That’s my prediction.

Books are seldom an impulse buy. That’s because it’s difficult to make a buying decision by browsing through a store or Amazon. You generally buy a book because of a recommendation, especially with fiction, or a need for information.

However, the advent of digital readers like Kindle (soon to die) and the, to date, imaginary Apple tablet (likely to conquer) changes things. A Times article today notes that publishers are giving away authors’ earlier work in e-book format to spur sales of their new books and it’s working. The publishing industry is gnashing its teeth over the pricing- they still seem to think that they are in the business of printing ink on paper and having warehouses and trucks full of those things. Have they not watched the music business? Bought a CD lately? The stupidity of this is mind boggling.

There is a significant upside to this, and as an author, I think it is great. People can now buy a book anywhere, via wireless, and have it instantly. The prices have dropped to the point ($10) where an impulse buy is no big deal. And they can carry their entire library anywhere they go- meaning more reading time.

Several years ago my brother Richard and I wrote a book on kitchen design (he is a kitchen designer). The book still sells and I recently received word that the publisher is a doing an ‘electronic’ version (the fact that there is nothing ‘electronic’ about it is revealing). When I queried them about it they informed me that they were going to sell a .pdf file of the book on their web site and pay us a small royalty. I pointed out that this was an antiquated way to do things and that Amazon recently raised the publisher/author share to 70% on e-books. Even with the reduced price our royalty would be at least twice what we currently receive. They have not replied.

My response was this: Why shouldn’t we write another kitchen book and publish it ourselves in digital format? We have the expertise and content and the new formats will support video, links to resources and instant updates. With a tablet, the kitchen planning couple could walk into a home center, access the book and get feedback on products for their new kitchen. And even if it sold for ten bucks we’d make $6-7 for each sale.

The publisher might argue that they have a better ability to promote the book. I don’t think so. At seven dollars a pop I have sufficient motivation to promote the hell out of the book, especially since online marketing is what I do!

The point here is that the publishing industry is on the verge of a major opportunity and they are going to blow it. Apple and Amazon are going to do what they did to the music business- take out the distribution and democratize it. As an author, I’m excited. I might actually make some money from writing.

(BTW, I totally made this up)

Apple will unveil an entirely new electronic book format next week and will provide the development tools free of charge to any publisher. Called iBooks, the software enables publishers to create interactive titles incorporating video, audio, color images and more. Books created in the format will be published exclusively via the iMedia Store which incorporates the application formerly known as iTunes. Viewable on iPhone, iPod Touch and iTab, the books will be stored in the cloud, meaning you can store an unlimited amount of reading and access it via any computer or device that is iMedia compatible including iPhone OS, OS X and Windows.

Existing book files can be converted by simply dragging and dropping content into frames in the software, then resizing and relocating the frames to fit the page style. Frames can be customized for various forms of content. Apple estimates that a book designer can port a typical illustrated book into the format in a few hours, hit Publish and have the book available on iMedia instantly. Details of pricing and revenue share were not available.

(You heard it here first folks…)

Apple has filed a wide ranging patent application for a home energy management system. While the patent is fairly complex, the concept is typically Apple: Elegant and easy to implement for the user. From what my non-engineer’s mind can see, the system adds a component to any household outlet (via a plugin adaptor or in the outlet itself). When you plug a device into the outlet it knows the actual power requirements of this device (speaker, iPod, TV, Laptop, printer, etc.) and it only delivers the power the device needs, no more. Given that electronics that are plugged in usually draw power even when they are turned off, this starts the savings.

The patent also covers the distribution of wireless signals around the house, balancing weak spots with strong. This same wireless capability provides for the distribution of any kind of digital content via the electrical system of the house, meaning you can route movies, TV, music, Internet, etc., from any device or location to any other.

Not only does this save a lot of money, it also centralizes control onto any iPhone, iPod Touch or, dare I say it, tablet. You get a dashboard that tells you how much energy you are consuming and that has a remote control for everything in the house, a remote that can be updated via software updates indefinitely.

There are business implications for this technology that are far-reaching. Managing power usage across devices and machines is a big cost saver but retrofitting existing electrical systems is very costly. As I read it, the proposed Apple system sits on top of the existing wiring and does the management at each device with wireless protocols handling the communications and control. This is a big deal.

Apparently doesn’t exist. A few years ago I saw a bad bug in Gmail. I searched through the Google sites fruitlessly looking for a way, any way to report it. I eventually found an email address for something else and sent them a message asking the recipient to forward my bug report to the relevant party. I, of course, never heard anything.

A few months ago I was working on a book proposal in Google Docs. I went to Save and got a dialog box that said Unable to Save Due to Network Errors. I freaked out. There was a URL in the dialog box for More Information. When I clicked it I got another Dialog box warning that I was leaving an unsaved document! A frantic Copy and Paste to a Word doc ensued. And I had been using Google Docs because of crashes in Word. Again, no way to report this whatsoever.

Don’t Buy A Nexus Phone From Google

Now Google is selling a $600 smart phone called the Nexus, online. You can activate it with your favorite carrier as long as that carrier is T-Mobile. However if your phone has issues you cannot reach anything resembling standard customer support at Google- no phone number and email queries take 3-4 days to get a reply. The T-mobile folks can’t really help you.

Poor customer service on free things like Docs and Gmail is one thing. It’s called ‘you get what you pay for’. Except that Google’s business model depends on widespread acceptance of free cloud services, particularly for critical things like email or document storage. No customer service for costly hardware products that could provide life or death protections, like a phone, is simply unacceptable.

You Can’t Automate Customer Support

The problem is spelled out in Googled, The End of the World As We Know It by Ken Auletta, the New Yorker media writer (a must read, IMHO, if you’re interested in this stuff). This book, which covers the history of Google, describes how their engineer-driven culture believes that everything can be automated via algorithms in software. Apparently they have not bothered to figure out an algorithm for customer support, a function that has to deal with all the serendipitous behaviors of non-engineering humans. Like ‘what do I do if I dropped my phone into the toilet?’, a common problem that might never occur to most engineer types who are likely to say ‘why would you do that?’.

I think Google has made a misstep here, a big one. If they want the big customers, like enterprise IT departments, to endorse their services and products, they are going to have to provide live customer support and things like Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that guarantee a certain level of reliability. You can’t automate everything.

It may already have. First, about that metric, ‘time spent on site’. This metric is very important in social media because we don’t typically have many page views- most blogs are a long scroll of stories that analytics engines read as a single page view. Same with platforms like Facebook. So the operative metric to watch these days is time spent on site.

Some stats on Facebook usage

Facebook, according to Wikipedia, had around 350 million members worldwide as of December 2009. A recent study of college student use of Facebook found that students were spending more time on Facebook than Google and that fully 50% of those users visited the site at least once a day. The Wikipedia entry breaks down users by country and, notably, China and Viet Nam are not included because they block the site. As of April 2009 it was estimated that 1.6 billion people globally have Internet access.

So what does this mean? First Facebook’s penetration is staggering. If these numbers are even close to accurate Facebook has captured 20% of all users on the web. And they are active- half visit the site daily. Factor in the fact that China, with a population of 1.3 billion and Viet Nam with 75 million, are not included and we can conclude that their penetration to users outside these countries is at an even higher percentage.

I don’t have stats for time on site for Facebook but I’m willing to bet they are high because of the nature of the Facebook stream, the social graph and the entertainment value. In comparison Google only captures our extended attention when we’re in an app like Gmail and there is little evidence that Gmail generates any significant portion of Google’s ad revenues. When we search, if Google does its job, we’re out of there as fast as possible because we found what we were looking for. When we go to Facebook we are at the place we want to be- it is a destination whereas Google is a signpost.

Revenue models are changing because of personal networks

Let’s look at the implications of these stats on Facebook as an ad platform. I’ve been playing with Facebook Ads and it is fascinating. While they operate in a very similar way to Google’s Adwords including auction-style bidding for clicks, their targeting works at an entirely different level. With Adwords you target by keywords and a few demographics like geo-location. With Facebook you target by keywords and demographics that include user information like gender, relationship status, interests, job titles- anything that a Facebook user includes in their public Profile. This is a huge difference from the faceless targeting of Google.

I’m not denigrating Google- the search giant has a big advantage in that they understand intent. And Facebook users are not there for information…yet. That is going to change however. People are starting to actively utilize their personal networks to acquire information used to make buying decisions and to find resources. This is trust-based search: If my friends like the VW Golf I’m going to consider it seriously. Same for restaurants, plumbers, etc.

Facebook will become the default destination in 2010

While I hate making predictions, I’m fairly confident that Facebook will surpass Google as a primary destination on the web in 2010. It may already have. Google, over the past 11 years, has provided us with universal free access to information. Facebook is providing us with universal access to free global communication. When we start using Facebook for both information access and communication it becomes the default destination to start our online (including mobile) activity. Monetize that!

Turns out the name I like, The Experience Architects, isn’t original. It’s the name of a chapter in a book on innovation written by IDEO GM Tom Kelley back in 2005. I own the book so it’s likely that the term was floating somewhere in my subconscious and surfaced when I was trying to encapsulate my ideas around a title. It’s also a job title at IDEO,  the high-end experience design consultancy. So, early on, my start-up has hit its first glitch. And it is a common one.

Naming things is hard. I’ve been paid to create business and product names over the years and it is a big challenge. A great name must be unique, memorable, protectable and compelling. For a business it also really cannot be a common word or phrase. When you add in the need to own the name as a dot com URL you really narrow the field. Buying your URL has become a start-up expense for many businesses and it can get expensive.

Because my start-up is a project rather than a typical business, my title needs are a little different. The need to find a new title has worked out however because it helped solve another issue that came up. I was given input by a publishing insider that using the words ’social media’ in the title and sub-title was a problem as there are a rash of books out there on the subject. This jibed with my thinking as I’m increasingly realizing that social media is just a piece of the revolution, albeit a significant one. So right now my draft title and sub-title is: Real Time: Redesigning Your Business for a Socially Connected World.

Disclaimer: This title is subject to change at any time!

Franke is a visual blogger living in Toronto who researches, illustrates and writes amazing visual blog posts about personal action in the fight against climate change. Her latest tells the shocking story of how Canada became one of the largest greenhouse gas polluters on the planet (clue- oil shale sands are very bad).

Franke is a designer who started out blogging a few years ago when she and her husband decided to sell their SUV and go carless. Her blog posts combine great illustrations with an almost comic-like personal story backed by the facts. The blog started to get a lot of attention which led to a book, Bothered By My Green Conscience (New Society Publishers 2009) and a growing reputation as an environmentalist.

Franke’s use of personal experience to tell stories and distribute them via social media demonstrates the power of viral story telling to drive change on a global basis. As I write this, Franke is in Copenhagen for the World Climate Summit.

When Facebook changed its privacy controls this week a lot of people saw it as an attempt to open up access to their information by changing the default preferences to allow more of your info to be accessible. This would particularly benefit marketers. I think there is something entirely different going on, a strategic change.

With the privacy controls a user can completely change Facebook to serve their own ends. If you only want to use it as a private club for your friends, set limits on everything. If you want it to take on a Twitter-like functionality, open everything up to a public conversation. By giving us these expanded options, Facebook has taken a direct shot at Twitter. Twitter is a public forum. Anyone following you can see your conversations unless you block them individually. This works great as an ongoing stream of news, opinion, links, etc., that can be tracked and searched. With the ability to open our Facebook privacy completely you can duplicate this aspect of Twitter with the broadly expanded capabilities inherent in Facebook: videos, pix, blog posts, links, conversational threads, etc.

For me this means I probably don’t need Twitter at all in the long run. As it stands Twitter is almost useless as a tool without a third party app set up to track certain keywords. Is there any reason I should be using both Twitter and Facebook if Facebook offers everything Twitter does and more?

All Facebook has to do is give me a stream on my page that lets me track keyword usage in all public conversations and I’m done with Twitter.

The Facebook strategy is to own the online communication space- and they are nearly there.

I’m writing every day to get my book proposal completed by the end of the month. Non-fiction proposals include a detailed outline, sample chapter(s), marketing plan, author bio, etc. I’ve been doing a lot of research for my sample chapter, gathering stories, sources, potential people to interview, etc. Yesterday I sat down to consolidate it all into a detailed outline so I can get to the actual writing (the last step in the process). I’m using MS Word on OS X. I started the project in Google Apps until I got a dialog box that said Unable To Save Due To A Network Error. Freakout- if Google can’t save me in the cloud I’m screwed. The dialog box has a URL link for More Info. I click it and instead of opening a new window or tab it says: You are about to leave an unsaved document! WTF Googlys? This is totally wrong. I quickly copy the text, open a Word Doc and paste and save, thinking that Apps in the cloud are definitely not ready for prime time. So I’m back to the hated Word- at least I can save and back-up.

Fast forward a few weeks to yesterday. I’m writing at full bore as my research is consolidating into a well-organized flow. I’m so into it I go 20 minutes without hitting the Save icon. You know what’s next. Abrupt crash, lost it all. Freakout.

So now I have a nervous twitch with both the cloud apps and the desktop apps. After 20 years of word processor development can’t we build-in safeguards against ever losing work? Photoshop saves multiple versions of huge files. Word can’t do the same? And Google…you guys need to get your act together if you want IT people to endorse your free cloud apps. They must be rock solid and save to multiple places for redundancy.

The Word crash, while unforgivable, is partially human error on my part- I should have been religiously hitting Save. However. sometimes in the heat of writing you don’t take a break for housekeeping. And don’t even mention Auto Save. That is a whole ‘nother source of pain…

Can a book project be a start-up?

I’ve been looking for a start-up to get involved with in 2010. I’ve also been working on a book proposal. It dawned on me that the book proposal is my start-up. The proposal is a business plan. The literary agent is a business development person. The publisher is both an investor and the distributor. I am the founder, developer and chief marketing officer.

The book is called The Experience Architects: How Social Media Visionaries Are Redesigning the Way We Do Business. It is about people and companies that understand the positive potential of social media and are using that potential to completely revamp the way their businesses operate- on all levels. It is not about companies stumbling into social media because of some PR catastrophe nor is it about self-described social media gurus who have never actually changed a company with their knowledge.

Because the book is about entrepreneurs, it made sense to me to treat it and its related ‘products and services’ as a business. Once this concept clarified in my mind it made putting the proposal together a much more intuitive process. It also made me realize that my marketing plan consisted of a simple concept: Drink The Koolaid. In other words, use the Experience Architecture concept to build buzz about the book, to research resources and people to talk to, and to virally get others excited. So you’ll be seeing a lot of social media activity around this subject.

In addition to the proposal (business plan) I have written a social media ‘blueprint’ consisting of a set of 30 action items that will build a fully integrated social engagement for the ‘business’. I’ll be sharing that plan, open source style, here over the next month.

If you know someone who has redesigned their business (any size, any type, any location) because of social media please connect with me via MartinEdic.com.