Publishing • Technology • Innovation — Issue #54

9 min readJun 24, 2019

By Kathy Sandler • Issue #54 • View online

Publishing

Justice Department Tries to Block Quad-LSC Deal HT @DeadTreeEdition “The combination of Quad and LSC — the two most significant magazine, catalog, and book printers in the United States — threatens to increase prices, reduce quality, and limit availability of printed material that millions of Americans rely on to receive and disseminate information and ideas,” reads the first paragraph of Justice’s complaint. The move is counter to Justice’s usual laissez faire approach to mergers in the printing industry, which it had previously viewed as highly fragmented and therefore not subject to antitrust regulations. (There’s No Such Thing as a Printing Industry explains that, in fact, printing is a collection of disparate marketplaces.) deadtreeedition.blogspot.com • Share

The sale of B&N again calls the question of the future of America’s bookstores ICYMI @MikeShatzkin’s take on the Barnes & Noble sale www.idealog.com • Share

Condé Nast International launches Vogue Business Talent Condé Nast International launches Vogue Business Talent, a curated recruitment platform for professionals seeking opportunities with the world’s leading fashion brands in London, NY, Paris, Milan + Hong Kong per @FIPPWorld www.fipp.com • Share

Allrecipes’ unlocks audio content through Meredith’s SmartCodes About nine months after including SmartCodes across its portfolio, Meredith has ventured further into multimedia, by incorporating audio content into the array of opportunities and experiences its readers can access through its exclusive QR codes. www.fipp.com • Share

A first look at Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women remake Vanity Fair dropped an exclusive sneak peek at Greta Gerwig’s upcoming film adaptation of the classic Louisa May Alcott novel. The film also stars Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Meryl Streep and more. twitter.com • Share

Picture This: Diversity in Children’s Books 2018 Infographic From @readingspark There are almost 3x more animals as characters in children’s books than African Americans and only 5% Latinx. This does not reflect the population. We have a lot of work to do to get diverse books! readingspark.wordpress.com • Share

First Public Working Draft: Audiobook Profile for Web Publications The W3C Publishing Working Group is working on audiobook specifications for putting audiobooks on the web. www.w3.org • Share

Accessible Ebook Publishing in Canada: The Business Case RT @LauraB7 inclusivepublishing.org • Share

How people find news and what they’ll pay for RT @DCNorg How people find news and what they’ll pay for @Randeloo looks at the latest digital news report from @risj_oxford digitalcontentnext.org • Share

Forbes Media may soon be on block again as investors explore sale Reached for comment, a spokesman for Forbes, also known as the “Capitalist Tool,” didn’t shoot down rumors of a sale — and even went so far as to encourage investors to take a closer look. nypost.com • Share

Study: Toddlers Prefer Print Books over Tablets HT @publishingtrend Despite the popularity of electronic devices and e-books, a recent study shows, for toddlers, nothing beats an old fashioned print book. newsroom.clevelandclinic.org • Share

How The New York Times’ AI-driven data insight tool is informing ad campaigns For publishers, AI-driven tools have largely been used for editorial purposes, to write articles on themes like sports scores, weather forecasts and real estate sales. The NY Times is using AI to inform ad campaigns. “There’s a ton of pressure on the industry, but the way it survives is being able to come up with smart ways to meet what the advertiser needs most efficiently.” www.fipp.com • Share

Innovation

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. Your guide to playing the new phone game Remember the Pokémon Go craze? Get ready to hear a lot about Wizards Unite — the new AR Harry Potter game. Per Techcrunch, it reached 400K downloads, $300K in consumer spend in UK and US https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/21/harry-potter-wizards-unite-reaches-400k-downloads-300k-in-consumer-spend-in-u-k-and-u-s/ as of Friday. www.cnet.com • Share

Yahoo News XR partner program/XR aggregator RT @nycmedialab Yahoo News XR Partner Program will “transform [it] into the world’s largest aggregator of premium content and immersive journalism.” Initial partners: USA Today, Reuters, AP, TIME. Yahoo News will be distributing, measuring, and monetizing XR content. XR monetization will be avail to partners via Verizon’s RYOT AR ads SDK. www.verizon.com • Share

Google Is Rolling Out Augmented Reality Try-On Tools for YouTubers and Beauty Brands It’s also debuting 360-degree display ads. www.adweek.com • Share

Disney’s New ‘Lion King’ Is the VR-Fueled Future of Cinema Director Jon Favreau shot the remake of the animated classic inside virtual reality. www.wired.com • Share

How the New York Public Library Brought Novels to Instagram With Unexpectedly Huge Results “The copious praise and engagement around #InstaNovels shows that a longstanding brand — in this case, one that’s more than 120 years old — can pleasantly surprise its fans by embracing technology in exciting ways.” www.adweek.com • Share

Technology

Facebook announces Libra cryptocurrency, Calibra digital wallet The Libra cryptocurrency will not be run by Facebook, but rather by a nonprofit association supported by 120 companies. But Facebook does have a plan to profit from it with a new subsidiary, Calibra, which is building a digital wallet for storing/exchanging the currency. Also interesting that they are targeting Wells Fargo fees for migrants. www.cnbc.com • Share

The Fall and Rise of VR: The Struggle to Make Virtual Reality Get Real HT @nycmedialab Peak VR hype was 2016, but there are non-consumer applications. fortune.com • Share

Business

If Strategy Is So Important, Why Don’t We Make Time for It? Not a new article, but important. By @dorieclark. In one study, 97% of leaders say their strategic behavior is vital to organizational success. But in another, 96% say they lack time for strategic thinking. So you need to make it. hbr.org • Share

Amazon’s next big thing may redefine big: ML and AI You know the AWS growth story. Amazon is now looking to have a similar impact with the next major phase in computing: machine-learning and artificial intelligence. “There’s only a certain set of problems for which you need to build new algorithms,” Mr Vogels said, suggesting for everything else, companies should just use Amazon.www.bbc.com • Share

Amazon’s Twitch acquired social networking platform Bebo for up to $25M to bolster its esports efforts techcrunch.com • Share

FedEx Leverages Dollar General Stores in Its Push into Ecommerce We saw that FexEx was discontinuing its agreement w Amazon, which I thought might be foolhardy. Now we see that FedEx is pushing into eCommerce and it makes sense — I guess…. www.ecommercebytes.com • Share

With Tasty as centerpiece, BuzzFeed aims for $260m in branded product sales digiday.com • Share

Texas court says photographer has no recourse against university copyright infringement This doesn’t make any sense to me. -> The University of Houston got a big win this week when a state appeals court agreed to reverse a lower court ruling that would have allowed a Houston photographer to sue the university for using an aerial photograph the university used to promote its business school. www.houstonchronicle.com • Share

Lyrics Site Accuses Google of Lifting Its Content ICYMI A lyrics website thought Google was scraping and copying their lyrics, so they changed the apostrophes in some to use Morse code and spell out “red handed!” However, did the lyrics site have the copyright? www.wsj.com • Share

How fitness equipment startups are plotting the push into physical retail Spurred by success of Peloton, new startups building internet-connected, in-home workout equip. Also, Best Buy to start selling exercise equip in 100 stores by end of yr. In interim, startups experimenting w pop-ups to get a better sense of what customers want. www.modernretail.co • Share

Andreessen Horowitz Is Blowing Up The Venture Capital Model (Again) ICYMI Andreessen Horowitz pivoting away from being a VC, they are registering their entire firm — a costly move requiring reviews of all 150 people — as a financial advisor www.forbes.com • Share

Women leading “non-female” startups raise 54% less VC than their fair share (and in deep-tech, it’s worse) RT @danielaperdomo After 4 rounds of VC, I ran my own data analysis to see if my experience is unique. Women founders in female-focused sectors raise equitable VC, but women in non-female sectors raise 54% less than their fair share. In deep-tech, women raise up to 75% less! industrialfelt.com • Share

Resources, Opportunities, and Causes

Celeste Ng on Twitter: “Let’s do this again. Donate what you can to @RAICESTEXAS and send me a screenshot of your receipt, and I’ll match it up to $2000.… https://t.co/84rJ9mAOwd" twitter.com • Share

litagentsofcolor RT @marcelalandres Literary Agents of Color, an online directory devoted to listing and supporting literary agents of color in the publishing industry. www.litagentsofcolor.com • Share

Ebook Technical Specialist — Publishing Operations RT @naomikennedy Hello #eprdctn friends! I have a job available on my dev team! Come help me make tools to make ebooks (note: no actual ebooks are produced by my team, this is a dev position not a production one) jobsearch.createyourowncareer.com • Share

The 2019 Langston Hughes Institute For Young Writers RT @ITooArts #Highschool #Writers Don’t forget, a few spots available for our Summer #LangstonHughes Institute for #YoungWriters this July! Week-long workshop with free breakfast/lunch + metrocards lead by the always energetic @AIRTUBMAN happens July 8th! Register: docs.google.com • Share