Delhi police seize books, confiscate printing press over ‘indecent content’

Days after booking the author and publisher of a book for Class XII, titled Health and Physical Education, Delhi police has written to the Delhi government’s home department, asking them to appoint an officer to seize all books and confiscate the printing press. Police have also charged the duo with circulation of obscene material and cheating. The CBSE had lodged a complaint against them for “indecent depiction of women and misrepresenting the syllabus”, after it received several complaints over the book which stated that “36-24-36 is the best figure for females”.

The case was registered at Preet Vihar police station under the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act 1986. Police have now added new sections — 292 (circulation of obscene material) and 417 (punishment for cheating) — in the FIR.

Sources said the letter was written a few days ago by the investigating officer to the home department, where he stated that they have registered an FIR on April 14 after they received a complaint from the CBSE.

“As per the law, the home department has to designate someone to seize all the books as well the printing agency from where it was printed. The IO was then informed that the book, authored by Dr VK Sharma, was published by Delhi-based New Saraswati House. He also requested that an official be appointed for expediting the investigation,” the sources added.

CBSE spokesperson Rama Sharma had said the board has set up a committee of experts to review the contents of the book. “The shape, size, figure have been inappropriately described and are not in consonance with the spirit of the syllabus. The publisher and the author have committed criminal misconduct by publishing and selling these books to students in connivance with some schools,” he said. (The Indian Express)

Screen fatigue sees UK eBook sales plunge 17%

Britons are abandoning the eBook at an alarming rate with sales of consumer titles down almost a fifth last year, as ‘screen fatigue’ helped fuel a five-year high in printed book sales.

Sales of consumer ebooks plunged 17% to 204m pound last year, the lowest level since 2011 – the year the eBook craze took off as Jeff Bezos’ market-dominating Amazon Kindle took the UK by storm.

It is the second year running that sales of consumer eBooks – the biggest segment of the 538m pound eBook market, which fell 3% last year – have slumped as commuters, holidaymakers and leisure readers shelve digital editions in favour of good old fashioned print novels.

“I wouldn’t say that the eBook dream is over but people are clearly making decisions on when they want to spend time with their screens,” said Stephen Lotinga, chief executive of the Publishers Association, which published its annual yearbook on Thursday.

“There is generally a sense that people are now getting screen tiredness, or fatigue, from so many devices being used, watched or looked at in their week. [Printed] books provide an opportunity to step away from that.”

Among last year’s biggest sellers were children’s books by JK Rowling (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) and David Walliams (The Midnight Gang, The World’s Worst Children), which helped sales of print and digital kids books to soar 16% to 365m pound. Diet book guru Joe Wicks (Lean in 15) was also a huge hit.

“The titles that sold really well last year did not lend themselves to digital,” says Lotinga. “People prefer to give, or read, children’s books like Harry Potter titles in print, and healthy cooking titles and biographies sell very well in print compared to eBook format.” (The Guardian)

Publisher business models in the age of platforms

It is perhaps time for publishers to focus less on how to further improve the content they produce and focus more on fixing their business model. To be less concerned about reach, and focus more on the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) they generate.

This is according to Greg Piechota, research associate at Harvard Business School and 2016 Nieman Fellow, who recently shared his thoughts in the Future Media Lab session at the Digital Innovators’ Summit (DIS) in Berlin.

Greg started off by asking whether the DIS audience has heard of Google’s toothbrush test. He explained legend in Silicon Valley has it that when Google considers investing in a company, the question is whether people will use their product/service several times a day – like a toothbrush. “Obviously news content passes the toothbrush test. Our content is driving daily news consumption and engagement on platforms all over the world,” he said.

Almost half of US adults are using Facebook for news. Platforms are therefore the mass media of today, with no publisher near the size of the main platforms. “We are no longer in mass media business; we are in niche media business. And it has a profound impact on our strategy,” Greg explained.

“Because platforms have aggregated such large audiences, they win at the attention economy [the battle for user attention]. They then capture most advertising in the market, with – in the US – Google and Facebook’s share last year up to 70%... So publishers are now fighting for 30%. And who is getting the money? 60% of the money goes to AdTech companies. In fact, publishers get one-third of the revenue,” he said.

That leads to the question whether publishers can get more money from platforms if digital advertising is not substantive enough. However, according to a benchmark study in the US, the top 17 US publishers received monthly revenue of average USD 1.3 million per month from platforms, said Greg.

In moving towards an answer, Greg went on to discuss three waves of disruption.

The first wave of disruption was the unbundling of media products into a variety of verticals. For example, purely unbundling newspaper content and classified marketplaces “basically crushed newspaper revenues”.

The result of this is that some of the biggest publishers in the US are now publishing on upwards of 20 platforms.

The second wave of disruption is disintermediation. “Basically, we were the gatekeepers. If someone wanted to reach the market, they had to go through publishers...” Today, anyone can be a publisher, attracting large audiences.

The third wave is decoupling. This refers to the consumer decision-making process versus publishers’ business model

For consumers, having to choose the medium and brand, sites or apps to visit and searching for content they want and then being forced to watch ads are all value eroding activities (in terms of e.g. time, effort and cost). In contrast, publishers created value through their brand websites and content; then capturing the value through the ads they served.

In turn, Greg said, platforms (and others such as ad blockers) are decoupling the act of consuming content from the act of value creation for publishers (and others, such as TV and “all kinds of other media”). (FIPP.com)