in Abu Dhabi. The event took place on the eve of the 22nd Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.
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Poetry and Dieting Score In February
A surprising success occurred in Italy last month, where the collected poems of Wislawa Szymborska landed at #2. Szymborska, who died February 1 at the age of 88, has a similar collection seeing “steady sales” in the U.S. from Mariner Books titled Poems New and Collected, originally published in 2000. But the poet’s performance in Italy, where the book has sold 64,000 copies, has been called “an unprecedented success for a volume of poetry on a world scale” by publisher Adelphi.
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Moroccan Authorities Ban Newspaper From Running Excerpt of French Book
The International Publishers Association is speaking out after authorities in Morocco banned the Spanish-language daily newspaper El País from distributing its February 26 issue because of an excerpt it featured from the French book The Predator King.
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