Amazon to Demo Kindle for the Web on Tuesday

Computerworld: "Amazon plans to demonstrate a new version of Kindle for the Web on Tuesday, one day after Google launched its Google eBooks and eBookstore strategy. An Amazon spokeswoman said via an e-mail to Computerworld late Monday that the new Kindle for the Web will 'enable users to read full books in the browser and [enable] any Website to become a bookstore offering Kindle books.'"

French Publishers Fight Back With a Communal Digital Newsstand

NYTimes: "PARIS — With sales of newspapers and magazines flagging at the ornate kiosks that adorn the boulevards of Paris, French publishers hope that a planned 'digital kiosk' can help revive their fortunes. The publishers, representing eight of the leading dailies and weeklies in France, said last week that they had formed a consortium to manage the project, which aims to create a single online portal to sell the publications’ contents via the Web, mobile phones and tablet computers like the Apple iPad. Consumers could buy articles or subscriptions with a single click of a mouse once they had created an account. 'The idea is to put a value on online content,' said Frédéric Filloux, a former newspaper editor who is heading the project. 'It’s a matter of survival for us.' ..."

The Google eBookstore is Not a Serious Threat to Kindle (and Why I’m Not Shopping There) - Nate the Great

As usual, the Digital Reader gets it right: "I decided to get a head start on all the pundits that tomorrow are going to post stories with titles like “GE will Kill the Kindle”. I’m not going to discuss the obvious format issue (I don’t think it’s that important). But I did find a problem. I’ve been looking over GE since it launched this morning, and I think it’s missing a critical component. Customer service. ... "

Google Finally Opens Its E-Bookstore

NYTimes: "The Google eBookstore could be a significant benefit to independent bookstores like Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., that have signed on to sell Google e-books on their Web sites through Google — the first significant entry for independents into the e-book business." Could be? No. Won't be. Mark my words.

More Insight re: Borders' Buyout Bid for Barnes & Noble

DailyFinance:

... even though it's Ackman in the news as the leading figure in the buyout, the tactics have Borders chairman and CEO Bennett LeBow written all over them. LeBow muscled his way into Borders' top position by acquiring a considerable amount of stock and warrants that, when they came due, gave him a 35% stake in the company.

Past precedent shows that LeBow's modus operandi with companies is to buy his way into one, use it in an attempt to buy a bigger company, and sink both businesses in the process. In fact, the potential B&N-Borders merger echoes another M&A disaster from the late 1980s: The LeBow-controlled MAI Basic Four attempted to buy larger competitor Prime Computer in a hostile takeover bid. Things didn't end up so well for either company, as they both ended up filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and LeBow was out of the computer business entirely by 1995.

The timing of Ackman's announcement is also noteworthy. On Dec. 9 -- the last day possible before the SEC starts asking uncomfortable questions about the company's financial status -- Borders will report its third quarter earnings. They're expected to be anemic, certainly much more so than Barnes and Noble's quarterly earnings, which were reported last week and weren't exactly fabulous either. Talk of a merger would certainly wake up otherwise sleepy investors who need all the help they can get to be excited about Borders' future, which even a spectacular holiday season won't be able to turn around. (And indeed, the merger talk has awakened investors: Barnes & Noble shares were trading Monday morning at $2.39, up 18%, at $15.60. BGP stock is up 19 cents, or 18%, at $1.27.) ...

Just Nuts: Titanic Rushing to Join Forces with the Andrea Doria - Borders to Buy Barnes & Noble?

The Dividend Daily: "Book retailer Barnes & Noble, Inc. (BKS) on Monday saw its shares soar in premarket trading following the news that Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital hedge fund is willing to finance a $16 per-share cash bid for the company from rival Borders Group (BGP). That $16 bid would represent a 20% premium to BKS’ Friday closing price of $13.28. Ackman also noted he would finance a cash/stock combination offer for BKS from BGP, should both parties prefer to go that route. Barnes & Noble shares soared $2.27, or 17%, in premarket trading Monday."

Sigil eBook Editor = Well Worth a Try

After several weeks of experimenting and kicking the tires, I really must recommend the Sigil eBook editor. Check it out.

• Free and open source software under GPLv3
• Multi-platform: runs on Windows, Linux and Mac
• Full Unicode support: everything you see in Sigil is in UTF-16
• Full EPUB spec support
• WYSIWYG editing
• Multiple Views: Book View, Code View and Split View
• Metadata editor with full support for all possible metadata entries (more than 200) with full descriptions for each
• Table Of Contents editor
• Multi-level TOC support
• Book View fully supports the display of any XHTML document possible under the OPS spec
• SVG support
• Basic XPGT support
• Advanced automatic conversion of all imported documents to Unicode
• Currently imports TXT, HTML and EPUB files; more will be added with time
• Embedded HTML Tidy; all imported documents are thoroughly cleaned; changing views cleans the document so no matter how much you screw up your code, it will fix it (usually)
• An actually usable user interface
• Native C++ application

Cory Doctorow on the Purpose of Copyright

via Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish: "In my world, copyright’s purpose is to encourage the widest participation in culture that we can manage – that is, it should be a system that encourages the most diverse set of creators, creating the most diverse set of works, to reach the most diverse audiences as is practical ..."

Figment Aims for Young Readers and Writers

NYTimes:

When Jacob Lewis helped create the beta version of the Web site Figment with Dana Goodyear, a staff writer at The New Yorker, Mr. Lewis envisioned it as a sort of literary Facebook for the teenage set.

“I really went into it and thought, ‘We’ll be the social network for young-adult fiction,’ ” said Mr. Lewis, a former managing editor of The New Yorker. “But it became clear early on that people didn’t want a new Facebook.”

The young people on the site weren’t much interested in “friending” one another. What they did want, he said, “was to read and write and discover new content, but around the content itself.”

Figment.com will be unveiled on Monday as an experiment in online literature, a free platform for young people to read and write fiction, both on their computers and on their cellphones. Users are invited to write novels, short stories and poems, collaborate with other writers and give and receive feedback on the work posted on the site ...

Len Riggio: PW's Person of the Year

PW: "By any standard, the past 15 months have been eventful for Barnes & Noble. In September 2009, the company completed its purchase of Barnes & Noble College Booksellers and two months later introduced the Nook, its entry into the e-reader wars. This spring, B&N appointed William Lynch as CEO and announced a $140 million investment to upgrade its digital capabilities. In late summer, the retailer emerged victorious in a proxy battle (while announcing that it was exploring the possible sale of the company), and in the fall surprised the industry with the launch of Nookcolor. The man behind all these events, who is leading the nation's largest bookseller through an unprecedented transformation, is Len Riggio, PW's Person of the Year."

Nook Color Hacked into a Cheap Tablet

Techtree: "... considering the open source origins of the underlying Android platform, the dormant power of Nook Color's hardware didn't lay unutilised for long. Users had already started rooting, that is gaining Super User privileges to override the Nook UI, their Nook Color to eke out full functionality. In a latest development, the e-reader has been hacked to run Android 2.2.1. What that means is your Nook Color now gets a home screen and the ability to launch Android applications right off the bat. It also gets the phone icon in the process, but that's moot considering it lacks the communication hardware to make and receive calls. ..."

Excellent Interview/Joi Ito of Creative Commons

The Observer: "Joi Ito, 44, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist with a particular interest in the world wide web, was an early investor in Twitter, Technorati, Flickr and Last.fm. He grew up in Japan and the US; he once owned a nightclub in Tokyo and worked as a DJ in Chicago. Time magazine hailed him as a member of the 'cyber-elite' in 1997 and two years ago Businessweek named him 'one of the 25 most influential people on the web'. Ito has a special interest in issues of copyright in the digital sphere and is CEO of the organization Creative Commons. ... "

UK: Agency Pricing Questioned by Waterstone's

The Bookseller:

Waterstone's has publicly queried the agency model, saying its adoption in the UK has 'not been great for anyone' and pricing has not always been fair on consumers.

E-books buyer Alex Ingram was speaking at FutureBook 2010, The Bookseller's digital conference. ...

Ingram said: "No one can judge the success or failure of the agency model just yet, but in the short term it has not been great for anyone. . . What matters most is getting a fair price onto the market, and I don't think that every agency price is fair."

Kieron Smith, managing director of The Book Depository, which has declined to accept agency terms, said: "We do a lot of 'couponing' and the agency model makes it very difficult to do any general discounting. We have a strong customer position that we do not want to change." ...

Conde Nast Digital Chief: Murdoch’s iPad Newspaper “Doesn’t Make any Sense”

VentureBeat: "News Corp mogul Rupert Murdoch is making a big bet on the iPad by hiring big-name (read: expensive) reporters for a new 'iPad newspaper' called The Daily. And other media organizations are skeptical. For example, publisher Conde Nast has made a big deal about iPad versions of its magazines like Wired and the New Yorker, but when Conde Nast Digital president Sarah Chubb was asked about The Daily today at the Ignition conference, she said, 'It doesn’t make any sense.' She noted that Conde Nast was able to revive Gourmet Magazine on the iPad, but that’s because Conde Nast only 'put a little bit of money into Gourmet Live, and we’ve gotten our money back.'" In other words, they did not have to finance original content, which Murdoch plans to do as part of The Daily business plan.

A Concise History of eBooks

This timeline from the Telegraph omits the old Voyager Toolkit (early nineties) - a Hypercard stack approach that I, at the time, thought exceptionally cool.

DRM ala Google

The Guardian: "A greater concern may be over how the content is protected: publishers are fearful that widespread adoption of ebooks could lead to spiraling piracy mirroring that seen in the music business. But Google says in the page about security for Editions that 'once a Google Edition is purchased and is added to a consumer's bookshelf, it can only be accessed when the consumer logs into his or her Google account. When Google Editions are purchased on our site, a Google account is needed to access the content, reducing the likelihood that consumers will share their login information with others'. It adds: 'Each consumer's Google Edition has a unique coding that caches the book when it is accessed through a browser (as opposed to a digital download) ... This means that the Google Edition is broken down into fragments and temporarily stored in – and accessed through – the browser window. The Google Editions web experience, therefore, is not that of a file download – it is an experience that is optimized for reading in the browser. This allows Google to detect and protect against abuse of each Google Edition.'"

Smashwords Adopts Agency Model

Smashwords blog: "Our authors and publishers spoke (and some wrote, screamed, begged and politely asked), and we listened. Effective today, all Smashwords retailers are pricing Smashwords books at the price set by the author or publisher. No more discounting. It also means we have significantly increased the royalties we pay our authors and publishers. ..."

CBS Publishing Unit: E-Books Are The Future

CBS Statement: "While the company is doing well on most fronts, its publishing division Simon & Schuster continues to see softening sales. The publishing revenues have declined from close to $900 million in 2007 to close to $800 million in 2009, and are further expected to decline in 2010. In our forecast, we estimate that Simon & Schuster and CNet together account for around 8% of our stock price estimate. The bright side is that the growth in digital publishing is offsetting the decline in traditional publishing and could well drive revenue growth in the near future given the increased adoption of e-books and greater use of tablets as e-reading devices."

Inventec to Ship a Million Nook Colors Before Year's End

TechEye: "It appears that Inventec’s Nook Color touch controlled e-book readers have been something of a success, with over a million expected to have shipped to Barnes & Noble in 2010. It was only released in mid November, having been announced in late October, but apparently the pester power of over a million kids has paid off, or perhaps parents are trying to attempting to purchase an educational Christmas present rather than Call of Duty Black Ops for their wee'uns. Inventec is also expected to land orders for 6-7 million Palm WebOS-based tablet telecommunication devices from HP next year, according to sources close to Digitimes."

The Nook Color has been Rooted

Geek *dot* com: "While everyone waits for the procession of good Android tablets to arrive, Barnes & Noble had one already on the market in the form of the Nook Color, but limited it to only being a color e-reader. That is until someone figured out to root it, unlocking the full potential of this now tablet device. With an ARM Cortex A8 800MHz processor at its heart, the Nook Color certainly has the power to become a great tablet. As Matt Miller has already shown, it’s great for playing video, so why not for playing games? Well, as you’d expect, one of the first things those applying this rooting solution did was to get Angry Birds running."

Google Set to Launch E-Book Venture

Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal:

Google Inc. is in the final stages of launching its long-awaited e-book retailing venture, Google Editions, a move that could shake up the way digital books are sold.

The long-delayed venture—Google executives had said they hoped to launch this summer—recently has cleared several technical and legal hurdles, people close to the company say. It is set to debut in the U.S. by the end of the year and internationally in the first quarter of next year, said Scott Dougall, a Google product management director.

In recent weeks, independent booksellers, which are expected to play a big role in Google Editions, began receiving contracts from their trade group. Several publishers said they were exchanging files with Google—a sign that it is close to launch, publishers say. "Because of the complexity of this project, we didn't want to come out with something that wasn't thorough," Mr. Dougall said.

Google Editions hopes to upend the existing e-book market by offering an open, "read anywhere" model that is different from many competitors. Users will be able to buy books directly from Google or from multiple online retailers—including independent bookstores—and add them to an online library tied to a Google account. They will be able to access their Google accounts on most devices with a Web browser, including personal computers, smartphones and tablets.

... Key details of Google's e-book project remain unanswered. Foremost is what percentage of revenue Google will share with independent bookstores and other retailers. It also isn't clear how many bookselling partners it has lined up and who they are. More than 200 independent booksellers in the U.S. could sign up, according to the American Booksellers Association. ...

Branson's iPad Magazine "Project" Hits the App Store

Pocket-lint: "Richard Branson's attempt at capitalizing on the massive popularity of the iPad, and its potential to re-invent the magazine genre, kicks off with the launch of the Virgin produced Project into the App Store. Available for free, the app provides links to download the magazine ... . It's currently showing up [as] two different issues, one labelled US and one Canadian - both featuring The Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, on the front cover. ... "

Survey: UK Booksellers Feel at Risk as Digital Market Expands

The Bookseller: "The UK book trade has embraced digital, but expectations of growth are racing ahead of the reality. Booksellers are also at risk of being left behind as publishers chase this digital firecracker. These are the standout conclusions of the second FutureBook survey of digital publishing, hosted by The Bookseller. ..."

At Last, a Common Sense, Non-Paranoid Consideration of eBook Piracy, and Its Future

Keir Thomas, PCWorld Business Center:

... One of the reasons the MP3 piracy scene was possible was that, along with the capability to shrink music to a 4MB file, it was built around a standard file format, MP3, which was supported by every media player. DivX brought the same standardization to movie piracy. In both cases, an entire ecosystem arose, based around the common file format.

EPUB is supposed to be the e-book standard file format, but by refusing to adopt it for the Kindle, Amazon is taking one step towards stopping a piracy ecosystem developing for e-books. Conversion to a compatible format is, of course, entirely possible, but Amazon may be hoping that the difficulty and hassle of doing so will put many off.

The other strategic difference when e-book readers are compared to media players is that e-book readers usually have built-in bookstore browsers. This was the failing that initially allowed MP3 piracy to gain a hold. In the late 90s, people had MP3 players and software but no legitimate source of MP3s, other than ripping them from CDs. It took Apple and the development of iTunes to bring some order to the chaos, to the extent that now most people are happy paying for music, and piracy is limited to a hard core of people who never had any intention of paying anyway.

While there are still many questions over e-book pricing, statistics released from the likes of Amazon indicate that people are happy making use of e-book stores straight from their devices. While piracy will always be an issue for any organization offering creative content online, all the signs are that those behind e-book readers have thought things through so that they're able to avoid e-book piracy being a necessity, and also less of a temptation. ...

Codex Group: 21% of Book Shoppers Now Own Dedicated eReader or Tablet - And These Numbers are pre-Christmas

Publishers Weekly: "The launch of the iPad and price cuts to the Kindle resulted in a significant increase in the number of digital reading devices owned by consumers between June and November, with 21% of book shoppers now owning a dedicated e-reader or tablet. The finding is part of the Codex Group's most recent national book shopper survey, which polled 6,250 book buyers on various aspects of their book-buying habits. Codex estimated that the introduction of the $139 Kindle in July helped to spur sales of 800,000 units between June and mid-November, with total units sold estimated at 2.7 million. The growth in Kindle unit sales drove overall e-reader penetration among book shoppers to 14% in November, and penetration levels could reach 22% by mid-2011, Codex predicted. The forecast is based on a dramatic increase in the number of book buyers stating they plan to buy a digital reading device this year."

The Sony Reader is Doomed

The Digital Reader: "For 3 years now, Sony have consistently been a step behind everyone else. In 2008, they released the PRS-700, an e-reader that still causes people to wince at the sight of the touchscreen (no Wifi). In 2009 they released the PRS-300 and PRS- 600 (still no Wifi) and then followed it up with the PRS-900 in January (3G but still no Wifi). I think the PRS-900 marked the beginning of the end for Sony. B&N shipped the Nook in November, and in terms of innovation that shifted Sony from 2nd place to 3rd place in the US market. And in 2010 it has only gotten worse. Pocketbook released the Wifi equipped PB-302 e-reader in February, It wasn’t a great e-reader, but it still did something no Sony Reader could do.And then the Kobo Wifi got Sony kicked out of Wal-mart (5th place now). ..."

Flipping Through e-Readers, a Skeptic Becomes a Believer

Michael Hiltzik, LA Times: "One entire wall of our family room is a bookcase, floor to ceiling, and piles of books unstrategically decorate almost every other room too. Yet over the last seven months I've become a convert to e-reading, to the point where reading something bound and on paper seems almost quaint. I never thought I would make this transition, certainly not so effortlessly. I say this in full awareness that this trend may do incalculable harm to traditional bookstores, places where I have spent incalculable hours of my life."

bol.com Partners with txtr to Deliver Dutch eBook Apps

eBook Magazine: "Online book retailer bol.com has launched two new ebook reader and shopping apps for iOS and Android devices to Dutch book lovers. From this month the Android app will come preloaded on each Samsung Galaxy tablet and smartphone sold by bol.com will the iOS version for Apple’s iPad and iPhone will be available to download from iTunes. txtr CEO Christophe Maire said the Dutch eBook market 'is ahead of most other European countries' with more 1500 eBooks are downloaded per day."

Russian eReader Tech Initiative - eReader Displays

Financial Times: "Rusnano, Russia’s state nanotechnology company, tends to specialise in projects too difficult or expensive for ordinary mortals to understand. But the logic of its latest Russian venture is a no-brainer in a nation renowned for bookworms: it wants to make screens for e-readers. The company approved plans this week to invest $150m in making state of the art plastic electronic displays in a partnership with Plastic Logic, a California-based electronics group. Oak Investment, a US venture capital fund, is expected to support the project, part of Russia’s drive to promote innovative industries to diversify the economy away from oil and gas."

How Google Can Save America’s Books

Robert Darnton, The New York Review of Books: "Google represents the ultimate in business plans. By controlling access to information, it has made billions, which it is now investing in the control of the information itself. What began as Google Book Search is therefore becoming the largest library and book business in the world. Like all commercial enterprises, Google’s primary responsibility is to make money for its shareholders. Libraries exist to get books to readers—books and other forms of knowledge and entertainment, provided for free. The fundamental incompatibility of purpose between libraries and Google Book Search could be mitigated if Google were willing to contribute some of its data and expertise to the creation of a Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). ... "

Art by Félix Vallotton