Book Publishing Software News

Klopotek's Information ViewPoint

2008-04-22T23:11:00.005-04:00

Two weeks ago we saw Klopotek’s Information ViewPoint product and were amazed. Its modern, easy to use and customizable for the user. In our view, its a clear competitive advantage vs. products offered by other vendors.

What is Information Viewpoint? In a nutshell it’s a web based customizable view of information that users want to see. Users select the fields that they want to see and position them by dragging them on the screen. It has a modern clean look, similar to that of Microsoft Outlook.

An example of a report created using ViewPoint is a Title Revenue Analysis. It shows sales by year with a drill down to sales by month and sales by Order type. You can access it online via the web and control access by user or user group.

Information Viewpoint integrate with most Klopotek modules including; Product Planning and Production, Contracts Rights & Royalties, Book Sales & Distribution, Journal Sales & Distribution, Customer Care Management and Advertising Sales and Management.

For screen shots have a look at the ViewPoint brochure.

A lot of companies focus on adding new features, but they overlook the need to make the information easily accessible to the end-user. From our point of view Klopotek’s management has focused their R&D on information accessibility. We saw this first with Production Cockpit, then Authors Online, Business Objects Universe for Production and now ViewPoint. Its a focus that is really setting their solution apart from the competition.

Quality Solutions Now Firebrand Technologies

2008-04-22T15:26:00.003-04:00

Its been a long time coming, but Quality Solutions is now FireBrand Technologies.

New technology, new software, web based applications, and an updated website for the 21st century.

The first release, Title Management 7.0 will allow a publisher to link together information from all the different aspects (texts, chapters, videos, etc.) of a title or titles to one property.

An article in the the April 21st issue of Publishers Weekly reports that purpose is to help the publisher manage all of their digital workflows.

The new website is: http://www.firebrandtech.com

Acumen Webinar

2008-04-02T15:29:00.003-04:00

Today we had the opportunity to view an Acumen webinar of their new features.

Acumen's webinar was different from that of knkPublishing in that they used a fictional business to demonstrate their new functionality.

Thus use of an imaginary business case really made the webinar come alive for attendees and lead to a lively question and answer session at the end of the demo.

knkPublishing Webinar

2008-04-01T23:58:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to view the knkPublishing webinar for book publishers.

It was a good introduction to the software but it could have been much better as there was little exchange between the presenters and the webinar viewers.

From my perspective;

1. I would have liked to seen current knkPublishing users commenting on how the knkPublishing software has helped their business. There are some really large publishers using knkPublishing, and their participation would have brought a level of shock and awe to the webinar for they have some pretty dramatic stories to tell.

2. There was too much emphasis on the accounting functionality of the core Microsoft Dynamics NAV product, and not enough on each of the publishing specific modules. Sure its great that you can instantly save reports to word or excel or reformat reports, but it would have been more informative if they walked you through a case of a publisher actually using the software to manage the production schedule for a title instead of just showing your screen after screen with a multitude of fields.

Prices are Negotiable

2008-03-28T18:47:00.003-04:00

For most vendors, prices are negotiable. Show them that a competitor is offering a lower price and "some" vendors will adjust their prices if it is for a "comparable" system.

How large can these adjustments be?

In the past we have seen vendors adjustment their prices by 10% to 33%.

Which firms are most likely to offer the largest price adjustments? Its new vendors that are entering the market and need references to obtain future sales or vendors that are desperate for a sale.

eBooks 103

2008-03-27T22:02:00.003-04:00

Once you are using POD to monetize your back list and are providing digital files to DARs (Digital Asset Resellers) its time to create new products from existing intellectual property, as that is where you will maximize income.

In this area publishers are using many strategies.,

1. Some such as Harlequin are selling eBooks by subscription. Readers get access to books before their published release.

2. O'Reilly is selling whole book PDFs along with short article based PDFs.

3. Random House is experimenting with the sale of individual chapters.

The key for success is to define digital products that will maximize revenue for your products. What works for one publisher may not work for another due to differences in content, the size of their back list and the number of new titles they produce each year.

eBooks 102

2008-03-26T22:36:00.003-04:00

Following up on my last post where I suggested that publishers signup with DARs, digital asset resellers;

1. Each DAR specializes in a specific area of the market. NetLibrary does best with professional books accessed by university students. Ingenta excels at the marketing of journal articles. Sony eBook is great for works of fiction. So target your efforts at the DARs that excel at handling your type of book.

2. How much can you expect to earn? At the time this article is being written a small publisher with sales of about $5M in New York gets 3% of their sales from digital resellers.

3. To faciliate the tracking of digital sales one should assign a new ISBN to your digital products. Some authorities recommend a seperate ISBN for each digitsal format, but for most publishers a single new ISBN for all digital formats (Sony eBook, Mobipocket, Adobe Digital Book) of the entire book is sufficient for sales analysis purposes.

eBooks 101

2008-03-25T22:44:00.003-04:00

There is a lot of talk in the industry about digital publishing, and many publishers ask what is the best way to proceed.

First, I would start with Print on Demand for old slow moving back list titles. If you do it through Ingram's Lightning Source they will take orders you send them and pick, pack and ship the books to the customer for you within 24 hours. Once your titles are listed as being available through POD with Lightning Source they are listed as being in stock at Ingram, the largest book wholesaler in the United States.

Second, then I would contact a DAM; Digital Asset Manager, such as LibreDigital or Code Mantra to convert my existing titles to digital books (they will do this for a minimal fee). Once this is done the next step is to sign agreements with digital asset resellers so that they can start selling your titles. Who are these DARs? They include eBrary, NetLibrary, Amazon, Sony eBook, OverDrive, eBook.com and many more.

Llewellyn Selects Elan Rights & Royalties Software

2008-02-19T10:43:00.002-05:00

"Llewellyn Worldwide, a leading publisher of New Age books and related products, has signed a contract with The Media Services Group to implement the Élan Rights and Royalties software application. Details of the agreement will see the new system implemented alongside the company’s current Oracle financials and fulfillment software."

Read the Media Services Press Release

Publishers Group UK installs Vista Hosted Solution

2008-02-19T10:39:00.004-05:00

"January 30, 2008 —VISTA, market leader in applications to support the publishing supply chain, is proud to announce that Publishers Group UK (PGUK), a market leader in book sales and distribution representing publishers from the UK, Europe and the USA, has selected VISTA’s fulfillment and financial applications in a hosted (AHS) environment. The hosted applications require minimal maintenance from PGUK’s perspective allowing their mainly non-technical staff to focus on their business of marketing, selling and distributing books."

Read the Vista Press Release

Software Selection Options

2008-02-18T22:47:00.003-05:00

What are your options?

Any company looking for software should look at all of their options;

1. Integrated software
2. Best of breed solutions
3. Custom designed software

and

1. Standalone vs.
2. Hosted solutions

That said, there is no one best solution. You must select the software that best meets the requirements of your organization.

Dyanamics GP (Great Plains) Royalty Module

2008-02-18T17:25:00.004-05:00

The Eclipse Rights & Royalty Management System (ERRMS) is the only software solution that is totally integrated with the mid market Microsoft Dynamics™ GP ERP package.

It is designed for Publishing, Music, Entertainment, and Merchandising companies who find it costly or disruptive to manually manage low value transactions, or to deal with intrusive SOX or trademark-initiated audits by “bounty-hunting” external auditors.

For more information visit: Eclipse Business Dynamics

SAP IPM Implemented in 4 Months

2008-02-17T22:47:00.004-05:00

Medium sized publishers rarely look at SAP. They think that its too expensive and/or that it takes too long to implement.

That is not always true. The Nomos Publishing House implemented SAP IPM (Intellectual Property Management) and SAP CRM (Customer Relationship Management) in four months with the assistance if IDS Scheer.

"After the initial identification of the specialist requirements, a small team began work on the project in mid-September 2006. The finished fee settlement for the publisher for the year 2006 was hot off the press at the end of January 2007. This enabled Nomos to start making automatic postings for financial accounting and payment runs to the authors — in record time and the result of an excellent partnership."

Read the press release about this implementation of SAP IPM.

If your publishing company has growing sales of $50M USD and needs a customizable intellectual property management solution I would include SAP IPM among the solutions that I would evaluate.

knk Publishing Software Comes to America

2008-02-10T04:22:00.002-05:00

knk Business Software (http://www.knk.com/ ) is a European vendor of book publishing software modules certified for the Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision) product line.

Their first implementations in the United States are due to start soon and both sites are expected to go live by the end of the year. One publisher is in the Midwest and this solution is being implement by Solution Dynamics (http://www.solutiondynamics.net ) - a Microsoft Dynamics NAV VAR) and the other is on the East coast. We will let you know who they are as soon as knk Business Software AG releases a press release.

What sets knk Publishing apart from competitive book publishing solutions is that their book publishing software modules are 100% integrated into the Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP product.

Users work from one user interface - the Dynamics NAV user interface. This means that users don't have to switch between programs and the IT staff doesn't have to export information from one system and import into another.

Seminar Software

2008-01-27T02:51:00.000-05:00

Some non-fiction publishers earn revenue by hosting conferences and seminars.

A number of years ago a publisher I know started a conference program. The first conference was hosted at the New School; a college, in New York City and broke even. Over the following years conferences grew to account for about half a million in net income a year for this publisher.
Conferences provide immediate revenue from prepaid registrations and qualified names for a publisher's direct marketing campaigns.

A conference needs;

Speakers - for whom the host is expected to pay airfare, hotel, meals and transportation and
Attendees - which are usually gained via a direct mail and internet advertising campaign and
A location - which can be a hotel conference room or a university lecture hall
Handouts for the attendees

Revenue from a conference usually includes;

Registration fees

Sponsorship Fees
Exhibit Income
Book sales
Tape sales

If you are planning to begin a semianr program the appropiate software can make your life a lot easier. Conference software will track participants, generate conference badges, take credit card payments, provide a financial summary of conference revenue, and send automatic conference registration and reminder emails.

The following three vendors market seminar management software;

These include;

The Media Services Group

Media Services solution is part of a hosted solution that can also handle royalties, book sales, inventory management subscriptions and production management. A total ERP solution for book and periodical publishers.

SolutionDymanics.net - the Midwest USA VAR for Knk's Microsoft Navision's Publishing Software

KnkPublishing Event's management module is tightly integrated with Microsoft's Dynamics Navision ERP software. For more information on the Knk offering visit http://www.knk.com/

Regonline.com

Regonline is a online hosted solution, that charges a fee based on the number of seminar attendees. For small events the price is $4.75 per attendee.

Pearson to Install IBS Bookmaster in Europe

2007-12-29T02:37:00.000-05:00

A recent press release from IBS, excerpted below, on the decision by Pearson to install IBS Bookmaster at sites in Benelux, Spain and Poland, Korea, Taiwan and Japan highlights what we see as one of the key competitive advantages of the IBS Bookmaster solution;

IBS Advantage: IBS with offices in 22 countries supports, installs & maintains their software with local staff.

"IBS has signed an agreement with Pearson, a leading international media company, for the installation of Bookmaster, IBS’ publishing and book distribution solution, in four European countries. The planned installation includes software, services and hardware with a total value of EUR 4.5 m.

Pearson, one of the world’s leading media organisations, first installed IBS Bookmaster, a software solution designed specifically for publishers and book distributors, in Australia in 1991. Today, the software is used in Pearson’s publishing and book distribution operations in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, India and South Africa, with Korea and Taiwan scheduled to go live in 2008 and Japan in 2009.

Based on Pearson’s positive experiences from their relationship with IBS in Asia, Australasia and Africa, Pearson has decided to expand the installation of the software to include four additional locations in Europe including Benelux, Spain and Poland. In total, 260 concurrent users will use IBS Bookmaster, which covers everything from editorial and book production, to distribution, warehouse management, e-commerce, business intelligence and royalties."

Production Scheduling for Book Publishers

2007-11-06T14:14:00.001-05:00

When I walk into a publisher, the most frequent question is what production management tools are available for publishers.

The book publishing specific tools - such as those offered by Klopotek for publishers with sales over $30M USD, Vista or Quality Solutions are often too expensive or hard to customize.

The one tool that small and mid-sized publishers use most often is FileMaker. FileMaker is an affordable database program designed for ease of use and the software that we recommend to small and mid-sized publishers looking for a solution that they can customize to meet their needs.

At http://www.filemaker.com/solutions/customers/industry/printing_publishing.html you can find stories about publishers that use FileMaker.

These include; Harvard University Press (a scholarly and trade publisher), Rebus (a medical publisher), and Holt, Rinehart and Winston (a text book publisher) .

IT Security - External Threats #2

2007-10-31T15:05:00.000-04:00

One of the biggest threats to security occurs when managers access their corporate systems from remote PCs, which may or may not be secure.

Currently, we are recommeding that employees of our larger clients use an IRONKEY usb flashdrive with hardware security and 128 digit encryption to initiate all remote accesses.

Why?

"It starts with the onboard IronKey Password Manager. As you visit your online sites, the Password Manager will ask you if you want it to remember your usernames and passwords. These are then stored with hardware encryption on the IronKey drive.

When you wish to log back into one of your accounts, the Password Manager compares the website that you are visiting with the website where you originally entered your password. If they match, the Password Manager enters your password for you without you having to type it in. If they do not match, then you may be on a phishing site, and the Password Manager will not enter the password for you.

This gives you simple but effective protection against phishing attacks and spyware that tracks your keystrokes."

IT Security - External Threats #1

2007-10-30T16:39:00.000-04:00

Recently we reviewed the IT security systems for a publisher, who shall remain nameless, that had just undergone an audit by a CPA firm. The CPA firm overlooked a major hole in the publisher's management information system (MIS) security.

In our experience, 95% of security threats are internal (employees of the company) and 5% are external (hackers, viruses and worms).

ERP solutions, that store data in encrypted files are relatively secure against external threats provided that the external threat (i.e. hacker) can't gain access to a user id and password that allows access to the system and the user id that allows access to the ERP software.

At this publisher, we found that although the internal systems were secure managers who accessed the system's web site interface remotely were often doing so via systems that had expired internet security and firewall software or in two cases had turned off the security software on their laptop (as they said that it slowed their internet access).

With the security software on the external laptop turned off or expired, it would have been relatively easy for a hacker - perhaps using keyboard logging software - to obtain a copy of the user's userid and password as he entered it.

IT managers need to review and secure external internet access with an integrated set of policies, procedures, software and hardware designed to protect the company's property and customers.

New Software Vendors - Risks and Benefits

2007-08-24T16:48:00.000-04:00

Looking at a new software vendor, a vendor with a small but growing customer base?

At Kensai International, Ltd. we tend to prefer established vendors with a customer base of 100 or more publishers, that said solutions from new vendors usually offer unique advantages over that of more established vendors.

These advantages include;

a. Features not offered by their larger competitors.

Example, iPub ( http://www.ipubtech.com/ ) and HiPoint ( http://www.hisoftwareinc.com/ )solutions offer integrated EDI processing, a feature for which some competitors charge $15 to $25K.

b. Newer Technology

New vendors are more likely to have software built using the latest software development tools.

c. Lower Pricing

With newer solutions that have a small customer base there is a risk that they will be here today and gone tomorrow.

To evaluate this risk we recommend that a publisher consider three factors;

Is their customer base growing?
Can they cover their operating expenses?
Do they have "glowing" references?

SAP Book Publishing Software

2007-05-28T11:40:00.000-04:00

SAP's book publishing software offers two unique advantages when compared to other solutions.

First, it offers the most highly customizable software solution available for book publishers that want a customized solution. When Random House realized they a customized rights solution for their unique needs they were able to construct a customized solution in SAP. Standardized software for larger publishers; such as IBS Bookmaster or Klopotek, does not offer this flexibility.

Second, SAP is multilingual. Workstations in Japan, Germany, United States, Russia and France can access a centralized database in their own language. This feature allows a multinational publishing company to standardize their operations around a single solution that provides management with real time information on their global operations.

That said, in our experience, SAP is best suited for large book publishing companies with sales or $100M+ USD. Why? In the past we have suggested that multilnational publishers with sales of $30M to $75M contact SAP. SAP was not interested in dealing with them, and recommended that they seek other solution providers.

Cats Pajamas Signs 4 New Contracts

2007-05-27T23:04:00.000-04:00

Four publishers selected the Cats Pajamas software offered by the Media Services Group.

The publishers are:

New York Botanical Gardens Press, the largest publishing program of any independent botanical garden in the world.

Smithsonian Books which will use Cat's Pajamas to calculate and process rights and royalties.

Kumon Publishing North America, a subsidiary of Kumon Publishing Corporation, an educational publisher founded in Japan in 1988.

Eastern Washington University Press

Bookmaster Selected by EMC Paradigm Publishing

2007-05-27T22:57:00.000-04:00

PRESS RELEASE
IBS North America, March 15, 2007

EMC Paradigm Publishing signs a software license agreement for IBS Bookmaster software.

EMC Paradigm Publishing, which recently celebrated fifty years in the publishing industry, has signed a software and services agreement with IBS to install the world-leading software suite for publishers – IBS Bookmaster. The new system will include financials, book production, inventory control, warehouse management, subscription management, royalties and retail management.

“The IBS Bookmaster software suite will help take our publishing business to the next level, while making us more competitive and more efficient,” states Pat McKeown, Director of Information Systems, EMC Paradigm Publishing. “We are especially looking forward to the Book Production Module that will be able to track our process from inception to final printing. Throughout the evaluation process, we felt that the IBS Bookmaster software was the most comprehensive of all the software applications we looked at.”

About EMC/Paradigm Publishing

For more than 50 years, EMC Paradigm Publishing has been committed to developing quality educational materials and providing personalized service to educators. Their School Division offers textbook programs in World Languages, Business Education, Literature, and Language Arts with supplementary and multimedia materials. The College Division offers textbook programs in Computer Technology, Allied Health, Accounting, Office Technology, Distance Learning, Staff Development and Biotechnology with supplementary and multimedia materials. EMC has customers throughout the US and Canada.

Acumen Rights Management Module

2007-05-27T22:47:00.000-04:00

The new Acumen Rights Management Optional Module enables you to manage rights submissions and contracts, and increase lucrative subsidiary rights sales. Subsidiary rights sales provide the benefit of leveraging existing intellectual property into other industries, geographic regions, and languages.

While the core ACUMEN system provides basic support for rights sales, the Rights Management Optional Module builds on the basic rights features by integrating Submissions, Customers, CRM, Regions, Products, Invoices, Accounting, Royalties and Cash Receipts into a full-featured system that enables you to manage all aspects of rights submissions and contracts—from the initial contact to the signing of a contract and receipt of royalty payments.

CyberWolf Inc. has been helping publishers grow since 1990 and is used by over 180 publishers. To learn more about ACUMEN Book®, visit www.acumenbook.com.

Sales Channel Statistics: 2006

2007-03-22T15:16:00.000-04:00

The Wall Street Journal of March 22, 2007 reported that book sales by sales channel for 2006; according to R.R. Bowker LLC, were:

38% - Traditional Retail
24% - Library
18% - Non Bookstore Retailers
13% - Online
05% - Book Clubs
02% - Direct publisher to consumer sales