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."