b.cognosco

What Not To Do

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 05:00:00 GMT

Someone has no doubt spent millions developing this beautiful, and utterly unusable, digital book interface. (hat tip to Ernie.)

Copy This! The Story of Kinko's

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 01:29:24 GMT

Copy This! Lessons from a Hyperactive Dyslexic Who Turned a Bright Idea Into One of America's Best Companies
by Paul Orfalea, Ann Marsh
Workman Publishing Company 2005
0761137777

This weekend I've been reading the autobiography of Kinko's founder Paul Orfalea. Probably because of my background in printing and my work with Kinko's as a customer, vendor, and consultant over the years my expectations for the book are different from the casual reader, but even so I've been pleasantly surprised. Orfalea offers a practical, pragmatic approach to business, backed by the frenetic and entertaining story of his life. It's refreshing to see such a down-to-earth blend of customer focus, respect for employees, and sharing the wealth. Throughout the book, Orfalea's focus is people, people, people - how to support them and how to give them power over their destiny. His theme is really "You can do this. It's just not that hard."

Orfalea, who has both dyslexia and ADHD, built a multi-billion dollar company using voice mail as his primary form of communication because he never learned to read effectively. (Tip for Skype Journal: Want to talk about a Skype Strategy? Pick up a copy and read Chapter 5 where he describes his innovative use of voice messaging to stay in touch, spread ideas, and even introduce co-workers to each other.)

Among other interesting tidbits I realized while reading (these are not explicit in the text):

Kinko's was the first major volley in the personal publishing revolution - in the 1970s they were the first significant business to open the printing press, via the photocopier, to the masses.
Kinko's was the first major casualty of the copyright wars - their loss, to eight textbook publishers, in a $3.5 million lawsuit in the early '90s set the tone for numerous limitations on fair use that were to follow.

I haven't finished the book yet, but it's definitely one I will give to some struggling young people I know. Orfalea's message - that while traditional education is good and valuable, if it doesn't work for you there are other ways to success - is powerful and needed by those who are increasingly left behind by our failing education system.

The More Space Project Launches Collaborative Book

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 15:32:06 GMT

The More Space project, organized by Todd Sattersten of 800CEOREAD has launched its book. This is a collaborative blogger book - i.e. Todd got several bloggers together to write individual chapters - and it's the first successful such attempt I've seen (if you know others please post a comment.)

The book is available online (pdf or html) at the More Space web site, but there's a nice bundle of bonus material available for those who want to preorder a printed book. By the way this is, increasingly, the way books will be sold. If you're looking at promoting a book you could do a lot worse than to follow Todd's example.

...presents nine current business bloggers writing in their own unique styles. Each author challenges the premise that places of business can only be cold and uninspiring. By sharing their own experiences they offer up ways for you to re-ignite passion and enthusiasm in your work.

To get a feel for the content and quality of the book I downloaded the chapter written by Marc Orchant of TheOfficeWeblog. I assume the pdf layout reflects the look of the printed book, and it's a nice, comfortable read. Mark's chapter is titled "Work Is Broken - Here's How We Fix It", but the pdf file is named MSBroken.pdf and the chapter's central character is named Bill. Hmm, any irony there?

The chapter is good though, spending enough time on background to give a clear picture of what is broken and why, then proposing some specific fixes for meetings, e-mail, and presentations. Like all good solutions, at the end you have a feeling of, "Oh, why didn't I think of that?"

Marc's chapter was was enough to sell me on the book and I've pre-ordered my copy. Go place your order today. I knew about More Space (having actually had a very pleasant Skype call with Todd some time back,) but had forgotten. I was reminded today via Hobart's The Mindjet Blog.

Why Did NYTimes Cut Jobs

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 21:25:19 GMT

Speech writer Jane Genova examines causes for the recent shrinkage at the paper of record. That is what the Times calls itself, yes? I dunno. I never even bother to click NYT links anymore. I know I can't get to them if it's been more than a few days, and it hardly seems worth the effort. It's just not that relevant anymore. But that's just me. Jane says there are other reasons:

After Black Tuesday Comes Wednesday

Civilized society had to quake on Tuesday when THE NEW YORK TIMES announced it was cutting 500 jobs.

Jane has some interesting work on her blog. Check out her perspective on whether or not CEOs should blog (says it's irrelevant) and why narcissism is being weeded out of the blogosphere (a very good thing.)

Rip-off 101: How Textbook Industry Manipulates Prices

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 00:15:08 GMT

A captive audience, naked price manipulation, over-reaching copyright laws, an apathetic education bureaucracy, and a student body that is rapidly losing respect for big corporations who abuse the market have created new tensions for the textbook publishing industry. Right now, publishers have a cushy, protected, contrived environment that they will fight to maintain, but students and consumer advocates are starting to fight back.

Oligopoly Watch author Steve Hannaford recently addressed the state of the textbook industry and the inherent issues of price fixing and consumer abuse now that only a few suppliers remain:

Textbook prices

College students across the US have just been hit with sticker shock. No, not from rises in tuition at private and public universities alike, though that is bad enough. The shock comes at the bookstore, where textbooks in most subjects now cost hundreds of dollars, ratcheted up year after year.

We don't often talk about naked price manipulation by oligopolies on this site, but this is a clear case of a captive audience and a few publishers that have "agreed" silently to raise prices. That's the opinion of Yale law professor Ian Ayres, writing in the New York Times (Just What the Professor Ordered, 9/16/2005). He quotes a government report that states that textbook prices have risen at double the rate of inflation. This the report attributes to the high cost of adding supportive CD and online materials to college texts.

But that same government report, according to Ayres. The real problem is the lack of price competition. A series of mergers has ensured that although there are hundreds of textbooks to choose from, the five largest publishers control 80 percent of the market The competitors don't need a secret meeting; they just look at others' rising prices and adjust them upward in return.

Strong corroborating evidence comes from a recent report by CALPIRG, the California Public Interest Research Group Rip-off 101: How The Current Practices of the Textbook Industry Drive Up The Costs Of College Textbooks (link via Dave Pollard via Stephen Downes) was based on a survey of the most widely assigned textbooks in the fall of 2003 at 10 public colleges and universities in California and Oregon. Student volunteers and staff also interviewed 156 faculty and 521 students about the cost of textbooks and their purchasing practices. Key findings from the survey include:

Student textbook expenditures have risen 24% since the 1996/1997 school year
Textbook expenditures are now equal to almost 20 percent of the average tuition and fees for in-state students at public four-year colleges nationwide
Half of all textbooks now come bundled, or shrink-wrapped with additional instructional materials such as CD-ROMs and workbooks. Students rarely have the option of buying the textbook a la carte or without additional materials
Sixty-five (65) percent of faculty rarely or never use the bundled materials in their courses
Seventy-six (76) percent of faculty report that the new editions they use are justified never to half the time. Forty (40) percent of faculty report that the new editions are rarely to never justified

The inclusion of value-added materials such as CDs and workbooks is identified as a major factor in rising costs. But the study finds no demand for these materials from either students or faculty. Yet publishers continue with claims these materials are necessary to to attract students and be competitive. Again from Oligopoly Watch:

The companies try to justify higher prices, as reported in a Washington Post article (Textbook Prices on the Rise", 9/18/2004):

The $3.4 billion-a-year higher-education publishing industry says that it must keep its material current to win schools' support and that prices are competitive in each market. Industry officials defend new editions churned out by major higher-education publishers Thomson Learning, Pearson Education and McGraw-Hill. They argue that texts must be continually modernized if publishers want to keep the attention of today's college students, who are used to the graphics and interactivity of the Internet.

Though that does not explain why the same companies sell textbooks at lower prices in other countries.

Ayres points out the parallels between the cost of textbooks and those of prescription drugs, where the person "prescribing" has no need to pay for the texts/drugs and may not even be aware of their costs. The consumer, who does pay, is given no choice.

This parallel between the pharmaceutical and textbook publishing industries is important, with a key difference. In medicine there is a massive layer of intermediating healthcare managers that have grown to balance the market power of the pharmaceutical makers. Doctors may not know what your medicine costs, but your insurer does and works to drive that cost down.

No such intermediary exists in education, and the entire burden falls to students, who have no representation in the process. Publishers are completely insulated from the people who have to pay them, creating a perfectly inelastic market where demand is unaffected by price. This sort of artificial environment is a gold mine for publishers, and ripe for consumer abuse and anti-competitive behavior.

The first of the CALPIRG policy recommendations is to inform professors of the cost of textbooks during their selection process, force publishers to disclose full pricing for all products, and require unbundling of value-added extras. Unbelievably, none of this happens today. The publishers create an artificial scarcity of information that allows them to dictate market conditions rather than respond to them. The university bureaucracies offer little resistance, exposing how disconnected they have become from their customers. In the past part of this financial pressure was mitigated by liberal use of photocopies. Professors would order photocopies of small, but key, portions of textbooks for their course paks. But a full frontal assault on copyright and Fair Use by publishers, and intellectual property holders everywhere, all but eliminated this practice.

Abandoned by university leaders, students have taken matters into their own hands and are finding innovative, affordable ways to make their own full-text versions of books. Over at The Student Tablet PC blog there is a wealth of information on setting up your own scanning and OCR process. Everything from what hardware and software to buy to ideas on annotation, file formats, and cataloging. Its not much of a stretch to imagine a substantial black market popping up in scanned, annotated electronic books created by students. Theyve already shown a complete disregard for interests of record labels selling overpriced CDs. It seems unlikely that textbook publishers will get any more respect.