A book currently doing the rounds at CCH Australia is “The Book is Dead, Long Live the Book” by Professor Sherman Young. Sherman is something of an expert on new media and the impact it is having on the book and the publishing industry. These being topics of some interest at CCH, Legal Editor in Chief Peter Rodrigues and I had a chat with Sherman to see what he thinks about the developments in eBooks and publishing that have occurred since he wrote his book.

Some of the topics canvassed included:
- eBooks – when will they truly be “mainstream”? (answer: we’ve still got a while to go!);
- How the transition to eBooks requires cultural change not only among publishers or even readers, but also among authors who like to have tangible proof of their efforts (it’s a bit hard to have a book signing of an eBook!);
- who will win the e-reader war;
- what is the true value of books and eBooks in an age of free information;
- Digital Rights Management and getting the balance right between access and protection.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the discussion was the potential of e-books to actually increase the range and accessibility of quality publications. Printed books must sell a certain number of copies before they will make any return on the costs of production, printing and distribution. As a result many books that have professional or literary merit but appeal to only a few readers never get published. The eBook does away with a good part of this costly process, allowing publishers to focus on the selection and editing of books and enabling them to electronically publish a wider range of titles with appeal to niche audiences.

All in all it was a stimulating discussion which we hope will be ongoing. If you would like to learn more I recommend you check out Sherman’s blog. A list of his other publications is also available here.

Regular IntelliConenct users may have noticed a few changes over the past few weeks.  While most folks were away on holiday over the new year, the IntelliConnect team were busy adding some new features.  Here’s a look at what they were up to:

Search Results

Scanning through a list of search results is now easier thanks to the inclusion of source details in the title of each result.  Here’s a quick summary of the changes:

• - Legislation results now displays the title of the Act
• - Rulings and releases display the issuing body and the issue date
• - Case results now display the citation, court and date of the judgment
• - Commentary, news and other secondary sources now display the title of the publication

IntelliConnect's new-look search results

Printing for Court

PDF reproductions of printed case reports are now available for online case reports.  Most cases from 2009 have court-ready versions, and all cases from 2010 onwards will also have this option. CCH is also looking into progressively adding Print PDFs for older cases.

To print a case for court, simply go to the full text of the case you are looking for and click on the “Print PDF” link that appears under the party name. A PDF reproduction of the print version will open in a new window.

Printing the "print" version of a case

Printing via the “Print Menu” will continue to provide an online version of the document for printing, rather than the court-ready version.

You may notice that very recent cases may not have a “Print PDF” option yet. That is because we update the online product faster than the print version – and we can’t reproduce a print version of the case until we’ve actually printed it! The links are added once the print update is published.

One of the great things about IntelliConnect is that we will be continually upgrading it and adding features according to what our customers want.  Be sure to keep an eye out here for more IntelliConnect news in the future.

While most of us enjoyed some time off over Christmas and New Year a small team of dedicated editors, production and procurement staff, customer service managers and printers were working hard on the CCH end of year book program.

The book program is an intensive period where annual and first editions of most of our key titles are edited, produced, printed and distributed in time for the start of university semesters. Planning starts in mid-August and the program ends in February. Dedicated teams work exclusively on the book program and it is always both demanding and rewarding.

Getting the books written and edited on time is the first challenge. Our authors and editors manage to do this every year but there are more than a few late nights and stressful moments. The next step is to ensure that the right titles are ready for the right universities and orders are fulfilled correctly. The university term start dates range  from the 15 February to the 1st March and dispatch has to be prioritized accordingly. What can increase the complexity is the communication between CCH, the printer and the bookshops – we talk a different language at times!  We use an internal code for each book, the printer uses a reference number and the bookshops use the ISBN. Luckily this is not a problem when you have such experienced coordinators as Merilyn Murphy and Sue Rooker: Merilyn has been with CCH for over 20 years and Sue has been CCH’s Relationship Manager at Macpherson’s Printing Group for over a decade. Merilyn and Sue are an integral part of ensuring the book program always goes to plan and so far it always has.

To give you an idea of the size of the book program, in 2009 we printed 240, 000, 000 pages and it will be even more this year. To take a look at the latest 2010 titles just click here.

The Salvation Army Raffle is a staple of the CCH festive calendar, right up there with the annual Christmas party and the masses of tinsel festooning team areas.

“It’s a great tradition here at CCH” says long-time organiser of the raffle, Graham Clayton. “It’s been going at least 10 years”, he guesses, scratching his head. It’s probably been going a bit more than that.

Community spirit is at the heart of this event, with employees from all areas of the company teaming up to donate prizes, sell tickets and scrunch up the ticket stubs for the draw itself. CEO Dave Lampert is a passionate supporter of the raffle and can be seen selling tickets every year at the staff Christmas party.

Prize lists are studied carefully – this year’s winner had the difficult choice of deciding between an Apple Iphone and an Amazon Kindle, along with a dozen other fabulous prizes.

Graham says the real reason for the event is not the prizes, but the donation of all proceeds to the Salvation Army.

In a typical week, The Salvation Army in Australia provides people in need with an estimated 100,000 meals. It provides beds to 5,000 homeless people, rehabilitation to 500 addicted and refuge to 400 victims of domestic abuse. It also provides counselling to several thousand people.

Each year the CCH Salvo Raffle raises thousands of dollars, and the company matches the amount raised by the staff. Graham and the CCH team are proud to announce that this year’s donation to the Salvation Army will total approximately $5660.

We recently held our second Innovation Cafe at CCH.  Once every six weeks we conduct a coffee, croissants and creativity session in the CCH Australia office in Sydney. All staff are invited and those who are interested come along to participate in a creativity-boosting workshop or to hear an external speaker. Last week we invited along Dr Jeffrey Tobias, the Managing Director of The Strategy Group, to talk to us about Open Innovation. Dr Tobias has extensive experience in innovation, including being global lead for innovation in the Innovations team in the Internet Business Solutions Group in Cisco Systems.

Using examples from a range of companies and industries – including Cisco, Proctor & Gamble and Pepsi – Dr Tobias explained that Open Innovation involved creating an innovation ecosystem that extends beyond the four walls of your office to include customers, suppliers and partners. Effective innovation doesn’t mean that you have an isolated R&D or engineering team coming up with new ideas in perfect isolation. Instead, companies need to engage with all internal and external stakeholders to maximise idea generation and execution.

After hearing about Open Innovation, we then spent some time with Dr Tobias discussing how we could use Open Innovation concepts to improve innovation at CCH. Our program had already started opening up innovation to all staff at CCH but could we do more to include suppliers and customers? What would be an effective way to do this? Dr Tobias gave us plenty of food for thought and it was a very worthwhile morning.

And as luck would have it, two days later we met with representatives of Lonely Planet, the travel publisher, who it turned out were implementing their own Open Innovation model. We had a great discussion with them about the challenges both our companies face in today’s dynamic publishing market, and talked about ideas and strategies for maximising our respective opportunities.

Next step: engage in Open Innovation with our customers. We have plenty of ideas of how we can do this so I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.