It is a truth too rarely acknowledged, that a commuter in possession of a sophisticated electronic device, must be in want of a good book.
Hypertext blogger Steve Johnson, paraphrasing Jane Austen
LATEST NEWS
June 2010
Special iPad Feature
(Dedicated to: Andrew & Lyndal C. of Brisbane, Qld)
* see May news for prices, connections, and other iPad details *
* see March news for an overall iPad review *
What's Up with the iBookstore
Apple's philosophy for the iPad & the iBookstore seems to be quite different from that governing iTunes downloads. Major rivals like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders/Kobo are being allowed to offer their own book-selling apps via the iTunes Apps Store, apparently on the basis that the more open the iPad is to content, the more popular it will become.
But Apple is not simply promoting the device willy-nilly, at the expense of selling its own books. By using an agency model with a thirty per cent cut on the sale price for books in its iBookstore, Apple hopes to attract maximum content there, and thus healthy book sales too. And there may yet be some iBookstore bargains - in negotiations with five major publishers Apple has reportedly insisted on rights to discount some bestsellers to Amazon's prices or even lower, by slicing into its own profit cut. The biggest drawback, though, is that titles bought directly from the iBookstore can only be read on the iPad. However the device itself will support DRM-free ePUB, PDF & other format e-books acquired from elsewhere.
The number of e-books available in the iBookstore is in fact burgeoning fast, thanks to deals Apple is signing in a blur of activity. One such is with the popular Smashwords site. Originally, Smashwords books were free, and some still are, but now many independent publishers and authors market their wares from there. Thanks to a new deal with Apple, thousands of Smashwords titles are presently making their way into the new iBookstore retail site. Apple has also begun working with a few other e-book aggregators such as LibreDigital and the Perseus Books Group (the latter is a large independent publisher that additionally distributes titles from 330 other smaller presses). Nevertheless, direct deals with five of the six largest international publishers (Hachette, Harper-Collins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster) are the centrepiece of the rapidly expanding iBookstore.
Not everything has swung Apple's way, or not yet anyhow. The biggest of "the Gang of Six", Random House, remains a holdout so far. Apple still has a long way to go to compete with Amazon's vast offerings too, and library purchases may also be deterred by the present lack of metadata.
* Weirdly enough, the Apple iBooks "app", which includes access to the Apple iBookstore, does not come pre-loaded on the iPad. Instead, owners need to download it from the App Store onto their device.
* In an early estimate, the Top Fifty titles in the iBookstore were reported to cost from $US7 to $US15, with cookbooks priced the highest. Offerings include a score or so top-level categories (genres), with over 150 sub-categories. There are even a few sub-sub-categories for highly specialised readers.
* In a lateral move, Apple has also introduced an iBooks for iPhone OS 4.0 "app", so that iPhone owners too can buy e-books from the iBookstore. Then they can share and sync their purchases across any Apple device registered to them.
Rivals on Board
* Kindle on the iPad? Some people thought it would never happen (we doubted it too). But hey presto and shazaamakalola, a Kindle app was there on day one of the iPad launch. There is a small catch though. You can log straight into your existing Kindle library, sure, but if you want to actually buy books from Amazon you have to go out onto the Web with Apple's Safari browser & navigate to Amazon's Kindle store.
* In contrast, Barnes & Noble's iPad app the BN eReader for iPad, was delayed for several weeks, and only became available towards the end of May. The nicely featured app so far appears designed exclusively to access B&N's e-bookstore, although an update to allow loading ePub format titles from elsewhere on the Web is reportedly in the works. NB: Barnes & Noble now owns the "eReader" brand, since its purchase of Web retailer & e-book entrepreneur Fictionwise.
The Kobo - not without Borders
Apart from Amazon (the Kindle) and Barnes & Noble (the Nook), a third bookseller/e-reader, the Canadian-based Kobo, also has an iPad app entry. Kobo (formerly Shortcovers) may sound like an also-ran, but is in fact proving quite popular. That's due especially to the fact that books purchased through Kobo can be read not only on any dedicated e-reader that supports Adobe Digital Editions and ePub format files, you can also read Kobo's large catalogue of titles on the iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm webOS, and Google Android platforms, not to forget Mac and Windows computers too. As well, unlike the Kindle app, you can buy books directly from within the Kobo app, and it provides a better reading experience on some platforms (for example, compared with the Kindle for iPhone application).
A further boost to the Kobo push comes from the company releasing its own e Ink reading device. This Kobo e-reader comes with a tie-in to a major bookselling chain, Borders, which has its own substantial e-bookstore. Other partner chains will also stock the Kobo e-reader, including Angus & Robertson (Australia), Indigo (Canada), Whitcoulls (New Zealand), and the Hong Kong-based Cheung Kong HoldingsMajor retailer Borders has in fact clutched Kobo fervently to its bosom, & is now selling and promoting the Kobo e-reader as its leading e-reading solution. Borders has suffered a continuing slump in physical book sales - the company endured a further net loss in its most recent reporting period (ended May 1, 2010) of $US64.1 million. That's not as bad as the $US86 million in the corresponding period of horror year 2009, but still dreadful. Total revenue in the most recent quarter fell 15.8 percent to $547.2 million, and Borders has now experienced seven straight quarters of double-digit sales declines.
So Borders executives must be hoping that future e-book & e-reader sales will save their bacon, as the world struggles to lift clear of recession. The Kobo e-reader is a fairly basic model, though, although very keenly priced, and other, higher-end versions of the gadget are expected later, to broaden its appeal. Indeed Borders interim chief executive Mike Edwards has promised to roll out "a strong selection of e-reading devices that suit all of our customers' needs."
IPad Extras
Free Audio on the iPad?
When Amazon introduced a read-aloud feature for its Kindle e-books (but note that's computer synth-speak, not a real human voice), it did not expect criticism. The goal was to assist users with vision disabilities, but the move unintentionally courted publisher and authorial wrath for a possible unauthorised use of rights. As in, is read-aloud an audiobook version that should be paid for separately? Apple has neatly sidestepped such controversy with the iPad. A read-aloud feature called VoiceOver is available, but it will only work with the free & usually out of copyright ePub format books available on Project Gutenberg and Google Books. The VoiceOver function will also read any HTML pages aloud if desired.iPad for Kids
A showcase iPad feature is its ability to display "enhanced" e-books, for example illustrated children's books. In this category, three Dr Seuss titles have now been released (The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Dr. Seuss' ABC). They may be read - or just looked at - in a variety of ways, and in addition, children can directly interact with many individual words or objects, a valuable feature in helping very young children learn to read.
An "Alice for the iPad" app has also stirred much interest, but vividly animated though it is, note that this is only a 52-page abridgment of the classic Alice in Wonderland story. So this wonder is very much a visual treat for younger children rather than a showcase of the intellectually-stimulating original. Then there's the Jack and the Beanstalk Children's Interactive Storybook , well-done for only $US3.99; a tempting Marvel Comics app; and the Toy Story Read-Along, from Disney. The last-mentioned is not only brimming with a kaleidoscope of appealing interactive features, astoundingly it is FREE. Presumably that's to whet appetites for purchasing future Disney book apps that kids will surely crave after this one. But get it while it's going for nothing, though, this is a goodie. Oh, note that these enhanced e-books are only available as apps from the iTunes Apps Store, not as ePub titles from the iBookstore.
* IPad fans do get more "book" acreage to look at than with say a standard Kindle, Nook or Sony Reader; and in fact, in landscape mode they get a full open book experience, i.e. two pages worth of screen. In addition, the iPad caters better to traditional readers by presenting more "book-like" aspects to the eye than competitors currently do. Whether that feature finds favour over the long, generational term is uncertain, but in the short term it is likely to appeal, especially to fiction buffs, and may drive changes in other future e-reader models.
* Some other iPad advantages:*no PC boot up delay, the iPad is on instantly *There's enough grunt - a 1GHz processor is up to the task *The iPad is excellent for games and movies, and adequate for email and most Web browsing . * For bad points though -see our March iPad article.
The Ipad versus the others - what's not being said right now
The iPad is intended for many functions besides reading books, but if it becomes popular as a general device it will almost certainly encourage the digital reading habit among a broader audience than at present. Moreover, it's clear that with its colour, video capability and interactive potential, the iPad is superior to any current e Ink device for presenting a large variety of writing forms. These include magazines, newspapers, comics, graphic novels & manga, plus what are currently referred to as "enhanced" e-books, particularly illustrated and interactive children's books. Equally important, it's better for textbooks too. For these reasons, the iPad is currently being trumpeted as a more advanced and progressive device than its rivals as e-readers, the Alex, the BeBook, the Cool-er, the Kindle, the Kobo, the Nook, the Sony Reader, and so on.
What some people have lost sight of though, and a host of glib commentators don't even seem to be aware of, is that this is a very temporary advantage. In the not too distant future we will have dedicated e-readers equally capable of both colour and video. Then, the argument becomes much narrower. Do consumers want a cheaper, much lighter and more portable device dedicated just to e-reading, one with the advantages of non-glare e-paper and ultra-long battery life? Or do they want a more expensive and heavier tablet-style device that is, however, capable of effective Web browsing, email and much more besides?
There are no "right" or "wrong" answers here, and the heated exchanges currently going on in Web forums on this question largely miss the point. The real issue is that it's just a matter of what people individually want, and their personal decisions in toto will determine which devices become more popular over time. Of course, at some point "herd factors" may also become significant, or even dominant, i.e. the desire to do what everybody else is doing rather than to make a genuinely informed personal decision. But by then, e-reading itself should be a more mainstream activity, and the dedicated e-readers -and iPads - available at that time will likely be much more advanced and perhaps quite different to those on the market now.
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2010 Major Editorial No. 3
How to resolve the e-book rights issue - a common sense approach
Should an e-book carry unrestricted rights to use & dispose of as you please, or does that involve stealing? After all, photocopying a printed book & selling such copies is unequivocally stealing (as in copyright violation). Where then should the lines be drawn with digital copies?
On the other hand, for book buyers to be allowed only one copy of an e-book, and one that they cannot even transfer to another device they own, seems most unreasonable. Didn't a previous generation (Gens Y & Z listen & wonder) tape the vinyl albums purchased back then so they could play them in cars or in portable tapedecks & boomboxes, or keep them as a backup in case of record scratch, or, compile favourite tracks from them for their own enjoyment? That was all done without any practical restraint, even if it was technically illegal in some countries. The thing was, no one cared back then, because it seemed a moral right, seeing you had already paid the artist and record company for personal use of their product.
Another major issue is: what should be the relationship between printed and digital copies? Should they be regarded as "separate but equal", to use a discredited phrase, or should they carry interrelated rights?
There are many aspects to this problem, ethical, legal, practical and so on. Perhaps a new approach is needed that is primarily qualitative & commonsense. If most major publishers agree to adopt it, it will become a new trade practice. Meanwhile, smaller independent publishers and retailers, and those authors who choose to market direct to the public, may go a different route, as they often do now with, for example, print-on-demand as an alternative to the traditional major print-run model.
So let's split things into two categories. First, for printed copies. Hardbacks are more expensive than paperbacks - the reasons include better binding, usually better paper, & they're available earlier. How about the hardback includes the right to one free digital download (e-book), but the cheaper paperback does not? That way, we simply enlarge an existing & readily comprehensible hierarchy of sale, as in you pay more, you get more, deal done.
The same system can be replicated on the purely digital side. I'll call them Category One & Category Two e-books, the equivalent of hardback and paperback. We'll want better names of course. A current buzzword is "enhanced" e-books, but perhaps here terms such as "Grade A Download" and "Basic Download" could apply.
If you want a digital copy of a book that you can duplicate as much as you like for your own use, and that is available as soon as the hardback is, that's a Category One or Grade A Download. It's a lot cheaper than a printed hardback book, perhaps half the price or even less, but at the same time, it's certainly not at a giveaway price. Note that you can also lend it to a friend (but not retain it at the same time, just as with a print book), and even sell it once, but only by giving up your own rights to it (again, the same as with a printed copy). So, you're getting most of the value of a printed copy for your "Grade A" price.
All this is technically possible, if agreement can be reached among all the parties who would be involved in bringing this type of e-book to you. Remember, though, that you absolutely could not file share this book on the Web, or download it illegally. Those acts would remain fraud and theft, just as you can't photocopy a printed book and sell unauthorised copies without committing a crime.
Then there's the Category Two or "Basic Download" e-book. If you just want a single & cheaper copy of the e-book, that's a Basic Download". It's cheaper than a dirt-cheap paperback, perhaps more like the price of an old second-hand book or heavily-remaindered item, but you cannot copy it, transfer it to another device or do anything with it other than just read it on the one device you download it to. It's also not available until a paperback version of the printed book has been released, where there's a hardback. This is disposable reading at a bargain price, for those who don't mind waiting & for whom cost is the key determinant. You gets what you pays for, folks.
Still grumbling? Well there are public libraries you know, and nowadays many of them lend e-books too. Of course you can't keep those copies; they expire when the loan does in a manner that brooks no argument.
As well as public libraries, a further aspect to the model could be subscription Web libraries, where participating authors & publishers place agreed titles for time-limited "loans". In this equation, you read each book online within say a four-week loan period, for a standard charge, or for nothing down within an annual subscription fee. Some of these Web libraries exist already, but they could become as popular as book clubs, or indeed be an aspect of book clubs, in the future.
We're all venturing into new territory now, as e-books begin to reach the mainstream at last. Some sort of commonsense approach is needed to the thorny question of what a digital copy of a book entitles you to, as we chart the difficult transitional years ahead until a new paradigm is firmly established. The model suggested above is one possibility, but there are others available too. So if this editorial at least stimulates some deep reflection, it will have served its purpose. Let's hope the discussion generates more light than heat in the months ahead, however, unlike many of the dogmatic and blinkered posts crowding out all too many Web forums at present.
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Nintendo intendin' to Contend
Seems like even hardcore gamers read e-books nowadays. Or Nintendo seems to think so, anyway. They're offering a cartridge called "100 Classic Books" for their outsized DSi XL device. The cartridge will be available from June 14th, for $US19.99.
It's not the first toe Nintendo has dipped in the e-book waters, but on this larger screen - in fact the foldable DSi XL has two 4.2-inch displays, just like, well, a small book - there may be more of a splash than with previous efforts. If they want a full-scale water park sliderama, though, we suggest, cough cough, hint, hint, some more modern or interactive titles may be needed too. And then, Wii!
Still Queued
Remember Plastic Logic and the Que? Their very large (10.7-inch screen) touch e Ink e-reader was previewed at the CES show back in January, and was supposed to be on sale in April. Pre-ordered customers are still waiting, waiting, waiting, however. The prototype boasted advanced organisational features, was lighter than you thought possible, & included glass-free "plastic transistor technology", a major advance in its field. Projected prices for Plastic Logic's intended model range were pretty steep though ($US649 for a 4GB Wifi only model, and $US799 for an 8 GB Wi-Fi + 3G one), & unashamedly aimed just at business users.
Now the Plastic Logic people have moved on into colour e-paper technology. In fact, they've already built a trial colour display and have it working at their Cambridge, UK laboratory. Their aim is to have a manufacturable display ready by the end of 2011, and to move it into volume production in 2012, according to spokesman executive Achim Neu.
Comment: 2012? Pick up the pace, Plastic Logic people! With Mirasol, Pixie Qi and other colour e-paper technologies perhaps hot to trot by this year's end, you'll be nowhere unless you get somewhere in particular much sooner than that. And your street cred. will be shredded soon too, unless you push your promised monochrome e- reader out into the marketplace without further procrastination.
www.que.com/
And of course, Google
Google Editions is expected to open in July. But what is Google Editions? It's the Net search giant's entry into the world of online e-bookstores. That's a business opened up by small independents; subsequently dominated by Amazon.com; now fiercely contested by Apple; and with Barnes & Noble, Borders and other major book chains currently angling for major market share too. Google Editions will differ in being an agglomeration as much as a single e-store, though. So as well as buying books direct from Google, you'll be able to use the service to buy from other online retailers too - with Google taking a cut from each sale, of course.
All this fervent commercial focus can only mean one thing - e-reading is exploding into the mainstream. There's real money to be made now, and even more in the future, both in selling digital literature of all types and from the devices that can display it. Expect a gold-rush mentality soon, as companies looking for any kind of slice of the new digital action seek to charge into the forefront. Their means - either their own new ventures, or by buying out established businesses to galvanise them with added capital and new ideas. In a cautious and often depressed business climate, the e-book world is shaping up to be one of the few dynamic hotspots of growth in the era immediately ahead.
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May 2010
IPad Updates:
* The iPad is now on sale in Australia, as of Friday, May 28. However pre-existing orders may arrive as late as June 7, while new orders may incur a delay of two weeks or more. Apple's "device of the moment" also launched in the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland on the same day, but owing to time zone differences Australians had the first look in. Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Holland, New Zealand and Singapore are scheduled for their turn sometime in July.
* Australian dollar prices for the three Wi-Fi only iPad models will be $629, $759 & $879, while the Wi-Fi plus 3G models will set you back $799, $928 and $1,049 respectively. For those with deep wallets there are lots of optional extras you may want, or need, too (e.g. device dock, keyboard dock and protective case; priced at $39, $89 & $48 respectively). Also, don't forget your access costs for the 3G models (the really bad news is that you can't join the iPad to your existing plan). Data plans for wireless Web access will be available on both a pre-paid and month-by-month basis, from Telstra and Optus (pre-paid minimum $20 for 1GB per 30 day period with Telstra, minimum $15 for 500MB over 15 days with Optus). With Vodafone Pre-Paid, you can opt for a 250MB titbit of data for $9.95, otherwise it's 1GB for $14.95, and more for extra. The iPad will also show data usage as a running total for each month, to help you keep within your limits. Note that you'll also need a micro-SIM card, not an ordinary SIM card, for the 3G connection (purchasable from a store of your selected service carrier).
* So far, over five thousand apps prepared specifically for the iPad are available, while many more iPhone apps (most of around 200,000) will also run on the device (but may not look nearly as good in many cases).
* Some readers are confused - will books for the iPad be available from the iTunes App store or from Apple's new iBookstore? The answer is yes and yes, but depending. Both will be possible sources, but in the first case the books will be sold (or in a few cases given away) as "apps", and in the second as standard ePub format e-books. Where the iBookstore is not yet available in a meaningful form, though, (which will apply in some countries for several to possibly many months yet), only the iTunes App Store option will apply. By late March there were more than 27,000 book apps in the App Store - about 2000 more than there are game apps there. Books as apps can include multimedia and other special effects in addition to text - such items are commonly known as "enhanced" e-books.
* Contrary to earlier belief, the iBookstore WILL be available immediately to Australian users, although with drastically less content in the early days and weeks than for US and Canadian users.
* Project Gutenberg's free e-books may be downloaded to the iPad - or at least, in the sense that the whole Gutenberg catalogue will be available free from within the iBookstore in countries where the latter is available.
* If your iPad battery dies, you can't replace it yourself (it's a sealed unit). Instead, Apple will replace your whole iPad, for about $A110 plus postage. That could suit some people fine, especially if the hardware improves in the meantime, while others may be profoundly irritated by this lack of service flexibility.
* By May 1st, more than one million iPads had been sold in the USA. That means the device has been selling at double the rate of the iPhone in its first month. Over 1.5 million e-books were also downloaded from Apple's iBookstore (in addition, a larger number of books have been downloaded as apps from the iTunes Apps Store).
* On 15 April, Apple announced that the international (as opposed to US) release of the iPad has been delayed for one month. International pricing will now be announced on May 10, and online orders taken from that date.
* By 10 April, The US iPad had sold half a million units.
* Apple's relationship to publishers will be primarily as an agent, receiving a 30 percent commission on the sale of each e-book.
Hot news:
Borders Australia have pipped Apple at the orchard gate by releasing the Kobo e-reader on 19 May 2010. It's a monochrome e Ink device, retailing online at what is for Australia a stunning price, only $A199. That includes 100 free, pre-loaded classic books. This release is ahead of a USA availability scheduled for 17 June, a rare reversal of the usual "wait down under". Americans will pay $US149 for theirs.
In brief, the Kobo is a lightweight device at only 221 grams and a scant 10mm thick, with an austere front design mitigated by a homely, quilted rubber back. There's 1 GB of onboard memory, with an SD slot for more if desired, and the battery life per charge is given as 8,000 page turns. The Kobo will support any non-DRM* ePub or PDF format e-books, or any books purchased from the Borders e-store (in DRM'ed ePub format). You get five print size options & two font styles (serif and non-serif), & the Kobo is available in black or white models only. PS: The reader app allows you to sync your books to a variety of devices, so you can read them anywhere with whatever you have to hand.
*DRM = Digital Rights Management, i.e. copyright protection that prevents users making or distributing unauthorised copies of an e-book.
Buried Treasure in New Aussie Trove?
Australia's National Library in Canberra has just rolled out a new database called Trove. Trove is designed to provide a "single point of access" to information about more than 90 million Australia-relevant items. These include books, diaries, newspaper articles, theses, reports, conference proceedings, images, maps and music. Trove will allow direct access to selected digitised material online, and more importantly provide a single portal to uncover information about the location of many more items around the country, by combining metadata resources from more than 1,000 Australian libraries. There's a users' forum too.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/general/project
Amazon/Kindle news:
Meanwhile, book Goliath Amazon.com has not being standing still. Its latest quarterly worldwide media sales, including books, e-books, music and DVDs, grew by a hefty 26%, to $US3.43 billion - and that doesn't include Kindle device sales. As reported through our friends at Teleread, Amazon now has no fewer than half a million e-book titles available for the Kindle, plus 175 newspapers and magazines and some 9,000 or so blogs.
* You've got to hand it to Amazon, they take no one for granted. Instead of writing off Mac users as inevitable converts to the iPad (sales indicate lots are), they've jostled Apple on its home turf by introducing a Kindle app for the Mac. The free beta application, available for Mac operating systems X 10.5 Leopard and higher, allows Mac users to buy and read Kindle e-books without owning the device of the same name. As well, the Whispersync technology included can synchronise bookmarks across a range of other devices, including the iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Windows PC, and the iPad itself, so enabling users to resume their book without fuss on different platforms. The app's reader software offers no less than 10 different font sizes, and aces over the Kindle itself by allowing for colour in the e- books purchased. What's more, full text searches, plus the ability to create and edit notes & highlights, are promised as future features.
Happy Feet
Penguin e-books are now back in the Kindle store. Following the tiff that led to their two-month expulsion at the beginning of April, it's kissy-kissy makeup time between the strayed Penguin and Web retail behemoth Amazon. Reconciliation is in the interest of both parties, but Amazon may have been prompted towards an agreement by the fact that the frisky two-tone bird, or indeed any major publisher unhappy with Amazon's previous take-it-or-leave arrangements, now has other, keen, major suitors offering shelter, nurture and profit opportunities...
Chip Off the Old Clock
Chipmaker Freescale reports releasing a faster, cheaper processor designed just for e Ink devices. Freescale's chips power most current e-readers, including the Kindle & the Sony Reader, but have never been purpose-designed before. The i.MX508 chip, with a powerful ARM core running at 800MHz, can render electronic ink pages at almost twice the speed of the processors used previously. This should speed up slow page turns & overall sluggish response, an often-annoying feature at present with many e Ink devices, especially when now compared with the iPad's instantaneity. The new chip should also help resolve the embarrassment caused Amazon by the fact that the Kindle app for iPad shows up the Kindle's own performance in its home device. Expect e-readers incorporating the new processor to be on sale by September, or perhaps even earlier.
Cheap & Cheaper
We've long called for inexpensive e-readers to be made available. We've suggested sub $100 or even sub $50 models as a goal, and also for "free" e-readers to be offered with a book purchase plan, the same as with mobile (cell) phones. Now at last the consumer market is moving in the direction of modestly priced devices. We're happy to report sightings of no less than three e-readers that are available for less than $US150. Granted they're more basic models, and most don't sport e-paper, but at least it's a start. Let's hope this is the e-reader price future, writ small!
Paradigm Shift EER-051D
*First up is the Paradigm Shift EER-051D, which will cost only $US129.95. It's a smaller, 5-inch model with a colour LCD screen, and extras such as MP3 audio, an FM radio, photo viewing & MP4 video playback. For the fashionistas, you can choose from among six vibrant colours. More importantly, the Paradigm Shift will read ePub standard files and PDFs, as well as a goodly range of other formats. Memory storage is 2GB built-in, plus an SD slot for more. The battery is Lithium Polymer with an estimated eight-hour life per charge. Oh, and the Paradigm Shift also features resizable fonts and adjustable screen orientation, just like the dearer devices.
We investigated further, and found that the Paradigm Shift is really a slightly-improved version of a model already offered, the Delstar "Open Book" eBook Reader DS 1006. ). That earlier 1GB model can be had for as little as $US99.99 (!) by canny shopping at Walgreens in the USA, and with a free carrying case thrown in too. Limitations? It is LCD, a bit slow, & lacks many possible features. Note also that it will not work at some major retailers, like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. But if you want a small, open device that's one of the cheapest currently available, this may hold appeal. It should be available in June.
*Then there's the Aluratek e-reader, a 5-inch LCD model that we've already reviewed back in January. Recently hot to trot at $US149, it's now been seen at a sale price of $US129.99 (and with free shipping!). This device is pretty much a rebadged Ectaco Jetbook, and its little brother the Jetbook Lite has also been seen at the magic $99 figure. So shop around folks, if you like a bargain they're out there.
*The Kobo, reviewed elsewhere on this page, will also just scrape into the sub $US150 group at $149.99 in the USA. It's due in the US on 17 June, and will be the only model in the budget range to boast an e Ink display. The Kobo will also represent a bit of a bargain in other countries, too.
If you can't beat 'em…
Samsung's "E6" entry into the e-reader device arena has been widely criticised for its still excessive price (originally to be $US399, now $US299), lack of originality, boring design, & sheer "blah" factor. Nevertheless the E6 has found a friend in book chain Barnes & Noble. B&N will offer the Samsung model for sale alongside their own more innovative "Nook", in an "out-of-left-field" move in which E6 owners will only be able to buy books from B&N's own e-store. To some, the surprising deal confirms that Samsung's device is a purely token entry by the Korean electronics manufacturer, while it has even been cynically suggested that B&N will use the E6 as a Brand-X foil to highlight the uniqueness of their own imaginative Nook. Whatever the truth, this column opines that the E6 will struggle to make much impact in an ever more crowded field, unless drastic steps such as a massive further price reduction, are swiftly implemented.
But then again…
Acer's Lumiread
By contrast, Acer, the world's second-largest PC maker, has decided to refrain from entering the e-reader market at all, at present. But hang on and shades of Steve Job's celebrated remark about reading, no no, no, that's just what they SAID a little while ago.
Now Acer has done a double reverse flip, with not only an e-reader but a Web tablet too, the latter presumably zeroed in on the iPad market. Their 7-inch colour tablet will run with an Android OS, and is touch-screen. It'll have built-in 3G connectivity, and be available by the end of this year (a prototype was recently displayed in Beijing by Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci). .And when Acer says they'll deliver by a set date, they usually do.
As for their e-reader, the LumiRead, there are obvious similarities to the Kindle. It offers a 6-inch e Ink screen with a QWERTY keyboard beneath, 3G & WiFi connectivity, 2GB of onboard memory, and an associated e-bookstore. Or rather, at least three of the latter. So far, Barnes & Noble (USA), Libri.de (Germany), and Founder (China), are fronting up for content in English, German and Chinese, with French and Italian deals in the making. The LumiRead supports "various" but as yet unspecified formats, and at least two varieties of DRM (Adobe and OMA2.0). You also get an Internet browser and an ISBN scanner. Add to that a microSD card slot and music player, and note that it will play audiobooks too. Acer's e-reader entry should be available in the third quarter of this year, but the price is unknown at this point.
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April 2010
E-BOOK SALES
A singular trend continues in US book sales, namely that people are buying fewer books than before overall, but at the same time more and more of those bought are e-books. For example, the Association of American Publishers reports estimated total US book sales of $23.8 billion in 2009, down 1.8% from $24.9 billion in 2008, a figure itself down 2.6% from 2007. Meanwhile, US e-books sales rose some 176.6% in 2009, to $313 million (still only 3.3 percent of all trade book sales though), and have continued rising in 2010. January sales alone this year were $31.9 million. They've leapt on up from there, with first quarter 2010 figures up almost 270 percent from the comparable period in 2009. A number of leading publishers, including Penguin and Simon & Schuster, are now expecting e-book sales to reach 10% of total book sales by the end of 2011, if not sooner.
Meanwhile in the UK, sales of e-books and related digital products such as audio books rose massively too, to about £150m in 2009 compared with only £75m-£80m in 2008. However, the latest annual figure was still only 4.9 per cent of a total £3.1bn of UK publisher sales. Surprisingly, only about £5m of the UK electronic take came from "popular" titles (including novels, children's books and "High Street" non-fiction), with an overwhelming proportion of British e-books being purchased instead by the academic and professional sectors. The recent release of the Kindle (& soon the iPad and other devices) is expected to begin to tilt UK digital sales more towards main street consumers.
* News from publisher Knopf Doubleday: John Grisham's complete works - some 23 legal and political thrillers - have now been made available as e-books.
Alex hits the streets
The Alex eReader (reviewed back in February) is now shipping. Running, uniquely so far, with Google's Andoid OS*, the dual screen device (sporting a 6-inch monochrome e Ink display plus a 3.5-inch colour touch screen LCD below that) is selling at $US399. With built-in Wi-Fi (the Alex can potentially support 3G too) and considerable Web functionality (those two screens can interact, as well), but without present 3G wireless capability and at a price point $US140 higher than the Kindle (and only $US100 less than the iPad), the question is, will this intriguing gadget be able to carve out a significant market share versus its major rivals?
Lest it be said that a potentially great device is being smothered by an unfair lack of media attention, we'll just run over its specs for you. The Alex weighs 310 grams /11 ounces, has 2GB of Flash memory, with a Micro SD slot for additional storage, and offers 600 x 800 pixel resolution (SVGA), with 167 Pixels per inch on its 8-Gray scale e Ink display. It will support e-books in ePUB, PDF, HTML and TXT formats.
*Android has just been updated to OS version 1.6
Out of the Nook and into the Cranny
Meanwhile rival and similar device the Barnes & Noble "Nook" (we're eschewing the silly lack of capitalisation) began to be more widely available in physical stores on 18 April, thanks to its release in the 1,070 US retail outlets of the Best Buy chain. Featuring B&N's eReader software, it naturally links to Barnes & Noble own e-bookstore, and currently sells for a price of $US259.
A significant Nook software update was also released on 23 April. The new version 1.3 software halves the Nook's page refresh lag to around a second, and is claimed to address problems with" freezing" that some users have experienced. Font resize is reportedly much quicker too. Other goodies include a beta Web browser for WiFi connections; a free "Read In Store" feature for selected e-books (free in-store newspaper and magazine reading is reportedly on the way too); some "More In Store" discount offers; and free Sudoku and chess apps.
Can't read it? Well Listen Up
The Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based, non-profit organization, has launched a project to increase the availability of modern digital books for blind, visually impaired and dyslexic people. Using twenty scanning centres in five nations, they're digitising thousands of current titles in "many" different languages. The goal is to make one million recent books available in a format readable by the text-to-speech software, and hardware devices, used by people with vision disabilities.
According to Marc Maurer, president of the US National Federation of the Blind, only about five percent of published books are currently available in a digital form that's accessible to the visually impaired, while fewer still exist in Braille. The books will be available for free to those qualifying, being exempt from copyright protection under US laws governing libraries and people with disabilities. Various US foundations, libraries, corporations and the American government are financially supporting the project.
www.archive.org/
Palm Outsauced by HP
At the end of April came news that Hewlett-Packard (HP) will buy Palm, makers of the once ubiquitous devices long favoured by many as their favourite mobile brand. And of course the various Palm incarnations were often used as, well, palm-sized e-readers. HP, equally, possesses a once illustrious but now fading mobile brand, the formerly-renowned iPAQ Pocket PCs. These have morphed into smart phones that have had very little market impact, while Palm's own smartphones, including the Pre and Pixi phones, now struggle amidst a sea of competitors.
The $US1.2 billion HP acquisition however includes the recent & formidable "Palm webOS" mobile operating system. With deeper pockets than the ailing Palm, and both hardware and cutting-edge software now at its command, HP/Palm may soon move to confront both Apple's iPhone and Google's Android phones more effectively.
The target may be wider though, as the newly-flavoured HP clearly hopes to gain a strong presence in the broader mobile market, including perhaps slate/tablet computers. An insider has told us that HP will in fact launch a tablet PC running the Palm WebOS by the fourth quarter of 2010, a device currently code-named the Hurricane. Should we expect a worthy rival to the iPad before year's end?
*
March 2010
The iPad
The iPAd! Interrogate the Web, flick through your email (literally), bathe in your favourite music, indulge in movies & TV shows, immerse yourself in games, pore over sharp photos, drool over YouTube content, prepare the odd serious document using the large virtual keyboard (you can buy an optional physical keyboard too), and - read books? Perhaps. Right now, the iPad is the most talked about device not yet available. Equally unavailable is any consensus that the latest Apple wonder is a booklover's dream.
The device is apparently wide open, format-wise. It'll read PDFs, Word, plain text, RTF and Web pages. But what of commercial book formats? They'll be possible as apps, but with Apple confirming an "approved-only" stranglehold on the latter, will anything outside of the iBookstore get a look-in? We'll have to wait and see, pious affirmations notwithstanding.
Meanwhile … the iPAD is a high-powered beastie, boasting a 1GHz Apple ARM A4 chip. With a 9.7-inch (diagonal) touch-screen you get 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 ppi. The device itself is 13.4 mm (half an inch) thick and boasts 802.11 n Wi-Fi, & Bluetooth 2.1. At $US240 more than the Kindle 2 for even the base model, though, claims of a "similar" price seem far-fetched. Unless the comparison is with the larger Kindle DX, when value comparisons suddenly have teeth.
Not for the faint of purse
There's no single model or price for the iPad, rather six configurations. These are divided firstly by those featuring Wifi alone or Wifi plus 3G connectivity, and secondly by three storage memory sizes, viz 16, 32 & 64GB. RRP's for these will be respectively (in USD) $499, $599 & $699 for the non-3G models, and $629, $729 & $829 for the 3G versions. In the UK, the cheapest version will apparently sell for a hefty £399.
First out will be the Wifi stand-alones (non-3Gs), allegedly to be released worldwide in late March*. Then we'll see the 3Gs in April; that's in the USA plus "selected countries" only. The US partner telecom will be AT&T (although users can change to another). AT&T will offer two price plans; 250MB monthly for $US14.99 or unlimited access for $US29.99 per month.
So who'll buy the iPad? That will be limited at first by an unspecified "production problem" at the iPad's supplier, Hon Hai Precision of Taiwan, leading to a shortfall in availability in the early release period. But later? In fact, the device may take more sales away from the similarly-priced & sized Kindle DX than from standard & much cheaper e Ink devices, such as Amazon's Kindle 2. Even there, the markets are not exactly the same. The DX is meant more for business & educational use, not long-form reading, while the iPad is likely at its best as a Web, game & multimedia leisure centre. In other words, as an enlarged iPod Touch.
*Update: Due to the problem foreshadowed in the above paragraph, the iPad will now go on sale in the USA on 3 April, and in nine other countries (including Australia) late in April. However the 3G model will not be availabe anywhere until late April. As for Apple's iBookstore, it will launch in the USA only to begin with, and elsewhere "later this year".
Meanwhile, serious novel readers will likely compare the glary LCD & short battery life of the iPad with those reader-friendly e Ink screens equipped with power that goes on and on, and draw the logical conclusions. While some readers may be seduced by the iPad's jazzy colour display, once colour e Ink (or an equivalent) is available even that advantage will be lost. Particularly so if battery life comparison shows up the Apple device (saying it will give "140-something hours" of continuous music playback with the screen off sounds like a supreme irrelevance to book readers).
So, a forthcoming colour Kindle could present as a veritable "iPad killer" as far as e-books go. In the meantime, the iPad will certainly appeal as a medium for newspapers, magazines and comics, for those who don't mind lugging it around, and for those who want more functions for their money.
Too Heavy?
The iPad ran into a fair whack of criticism once details were released. Jibed one critic from Melbourne, " Is it an oversized phone or a notebook with a touchscreen?" The ten-hour battery life, brief for a modern e-reader, also provoked scorn. More sympathetic Australians were irked that the iBooks store will only be available in the USA to begin with, prompting memories of the long wait down under for iTunes. Presumably Amazon's Kindle Reader will be banned from the "app-type" iBookstore too, although ironically an openness there might be hugely favourable publicity compared with the Kindle.
Another negative is that at 700grams (1.5lb) the iPad may be too heavy for many to be a comfortable e-reader, especially when there are feather-light alternatives available. The 'Pad' is great for video though (but what's with only 4:3 aspect ratio?), excellent for photo viewing, and may work well instead of just in mediocre fashion for myriads of iPhone apps once the latter are customised for the device.
But then again, no USB port, oh dear, no support for Flash, runs only Apple-approved applications and won't support multi-tasking. Word processing is a chore with this one too. Then there's not even a built-in camera connection (let alone camera), you have to buy a $39 kit for that. Strangely, it won't recognise .mov video files either. The iPad has many good features too, but clearly can stand improvement. While Apple mulls over releasing a more adequate model the iPad will probably be beaten on price by a host of imitators who add in what's missing. Already there are rumours that a forthcoming HP "Slate" may be tweaked to do both of those things. Overall, while hardly likely to be a flop, the iPad seems unlikely to be the iPOD of the book world without first becoming cheaper, better & indeed something quite different from what it is at present.
Still, the iPad cannot fail to sell to both diehard Apple fans and a variety of niche markets. Shall we just classify it as an Apple portable media player plus netbook equivalent, good also for daily papers, magazines and comics, and forget about it for books altogether (particularly if it tries to tie us down to one Apple bookstore)? Or do we regard it as a worthy, all-in-one convenience device? You, the consumer will decide.
www.apple.com/au/ipad/features/*
Amazon to use Mirasol screen for new Kindle?
Readers may recall mention of Qualcomm's Mirasol tchnology in our December 2009 monthly news. The excitement of Mirasol is the promise of a colour, e Ink quality screen that is no more expensive to manufacture than the present monochrome varieties. Now, rumours abound that Amazon will partner with Qualcomm to offer a colour, touch-screen Kindle, perhaps even as soon as the third quarter of this year.
Will Amazon resist the temptation to price gouge and instead actually drop their colour Kindle price to frustrate Apple's bid to sweep the e-reader market? If so, a colour Kindle could be the first of the dream e-readers that everyone will want in the future. In the hiatus between the (LCD) iPad and the more advanced colour Kindle release, a canny Amazon may well drop monochrome Kindle prices too, to emphasise that the iPad will cost lotsa moola as an e-reader by comparison. If so, with colour and more affordable monochrome this could be the year we can finally say that e-books have reached maturity as a vibrant new technology.
Liquavista, huzzah!
*On the colour e-reader front, there's also a new variety in the offing thanks to Liquavista , another spin-off company from Philip's Research Labs in the Netherlands. A prototype was on display at the CES show in January. It sounds like LCD to the layperson, being equally capable of use in reflective, transmissive or transflective modes, but instead involves some esoteric water/oil-based interface with the risible name of "electrowetting". Nomenclature aside, that technology is claimed to possess all the virtues of e Paper in terms of superior readability, with a paper-like appearance and no limitations to the viewing angle. Even better, it's video-capable too.
But what about battery-life? Power consumption is supposed to be low. Just for you, readers, we took a look at their tech data and came to the conclusion that Liquavista video will use only about one third of the power required for backlit LCD, although they're a little coy about a greyscale text comparison. Now here's a stunner: they have a further advance called LiquavistaVivid, where the screen can be switched from reflective monochrome (with no less than sixty-four shades of greyscale) to video-capable colour simply by turning on the backlight control, a change that occurs in milliseconds. Now that sounds like the kind of e-reader we're all lusting after! Bebook* will launch the new readers as their colour model, although expect to wait a good few months yet.
www.liquavista.com/*BTW, Bebook's latest monochrome touch screen e Ink model, the Neo, has Wifi & is a genuinely open device; so unlike (ahem!) certain others it allows you to buy e-books freely from any Web store in the world. What's more, there's a special feature built-in to help you find them. The Neo will be available some time this month (March), but costs no less than $A589 at present. Alas and heavily alack, for it's an otherwise commendable product. So if you still want it, go and show your devotion to some doting relative - or be the generous one yourself.
*
Telread changes hands
Teleread has been sold. This oldest (and one of the most influential) English-language e-book news & views website has been purchased by a subsidiary of the North American Publishing Company (NAPCO). The latter specialises in print magazines, but is attempting to enlarge its digital footprint.
We congratulate the former owner & editor of Teleread, David Rothman, for his enormous contribution to the popularisation of the digital book concept - a magnificent effort from a dedicated enthusiast. Indeed, we hope that David will receive some kind of Web award for his achievements, and perhaps a civil award too.
David's former co-editor, Paul Biba, will remain with Teleread as the new editor. It is unclear at this stage what new directions, if any, Teleread will take.
www.teleread.org/
Pi squares away the competition
China now has e-readers galore, some so good they're re-branded and sold all over the world. Isn't it about time that India, the world's second most populous nation, had it's own e-reader too? Well yes, it is, and it does, now. Take a bow the Infibeam Pi, available for a mystically numbered 9,999 Indian rupees, which translates to less than US$220. That's an appealing price in today's world market (look on and learn, Samsung).
The Indian e-book market is still in its early days, however. Moreover, Infibeam.com deals primarily in print books, so founder & CEO Vishal Mehta has kept the Pi basic at this stage. For the nicely restrained price you're getting your standard 6-inch e Ink display, borne on a feather-light 180 gram device that's just 9.5mm thick. OK, so you only get 8 level grayscale, and you'll need to connect to a PC via USB to get books (a future wireless download version is planned). Internal memory is a modest 512MB, but is expandable up to an extra 4GB using the inbuilt SD Card slot. Oh, and the casing colour comes in white only. Hands up those who know how many colours the world's most popular car ever, the Model T Ford, came in? There's still value for money here.
There's a rechargeable Lithium-Polymer battery built in, with 7 days use specified. Book formats supported are PDF, EPUB, HTML, TXT, MOBI, & DOC; plus JPG, BMP & PNG images; and audio MP3. Along with a rotatable screen (a button press is required) there are a range of the essential features you'd expect, and there's a Linux-based OS. The first Infibeam Pi's were shipped on 22 February.
The Pi supports a number of Indian languages (in for example Devanagiri, Kannada and Sanskrit scripts) and has its own e-book store, with offerings from several of the world major publishers in addition to locally-derived titles. You can also add personal content. We delicately won't mention where the device is actually made, for hey, coming ourselves from a glasshouse nation that has dismantled most of its industry in order to "advance" to being a quarry for its northern neighbours, we're not about to throw stones in any direction. Welcome to the e-book club, Mr M.
*
Now you see it, soon you won't:
Disappointment and Challenges Doom First Model DX in EducationSince late 2007, Amazon has attempted to promote its Kindle DX large e-reader, then still on the drawing boards, as a device suitable for higher-level education. The DX was released in May 2009, with agreed trials in Arizona State University (ASU), Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, Reed College, Pace University, & Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. Many other universities and tertiary institutes showed interest, and Amazon clearly believed it might have found a new boom market.
As it turned out though, students found several aspects of the DX unsuitable for their purposes, and enthusiasm was muted or absent. Worse, disability advocacy groups filed complaints of discrimination on behalf of visually impaired citizens, charging violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). At that, most colleges backed away from the device. Finally, last month (January 2010) four universities against whom suit had been filed agreed not to purchase, recommend, or promote use of the Kindle DX, or any other dedicated electronic book reader, unless or until those devices are fully accessible to blind and visually handicapped students.
Amazon has now promised to improve matters by adding audio menu features by mid-year, plus an extra, super-sized font twice as big as the previous largest. There's already a text-to-speech feature, but now it will be possible to navigate to it by audio prompts. In truth, though, the original DX is doomed for swift obsolesence anyhow, and a new model addressing the other shortcomings students complained about is well on the way.
www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/January/10-crt-030.html*
Blio, from Ray K
The noted Ray Kurzweil & friends recently unveiled a new, platform-neutral, e-reading software called Blio. (www.blioreader.com). The Blio Reader is multimedia-capable, & so useful for presenting so-called "enhanced" e-books. So a Blio textbook could have animated images instead of mere static pictures, just like those "magic" Harry Potter books and newspapers. . Video, graphics, and hyperlinks are all catered for, as is audio text-to-speech. Notes may be entered, and there are nifty features for adding in content too, including photos, video sequences and web pages.
The software will fully represent magazines or websites in colour, showing all layout, typesetting and special features, so is suitable for the "third generation" e-readers due out later this year. Even more exciting for some is the prospect of the world's best text-to-speech feature, including the possibility of immediate translation in up to sixteen languages (but don't expect perfection in that).
Blio has partnered with Baker & Taylor for book purchases that may be used on, and even synced with, up to five devices. (Copyrighted books with DRM may not be loaned however, and are encrypted to you specifically). Meanwhile public domain books (titles not in copyright) may be loaded in to Blio quite simply. There are a variety of viewing choices available for the high-res display, including double page view and 3D effect. By contrast, you can also use simple text-only viewing for mobile phones and other small devices, or for speed-reading.
There'll be a Blio Bookstore too, with publishers including Elsevier, Hachette, HarperCollins, Random House, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and Wiley represented. The Blio Reader is free to download, but registration is required. More than 1.2 million titles are already available for use with Blio - that includes free public domain books from Google, Project Gutenberg, and Feedbook. Publishers will be able to specify titles or series as "available for Blio Reader ".
Sounds great all up, and hearty congratulations to Ray, whose contribution to disability software is already huge. On a cautious note though, it appears that Blio will support "targeted" ads - you know, those ones that follow you around the Web for weeks or months after you just looked at something in detail once - the ones that give you that creepy "someone is watching you" feeling. So we hope the controls will include the ability to turn off unwanted features.
Did I mention that the Blio Reader will be everybody's favourite price? As in, free, free, free?
www.blioreader.com*
Nook e Update
A great feature of modern e-reader devices (or some at least), is that in response to reader gripes software updates can be made available during the life of the product, often lessening or even eliminating poor functional design. Barnes & Noble have now released Update 1.2 for The Nook e-reader. Apparently, it either fixes or improves at least nine issues. That's got to be a goodie.***
February 2010
The Que
Plastic Logic's Que device was previewed at January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Briefly, it's a very big (10.7-inch screen) touch e-reader, with e Ink, superior text presentation and lots of organisational tools. New is that the Que's also glass-free thanks to "plastic transistor technology", and so surprisingly light for its size. A handy feature is that you can easily grab MS Office documents & other files from your PC to read on the run, or use as a mobile backup and presentation platform.
For buying actual books the Que is tied to Barnes & Noble via a devolved e-book store , & also has tie-ins with major US business news media. In fact, the Que is meant unashamedly just for business folk. Especially when the company is footing the bill, for the Que will set the buyer back quite a tidy sum. Even the cheaper version will be $US649 (that's with Wi-Fi and 4GB storage), while for 3G connectivity and 8GB memory the fork-out figure will be no less than $US799, for which you could buy three ordinary Kindles. Available in April.
www.que.com/
Skiff (from Old High German, a small boat)
Skiffle a type of music (see skiffle group or band)
Skiff Reader (no entry yet...)
The long-established Hearst Corporation was long rumoured to be planning to field its own entrant in the e-reader stakes. That device is the innovative Skiff Reader from Skiff LLC, a Hearst subsidiary, together with the Marvell Group (who supply the CPU).
With a very high-res (1200 x 1600 pixels) UXGA touch screen supporting the huge 11.5 inch display (measured diagonally), the Skiff is clearly intended for newspapers, magazines and documents as much as e-books. And in fact it's ahead of the e-reader pack in allowing full and sophisticated layout, just like you see in a paper or magazine (indeed only the Que can match it there). Accordingly, we feel bound to observe that although it's great to see such high quality e-paper along with advanced formatting features, it's also tragic that this device is only monochrome. A colour Skiff Reader, presumably the next model to come, might be really up there with the best of them.
What's unique about that ultra high-res screen, anyway, is that it's neither glass nor plastic, but rather a special kind of stainless-steel foil developed by LG electronics, and secured within a magnesium housing. What's more, it's claimed to be shatter-proof, crack-proof and "incredibly sturdy" overall. You can even safely bend the unhoused foil screen to an alarming degree.
Incredibly, the Skiff is only 6.8 mm thick (0.268 inches). Thanks to its super-size and the metal elements it does weigh 498 grams (1.09 lb) though. That's over half as much again as the Kindle 2, but still substantially less than the iPad, and in fact a shade lighter than the Kindle DX. The rechargeable lithium ion battery is said to last for a week of average reading use. And you guessed it, it runs with a Linux-based operating system.
What else? There's USB 2.0, 4 GB of onboard memory (3GB+ actually available) and an SD-card slot for more. In addition to its WiFi capability there'll be 3G wireless connectivity through US Telco Sprint - and the latter will also market the device in its retail outlets.*
Note however that Skiff is a service as much as a device, so various manufacturers will be licensed to produce a variety of Skiff Readers. Central to the concept is a Skiff Store and a Skiff Service platform. Expect Skiff to sell and distribute primarily newspapers & magazines, as well as books, blogs and other content. There's no word yet on exactly when we'll see a Skiff Reader though, or how much it will cost.
www.skiff.com/*This makes a change, as Sprint rival AT&T already has Amazon's Kindle, Sony's Daily Reader and Barnes & Noble's Nook e-readers under its belt, & will support the iPad's 3G connection too.
*
Alex the Great?
The Alex e-reader mentioned in our last November's news has been delayed a little, but will now go on sale "sometime in early March", complete with a seductive "Read Me, Browse Me, Love Me" slogan. Back in November, controversy was raging over the lawsuit brought by Alex makers the Spring Design Company against Barnes & Noble. Spring Design claimed B&N had "ripped off" a key design element in the new Nook device from their own, viz.the additional colour LCD mini-screen that features at the base of both e-readers. It was announced in January that the Alex will be linked to the new e-bookstore of B&N rival Borders.
The Alex will cost $US359, but for this you get not only a monochrome e Paper display to read text on, but also a browser-enabled colour secondary screen with full Web capability. It has a slimmer look than the Nook, and as well as being visually appealing may be easier to carry or slip into a larger pocket. Great, but only some solid user experience will reveal which of the two is the best in practice. www.springdesign.com/us/index.action
*
Samsung is to release two e Ink style monochrome e-readers, the 6-inch screen E6 model and the 10-inch E101. You can write on them both with a stylus. They have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0, but no 3G connectivity. When? Maybe during March. Will anyone care, though? At the hefty prices of US$399 (429,000 won if you'd rather) and US$699, we wonder how well they'll do out in the real world. This is a tough market now guys, and an entry just for the sake of appearances is really wasting everyone's time…
*
Meanwhile in Taiwan, the government is to invest 2 billion New Taiwan dollars (that's about $US65 million) into the e-reader industry. Companies developing related technologies will be eligible for substantial subsidies. Taiwan produces the lion's share of e Paper-type screen displays at present, not to mention related parts and product assembly. With such an assist the Taiwanese look set to maintain that market over the vital next few years of e-reader sales growth.
Ironically, there's little Chinese-language content available from Taiwan for all those devices. Apparently, publishers there are very concerned about prices, sales cannibalisation of their print output and piracy, and so are dragging their feet on releasing much...
*
Amazon & Macmillan - the stoush
Some late January excitement was the opening of direct hostilities between Macmillan publishers and Amazon.com. Macmillan insisted that irrespective of Amazon's views on the matter it wanted its e-books on Amazon to sell for a significantly higher price than at present, and Amazon fiercely rebutted that by removing Macmillan "buy buttons" for both e-books and hardbacks, in a heavy-duty return sally.
This lose-lose strategy, resulting in no sales for anyone, only lasted a week. Moreover, instead of squelching Macmillan the aggro stirred up a hornet's nest, as more major publishers complained of Amazons' $9.99 strategy for e-book best-sellers. French giant Hachette lined up firmly behind Macmillan, and Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins made supportive noises too.
The publishers are increasingly fearful of a $9.99 Amazon price point becoming established in the public mind as the "right" amount to pay for e-books, and of Amazon subsequently forcing their own wholesale prices downwards to accommodate that. They're also emboldened by the emergence of Apple's forthcoming iBookstore as a possible major competitor to Amazon's dominance in this market. Publishers suggested a $14.99 figure as a "better" alternative, and the rush of the majors to sign up with Apple was a clear warning shot to Amazon.
After a week missing, Macmillan's "buy buttons" were restored. Amazon meanwhile played successfully for consumer sympathy, claiming it would have to "capitulate" to Macmillan "at prices we believe are needlessly high". Then the Big Web Bookstore swerved laterally and offered publishers a choice of existing pricing arrangements or a new deal. With the latter, publishers would set the sale price and receive 70% of it back, minus book download charges (calculated at only six cents for an average-sized novel).
Was there a catch? You bet. The books could still sell for no more than $9.99, and the price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest list price for a physical book. The e-book must also be made available in all territories for which the author or publisher held rights. Text-to-speech permission must be included too, plus any new functions the Kindle might support in future. And lastly, the rights holder could not sell the book cheaper anywhere else.
Such a hedged deal might not seem worth it to many. Some publishers might take it anyway, and try offering their e-books elsewhere for more in the hope of sales at multiple-price levels. Would nearly all the business then migrate to Amazon, as canny shoppers sought out the best deal available, or would consumers just buy at their favourite e-stores? One possibility is that retailers elsewhere might competitively draw down the margin to be only a little dearer than at Amazon (say up to $12.99 rather that the $14.99 publishers have sought), so contributing to Amazon's plan to squeeze prices down and boom the e-book market, with its far smaller burden in retailer overheads.
2010 Major Editorial Two
The Coming War - Amazon, Apple, and the Frightened World of Publishers
The Amazon-Macmillan stoush described above may well be described in retrospect as the opening volley of an inevitable commercial war. Although that war will not officially begin until the Apple iBookstore opens, it is already well under way. Unlike many wars, this one's aims will be clear. It will be a war in which the iTunes giant attempts to muscle in on Amazon's dominant market share in retail digital books, and the latter pulls out all stops to prevent that happening.
In this war, it seems that the main game plan is already foreshadowed. Amazon will attempt to take the high ground as the consumer's friend, providing cheaper e-books for all, while Apple will pose as the saviour of the publishers, urging them to rush eagerly into the saving arms of an iBooks embrace to protect their industry from ruin - or at least vastly diminished profits - at the hands of an uncaring monopolist.
"Publishers (will) pick the price, not Apple," said Steve Jobs to the Wall Street Journal's tech columnist Walt Mossberg, following mystifying remarks that iBookstore e-books will be priced "the same" as their Kindle and Nook counterparts. He may have meant he believes that the latter two will be forced up to the iBookstore price, or risk losing product availability. However, some subsequent reports have Apple driving a harder bargain than Jobs says. Insiders claim that despite the talk, Apple will at any rate require publishers to discount their best sellers, and where less-popular titles are cheaper than average in hardcover, to discount those sales in e-book versions too.
In truth, both Amazon and Apple would like to be the undisputed King Kong of the future e-book world. That's far from likely to be the end result, though. Instead of focussing on either's statements we should look at the rivals' interactions, plus the efforts of other players like Google - yet to make its own huge play - Sony, and Barnes & Noble. Their proactive and reactive manoeuvres will more likely make the market more fluid and evolutionary with every passing month, as each struggles fiercely for advantage. Meanwhile the rush by leading publishers to sign up to iBooks - Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster are instances - may be spurred most of all by the desire for a counter-balance to Amazon that will dilute its growing power to dictate terms to the book trade in the e-book arena. The end result of all this should work to help keep the market open.
Several additional skirmishes in the Amazon-Apple face-off are already occurring. In one, Amazon has now reversed course and opened up the Kindle for third-party product development, foreshadowing a host of Kindle "apps" just like Apple has for the iPhone and now the iPad. With developers promised 70% of revenue from the sale of "Kindle apps", there will be, most likely, a rush of enthusiastic applicants.
Then there's Amazon's cunning alternative pricing model for publishers, detailed above. It still ends up with $9.99 e-books, offering a reassuringly high share of profits while simultaneously squeezing publisher's total revenue. And rightly so, many critics would say, noting the much lower cost structure of e-books to publishers as compared with print versions. At this point Amazon is winning the PR war with the customers anyway, while Apple seems to be playing the opposite game to the one it has in iTunes, where it was the one to face down music publishers on download prices.
One possible good effect of all this strife - and we can expect much more, and possibly some dramatic shifts in position later on - may be the opposite of what the market giants would prefer. Namely, that attempts to forcibly lock in consumers to single retail outlets by software controls and by browsing limitations will collapse, as the openness of a wireless device becomes a hugely attractive selling point for book-buyers keen on benefiting from price wars and alternative purchasing models.
Meanwhile, the availability to publishers of different pricing schemes from different retailers will strengthen the formers' hand considerably versus that of the latter. Publishers may in fact be rescued from an almost untenable position in the short term, allowing time for competing strategies to be cold-tested in the marketplace. After that, the options most appealing to the public will prevail, and publishers will prosper or decline in their digital markets at a pace fast enough to force "adapt or perish" options upon them.
It's an excruciating situation for publishers, though. Should they boycott Amazon altogether and back an Apple alternative to force e-book retail prices up, suffering inevitable pain in the short term through sales lost to outraged consumers? One reason they might balk at that choice is that it's unlikely that the more expensive iPad will grab a dominant share of e-readers sales from the Kindle, at least in the short to medium term. Against that, Apple will inevitably introduce its own software so that you can buy iBook titles using practically any device. In other words, the iBooks webstore is likely to do well whether or not the iPad itself is widely adopted.
The publisher's dilemma is an acute one, nevertheless. To ditch Amazon and defect to Apple, giving the latter the major portion of their future digital business, could be risking a "deep blue sea" result in the long term, when you look at how iTunes has emasculated music companies. Another possibility would be to hold out on price to all comers. But then there's a risk of being fatally undercut by fellow publishers. After all, if a customer likes the look of two different new titles equally but will only buy one, won't he or she buy the book that's clearly a better bargain? Could rival publishers make a fist of standing together for their common profits? Whose nerve would crack first?
Another factor is that unlike the digital music saga, Apple will not be in an essentially monopolistic position from scratch this time around, and in fact may never be so. So in theory the strongest suit for publishers may be to sell to all e-stores who will buy at their declared price, and let retailers compete within their own added margins. That will pitch retailers at each other's throats competitively, rather than set publishers to undercutting each other.
Such a strategy requires publishers to remain united in approach though, and the chances of that happening must be questionable at best. But then again, such an outcome is not impossible if "the majors" feel this is their one and only chance to control e-book prices in the longer term. So, any choice made now may end in disaster, but there's no option not to choose. All up then, in the Year of the Tiger publishers live in times that will never be less than "interesting" for them, and mostly just plain dangerous.
Equally, digital book retailers and e-reader manufacturers are competing as never before, with none assured of a good position in future markets. With e-books now showing explosive growth, consumers are awakening to the reality that far from being "locked in" they now hold the power to decide which rival models and companies they will patronise, and which consign to oblivion. It's going to be a tough but exciting couple ofr years ahead for all the players.
More Amazoniana...
DX Goes Worldwide
The Kindle DX, a big-brother model of Amazon's popular e-reader, became available internationally on January 19, 2010. Note that the larger-screened & wireless DX also supports PDF files, and offers additional memory storage compared with the standard Kindle. Price - $US$489.00, plus postage.
* Meanwhile the Kindle reader application is now available as a free download for BlackBerry devices. So Kindle e-books can now be read on, iPhones, the iPod Touch, the Blackberry and PCs in addition to Kindle models.
* The busy Amazon folk also cut a deal with the British Library to make 65,000 largely out-of-print British public domain titles from the19th century available free to the Kindle. As well, anyone who wants a hard copy will be able to buy one inexpensively, through Amazon Print On Demand subsidiary CreateSpace. There'll be fiction, history, philosophy, and poetry too. A resulting 25 million or so digitised pages will include both famous and lesser-known authors, and even many of the pulp titles known affectionately as 'penny dreadfuls'.
www.bl.uk/news/2010/pressrelease20100223a.html*
Heavily Googled, Nil results so far
Readers will recall the ongoing saga of Google's attempts to reach a settlement with litigating objectors to its massive book scanning and electronic Web distribution project, Google Book Search. While supporters view the Google plan and a subsequent draft negotiated agreement with some publisher and author groups as visionary, opponents regard it as outrageous and just plain illegal. In the latest round, there was great interest in the outcome of a US District Court hearing on 18th February.
In the event the going was heavy, with twenty-one speakers against the proposed settlement and five for it. The former included a strong attack from US Department of Justice attorney William Cavanaugh, who told Judge Denny Chin that the class action vehicle was inappropriate, and that the draft settlement "turned copyright on its head". Warming up, he declared emphatically, "If there's going to be a fundamental shift [in copyright law]… that should be left to Congress."
Judge Chin, the presiding officer in the Southern District of New York, dashed hopes of a quick ruling. The case, he declared, gave him "a lot to think about", and he aded that "There is too much to digest" for an immediate result. Given the major and complex issues involved, all concerned will expect a detailed and closely argued decision from the court, and that may take weeks or even months to produce. Meanwhile, more than 6,800 authors, publishers and literary agents have chosen to opt out of the present proposed settlement.
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Australian e-Books - Movement at the Station
Publishers are at last taking - or at least - talking - e-books seriously in the land of Oz. Thanks to a determined push from the Australian Council for the Arts and its gung-ho CEO Kathy Keele, February symposiums in Sydney and Melbourne were well attended by publishing industry types.
Ms Keele urged them to get with it and change fast, while the Australian Federal Government promised to fund an industry working party to assist in the development of relevant digital platforms. Even Australian Publishers Association chief executive Maree McCaskill declared, "With the recent release of a number of dedicated delivery devices, we can now see the outlines of a future business model". However. she cautiously added that "What that means…is being worked out right now."
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KiwiBooks
Across the Tasman Sea from Australia lie the Shaky Isles, as New Zealand is affectionately known for its alarming but seldom lethal earthquakes (the latter thanks to sensible construction methods that should be emulated more widely elsewhere). There, e-books are finally beginning to impact on the broader public consciousness. As a result, a Digital Publishing Forum was set up a year ago by the Book Publishers Association of New Zealand, the New Zealand Authors Society, and the Copyright Licensing organisation.
The DPF aims to stimulate the Kiwi e-book industry's overall development, and this year is to promote a "Great New Zealand E-books" project. Launching in the second quarter of 2010, the programme will digitise more than 300 of New Zealand's favourite books, which will be licensed to booksellers, the educational sector and libraries. Debate is still raging on which format(s) will be chosen for the project, although "open" ePub is likely, and the Kindle may be catered for too, even though the device hasn't been released in New Zealand yet. Meanwhile, regional book trade biggie the REDgroup plans selling 30,000 e-books in the southern hemisphere, and providing access to one million more free.
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E-books and E-content 2009
For those interested: recent UK site www.econtent2009.com specialises in information on conferences about e-books, e-publishing and e-content, in particular those held in university and college campuses in London UK from 2009 onward.
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Egyptian pioneer leads on North African e-books
Ramy Habib's Kotobarabia is reportedly the first online e-bookstore to specialise exclusively in Arab content. His site's mission is to create a global Web shopfront "for Arabic literature, knowledge and wisdom", and so far he has over 4,000 e-titles available in Arabic and English.
A complication of Habib's work is that because of the multiplicity of Arabic fonts, which are often customised to individual publishing houses, the use of OCR on Arabic has been problematic so far. As a result, titles either have to be fully retyped to ensure accuracy, or scanned and then closely edited so as to produce a reliable and searchable text. Both are lengthy processes.
A further difficulty has been that because of confusion over e-rights, a term little understood or provided for among traditionalist Arab publishers, Kotobarabia has also had to sign contracts directly with over 1,300 authors. And then there are censorship issues to negotiate too...
Habib however is not deterred, and continues to trail-blaze. A feature of his site is that Kotobarabia's entire catalogue can be licensed on a yearly basis by libraries and other organisations. Originally all the books were in PDF format only, but ePub versions are now on the way.
www.kotobarabia.com/
E Ink: Texan rescue charge, but for how long?
As the new standard in e-book screen rendering, e Ink has been seriously in vogue for several years now (although strictly speaking e Ink is a brand name, so we should really refer to e Paper to describe the broader category). However, the delay in introducing a satisfactory colour version of e Paper has been a serious and potentially fatal flaw in the longer term. Indeed, Apple has chosen to launch the iPAD with old-fashioned LCD, because its new tablet device would not have been taken seriously in a monochrome incarnation.
New colour technologies such as Mirasol, rumoured to be the choice for a forthcoming colour Kindle, may well sweep the field later this year. In the meantime, even monochrome e Ink is under threat from rivals.
Texas Instrument's new EPD (electronic paper display) chip may save e Ink's bacon in the short term, though. The new power management chip is said to replace around 40 present components, and may extend battery life by 50 per cent, to allow for about 14,800 page-turns per battery charge. TI software improvements will also allow integrated hardware control and graphics acceleration all on the one OMAP3621 processor, allowing for more responsive devices and significant potential cost savings. So cheaper, better e-readers may soon flood the market. What's more, Texas Instruments will also collaborate with Liquavista (see previous story) on colour e-readers.
When to Buy?
That will leaves consumers ever more perplexed about when is the best time to buy an e-reader, or to replace their old one. Answer, there is no best time. In current technology everything is obsolete in some sense every six months. If you want to wait for the perfect e-reader at the optimal price, join the queue waiting for Godot.
Meanwhile, our best advice is to avoid being over-impressed by lush descriptions and instead read the specs carefully, compare prices, note whether the screen size suits you, and read independent reviews diligently, keeping a careful lookout for any limitations that may cramp your style. And good luck. If what you've bought is not what you want, we suggest you pass the offending device on to a younger sibling, child, or friend as a gift and start again, sadder but wiser. Anyhow, most of the current models are quite good, it's just that there'll certainly be a better one out next month, every month, for quite some time yet.
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January 2010
Here's the New Year off to a flying start, with a slew of new e-reader models debuting in breathless succession. Many eager or just curious folk are meanwhile awaiting an announcement introducing Apple's long-awaited tablet, on January 27. That device will inevitably have e-book functions & will be discussed in February's news, but just note for now that despite all the desperate rumours to the contrary it will not be called the iSlate. First up in our previews is the:
enTourage eDge
If you like it all ways - owning an e-reader that is also a fully functional Netbook and multimedia centre, with extras to boot - then the enTourage eDge might possibly be just your cup of Earl Grey. Promoted as "the world's first dualbook", it boasts not one but two large, quality screens. The first functions as a monochrome (16 greyscale) wireless e-Ink e-reader, and will read ePub books and PDFs. The second and opposite display is an LCD colour touch screen with full Netbook functionality. Both screens are book-sized, (close to 10 inches diagonally), and rotatable.
The entourage edge -complete with edgy (or just absurd) placement of capital letters - runs on Google's Android operating system. It sports built in WiFi and BlueTooth, and promises future support for 3G, via EVDO or HSDPA. There's an SD card slot, two USB ports and 3 GB of usable storage memory, while the lithium ion battery is said to last up to 16 hours of reading without recharging, although that won't stretch as far if you're using several features at once.
The edge will allow you to record audio and video too, or snap photos, and of course play them all back. It offers a virtual keyboard for typing on, and you can browse the Web, use email and so on.
A very clever feature allows you to view images from the e-book you're reading on the opposite, colour LCD display (just drag & drop the page). In fact, there's quite a bit of interactivity possible between the two screens. For instance, you can select a book title to read from the (RHS) netbook screen, and the e Inked text will appear on the left-hand display. Students & researchers will love the ability to highlight a text word or phrase, Google it with the netbook's built-in browser, and then hyperlink the results back on your initial page. As well, you can write directly on the e Ink screen with a stylus, and also type on the RHS virtual keyboard to the same end.
But does a device designed to do everything do all of it well? It depends how tolerant you are. What looked like the huge stumbling block - a whopping price tag for all that functionality - turns out to not be the case, with the edge to retail at a very reasonable $US490.00. Reasonable, that is, considering it's a netbook computer too.
For my mind, though, the chief drawback to this intriguing device is the eDge's weight. At nearly three pounds (that's well over a kilo), this device simply underlines the fact that the feather-light portability of today's dedicated e-readers is one of their greatest advantages (price will be another, one day, we can only hope). But if you don't mind lugging all that weight around this is a goodie. However it risks being edged out in the market place if Apple's forthcoming tablet is too similar in functions and price point.
The eDdge is available next month (February), or for pre-order now. They won't quibble if you order it in Midnight Blue or Piano Black, but mystifyingly they'll slug you an extra $40 for Ruby Red, Glacier White or Ice Blue. Choose wisely.
www.entourageedge.com/entourage-edge.html*
the Benq nReader K60
Displayed in prototype in Taipei just last month (December 2009), the nReader is to be released shortly in Taiwan and China. It will apparently support ePub, PDF, TXT & HTML book files, as well as JPEG, BMP, GIF & PNG images. Whoopee-do.
Yep, it may be hard to work up much enthusiasm for the new nReader. To begin with, a mooted price of NT$8,990 (US$280) seems unsustainable given that both the Kindle and the Nook now retail at a lower $US259. "Rip off the early adopters" is a tired old game that is generally a bankrupt strategy in this market now, and to imagine that this kind of gambit will succeed in East Asia when alternative are readily available (e.g. the Taiwanese Greenbook, a near clone), and more are in the pipeline (from the likes of Asustek, Netronix & Micro-Star International, some with sophisticated dual screens too), seems a breathtaking leap of faith. Or perhaps madness. And does that 'n' in the name stand for "nothing" as in "nothing new"?
Well there's a 6-inch e Ink-type touch screen of course (16-level e-paper from Sipex), and yeah it also plays MP3s, as do nearly all the others. It's thin (11mm) and lightweight (220 grams), just like the others, yada yada yada. And of course there'll be the inevitable linked e-book store. There's support for Chinese, English and Japanese languages to begin with, that's good. In fact, the promised access to "popular Chinese-language books, Chinese-language magazines, Japanese comic books and novels, and English and European-language works" is the nReader's chief, but scarcely unique, drawcard for an east-Asian market.
In its favour, the nReader is capable of downloading e-books wirelessly by Wi-Fi, and there's a capability to attach a 3G dongle at the top, so perhaps it may be upgradeable to full remote connectivity later on. There's a solid 2GB of flash memory on board, expandable through a MicroSD card slot, so storage memory is not an issue. That's about it, apparently. Unless they slash the price right down, in which case it might have a chance or raising more than a yawn.
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The Libre eBook, from Aluratek, Inc.
Well we like the meaning of the name, although it's a shade too close to Sony's old Librie to pass without a raised eyebrow. But a monochrome LCD? Are they kidding? Apparently not. The price ($US179) is nicer than most of course, but then there's no wireless connection, no colour, no e Ink, & only a 5 inch screen.
That said, this is a budget-conscious alternative with good format support. So the Libre is worthy of consideration for the financially squeezed (a lot of folks these days), until an even better value one comes along. Note that you also get a 2GB SD card thrown in, preloaded with 100 classic titles. Now that's a lot of free reading.
What's more, Aluratek is making the claim that its latest "monochrome reflective" LCD display is the equivalent of an ePaper, i.e. looks as good as printed paper or e Ink. If true that's a stunning technical advance, although one that needs substantiation. With no backlighting to drain power, the company claims potential of up to 24 hours of continuous use from the lithium-ion polymer battery.
The Libre supports ePub and PDF formats with or without Adobe's Digital Edition DRM. That allows users to buy books via PC or Mac (USB connection) from multiple content providers - the "free" meaning of the name, evidently. Other book formats supported are Mobi and PRC (without DRM), plus FB2, TXT and RTF.
You can expand the Libre's storage memory with extra cards up to 32GB. As extras you can also listen to audio (MP3s), and view BMP, JPG, GIF and animated GIF images. Then there's screen rotation support (portrait or landscape mode), while the device sports a handy five font size options. All up, as an "also ran" this e-reader is actually a good runner for the budget end of the market. If the price could be whittled down to under $100, it might even do well. E-reader makers need to be aware, though, that the competition is now ferocious, and that this year's shoppers will be keenly scrutinising what they get and don't get for the money.
*
Interead, maker of the popular "out of left-field" Cool-ER e-reader, is preparing to launch three new models. Good on them, but first let's take a stand here and ditch this fussy fad of weirdly-placed capitalisation. OK, so the Cool-er Compact and the Cooler Connect will be available in the (northern) Spring, while the 3G Cooler will be released mid-year.
There's more than a hint of the Sony array in Interead's expanded device range. The Compact is smaller and lighter than the standard model (already called the Classic!), while the Connect (itself weighing only 164 grams, or 5.8 oz) will have WiFi and a touch screen. Meanwhile the Cooler 3G will obviously have 3G connectivity, as well as WiFi, & will also offer more than 1,300 magazine and newspaper subscriptions through NewspapersDirect. There's no word on pricing yet.
www.coolreaders.com/
2010 Major Editorial I:
Publishing: Time for a Cool Change?
The impact of e-book sales, and the publicity generated by an onslaught of new e-reader devices with a plethora of attractive features, continues to generate shock waves throughout the book world. Claims abound that long-established publishing models are doomed, or at a minimum ripe for substantial revision. Recently however several leading publishers have decided to strike back in favour of their traditional process, by tilting the scales back towards print book sales.
Last month Simon & Schuster - owned by CBS - announced it would delay e-book versions of thirty-five forthcoming titles for some four months after the hardback is released. Simultaneously the Hachette Book Group (owned by Lagardere SCA), declared it too would delay e-book publication of "many" 2010 titles, for a similar three to four months. Shortly after that, HarperCollins (a News Corp. subsidiary) proclaimed its own restrictions for e-book versions of new releases. From this month onwards, HarperCollins will hold back e-books of five to ten major new hardcover titles per month for periods of from four weeks up to a startling six months. The new strategy is based on the concept of creating a standard sequence for the release of e-books after a hardcover version but before the paperback
Is all this more than a temporary whistling at the moon though, in the same way that the music industry persisted in the denial of digital reality for many years, much to its own cost? That particular industry engaged in ferocious and futile wars against ever-burgeoning piracy before finally being dragged, kicking and screaming, towards a new primary sales model for younger consumers. The kids wanted downloadable music files for their modern and digital portable players, so at long last the music companies agreed to sell song tracks online at realistic prices, through the likes of Apple's iTunes. The music companies finally realised that they could not dictate the way the new model would work, instead they had to go with the flow or watch the steady disintegration of their business if they failed to adapt sufficiently.
Publishing is in turmoil these days, without doubt. As is the situation for authors. The argument that e-books alone have turned it topsy-turvy, though, is just not true - or not yet, anyway.
Rather, publishing as an industry has in fact been evolving, steadily but silently in recent decades, though not necessarily with a good result. Large corporations now own most of the traditional "houses". That has caused a demand from corporate bean counters for consistent & predictable high profits, partly achieved by offering big-name authors enormous "advances" up front to secure their inevitably best-selling titles. Meanwhile lesser-selling authors, whatever their quality, are increasingly shunted to the sidelines with little or no "advance" payments and delayed royalties. In a contracting market, amidst economic recession and with less book-buying generally, this means that many "quality" authors of fiction and non-fiction alike are unable to make ends meet, and may be forced to simply give up their writing, unless they can find another route to market. Enter independent print-on-demand, which in alliance with bookselling giants such as Amazon has the potential to cut out traditional publishers altogether if their model does not change.
Even more ruinous for the industry has been the recent practice of some general retail chains in offering newly-released best-sellers in hardback for a loss-making $US9.99, in order to lure in customers for their other products. That move damages the viability of existing dedicated bookstores, misleads print book customers into believing that such prices are realistic, and pressures publishers to lower their wholesale prices to below viability, or else risk being cut out of the equation in an industry-wide Dutch auction.
Note that it is unfair to equate this unsustainable hardback price with $US9.99 e-books, because the publisher's expenses are far less with digital copies than with the physical product. Even so, Amazon does not appear to be making any money on e-books at this price either, and is instead using them to help establish an e-book mass market more quickly for long-term gain. Amazon may also be trying to force wholesale prices down by using its market clout as a blunt instrument, with much more justification though than for physical books.
These dramatic strategies are indicative of a book industry in flux, and soon the major processes of publishing may have to change, and change radically, or much of the industry will collapse. In important senses this change may be a very desirable development too, because what many people believe to be the way publishing still works is in fact a mode of business that has already disappeared from the industry mainstream.
So far, that disappearance has been of very little benefit to the book-buying public, or for all but a handful of the most successful authors. As regards authors for example, what does it profit a writer if his book sells at $25 but he only gets $1.25 from that? A $9.99 e-book from which he receives $2.50 or even $4.50 would make a lot more sense for keeping writing viable, a situation that will also benefit the customer to the tune of a massive $15 saving per book.
At the same time a lunatic fringe thinks all future books can be free, and talks such nonsense as that an author could instead make a living reading his or her works aloud in the same way a rock band can pack out a stadium. Naturally, they have no actual examples to offer of this ever happening anywhere.
Overall though, future changes that lead to a better deal for both readers and authors alike, while keeping a transformed publishing industry viable, must surely be a welcome outcome. Timely e-books at reasonable prices, prices that are substantially cheaper than for most present print books, will almost inevitably become a major element of a new era in publishing. The companies that recognise that will prosper, while their complacent rivals decline and then fall by the wayside, as e-reading grows steadily more popular. Especially worthy of a fall will be those enterprises who try to treat digital readers as second-class citizens.
But what about this???
Meanwhile, MacMillan publishers are off on an entirely different path. Instead of holding back cheaper e-books they're planning to sell them up front for extra dosh - as "enhanced" versions including author interviews, reading guides and the proverbial "more". In other words, as the kind of deal you get with deluxe, boxed versions of movies on DVD. They'll go on sale at the same time as the Macmillan hardback print editions, but priced a little higher. Ninety days later a "standard", cheaper, e-book will be released. So there you have it folks, the two-tier e-book market will debut this year as a "blind faith" exercise in salesmanship. Of course, the fact that only titles expected to be bestsellers will be treated this way will likely lessen the risk in what is otherwise a truly audacious exercise.
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Nook Nook, lend me your book
Some readers are curious about just how you can lend e-books bought for the Nook device, an attractive selling point for Barnes & Noble's new e-reader. You do it through the Lend menu option, using a name and email address you've added into your Contacts list. The person you're lending to must have eReader software on their device though, whether it be the Nook, an iPhone, a BlackBerry, a PC or Mac, or many Palm, Windows Mobile, & Symbian OS devices.
But let's be clear - just as you can't lend a physical book to more than one person at a time, you can't"improve" on that in the digital case. In fact the digital version has additional restrictions - you can only lend your book once, ever, and then only for a maximum of 14 days. You can't "on-lend" a book already loaned to you, either. Please also note that while lending a book the original purchaser cannot access it at the same time - just as with a physical book. In fact, so far only about half of B&N's e-books may even be lent out. Those restrictions are imposed by publishers though, not by B&N.
Will we progress to a situation where e-books can be loaned out for long periods, or even indefinitely? Again, that's in the hands of publishers so far. How about being able to sell your e-books, legally, if you no longer want them?
It would also be relatively easy to establish pay-per-use digital lending libraries and second-hand e-bookshops on the Web, if publishers and authors agreed to the concept. Such developments would certainly add significant value to future digital books - and might lead to higher prices, too. Perhaps multiple possibilities could flourish, for example that you could buy a cheaper e-book with no additional rights, or a loanable and re-sellable one for an added premium. None of these possibilities can be excluded once the digital book market becomes more mature. Ironically, in their social and commercial aspects e-books may in fact become more and more like existing physical books, as time goes by. Plus ça change…
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Ebookbop
Ebookbop is a new Aussie site selling both e-books (around 60,000 at last report), and e-readers (the Bebook, the Cooler and two types of Sony Readers). Their titles come in PDF/AER, ePub, Mobi and Microsoft Reader formats, with MP3 audiobooks available too. More info at:
www.ebookbop.com.au/
The Absence of Borders
And what of Borders, the delightful but financially faltering US-based book chain long in rivalry with Barnes and Noble? Where's their e-reader? Well actually, they don't have one. However there are claims of one in the works, and they do currently sell Sony Readers in store. In any case, they're partnering with Kobo Inc. of Canada to produce their very own "app", e-reading software for (most) mobile phones and PCs too.
The Kobo initiative is expected to debut before mid-2010, and support the sale of "device neutral" e-books from Borders.com on the Web. Kobo was formerly known as Shortcovers, the digital book unit of Canadian company Indigo Books & Music. It has deals in place for access to some 2 million e-books for sale. Kobo will be spun off as a separate company in which Indigo will retain a majority interest, while Borders has added $US5 million to the pot. Two other investors, one of them from Australia (REDgroup Retail Pty Ltd), have invested a further $US11 million in the hopeful new venture.
* Incidentally, & illustrating our editorial theme of the silent changes that have already taken place in the book industry, note that RedGroup owns the formerly local Angus & Robertson booksellers chain in Australia, plus the flogged-off regional Borders chains in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, plus the dominant Whitcoulls chain in New Zealand (itself once two venerable companies, Whitcombes & Tombs Booksellers and Coulls,Somerville Wilkie). REDgroup Retail is in turn currently owned by the wheeler-dealer buy-em/doll'em up/sell'em up fast company Private Equity Partners (PEP) of the USA, who have owned those retail jewels above for at least fifteen minutes, perhaps even twenty, so now are reportedly very keen to get rid of all of them whenever you like for the "right" price, i.e. a good profit for themselves. Whatever happened to book-selling as an occupation or calling?
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