Ron van Rijbroek

by Douglas Rushkoff — Publishers Weekly, 8/24/2009

The corporate consolidation of publishing over the past two decades has finally maxed out. Borders is verging on bankruptcy; Barnes & Noble is closing stores; and major media conglomerates are closing imprints and ejecting talent faster than they gobbled it up in the 1990s. While this makes for some bleak headlines in the short term, it bodes well for the future of a publishing industry that operates on a scale more appropriate to the medium we’re all creating and selling.

Publishing is a sustainable industry—and a great one at that. The book business, however, was never a good fit for today’s corporate behemoths. The corporations that went on spending sprees in the 1980s and ’90s were not truly interested in the art of publishing. These conglomerates, from Time Warner to Vivendi, are really just holding companies. They service their shareholders by servicing debt more rapidly than they accrue it. Their businesses are really just the stories they use to garner more investment capital. In order to continue leveraging debt, they need to demonstrate growth. The problem is that media, especially books, can’t offer enough organic growth—people can only read so many books from so many authors.

So begins consolidation. In order to achieve the growth shareholders demand but the businesses can’t supply, corporations embark upon mergers and acquisitions, even though, in the long run, nearly 80% of all mergers and acquisitions fail to create value for either party. The music industry is a prime example. In the 1990s, when Sony could no longer demonstrate growth commensurate with its share price, it bought Columbia Music. At the time, newly invented CDs were selling briskly and at margins higher than vinyl records. This was because baby boomers were replacing their record collections. Once that surge ended, artificial growth turned out to be negative growth. The centralization of recording companies and labels under a few corporate giants, meanwhile, favored the rise of large distributors and retailers and the decline of local, specialized shops. Blame Napster if you must, but the truth is that the retail music industry no longer had anything to offer that the Web couldn’t.

The same thinking led the conglomerates to hone in on publishing. Top-heavy, centralized bureaucracies know how to work with a B&N better than with a Cody’s or a Spring Street Books. And they applied their generic corporate management to a ragtag crew of book nerds, most of whom wouldn’t—and shouldn’t—know a balance sheet if their lives depended on it. Finally, unable to grow as fast as their debt structures demanded, these corporations have resorted to slashing expenses.

Over the past year, we’ve watched venerable imprints fold into one another and great talent be almost randomly ejected. Knopf’s revered name is now subject to the corporate-speak of “Knopf-Doubleday.” HarperCollins created Collins, then crossed it off the spreadsheet, in the process booting Brenda Bowen’s children’s imprint; one of the most talented publicists in the industry, Larry Hughes; and the brilliant Gillian Blake, whom they had just snatched from Bloomsbury. Doubleday closed Morgan Road and lost an irreplaceable asset: one-woman publishing-powerhouse Amy Hertz.

Along with the publishing houses, the megaretailers designed to profit off now-failing centralization are also beginning to feel the pain. Book depots just can’t sprout at the rate of Wal-Marts—besides, Amazon already does the centralization thing better than any brick-and-mortar business. Thus, the talented staffs of the superstores (meaning the talented former staffs of the independents) are also being cut loose, region by region.

The good news is that much of this talent—book editors, publicists and sellers—is ready to rebuild what Wall Street has seen fit to destroy. Book enthusiasts are not giving up. I get e-mails constantly from editors asking if I’m interested in writing books for their new, independent publishing houses. Many offer smaller advances but higher royalties and more attention to details—like the quality of my writing. I also get correspondence from people opening independent bookstores in the shadows of vacant outlets, stores that would be happy with a hundredth of the sales volume that made their larger counterparts unsustainable.

Behind the bad news, there is much to look forward to. Our industry has for too long favored those skilled at negotiating the corporate ladder and punished those who simply publish great books. Now that publishing has revealed itself to be a bad growth industry, it is free to rebuild itself as the vibrant, scaled and sustainable business the reading public can support.

via Soapbox: We’ll Be Back – 8/24/2009 – Publishers Weekly.

Publishers Weekly Gedeelde Artikelen

The social networking bandwagon is operating at near capacity: Only 18 percent of the online population is holding out from social media, according to Forrester Research.

To put that 18 percent in context 25 percent of the online population was socially inactive in 2008 and 44 percent were no-shows in 2007. Forrester’s third annual Social Technographics Profile, as highlighted by Josh Bernoff, reveals the following:

• Nearly a quarter of the U.S. online population create blogs, upload audio and video and write stories.
• Online forum traffic is down as folks move to Facebook and social networks.
• One in five adults categorize content with tags, RSS feeds and voting systems like Digg.
• Half of online adults are members of social networks.
• We’re all spectators that consume social content. Social participation increased across all age groups, but adults 35 to 54 really got on the bandwagon.

The enterprise takeaway: Given all your employees are now online social creatures it stands to reason that these technologies will make their way into corporate applications as features.

The report categorizes people into six categories: Creators, who write and upload multimedia; critics, who regularly comment; collectors, who aggregate information; joiners, who are relative newbies; spectators, who just watch; and inactives.

Here’s a look at the social trends by activity:

Via: Why social networking tools will go enterprise: All your employees are using them | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com .

ZDNet.com Gedeelde Artikelen Advertising & Promotion, Forum Traffic, Larry Dignan, Marketing, Online Communications, Social networking, Social Networking Bandwagon, Tool

Ron Blog hidden

Door: ANP | 20 augustus 2009

Door op opengemaakte rekeningen van overheidsinstanties een sticker met hun eigen bankrekeningnummer te plakken, zijn oplichters erin geslaagd bedrijven in de provincies Friesland en Noord-Holland tienduizenden euro’s te ontfutselen.

Dit meldt de Telegraaf.

Nieuwe manier
Volgens woordvoerder Anne van der Meer van politiekorps Friesland is dit een nieuwe manier van oplichting. ‘De oplichters maken de post van de bedrijven open en plakken op de nota een sticker.

Hoe ze de post onderscheppen en op welke manier ze de brieven openen, onderzoeken we nog. Op de aangebrachte sticker staat dat het rekeningnummer van de betreffende overheidsdienst is gewijzigd. Het veranderde banknummer is van de oplichters.’

Aanmaningen
De politie kwam de oplichting op het spoor nadat bedrijven zich hadden gemeld nadat zij aanmaningen hadden gekregen terwijl zij in de veronderstelling verkeerden al te hebben betaald. Het onderzoek begon toen de ondernemers inderdaad konden aantonen het verschuldigde bedrag te hebben overgemaakt.

Als snel bleek het geld te zijn gestort op verkeerde rekeningnummers. De politie verzoekt ondernemers zich te melden indien zij nota’s van de overheid ontvangen waarop een wijzigingssticker is geplakt.

via zibb – Ondernemers dupe van stickertruc.

Zibb.nl Gedeelde Artikelen aanmaningen, crediteurenadministratie, facturen, fraude, spookfacturen, Zibb

Definities
Tijdens het vooronderzoek is gebleken dat bij uitgeverijen diverse vaktermen gehanteerd worden.
Om misverstanden in het onderzoek en de uiteindelijke resultaten zoveel mogelijk uit te sluiten geven wij hierbij een opsomming van uitgangspunten:

Ron Blog, UvT hidden, pod

De volgende vragen hebben betrekking op de longtail.

Definitie longtail:
Doorgaans oudere titels, tegen het einde van de productlevenscyclus, waarnaar een zeer lage vraag is.

De Longtail; geel gekleurd
(bron: wikipedia)

Ron Blog, UvT hidden, longtail

Note: de code is ook beschikbaar via saveattachments1.

January 2, 2007 — arcanecode

I spent my new years day recovering from a nasty cold. My wife asked me if there was a way to save the attachments in Microsoft Outlook for multiple messages. I spent a little time and came up with a handy macro, I thought others might find it useful as well.

First, in Outlook click on Tools, Macro, Visual Basic Editor. Now in the editor on the left you’ll see Project. Drill down Project1, Microsoft Office Outlook, ThisOutlookSession, and paste the code below in:

Public Sub SaveAttachments()

‘Note, this assumes you are in the a folder with e-mail messages when you run it.
‘It does not have to be the inbox, simply any folder with e-mail messages

Dim App As New Outlook.Application
Dim Exp As Outlook.Explorer
Dim Sel As Outlook.Selection

Dim AttachmentCnt As Integer
Dim AttTotal As Integer
Dim MsgTotal As Integer

Set Exp = App.ActiveExplorer
Set Sel = Exp.Selection

‘Loop thru each selected item in the inbox
For cnt = 1 To Sel.Count
‘If the e-mail has attachments…
If Sel.Item(cnt).Attachments.Count > 0 Then
MsgTotal = MsgTotal + 1
AttTotal = AttTotal + Sel.Item(cnt).Attachments.Count
‘For each attachment on the message…
For AttachmentCnt = 1 To Sel.Item(cnt).Attachments.Count
‘Get the attachment
Dim att As Attachment
Set att = Sel.Item(cnt).Attachments.Item(AttachmentCnt)
‘Save it to disk
att.SaveAsFile (“C:\Attachments\” + att.FileName)
Next
End If
Next

‘Clean up
Set Sel = Nothing
Set Exp = Nothing
Set App = Nothing

‘Let user know we are done
Dim doneMsg As String
doneMsg = “Completed saving ” + Format$(AttTotal, “#,0″) + ” attachments in ” + Format$(MsgTotal, “#,0″) + ” Messages.”
MsgBox doneMsg, vbOKOnly, “Save Attachments”

Exit Sub

ErrorHandler:

Dim errMsg As String
errMsg = “An error has occurred. Error ” + Err.Number + ” ” + Err.Description
Dim errResult As VbMsgBoxResult
errResult = MsgBox(errMsg, vbAbortRetryIgnore, “Error in Save Attachments”)
Select Case errResult
Case vbAbort
Exit Sub

Case vbRetry
Resume

Case vbIgnore
Resume Next

End Select

End Sub

Note some browsers trash the html I tried to do above, so I uploaded it as a text file. Just save to your hard drive and paste into the VBScript Editor or rename the txt to cls and do a File, Import and browse to this file: http://arcanecode.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/saveattachments1.txt

And of course save it. Now switch back to Outlook, and click on View, Toolbars, Customize. Click on the Toolbars tab, and click New. I named my new toolbar ArcaneCode, but name yours what you will.

Once you have the new toolbar, click on the Commands tab. Scroll down on the left to Macros and click on it. You should see your new macro in the Commands window on the left. Drag it on to your new toolbar. Now you can shorten the name a little, right click on the tool, to see it’s pop up menu. Go to Name and click on it, then shorten the name to what you want. I then drug my new toolbar up with the rest of my other toolbars.

Two notes, I made it easy on myself and am saving all attachments to C:Attachments, which I’ve hardcoded in the macro. Feel free to change to what you want or add code to have it ask you for the folder.

Second, I have tested with Outlook 2002 and 2003, but have not tested under 2007. Your milage may vary.

And there you go, a way to save attachments on all the messages you have selected within Outlook.

via Saving Attachments in Outlook « Arcane Code.

Ron Blog 2007, bijlage opslaan, marcro, Outlook, saving attachements, VBA

Op de A4 richting Den Haag staat het verkeer bij Nieuw-Vennep al sinds 09:30 uur vanochtend vast door een gekantelde brandweerwagen.

Gekantelde brandweerauto

Snelweg

De brandweerwagen ligt dwars over de snelweg. Automobilisten kunnen geen kant op.

Vliegtuigen

De crashtender, een speciale brandweerwagen die vooral gebruikt wordt voor het blussen van vliegtuigen, moet weggetakeld worden. Het is nog niet bekend hoe lang dat gaat duren.

Auto’s

De bestuurder van de crashtender is lichtgewond geraakt. Er waren geen andere auto’s bij het ongeluk betrokken.

© RTL Nieuws.nl

Via RTL Nieuws.nl – Verkeer op A4 staat al uren vast.

Ron Blog file, gekantelde brandweerwagen, RTL

Maandagmorgenhumor: Glassex

via Hardcopy » Blog Archive » Maandagmorgenhumor: Glassex.

Ron Blog Glassex, humor, Maandagmorgen

Sinds enkele weken beschikt Vloerenbedrijf van Rijbroek BV Uden over een nieuw internet domein.

Naast de domeinen Gimoc.nl, vanRijbroek.nl, Rijbroek.com en natuurlijk RijbroekVloeren.nl, is het domein RijbroekGietVloeren.nl sinds enkel weken actief.

Dit domein zal in de communicatie gebruikt gaan worden voor het promoten van de gietvloer. Hierbij verwijst het domein door naar de specifieke gietvloerenpagina binnen RijbroekVloeren.nl.

Tevens is dit domein geschikt gemaakt voor email.

Ron Blog, RijbroekVloeren, Websites Communicatie, Domein, RijbroekVloeren, Websites