Arrived in Fes, beautiful view from my room at the Dar Fes Medina

And a very hospitable host, Mohammed

We're off on the Road to Morocco! Representatives from the global @BioDivLibrary partners heading to Fes, Morocco

Well, all the global BHL-ers should be on the Road to Morocco! We're having the 4th Global BHL meeting in Fes, Morocco on 27-28 May 2013. We'll have representative (in person) from BHL China, BHL Europe, BHL Egypt, BHL Australia, BHL Africa, and BHL. Our Brasilian colleagues were unable to make it in person, but we hope to bring them in virtually.

So, here's our pluck trio from the United States, Nancy Gwinn, William Ulate, and me, somewhere, can't say exactly where  we are all at this moment, but we're all converging on Fes!

So I guess you could say that, with Bing Crosby that  ...

We're off on the road to Morocco
This camel is tough on the spine (hit me with a band-aid, Dad)
Where they're going, why we're going, how can we be sure
I'll lay you eight to five that we'll meet Dorothy Lamour 
(Yeah, get in line)

Off on the road to Morocco
Hang on till the end of the line (I like your jockey. Quiet)
I hear this country's where they do the dance of the seven veils
We'd tell you more (uh-ah) but we would have the censor on our tails 
(Good boy)

We certainly do get around
Like Webster's Dictionary we're Morocco bound

We're off on the road to Morocco
Well look out, well clear the way, 'cause here we come
Stand by for a concussion
The men eat fire, sleep on nails and saw their wives in half
It seems to me there should be easier ways to get a laugh
(Shall I slip on my big shoes?)

Off on the road to Morocco
Hooray! Well blow a horn, everybody duck
Yeah. It's a green light, come on boys

We may run into villains but we're not afraid to roam
Because we read the story and we end up safe at home (yeah)
Certainly do get around
Like Webster's Dictionary we're Morocco bound

We certainly do get around
Like a complete set of Shakespeare that you get
In the corner drugstore for a dollar ninety-eight
We're Morocco bound

Or, like a volume of Omar Khayyam that you buy in the
Department store at Christmas time for your cousin Julia
We're Morocco bound
(We could be arrested)

QotD: "If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year" Lewis Carrol on the streets of Casablanca

'If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,' the Walrus said,
'That they could get it clear?'
- Lewis Carroll

 There is an amazing amount of sweeping that goes on in Casablanca, and yet, well, everything seems to remain rather dirty ... I know I said the same thing about Beijing a few years ago, one of the differences in Casa is that they tend to throw water on the ground first (to keep down the dust) and often use push brooms (and the maids are mostly men it seems)

Good morning Casablanca, from the fabulous 6th floor of the Novotel Casa City Center

QotD: "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine" Rick Blaine, Casablanca

For some reason, the neon artwork of the famous quote by Rick Blaine from Casablanca in the bar of the Hotel Sofitel punctuates the quote as follows (with an odd question mark):

"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world? She walks into mine."

Seafood tangine, mezze and grilled eggplant

At Delight in Casablanca

Good afternoon, Casablanca ... From the Novotel Casa City Center

Lotsa construction!!

Sunrise at Charles De Gaulle Airport, Paris

Air France 1896: CDG to CMN

Sent from my IBM Selectric

Gate L21

Spinning the @BioDivLibrary globe again ... round and round ... where does it spin me?

Can we say North Africa?

Air France 39: IAD to CDG

Gate A20.

McKeldin Library, at the University of Maryland

Haven't been here in ages!

QotD: "It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one’s youth with a false precocity or a false innocence" / Evelyn Waugh

"It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one’s youth with a false precocity or a false innocence; to tamper with the dates marking one’s stature on the edge of the door. ... I should like to think—indeed I sometimes do think—that I decorated those rooms with Morris stuffs and Arundel prints and that my shelves were filled with seventeenth-century folios and French novels of the second empire in Russia-leather and watered silk. But this was not the truth. On my first afternoon I proudly hung a reproduction of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers over the fire and set up a screen, painted by Roger Fry with a Provençal landscape, which I had bought inexpensively when the Omega workshops were sold up. I displayed also a poster by McKnight Kauffer and Rhyme Sheets from the Poetry Bookshop, and, most painful to recall, a porcelain figure of Polly Peachum which stood between black tapers on the chimney-piece." Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

Yup, I did graduate

Alas, it was not Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" but rather "Starry Night" that graced my room that first freshman year in college. I was also lucky to have a roommate that was quirky and shared, I humbly add, a taste in 60s music (and thank you Steve for introducing me to The Blues Project, John Mayall, and the deeper cuts of the Grateful Dead).

In addition to "Starry Night" our decor also included Milton Glaser's famed poster of a psychedelic Dylan (no McKnight Kauffer), and as the year wore on, in place of the Polly Peachum figure, an actual tree stump (which sprouted mushrooms over winter break), the top of a lamppost that when hung from the ceiling and hit with tossed dice rang like a bell (you had to be there). Not sure if I had pretentious French novels that first year (Huysman's  À rebours and Françoise Sagan would come later), but I do recall William Golding's Pincher Martin on the shelves. The next three years, though they had interesting element and a series of new roommates, didn't have that initial burst of the new that first year.

The Big 80s, times of Big Glasses! (sitting by two Annes)

And so the college years flew past and, wow! To paraphrase Floyd, one day you wake to find, THIRTY years have got behind you .... ergo, it was way way back on 21 May 1983 (see diploma above) that I graduated from The Catholic University of America. BA, English, focus, Medieval, dropped (after 1.5 years) architecture.

That year, the commencement speaker was James Billington. Dr. Billington was then the director of the Woodrow Wilson Center International Center for Scholars (semi-, kinda, sorta part of the Smithsonian). Just a few years later, he became the Librarian of Congress, a post he's held since then. So, in that speech by Dr. Billington (and no, couldn't tell you a lick of what he said), my future was crystallized  first, by ending up working at the Library of Congress after graduation, and then moving on to the Smithsonian Institution. I've subsequently met Dr. Billington on a number of occasions (let's all say "World Digital Library" -- but nope, I do not believe he would have a flicker of who I was), but never mentioned our hooded congruence.

And so, now, looking back on an unimaginable thirty years, the false precocity (which I now freely and humbly admit too) grown to, what? With unimaginable successes in areas that never existed in 1983? With dashed dreams that were probably best unfilled ... I can honestly say, in the words of the OTHER Grateful Dead lyricist  (Robert Hunter) -- the one I've not had the pleasure to meet (which would be John Perry Barlow) ... "what a long, strange trip it's been!".

James Billington, a little to the right of the guys standing

Protestors outside Dept of Justice today

Protestors outside Dept of Justice today, a photo by martin_kalfatovic on Flickr.

The Battle of the Books redux, eBooks vs pBooks and The Author's (Only True) Home is in the Brick and Mortar Bookstore

Shelf space

To kick off this third installment, let's start with a quote from Neal Stephenson ...

The great serialized novelists of the 19th Century were like rock stars or movie stars. The printing press and the apparatus of publishing had given these creators a means to bypass traditional arbiters and gatekeepers of culture and connect directly to a mass audience. And the economics worked out such that they didn't need to land a commission or find a patron in order to put bread on the table. The creators of those novels were therefore able to have a connection with a mass audience and a livelihood fundamentally different from other types of artists. - Neal Stephenson in Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing

... and then a little snippet from the Dean of St. Patrick's:

By this expedient, the public peace of libraries might certainly have been preserved if a new species of controversial books had not arisen of late years, instinct with a more malignant spirit, from the war above mentioned between the learned about the higher summit of Parnassus. - Jonathan Swift, The Battle of the Books

... esp. lithographs

I chose the Swift quote because we have a new battle of the books, but this time the Ancients are not Aristotle and Virgil and the Moderns are not Hobbes and Dryden. Rather, the combatants are print and electronic. As a frame of reference, let's look at a recent entrant in the "(print) books aren't dead" genre, a Salon piece (20 March 2013) entitled "Books aren’t dead yet Self-publishing fans and the tech-obsessed keep getting it wrong: Big authors want to be in print -- and bookstores" by Laura Miller.

I don't mean to single out Miller, as she is just one of many who go on at length to denigrate positive changes in the publishing and world of books with dubious facts and a misty-eyed view of one of the most cutthroat and un-business-like business this side of the music industry.

The piece focuses on a number of recent sensations (E.L. James, Hugh Howey [minor quibble, she mis-spell's Howey's name as "Howie"], Amanda Hocking) have moved on from ghetto of self-publishing to the Big 5.5. And though she does asterisk that with the move is often for good reasons (seven figure advances!) she never hits home the point that it is nearly always on the authors' terms (such as keeping all e-rights - see Hugh Howey in the Huffington Post on that topic). Miller's piece itself was a response to "Book Publishers Scramble to Rewrite Their Future" by Evan Hughes (in a 19 March 2013 article in WIRED).

So, let's unpack Miller's title a bit. First off, she doesn't really mean "books" aren't dead, she means PRINT books aren't dead. Print is, of course, a little bit vague of a term, encompassing as it does hardcover, paperback, mass-market paperback, etc., and yes, she is correct, PRINT books are not dead, and, because of the varied nature of "print" it will probably be hard to find that point in them when anyone can say "He's dead Jim."

Digging further into the title, Miller's says "big" authors want to be in print and in bookstores. Big is relevant too (as my Aussie friends would say, "about as long as a piece of string") and, true, of course, any author would want to be in a bookstore (or probably any place where they could find a reader, preferably a paying reader) for their hard work.

Let's look a little closer at these two topics: eBooks vs pBbooks and The Author's (Only True) Home is in the Brick and Mortar Bookstore.

Enduring Works

EBOOKS VS PBOOKS
With just a little looseness with facts. Miller notes that "ebooks are 25% of market." The American Association of Publishers (AAP) -- which is hardly the cold, laser-eyed robotic proponent of all things "e" or "i" (see for instance their stance on the FASTR legislation) has the relevant statistics on that. In the most recent stats from the AAP (2012), adult fiction and non-fiction e-books are 28.5% of the total book market in that category. Feh, you say, she's just rounding down a bit. But if you do the math (not hard math), that's a mis-stating error of 12.28% -- that's not rounding, that's just wrong. (FYI the statistics from AAP report has been summarized by Galleycat here).

Moreover, in the same AAP report, the 28.5% is an increase over 2011 (when the share was 22.84%) of 36%. A market growth of 36% also calls into question Millers assertion that:

"But the early-adapter boom is showing signs of flagging and the growth of the e-book market appears to be leveling out. E-books are definitely here to stay, but it seems that many, many readers — a threefold majority, in fact — still prefer print." 

My hunch is that this "flagging" is based on the flattening curve of dedicated ereaders. The explosion in tablet sales (iPad, iPad Mini, Nexus and all their kindred Kindle Fires and Nooks) is where those ebooks are being read. So, yes, very roughly, three quarters of the book market are not ebooks, but that is a 24.78% increase in one year.

Bye bye Borders

Mass market paperbacks are going away, hardcovers are going away. When will trade paper and ebooks totally dominate the market and regulate the rest to the same quaint niche occupied by vinyl records? Because "past performance doesn't guarantee future returns", I won't trend line the 2011/12 numbers and say, oh, 2016 (which is what the trend line predicts) that ebooks completely dominate the market, but it will be sooner than many who claim "print will always be with us" might be comfortable with.

THE AUTHOR'S (ONLY TRUE) HOME IS IN THE BRICK AND MORTAR BOOKSTORE (and we don't mean that nasty Barnes and Noble!)
"Furthermore," Miller continues, "to switch to Amazon-style self-publishing would mean getting shut out of bookstores -- not a big deal for an author whose books weren't there to begin with, but a major loss for the likes of, say, Stephen King, who has always made his love of and gratitude toward booksellers well-known. Bookstores are where fans meet popular authors and get their books signed, cementing their devotion."

Well, yeah yeah yeah, Stephen King does love book stores, who doesn't? But how many of King's books are sold in the small and indie bookstore (which we do need more of, but with a radical refactoring) in those locations?

Dan Brown's Inferno @ Target

I had the privilege of having dinner recently with a noted author, one of those "name above the title" types with legions of fans waiting to scoop of the next work and add to the millions of books sold. As we discussed publishing and the book market, the author noted that 70% of sales were ebooks and that of the remaining 30% the vast majority were sold (no, not at 82 Charing Cross Road) but at Walmart, Target (and, I would guess but it wasn't said), airports.

This provides anecdotal back up to more figures from the AAP report, namely that hardcover sales are now 26.28% of the market (down 1.53% since 2011); and more significantly, mass-market paperbacks are now down to a touch over 9% (a decrease of 16%!). I should also note that the AAP report also counts audiobook downloads, which, in 2012 represented 2.43% of the market, not a format that makes the print book lovers dewy-eyed I'm guessing.

Note that all of the above is, again, adult fiction/non-fiction. To really get an idea of where the trend (which, again Miller says is "flagging") is to look at children and young adult (YA) books.

Ebooks are only 16.17% of the YA market now, but that number represents a 177% increase over 2011. 177%, that increase is coming from future book buyers. I might also add, that unlike in the adult books, the ebook growth didn't come from cannibalizing other formats (the only category that dropped in the C/YA stats was board books, down 6.61%, I'm not sure what to make of that number).

eBooks for K-12

So, if we were doing a data smackdown between Miller and Evan Hughes, the AAP numbers, which are probably the best we can get from an industry that can be notoriously opaque in revealing market information, I think we need to give the win to Hughes.

Miller hides behind the "book sniffer" argument that the only true book is a print book; that the only place to buy a book is the quaint indie bookstore (in an swipe at Barnes & Noble, an example - the only remaining one perhaps -- of the  "relatively impersonal chain stores"); that the only true publisher is a multi-national corporation that will strictly dictate who gets published, how they get published, when they get published, author and readers be damned.

Authors and readers are rebooting their relationship. Amazon, SmashWords, and a few others are fostering this new relationship. As Gershwin could have said, "Writers gotta write, readers gotta read, I'm gonna love one book til I die ..." and yes, I mean the book, the perhaps Platonic notion of the book, be it print, pixels on a screen, or the wonder of e-ink.

See the earlier parts of this series:

• Part I: Some thoughts on trade publishing: @HughHowey, and the virtuous circle 
• Part II: Some thoughts on trade publishing: Kelly Hand (@khwriter), and the virtuous circle

END PART III

20 - 30% Off

Visit to the bowling alley...

First time in many years... 99 and a 75. 1 strike and some spares.

Joel Richard (@cajunjoel) from @SILibraries on Taxonomic Literature II and #LODLAM #TL2LOD

Very sorry that we had a webcast failure, but hope to put up a slide cast after the fact.