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Archive for Commentary
Can Digital eBook Lending from Libraries Hamper Book Sales?
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At a recent event in London many publishers and booksellers got together to talk about the current state of affairs in the world of digital publishing. One of the hot topics of the day entailed libraries lending out digital books and how it effects bookstores. Waterstones m.d. James Daunt said that library e-lending could be disruptive to brick-and-mortar booksellers. “If you can download a book for free and read it, why would you want to own it?”
The essence of this issue is if digital lending from libraries actually hurts online bookstores? Obviously libraries have been lending out physical books for hundreds of years but the digital frontier is evolving dramatically and many online retailers are struggling to adapt. If people can just borrow books for free, what incentive do they have to purchase it?
My opinion is people with lower incomes traditionally are the ones that patronize libraries in the digital realm. Tangible libraries in small towns have more functions than just lending books, but they also provide parents with an easy way to get their kids out of the home and discovering the love of reading. It also functions as a study hall for students to all get together and work on group projects. I would say that libraries that lend out digital books do not directly hinder online retailers that sell the books, because they are not in the position to buy them anyways.
I don’t think its fair to blame libraries for devaluing books by lending them out for free. This is actually the main reason why many publishers pulled out of doing business with Overdrive. Many bigwigs are of the belief that if you give it away for free it really makes the item worthless. I think people are looking to deflect the blame from their existing business model that often becomes irrelevant fairly quickly, due to the dramatic shifting landscape of digital books and online retailing.
The Corporate Battleground for Your Digital Book Business
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The current ebook market climate is riddled with uncertainty as corporate giants do battle with each other for your digital content. Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, and other major publishers are fighting it out online and in the courts for your business.
Amazon launched the Kindle Reader in 2007 and Sony in 2006. At first, both devices lived on the fringe with early adopters. Since that time, many new entrants have entered the fray with both e-readers and content distribution systems. The e-readers themselves became more refined over the years and many devices give you wireless internet access to purchase books directly on your reader. They also came down in price to under $10o, while getting faster processing and more robust page turns.
There are a myriad of reasons why people decide to go digital in the first place. Some people do it to save money, some to conserve shelf space, and others for a lightened travel load.
The battle for your dollars is in full swing and has coalesced into ongoing legal battles between the US Justice Department and major publishers. This stems from Amazon’s veritable monopoly on ebooks and their ability to purchase content at wholesale rates and undercut their competition. Apple, Penguin, and Macmillan are currently engaged in an ongoing legal battle to maintain their ebook fixing cartel to promote a competitive landscape.
Not only are publishers fighting it out in court for a fair shake at digital book prices, but this has also transcended into the retail sphere. Recently Target has decided against carrying Amazon e-readers and tablets in their stores. This is mainly attributed to Apple wanting a more exclusive relationship with the chain and trying to phase out their direct competition.
Apple and Amazon have been fighting for a number of years. One of the main elements that contributed to their ongoing battle was Apple’s mandate to control all in-app purchases on their iOS ecosystem. Amazon decided against paying Apple 30% for each book sold in its official app and now faces the predicament of not being able to sell books directly within their app.
Apple seems to have it out for Amazon and is influencing publishers and retailers to curb their relationships with them. This is undoubtedly affecting Amazon’s ambitions to be the number two tablet company in the world. Last year Amazon shipped 4.8 million Kindle Fires and reached a critical mass during the holiday shopping season. They basically increased their market share in the tablet market, but fell to only 728k units in the first quarter of 2012. It seems as though the Kindle Fire has reached critical mass and everyone who wanted one, now has one.
Barnes and Noble recently got a 300 million dollar investment from Microsoft to bundle their bookstore in Windows 8. This will allow users all over the world to purchase textbooks and electronic books. This was a necessary move for B&N for their international expansion, something that they have had no success in doing in the past. Microsoft also benefits from this new partnership because they also have had little success in the ebook market.
The digital book market on a whole has been seeing massive success over the last few years. The UK market has seen over 366% growth in 2011 and ebooks now account for 7% of the entire publishing industry’s revenues. Meanwhile in the USA, the Association of American Publishers said that 31% of all adult trade sales in February, up from 27 per cent in the same period a year ago, with their share of the children’s and young adult market jumping from 10% to 16% in a year. The entire USA market is estimated to do a brisk 2.5 billion dollars in sales in 2012.
e-Readers are currently the best way to read your digital books and the Yankee Group projected that the industry will sell over 8.2 billion dollars worth of devices by 2014. Most companies like Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes and Noble used to focus exclusively on the USA market, but in the last year have aggressively adopted a stance of international expansion. Kobo and Amazon both have started marketing their readers and bookstores in UK, Spain, Germany, France, Denmark, and are both branching into South America later this year. B&N is the odd man out in expansion but is making inroads in the UK market and should release a new reader and bookstore later this year.
e-Readers, tablets and digital books are enjoying unparallelled success in the last few years. More money then ever before is at stake and companies are trying to cornerstone the entire industry. Google, Kobo, Apple, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon are all fighting hard for your money. Some are offering discounted hardware and some are offering millions of free books. If you thought things are getting complicated with the USA Justice Department and backroom dealings with major publishers and hardware companies, you haven’t seen anything yet.
- I recently did a great interview with Barney Jopson of the Financial Times on this very subject! Everyone is suggested to check out his great article that was published today! You can read it HERE.
Pocketbook in a Precarious Predicament Due to Crowded e-Reader Market
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Pocketbook USA is in a precarious position for the first time and runs the risk of seeing tremendous lack of revenue due to a crowded e-reader market. The company is seeking to stay relevant in a very competitive North American market dominated by Barnes and Noble, Amazon and Kobo. These companies can offer steep discount on their e-readers which puts pressure on a independent company trying to stay afloat.
Pocketbook has been in business for over four years and has issued many e-readers and tablet computers. The hardware is sound, frequently offering WIFI, Stereo Speakers and a solid build design. The company lacks three primary factors that contribute towards their lack of success in the business market.
The two main concerns with Pocketbook is the cost of the units. The average price for their e-reader is from $180 to $500. This pricing model is too high for most people to afford and they end up switching to cheaper models. This is mainly due to higher importer rates from Europe where the e-readers are manufactured and ultimately distributed to other markets for resale. Another huge concern is the lack of a ebook ecosystem. Most devices that do well in the market offer an ‘all in one’ solution. They offer the hardware and an expansive bookstore for people to purchase magazines, newspapers and ebooks. Pocketbook has a paltry selection of international books via their “Book World” portal that mainly has open source books and not very viable towards your average reader. Lastly, Pocketbook simply has no visibility in North America or in a retail environment. Many companies such as Amazon, Kobo and Barnes and Noble sell their e-readers at major big box retailers like Walmart and Best Buy. You can even find them within bookstores and electronics chains. It is so easy to buy one online or walk to a retail location and purchase one. Pocketbook is not sold in any stores, although they have experimented with Kiosk locations. With no real marketing budget and being virtually unseen in the retail sector, it is easy to see where things are going awry.
One of the first signs that the company was in trouble when they did not attend the popular CES show in Las Vegas earlier this year. Pocketbook has been as staple at the conference for many years and did not have a booth or token delegation. Their new A7 Tablet PC has been pushed back for another six to eight weeks and is currently in limbo. Sources at the company have told us that they have sold less then 20 units in the last three months and are being strangled in the market by lower cost devices.
The company hopes to turn things around by establishing relationships with Chinese manufacturers. They intend on buying very low end devices and marketing them for $75 to $120 to appeal to a broader demographic.
Should Overdrive Develop Its Own e-Reader?
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Overdrive is the company responsible for the facilitation of ebook lending from your local libraries in digital format. The company is in a unique position in that it offers a purely digital service with no real tangible product related to said libraries. I think the company should develop and market its own e-reader directly to K12 schools and the libraries it deals with.
There really has been no greater time for companies to get involved and develop their own e-readers. The costs of e-ink screens and the chips are at an all time low and there is many ODM and OEM companies based in China and Taiwan that can easily make low-cost devices. Overdrive is in the perfect position, having a well developed back-end system developed for libraries that agree to tap into its ecosystem of audiobooks and ebooks. If Overdrive developed its own cheap reader and allowed libraries to loan the devices out to patrons who did not have an e-reader or tablet, the company could win in more ways than one.
Over the next year, Overdrive will face competition from 3M and its cloud library service. 3M has developed its own e-reader that library staff can lend out to patrons. The e-reader works only with books from libraries supporting its platform. If you steal it, the device deactivates and becomes unusable. The library then sends the user a bill for the device or implores then to return it. In the 30 libraries participating in this beta test, reception has been warm.
Obviously, Overdrive dominates digital lending in libraries across Canada, the USA, Australia, and the UK. It currently has a Test Drive program out where it directly supports three tablet computers and the Sony PRS-T1 e-reader. It does not sell the readers itself, but does guide libraries to vendors. In order for Overdrive to take its business to the next level, it needs to develop a super cheap reader that only taps into their ecosystem and can be offered for 50$ or less.
I think the public would really benefit from being able to borrow a device geared specifically for public libraries and schools. A device geared towards only reading and nothing else. Something very bare bones can be made and sold at a very cost effective price. Not only would Overdrive make a bit of money selling them to libraries, but library staff would find it easier to be trained on an official device rather then the 100′s of e-readers on the market.
What do you guys think? Should Overdrive develop its own e-reader instead of relying on 3rd party ones? Should 3M serve as an example how a cheaply made device can be used as a selling point?
Should e-Readers Embrace Social Media More?
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Many e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle and Kobo Touch have embraced social media, but in very different ways. Amazon allows you to share via Twitter and Facebook quotes and passages from the books you are reading. Kobo has developed “Reading Life,” which takes this premise a step further and earns you awards and achievements. Kobo even allows you to access Reading Life with no software on the Kob Vox and Apple iPad gives you the freedom to talk with other people in real time who are reading the same book as you are. Are these companies doing enough with various social media platforms or is this a feature that takes away from the book experience?
Social Media is growing. A recent survey conducted yesterday on Facebook Burnout states that even though the social network is many years old, people are clearly not jaded or banal about it just yet. Facebook is in the news a ton lately due to its recent IPO filing and the company imminently going public, making many people rich. Twitter is the other mega-network that helps foster the revolutions of the Arab Spring and lets you find out what your friends ate for lunch.
Clearly, social media has come a long way since the early days of Friendster and Myspace. These networks are embedded into the fabric of our society and at the very least people can keep track of their old high-school friends. The question is how these networks enhance the reading experience or take away from it.
Reading is often an anti-social endeavor and whether you read for a few hours or an entire day it can be quite cathartic. People love to get into a book and live the life of someone else, battle dragons, or find out how Apple was created. Reading gets you away from your normal life and even for a brief moment you forget about emails, text messages, work, or the kids. Do people really want the distraction of popup messages or social media elements taking them out of reverie?
Many people who have emailed us or commented on our blog during the last few years have mixed reactions about social networks employed by Amazon and Kobo in their book experience. Some think its a great idea to chat with friends about quotes they are reading or form their own virtual book-clubs. Others find it a nuisance and a distraction from the process of reading. The companies offering the service do give you options whether you even want to use those features and are not embedded into the book experience, yet.
Clearly social media elements are severely lacking in the whole e-reader and ebook experience. I can send Tweets of a paragraph or make a Facebook status update of a book I am reading? How 2009. Kobo is about the only company that actually does something unique with the whole social experience while your reading a book. They stared with Reading Life, which was basically updating your status with text from a book. They expanded on this and offered merit badges and progress achievements on books you read and allowed you to share with it friends. Recently with their VOX Tablet they unleashed “Pulse” which allows you to read comments other users made about the book. It even gives you “spoiler” options so you will not read any comments made by users who have progressed further in the book as you. People use it to post reviews, ratings, or even just to chat. A few weeks ago they updated their “Timeline” feature into Facebook which was a culmination of their partnership with Facebook they announced at the D8 conference last year.
I think companies aren’t using social media right and are not offering anything very innovative or indicative of how it should work in the book experience. For one, this is no great virtual bookclub feature that allows me to talk with other users about the book I just read or are in the process of reading. Kobo Pulse strives to do this but falls short in the execution. I would love to see each book published in ebook form to have an automatic Facebook Group page started that is developed to be a virtual bookclub for that specific book. People who are reading the book have options to talk about it as they are reading it and say “I loved it when the character said this” and see an immediate response like “OMG ME TOO.” Blending a Facebook Page with a live chat option would really develop a sense of community. Personally I love the idea of a bookclub that meets once a week for coffee and discusses books they read, but seriously, they are so hard to find. I want to talk with other tech savvy people with e-readers that are reading the ebook version. When I am not reading at work, I want to login to the Facebook eBook Page and talk to the new friends I made or just relive past chapters.
There are clearly other major options, and standalone Twitter API and Facebook APP coding knowledge will reap you huge rewards. The sky is the limit based on the limitations of the platform to develop innovative ways for an e-Reading program to let you socialize more. Humans are naturally social beings and adding an expanded twist on the reading process might encourage more people to actually read. If a company were to use social media correctly, they would have a major selling point for their product or service. Customers who were looking for a more social book experience would gravitate to that company and everyone would make money.
In the end, social media in electronic books is severely lacking. Most companies are not exploring the myriad of ways that you can improve the experience of talking to other like minded people. What paltry features we have now really just spams other peoples walls and most of your friends don’t have the same taste in books as you do. Having more embedded social functions in an e-reading indie app or mainstream company taking to the next level will only help the industry grow and spurn more companies to offering competing or better options.
eBook Pirates – The Reasons Why People Do It
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It is easy to see how pirating copyright material in the digital age contrasts to how we people used to do it. You might remember mixed tapes, when cassette players first got the ability to record content, many people heralded it as the end of the music industry. People gave them to their high-school crushes and to their friends, and despite that fact they owned the music they were making a tape of, they were unlawfully distributing it. Next came VCR’s that had the ability to record television shows or movies you watched and enabled you to make your own private recordings. This spawned a tape trading underground that people mailed their tapes to each other or just loaned them out to friends, again it was harmless, but recording television shows was against the law at the time. Fast forward to the digital age when Kazaa and Napster hit the scene and piracy exploded, as it was easier then ever before for non-tech-savvy users to download full albums. Expanding on the peer to peer file sharing concept, Bittorrent piracy sites now flourish and pick up where Napster left off. Entire generations of users grow up getting their music, movies, and books for free and feel no moral qualms about what they do.
Many people initially purchase an e-reader because of the low entry level price points for the technology. It makes perfect sense if you are a voracious reader to buy a digital book reader for under $100 and then purchase ebooks that cost less then their tangible counterparts. A new hardcover costs anywhere between $20 to $40 and an ebook normally retails for $9.99. If you love to read, it makes sense to give your overflowing bookshelves a break and start amassing a digital library. The problem is a growing number of people choose to pirate the books instead of paying for them.
From various interviews and research we have conducted over the years, there are three main reasons why people pirate. The first reason is the type of person that grows up pirating content and has absolutely no moral qualms about doing so. The second is people who have a lack of a stable income or fixed income and still wants to satiate their literary thirst. Third, in the eBook realms people tend to pirate books they cannot get locally due to geographical restrictions or the lack of an official copy (such as Harry Potter).
Let’s take a look in greater detail at the three main types of people who pirate ebooks and try to understand why they do it. It is only by understanding the reasons behind the actions can people tailor the industry and try to get them to become paying customers. After all, DRM on ebooks alienates the users who actually paid the money for them and might want to load them on other devices. In addition, all current forms of DRM have been circumvented and you only have to Google any type to find easy to use tools to break it.
The current generation of young adults and adults who grew up with the internet in full swing have it easy. You only have to Google any book you want to find a pirated copy on file sharing websites or via Torrents. Movies, Games, Music, and many more are but a few clicks away and presented in super high quality. Many authors find themselves in the predicament that more people are pirating their books than they are actually buying them. This plays into the moral ambiguity angle we mentioned before, with people commonly aged 10 to 25, see no problem with file sharing because they have always done it. It is free and online and they aren’t really hurting anyone and getting content easier than paying for it. This is the type of situation that is hard for the industry to solve because how do you make money if people are getting your content for free?
The second reason for piracy and the situation most people can empathize with is the lack of income or a fixed income. Many pensioners and people who faced life changing disabilities are downloading and pirating ebooks. They simply are in a position where their monthly income is not enough to sustain their entertainment needs, which become more expensive every year. After bills, food, and expenses, there is not enough money left over to entertain yourself. It is easy to feel sympathy towards this demographic of people, but in effect it hurts the entire industry.
Many people find themselves in a unique position that the books they want to buy are simply not available! Most have told us that they would LOVE to throw money at ANY company that offered the books in their country that they want to buy. The Harry Potter series is the most pirated book of all time and it is mainly because they have never been officially released in digital format. If you look at the average pirated version, it is not some scanned copy that is hard to read but very slick and professional book editing to make it seem like the real deal. Geo-graphic restrictions by booksellers is also one of the largest reasons most people cite for having to pirate the book. Many publishing companies have different agreements in different countries and in some cases different units all together. You only have to look at the huge selection in the Amazon.com Kindle Store and visit the same store in Canada, UK, and Australia and the selection dramatically dwindles. Publishers and Book Sellers simply don’t have the rights to distribute books in different countries which stifles the growth of ebooks in general.
So how can the industry combat the ebook piracy issues? It is a daunting task and a huge mountain to climb in order to solve the problem. The most hurt are indie and first time writers who see a lack of revenue come in and fail to garner book deals because sales numbers are everything. They also hurt the publishing companies themselves, the big six are fairly immune to this problem but the smaller and mid-range companies are particularly vulnerable. We at Good e-Reader have NEVER endorsed piracy but we have open forums and sometimes things get uploaded that should not, but we are always diligent in policing it. I would say we are more vigilant than Megaupload and other file sharing sites that simply turn a blind eye to the entire problem.
There are two big ways the industry can adapt in order to curb the piracy problem and start to dwindle down on the number of people contributing to the problem. Stand alone books in the form of applications for Android and iOS is a solid start and advertising in books.
The Apple iOS ecosystem is the most lucrative way for authors and publishers to submit their content and maximize their returns. Most books that are considered enhanced are standalone applications that you have to buy via the iTunes store. Some of these books have interactive content, audio, video and more. A fair portion of them are aimed at kids because they are great learning tools and don’t cost a ton of money. These are not EPUB books per say, but instead are fully fledged applications that are notoriously hard to pirate. It is quite easy to pirate a book that is in PDF, ePub or MOBI format but pirating an iOS app? Not so much. Now that Apple has released new tools for authors to make their own books in a proprietary Apple format exclusive for iBooks, this is a step in the right direction. You can either make a book as an app or make a book available in a format that no other device can read.
I have debated the semantics of this issue before, but advertising in ebooks is a viable way for the industry to mature and actually make money on people who pirate your books. Companies could tremendously benefit by offering free versions of their books but having internet banners or ads embedded in them. Amazon released the Kindle Special Offers Edition line of devices that show an advert on your screensaver and homescreen but never in a book. This subsidizes the cost of the hardware to serve you relevant campaigns from their partners. Companies could run Google Ads since almost every PC, eReader and Tablet on the market right now has WIFI connections and could make money from people pirating them. The industry also should develop metric tracking software embedded right into the book that would provide valuable metrics so they could keep track of who is reading their books and in-turn sell that information to advertisers.
Piracy will never go away and the easier it becomes to do the more people will do it. If there is a new form of encryption or security people will break it in short order and offer easy to use tools for people to download. The industry in order to combat this problem should not go after the pensioner who likes to read or the 13 year old reading a James Patterson book, but should incorporate new technologies to make piracy profitable.
I really think that enhanced ebooks and ebooks as apps is the way the industry is gravitating towards right now. You only have to look at the Apple Newsstand and companies like Zinio. All of their newspapers and magazines are basically enhanced ebooks with cool interfaces that are tailored towards a touchscreen device. You simply could never get the same effect in a PDF document and most people would gladly take out a Wired Digital Subscription for a low cost and get touchscreen optimized features then try and find a pirated version of it somewhere. Same goes with eBooks that are sold and marketed as enhanced books. You simply cannot make an EPUB or a pirated book file out of a proprietary copy that has rich media features that could not be rendered on a e-ink based device like the Kindle.
Companies have been trying to solve the built in book advertising solution for a number of years and even Amazon has filed several patents on technology that they are trying to develop. I feel this endeavor would cost too much money and people aren’t interested in investing a ton of money in research and development without a firm notion if the premise will take off and people would be willing to license it.
Why do you think people pirate books? This is a fairly complex issue and would love to hear what you have to say about it.
The Book Release this Year I am most Excited About
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Books are an essential part of my life and the joy of discovering new authors is pivotal to my literary growth. Last year I discovered one particular author that resonated with me, Justin Cronin who wrote ‘The Passage’
The things of your life arrived in their own time, like a train you had to catch. Sometimes this was easy, all you had to do was step onto it, the train was plush and comfortable and full of people smiling at you in a hush, and a conductor who punched your ticket and tousled your head with his big hand, saying, Ain’t you pretty, ain’t you the prettiest girl now, lucky lady taking a big train trip with your daddy, while you sank into the dreamy softness of your seat and sipped ginger ale from a can and watched the world float in magical silence past your window, the tall buildings of the city in the crisp autumn light and then the backs of the houses with laundry flapping and a crossing with gates where a boy was waving from his bicycle, and then the woods and fields and a single cow eating grass…….
…..Because sometimes it was one way, easy, and sometimes it was the other, not easy; the things of your life roared down to you and it was all you could do to grab hold and hang on. Your old life ended, and the train took you away to another…”
The Passage was heralded by some to be too long at over 800 pages but I found it compelling because of its narrative. It was originally written in 2010 and is considered to be a horror epic on-par with Stephen Kings ‘The Stand.’ The book starts in the near future with terrorist attacks on malls and subway stations as being commonplace. The military influences the work of a microbiologist working in Bolivia who is working with bats for common cures. In secret 12 different death-row inmates are brought into the project who have no family, friends and are otherwise unforgettable. Like any military experiment they are held in quarantine and all suffer from psychological maladies that surface throughout the book. The premise is to create a new kind of super solider who can regenerate and learn new tasks very quickly. All goes wrong and one of the virals escape and in a few short years the human population is nearly extinct. They are fairly akin to vampires but are never named as such in the book which makes them compelling.
The next half of the book is set in a dystopian future where a group of survivors lives in a compound ruled by family caste system and this is where the book really comes into form. The colony was originally started by FEMA has being one of the last bastions of humanity and is fairly self-sufficient but on the decline. It is a mortality play with a destructive and flawed race of beings. Justin will be releasing a new book this year which I am very much looking forward to and will be called ‘The Twelve.’ You can read a great review by the New York Times, HERE.
Is a Dedicated e-Reader Right for You?
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In a world of tablets, smartphones, computers, and e-ink based book readers many people naturally wonder if a dedicated e-reader is right for them.
Dedicated e-ink based readers have been around for six years in the public consciousness and have drastically altered their technology and price-point to be easier to carry and pocket friendly. e-Readers have a great way of giving you the ability to carry thousands of books on the go and be easy on the eyes during long reading sessions. Most have the ability to connect via WIFI to the internet so you can purchase e-books, newspapers, and magazines directly through the companies you do business with.
The big question is a dedicated e-reader right for you? The main reason you want to buy one is the cost. Many people who have tablets often never bring them outside of the house in fear they might get damaged, lost, or stolen. Carrying a $300 to $800 device out and about is a recipe for disaster unless you are in a controlled environment like an office or business. Another huge factor is the portability, since most are light-weight and easily fit in your back pocket or handbag. Finally, most people get LCD burnout when staring at a computer monitor or tablet like the Apple iPad. I hear all the time from people who wear glasses that they can’t stand to look at a screen for more then an hour before they have to do something else. e-Readers do not have light emitting from the screen and instead rely on ambient light. Most e-readers have a grey screen with very high contrast black text that makes reading for hours very easy and much akin to reading a real book.
Personally, I carry my smartphone with me everywhere and hardly ever bring my various e-readers out with me when i am running errands. It is much easier to carry a device that has a 4.3 inch screen and can use for phone calls rather then carry a six inch device that is a bit more encumbersome. Although I do use my phone to keep up on the daily news, it could never be my go-to device for reading books due to the small screen.
Many people rely on their tablets, like the Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, or Apple iPad, to read all of their content. There are large benefits of using these types of devices because they are full color and you reap the rewards of content tailored for this medium. Magazines, Cookbooks, Kids Books, and Interactive enhanced books really shine in full color and give you a chance to see videos, animations, and other content. Not to mention the full internet experience with Adobe Flash, Youtube, and much more.
So is an e-reader right for you if you love to read? Ultimately it is your call and depends on your financial situation and how your eyes hold up reading LCD screens. Many kids and teens these days have grown up with a computer and phone in their hands their entire life. They are used to reading on bright screens where the older crowd responds quite differently. I normally have both a tablet and an e-reader that I use for different things. I normally read at night before bed, so my iPad is what I use to read books and listen to podcasts. When I travel, which is often, my e-reader is always with me because it is lighter and easier to carry.
I’d like to hear what other people have to say on the issue. Is your dedicated reading device a tablet, e-reader, or phone?
We broke the news last week that Apple is in development of a self-publishing program and many leading websites such as Media Bistro, Paidcontent, and tons of others. The essence of our writeup was that Apple will be holding an event at the end of the month where they are expected to take the wraps off of their self-publishing program for iBooks. This may benefit indie authors that want to submit directly to the service and not be forcibly relegated to doing business with various Aggregators. What does it mean for these companies if Apple starts their own program?
iBooks only launched in the last few years and has been playing catchup with Amazon, Kobo and Barnes and Noble. All of its competitors have expansive ecosystems that have been developed for many years and have solidified partnerships with the leading publishing companies and also smaller ones. The iBooks store is woefully sparse in terms of selection compared to the other stores. Most of their books are overpriced and many bestsellers are not available for an international audience.
One of the advantages Amazon and Barnes and Noble have over Apple is their own self-publishing program. Apple does have a little known process to publish your own books but it involves a validated ePub file, ISBN identifiers from the Library of Congress and a willingness to run the gauntlet of contracts, paperwork, and use iTunes Connect. This entire process is very daunting and many users are unaware of its existence.
Instead of dealing directly with Apple self-published authors have been using official Aggregator’s such as; Ingram, INscribe Digital, LibreDigital, Lulu, and Smashwords. If you live and publishing in Europe, you can do business with Bookwire and Immatériel. Of these, only Smashwords will convert MS Word documents to ePub.
Publishing Aggregator’s are proving to be a popular option for people to self-publish with because they help you along the entire process and normally submit to many other bookstores. Smashwords is one of the leading companies that do this and even provide you an ISBN number for free. They submit to Kobo, Sony, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple and a few others. One of the drawbacks of using any major Aggregator service is that they brand your book and serves as self-promotion.
Now people in the industry will say that Apple relies too heavily on their 3rd party service that allows companies like Smashwords to benefit. In a recent interview the CEO of the company Mark Coker said “Apple realizes that they’re going to earn a 30% commission whether they source the book from an aggregator or from their own platform, and books sourced from aggregators are more profitable for Apple because they can be sourced at lower cost (no need to invest millions of long term dollars to maintain and staff their own platform) and greater scalability than from one’s own platform.” Obviously many companies have to downplay this new platform because it seriously impacts their own business and have to try and rationalize why it won’t be profitable for Apple.
What does it mean for these companies that made their living from submitting peoples books to the Apple iBooks store? If Apple does start their own self-pub service in the next few weeks many people will gravitate towards it because of Apples famous ‘ease of use’ philosophy. It is hard to dispute the growing number of indie authors breaking out of digital and getting huge book deals. Amanda Hocking continues to be the poster child of ‘indie author makes good’ and has landed major book deals from a major publisher due to the success of her ebooks. In a recent study over 60 million ebooks were sold worldwide and 20 million e-readers were sold just in December. These are huge numbers and goes to show people are hungry to consume digital content. Smashwords can undoubtedly survive with Apples new publishing program because it is easier to sign up for one service that automatically submits your one book to many other websites, rather then doing it one by one. The others will continue maintain the status quo, for at least this year, but face diminished returns.
The people I can see benefiting from Apples new program is small and medium size publishing companies. Many organizations and companies right now publish kids books and rich media titles and sell them as apps. Having the option to publish ebooks with their same Apple Developer account or making the process more streamlined will help the authors who have signed on with them. I am a huge fan of the Apple iPad because does the huge app selection available and the sheer amount of kids books, cook books and various media based books make the platform very unique. The ability for an author to make an animated cookbook and an ebook variant during the assembly process and submitting it to one entity could be financially lucrative.
Finally, the Apple iBookstore platform could see a tremendous boost in books submitted and could finally make it a viable alternative to Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble and others. The huge advantage Apple has is their own iTunes platform to facilitate purchases. This has alienated most of their competition who decided to remove the ability to buy books on their app rather then cave into Apples demand to give them 30% of each book sale. The average user only knows that they used to buy ebooks on their iPad with Amazon but can’t anymore. Boosting up the number of books in the iBookstore and buying books directly through it could really help with overall sales and visibility.
In the end, with the Apple Self-Publishing platform small and medium sized companies will benefit the most with its ‘all in one, turnkey solution’ and indie authors who have more control over their individual brand. It could also over competitive advantages to choosing them and only publishing with them, like Amazon is doing.
How has your Reading habits changed during 2011?
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E-Readers and tablets in 2011 have really come into their own and are readily available to suit most peoples financial budgets. Now more then ever newspapers, magazines and books are readily available in digital format. Marvel, DC, Darkhorse and other comic books companies have all come to an understanding that it is in their best interest to release the digital format on the same day as the printed. Since content is so easy to get and the technology to read it with is in the hands of many people, how has your reading habits changed?
You have to look no further then every major retail and big box store in the USA to get your hands on a low-cost e-reader or tablet. The Amazon Kindle, Nook Simple Touch, Kobo Touch and many more have broke the $100.00 price point and you can get a solid e-ink based device for $79.99. The devices themselves are not only more affordable then ever but have really matured to appeal to a wider audience. Two years ago you would be hard-pressed to find an e-reader that allowed you to purchase books right on the device. Reading and loading books entailed complicated procedure to buy them with your PC and then transfer them to your device via Adobe Digital Editions. For the less tech savvy inclined this factor was very challenging for new users. Now most mainstream devices allow you to connect right up to the Sony, Google, Kobo, Amazon or Barnes and Noble digital store and have access to millions of books.
In the last year digital magazines have started to proliferate an an accelerated pace. Companies like Zinio has been a leading provider of high profile publications for a multitude of platforms such as Android and iOS. During 2011, Yahoo, Apple, Google, and Amazon have all entered the fray vying for your dollars. There is now more choice then ever before and most of these providers appeal to a wide range of people. Whether you have a Kindle Fire, iPad or Android smartphone it is easier then ever before to read Wired, the New Yorker or Vanity Fair on the go. Often prices for the digital editions are more cost effective then the printed variants and require not going out of your way to purchase and read them.
Comic books and graphic novels have finally reached the point where the same days the printed versions come out the digital version is released. This is very new and companies such as Marvel and DC were worried that retail stores would suffer because customers wanting to get 0 day editions would not come into the store anymore. After much research and due diligence they released the more people reading comics would result in more people visiting the stores to buy back issues or just to talk shop with the geeks running the joint. All of the major companies now offer dedicated apps to read and purchase content with the push of a button.
Tablet Computers have hit the point where every major company is releasing new models all year long and enjoying tremendous innovation on the hardware front. At the beginning of the year single core CPU processors were the norm and then many companies switched to the Tegra 2 and other multi-core processors. Now at the end of the year we see the advent of quad-core processors with Tegra 3 with the Asus Transformer Prime. During 2011 the technology underneath the hood of your device has really been refined which results in a better end user experience. You only have to draw parallels with he shift in standards with hardware with the Kobo Vox and Amazon Kindle Fire. It is really night and day differences with the performance side of things.
2011 resulted in peoples reading habits drastically change because of the technology maturing and coming down in price and the huge increase of content now available. It is simply cheaper and simpler to procure the electronic versions in the comfort of your own home then go out and buy it in the stores. e-Readers continue to lead the reading of books, while tablets give you the best newspaper, comic, graphic novel and magazine experience.
I know my reading habits have radically been altered in 2011. I used to visit my local used bookstore and Chapters every two weeks to buy the latest first edition hardcover books. My reading habits are all over the map with business, fantasy, sci-fi and socioeconomic. With digital comics really maturing I now exclusively buy my GI JOE and Marvel comics via my iPad and rarely go into my local store anymore. Mainly this is because I can lay in bed at night and check on the new releases of the day and pick and choose what appeals to me at the time. The other reason is my local comic shop moved from 2 blocks from my house to a bigger location 15 blocks away. While I use my Kindle for books and my iPad for everything else, magazine purchased in the tangible form I still purchase a copious amount. I honestly spend close to $90 every two weeks purchasing Stuff, Wired, PC Gamer, and many imports. It is really the magazines from Europe which I really dig that costs the most amount of money but hey, its great bathroom reading!
With the pace technology has changed in 2011, how has your reading habits changed?
Should Companies Pay for Product Placements in Books?
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Movies and television shows have had product placements in them since their inceptions. Companies pay big money for the lead character to drink a Coke or to place a FedEX truck all throughout the movie. With ebooks gaining more visibility in our culture and more authors trying to make a viable income from their sales, is it time for companies to pay for product placements in books?
I recently wrote an extensive piece on the merits of advertisements in eBooks and we received tremendous response on our article via emails and forum discussions. It seems we are not too far away from full fledged adverts in the books we read and have the price subsidized by product ads.
The big question facing us today is how visual media is inundated with brands being showcased. A recent documentary movie by Morgan Spurlock, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, evaluated product placement, marketing, and advertising in media. He garnered over 1.5 million dollars and financed the entire film with money from companies looking to place their brand in the film. The entire documentary walked you through the entire process of pitching the idea, going to meetings, legal concerns, and even hyping the film. He posed an interesting scenario that advertisements are visual in nature and not effective in books.
Books are a more visceral experience and many people internally visualize in their heads the plights of the character in the book and the overall theme and setting. Key product placements might in some cases distinguish an otherwise dull character. For instance, a main character might be addicted to Pepsi and will always be drinking it in key scenes and may mention it throughout the book. If you were to put a Pepsi in the hands of the character Jack Reacher from the Lee Child series of books, people would notice and maybe crave a soda.
Mainstream authors like Charlaine Harris, James Patterson and Lee Child have sold millions of books via Amazon and have a loyal following. Many authors do not receive a large percentage of their ebooks sold and publishing companies reap many of the financial gains. If authors were to come to terms with the companies to put their product placements within the book, they could make a ton of extra money. It is much akin to highly paid sports stars making more money with being a spokesman or to represent a brand. Why aren’t novels given the same treatment?
A James Patterson to invest in is fairly appealing, considering he pumps out more books then Stephen King in an average year. Many companies would be falling all over themselves if given the opportunity to have each novel reaching millions of customers. It seems there are no companies out there that facilitates product placement in books, which would be a solid business venture.
Product placements in books not only help the well known and substantiated authors, but also can help rising ones. There are many authors who are just starting out and can market themselves correctly enough to warrant the attention of companies looking to invest. Most authors we speak to in our eBook of the Week series often have a day job and like to write on the side. How glorious would it be to finance your writing career with the proceeds of a few companies wanting their product in a book. You main character is an airline stewardess? Why not have them a JetBlue employee? Your character is a drunk? Make them always drink Bud Light. Authors can look at it not as selling out, but buying in.
On the flip side of the coin, people may not respond well if this trend becomes prevent in every book that they read. One of the biggest arguments is that adverts run rampant in our society and you cannot avoid advertising in any aspect of your life. In San Paulo Brazil, the entire city mandated that public advertisements be taken down. “We all thought it was the end of the world,” said Marcio Oliveira, vice-president of operations at Lew’Lara. Three years after the new law came in, it is extremely difficult to find outdoor advertising in the city; no billboards, no ads on buses or taxis, or in shop windows. But equally remarkable is how quickly big advertisers and the industry itself have adapted and, in fact, thrived.
The city feels cleaner and the law forced creative innovations into other, newer advertising methods that have often been more effective. “In the first instance, everybody, including the advertisers, loved this – to see their city without this visual pollution we had in the past,” said Oliveira.
If done properly and in moderation, advertisements in books do have their place and could allow part-time writers to become full-time writers. Mainstream authors could gain tremendous extra income by making lucrative deals. Do you think we should see more product placements in eBooks? Do you think the drawbacks outweigh the benefits?
Advertisements in eBooks – Is It a Good Idea?
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Many publishing companies are toying with the idea of building advertisements contained within books. The idea is that books can be sold at tremendously reduced costs or given away for free with the intention of making long term gains by making money on ad-clicks or people purchasing products. Would customers accept this?
Amazon obtained a patent back in 2009 that describes the steps they would take in order to put adverts within books and another for printed content. In the details the company said “Including advertising and/or related content with on-demand printed content may prove advantageous to a consumer. For example, a lower price may be offered to a consumer regarding a request for on-demand printed content if the consumer is willing to accept advertising in the printed content.” The company has not used this technology yet within ebooks, but has proved that subsidizing the price of hardware with adverts being displayed is quite tantalizing.
There is no dispute that with the growth of e-readers and ebooks that rampant piracy is growing. You only have to look at some of the largest sites on the internet to see the tremendous growth. Websites such as Demonoid and the Pirate Bay have combined over 700,000 + books in their database , which is growing exponentially as hardware prices come down and the public is more aware of e-readers and tablets. I could see ebooks with embedded advertisements allowing authors and publishing entities to make money from their book being circulated on those websites.
The big advantage with advertisements being displayed within ebooks is the cost to the end user. It would encourage people to pirate less because they could get the official version for free and give the companies important data on downloads and customer demographics. Most users want to do the right thing and get the book via legitimate channels. A fair chunk of users would continue to purchase the ad-free books but the option to give it away with the ads embedded in the book might be a solid option.
The newspaper and magazine industry was built on the pillars of advertising. This is in many cases a large chunk of their financial strength comes from companies paying for ad placement in their publication. This is why, in many instances, magazine subscriptions and single issues cost less then their ebook counterparts.
Would customers accept advertising in the books they read on their e-reader, smartphone, or tablet? I would say there is a ton of money in this idea and no companies we have heard of are pioneering this. With the emergence of EPUB 3, Kindle Format 8, and HTML5, the core technology to provide rich media is going to be evident very shortly. I could see static, dynamic, and video adverts being very appealing to many companies, especially in bestselling authors who are assured to sell hundreds of thousands of copies.
Can Publishing Companies Adopt the Pottermore Model?
Posted by: Michael Kozlowski | Comments (7)The Pottermore website has done something in the digital publishing industry that no one has managed to do. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Sony, and other major websites direct customers from their websites directly to Pottermore to purchase the Harry Potter line of ebooks. The best part is the books you purchase are DRM-Free! This basically means you can freely transfer them to your other devices without having to rely on using Adobe Digital Editions. Can other publishers adopt this model and is it economically feasible to make serious money in today’s digital world?
J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter franchise topples billions of dollars in revenue from the books, movies, and licensing agreements. They have an amusement park and cups at 7-11, proving that it has permeated into most facets of our lives. Rowling was famous for being anti-ebook for the longest time and remained a staunch holdout in digitizing her content in the current Wild West of ebook distribution. For the longest time Amazon was throwing around huge amounts of money to gain the digital rights and were summarily shut down.
Instead of selling the ebook rights to a major company and letting them solely distribute it for a number of months before other companies entered the fray, she decided to do it herself. Pottermore was initially launched as a virtual world where people can play supplementary characters and run parallel adventures beside Harry Potter. A few months ago they launched their ebook section that sells the entire series of books and gives you a deal if you buy the complete set. Pottermore has made close to five million dollars in sales in its first month and shows no sign of slowing down. One of the best advantages of buying content from this website is that the books themselves are not digitally encrypted. This is a stark contrast to how most other booksellers operate and is a departure from the norm. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Sony sell all of their books in proprietary encryption formats. This prevents people from distributing the book to others on the internet or reselling the product. To counter theft, Pottermore does a digital watermark symbol on the books that have some of your private info. This means if you upload it to a file-sharing website, all roads lead to you. For the first time ever, a major franchise decided to distribute ebooks on their own and bypass the entire online bookseller scene. The funny thing is, its working and many companies are taking notice.
Earlier in the month, Macmillan removed DRM altogether from its TOR imprint of books, which was a huge positive step forward in making ebooks easily transferable to your myriad of devices. This is setting the stage for other companies to experiment with this business model and see if it’s viable. Obviously, there are piracy concerns and companies have relied on DRM for too long to just scrap it. Consumers can be complacent and resistant to change, which is why the encryption technology has not really been protested.
Can publishing companies adopt the Pottermore model of distributing their ebooks and make big booksellers direct customers to a third party website? I think the Pottermore phenomenon really caught lots of people off guard and is the exception and not the rule. A mega-franchise like Harry Potter comes along once in a generation and there was a predatory desire by the public at large to have these books in digital format. Rowling resisted so long at making the ebooks a reality that the demand for them was feverish. Before her books came out, you only had to look at popular file sharing sites to see millions of people were actively offering all of her books. Can any established franchises possibly have the clout to adopt the Pottermore model and can they make money from it?
Major publishers have hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to protect and are accountable to authors, agents, and the rail sphere. Pottermore, when it launched, had no accountability to anyone and hardly any overhead with the website in comparison to the infrastructure of major publishers. It would only take one of the big six publishers selling the ebooks through their own website to change the landscape of the industry.
Microsoft recently invested $300 million into Barnes and Noble and their online ebook collection. Redmond is betting on Windows 8 on tablets and PC’s to give customers the ability to buy tons of books through its own ecosystem. The essence of this deal was to give B&N access to international markets that have eluded the company thus far. Kobo is in the midst of a campaign of world domination with its new relationship with Rakuten. Kobo is leading the charge with expanding into tons of different markets and developing localized versions of their bookstore to accommodate people who speak different languages. There is a huge amount of growing investment into content distribution systems that these companies make the bulk of their revenue from. Amazon and all the rest could not afford to lose a big six publishing partner if the publisher delivered an ultimatum to redirect customers to its own website at the threat of pulling books from their stores. No major online company could afford to lose a big client and thousands of popular bestsellers, while the competition agrees to the publisher’s terms.
The current ebook scene is really in its infancy and will undergo a paradigm shift during the next five years. The current business model of books being locked into encryption and making their customers jump through a ton of hoops will be at an end. The average person has a computer, tablet, and smartphone and wants to easily transfer books to their devices without relying on third party programs. The elimination of DRM will continue to gain traction in the next few years with most major companies adopting alternative forms. Encrypting digital watermarks and behind-the-scenes metadata is the obvious solution to make people accountable for their online actions. Without being obtrusive, it allows people more freedom but penalizes the people who just love to pirate books.
In all honesty, I don’t think any major publishers will decide to sell books through their own website and make online booksellers redirect their customers to it. It requires too much infrastructure and a new forward way of thinking that does not have a proven track record. No “big six” publisher will be the first to pave the way and take all the risks. It would allow their competition to learn from it or overtake them in market share. The best thing we can expect is experiments with smaller imprints to test the waters and move very slowly.