Category Archives: Publishing

Cooking the books?

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Over the many years I have been writing this blog, I have often commented on the publishing industry, from my personal experiences, to industry trends and future outlook. The recent collapse of Australia’s online bookseller, Booktopia, prompted me to revisit the topic.

First, a declaration – I am an unsecured retail creditor of Booktopia. Orders for books I  paid for in advance of their publication dates still have not been fulfilled. Obviously, I am not alone; there are about 170k retail creditors, owed a total of $15m. That is an average of about $90 per creditor, although some retail customers are owed more than $10k.

Second, Booktopia’s total debts of around $60m are nearly one third of annual turnover ($198m in FY2023). In FY2022, annual turnover was $240m. Clearly, this was a business in decline, and in financial trouble.

Third, I should have been alert to the problems when I enquired about my outstanding orders, shortly before the administrators were called in. I knew the books had already been published, so I wanted to know when to expect them. This was part of the reply I received, in mid-June:

“We have been experiencing difficulties procuring new stocks from our supplier lately, we are so sorry for the delay.”

Fourth, it transpires that publishers, wholesalers and distributors were experiencing payment delays from Booktopia. Suppliers were reducing or cutting off their credit lines, and declining to supply more stock unless the existing debts were cleared. The administrators are doing their best to realise any remaining value of the business, including a trade sale of Booktopia (as a whole, or as parts). The assets include warehouse stock (some of which may still be owned by the publishers/wholesalers), customer lists, technology, goodwill and other IP. But it was made pretty clear at the first creditors’ meeting that unsecured trade and retail creditors should not expect to get their money back any time soon, and certainly not in full. (A total of $15m in secured debt will get preference, including employees.) So even if the unfulfilled but paid-for stock can be located, there is no apparent obligation for outstanding orders to be completed. In fact, the administrators were suggesting that retail creditors should contact their banks or credit card providers, to see if they could recover their money via those channels. (Which is why insurance premiums, card fees and bank charges go up, of course.)

I don’t understand why Booktopia’s retail and trade debts were allowed to get to such a high percentage of their turn over. Book publishing and distribution shouldn’t be that hard – either the book is in stock at Booktopia, and can be sent immediately, or it is available to order from suppliers and can be fulfilled within a reasonable time. For books that have not yet been printed, surely the customer’s money should be held in some sort of escrow account, and the cash not accessible by the seller or recognised as revenue until the order has been completed?

Of course, books go out of print, and customers may have to wait for a re-print or a new edition. Or the industry needs to consider print-on-demand solutions. Funnily enough, that is one of the key recommendations of the Ad Rem report on the Australian publishing industry (“The Australian Book Industry: Challenges and Opportunities”) in 2001….

Next week: Notes from the UK

 

 

A postscript on AI

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AI tools and related search engines should know when a factual reference is incorrect, or indeed whether an individual (especially someone notable) is living or dead. In an interesting postscript to my recent series on AI, I came across this article – written by someone whom Google declared is no longer with us.

Glaring errors like these demand that tech companies (as well as publishers and media outlets who increasingly rely on these tools) take more seriously the individual’s right of reply, the right to correct or amend the record, as well as the right to privacy and to be forgotten on the internet.

As I commented in my series of articles, AI tools such as ChatGPT (and, it seems, Google Search) can easily conflate separate facts into false statements. Another reason to be on our guard as we embrace (and rely on) these new applications.

Next week: Bad Sports

 

 

The Five Ws of Journalism

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The importance of a free press within a democratic society cannot be overstated: without the Fourth Estate who will “speak truth unto power”? The role of the printing press was critical to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the great political reforms in nineteenth century Britain.

But lapses in journalistic behaviour and a decline in editorial standards over the past few decades have brought the press and broadcast media into increasing disrepute – to the point that mainstream media (MSM) has become a pejorative term, and social media (SoMe) claims to be the last bastion of free speech.

I think the truth lies somewhere between those two positions – I don’t believe that the MSM is totally devoid of ethics, nor do I believe that SoMe will displace formal journalism (and it certainly isn’t without its own ethical challenges when it comes to dis/misinformation and hate speech).

But what do I mean by “formal journalism”? After all, we have seen a raft of platforms giving rise to “citizen journalism” and other services which rely heavily on community sourced content, but few of these platforms appear to operate to the same professional standards of traditional reportage, fact-checking, investigative journalism or news dissemination. It also remains to be seen whether these new media channels can displace traditional print (and online) news media as “papers of record”.

As part of a career transition, I took a night class in journalism and sub-editing, with a view to becoming a writer or editor. Although I did work as an editor for many years, it was in the field of legal publishing, and not for a newspaper or magazine. Even though the course I completed was not a traditional degree in journalism, communications or media studies, I was still taught some of the key tenets of serious journalism, principally the Five W’s – the “who, what, where, when and why” of any news event (with the “how” also being an important component of any credible story).

This foundational approach to news reporting underpinned many of the most significant pieces of investigative journalism in the late 20th century, some of which changed laws and government policies, as well as influencing public opinion. Think of the role of the press in breaking the thalidomide story, publishing the Pentagon Papers, or exposing the Watergate cover-up. Even the Panama Papers relied on the collaboration of traditional news media outlets to bring the story to public attention. More recently, the work of Private Eye in helping to bring the UK’s post office miscarriage of justice to light is a prime example of the power of journalistic persistence in search of the truth.

On the other hand, a raft of tabloid scandals have dented the public trust in the traditional press, in particular the phone hacking exploits within the British media. Here in Australia, a recent high profile defamation case prompted the judge to put TV journalism under the microscope – and neither broadcaster involved in the case came away covered in glory. In particular, the court questioned whether the journalists involved had breached their own industry code of practice, by failing to check their facts and by inadequately testing the credibility of their witnesses. The grubby practice of cheque book journalism also came under renewed scrutiny, as did an ill-advised speech on TV by one of the parties that could have been prejudicial to a criminal case. More significantly, one media organisation displayed a willingness to believe (and even assert) that there had been a political conspiracy to suppress an alleged crime, when no such evidence of a cover-up had been established. This case (and its associated claims and counterclaims) still has a fair way to go, and has already embroiled senior politicians (some of whom have been accused of lying about what they knew, when and how), civil servants, political staffers, public prosecutors, multiple police forces, so-called “fixers” and “influencers” with their insidious “back grounding” and a number of TV producers who will probably never work in the industry again.

Added to this sh!t show has been the misnaming of a suspected murderer by one of the above-mentioned TV news channels. This major and latest faux-pas is believed to have been the result of “reporting” some false, misleading or mischievous commentary circulating on social media.

Apart from undertaking more rigorous fact-checking, and enforcing the established journalistic practice of getting actual confirmation of events from at least two credible sources, the news media also needs to make a greater distinction between the facts themselves on the one hand, and conjecture, speculation, opinion, analysis and commentary on the other.

Next week: Is it OK to take selfies in the gym?

 

 

 

AI vs IP

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Can Artificial Intelligence software claim copyright in any work that was created using their algorithms?

The short answer is “no”, since only humans can establish copyright in original creative works. Copyright can be assigned to a company or trust, or it can be created under various forms of creative commons, but there still needs to be a human author behind the copyright material. While copyright may lapse over time, it then becomes part of the public domain.

However, the extent to which a human author can claim copyright in a work that has been created with the help of AI is now being challenged. A recent case in the USA has determined that the author of a graphic novel, which included images created using Midjouney, cannot claim copyright in those images. While it was accepted that the author devised the text and other prompts that the software used as the generative inputs, the output images themselves could not be the subject of copyright protection – meaning they are either in the public domain, or they fall under some category of creative commons? This case also indicates that, in the USA at least, failing to declare the use of AI tools in a work when applying for copyright registration may result in a rejected application.

Does this decision mean that the people who write AI programmes could claim copyright in works created using their software? Probably not – as this would imply that Microsoft could establish copyright in every novel written using Word, especially its grammar and spelling tools.

On the other hand, programmers and software developers who use copyright material to train their models may need to obtain relevant permission from the copyright holders (as would anyone using the AI tools and who uses copyright content as prompts), unless they could claim exemptions under “fair dealing” or “fair use” provisions.

We’re still early in the lengthy process whereby copyright and other intellectual property laws are tested and re-calibrated in the wake of AI. Maybe the outcomes of future copyright cases will depend on whether you are Ed Sheeran or Robin Thicke….

Next week: Customer Experience vs Process Design