Pondering the End of the Digital Frontier

NYTimes.com:

“The Web is dead,” Wired magazine declared in a recent cover story. “The golden age of the Web is coming to an end,” wrote Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research. The Atlantic ... warned of “the closing of the digital frontier.”

The argument goes something like this: After falling in love with the openness of the Web, consumers are recoiling from its chaos and embracing the sense of order offered by walled-off digital realms. These include applications for mobile devices like the Apple iPad and iPhone and password-protected social networks like Facebook, where much of what people do takes place beyond the reach of search engines and Web browsers. ...

Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard professor of Internet law, says that the growth of walled gardens like Apple’s applications store have threatened the “generative” character of the Internet, which has permitted users to build on what is already there, as with Lego toys.

“The serendipity of outside tinkering that has marked that generative era gave us the Web, instant messaging, peer-to-peer networking, Skype, Wikipedia — all ideas out of left field,” he writes in a recent book, “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.” “Now it is disappearing, leaving a handful of new gatekeepers in place, with us and them prisoner to their limited business plans and to regulators who fear things that are new and disruptive.”  ...

Even if the supposed threats have been overblown, it is clear that the Web and the Internet are changing.

Mobile devices increasingly come with Internet access as a standard feature. Within a few years, analysts predict, more people will connect to the Internet from smartphones than from deskbound computers.

The popularity of applications for smartphones, often with content or features similar to those available on open Web sites, could steer more toward private digital gardens, like those that existed in the heyday of online services like CompuServe and Prodigy ...

eReader Color vs. Black & White vs. ...

Nick Bilton, NYTimes.com:

Although it is still unclear if the color version will be a hit, William Lynch, chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said at a news conference Tuesday that the company had sold over 1 million Nooks since the device was introduced last year.

That number seems impressive until you compare it to other devices on the market that have logos of a little apple on the back. The Apple iPad, which costs $500 and up, is clearly not just an e-reader, but a computer, e-reader and Web device all rolled into one, and it has fared extremely well with consumers so far. Apple said in its latest earnings report that it had sold over 7 million iPads in six months. ...

Phil Lubell, vice president of digital reading at Sony Electronics, said in an e-mail that he believed consumers preferred “a crisp, glare-free e-ink screen that provides the most immersive reading experience possible.”

“Barnes & Noble’s new LCD tablet cannot be considered in the same category as a dedicated reading device,” Mr. Lubell said. “We’ve heard overwhelmingly from book lovers interested in e-readers that electronic paper is their No. 1 reason for choosing an electronic reading device.” (Of course, Barnes & Noble’s chief said during his news conference that customers had “asked for a color e-reader.”)

Although Sony declined to offer the exact number of e-readers it had sold to date, a Sony representative said the company had “passed the million-unit milestone a while ago.”

And of course there’s one more e-reader: the Amazon Kindle. Although not the first to enter the marketplace, the Kindle has definitely made one of the largest splashes.

An Amazon representative declined to comment about the company’s future plans for the Kindle, or the number of units the company has sold to date. Analysts believe Amazon has sold between 3 million and 6 million units since the first Kindle was introduced in 2007.

Don’t expect a color version of the scrappy Kindle anytime soon. Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, has repeatedly said that color is “not ready for prime time” when it comes to next-generation e-readers. Mr. Bezos has also said in the past that color Kindles are “multiple years” away.

Holding out for a better color technology could be beneficial for Amazon and Sony, or it could completely backfire. As consumers continue to read more content on color devices that can handle video and deliver a more magazine-like experience, dedicated black-and-white readers could quickly become a niche product. ...

Dan Gillmor: By Locking Down its New Nook Tablet, B&N Cripples a Potential Breakthrough

Salon.com: "The most important thing to recognize about Barnes & Noble's new Nook Color e-book reader, a color-screen model announced today, is what the device actually is, not its primary designated function. It's a tablet computer running the Android operating system. But, based on what I can tell from coverage of today's launch event and the company's website, the Nook Color going to be a deliberately crippled tablet computer, locked down so that users can't add apps other than ones B&N decides they can add. ... "

Stephen King Says Digital Publishing Isn't Scary

WSJ.com: "Mr. King is realistic about where books are headed. In digital publishing, as a writer, he's what might be called an 'early adopter.' Back in March 2000, Simon & Schuster Inc. issued Mr. King's story 'Riding the Bullet' as an e-book that was downloaded from the Web onto hand-held devices or computers. More recently, Mr. King's novella 'Ur' was written exclusively for Amazon's Kindle e-reader when the second generation of that device went on sale in February 2009. In [this] interview ... Mr. King discusses his thoughts on the future of digital reading and publishing. ..."

Institutional Libraries Say 'No DRM' - Springer Agrees - Bravo

PW: "“We’re not concerned about piracy,” said George Scottie, Springer Verlag’s director of channel marketing, when asked about the Springer e-book program, which allows institutional customers to lend Springer e-books without DRM protection. Seventy percent of Springer’s business comes from big academic and research libraries, Scottie said, and they are adamant that they don’t want DRM or other such restrictions on the e-books they buy from Springer. Launched in 2006, Springer’s e-book program offers 40,000 titles in the PDF format in the science, technical, and medical category (including some textbooks). ..."

Last Gasp - GOODNIGHT MOON (WITH ZOMBIES)

Enjoy this brief video and feel free to pass along. Happy Halloween from your pals at New Street. Play safe, children.

Behold, It Lives! Frankentext!

Flat World Knowledge co-founder Eric Frank:

There’s nothing like a dissatisfied market to create opportunity for new players and new models. Imagine, if you will, a cottage with a sign on the door in big letters that reads, “OPEN.” An Old Man in dark glasses, who looks suspiciously like Gene Hackman, motions Frankentext inside and offers him a bowl of hot soup. The Monster sits down and picks up a book. It seems like any other commercial textbook — professionally developed, peer-reviewed, and written by a renowned scholar. But something is different. Most startling, the book costs 80% less than a traditional textbook.

Frankentext looks inside. Instead of a copyright “All rights reserved” notice, he sees a funny symbol, “This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license.”

The Old Man explains:

“This is an open textbook, published by Flat World Knowledge, my son. It’s a new model that lets professors choose the book, and students choose the format and price. Flat World is not a publisher of online books. They are an open textbook publisher which automatically publishes books in multiple, low-cost formats. ... "

Nook Color Team Adopts Apple's 'Curated' Apps Model

Electronista: "Barnes & Noble in a follow-up to the launch of the Nook Color has said it will have its own, separate app approval process. Similar to Apple's own approach, it will take submissions and get approvals within 'weeks' of their arrival. It should have a typical revenue split, which Gizmodo interpreted as falling along the 70/30 division Apple and others use. Android Market also won't be available."

Nextbook Next2 Budget Android Tablet

UberGizmo: "Hot on the heels of the Nook Color announcement, E FUN has introduced the Nextbook Next2 tablet, an Android-powered eBook reader that sports a 7-inch TFT 800 x 480 pixel display, 2GB of memory, Wi-Fi, SD card expansion, app support and access to Borders BookStore. The Next2 comes preloaded with 25 ebooks and will be retailing for $199 come November."

Amazon to Launch Kindle App for Windows Phone 7

Press Release @ MarketWatch: "SEATTLE, Oct 28, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Amazon.com, Inc. today announced that Kindle for Windows Phone 7 will be the first major eBook application available for Windows Phone 7. Kindle for Windows Phone 7 will be released later this year, and includes the features customers love about all of the Kindle apps, plus new features built into a Kindle app for the first time, such as personalized book recommendations on your Kindle app home screen and the ability to send a book suggestion to a friend from any book in your library without leaving the app."

Niches, Backlist Books Fuel Open Road's Growing Partner Program

PW: "With three new publisher partnerships launching this fall, and more to come, digital upstart Open Road is betting that while formats, technology and strategies may change, good digital publishing will be built on the same foundation as good traditional publishing—niches, backlist, and great marketing. The latest partnerships, with literary publisher Delphinium, Philosophical Library, and spirituality publisher Shambhala, will see a host of new e-book titles and digital marketing efforts rolled out in the coming weeks and months—and they mark another step forward for Open Road’s business ..."

WSJ Video: The New Nook & More

Digits Live Show - WSJ: The Wall Street Journal’s Geoffrey Fowler and Spencer Ante discuss what the new Nook offers and the evolution of the e-reader market. ...

Oy ... Remote Detonation of Nook Content

Crunchgear: "A user turned on his Nook after a while of not using it, and found that it insisted on updating itself. Not wishing to interfere, he let it run its course, and in the course of updating, it deleted all non-B&N documents on the device. What the hell, right? Doesn’t that break like 10 basic laws of user experience design? The worst part, though, was when he called it in. He assumed it was a bug, but he was told it was in fact his fault: he had failed to keep his Nook updated, and this was the consequence. The Nook couldn’t install the collected updates without wiping its memory."

What Happens When Classic Literary Characters Go Digital?

Laura Miller, Salon.com: "The ill-fated matchmaking and meddling of Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse, for example, was seamlessly updated to include cellphones in the 1995 movie 'Clueless.' Of course, an Emma transposed to 2010 would have a field day with Facebook, nudging acquaintances to friend each other and forming little groups like 'People Who Have Heard Quite Enough in Praise of Jane Fairfax,' to the dismay of Mr. Knightley. Can anyone doubt that if Holden Caulfield were around today he'd have a blog? He practically invented the blog, five decades before the things existed! As for James Joyce's Stephen Dedalus: He'd have a Tumblr. Would it necessarily detract from 'Moby-Dick' if Ahab implanted a GPS chip in the white whale, and couldn't Iago have spread doubt and suspicion even more insidiously as an anonymous Internet commenter? Scarlett O'Hara could have bypassed that loveless marriage to Frank Kennedy and financed the restoration of Tara by using the project as the premise for a reality TV show. That would be just like her -- and the dress made out of old curtains would still play."

Amazon Prevails in First Amendment Case

Washington Post: "Lists that identify the books, music and movies individual customers bought from online retailer Amazon.com are protected from North Carolina tax collectors, a federal judge has ruled. Amazon said in a lawsuit it filed in April in its home town of Seattle that disclosing such information, as requested by the North Carolina Revenue Department, could harm its customers. U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ruled late Monday that the First Amendment protects a buyer from the government demanding to know the books, music, and audiovisual products they've bought."

Barnes & Noble Puts Color on its Nook

The elephant in B&N's room is actually a monkey: the monkey on its back - all those brick and mortar locations and their related expenses, not to mention an evaporating college book business. And a Color Nook won't save the day. NYTimes.com:

Barnes & Noble on Tuesday introduced a new color version of its digital e-reader called the Nook Color, which comes with a new Google Android operating system.

In a company news release, Barnes & Noble said the new Nook Color is 1/2 inch thick and weighs less than a pound. The device also comes with 8 gigabytes of built-in internal memory and comes with a micro SD card slot which will allow users to upgrade the devices memory. The battery will last 8 hours, the company says.

The Color Nook will compete more directly against Apple iPad, which has a larger color screen. Amazon’s Kindle, the leader in e-readers, and Sony’s Reader do not have color screens.

Demonstration units of the Nook Color showed a crisp LCD screen and a simple design. It seemed zippy and responsive to the touch. The original Nook, which used a black and white screen technology from E Ink, received a number of negative reviews for its slow and confusing interface.

... It will also offer a number of new experiences including Nook Kids, which will offer children’s books that integrate touch and interactivity directly into a book.

A new feature called Nook Friends will make it simple for readers to share content, including book passages and notes with friends using social networks including Facebook and Twitter. ...

Ray Ozzie's "Doomsday" Memo re: Microsoft and "The Cloud"

Ozzie is spot-on. But then, that is what he does. Computerworld: "Departing Microsoft executive Ray Ozzie's just-published memo is a 'doomsday-ish' missive that calls on the company to push further into the cloud or perish, an industry analyst said today. Ozzie, who replaced Bill Gates as Microsoft's chief software architect in 2006, is leaving the company, although Microsoft has not disclosed the date of his departure. His 'Dawn of a New Day' memorandum ... is an attempt to focus Microsoft's attention on the day when PCs no longer rule consumer or business computing, said Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, the Kirkland, Wash. research firm that specializes in tracking Microsoft."

B&N Reveals "Nook Kids"

Gadgets: "American bookseller Barnes & Noble will soon be whipping the covers off its Nook Kids platform, a vast collection of electronic books (eBooks) tailored specifically for the younger book-reading demographic. The Nook Kids service, which will work alongside Barnes & Noble's popular twin-screen Nook electronic reader, will reportedly boast 12,000 digital publications—including around 100 illustrated picture books. The books contained within Nook Kids will be aimed at children between three and eight, according to a Wall Street Journal report, which also outlined that content will include popular novels and a variety of 'enhanced editions' of classic children's publications."

Adobe Will Create Tools For All Conde Nast Digital Mags

paidContent: "Conde Nast will formally rely on Adobe tools when it comes to crafting its digital magazine replicas, after dividing duties between the software company and its in-house team at Conde Nast Digital. The decision, announced by Bob Sauerberg, Conde Nast’s president, comes on the heels of five new app releases. Although there is 'ongoing R&D,' the change marks the completion its initial wave of experiments with mobile apps. It also comes as Conde Nast has been making some changes following two high-profile hires on its technology and marketing sides."

Publishers/Colleges Partner in New Digital Textbook Paradigm

The evolving market model described in this piece from The Chronicle of Higher Education makes complete sense, and will spell the death of organizations - such as Barnes & Noble's Wholesale/College Division (founded by my late father-in-law, by the way) - which have dominated the college text business for decades.

[Publishing] companies and college leaders are ... saying that e-textbooks should be required reading and that colleges should be the ones charging for them. It is the best way to control skyrocketing costs and may actually save the textbook industry from digital piracy, they claim. Major players like the McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson, and John Wiley & Sons are getting involved. ...

Here's the new plan: Colleges require students to pay a course-materials fee, which would be used to buy e-books for all of them (whatever text the professor recommends, just as in the old model).

Why electronic copies? Well, they're far cheaper to produce than printed texts, making a bulk purchase more feasible. By ordering books by the hundreds or thousands, colleges can negotiate a much better rate than students were able to get on their own, even for used books. And publishers could eliminate the used-book market and reduce incentives for students to illegally download copies as well. ...

An Indiana company called Courseload hopes to make the model more widespread, by serving as a broker for colleges willing to impose the requirement on students. And it is not alone. The upstart publisher Flat World Knowledge recently made a bulk deal with Virginia State University's business school, and last month the company hired a new salesperson devoted entirely to "institutional sales" of its e-textbooks. And Daytona State College, in Florida, is negotiating with publishers to test a similar arrangement. ...

Kindle is Amazon's Best Seller

The Inquirer: "Steve Kessel, SVP of Amazon Kindle, said in a statement, 'it is still October and we've already sold more Kindle devices since launch than we did during the entire fourth quarter of last year - astonishing because the fourth quarter is the busiest time of year on Amazon'. He thinks that it's clear that this is going to be the biggest holiday for Kindle, by far. Amazon's book-reading customers are buying top 10 best sellers in the digital format rather than traditional hardback or paperback publications, often at a rate of greater than two to one."

Amazon's Kindle Page for HEMINGWAY'S PARIS: OUR PARIS?

I'm liking the look of the page, and the progress on sales, especially since our publicity push does not commence until October 29th.

Pearson Boosted by Strong Digital Demand

Telegraph: "Pearson said that surging demand for e-books had helped drive a better-than-expected performance. Despite a tough market in physical books, its Penguin book publishing arm saw a three-fold increase in the sales of e-books, with the division now offering 16,500 digital titles."

WSJ Doesn’t Buy Into Amazon’s ‘Buy Once, Read Everywhere’ Plans

paidContent: "Earlier this month, I told an Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) VP the aspect that bothered me most as a Kindle user was the inability to access my subscriptions across the e-reader platform. Amazon execs are among the best I’ve ever seen at playing it close to the vest and he was no exception, never letting on that they were on the verge of doing just that. Well, on the verge of making it possible for publishers to do it. PaidContent has learned the Wall Street Journal, one of the top-selling newspapers on Kindle, is opting out. The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) reply to my question about whether it would be taking part initially wasn’t a straight up or down: 'We’ll be announcing our bundle details when we launch the details of our paid model.' The NYT is the top-selling Kindle newspaper."

‘Adderall Diaries’ Blurs Books-Apps Line

NYTimes.com:

STEPHEN ELLIOTT, a 38-year-old from San Francisco, just introduced his first piece of software for sale: an app for the iPad and iPhone called “The Adderall Diaries.”

He’s not exactly a programmer — better to call him a writer. And the app that he conceived looks a lot like an electronic book. That is, most people who buy the app will do so to read the text of “The Adderall Diaries,” his “memoir of moods, masochism and murder” based on his childhood in Chicago group homes, which was published in hardcover last year by Graywolf Press.

But Mr. Elliott says he has good reasons for producing his own iPad app, separate and apart from the e-book version of “Adderall Diaries” that is for sale, say, for the Kindle or the iPad reader from Apple. But those reasons are not the artistic, meta-fictional ones you might suspect — you know, so that when characters enter a bar, you suddenly hear music and a glass dropped by the waiter, or more fancifully, you can make them turn around and go somewhere else.

Rather than exploit the multimedia potential of an app book, Mr. Elliott said he wanted to include tools that cater to a special group: Stephen Elliott readers. ...

Kindle eBook Lending, etc.

At New Street we don't DRM our eBooks, so the lending thing is not big news in this office. Crave - CNET: "In a forum post today, Amazon made a couple of small but significant Kindle announcements. First, it's soon going to make Kindle newspapers and magazines readable on any Kindle app, 'so you can always read Kindle periodicals even if you don't have your Kindle with you or don't yet own a Kindle.' Second, the company said that later this year a lending feature will come to the Kindle, though it has the same restrictions as the current lending feature on the Barnes & Noble Nook."

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry ~ Pull the Plug on the Nook, Round II

Business Insider @ sfgate.com:

Our post earlier today advising Barnes & Noble to finally pull the plug on their Nook e-reader and e-bookstore has generated a bit of interest. We're delighted that there seems to exist a thriving online community of Nook fanboys, ready to pounce on every critical article written on the product. Many of them took to the comments (and Twitter, and our email...) to explain how wrong, wrong, wrong we are. We still respectfully disagree.

First, a couple concessions. Yes, the Nook e-reader has actually been selling pretty well -- anything else would've been surprising given how heavily B&N marketed it in store. And yes, the Nook's e-book store seems to have a good selection -- although this has more to do with publishers scared of Apple and Amazon hedging their bets than anything intrinsic to the Nook. We didn't mean to imply otherwise in our post.

With that in mind, here are, as best as we can tell, the main arguments in favor of the Nook:

• "I love my Nook!" And we still love our old Amiga, but that didn't make it win the PC platform wars of the 80s.

• "The Nook is compatible with the epub format, and not the Kindle!" Ok, fair enough. But how much does the average consumer care about that? How many people in the world know what "epub" is? And if it's really that important, how hard would it be for Amazon to add it? 

• "You're just an Apple/Amazon fanboy!" Well, Apple and Amazon just happen to be extremely disciplined, phenomenally successful giant companies with very deep pockets led by visionary Founder/CEOs who think in decades, not quarters. Barnes & Noble? Not so much. 

• "It's too early to tell who will be successful!" That's actually a really good point. The e-book market is still nascent and fluctuating, and it might be too early to make such bold predictions. But it might not be.

That said, we still think the Nook is doomed.

Because ...

There Is No New Media, Only New Consumption

This trenchant piece comes, somewhat ironically, from NYTimes.com:

The knee-jerk response from the television industry and media to services like Google, Apple, Amazon and Netflix is a typical reaction from institutions of the past century, and a result of limited and short-term thinking. Unfortunately, the broadcast industry aren’t the only ones.

Every so often, you hear executives bemoaning the demise of the newspaper business, the declining fortunes of radio networks and the crumbling of the television industry. There’s talk of the music industry being at the point of no return, and one could probably add Madison Avenue to this gloomy outlook.

When I look at these industries and the failure — or impending failure — of these institutions, I see a fundamental mistake on their part to understand their own core businesses ...

Pssst ... Nook 2 Details

Geek.com: "Book retail chain Barnes and Noble has called for journalists to appear on Tuesday to cover an exciting new announcement that it looks likely will prove to be the Nook 2 e-reader… and according to sources speaking with CNet, the Nook 2 might be something worth getting excited about. Like the original , the new product will be an Android-based e-reader, but unlike the original Nook, it’ll be in full color. Christened the Nook Color, the new device will be a 7-inch device with a color touchscreen display and powered by Google’s Android operating system. It doesn’t seem to be a tablet, though. For one, the price is much too low at just $249; for another, the unnamed source claims that the Nook Color won’t have nearly the same functionality as, say, Apple’s iPad or Samsung’s Galaxy Tab." About $100 more than the Wifi Kindle - so I don't think Amazon has to worry this Christmas.

(Incredibly Awful) Kobo Wireless eReader Launching in Walmart US

If you must do your eReader shopping at Walmart, then do yourself a favor and shop for a Nook. Kobo Blog: "Building on our relationship with Walmart Canada, Kobo’s Wireless eReader will be available in 2500 US Walmart stores across the country starting next week."

LibreDigital Debuts SkyShelf Reader for the Starbucks Digital Network

PW: "Digital distributer LibreDigital has teamed up with Starbucks and Yahoo! to show off the LibreDigital SkyShelf HTML5 Reader, a new wireless technology that will initially supply e-book content to the Starbucks Digital Network, a new multimedia entertainment service launching this week that will deliver books, music, newspapers, movies and other content to consumers in Starbucks stores around the country. Much like the long-delayed Google Editions service, LibreDigital’s SkyShelf HTML5 technology will allow consumers to read e-books through the web browsers of any kind of device and LibreDigital plans to launch a broader range of SkyShelf-powered partnerships by early November."

The Nook Goes to Walmart

B&N would have gotten a bigger bang announcing this news on a day when Amazon was NOT reporting earnings. Reuters: "The devices, which will also be available on the discount chain's website, will hit Walmart shelves as soon as October 24, Barnes & Noble said in a statement on Thursday. ... Walmart will offer two Nook models -- Nook 3G, which offers free AT&T 3G wireless and WiFi connectivity, as well as NOOK WiFi, a WiFi only model."

Amazon.com Announces Third Quarter Sales up 39% to $7.56 Billion

Business Wire: "Net sales increased 39% to $7.56 billion in the third quarter, compared with $5.45 billion in third quarter 2009. Excluding the $83 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales would have grown 40% compared with third quarter 2009. Operating income increased 7% to $268 million in the third quarter, compared with $251 million in third quarter 2009. The unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter on operating income was $15 million. Net income increased 16% to $231 million in the third quarter, or $0.51 per diluted share, compared with net income of $199 million, or $0.45 per diluted share, in third quarter 2009." Third-quarter net income rose 16 percent. Most analysts were looking for net income something like .48 cents per diluted share. Amazon delivered .51.

VidLit's Paca Thomas: It Won't be "Bad" if Mainstream Publishers Topple

Carolyn Kellogg - Notes from the ebooks panel at Digital Hollywood | Jacket Copy | Los Angeles Times: "VidLit's Thomas seemed to lean on old publishing tropes, such as saying that young people don't read (one NEA report said they didn't, while a later one said they did). He's been at it for a while -- his company's online video promotions for books pre-date YouTube. It had early successes -- such as its popular video for Little, Brown's 'Yiddish with Dick and Jane' -- for major publishers, but lately has faced a more competitve marketplace. Today, he's warming to the self-publishing market. 'Will it be bad if the whole thing topples?' he asked of mainstream publishers. 'Frankly, I don't think it will be bad.'" And I agree.

Introducing India's Wink eReader

The Economic Times: "NEW DELHI: Book lovers can now look forward to reading nearly 200,000 titles on the Internet in 15 languages with the help of a new e-reader, that has been billed as an answer to Amazon's Kindle. Bangalore-based digital publisher EC Media International has come out with 'The Wink eReader' which, it claims, is India's first multi-function e-reader that supports more than 15 regional languages. A book lover can now browse the online store from the web or through the catalogue present on the gadget, intuitively designed for easy preview of content, downloads and a secure payment gateway."

New Barnes & Noble Nook Needs a Niche

Joel West, Seeking Alpha: "In the e-reader space, the devices themselves are commodities. Yes, there are differences, yes some are cheaper or lighter or brighter. But the key differentiators — screen readability and battery life — depend on outside suppliers available to all. Instead, B&N needs to attack Amazon (AMZN) on one of the other dimensions of competition — the broader value proposition for the slate format. ..."

Kobo to Small Publishers: Go Away!

Tomorrowsbook.com: "If you're running a small publishing outfit and want to reach the Kobo/Borders community, forget it: if you publish fewer than 10 titles, they'll turn away your business. Unlike Amazon and Barnes & Noble, who have made it a breeze for small publishers to sell titles in their online stores, Kobo requires that you work with a digital aggregator -- good news for middlemen who are an endangered species, but bad news for publishers who don't want to deal with life-sucking middlemen. ..."

Stephen King: eReader Screen "Feels Like Home"

USATODAY.com: "Novelist Stephen King, who says he does nearly one-third of his own reading on an iPad or Kindle, sees e-books becoming 50% of the market 'probably by 2013 and maybe by 2012.' ... For now, King, who experimented with writing a digital book, Riding the Bullet, in 2000, when it had to be read on a computer, thinks people are reading more 'because the screen now feels like home to them.' HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray reports 'a sea change in the past few months' among new best-selling books: 'On some books, the e-books are outselling the hardcovers.' It's a transformation, says Peter Osnos, founder of PublicAffairs Books, 'in the same way that people moved from silent pictures to talking pictures to movie theaters to television to television-on-demand. We are adapting to the notion that we can choose where, when and how we read books.' An estimated 4 million U.S. homes have an e-book reader such as Amazon's Kindle or Barnes & Noble's Nook, according to Forrester Research, which predicts sales of more than 29 million devices by 2015. ..."

Biblio Leaf SP02: Toshiba’s (Solar) Answer To The Kindle

CrunchGear: "Toshiba and Japan’s second biggest mobile carrier KDDI announced [JP] the Biblio Leaf SP02 for the Japanese market yesterday, an e-reader that features a 6-inch monochrome screen (16 shades) ... The device has 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity and supports XMDF/PDF/EPUB files. Toshiba says buyers can expect a built-in calendar, a calculator and a notebook function. The Leaf’s internal memory (2GB) can be expanded via microSD cards (the device also features a microUSB port). What’s pretty interesting is the mini solar panel that’s built into the bottom right of the device. ..."

Oct. 26th: Barnes & Noble Special Event ... Announcing New NOOK?

Mashable: "It’s been almost exactly one year since Barnes & Noble announced its Amazon Kindle competitor, the NOOK E-Reader. So when invites went out for a Barnes & Noble event to be held on October 26, it was difficult to think that it could be regarding anything other than NOOK. To add a bit of fuel to the fire, Barnes & Noble announced on Monday that NOOK would soon be updatede to firmware version 1.5. The firmware will work on existing NOOKs, but it’s possible that it also clears a path for new devices. ..."

Amazon Updates Kindle for Mac

NetworkWorld.com: "Amazon's Mac application that allows you to read Kindle e-books on your computer, has been updated and given a fresh coat of paint. Amazon's updated reader now lets you add and edit notes and highlight passages, both of which are synced across all Kindle devices and apps using the company's Whispersync technology. This update also includes the ability to search within a book, a much-requested feature. Multi-column reading mode, which was just added to the iOS Kindle apps, makes its debut on Kindle for Mac with this release as well. ..."

H.R. Stoneback - HEMINGWAY'S PARIS: OUR PARIS?

The Kindle edition for Hemingway's Paris: Our Paris? is now officially available! The paperback should be good to go within a week or so.

Hemingway's Paris: Our Paris? constitutes a masterpiece of both appreciation and analysis by a scholar whose knowledge and love of Paris is as deep, profound and genuine as his knowledge and love of Hemingway.

Kindle price: $3.95
Paper price: $9.95


Advance Praise:

"H.R. Stoneback knows his Hemingway and his Paris. I had the incomparable experience of visiting Paris twice while working for Ernest Hemingway in 1959. I viewed the city at the side of the writer while he added the finishing touches to A Moveable Feast. Professor Stoneback's evocation of Hemingway's Paris of the 1920s is as close as I have come since to reliving those Paris days in the company of Ernest Hemingway. Reading this book will be a treat for all who love Hemingway and Paris, and a pleasant surprise for all readers."

- Valerie Hemingway, author of Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways

"H.R. Stoneback's intense reading of Hemingway's Paris–revealing Hemingway's nuanced rendering of the deus loci and his intentionally subtle infusion of numinosity–is nothing short of nonpareil. Stoneback's work undoes decades of weak and negative criticism of Hemingway. Read this classic piece–a benchmark in the creative essay–and you will see exactly how and why Hemingway's Paris became Stoneback's Paris and by extension your Paris. Stoneback's Hemingway's Paris: Our Paris? shows, ever so illustratively and ever so doucement, how and why we read Hemingway."

– Allen Josephs, past president of the Hemingway Foundation and Society, and author of Ritual and Sacrifice in the Corrida

"No one has written better or more wisely about Ernest Hemingway’s Paris than H.R. Stoneback."

– Donald Junkins, author of Late at Night in the Rowboat, Journey to the Corrida, Playing for Keeps, Crossing By Ferry and other books

Apple Posts Surge in Sales and Profit, but Margins Slip

Have you ever noticed how "bad news" from Apple is almost always news that any other corporate board would die for? NYTimes.com:

SAN FRANCISCO — Strong sales of iPads, iPhones and even Mac computers produced record revenue and profit for Apple in its fourth quarter.

It was not enough, however, to sustain Wall Street’s exuberance for the consumer electronics company that has seemed to do everything right in analysts’ eyes. The company’s shares fell about 6 percent in after-hours trading on Monday after the company announced its results.

Apple said that it sold 14.1 million iPhones in the quarter, ended Sept. 25, an increase of 91 percent from a year earlier. Consumers bought 4.2 million iPads, the tablet computer it introduced in April. Mac sales totaled 3.9 million, up 27 percent.

But buried among quarterly results that any company would be more than happy to emulate was a decline in gross profit margins. Investors disliked the small blemish, sending Apple’s shares down. ...

Apple’s success has helped to propel its shares up over the last year, to close on Monday in regular trading at $318, a high.

Otherwise, analysts remained enthusiastic about Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif. Indeed, it was a quarter that highlighted the company’s dominance in consumer electronics. The company said net income for the quarter rose 70 percent, to $4.31 billion, or $4.64 a share, from $2.53 billion, or $2.77 a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 67 percent, to $20.34 billion, from $12.21 billion. ...

HTML Giant Launches Literary Magazine Club

Jacket Copy | Los Angeles Times: "HTML Giant is a literary website that has become an exciting place for aspiring writers with an edge to convene, conspire and commiserate. Today it announced the launch of its own kind of online book club. Like most book clubs, the Literary Magazine Club asks its members to read and discuss a single work together. As the name says, however, instead of reading a book, the club will be reading a literary magazine. The first will be an issue of New York Tyrant. 'Publishing may be dying, but there are countless writers and editors who have not been notified of this untimely end coming to pass,' writes Roxanne Gay in her introduction to the LMC. 'The plethora of literary magazines actively contributing to the literary conversation are ample evidence, for me, that we have not lost the battle to other forms of entertainment. We’re very much in the fight.'"

Nook Firmware Updates

PCMag.com: "Barnes & Noble is fixing to release its 'biggest' software update yet for its Nook e-reader, an upgrade that includes faster page turning, among other things. Other new features on v.1.5 - available for free at the end of this month via Wi-Fi or www.NOOK.com/support - include an improved search function, customized library organization, password protection, and the ability to sync your reading progress across all Nook-enabled devices. Separately, Nook will also release a software update for its Android app by the end of this week. New features on v.2.3 include the ability to jump to a specific page number, search within a book, view highlights and notes, and delete books from the library. Check www.bn.com/nookforandroid for more information and download instructions."

Apple 4Q Net Income Soars 70 Percent

NYTimes.com: "CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) — Apple says its fourth-quarter net income soared 70 percent on staggering sales of iPhones and iPads. Apple Inc. sold 14.1 million iPhones from July through September. It sold 4.2 million of its tablet computer, the iPad. That's fewer than analysts, on average, had expected. Apple earned $4.3 billion, or $4.64 per share. Revenue jumped 67 percent to $20.3 billion. On both measures, Apple did significantly better than Wall Street analysts expected. "

The Headspin Story: Pop-up Books in a Digital Age

Theliteraryplatform.com: "The world is coming to terms with the existence of the iPad and as we head towards the Christmas buying frenzy, rival tablet devices begin to take their first tentative steps into the Apple-generated marketplace. When we began our initial investigations last year into appropriate digital publishing content for larger mobile devices, one of the first concerns was how to sensitively translate print to pixel. Some material requires little more than a cover-to-cover page turner, whilst other titles merit fresh thought from the ground up. Publishing is undergoing an incredible transformation and the app is driving the revolution. The concept of the book no longer means a strict adherence to the definition of a number of ‘pages’ contained between two ‘covers’ ..."

Why Some E-books Just Don't Look Right

PW: "There are a couple of major issues that need to be dealt with if e-books are to approach print standards. Bud Parr, president of Sonnet Media, a Web design firm that has created Web sites for authors, presses, and organizations, who is beginning to expand his work from the Web to the e-book field, said, 'The technologies that are used to create e-books in EPub are wholly familiar [to me] as a Web developer and designer.' EPub uses the same style sheets, which 'give it its formatting and its visual life,' noted Parr. The main challenge in formatting e-books, according to Parr, is the way different Web-browsers—or, in this case, e-books, e-readers, and e-reading apps—interpret the code and style in an EPub file (Kindle, of course, has its own proprietary file format and style, and requires separate formatting). Because all the apps and devices work a little differently, the same file can look different in iBooks than it does in the Kobo app or on a Sony Reader. This is especially problematic with poetry or e-books with tables, visual elements, or a lot of tricky formatting: an indent, for example, might look right on one e-reader, but not indent enough on another, just because the two platforms are interpreting the same code differently."

Digital Media Juggernaut OverDrive Nabs Funding From Insight Venture Partners

TechCrunch: "OverDrive, which provides infrastructure and services for the distribution of digital content such as ebooks, audiobooks, music and videos, has raised capital from PE firm Insight Venture Partners, the New York-based backer of the likes of Twitter, Chegg, Privalia, Newegg and HauteLook. The size of the financing round remains undisclosed, but OverDrive says it concerns a 'major investment' and the provision of additional resources and capital by the investment firm is subject to regulatory approval. ..."

New Adobe Reader Sandboxed, Simplified

NYTimes.com: "Adobe has released the new version of its Reader PDF viewing software, and with it comes a number of changes: a new Roman-based numbering scheme ('Adobe Reader X'), tightened security and, for the browser version, a substantially reduced user interface. Adobe's flagship PDF creation software, Adobe Acrobat, has been upgraded as well. ..."

Evolution of the E-book: When Is a Book Not a Book?

Mathew Ingram, BusinessWeek: "The line between what we call a 'book' and something that's just a really long chunk of published text—what you might call the 'not quite a book' category—continues to blur in the electronic publishing world. In one of the latest examples, Borders (BGP) has joined forces with a service called Bookbrewer to provide a simple service that allows bloggers or anyone else with an idea to publish what is effectively an e-book and get it distributed through all the major e-book platforms. In a similar move, Amazon (AMZN) this week launched its Kindle Singles program, which is also designed for publishing less-than-book-length writing online. ..."

Call it "Wiki-italicization" - That Annoying Kindle Highlight Feature

NYTimes.com: "What to make ... of  ... italics added right in books, postpublication, by readers, in a kind of wiki-italicization project? These are the so-called 'popular highlights' that now show up in Kindle e-books. Marked by a dotted underscore that indicates that other Kindle users have found the passages significant, popular highlights constitute crowd-sourced literary criticism. Readers, on the spot and yet collaboratively, make meaning of what they’re reading. The effect is odd — even for those of us who see literature as something readers determine incrementally and collectively."

ePagine Adobe DRM eBook Reader Released for iPad

eBook Magazine (UK): "French ebook reader ePagine has become the third iPad app to support Adobe DRM protected ebooks, joining txtr and Bluefire Reader. The iTunes description for the free app, which first appeared in the app store on 15th October, boasts 'access to a catalog of more than 100,000 titles' ..."

Borders' BookBrewer Sounds Singularly Unappealing to this Publisher

The economics of Borders' new digital self-publishing program sound singularly unappealing as opposed to programs offered by Amazon and even B&N, especially given Borders' microscopic footprint in the digital marketplace. eBookNewser: "BookBrewer is powering the technology and the platform will be co-branded with its name. Using the service, authors can publish and sell eBooks through the Borders eBook store, as well as other partner eBook retailers. The service will be available at borders.bookbrewer.com beginning Oct. 25. ... There are two tiers of pricing for those looking to get published –$89.99 and $199.99. Under the basic package, BookBrewer will assign the book an ISBN and make it available to major eBook stores at a price set by the writer. Royalties will be based on sales and will vary with each retailer. The higher priced package comes with a full version of the ePub file, that authors can share with friends, family and press and submit to other eBook stores."

The iBookstore Six Months Post-Launch: Not Impressive at All

An informed bystander comments: "It's been over six months since the release of the iPad on April 3rd, and the simultaneous launch of iBooks and the iBookstore, which promised to give Amazon's Kindle and Kindle Store a run for its money. I figured that this would be a good time to see just how the iBookstore has progressed. The answer, in a word: poorly ... very poorly."

Amazon.co.uk Says it will Fight Agency Pricing

theBookseller.com: "Amazon.co.uk has hit out over agency pricing telling Kindle customers that it 'will continue to fight against higher prices for e-books', and has urged publishers 'not to needlessly impose price increases on consumers'. It has also revealed that for those publishers who have adopted the agency model in the US the rate of growth in e-book 'unit sales' is now 'half the rate of growth of the rest of Kindle book sales'."

FastPencil Signs More Authors for "Premiere"

PW: "Self-publishing start-up FastPencil is continuing to attract established authors: this week it announced it has landed some of its biggest authors to date. Mark Victor Hansen of the Chicken Soup for the Soul franchise; Legend of Bagger Vance author Steven Pressfield; and other established authors have signed on to self-publish their works through FastPencil Premiere. FastPencil announced the launch of Premiere--which is aimed at established and “top tier” new authors and offers authors royalties that it says are three times that of average rates--this summer."

E-book Sales Jump 172% in August, while Print Shrinks

Publishers Weekly: "While sales in the print trade segments shrank in August, e-book sales had another strong month, jumping 172.4%, to $39 million, according to the 14 publishers that report sales to the AAP’s monthly sales estimates. For the year-to-date, e-book sales were up 192.9%, to $263 million. AAP said that of the approximately 19 publishers that report trade sales, revenue in the January to August period was $2.91 billion, making the $263 million e-book sales 9.0% of trade sales. At the end of 2009, e-book sales comprised 3.3% of trade sales."

"Your time is up, publishers. Book piracy is about to arrive on a massive scale ... "

Fascinating essay. Big subtext for me: Why easy pirating capacity will ultimately force all eBook prices down, and why the Agency Model may well be the knife with which large publishers cut their own throats. Adrian Hon, Telegraph Blogs: "If book publishers want to see the next decade in any reasonable health, then it’s absolutely imperative that they rethink their pricing strategies and business models right now. I hope this example will illustrate why ... "

More from My Favorite Indie Novelist: Why Indie Literature?

Wanda Shapiro, One Girl One Novel: "I’ve been reflecting recently on why I decided to go indie. There was a time when writers only self-published if they were sitting on a pile of rejection letters (and a large sum of money) which created a stigma of desperation, but times are changing and more and more writers like myself are choosing the indie business model proactively, foregoing traditional publishing models entirely. While some writers are still driven by anger and rejection, for me, going indie was business decision made after a good deal of research and soul searching. It was not a decision I made lightly, and it was not a simple decision, but in the end it was not a difficult decision. Here’s why I decided to go indie ..."

Kindle App to Come Preloaded on Select Android Devices via Verizon

Mashable.com: "Amazon’s Kindle app, which allows users to download and read electronic books on a variety of mobile and desktop devices, will now come preloaded on a few Verizon phones running Google’s Android operating system. The app will come pre-installed on new copies of the recently released Samsung Fascinate, as well as Motorola’s Droid 2 and Droid X smartphones, Amazon and Verizon jointly announced. ... "

Conde Nast Study Concludes iPad Is Not A Mobile Device (At Least Not Now)

paidContent: "There have been over 3.8 million downloads of Conde Nast apps on the iPad and iPhone since the publisher began rolling them out. Over the past few months, Conde Nast has been surveying readers of its GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired and Glamour apps and has found that these users are generally not the early-adopters or Apple fanboys the publisher expected. ..."

Amazon Breathes New Life Into Novellas, Long-Form With Kindle Singles

Several publishers have already been doing so-called "shorts," such as the recent Kindle release of a short story by Ann Hood: Coney Island Dreams. So I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. Anyway, from ReadWrite Web via NYTimes.com: "Amazon is continuing to ramp up for the holidays with the introduction of Kindle Singles, offerings that aren't quite a novel but are more than a magazine article. Just last month, the service began offering iTunes-esque previews of content, recognizing that users may want to peek at what they're buying before actually buying it. Now, with Kindle Singles, the company is recognizing that it has officially escaped the constraints of the printed word. ..."

Amazon Makes Room for Shorter Works With ‘Kindle Singles’

The devil may well be in the details. We'll have to wait and see. Digits - WSJ: "The online bookseller said Tuesday it is putting a new section in its Kindle Store for e-books that are just 30 to 90 pages in length. The Kindle Singles are supposed to be about 10,000 to 30,000 words — or as Amazon describes it — 'twice the length of a New Yorker article or as much as a few chapters of a typical book.' ... The company said its announcement was 'a call to serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers.' Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request other details, such as whether anyone published in the Kindle Store could be represented by a publisher or how it would split revenue with authors. And since this part of the store isn’t live yet, there aren’t any examples of just what Amazon thinks will work. ..."

Insightful Libre eBook Reader Pro Product Review

Bridget Carey, MiamiHerald.com: "Doesn't look as sleek and sexy as other popular eBook readers, like the Kindle and Nook. Unlike the competition, it cannot be used for digital newspaper and magazine subscriptions. It also doesn't have Wi-Fi, so updating files must be done by connecting it to a computer. A couple of times I found the response to be delayed when trying to turn it on and off, and one time it loaded the wrong book. But the reset button will fix those glitches (and the reset button won't erase your memory). Having 100 preloaded books takes up roughly 78 megabytes, so unless you move them out into a separate SD card or a computer, you only have about 10 megabytes left of memory."

Study: One in Five People Who Buy Kindle Books from Amazon Don't Own a Kindle Device

LA Times: "When Apple unveiled its iPad in January with its full-color high-resolution glory, many assumed it would be end of story for Amazon.com's Kindle book store and its black-and-white reader. Turns out the iPad has actually helped Amazon. Not only are sales of the Kindle device expected to grow 140% this year to nearly 5 million units from 2009, but digital book sales via the Kindle store are on track to grow 195% to $701 million in 2010, according to Cowen and Co., which released a report Monday on the digital book market. Greasing those book sales are Amazon's Kindle app for iPhone and iPad ..."

Dark Horse Comics To Launch Digital Program in January

PWxyz: "In the wake of the ICv2 Digital and Comics Conference that kicked off this year’s New York Comic con, it’s no surprise that some of the biggest stories coming out of the show will likely skew to digital. Dark Horse Comics didn’t waste anytime and announced the beginnings of a comprehensive digital publishing program that is not only looking to bypass some of the restrictions of the App Store but also claims to offer features aimed specifically at including physical store retailing. ... "

McGraw-Hill's New Custom Publishing Platform: Create

Press release via The Digital Reader: "McGraw-Hill Education has brought custom publishing into the 21st century with McGraw-Hill Create (www.mcgrawhillcreate.com), an innovative platform that gives instructors unprecedented control over and customization of higher education classroom content. Gone are the days when professors had no choice in how to assemble content for classroom instruction, or had to wait weeks to receive a customized text. With Create, instructors can produce their own e-books or printed texts by selecting content from a vast library of resources – and receive a digital proof in under an hour. ... "

Rights Time Bomb? - The Big Bump

Publishing In the 21st Century: "The Big Bump is a major copyright event shaping up for the near future. As copyright attorney Lloyd J. Jassin informed us, thanks to a provision of the US Copyright code authors will be able to terminate contracts negotiated in the late 1970s even if those contracts appear to give the publisher rights forever. 'Starting in 2011,' Jassin writes, 'the publishing and entertainment industries will be looking at the possibility of thousands of negotiations with copyright owners seeking to recapture their rights. Some call it "contract bumping." This powerful "re-valuation mechanism" found in the Copyright Act allows authors (and their heirs) to terminate contracts 35-years after the contract date. The termination right trumps written agreements — even agreements which state they are in perpetuity.'"

Frankfurt 2010: Panel Discussion on the Evolving Impact of eBooks

FutureBook: "The panel agreed that, with ebooks currently accounting for approximately 15% of trade sales in the United States, it no longer made any sense to have a separate strategy for ebooks: digital had instead to be at the heart of a more general publishing strategy. Barnsley suggested that the UK market would follow the US experience (Harper, she said, had budgeted for 3% this year), and predicted that the proportion of ebooks could well reach 50% within five years. (Germany, Schild noted, was currently about three years behind the US, at under 1% of sales, giving German publishers an opportunity to work together to defend their market before the big international players became involved.)"

WSJ Video: Publishers Line Up Behind Galaxy Tablet

Digits Live Show - WSJ: "Several news publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today are building software applications for Samsung’s Galaxy tablet, which go on sale later this year. The Wall Street Journal’s Julia Angwin and Jessica Vascellaro discuss publishers’ efforts to reach beyond iPad owners for mobile readership."

Frankfurt 2010: Are US Publishers Using eBooks to Undermine Territorial Rights?

Publishing Perspectives: "Frankfurt Book Fair veteran agent Andrew Nurnberg has raised the specter of e-book deals being used to undermine territorial rights in an interview with Publishing Perspectives. But his fear that some American publishers may try to use e-book negotiations to break existing rights boundaries left other agents unruffled. Arguments about the primacy of authors’ relationships with their editors, who may work at competing houses in different countries, still appear to hold sway in the case of digital deals. 'The big thing that’s in the air all the time,' Nurnberg said, 'is that territoriality is not so much about physical books. Now the question is moving toward territoriality for e-rights.'"

President Bush’s Enhanced Book Memoir - Multimedia Shock & Awe - Just Like Being There

Mediabistro: "The memoirs of the 43rd President of the USA will be released on 9 November. Normally I wouldn’t have noticed, but I just learned that there will be 2 ebook editions. One will be enhanced with source content."

Cover Design: A CHRISTMAS CAROL retold in the manner of Ernest Hemingway

We've just finalized the cover for what will be New Street's second book - A Christmas Carol retold in the manner of Ernest Hemingway - coming November 1st. Let me know what you think.

Piracy and the Agency Model

We've seen the recent study from Attributor talking about the increase in piracy of eBooks. Interesting to see how this increase is timed, to some extent in step with price-gouging from big six publishers through the terms of the Agency Model. The formula is simple: drive up the price, expect more piracy.

Frankfurt 2010: David Risher's Worldreader.org

PW: "As a senior vice president of product and platform development at Amazon.com, David Risher was well aware of the potential of ebooks. But it wasn't until he left the company in 2008 that he discovered just how powerful ebooks really can be. Today, his non-profit venture, Worldreader.org, is undertaking an ambitious goal – to bring ebooks and ereaders to the developing world and, along with them, a self-sustaining reading and publishing culture."

Amazon Said to Plan Android App Store to Compete with Google

Bloomberg: "A store would help Amazon benefit from rising demand for games, entertainment and workplace tools that can be downloaded to handheld computers -- a market that Booz & Co. says may balloon to $40 billion by 2014 from $14.3 billion this year. Developers and consumers have complained that the Android Market makes it difficult to accept payments and to find apps. 'Everybody expects mobile commerce to be bigger than today’s e-commerce,' said Maribel Lopez, founder of San Francisco-based Lopez Research, which tracks the mobile industry. 'Amazon’s overarching goal is to be the leading retailer for digital media.'"

Analyst: Apple Will Retain At Least Half the Growing Tablet Market

John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD: "Acer chairman J.T. Wang recently predicted that Apple’s share of the tablet market would decline precipitously as new rivals emerge, falling from nearly 100 percent to 20 to 30 percent. But J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz isn’t so sure. While a number of new tablets will hit the market over the next year, inevitably claiming some market share, it’s unlikely that they’ll whittle the iPad’s down to 20 percent or even 30 percent."

Frankfurt 2010: Our Digital Future with Evan Schnittman

Interesting interview with Schnittman, the former vice president of corporate and business development at Oxford University Press who in August became Managing Director of Group Sales and Marketing, Print and Digital at Bloomsbury. "I think last year was the final time you'll have heard folks refer to publishing's 'digital future'. We are in the centre of that universe now. There are mature and sophisticated channels of commerce available, as well as an ever-increasing pool of innovation and change. The business models are there and the percentage of sales are staggering, particularly when you consider frontlist. And Google Editions hadn't even launched!"

London: Free Word Centre Debate on (drum-roll) ... THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK

Books | guardian.co.uk: "People often talk about the future of the book; strangely, no one in the UK has recently thought to examine the prospects for the book industry in public. So the Free Word Centre's debate on the future of publishing was a first, and very interesting it was, too. As it turned out, the headline news from this event, which I chaired with a panel of two influential contemporary publishers (Faber's Stephen Page and Canongate's Dan Franklin), a self-styled techno-geek from the BBC (Bill Thompson), and a very senior Google person (Santiago de la Mora) was all about Google. ..."

The eReader Incompetence Checklist

Satellite — Craig Mod: "The bottom line is: most of our ereading experiences are pretty bad. And many of us don't realize it. iPad is still a baby — barely six months old! — so we're clearly still in a developmental and experimentation phase. But I feel like many readers, authors, editors and publishers simply don't know how to assess their digital reading experience. I always like to follow up schpeels with URLs, so consider this the followup URL to my ereader schpeel if we've ever met in person. In order to assess something we need a rubric. Criteria. Standards. Metrics. A baseline. So let's set one together. ..."

Study: Arghhhh Matey - E-Book Piracy on the Rise

ReadWriteWeb via NYTimes.com: "As the popularity of e-books and e-readers continues to increase, e-book piracy is also growing rapidly. According to Attributor, a company that develops anti-piracy and content monitoring solutions, the daily demand for pirated books can be estimated at up to 3 million people worldwide. The company's latest study also highlights that the total interest in documents from file-sharing sites has increased more than 50% over the course of the last year. Interestingly, e-book piracy is moving away from large sites like RapidShare to smaller sites and those that specialize in pirated e-books."

Steven Levy: Kindles in the Tabletized World

Wired: "We can read books on our phones, laptops, and tablets. So why would we throw in a dedicated e-reader like the Kindle when packing our already cramped carry-on bags? As you might expect, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos is happy to supply an answer: angry birds. Let him explain. 'The number one app for the iPad when I checked a couple of days ago was called Angry Birds—a game where you throw birds at pigs and they blow up,' Bezos says. 'The number one thing on the Kindle is Stieg Larsson. It’s a different audience. We’re designing for people who want to read.'"

Joe Konrath's eBook Self-Publishing Drastically More Profitable than His "Big Six" Deals

Konrath's blog: " ... not only does self-publishing earn more money than a print deal does over the years, you can also reach more readers by selling more copies. Think about that. I've gotten over a quarter of a million dollars in advances from the Big 6. That's more than most writers will ever get. And I've also earned out above and beyond that number. But all by myself I can make a quarter mil in two years. And I can reach more people in six years than a Big 6 publisher with all of its distribution power."

Amazon Extends 70% Kindle Royalties to UK

paidContent:UK: "UK authors and publishers can now choose to get a 70 percent royalty from ebooks sold via Amazon.co.uk’s Kindle Digital Text Platform. ... This higher tier has been available to U.S. authors and publishers since June, after being announced in January."

Open Road Announces E-riginals Debut List

Jane Friedman has some great things happening. PW: "Jonathon King is moving his Max Freeman mystery series to Open Road, releasing Midnight Guardians as an e-book October 14, although it is up at Amazon for $9.99. Open Road will also release King’s earlier Freeman titles as e-books plus two standalone novels. Another previously published author, Alan Dean Foster, is releasing his travel memoir, Predators I Have Known as an E-riginal in January. Foster has written over 100 books. Home in the Morning is a first novel by Mary Glickman set for November, while veteran entertainment journalist Jo Piazza’s look at the business of being famous, Celebrity, will go on sale in February. Open Road has worldwide electronic and physical rights to each title, and marketing efforts will include producing videos that will be distributed through the company’s digital marketing platform. Trade paperbacks will be sold only through online retailers. Jeffrey Sharp, president and cofounder of Open Road, will work with each author on the exploitation of additional media rights for their books. Authors receive a 50/50 split on e-book sales."

Ballmer Promises Slates with Windows by Christmas

Well, Stev-i-o, time is getting short.WSJ: "Tablet computers running Windows will be unveiled before the end of the year, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Tuesday. But Mr. Ballmer didn’t provide more details on the software giant’s slow response to Apple’s iPad. ... Microsoft has faced criticism for its performance in the mobile market. Its Kin smartphones were pulled off the market after less than two months, and there is concern that it hasn’t had a response to Apple’s iPad, which poses an additional threat because it could eat into PC sales. Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs analysts downgraded Microsoft’s stock to neutral, in part because of the 'threat of notebook cannibalization from tablets, where Windows does not yet have a presence. Mr. Ballmer in July said Microsoft has 'got to make things happen' with Windows on tablet devices and that the company was 'in the process of doing that right now.'"

Luddites Whining Department: Philip Roth

Yahoo! News: "NEW YORK (Reuters) – American novelist Philip Roth dislikes e-books and the distracting influences of modern technology, which he feels diminishes the ability to appreciate the beauty and aesthetic experience of reading books on paper. ... 'It is a shame. It is also what is happening, and there is nothing at all to do about it,' the 77-year-old Roth told Reuters, discussing the changing publishing landscape in the digital age during an interview for his new book, Nemesis, which is released in the United States and Britain on Tuesday. 'The concentration, the focus, the solitude, the silence, all the things that are required for serious reading are not within people's reach anymore,' he said." I focus on books, in silence, quite regularly. And those books are on a Kindle.

Library of Congress to Issue Public Domain Works via Amazon's CreateSpace

Business Wire: "CHARLESTON, S.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CreateSpace, part of the Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) group of companies, today announced an agreement with The Library of Congress to make at least 50,000 public domain books available through www.amazon.com. The Library of Congress also reached an agreement with Amazon Europe to make tens of thousands of books in the public domain available around the world to customers on www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de and www.amazon.fr using print on-demand technology, an inventory-free, cost-efficient publishing solution that only manufactures titles as customers order them. This announcement with The Library of Congress follows the announcement in February 2010 that The British Library would be bringing at least 65,000 public domain titles to market using print on-demand. From Victorian classics to 'penny dreadfuls,' readers now have access to The British Library’s unique collection of historic content. ... "

Citigroup Analyst Boosts Kindle Sales Forecasts

Peter Kafka @ D: All Things Digital:

Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney ... is bullish enough about the Kindle to boost his sales estimates for this year and 2011. Mahaney now thinks Amazon (AMZN) will sell 5 million units in 2010, up from an earlier estimate of 3.9 million; he predicts sales of 8.4 million units in 2011, up from an earlier target of 5.2 million units. ...

More Kindles sold means more e-book titles sold, so Mahaney has bumped up those numbers, too. He assumes that each Kindle device represents two books sold per month, and that Amazon will sell 128 million units in 2010, and 271 million in 2011.

Note that even when a potential Kindle buyer grabs an iPad instead, it’s not the end of the world for Amazon, because it can sell e-book titles to iPad owners, too. (In fact, Amazon has begun selling the iPad itself.)

And the retailer still holds a huge edge on Apple in terms of available catalog. ...

Kindle Version of Follett’s ‘Fall of Giants’ and Patterson's Latest Priced Above Hardcovers

Don't blame Amazon. Blame the agency model and the bloated overhead of the "big six" publishers. We need a free market for eBooks. NYTimes.com: "Russ Grandinetti, the vice president of Kindle content for Amazon, suggested that the publishers should lower their e-book prices in response to consumer complaints. 'Setting a price for a Kindle book that is higher than its print counterpart makes no sense,' Mr. Grandinetti said in a statement ... 'It’s bad for readers and authors, and is illogical given the cost savings of digital. We’ve seen publishers do this in a few cases, and we’ve been urging them to stop.'"

Desperation Row: Skeptical Indie Booksellers (Hens) Get Google Editions Details from the Fox's Mouth

The headline here isn't that Google seems poised to screw their erstwhile indie bookseller partners. No, the headline is that ABA COO Len Vlahos believes e-book sales will eventually "level out" to represent just "20% or 25%" of the total book market. Who agrees? May I have a show of hands? PW:

When Google Editions goes live, which still could be six months from now, the Web sites of booksellers who participate in ABA’s IndieCommerce will go live with it. But independents won’t be Google’s only partners, ABA could be selling e-books alongside Wal-Mart and Barnes & Noble. Those were among the revelations at the New England Independent Bookseller Association fall conference held last week in Providence, R.I., in a session about how the partnership between ABA and Google Editions will work.

Former Harvard University Press sales director turned Google strategic partner development manager Chris Palma discussed what a Google Editions enabled IndieCommerce site will look like. ...

With Google Editions, said Palma, “the role of publishers and booksellers as gatekeepers is going to become stronger. People are going to realize that free is not best.” He described Google’s role as a wholesaler like Ingram or Baker & Taylor. Under the agency model, Google will act as an agent on behalf of the publisher and prices will be fixed across the board. Still, the fact that Google will also be selling direct on its site gave some booksellers pause. As one commented, “it’s kind of like the fox watching the henhouse.” Palma praised booksellers for being able to curate, adding that what Google excels at is selling ads, $26 billion worth; it has not needed to sell e-books. Kenny Brechner, owner of Devaney Doak and Garrett Booksellers in Farmington, Maine, was not convinced: “You’re not good at bookselling yet. Over time you’ll be creating a curatorial model."

 ABA COO Len Vlahos, who attended the meeting with CEO Oren Teicher, acknowledged that the partnership with Google has some drawbacks. “ABA would be foolish, if we didn’t come into this with skepticism, too,” he said. “But Google’s DNA is wired to help people search. We don’t know who the other partners are. They could be Barnes & Noble or Wal-Mart. The alternative is we won’t be in the conversation. Truthfully these people came to us. We feel it’s absolutely imperative that we be there.”

In that spirit, ABA is talking to Baker & Taylor about Blio; the Sony negotiations are over. Vlahos’s believes that e-books will not be 100% of the book market. But even if they level out at 20% or 25%, it’s important for ABA to ensure that independent booksellers get their 10% share. “We ought to be focused on market share,” he said. “Our hope is you will be competitive.” Most booksellers agree and outside of the meeting expressed concerns about the possibility of missing Christmas. ...

The Seven Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success

Very valuable advice from Mark Coker of Smashwords: "This past weekend at the Self Publishing Book Expo in New York, I presented my Seven Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success. I embedded the presentation below for your Powerpointing pleasure. The presentation builds on a previous presentation on how the rise of indie ebooks will transform the future of publishing. ..."

After Proxy Win, More Challenges for B&N

The company remains for sale. That being said, Chairman Len Riggio has made some comments to PW concerning the company's brick-and-mortar future, which involves [read between the lines below] abandoning paper-books. Italics are mine.

Although he acknowledged that bookselling faces lots of challenges in the digital age, [Riggio] maintained that there is opportunity for "explosive growth. In all the years I've been involved in bookselling, I've never been more excited about the industry." The key, Riggio said, is to have the ability to sell the customers what they want. "You can't tell the customers how to take their information," he said. For B&N, this has resulted in faster than expected sales of e-books. In the year to date, Riggio said, total spending per customer on all formats has increased 20% over 2009, with the number of units jumping 60% as more buying moves to lower-priced e-books. The number of print books sold in the same period has declined 20%. Riggio said he expects print books to sell better over the holiday period as consumers buy more illustrated books as well as titles "they want to put on their shelves."

Despite the possible bump in print sales over the holidays, it is clear fewer print books will be sold in bookstores in the future, forcing booksellers to find ways to make up for lost sales as well as to bring in customers, Riggio said. B&N stores "will remain chock-full of books," he said, and will continue to have the appearance of a grand library. But the company has already added more nonbook items, such as education games and toys, and the retailer will continue to test new initiatives over the holidays. And while the merchandise mix of the stores will change, Riggio said he doesn't expect the number of stores to change. "We tend to close a few stores every year at the end of their lease, and we move some stores to better locations. But over the next two to three years, I don't see the composition of our stores changing much at all," Riggio said.

Abdo Launches Digital Division

Family-owned midwestern library and educational publisher Abdo "has organized its digital publishing lines into Abdo Digital, a Web-based division that offers online access to e-book versions of Abdo print titles as well as new educational database products. ..."

Is The Word "Publish" Becoming Obsolete?

NYTimes.com: "You could say that everyone is a publisher these days, with blogging, Twitter and Facebook (amongst hundreds of other social media tools). What's more, there are many new devices on which to deliver content - tablets, smart phones, video web sites and more. ... Ultimately it's a much larger and diverse media ecosystem than it was even a couple of years ago, so the increasing irrelevance of the word 'publish' probably doesn't matter much. Perhaps the next update to Oxford Dictionary's definition of 'publish' will be along these lines: used to mean make something public using print, but now virtually everything is public online. Word discontinued." Of course, rumor has it that the next edition of the OED won't even be "published" on paper.

Goodnight Moon (with Zombies)

Happy (early) Halloween from New Street Communications, LLC. Please feel free to forward.

Eloquent Rant of the Day: Wanda Shapiro

My Favorite Indie Novelist @ One Girl One Novel:

... E-books are good for me. And so are all of the other advances in technology that are scaring the pants off the publishing industry. With the advances in personal computing technology and print-on-demand printing, I can now do everything Random House does—at home, in my spare time, with my laptop and an internet connection.

But more than that, the current state of the publishing industry relative to literary authors is good for me too. Writers in all genres can now take advantage of technology and self-publish their work, but writers of literary fiction are the ones who stand to benefit most from the crumbling of the industry that has abandoned them.

The publishing industry (and their continued trend of bad business decisions) has created a vacuum in the literary arena and, in my opinion, literary authors should be doing cart wheels. I write literary fiction and I’m confident I’ll be able to make a living as a writer. It’s only been a few months since the debut of my first novel but I’m leveraging available technology and bringing indie literature directly to my audience which is primed and ready for a kind of quality that the publishing industry isn’t providing. ...

What Steve Jobs Learned in the Wilderness

NYTimes.com: "Suppose Mr. Jobs had not left in 1985. Suppose he had convinced the Apple board to oust his nemesis, John Sculley, then chief executive and president. Under Mr. Jobs’s uninterrupted direction, would Apple have arrived at the pinnacle it has reached today, but 12 years earlier? It’s hard to see how anything like that would have transpired. The Steve Jobs who returned to Apple was a much more capable leader — precisely because he had been badly banged up. He had spent 12 tumultuous, painful years failing to find a way to make the new company [NeXT] profitable. 'I am convinced that he would not have been as successful after his return at Apple if he hadn’t gone through his wilderness experience at NeXT,' said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a technology consulting company. ..."