Books
Pearson has reported that in 2016 the North American higher education courseware market was much weaker than expected and that their net revenues fell 30% in the final quarter resulting in an unprecedented 18% decline for the year.
According to the Pew Research Center in the last year 39% of Americans read only print books. Another 26% didn’t read any books at all, but read other things. The question is where do the other 35% of book readers get their information. Remember, that not so long ago the 74% who wanted to read a book turned to one that was printed.
Pearson has cut its full-year guidance to investors in a dire warning about the continuing "cyclical and policy-related factors which have been hurting our markets for some years." Its share price fell almost 17% to a value of $14.54 in New York. The company’s ADRs are now down 30.7% over the past six months.
Royalty free stock image agency
Novel Expression and Jenn LeBlanc of
Illustrated Romance are launching the Exclusive Jenn LeBlanc for Novel Expression collection. The initial collection will feature images of male and female same sex couples in both contemporary and historical costumes.
You'll never guess what attendees at the annual Self-Publishing in the Digital Age conference in London were told to pay for a photo that would attract readers and help sell their book. You'll be surprised. Check out this story.
BookStats has reported that the U.S. book and journal publishing industry sold 2.59 billion units and generated $27.01 billion in net revenue in 2013. The trade sector - covering general consumer fiction and non-fiction – generated $14.66 billion in net revenue leaving about $12.35 billion for educational publishing. There were 2.32 billion trade book units sold and approximately 270 million educational books.
In January Pearson provided a regular trading update and on February 28, 2014 it will announce preliminary results for 2013. While overall the company expects an operating profit of approximately £865m they had “lower underlying margins in North American Higher Education, particularly in the important fourth quarter.”
Given the changing and growing demands publishers are facing when developing an educational program, PACA’s Editorial Relations Committee and Cengage Learning have worked together to create a new “Preferred Provider” Insert License Agreement that helps meet the publisher’s needs while providing image vendors of a better understanding of how their images are being used.
Art Directors and Graphic Designers lament the
decline in creativity. They say this results from a lack of Time and a lack of Funding which leads to a lack of Inspiration. 75% say they have too many competing priorities to leave time for reflection.
How fast is the education market moving from print to digital delivery? In its Q2 2013 earnings conference call with investors last week, Pearson, PLC, the world leading provider of educational materials and services provided some interesting data.
Given the prices publishers are charging for their digital products, they are establishing a precedent that images – in fact, all the content – is essentially worthless. See what publishers are charging and what that makes a single photo worth.
Last month the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-to-3 decision in the case of
Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons found that Supap Kirtsaeng had the right to resell, in the United States, textbooks that his friends and relatives purchased in Thailand. The Thai math student at Cornell University generated roughly $900,000 in revenue by reselling books that can be purchased at a much lower price in Thailand than in the U.S.
A major shift is coming in the education market, and more rapidly than many expect. In Pearson’s recent
Q4 2012 earnings call John Fallon, CEO and Chief Executive of International Education business discussed many of the “fundamental structural change” that are taking place in Pearson’s education business.
At the PACA International Conference in October, Christie Silver of McGraw Hill School Education Group provided details on where her team found images for a major reading program they have been working on this year. She also provided insights as to how educational publishers will be sourcing images in the future and pointed out that the main focus of all educational efforts these days is digital.
If you think there is still a decent market for textbook usage of stock photos – think again. The following is a summary of a conversation yesterday between a picture researcher for a major U.S. textbook company and renown travel photographer
Wolfgang Kaehler.
At the PACA International Conference in Chicago in October the keynote
speakers was Ken Carson, EVP and General Counsel of Cengage Learning. He
outlined many of the challenges educational publishers face today and
provided insights as to where content licensing for educational use is
headed.
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Google have announced a settlement agreement that will provide the Google Library Project with access to books and journals that are still protected by copyright. Now, Google may digitize new books as well as make the contents of books already scanned available online.
For more than 30 years “Collecting Societies” in many countries have had systems to compensate photographers when their images in books and periodicals are photocopied. U.S. photographers are not so fortunate.
Alan Capel, Head of Content at
Alamy explains that the price for printing 3 million copies of a textbook was much higher than we
reported earlier this week.
Photographer Jacques Jangoux reports that Alamy has licensed two of his images - A3N0PR (2 boys in a canoe in the Amazon region) and A3AB62 (waterfall of Jari River, tributary of the Amazon) – for just
$25.00 each for textbook use. Of course the photographer will only receive 60% of these figures.
When you discover that a large educational publisher has made extensive use one of your images beyond the rights they licensed is it wise to try to collect for the unauthorized use? In a recent discussion on the Stockphoto@yahoogroups.com forum it was pointed out that publishers often “blacklist” suppliers who try to collect for unauthorized use. Thus, it was argued that it may be better to accept a loss on one sale in hopes that in the years ahead you’ll make it up through additional sales to that same publisher.
Education Companies have recently settled copyright and trademark claims against several textbook distributors. However, these same companies have no remorse about knowingly, intentionally and systematically infringing the copyrights of image creators who have supplied images for use in many of the books they publish.
For some time professional image suppliers and many educational publishers have been at odds over unlicensed use of images. Image creators and suppliers claim they have not been properly compensated for the use of some images while publishers either try to hide the unauthorized uses or argue that what they have done is not copyright infringement. Now publishers and image creators are on the same side against alleged infringer
Boundless Learning.
In the future, will it be possible for more photographers to earn a
better living than they are currently earning producing stock images? More and
more photographers are jumping into the stock photo business every day
and many hope to make it a career. Here’s
a dozen reasons why future
revenue growth for this industry seems unlikely. I’ve discussed all
these issues before, but it seems useful to briefly itemize them all in
one place.
In late March In the case of Tom Bean vs. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona Judge Frederick J. Martone
GRANTED partial summary judgment to the plaintiff on the issue of defendant's liability for copyright infringement of 26 images used in seven titles.