Amazon 70% (Approx.) Kindle Royalty Kicks in Today For Those Who Want to Play by New Rules

In January they said it was coming. Now it is here. Good news for self-publishing authors and small presses - certainly one of the things I have been planning on and waiting for. AP:

The offer comes with conditions aimed at keeping book prices low for consumers, a step Amazon hopes will allow it to remain on top of the growing e-book market against rival stores like the one rolled out by iPad maker Apple Inc.

To get the better rate, authors and publishers have to meet various criteria. The book's list price must fall between $2.99 and $9.99 and be at least 20 percent less than the lowest price of the physical edition. Some major book publishers have demanded that Amazon allow them to raise prices on e-editions to as much as $14.99.

Under the new royalty offer, books also have to sell on Amazon for the same price, or less, than they do with competing book sellers. And they have to be available everywhere the author or publisher has intellectual property rights.

The 70% is net of delivery costs. Financial Post:

Delivery costs are based on file size, and pricing is set at $0.15/MB. At today’s median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option. This new option, first announced in January 2010, will be in addition to and will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option.

In addition to the 70 percent royalty option, Amazon also announced improvements in DTP such as a more intuitive “Bookshelf” feature and a simplified two-step process for publishing. These features make it more convenient for authors and publishers to publish using DTP.

Google Editions Marriage with Indie Bookstores?

Pardon my cynicism. From NYTimes.com:

Google is on the verge of completing a deal with the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to make Google Editions the primary source of e-books on the Web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers around the country, according to representatives of Google and the association.

The partnership could help beloved bookstores like Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore.; Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, Calif.; and St. Mark’s Bookshop in New York. To court the growing audience of people who prefer reading on screens rather than paper, these small stores have until now been forced to compete against the likes of Amazon, Apple and Sony.

The Google deal could give them a foothold in this fast-growing market and help them keep devoted customers from migrating elsewhere.

“Google has shown a real interest in our market,” said Len Vlahos, chief operating officer of the booksellers association, which has over 1,400 member bookstores. “For a lot of reasons, it’s a very good fit.” ...

As a wholesaler, Google will play a role similar to that of offline distributors like Ingram Book and Baker & Taylor, which buy books from publishers and resell them to bookstores. Those companies generally keep a single-digit percentage of each sale, ... Google would operate along similar lines.

Independent bookstores seem to believe that Google is more interested in working through them than being a direct retailer. In fact, they are banking on it.

But ...

[Darin Sennett, the director of Web development at Powell’s] acknowledged that Google would also be a competitor, since it would also sell books from its Web site. But he seemed to believe that Google would favor its smaller partners.

“I don’t see Google directly working to undermine or outsell their retail partners,” he said. “I doubt they are going to be editorially recommending books and making choices about what people should read, which is what bookstores do.”

He added, “I wonder how naïve that is at this point. We’ll have to see.”...

Yeah. We'll have to wait and see.

Full-Color Kindle for Christmas?

Adam Hartley of TechRadar UK spreads the rumor:

There are rumors that Amazon may be readying to release a full color Kindle e-reader in time for Christmas, following a Mirasol screen tech product demo this week.

At a product demo at Qualcomm in San Diego – Mirasol's parent company – the company's Marketing Director, Cheryl Goodman, confirmed that contracts have been signed and that the new colour screen technology would be in 5.7 inch e-readers later in 2010. ...

Mirasol's screens are able to run video content, and require a minuscule 1mW of power to run. In comparison, it takes 100 milliwatts to power an equivalent AMOLED screen. ...

"Activity will come from the e-reader sector first," said Cheryl Goodman ... . "We are working towards the end of the year, beginning of next, and with multiple vendors."

When asked directly about future plans for the Amazon Kindle, Goodman declined to answer, telling Pocket-lint, "multiple deals are in the queue."

Kobo eBook App Updated for iOS 4

Pretty straightforward. iPodNN tells the tale - retina display compatibility, etc.

LibreDigital Acquires Symtio Platform From Zondervan (Harper Collins)

From Dianna Dilworth at eBookNewser:

Digital distribution company LibreDigital has acquired the Symtio e-commerce platform from Zondervan, a HarperCollins company. ...

LibreDigital was one of the first big players to handle conversion, warehousing and distribution for eBooks and was endorsed by Apple as a "Certified eBook Aggregator" for the iPad back in April.

Adding the Symtio platform will give LibreDigital e-commerce capabilities and the ability to sell eBooks, audiobooks music and video online. ..

As part of the acquisition LibreDigital is adding the Symtio e-commerce technology, existing e-commerce contracts and applications, as well as some e-commerce staff.

This could give LibreDigital a good position in the digital distribution business. In a press release, Brian Murray, President/CEO of HarperCollins Publishers said, "LibreDigital is well-positioned to become the de-facto standard for publishers seeking to increase sales across new and existing digital marketplaces." ...

Great FORTUNE Interview with Jeff Bezos on eBooks, etc.

From Fortune Tech:

Bezos: I think the definition of a book is changing. It's getting more convenient. Now you can get a book in less than 60 seconds.

But in some ways, books are also staying exactly the same. The whole narrative isn't changing. The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It's the thing that people create.

There's another way that it's not changing, and that's that the book -- the physical book -- is designed to disappear and get out of the way so you can enter the author's world. So when you're reading a physical paper book, you're not thinking about the ink and the glue and the stitching. All of those things vanish so you can focus on the author's words. The Kindle's designed to be the same so when you're reading, the whole device vanishes, so that you're left with the author's world.

Kindle for Android: Smartphones Today, Tablets Tomorrow

Jason Perlow on ZDNet:

Today, Amazon released its highly anticipated Kindle e-book reader software for Android devices, which gives Google’s smartphone and MID operating system immediate legitimacy as an e-Reading platform. ...

This opens the possibility to the Kindle for Android software being used on full-size and mid-size tablet devices, such as the DELL Streak and other devices which are due in the fall of 2010, which should sell between $199-$299 and will compete aggressively with the Apple iPad as well as with dedicated e-Reader devices.

Forbes: Amazon Could Earn $800+ million in 2010 from eBooks Sold to Kindle Owners

The report is authored by Forbes's Trefis Team:

According to research done by Foner Books, Amazon could be selling around 24 eBooks per Kindle per year. If we consider about 3 million Kindle units in use in 2010, Amazon could sell 72 million eBooks for 2010. If we consider the average pricing to be around $12 per eBook, Amazon could be earning $864 million in 2010 from eBooks alone that are distributed on the Kindle device.

The upside can be even greater if Amazon succeeds in becoming the eBook store of preference on the iPhone (50+ million sold), iPad (3+ million units sold) and Android-based smartphones / tablets, although the number of eBooks downloaded per device is likely to be lower for such devices.

If current trends continue, there will be more than 100 million iPhone, iPad and Android-devices in use within the next 1-2 years. Even if each device were to download only one eBook through the Kindle store annually (at $12 a piece), that would imply $1.2 billion of Amazon sales from non-Kindle devices. ...

Barnes & Noble Fiscal 2010 Fourth Quarter and Full-Year Results

From MarketWatch. The year-end numbers are, of course, interesting, but I find the guidance for 2011 even more so:

"We are pleased that in the fourth quarter each of our three channels of business have all gained significant share: physical bookstores, digital books and books sold online at bn.com. In fact, in just a brief 12 months since we launched the Barnes and Noble ebookstore, our share of the digital market already exceeds our share of the retail book market," said William Lynch, chief executive officer of Barnes & Noble, Inc. "In light of the exciting digital opportunity before us, we are planning to redirect a significant portion of our financial resources towards investments in technology, sales and marketing. These investments will impact our bottom line in 2011, but we believe they will enable Barnes & Noble to capitalize on the significant mid-to-long-term growth opportunities presented by the digital markets." ...

"'The explosive growth of digital books has created the most compelling opportunity in Barnes & Noble's history,' said Leonard Riggio, chairman of Barnes & Noble, Inc. 'We have found that Barnes & Noble Members, our best customers, have increased their combined physical and digital spend with us by 17 percent since purchasing a NOOK(TM), and by a phenomenal 70 percent in total units. Based on our assessment of the future digital landscape, I am confident that we have the right strategy and management team to drive Barnes & Noble's next phase of growth and development.'"

Agent Andrew Wylie Puts All eBook Rights Negotiations on Hold

Powerful literary agent Andrew Wylie, longtime terror of editors at major publishing houses, stays true to form - intent on wrestling the very best 21st century terms for his clients. And he is quite right to do so. That's his job. This comes from Bookseller.com:

In an interview with Harvard Magazine, Wylie said the agency’s negotiations with publishers on e-books were currently on hold across the board.

“We will take our 700 clients, see what rights are not allocated to publishers, and establish a company on their behalf to license those e-book rights directly to someone like Google, Amazon.com or Apple. It would be another business, set up on parallel tracks to the frontlist book business,” Wylie said.

Such a "heretical strategy" would likely meet with stiff resistance from publishing houses, the piece notes in response. The Wylie Agency’s stellar list includes authors Martin Amis, Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie, as well as the estates of giants including Italo Calvino, Arthur Miller, Vladimir Nabokov and John Updike.

Wylie also takes issue with the deals publishers are making with Apple, which he says are similar to those entered into by music publishers. "The music industry did itself in by taking its profitability and allocating it to device holders. Manufacturing and distribution accounted for roughly 30 percent of the music industry’s profit. These were conveyed to Apple in the deal for iTunes. But why should someone who makes a machine—the iPod, which is the contemporary equivalent of a jukebox—take all the profit?"

Stocks: Amazon Downgraded on eBook Rivalry Concerns

From Dan Gallagher at MarketWatch:

Marianne Wolk of Susquehanna downgraded Amazon (AMZN 119.13, -1.87, -1.55%) to a neutral rating on Monday. In a note to clients, the analyst cited "intensifying competition" in the e-book market that is creating more uncertainty around the company's Kindle business. ...

"With moves pending by Apple and Google, rising competition is raising the uncertainty regarding eReader, eBook, and Book profit growth rates, capping the contribution to Amazon's valuation from these sectors," Wolk wrote. ...

Wolk said she estimates that the e-book business -- both devices and content -- will contribute about 6% of Amazon's total revenue by 2014. She believes that e-books and physical book sales account for between 8%-13% of the company's valuation, which leaves the shares exposed as competition mounts in the sector.

"With news flow likely to raise uncertainty over the next 12 months, it is likely to reduce the multiples attached to the contribution from the Kindle and importantly lower the valuation on physical books, which should see slowing growth as eBooks accelerate," she wrote. ...

Wolke also noted the way the industry's gradual adoption of the Agency Model is likely to impact Amazon's bottom line.

Kindle iPad App Gets Audio and Video, Plus New Amazon Emphasis on Reader Software Over Hardware?

The italics are mine. This report by Paul Lamkin for Pocket-lint:

Amazon has released an update to its Kindle apps for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that allows for the embedding of audio and video features within its eBook titles.

Now, not only is this a rather nifty little feature, it also raises two very significant points. Firstly, that the Kindle app can surely now claim to be the best eBook reader available in the App Store, even trumping Apple's very own iBooks.

And secondly it shows that Amazon considers the Kindle to be a significant brand, rather than just a hardware product. After all, the Kindle eBook readers themselves are not capable of these multimedia features (or even color for that matter) and so it demonstrates that Amazon may well be prepared to let its hardware take a back seat as its software makes inroads into the app market.

The first books that take advantage of the new functionality are Rick Steves' London and Together We Cannot Fail by Terry Golway. ...

Also note this from MobilitySite. Once again, italics are mine:

Adding video/audio to ebooks certainly steals a march on iBooks. Of course, such tech has been the basis for Vooks for nearly a year now. The ability to open ebooks with video or audio INSIDE a reader and not as a separate app is new however, and has it’s advantages and disadvantages. I am fascinated that Amazon is targeting this ONLY at Apple products. I wonder if they will be updating their PC or Blackberry software to also display Kindle Editions, and if it will be included in their upcoming Android software? Personally, I have a feeling they may keep it focused at Apple, at least for the short term.

Ten Commandments for Publishers

This from Mike Shatzkin and Joe Esposito:

1. Thou shalt regard thy former competitor as thy future collaborator.

2. Thou shalt let no intermediary stop you from knowing your customer, nor stop your customer from knowing you.

3. Thou shalt publish no book intended for an audience outside your spheres of direct influence.

4. Thou shalt read Dr. Faustus in all its editions–Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Google–and know that Mephistopheles always appears first as a helpmate.

5. Thou shalt not forsake thine own brand.

6. Thou shalt create new brands and master the power and importance of brands.

7. Thou shalt respect and value thy communities with the same devotion thou hath always given to copyrights.

8. Thou shalt recognize that metadata is everywhere and associating it meaningfully is thy job.

9. Thou shalt not fail to test a new marketing channel in order to protect an old one.

10. Thou shalt deliver thy content in every imaginable form that thy customers request or might require.

Indie Lit Experiment: Sometimes That Happens With Chicken

Indie author and publisher Wanda Shapiro is giving her novel Sometimes That Happens with Chicken away as a downloadable PDF, and selling the self-published paperback, ala indie musicians and also such writers as Cory Doctorow, using a model of the type I blogged about here. Check out Wanda's book and her concept.

Brilliant Essay by Craig Mod Concerning eBook Page Design

Find it here.

It's a rainy Sunday afternoon and I'm sitting in a cafe in central Tokyo, desperately trying to enjoy a book on my iPad. Distractions abound: sloppy typography, misspelt words, confusing page breaks, widows, orphans, broken tables. These and more pull me from the narrative spell. In that moment I realize, although I've had this substantial object of glass and metal for a few weeks, I haven't managed more than ten pages of anything.

What, then, is the problem?

It's not the screen — I've happily read several novels on my iPhone.

It's not the weight — it feels fine when resting on a table or my knee.

The problem is much simpler: iBooks and Kindle.app are incompetent e-readers. They get in the way of the reading experience and treat digital books like poorly typeset PDFs.

We can do better. ...

Somebody Blow "Taps" for the Borders Kobo e-Reader

I've been forecasting the still-birth of the Borders Kobo e-Reader for some time now, primarily given its lack of not only 3G, but WiFi as well. And last week its sole major distinction - that of being the cheapest Reader on the market - went out the window when Nook WiFi emerged - competitively priced, WITH WiFi, and also of course with the very nice Nook ergonomics. This from PC World yesterday:

Awkward Buttons

The Kobo has a bright blue navigational pad, which happens to be the e-reader's most awkward feature. ITWire wrote, "Eventually, after more than an hour of reading time, your hand and fingers will start to ache due to repetitive strain from pressing the button hundreds of times."

PCWorld agreed: "... the buttons still provide enough resistance that my hands fatigued after using them for more than a 15-minute block of time."

No 3G or Wi-Fi is a Bummer

It's fine that the Kobo doesn't have all the fancy features of its competition, but without 3G or Wi-Fi connectivity, the Kobo immediately presents itself as something circa 1994.

Wirelessly connecting to and downloading from an e-bookstore has become an essential feature since other e-readers sport that capability. As it stands, if you want to download from the Kobo e-bookstore, or Borders' upcoming e-bookstore, you need to do so with a computer and the mini-USB cable. Sony's e-reader made the same mistake.

Sure, there's an app for the Kobo, but that requires either Bluetooth syncing or a sync via your PC. Plus, as ZDNet points out, you can't choose what books you'd like in your library -- the Kobo syncs them all.

The Verdict

When "competent" and "decent" are the best adjectives you can get in a review, you're in trouble. The only way I can see the Kobo surviving the battle of the e-readers is if the price is lowered by at least $50. That way its barebones makeup would be justified by its price.

The price cut suggested would put the retail tag of the Kobo well below manufacturing cost, so I don't see that happening.

Simon & Schuster's Jonathan Karp Leverages eBook Technology & Backlist Prose to Address the Topic of Generals and the Presidents Who Fire Them

Sequence: President Obama fires McChrystal. Then pundits compare the event to Truman firing MacCarthur. Next Jonathan Karp, newly ensconced at Simon & Schuster, smells an opportunity to leverage the efficiencies of eBook publication, catering to the immediate, but likely brief, public interest in this topic. Karp grabs relevant prose from a sleepy S&S backlist title, David McCullough's bio of Truman, and revs it into a short but immediately relevant eBook. We'll be seeing more of this type of thing.

eBook Royalties - New Street Communications, LLC

After studying the matter quite carefully, I've decided New Street will follow the royalty model that seems to have become the standard for Jane Friedman's Open Road Media. We'll pay authors 50% of net profits, generally with no advance. We'll report every six months. And we'll hold no reserve against returns for amounts payable because (in less than five words) eBooks don't get returned.

Bottom Line: Pandigital's "Novel" Will Be - In Fact, Already IS - Dead on Arrival

Endgadget's Joanna Stern seems not impressed at all. To this I'll add the simple fact that for the same money readers can get the Nook WiFi. Stern:

Sure, Pandigital's Novel may be delayed until next month because of some firmware issues -- and we haven't heard the most positive things about the 7-inch LCD based e-reader / tablet -- but we had to check it out for ourselves. At $149, the all-plastic reader isn't going to win any build quality awards (it's also rather heavy for what it is), but the Android 2.1-powered gadget does have a pretty attractive user interface. In use, however, the resistive screen had to be pressed quite firmly to make selections and the software was noticeably sluggish. Surprisingly, the device did play a standard definition video smoothly and it has an accelerometer -- which is more than the Archos 7 Home Tablet can brag. Barnes & Noble's Android app will be preloaded, and it also has a skinned Android browser of some sort. ... you've got the picture here: the Novel isn't what we'd call novel, you just get what you pay for.

Google Foe Antoine Gallimard Elected President of the French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l’Edition, SNE)

Read about it at Bookseller.com.

[Gallimard's] priorities for the SNE include an agreement for digitizing out-of-print titles, but despite political pressure "let us not confuse speed with rushing," and "allow technical and financial reasons to interfere with the aim of including French 20th century heritage in digital libraries and thwarting the worrying ambitions of Google Books."

He called for more dialogue with booksellers at a time when "a few major players want to control our pricing policies in order to impose their vertical integration model," and for VAT on ebooks to be reduced from 19.6% to the 5.5% levied on print.

Gallimard, who took over as SNE chief from Serge Eyrolles, welcomed the recent industry-wide agreement to achieve interoperability of the various ebook distributors. "We must overcome divisions and form ties between the profession’s structures," he said.

But interoperability was not enough for former culture minister Jacques Toubon. "Publishers should get together to create a single distribution platform," to compete with the search engines and other powerful groups, he told The Bookseller.

Apple - Typographical Fashionistas

With iBooks, Apple says, basically, it's our fonts or no fonts. From the elves at ThinQ:

Designers of ebooks are starting to grumble about Apple's policy of locking down which fonts can be used on its iBooks platform.

Apparently iBooks 1.1 won't recognize fonts applied with standard CSS to any body, p, div, or span element.

Apple's guidelines say that designers choosing their own fonts would lead to "a bad user experience," a claim which some are calling shortsighted.

Liz Castro from the enigmatically-named Pigs, Gourds and Wikis says that Apple is messing with the ePub standards it purports to support and tells the Cupertino company: "Your desire for control will ultimately break these standards or it will break iBooks. It will break standards as it incites designers to use ugly hacks to overcome iBooks' broken support for standards. It will break iBooks as people design beautiful standards-compliant ebooks that look great in other readers ...

On the other hand, too many font options will make for chaos across the boards in eBooks publishing, if we are not careful. Perhaps Apple is on to something, although they lose points - as usual - for their heavy-handedness.

Follow This Blog Via Twitter

Effective immediately, another way to follow this blog will be through tweets, this in addition to the e-mail subscription and RSS feed already on offer.

Good Detailing of Nook Wi-Fi Specs by Angela Pollock (Helium)

Check this for all the minutiae. Core info:

The NOOK Wi-Fi, priced at $149, weighs about 11.6 ounces and has a white back panel. Also available is the 3G NOOK Wi-Fi for $199. The 3G+Wi-Fi has a gray back panel and weighs a touch more – 12.1 ounces. The back panels on both can be interchanged with others available through Barnes & Noble.

The 3G NOOK will connect free anywhere via 3G plus Wi-Fi. The size averages – 7.7” x 4.9” x .5”. The 2GB of storage will hold about 1500 eBooks but also has an expandable microSD slot. It will works as an MP3 player so you can listen to your music or audiobooks. The NOOK will hold approximately 26 hours of audio. The rechargeable battery will last about 10 hours when not using the Wi-Fi.

Kindle App Update for iPhone iOS4 - And the Illusion of eReader Hardware Wars

These hardware price wars are, in the long run, something of a joke. Amazon and B&N are both in the business of selling books, regardless of what platform they are read on. Thus we are given all of these great cross-platform apps, including the latest update from Amazon.

Politics & Prose Bookstore (Amazingly) Finds Interested Buyers

Given the transitional state of the current publishing/bookselling environment, not many would think it wise to invest new money in any brick-and-mortar operation, not even the venerable Politics & Prose of Washington DC. Per Examiner.com:

The sale of Politics and Prose is yet another indication that the recent climate has become increasingly hostile to independent bookstores. Over the past six years, the Washington DC area has seen popular stores like Olsson’s, Reprint Book Shop, Sisterspace, Karibu, and Vertigo Books close their doors. Even the very chain stores that have played such a role in the demise of the independents have had their own share of problems ...

Washington Business Journal editor Douglas Fruehling delivers a similar analysis:

Although there's no indication Politics & Prose will close — presumably it could if a buyer isn't found or the right price is not achieved — it's the latest chapter in the sad story of the ever-changing publishing industry. D.C. has already lost several home-grown bookstores: Olsson's, Franz Bader Bookstore and Trover's.

The owners of Politics & Prose, which was often featured on C-SPAN, say they have been selling about $3 million in hardcover books in recent years and have 60 employees. That's not chump change, of course, but with more and more iPads and Kindles hitting the market, you have to wonder how long they can keep those sales up. Or how long it will be before Politics & Prose goes the way of our city's other great institutions: Woodward & Lothrop, Nathan's and Commander Salamander.

But buyers there seem to be ... including Jeffrey Goldberg and friends.

Jason Perlow: Nook, Kindle and Other Dedicated eReaders Headed the Way of the Dinosaur

Writing on ZDNet, Jason Perlow foretells the mass extinction of the dedicated, unitasking eReader as a class of hardware, with the long-term market moving to the iPad, etc. and also inexpensive Android devices. A very interesting and informed analysis, which starts with a reference to this week's price-slashes for Kindles and Nooks:

Where is that bottom? I don’t know exactly, but I can tell you that it is very close to device manufacturing cost, which is somewhere between $90 and $125.

And unfortunately, Amazon and Barnes & Noble will be unable to sustain a business on the devices when it hits that low, because the price of the most important and expensive component of those Black & White e-ink readers, the Vizplex display, is controlled by a company that exclusively manufactures and owns the rights to the electrophoretic technology used in these devices, E Ink Corporation.

The “give away the razors and sell the blades” model doesn’t work with dedicated e-book readers because Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s customer base is increasingly becoming iPad and iPhone users, and shortly will also be Android phone and tablet users.

In which case, there’s no reason to sell “razors” at all, especially since Android Tablets will be made out of commodity parts, will use cheap LCD display technology and will be far more capable, and many will be priced in the $200-$300 range and well within striking distance of the current price of dedicated e-readers.

Indeed, e-ink may be superior for daytime reading, and at least for the time being, the hardcore reader types, most of which are Boomers, will go out and buy Kindles and Nooks for their content consumption this summer at the beach.

But the Millennials will only be interested in their iPhones, iPads and Droids, with brilliant and sharp color displays, and the App versions of these e-book stores will suit most of these people fine, at least for the remaining ones that still like to read books.

In the next year Vizplex e-Ink will almost certainly be revved to color technology, but for the dedicated reading device, it will be too late.

By then, different competing high-performance transflective LCD displays will be on the scene, manufactured in huge volumes ...

Released: Borders eBook app for iPad

The free Kobo-based app can be downloaded here. Use this app to login to your existing Borders account from your iPad, re-download your previously purchased titles, and buy new eBooks. Also runs on the iPhone, of course. Currently only available within the United States. As is usually the case with Borders/Kobo, the app falls short. According to Chris Davis at SlashGear, the "app doesn’t appear to sync automatically – such as updating to the last page you read on any device – across their other platforms; the company already sells various dedicated ereaders, including the Kobo eReader, the Aluratek Libre and several Sony Reader models." As previously noted, a Kobo Android app dropped several days ago and has a few tech glitches.

Amazon Responds - Kindle (with 3G) for $189

The latest in today's price cuts. Late this afternoon, Amazon brought the price of a Kindle down to $189. The cut is obviously a response to Barnes & Noble's news of earlier today. From The New York Times:

“It was obvious that the price of standalone e-readers had to come down,” said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, citing the threat by Apple and other tablet makers. “We just never thought it was going to happen this rapidly.”

Analysts had expected the prices of e-readers would gradually fall because of the natural decline in component costs and the increased profitability of e-books themselves.

Until this spring, e-book sellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble sold many bestselling e-books at a loss, in order to entice customers. But then five of the six major American publishers agreed with Apple to change to a so-called “agency” sales model. Under the new agreement, booksellers were required to raise prices on many digital books and got to keep a 30 percent commission on the sales, which now allows them to sacrifice some profit on their hardware.

The price cuts should add further momentum to what, despite incursions by the iPad, has been a growing market for dedicated e-reading devices. Amazon and rivals are on pace to sell 6.6 million e-reading devices this year, up from 3.1 million in 2009, according to Forrester.

But even as the market grows, several smaller players have encountered problems. iRex Technologies, based in the Netherlands, recently sought protection from creditors in Dutch bankruptcy court, citing problems with its division in the United States. Earlier this month, the Skiff e-reading platform, developed by Hearst, was acquired by News Corp., casting doubts about the planned introduction of a Skiff reading device.

“I don’t see more than two, or maybe three dedicated reading companies in the market for selling e-books,” said William J. Lynch, chief executive of Barnes & Noble, in an interview. “I think you are starting to see a shakeout now.”

Mr. Lynch also predicted that within 12 months, e-reading devices “that people will actually want to buy” could be available for under $100.

Nook WiFi Confirmed Plus Drop of 3G Nook Price to $199

Check TechCrunch. The cheaper model includes free WiFi at all AT&T Hot Spots.

Cheaper "Nook WiFi" About to Ship From Barnes & Noble?

electronista reports:

A leak from Barnes & Noble's inventory system is likely to have confirmed rumors of an entry level Nook coming by the end of spring. The listing for a "Nook WiFi" shows it shipping for $149 on June 23. Not much else is detailed by Engadget's insider, but prior leaks had it stripping out 3G to fall below the regular Nook's $249 asking price.

In the short-term, this Nook WiFi (Nook Lite) will really pose a significant challenge to the generally-unimpressive Kobo eReader (Borders-affiliated) which sells for the same price but has no touch-screen interface and no WiFi. Not so much the Kindle, which incorporates 3G and stands on a par technically and price-wise with the standard Nook. In the longterm, the launch of Nook WiFi is the first step on what seems an inevitable trail for the major dedicated eReaders (Kindle, Nook, Sony eReader) toward increasingly modest hardware price-points while maintaining (if not enhancing) essential functionality - thus creating a niche even more distinctly separate from the tablet market than it is now. Choice for consumers. That's the key.

Note, Nook 2 is in development, as is a major new hardware release for the Kindle.

Jay Yarow's Premature Eulogy for the Kindle

Writing on Forbes.com, Business Insider editor Jay Yarow has breathlessly announced: Apple on the Cusp of Crushing Amazon Kindle Platform. Oh yeah? Let's see. Amazon has the complete list of Random House titles (including Doubleday, Crown, etc.) in its store, and Apple doesn't. Amazon owns the world-leading dedicated eReader hardware, and Apple doesn't - this despite the fact that Amazon's true strength is the marketing of content rather than the development and marketing of hardware. (Of course, that situation is exactly the opposite for Apple.) The bottom line is that no-one is poised to crush anyone. The eBook marketplace is and promises to remain quite diverse, with Kindle readers and iBooks readers and Nook readers and Android folks, etc., enjoying the same books in different ecosystems of their own choice, and frequently mixing those ecosystems (the Kindle app on the iPad, etc.) This is not a zero-sum game.

Kobo Releases eBook App for Google Android

You can download it here. There's a companion Borders-partnered bookstore, of course (about two million titles at the moment). Here's a useful review from Zatz Not Funny:

When you download or purchase books they’re added to your library in a matter of seconds, and the Kobo app will keep track of the last read page on each book.

Your data is synced with the Kobo web site, which means you can also pick up another device and keep reading where you left off.Kobo offers a physical eBook reader as well as a a desktop app for PC and Mac (which is currently only available when you buy a Kobo Reader device, but which should be available for download this summer). There are also apps for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, and WebOS.

There are a few quirks with the Android app. For one thing, I found deleting eBooks from my library to be a big hassle. There doesn’t appear to be any way to do this from my phone. Instead, I had to login to the Kobo web site, visit my library, and delete books from the web interface. Next time I launched the Kobo Android app those books were gone. But this seems like a clunky solution.

Also, while the Kobo Android FAQ says that you can create bookmarks by pressing the menu button in any book, I didn’t see any option to create a bookmark. Hopefully this will be addressed in a future release.

Garrison Keillor and the End of Old Media

Garrison Keillor, speaking to a hoard of old media publishers and authors at the annual Authors Guild benefit last month, said: "I'm an older writer, so I have nostalgia about these occasions and always imagine that this might be the last one." Garrison likened the evening to a "1951 meeting of CBS Radio affiliates" or a "1982 convention of typewriter repairmen." Boo-rah.

Authors Guild, Turow, Piracy Redux

Re: My earlier post of today regarding piracy and Authors Guild prez Scott Turow. A friend just sent me this open letter to Turow written a week or so ago by Brian O'Leary of Magellan Media Consulting Partners. O'Leary hits many of my same points, only better. Note especially this:

I do believe that there are markets in which digital book piracy is a net loss - college textbooks may provide the most direct example. But I also believe that there may be markets, and authors, for whom piracy helps improve awareness, trial and paid sales.

That’s why we started studying the impact of piracy on paid sales almost two years ago. On an admittedly limited sample (something we’d like your help to grow), we’ve found an apparent correlation between piracy and subsequent growth in paid sales.

Now, you recently told GalleyCat’s Jason Boog that “…the larger problem for us is the pirating of books”. I ask, simply, “How do you know?”

There are no reliable studies of the impact of piracy in the book business. Because our sample set is limited, I include our own work to date in that bucket. The studies that are cited most often are based on sampling techniques that try to track the instance of piracy, then apply an assumed number for “substitution rates” (lost sales).

The Government Accounting Office recently “assessed the assessments” of digital piracy and found them all lacking. That’s not the final word, but it’s an indication that conclusions drawn on the limited data available are premature, at least. ...

Kurzweil's Blio

Technologist Ray Kurzweil's soon-to-be-released Blio eReader software comes free. The software will drop at the same time the bookstore opens. The bookstore has been developed in partnership with Baker & Taylor. Blio runs on - literally - anything: hand-held devices, PCs, tablets, whatever. It can handle color and supports multimedia. Unlike standard dedicated reader software, it preserves a publisher's original formatting (important with many textbooks, cookbooks, how-to books, childrens books, etc.) Kurzweil says Blio is "the new touchstone for the presentation of electronic books, magazines, and digital content." There is also a read-aloud feature. Supports XPS, PDF, ePub. Beta testers have reportedly been impressed. But ... a very late entry into the marketplace, and formidable (to say the least) competition.

The Grateful Dead, The Economy of Ideas, And Reconsidering the Notion of eBook Piracy

I'm just now noting month-old comments from Authors Guild president Scott Turow citing the "pirating" of eBooks as a large problem.

Two points.

1) I wonder how he has quantified this. I mean, what's the methodology? Given the extent to which all the major players load their editions up with DRM, I'm skeptical of the risk.

2) More importantly, however, I wonder how much of a detriment piracy actually is. Are we even correct in viewing piracy as something we actually want to avoid? There's evidence that piracy (in my view: free word-of-mouth) grows reputations and thus fuels legitimate sales.

So, the question: Do we need DRM? The Grateful Dead used to create a dedicated space at their concerts for people who wanted to record bootlegs of the band playing live. They encouraged the exercise and, in effect, gave away their work (their "content") for free. In turn, the band's reputation/fanbase grew exponentially.

As regards books, per Michael Shatzkin, there's little evidence file-sharing reduces sales. Shatzkin points to science fiction writer Cory Doctorow who "does the best he can to give away as much of his content as possible." The result? Doctorow's sales continue to boom.

I am reminded of a statement in "The Economy of Ideas," that seminal 1994 essay by Grateful Dead lyricist, EFF co-founder, Berkman Center Fellow, and (now) New Street Communications Editorial Advisory Board member John Perry Barlow: "The increasing difficulty of enforcing existing copyright and patent laws is already placing in peril the ultimate source of intellectual property - the free exchange of ideas ... unbounded intellectual property is very different from physical property and can no longer be protected as though these differences did not exist. ... if we continue to assume that value is based on scarcity, as it is with regard to physical objects, we will create laws that are precisely contrary to the nature of information, which may, in many cases, increase in value with distribution."

Here is Barlow making the same point - click the center "play" button:

Quark's New Digital Publishing 2.0 Ideal for Color/Interactive Content

From eBooknewser's Diana Dilworth:

Quark has a new digital publishing platform out today called Quark Digital Publishing 2.0. The company unveiled the platform at The Big Money's Untethered conference--partnering with K-NFB Reading Technology, creator of the Blio e-reader application and distributor Baker & Taylor. The three companies are collaborating to offer Digital Publishing 2.0.

Taking advantage of the popularity of color screens on iPads and other tablets, Quark's new platform allows publishers to publish in color and create interactive design-heavy content. Designers don't have to know how to program code, they just have to input their designs into the platform to create interactive content.

QuarkXPress's built-in interactive features include the ability to add slide shows, embed video and create other interactive elements. The published content can be formatted for viewing on various devices. ...

eBook Sales Up 127.4% Over Last Year for April

From eBooknewser's Jason Boog:

According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP), eBook sales jumped 127.4 percent in April compared to the previous year--totaling $27.4 million in sales. In comparison, audiobook sales were $11.7 million for the same month.

Nevertheless, March 2010 was a better month for eBooks. As we reported, sales totaled $28.5 million that month. Follow this link to see stats for adult and children's/YA sales in April. ...

Kindle 2.5 Firmware Update Now Available in US

The new release (2.5.3) has been available to international users for a couple of days already, and now American Kindle owners get theirs. The update is automatic via the wireless connection. Just leave your Kindle wireless turned on and the update will flow. (Don't have 3G? Go to the Amazon Kindle update page for a manual download.) 2.5.3 gives you "collections" to help you organize your books and docs ... and tools to use Facebook and Twitter posts to share your notes and highlights with others. More perks: zoom in and pan across PDFs, see what others living and reading in the Kindle ecosystem think are the best passages of the book you've currently your eyes in, enjoy a wider array of font sizes (all improved in clarity), and get the security of password protection. Check Geek.com. But note: the 2.5 update is not compatible with the original Kindle.

Free Content at Starbucks

Well, you'll still have to pay for the content of the coffee cup. But as of July 1st, something called the "Starbuck's Digital Network" will give in-store customers free access to such paid sites and services as the Wall Street Journal, Apple's iTunes, USA TODAY, ZAGAT, etc. The list includes the New York Times - which presumably means that Starbucks customers will be allowed to do an end-run around that publication's impending pay-wall restrictions. There will also now be no arbitrary time limit to instore free WiFi usage. (Up to now, there has been a two hour limit.) Find the Starbucks press release here.

News Corp's Investments in Digital Reading

News Corp has purchased Skiff LLC, an e-reading tech firm formerly owned by Hearst, and has made a substantial investment in Journalism Online, an outfit which helps publishers charge readers for online news. Of course, both these moves further Rupert's ambition to monetize his content across every and any platform available. More from Leena Rao at TechCrunch.

How to Make eBooks Better - Kevin Rose

Check this short video in which blogger and technology angel investor Kevin Rose itemizes his (perceptive) top five wish-list for improving eBooks and taking them to the next level.

Baker & Taylor, LibreDigital Form Ebook Distribution Partnership

From eContent:

Baker & Taylor and LibreDigital, Inc. announced an expanded agreement to partner for the delivery of ebooks. The two companies are introducing a new digital services platform that includes books, newspapers, and magazines, and such digital devices as the Baker & Taylor-powered Blio e-reader software and Apple's iPad.

As part of the agreement, Baker & Taylor will offer its more than 30,000 publishing partners a full range of LibreDigital digital services, including LibreMarket and LibrePublish.

Inbound from South Korea - LG and iRiver Partner on an eReader for the American Market

The American version of the iRiver "Story" will supposedly be on sale in about a year. The current Story - distributed in Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, China and Russia - is a fairly robust device with a price just under $300. The dedicated eReader can handle all essential eBook formats, runs Linux (despite some blog posts and press reports to the contrary), and features a 6 inch E-ink screen. It will be interesting to see what design changes happen, since iRiver and LG must realize they'll have to up the specs (and lower the price) considerably in order to even have a chance against Kindle, Nook etc. The ghost of iRex is watching. Read more in the Wall Street Journal's "Digits" blog. Note that the Journal gets the Story's operating system wrong, claiming it runs Windows. It doesn't.

Tim Beyers: Amazon/Apple Strategic Positioning for the Coming Battle

From Motley Fool:

Beyers says Amazon leads Apple when it comes to scale.

Publishers still see Amazon as the king, and that's not going to change. Apple has a long way to go to overcome Amazon's volume lead in terms of books, in terms of content yields. It's not like Apple won't strike great deals with publishers. But they're way behind Amazon in terms of doing deals with publishers. And I think the competition is going to heat up. Ultimately, I think that benefits publishers, because if Apple and Amazon knock heads, maybe publishers get some favorable terms. And you know, this is one of those things where users just get more access to more great content; and that's great for users. But at the same time, I don't really think it's a foregone conclusion that Apple takes over this market. The publisher relationships still belong to Amazon.

But Apple has the advantage of the iPad's flexibility.

The iPad is a great device. Now that it's out and consumers love it, there's really almost no interest in buying a brand-new piece of Kindle hardware, and the iPad has proven to be that good. And I admit, I was a skeptic on this. I thought of the iPad as a large iPod Touch, and I wasn't certain that it was going to knock the Kindle off its perch. Now, in terms of hardware, it does look like the iPad is the device to beat. And some of the research suggests that people not only love it for the hardware, but they love it for apps. And even more important, they love it for newspapers and magazines. That's a really big advantage for Apple. So as much as Amazon has the book publishers in its corner, very quickly Apple could find the newspaper and magazine publishers in its corner, and that makes this battle very interesting.

Expensive Information - Fences on the Electronic Frontier

Note Michael Hirschorn's very important essay, "Closing the Digital Frontier," in the July/August Atlantic. Hirschorn takes a hard look at how the shift from the Web browser to the smart phone changes the terrain of cyberspace, erecting fences on the once-wild and lawless landscape. It is important to remember that Stewart Brand, in famously saying information wants to be free, insisted in the same breath that it also wants to be expensive. Hirschorn:

The era of the Web browser’s dominance is coming to a close. And the Internet’s founding ideology — that information wants to be free, and that attempts to constrain it are not only hopeless but immoral — suddenly seems naive and stale in the new age of apps, smart phones, and pricing plans. What will this mean for the future of the media — and of the Web itself? ...

Despite its Department of Defense origins, the matrixed, hyperlinked Internet was both cause and effect of the libertarian ethos of Silicon Valley. The open-source mentality, in theory if not always in practice, proved useful for the tech and Internet worlds. Facebook and Twitter achieved massive scale quickly by creating an open system accessible to outside developers, though that openness is at times more about branding than anything else—as Twitter’s fellow travelers are now finding out. Mainframe behemoths like IBM wave the bloody shirt of Linux, the nonprofit open-source competitor of Microsoft Windows, any time they need to prove their bona fides to the tech community. Ironically, only the “old” entertainment and media industries, it seems, took open and free literally, striving to prove that they were fit for the digital era’s freewheeling information/entertainment bazaar by making their most expensively produced products available for free on the Internet. As a result, they undermined in little more than a decade a value proposition they had spent more than a century building up. ...

But now, it seems, things are changing all over again. The shift of the digital frontier from the Web, where the browser ruled supreme, to the smart phone, where the app and the pricing plan now hold sway, signals a radical shift from openness to a degree of closed-ness that would have been remarkable even before 1995. In the U.S., there are only three major cell-phone networks, a handful of smart-phone makers, and just one Apple, a company that has spent the entire Internet era fighting the idea of open (as anyone who has tried to move legally purchased digital downloads among devices can attest). As far back as the ’80s, when Apple launched the desktop-publishing revolution, the company has always made the case that the bourgeois comforts of an artfully constructed end-to-end solution, despite its limits, were superior to the freedom and danger of the digital badlands.

Apple, for once, is swimming with the tide. After 15 years of fruitless experimentation, media companies are realizing that an advertising-supported model is not the way to succeed on the Web and they are, at last, seeking to get consumers to pay for their content. They are operating on the largely correct assumption that people will be more likely to pay for consumer-friendly apps via the iPad, and a multitude of competing devices due out this year, than they are to subscribe to the same old kludgy Web site they have been using freely for years. As a result, media companies will soon be pushing their best and most timely content through their apps instead of their Web sites. ...

Editorial Advisory Board for New Street Communications, LLC

I'm delighted to announce the editorial advisory board for New Street Communications: John Perry Barlow, Arthur Goldwag, John Hanson Mitchell, Tao Seeger and Michael Stein. Bios here.

ISBNs for eBooks?

I've spent some time recently looking into the question of ISBNs for eBooks. Amazon does not require them for Kindle editions. But Google Editions intends to require them, and has worked out an agreement with the U.S. ISBN Agency (i.e., the Bowker monopoly governing such things in the US) to see to it that this happens. Publishers as a sector are still dithering back and forth as to whether or not ISBNs are truly essential for digital publications. I personally don't see why ISBNs should be integral for products that are not sold via brick-and-mortar retail. Apple, however, wants you to have an ISBN for iBooks. This can turn into an expensive proposition for small presses, what with the traditional fixed-cost of an ISBN regardless of sales. However, per John Chow, Apple has a solution that is worth exploring. Italics are mine:

If you don’t know how to get an ISBN number, Apple suggests that you use an Apple-approved aggregator. These are firms that have a financial arrangement with Apple and can provide you with a number of services.

For example, Bookbaby charge $49 per book the first year and then $19 per book each year the book is in the store. For an additional $19 they will register your ISBN number. They’re convert your eBook to the ePub format for another $19. Other services takes no upfront money but instead take a cut of the profits. You’ll have to decide which service is best for you or you can bypass the aggregators and try to do everything yourself.

Then there is also another question: If ISBN a "must-have," then just one ISBN for all eBook editions of a particular work, or separate ISBNs for Kindle, iBooks, etc.? I'm still digging.

Kindle on iPad

Commenting on his experience of the iPad for the reading of eBooks, Atlantic senior editor Clive Crook indicates a habit of usage that seems to be fairly typical. Kindle books on the iPad platform, using the Kindle app:

[The iPad] is a bit too big. It is a bit too heavy. But one quickly adapts and it soon feels natural. The key thing is that it has replaced my Kindle. Almost. I might still prefer my Kindle on the beach, say, because the screen is easier to read in very bright light and I wouldn't want to get sand on my iPad. In all normal lighting conditions the iPad is a lot easier to read. Friends report eyestrain from the backlit display. This seems to vary from person to person. I have now read half a dozen books on it, and I find it comfortable hour after hour.

I use the Kindle app, rather than Apple's IBooks. I already have a ton (as it were) of Kindle books. It is nice, but inessential, that the iPad app keeps places, bookmarks and notes synchronized across devices. iBooks is better-looking and has search and a dictionary, like the Kindle device but unlike the Kindle app. On the other hand the Kindle app can do white text on black for reading in bed without annoying your wife. For now the main thing is that Amazon's range of titles is much bigger.

New Sony Patent: solar charged e-reader/laptop built from two touchscreens

I missed this, which popped more than a week ago. From VentureBeat:

A patent application filed by Sony depicts a folding two-screen device that can be held like a book, or typed on like a laptop.

The patent paperwork explicitly states that there are “first and second touchscreens,” that “the image of a keyboard” could appear on one screen, and that “electronic book files” would be storable. The device would be “connectable to a solar charger.” ...

Sony’s device seems a more direct attempt to create an alternative to low-cost netbook laptops, one that doubles as a book-like reader. The obvious two benefits are a lower overall price and only one gadget to carry instead of two.

The concept of a laptop with a touchscreen keyboard has a novelty appeal, but it also says something about the intended market: Unlike the road warriors of the past who carried top-of-the-line laptops for constant typing, there’s a new demographic of mobile content consumers and producers that sticks to short messages. They don’t need a ThinkPad-grade keyboard to type on. Hopefully for Sony, they’ll be able to build a sexy-looking device that can serve as a status symbol like the company’s early Vaio laptops. ...

Not Ignoring the Blog ...

I'm not ignoring the blog. I just literally can't find anything of importance to catalogue this morning. Onward and upward.

New Virginia Quarterly Review iPad Edition

From Publishers Weekly:

The Virginia Quarterly Review has created a digital edition specifically tailored for the iPad. The literary magazine from the University of Virginia has become one of the first magazines to create such an edition and sell it directly through Apple's iBookstore. A free 29-page sample of the magazine's current issue can be downloaded here. VQR is selling its digital editions for $3.99, as compared to the $14.99 price for the print issue.

Speaking to the magazine's push to get into the iBookstore, managing editor Kevin Morrissey said one attractive feature with Apple's storefront is the fact that it supports ePub. "It is important to us that we distribute VQR in a manner that is open, unencumbered by the limitations of digital rights management and patents," Morrissey explained. The magazine also created the ePub edition in-house which developer Waldo Jaquith said "is a testament to the simplicity of the format." Jaquith added that creating the digital editions proved economical for the magazine. "Rather than building a stand-alone app for the iPad, as so many other magazines have done, we were able to leverage our existing website content and create this version at a fraction of the cost of a proprietary app."

Former Lulu Exec Launches Outer Banks Publishing

From Publishers Weekly's Calvin Reid:

Anthony Policastro, a former business analyst at self-publishing vendor Lulu.com, has launched the Outer Banks Publishing Group, a new publishing venture that will focus on digital publishing and the use of social media to build an audience for POD print releases.

Outer Banks Publishing offers a different model than Lulu.com. Policastro said OBP is not a self-publishing vendor like Lulu, but a hybrid publishing model that combines selective editorial content with new media publishing and promoting platforms. Policastro said he solicits manuscripts like a traditional publisher and is selective about what he publishes. However, OBP does not offer advances. Instead, Policastro says he offers writers the chance to publish their books in e-book format and his experience and expertise in using a wide variety of social media and viral marketing strategies and technologies to promote and market the book online.

His plan is to publish books initially in e-book format; create buzz on the Internet through social media and then move to POD print publication when the initial e-book edition has “proven itself” by generating digital book sales. Outer Banks, Policastro said, will show its authors how to create a significant web presence with blog tours, web sites, blogs and web optimization.”

A former magazine editor and blogger as well as a novelist—he has self-pubbed two novels of his own through Outer Banks—Politcastro said he is about to publish an updated edition of Martin Brossman’s Social Media and Online Resource Directory for Business, and is currently considering several manuscripts for publication.

According to Politcastro, “The publishing industry is moving too slow to adapt these new technologies,” and that Outer Banks is “bridging the gap between authors and publishers and getting more authors in print.”

Outer Banks and my New Street Communications are both aimed at bridging the same gap, although at New Street we'll make digital and POD editions available simultaneously. We'll also focus less on over-the-transom manuscripts and more on titles developed and commissioned in-house. Plus New Street is exclusively nonfiction.

Excellent Consideration of B&N and eBooks

Note Lydia Dishman's insightful analysis of B&N's position/strategy in the eBook universe. This comes from bnet:

Perhaps it’s a calculated management sleight of hand, but while Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (APPL) duke it out for the e-book crown, Barnes & Noble (BKS) is working in the background, making moves to position itself as the biggest player in the market.

What’s interesting is how a series of small moves can add up to a big impact.

Take the latest promotion: get free coffee with the download of the B&N eReader app. As part of an overall Nook promotion (which runs through June27) store customers can download the app, then show the B&N Café barista show an open eBook on a Nook or the eReader software on their iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, HTC HD2, or a Windows PC or Mac and snag a free tall coffee. Nook owners can also get the freebie just for bringing their device into any store.

Sure a cup of joe doesn’t seem like much of a perk (except to your sluggish system), but it shows that in crafting an overall digital strategy, the world’s largest bookseller isn’t forgetting that its bricks need to be tended alongside clicks.

Also encouraging the brick/click crossover is B&N’s other freebie promotion. Nook and eReader users can come in the store, flash their device, and download an e-book from a bestselling author at no cost. It’s not just a one-shot either. New titles are offered each week ...

Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble are anticipating apps for Android to launch this summer. Meanwhile, through ereader.com , B&N is offering a beta version for Droid as well as a plethora of other devices that Amazon currently isn't serving.

What remains to be seen how well B&N will leverage its new digital self-publishing platform. If it manages to negotiate competitive royalty rates for authors and independent publishers on PubIt!, the world’s largest bookstore may indeed become the smartest as well, bypassing the trade publishers and snapping up thousands of exclusive new e-books.

Will eBooks Make Midlist Authors Extinct?

Of course not. Quite to the contrary. eBooks remove barriers. But I'll catalogue this essay anyway and file it under a new category: Luddites Whining.

iRex/Illiad Troubles

From MobilitySite:

iRex, the Dutch company that produced the Illiad ebook reader for several years, and recently started selling their new DR800 reader in Best Buy stores has filed for Chapter 11. Whether they will proceed to bankruptcy isn’t clear yet, but iRex brass are apparently hopeful this can be turned around. Analysts are less so.

It's not hard to see where iRex’s troubles have stemmed from. It has zero consumer name recognition in a field that is now populated by Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Sony and…oh yeah, Apple. Beyond that iRex doesn’t have it’s own online bookstore, which is a prime moneyspinner and awareness factory for those four competitors I already mentioned. ...

From China: The Green Book - "World's Lightest eReader"

From Inhabit.com:

Want an e-reader that’s lighter, smaller, and more streamlined than either the iPad or the Kindle? You can have one — if you speak Chinese. Taiwanese company Green Book Inc. recently unveiled the Green Book — the world’s lightest e-reader — at the Computex Taipei trade show.

The pocket-sized Green Book weighs just 0.4 pounds, compared to the iPad’s 1.5 pounds. Green Book offers a tiny six inch screen and 32 gigabytes of memory, or enough memory to store 30,000 books. The device can read 8,000 pages per full battery charge — more than enough for a week’s worth of reading sessions.

But despite the Green Book’s impressive portability, Amazon and Apple won’t have too much to worry about in the English-speaking world. Unlike the Kindle and iPad, Green Book is intended primarily for Chinese-language titles.

Coffee and eBooks

Barnes & Noble has mounted an interesting promotion designed to use downloadable eBook content to drive customer traffic to B&N brick & mortar establishments. Check it out. And here's where you can download the app in question.

This Just In: New York Times Objects to the Reading of Its Feed

Or so it would seem. Embattled reactionary old media Luddites trying to create false scarcity.

More Apple WWDC iBooks Noise - Syncing, PDFs, and Agnosticism

From MobilitySite:

Slipped into all the noise of the iPhone 4 announcement, Steve Jobs had some interesting [comments] concerning the future of iBooks. As we all assumed he would, he followed the normal Apple pattern of announcing expanded functionality for a product announced in the previous big event. In this case Apple is opening up iBooks to PDF reading, annotations and proper bookmarking, which are very important steps in the evolution of the product.

Even more interesting is that Apple is moving iBooks squarely into position to compete with the Kindle head on. For one thing, they are porting the iBooks functionality to the iPhone as well, and I assume the iPod Touch if not now then in the near future when they release iOS 4 for that device. This gives at least a hint that Apple is buying into the prevailing business models for other ebook vendors such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, that ebook reader software should be agnostic, and not be tied down to a single device. Whether this means that we will see Apple providing the iBooks software for Windows Phone 7 or Android, I don’t know yet…however I am almost certain we will at least see iBooks Reader for Mac and Windows. Remember that Apple’s media empire didn’t really get going until they provided iTunes for Windows.

In addition, Apple is taking the incredibly important step of making books you buy from the iBookstore load and sync on ALL devices running iBooks. So when you close your book on your iPad, it opens to the same place on your iPhone. This mimics Kindle’s WhisperSync technology which would be essential if Apple means to seriously compete with Amazon in ebooks, especially since B&N PROMISES this ability, but their forums are filled with comments that it has yet to work. If Apple can sync iBooks between the iPad and iPhone before you can sync B&N Reader between them, or between a Nook and your iPhone for that matter, then that will give Apple a major advantage. ...

Apple Grabs 22% of eBook Market for Past 65 Days, Announces iBooks Enhancements

All of this from the San Francisco Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as reported by AppleInsider's Sam Oliver:

Apple revealed that iBooks will allow for wireless syncing across devices, including purchased content and user-added content such as bookmarks, notes and highlighting. The wireless capabilities will be available free of charge for iBooks users on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

[Steve Jobs also announced a new version of the iBooks app] due out later this month that will add new features that will let users highlight text, paste sticky notes, bookmark pages, and add bookmarks to the title's table of contents.

[Jobs said that the new iBooks would] add support for PDFs, a feature widely requested for its e-book platform. The new update will be available later this month, and will feature a separate bookshelf for users to view their PDF.

In the first 65 days [of the iBookstore], Jobs said users have downloaded more than 5 million books -- amounting to 2.5 eBooks for every iPad sold and giving Apple a near-instant 22% slice of the eBook market. Five of the six largest publishers in the world are on board with iBooks, releasing content for the Apple-supported format.

Note this useful analysis from the Nieman Journalism Lab's Joshua Benton:

In the two months since the iPad launched — and with it Apple’s new ebook platform, iBooks — Apple has taken over a remarkable 22 percent of the ebook market. (That’s based on data from five of the six major publishing companies; the sixth, Random House, isn’t on the iPad.)

In one sentence, Jobs revealed more hard data about ebook sales than Amazon has in 2.5 years of the Kindle. (I exaggerate, but only slightly. Amazon still hasn’t unveiled any hard numbers on Kindle device or ebook sales. Maybe this will prompt them.)

Those Apple ebook sales are based on the 2 million iPads sold, which are the only Apple devices that have iBooks. But iBooks is coming to the iPhone and iPod touch later this month — around the same time Jobs said the 100 millionth iPhone OS device will be sold. In other words, iBooks’ momentum is about to get punched up.

IDW Developing Digital Comics Across a Wide Range of Platforms

From Digital Spy:

The publisher is working with companies including Apple and Sony, making its comics available on the iPhone, iPad and PSP. Among the products being offered is Jeff Smith's legendary Bone comic and his current series Rasl.

Consumer Reports: Kindle Best Value Among eReaders

From Consumer Reports:

Despite improvement to the rival Barnes & Noble Nook e-book reader and the arrival of Apple’s iPad tablet computer, which offers e-reader capability, Amazon’s Kindle is still the best choice for most consumers. ...

Consumer Reports testers recently put nine e-book readers through comprehensive lab tests. Amazon’s Kindle, $260, and its super-sized sibling, the Kindle DX, $490, had crisper, more readable type than any other model ...

The Kindles were among the fastest at refreshing and turning pages. For most users, the lower-priced Kindle is a better choice than the DX because of its lighter weight and smaller size, unless extra real estate is needed for reading content such as e-textbooks.

Two e-readers from Sony – the Daily Edition PRS900BC, $400, and the Touch Edition PRS600SC, $280, were solid performers in Consumer Reports lab tests and noted for their versatility – including their ability to be used as digital notepads for text or drawings. However, the Daily Edition is expensive and heavy and the Touch Edition is among the rated models that do not feature unlimited, free, 3G wireless data network access which means consumers cannot download books whenever and wherever they want.

Consumer Reports found that Barnes & Noble’s Nook is among the faster models at turning pages, but its type was not quite as crisp as the Kindle’s and it weighs more even though both models have the same 6-inch screen size. Navigating content on the Nook was more complicated and touch controls were nonintuitive.

Consumer Reports also tested e-readers from three lesser-known brands – the Aluratek Libre eBook Reader Pro, $170, the BeBook Neo, $300, and the iRex DR 800SG, $400 – and found that all were undistinguished at best.

[Consumer Reports excluded the iPad from the formal comparative study and ranking, on the grounds that it is a diversified tablet PC as opposed to a dedicated eReader. Nevertheless, the article does speak to the iPad's eReader capabilities:]

The iPad’s iBook app, one of at least three available for the device, offers fast page turns, with a dazzling virtual image one page curling back to reveal another, and the full-color screen is more eye-catching than the monochrome displays on the e-book readers.

Type on its LCD touch screen is fine, though it is slightly less crisp than that of the best e-book readers. Compared to the most expensive e-book reader tested, Amazon’s Kindle DX, $490, Apple’s iPad is more expensive costing $500 and up and substantially heavier at 24 ounces versus the Kindle DX’s weight of 19 ounces. Consumer Reports recommends buying the iPad for e-books only if consumers are willing to compromise to get a multifunction device.

Spring Design's Android Alex eReader Doesn't Sound Like a Contender

At least not to me. Or to others. As the guys at CNET put it:

Very expensive; no access to major e-book store; color LCD appears to have a significant impact on battery life; navigation is hampered by lack of a "home" button; non-standard 2.5mm headphone jack; no support for Word files; no easy way to add new Android apps; too many fixes and additional features currently listed as "coming soon."

Add no 3G. Also add the fact that Alex uses the ancient (in tech time) Android 1.6 operating system. And no proprietary bookstore. And a price of $399. Forget it. DOA.

Stanza e-Reading App Now for iPad

Sounds like a winner, especially for e-bookstore agnostics. Scott Stein comments on CNET:

The iPad is rapidly becoming a Swiss army knife for e-reading apps of all types. Just in case you find Apple's iBooks disappointing (and most of us do), there are the Kindle, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble apps. While each has its advantages, they're generally not compatible with each other. They also make sharing and file-format recognition beyond their e-books pretty difficult.

Well, here's the good news: Stanza just hit the iPad last night.

Stanza has been a longtime favorite of iPhone and iPod Touch users--it accesses a variety of e-book stores directly, can read several formats, and has an amazing amount of font, spacing and color customization. It was a bit of a surprise to see this latest update, simply because Amazon acquired Stanza last year to create the backbone for their Kindle app. ...

The universal iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad app update that has just arrived, version 3.0, looks superficially just like Stanza did before, albeit on a larger iPad screen. Unlike the Kindle and Barnes & Noble apps, Stanza can still browse Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg, and several other book collections directly within the app. The app doesn't connect with Amazon, nor does it offer any indications of an Amazon link.

The additions to this version, however, are eye-opening: Stanza now supports PDFs and comic book files in CBR format (yes, full-color ones). That comic book reader we were excited about that costs about 7 dollars? Irrelevant.

Price? Free.

Kno Announces A Split-Screen Tablet for the College Market

This type of thing is definitely in our future, but the Kno sounds to me as if it has significant shortcomings, from price to weight to connectivity. Wired has an informative piece. Here's the good news:

The device has two 14-inch LCD touchscreens that fold in like a book. The idea is to make textbook pages fit perfectly across the screen and flow from one digital page to another. Kno made its public debut at the D8 technology conference Wednesday

The tablet will be powered by an Nvidia Tegra processor. It will include a stylus for handwriting recognition, have a full browser, support Flash and offer six to eight hours of battery life. The Kno will offer 16 GB or 32 GB of storage–enough to store 10 semesters’ worth of files, documents and books ...

But ... it'll be a very heavy tablet at 5.5 pounds (the same as the weight of your average notebook PC) priced somewhat but not much below $1,000, according to Kno. You can get an iPad for about $500 and it weighs 1.6 lbs., a Kindle $260 and 0.6 lbs.

Adding insult to injury: 3G connectivity --- not. Just wifi.

Kno is a start-up launched September '09, with much work ahead, evidently.

One last point:

But tablet-like devices from startups have been disappointing so far. Despite its 12-inch screen, the JooJoo has been widely panned for not delivering the kind of zippy, delightful experience that’s made the iPad so appealing.

Kno’s closest rival, the Entourage Edge, is also disappointing. The Edge is a dual-screen device with an E-Ink screen on the left and a 10-inch LCD display on the right. But this Frankenstein-ish monster is hobbled by a slow processor and by its weight.

Apple iPhone 4G to Have Easy Interface With iBookstore

Steve Jobs will unveil the iPhone 4G at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday. From The Telegraph:

... Now iPhone users will be able to buy and download novels from the Apple bookshop on to their iPhone. Amazon already offers a Kindle app for the iPhone and iPod touch, a long with a far wider selection of titles, but the roll-out of Apple's own ebook store to the iPhone underlines Apple's commitment to making digitised content more widely available across all of its platforms. ...

Open Road: $4 Million in Venture Capital from Kohlberg

From Publishers Weekly:

Kohlberg Ventures has increased its investment in Open Road Integrated Media LLC. The venture capital firm invested an additional $4 million in Series A financing, building upon its original $3 million investment last August. ...

Kindle To Be Sold Through Target Stores Starting Sunday

I suppose with the Nook being available at B/N brick-and-mortar stores, and the iPad being retailed from Apple stores and other electronics outlets, Amazon thought they needed a brick-and-mortar retail sales option as well. I guess this makes sense. And the people at Target say they experienced an "overwhelmingly positive" response to the Kindle when it was sales tested in 104 of their locations. Price is $259, the same as with a direct order through Amazon. Check the Boston Globe coverage.

SONY's Steve Haber: eBooks to Overtake Print Within 5 Years

From the Telegraph's Shane Richmond:

Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading business division, said: "Within five years there will be more digital content sold than physical content. Three years ago, I said within ten years but I realised that was wrong - it's within five."

He said the same patterns that Sony had seen in the digitisation of music and photography were now being repeated in the books market. ...

Sony believes that the ebook market has now passed the point of no return. Haber said: "I have multiple meetings with publishers and tell them paradigm shifts happen. You can say fortunately or unfortunately you haven't had a paradigm shift in, what, hundreds of years."

He added: "We in the consumer electronics area have a paradigm shift every year or two."

The Sony Reader range consists of two models in Europe - the Sony Reader Touch and the Sony Reader Pocket. In the US there is a third model - the Sony Reader Daily Edition, which is larger and offers wireless connectivity.

While Sony sees its devices as “immersive” readers, Haber says there is room for multi-function devices too, such as Apple’s iPad, which offers a range of ebook-reading apps. Recent research for Sony in the US by Marketing and Research Resources found that 11 per cent of iPad owners bought the device primarily for reading. ...

Asus Eee Tablet Grayscale Bloc-Note for September, Along with Eee Pad

From UberGizmo:

The Asus Eee Tablet is an electronic bloc-note that uses a 64-levels grayscale display to display black and white content at the resolution of 1024x768. Asus has built it to make the paper and pen obsolete, which is quite an ambitious goal. The device uses a pen as an input device and Asus touts that the display sensitivity is 2450 dpi, which means that we're reaching sub-pixel accuracy here. Thanks to that level of precision, Asus believes that the Eee Tablet (do not confuse it with the impressive Eee Pad!) will be an ideal note taking and sketching device. Of course, it can also display eBooks and text without a sweat.

If you are curious, the battery life is claimed to be 10 hours, and the price will be set at $199 to $299 depending on models. The Asus Eee Tablet will be commercialized in September. What do you think? In these days of multi-touch, do you miss using a pen?

Also check comments at TFTS:

Tablet haters look away as we have yet another tablet computer to show you. However, if you were expecting a Windows 7 powered touchscreen device like the Windpad 100 or Eee Pad, both of which we just showed you, you are to be disappointed. The latest device to come from ASUS is the Eee Tablet, a device that is set to hit the market alongside the Eee Pad, and with good reason.

While the Eee Pad is marketed towards those who are looking for a portable computing device that is theoretically capable of doing everything a normal computer is (thanks to Windows 7) the Eee Tablet is marketed towards an entirely different demographic.

First of all, the Eee Tablet will not feature a color screen but instead a non-backlit TFT-LCD capable of displaying 64 levels of gray. Now, you may be scratching your head wondering why you would ever want a device only capable of displaying gray ... but if you are constantly shuffling around with countless number of notebooks for any reason, this device is for you. ...

Borders, Ebook Reader, Libre Pro

From MobilitySite:

Borders, the often beleaguered second largest bookstore chain in the US has been hitting the ebook market hard the last few months, after neglecting it previously. According to reports they will be offering up to 10 different models of Ebook Reader in their stores and website (such as the new Kobo reader for $150). Most interesting to me at the moment is the one they just announced, the Aluratek Libre Pro.

The Libre is a bare bones ebook reader that has been around for a while in Europe in one form or another, but that is not the interesting part. The interesting part is the PRICE. $119 Samolians. Half the price of a Kindle or Nook, a quarter of the price of an iPad. Remember that the number that keep floating around as the sweet spot for an ebook reader to really crash the mainstream is $100? We’re getting closer.

Of course the Libre is not exactly cutting edge, but would you expect it to be? 5 inch LCD screen, no touch, no color. Only 256MB internal storage. An SD slot and USB port. Built in MP3 player. However it does come with 100 classics preinstalled which should play well with the mainstream, and then there is the price. No one can beat that price at the moment. ...