The Most Anticipated Books of 2010

As part of my research for a feature story on the future of books, “e-Books: Averting a Digital Horror Story,” I reached out to book agents, publishers and other industry experts to spotlight some of the most anticipated books of 2010 and how they will be released. Here they are:

NON-FICTION
War by Sebastian Junger, Twelve (May 11, 2010).
The Hachette imprint plans to release an electronic version of Junger’s book about American soldiers in Afganistan complete with video clips. But Hachette has said it will release certain e-books well after the hardcover debut to avoid cannabilizing sales, and Junger’s book is a likely candidate for such treatment, given his popularity.

Overhaul by Steven Rattner, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Fall 2010)
The former auto czar for the Obama Administration is likely to release hardcover and digital versions of his memoir of the auto bailout simultaneously.

Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu that Led America into the Vietnam War Ted Morgan. Random House (February 23, 2010).
This 700-page history book by a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter will probably be released in hardcover and digital forms at the same time.

The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personal Medicine by Francis Collins, Harper (January 5, 2010).
The director of the National Institutes of Health will likely release the hardcover and digital versions of this science book simultaneously.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. Broadway Business (February 16, 2010)
The authors of the best-selling Made to Stick have already decided to have the hardcover and digital versions of their next book released at the same time.

FICTION
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson, Knopf (May 25, 2010)
The Swedish author’s final installment of his Millenium Trilogy will likely be released first as a hardcover and later in digital form because of the popularity of his previous books.

Private Life by Jane Smiley, Knopf (May 4, 2010)
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres will probably get a simultaneous release for hardcover and digital versions of her upcoming book.

The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis, Jonathan Cape (May 11, 2010)
The best-selling English author will probably see delays in the release of this book’s electronic version given his track record of strong sales

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey, Knopf (April 20, 2010)
The Australian author of Oscar and Lucinda and the True History of the Kelly Gang could see delays in the digital release of his upcoming novel.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, Random House (June 29, 2010)
The cult fiction writer will likely see simultaneous releases of this upcoming book in hardcover and electronic form.

OTHERS TO WATCH:
Here’s a list of books suggested by the American Library Association’s Booklist Magazine.

Adult Fiction:
Jonathan Franzen. Freedom (Farrar)

David Foster Wallace. The Pale King (Little, Brown)

Scott Turow. Innocent. (Grand Central Publishing)

Roddy Doyle. The Dead Republic (Viking)

Henning Mankell. The Man from Beijing. (Random House)

Ian McEwan. Solar. (Doubleday/Nan A. Talese)

Adult Nonfiction:
David Kirkpatrick. The Facebook Effect (Simon & Schuster)

Jonathan Alter. President Obama: Inside the Early Days (Simon & Schuster)

Laura Bush. Spoken from the Heart. (Scribner)

Nicole LaPorte. The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called Dreamworks. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Ian Johnson. A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Children’s and Young Adult:
Suzanne Collins. Hunger Games #3 (Scholastic)

Rick Riordan. The Kane Chronicles, Book One: The Red Pyramid (Disney-Hyperion)

Jeff Kinney. Diary of a Wimpy Kid #5 (Abrams/Amulet)

Jon Scieszka and Francesco Sedita. Spaceheadz (Simon & Schuster)

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom: New Blogs by My Former BusinessWeek Peeps

One of the upsides of the epic decline of print media is seeing the new paths taken by many seasoned journalists. I am watching this transformation take place right here at BusinessWeek, where some of my former colleagues have recently launched new blogs or turned pre-existing ones into their main outlet.

Here’s a sampling:

* Mandel on Innovation and Growth: BusinessWeek’s former chief economist Mike Mandel recently launched a new blog dedicated to covering innovation, growth, economic statistics and commentary on economic and financial reporting.

* Globespotting: Former BusinessWeek senior writer Steve Hamm has moved his globespotting blog over to a new address on WordPress.com. Hamm has also joined IBM as a communications strategist.

*Business Books Guy: BusinessWeek’s former book editor Hardy Green has launched a new blog about the book industry, with a focus on the subject Green knows very well, business books.

*The Numerati: BusinessWeek’s former senior writer Steve Baker has continued to publish the blog he launched for his book. It’s a tech-oriented site focusing on the data explosion and its repercussions for business, politics, culture, etc.

Update: I just found out about one new blog by Joseph Weber, BW’s former chief of correspondents. Weber is now an associate professor of journalism at the University of Nebraska and has started a new blog called Wide-Eyed Wonder.

When Land Lines Go Away: Check out My Appearance on NPR’s On Point

Yesterday, I was invited to appear as a a guest on NPR’s On Point show with host Tom Ashbrook to talk about disappearing phone lines in American households.

In 2006, just 11% of homes had cell phones only. By the first half of this year, that number was 23% and climbing. And 37% of households say they don’t answer land lines anymore.

I think this trend underscores some big new realities in communications technology, such as wireless substitution, the megawar between telecoms and cable companies and the increasing sophistication of cell phones.

Click here to listen to the segment.

The show also featured Scott Steinberg, publisher of the technology product review site Digital Trends; and Mimi Ito, a research scientist at the University of California, Irvine, who studies new media use, especially among young people in the U.S. and Japan. She’s the lead researcher on a recently completed three-year study of teens and the Internet by the Digital Youth Project, supported by the MacArthur Foundation.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek Exclusive: Content-Search Deals Make Twitter Profitable

Content-Search Deals Make Twitter Profitable
Data-mining deals signed in October will bring in $25 million in exchange for rendering Twitter’s tweets searchable on Google and Microsoft Bing

By Spencer E. Ante

Twitter is ending 2009 on a high note. The microblogging site has reached profitability after inking $25 million of deals that make its content searchable by Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT), Bloomberg BusinessWeek has learned.

In October, Twitter said it had struck multiyear arrangements that make users’ short blog postings available on Google.com and on Bing, which is run by Microsoft. Those agreements carry sufficient value to help Twitter achieve a small profit for 2009, say two people familiar with the company’s finances, who asked to remain anonymous because Twitter’s books are not a matter of public record.

Like many social media startups, three-year-old Twitter focused early on adding subscribers rather than generating revenue. That’s left many analysts and investors wondering how and whether the company—often cited as a candidate for an initial public offering or acquisition—would make money. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone declined to comment on the company’s finances, but wrote in an e-mail that the company is proud of the work it accomplished in 2009. “We’re thrilled about the partnerships we’ve formed this year and we’re looking forward to opening Twitter even more in the future,” Stone wrote.

In exchange for making short blogs, known as tweets, searchable on Google, Twitter will receive about $15 million, the two people say, adding that the Microsoft partnership is worth about $10 million. “The deals were huge,” says one. “With two scoops of the pen, a lot of revenue came in.”

Read the rest of the story here.

Creative Capital Makes Top VC’s Best Books of 2009 List

When I wrote my first book Creative Capital, I hoped that it would cross over into the mainstream AND appeal to the venture capital community.

This week, I got some proof that VCs are finding value in the book. Brad Feld, a founding managing director of the Foundry Group, a venture capital firm in Boulder, Colorado that has invested in Zynga, StockTwits and Topspin, posted his list of the Best Books of 2009. And I am honored to report that Creative Capital made the list along with some very distinguished company, including great books by Dave Eggers and Andrew Ross Sorkin.

This year, Feld read 72 books and he listed his top 5 non-fiction and top 5 fiction books. Thanks Brad!!!

Here they are:

Non-Fiction

Zeitoun: New Orleans + Katrina + Muslim American + Heavy Bad Stuff

How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else: Successful Ad Exec finds himself in the dumps later in life. Fixed by a job at Starbucks.

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves: The Financial Crisis of 2008 unfolding in great detail.

Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska: Actually, in really remote Alaska.

Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital: The story of General Georges Doriot and the start of the venture capital industry.

Fiction

The Scorpion’s Gate and Breakpoint: Brilliant contemporary spy vs. spy stories by Richard A Clarke. Yes – I realize this is two books – read them in order.

The Player of Games: An Ian Banks classic. Particularly interesting if you are addicted to Zynga games.

The Orpheus Deception and The Echelon Vendetta and The Venetian Judgment: David Stone is my favorite new mental floss writer. Three books – read them in order.

Daemon: Easily the best cyberthriller I’ve ever read.

Supreme Courtship: Anything by Christopher Buckley always makes the list. Especially poignant given my Supreme Court visit this year.

Exclusive: Verizon Wireless Prepares for the iPhone

Verizon Wireless Prepares for the iPhone
Verizon Wireless is buttressing its network in the event Apple drops AT&T as the exclusive carrier of its popular smartphone

By Spencer E. Ante

There’s no telling yet whether or when AT&T (T) might lose its position as the sole U.S. carrier of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone. But in the event Apple opts to partner with other mobile-phone service providers, Verizon Wireless says it’s up to the task.

Verizon Wireless has even made upgrades that would make its network more capable of handling extra traffic that would be generated by the iPhone, Verizon Wireless Chief Technology Officer Anthony Melone says in an interview.

“We have put things in place already,” Melone tells Bloomberg BusinessWeek. “We are prepared to support that traffic.”

AT&T has come under fire for the spotty performance of its network. Vexed by dropped calls and slow download speeds, some consumers say the company was unprepared for the surge in traffic that’s resulted from iPhone use. Verizon Wireless in TV commercials has mocked AT&T’s network coverage, and Melone says his company’s equipment would do a better job catering to the heavy data demands of iPhone customers. “Absolutely, I think we could handle it,” he says.

Read the rest of the BusinessWeek story here.

Want a Job? Analytics is the Thing, says IBM

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?

When Mr. McGuire famously whispered the word plastics to a young and confused child of the suburbs played by Dustin Hoffman in the classic movie The Graduate, the idea was that plastic was the future and young Benjamin should get with the program.

Well, if The Graduate were remade today, the new buzzword for the young could be “analytics.” Thanks to the Internet, the world has become a swelling ocean full of data. One grand challenge of our age is to find a way to harness that data. And that’s where the burgeoning field of analytics comes in. Companies as large as IBM and as small as Twitter are looking to hiring people who can boil down this ocean of data into knowledge and insights that can help improve the performance of their businesses.

But the field is so new and growing so fast that there just aren’t enough qualified workers who can do these jobs. IBM currently has over 2,500 job postings for analytics-related jobs, and 60% of its new hires come from universities.

So IBM is taking the matter into its own hands. On Dec. 9, Big Blue announced that it was working with Fordham University’s School of Business to create a new business analytics curriculum to help prepare students for jobs in the field. IBM is currently working with several other schools on similar initiatives, but this is the first program that IBM has announced.

Click here to read the rest of the post on Businessweek’s Techbeat.

Here Come the Innovation Hippies! Beware of Social Media Snake Oil

My newly departed colleague Steve Baker’s last piece for BusinessWeek is a contrarian take on social media. Given that this skeptical piece was penned by one of social media’s biggest fans and practicioners, it’s worth a close read.

Says Baker: “The problem, according to a growing chorus of critics, is that many would-be guides are leading clients astray. Consultants often use buzz as their dominant currency, and success is defined more often by numbers of Twitter followers, blog mentions, or YouTube hits than by traditional measures, such as return on investment.”

Read the rest of the piece here. It’s generating a pretty vibrant discussion on bw.com.

Shout-Out to Departing BusinessWeek Colleagues

The most difficult part of Bloomberg’s acquisition of BusinessWeek has been seeing so many hugely talented colleagues and friends leave the operation. Five close coworkers of mine, most of whom I’ve been working with over the last nine years in the technology cluster, are no longer working for the tech team. Left coaster Rob Hof, Chicago correspondent Roger Crockett, and my three NY homies Steve Baker, Steve Hamm and Heather Green. Damn, that is a gaping hole you all have left!

[Steve Baker On the Streets of El Paso]

It has been a pleasure and honor to work with all of you. Thanks for everything you’ve taught me over the years, and thanks for your camaraderie. I know we’re all going to keep in touch but the office will feel pretty empty without you all–especially the Mother Ship in NY. Best of luck in all of your new ventures and I’ll see ya on the 43rd floor, Playwright, University Cafe, etc. I have no doubt you will all go on to do different and interesting things, and I am eager to see each of you ramble down those new paths.

[Real Rob Hof Posing with Virtual Rob Hof]

Georges Doriot Still Making News

Georges Doriot, the founding father of the venture capital industry and subject of my book Creative Capital, continues to pop up in the news. On Dec. 1, in the Financial Times, Luke Johnson, founder of the British private equity firm Risk Capital Partners, wrote an editorial, “A call to arms for ex-soldiers in business,” about the unique role that the military has played, and continues to play, in spurring innovation.

Johnson credits Doriot as the pioneer of the VC industry and for forming the “link between the military and venture capital.” As I argue in my book, Doriot learned how to become a VC during the war when he was in charge of research and development in the Quartermaster Corps of the U.S Army.

As further proof of his theory, Johnson mentions a new book, Start-up Nation, which explores the role that the Israeli military and social networks and leadership training provided by Israel’s mandatory military and reserve service has helped foster a vibrant entrepreneurial culture in the middle of the world’s most chaotic region. (At one point I considered calling my book Start-up Nation, too!)

For Doriot’s singular efforts, he was promoted to the high rank of brigadier general and was received the Distinguished Service Medal, the highest U.S. military medal given to a noncombatant, as well as being decorated a Commander of the British Empire and awarded the French Legion of Honor.

Also, the New England Journal of Technology recently ran an interview with Leo Beranek, a cofounder of BBN Technologies, a landmark technology company that was a leader in computer networking and communications. The interview was done by MassTLC chairman Steve O’Leary and Mass High Tech editor E. Douglas Banks. Beranek was presented with the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council Commonwealth Award for lifetime achievement.

In the interview, Beranek is asked if he remembered Doriot. He replied:

“Venture capitalism really didn’t start until General Doriot came into the picture with the American Research and Development Corporation. But until then the banks were doing it. The banks were not taking any stock. They just lent you money, so they didn’t get to make any big profits from it.”

“Well, General Doriot was of course with the big venture capital firm, American Research and Development. He was very famous and very powerful because he was financing all these companies of which Digital Equipment is his most successful.”

And then he goes on to recount an amusing anecdote, which I never heard, about how Doriot threatened to sue BBN after they poached a star employee of one of the companies Doriot had invested in.