[nfais-l] NFAIS Enotes 2013, No. 1 - Discovering The Book

[jilloneill at nfais.org]

NFAIS Enotes 2013, No. 1 – Discovering the Book
Written and Compiled by Jill O’Neill
 
In April of this year, noting the sale of the social networking site Goodreads to giant bookseller, Amazon, The Atlantic ran a brief piece that contained a statistic worked up by the Codex Group, based on a 2008 population study by the National Endowment for the Arts. Specifically, the statistic was that 19% of the American population did 79% of the country’s unassigned reading (that is, reading not required by or tied to either schoolwork or profession). What was striking was that the bar for inclusion in that group was set so low -- the 19% referenced were those who had simply read twelve or more books in the previous twelve months. These prolific readers were at the pinnacle of the Codex Group triangle. (See [http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-simple-reason-why-goodreads-is-so-valuable-to-amazon/274548/] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-simple-reason-why-goodreads-is-so-valuable-to-amazon/274548/. Another diagram in that piece showed that Americans were no longer as dependent upon browsing in bookstores or libraries to find a reading selection, but were far more apt to discover new content via online social networks and from those people whose tastes they knew and trusted. 
 
Is this significant for those working with bibliographic information, serious monographs, and other scholarly information services? It may be. Discovery has morphed somewhat in the 21st century. Fifteen years ago, I walked the aisle of an ALA exhibit hall and spied a volume on display in a publisher’s booth. The cover was fairly standard in its uniformity of design for an established book series – black rectangle on a pine green background with the title picked out in letters of gold. The formula for creating the title was fairly standard as well; there was an attention-grabbing main title with a subtitle that gave a more realistic sense of the book’s scope.  But the displayed cover, however muted, and the title of the text were the only elements to prompt an attendee’s interest in pursuing an acquisition.  Such an approach suggests a hopeful reliance on serendipitous discovery by the (quite reputable) publisher.  However, from a business perspective, serendipitous discovery is unreliable as a selling tactic.  So, the question remains. If the potential buyer doesn’t know of a book’s existence, how can the publisher foster discovery?
 
In this digital age, if he or she were to be lucky, the scholar’s dissertation published in book form might carry some eye-catching image, but it is by no means a given.  I might be able to follow a trail of potential titles of interest generated through an online search and discover a new title that way.  Somewhere there would be a web site from which I might download a digital sample onto my smartphone and links that could direct me to an online retailer for purposes of completing the sale.  As a nod to the social, the site might offer some functionality for sharing the discovery of the title with my friends. 
 
Take a look at the UK start-up, Jellybooks ([http://www.jellybooks.com/] http://www.jellybooks.com).  The service focuses on serendipitous discovery; the user is looking for a book, but without any awareness of a particular title or author.  In their approach, the first choice offered to the visitor is whether they want fiction or non-fiction. Two additional tabs direct those interested to alternate choices of a genre. Once that question has been answered, the visual image of a cover is the primary means of attracting attention to an ebook. The other services (e-text sample, sharing to a social network, link to a retailer, etc.) essentially minimize the need for the buyer to think like a librarian or store clerk. (Publisher name and ISBN are pretty much buried.) Jellybooks focuses on the creation of a connection between the visualized concept of a book’s content and the curious mind of the buyer.  It’s about as fundamental a form of discovery as we can presently achieve.  Andrew Rhomberg, founder of Jellybooks, wrote publicly about his theories of discovery on the Digital Book World blog:  ([http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/five-shades-of-book-discovery/] http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/five-shades-of-book-discovery/). To him, discovery breaks down to five fairly straightforward classes: (1) serendipitous discovery; (2) social discovery; (3) discovery in context or distributed discovery; (4) data-driven discovery; and (5) incentivized discovery. 
 
When I survey the landscape for Rhomberg’s classes of discovery, I note that in many instances the major book publishers serving the academic community have gotten the message. While it is true that book covers are still rather lackluster, some adoption of new technologies and thinking are fueling informal discovery. For example, Oxford University Press (OUP) has been brilliant in leveraging their blog.  In terms of graphic appeal and content, the blog might be mistaken for a major digital magazine,  in support of the reader discovering  titles that would not otherwise surface or appear to have broad appeal.   In a recent post, a staff intern wrote about how one might survive the ever-recurring nightmare of a zombie apocalypse, offering solutions found by consulting various reference works – including various dictionaries and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology. 
 
In 2012, OUP also ran half a dozen entries tied to the popular Downton Abbey television series. A user searching Google could turn up entries that tied published OUP historical studies to the events and cultural attitudes appearing as part of the Season Two storyline. There was less emphasis on the elite nature of the content and instead emphasis on the value of the content in satisfying the reader’s nascent curiosity.  OUP was perceived as not taking itself too seriously while positioning its academic product as being accessible to the broader reading public. 
 
The Oxford Companion to Downton Abbey: [http://blog.oup.com/2012/02/oxford-downton-abbey-reading-list/] http://blog.oup.com/2012/02/oxford-downton-abbey-reading-list/
How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse: [http://blog.oup.com/2013/05/oxford-companion-zombie-apocalypse/] http://blog.oup.com/2013/05/oxford-companion-zombie-apocalypse/
 
That prolific readers are interested in more than just Fifty Shades of Grey is evidenced by some on-going individual initiatives.  A case in point is the WordPress-driven site War Through the Generations, a blog that came into existence because two blogger-readers were driven by curiosity to learn more about the literature of war. The blog explains that it aims “to generate discussion and provide readers with lists of books and links to online reviews of war-related books” (see: [http://warthroughthegenerations.wordpress.com/] http://warthroughthegenerations.wordpress.com/).  So far the site has offered annual thematic support for challenging readers to discover more about World War II, the Vietnam War and the American Civil War. In 2013, the focus is on the American Revolutionary War.  Titles include biographies, memoirs,  and histories at various levels.  If you are unfamiliar with the concept of reading challenges, they’ve proven to be a popular motivational tool for individuals who want to deepen their knowledge of a topic or genre or even just increase the number of books finished in a year.   Depending upon the topic or genre, some established reading challenges are nearing a decade of existence. Badges of participation may appear on individual blogs, notifying others of involvement in the challenge, of interest in the topic, creating a social tie between individuals and fostering relationships as well as associations between topically-related titles. 
 
It is such relationships and associations that fuel social and data-driven discovery. Referencing again Amazon’s purchase of Goodreads, the acquisition made sense in support of both.  Goodreads’ 18 million users actively post about what they are reading, fueling discovery by other readers, while Goodreads’ 2011 acquisition and integration of the DiscoverReads content engine delivers a fairly robust recommendation system.  While recommendation systems have a long way to go (and again, I reference The Atlantic article referenced earlier as it pertains to lackluster recommendation options), the 20 billion data points fueling Goodreads’ recommendation system is far superior to Amazon’s tired “customers who bought this also looked at this” approach (see: [http://readwrite.com/2011/09/14/goodreads_book_recommendation_engine_launched] http://readwrite.com/2011/09/14/goodreads_book_recommendation_engine_launched). While it’s primarily oriented towards trade publishing, a 2012 slideshow by Otis Chandler (CEO, Goodreads) includes some graphs on just how social networks can fuel discovery and support sales.  A number of scholarly presses – for example, Yale University Press – take advantage of the Goodreads network (see:. [http://www.slideshare.net/GoodreadsPresentations/goodreads-pubwest-2012-how-readers-discover-books-online] http://www.slideshare.net/GoodreadsPresentations/goodreads-pubwest-2012-how-readers-discover-books-online). 
 
The data that fuels these recommendation systems can’t just be the individual’s purchasing or behavioral data. To fuel the best possibilities of discovery, publishers should be leveraging every bit of data about their book titles, enhancing and enriching it. Capturing multiple facets as to what the book is “about” can support recommendation engines, but identified entities and associations may also be extracted and used in linked data initiatives.  It’s worthwhile looking at the Goodreads acquisition as Amazon’s attempt to build and ultimately deliver the literary equivalent to Google’s Knowledge Graph, where a brief query can dynamically generate a boxed record encapsulating more information than the user originally sought.   Amplifying and linking traditional front and back matter as well as making the full text searchable will broaden the context that enables the reader’s discovery of worthwhile material. 
 
At the moment, all this may be further complicated (at least for the content providers) as global user populations shift to expectations of discovery through use of their mobile phones.  Anobii, a European social network for readers similar to Goodreads and Librarything, supports three mobile apps - one for Apple’s iOS and two Android versions, one under the Anobii name and the other rebranded as “Ebooks at Sainsburys.”  (While UK food distributor Sainsbury is the majority stakeholder in Anobii ([http://www.anobii.com/] http://www.anobii.com), Penguin-Pearson, HarperCollins, and Random House hold minority interests in the site.) 
 
While in our sector of the information industry, we see many content providers offering mobile options, (see science librarian Bonnie Swoger’s inventory at [http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/2013/03/26/mobile-apps-for-searching-the-scientific-literature/] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/2013/03/26/mobile-apps-for-searching-the-scientific-literature/), it’s not yet clear how discovery of book titles will be fueled or supported across the widely-disparate needs of various disciplines.  Scholars may want to be made aware of a book’s availability, but that awareness may not drive demand. 
 
Some book-oriented sites do support awareness over other forms of discovery, a difference in approach driven in part by the type of device assumed to be in use.  Recently opened to the public is Riffle ([http://www.rifflebooks.com/] http://www.rifflebooks.com).  Unlike Anobii or LibraryThing, Riffle focuses on awareness and display rather than on cataloging and social interaction. The interface is clearly designed for a tablet device, imitating the graphical appeal of Pinterest and delivering the bookstore browsing experience in the context of couch computing. There is minimal interaction via keyboard input; purely touch or single mouse click.  Social exchange is held to a minimum; even when questions are posed under a specific questions tab, Riffle is less concerned with the rationale behind a readers’ evaluation and recommendation of a title than it is in displaying the book’s primary online marketing asset – the cover image.  Developed by Odyl Technologies, this site claims to make use of data and insights about readers that Odyl has already gleaned through its marketing work for authors and publishers on Facebook. 
 
If you have time, you might also take a look at The Reading Room ([http://www.thereadingroom.com/] http://www.thereadingroom.com), a site created by trade publishers that is an attempt to weld serious marketing efforts to the social interactions of readers.  The tagline for the site is where passionate readers find, buy, and discuss books. Once logged in, the user is presented with a three-column layout that resembles a newspaper (complete with advertising) with designated zones for book trailers, chapter downloads, and featured member reviews and conversation.  The navigational bar at the top is oriented towards exposing the registered user to reviews and samples generated by content providers.  The interactive portions of the site – where users themselves contribute – are not held front and center, but pushed either to the side or the foot of the page.  Given that the targeted demographic for the site appears to be  young adults, perhaps 18-30 years of age, one wonders if this will appeal to the generation that grew up posting status updates on Facebook. The interface telegraphs that the message that author branding and book product are more important than the contributions made by the community. 
 
While these are trade publishing examples, I see a problem in satisfying the expectations of rising populations in fostering discovery and usage of more esoteric titles.  Academic social networks such as Academia.edu or Researchgate have no support for books other than the most basic bibliographic citation in text form, and bibliographic management sites such as Mendeley and Readcube are primarily oriented at the discovery, sharing and retention of journal literature.  Content providers haven’t done much to prepare for capturing the attention of a readership that is at least as oriented towards visual tools as to text-based ones.  If a monograph features no cover image and offers minimally descriptive elements in its table of contents, how likely is it that such a book will be discovered in an online environment that emphasizes color graphics and gesture control of the interface? The problem may not be significant for STEM titles, but it’s decidedly significant for texts in the social sciences and the humanities when you consider the traditional branding applied to book series or subject specific reference works.  Discovery supported solely via traditional citations will simply not be effective in persuading the individual user of a book’s potential value. 
 
Publishers and readers represent a symbiotic relationship. If I as the reader find value in a book title and enthusiastically share that value with my colleagues, the publisher of that title benefits through direct sales and indirectly through referred usage. Enhancing that value through accurate metadata, related items, and aggregated collections is fairly basic stuff for the information services created by NFAIS members, but there’s clearly much work still to be done in delivering more engaging avenues and environments for discovery. 
 
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