TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for May, 2008

By David Rothman

"Books cost too much." That was one of the slogans of Crown Books, an aggressive price-combatant, which, however, went bankrupt in the end despite some glowing press reports. Was the real problem that its books didn’t cost enough? Or was Crown—the setting for the Jimmy Carter book signing shown in this photo—on the right path?

Former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget might have disagreed with Crown on hardback prices—he thinks such p-books "should cost $25"—but these days he’s calling for a cost of "$4.99 for a first-run bestseller, downloadable to your Kindle, PC, or iPod–or simply readable on the Internet. The retailer keeps $1 or so, the author gets $1 or so, and the publisher takes home about $3. Some of that goes to marketing and some to overhead. And then you’re left with the typical publisher profit of less than $1 (no returns, manufacturing, or distribution costs).

More revenue in the end?

"But," he says, "here’s what happens: book sales suddenly go through the roof," because "you’ve made buying a book almost a no-never-mind. At $4.99, buying a book is like buying a couple of magazines: you can buy them on a whim and feel free to skim them. At $25, meanwhile, buying a book is like buying a two-pound guilt trip: Until you slog your way through it, you don’t deserve to buy another one.

"With a similar margin per book sold, cannibalization wouldn’t matter. If publishers really wanted to get aggressive, however, they could cut book prices to, say, $1.99, compress all the revenue splits, and watch sales truly explode. Especially when they made available the out-of-print catalogs."

Potter not a savior

Justifying his proposal, Blodget notes: "Despite Harry Potter selling 8.3 million copies in 24 hours, book publishers only sold 0.9% more books in 2007 than 2006—less than the country’s rate of population growth."

So, gang, whether you’re a book pro or outside the industry, what do you think?

Related: BooksForABuck owner: The lowdown on our business model and The e-book pricing debate: ‘Why are their books so cheap?’, as well as as E vs. P Prices: How heavily to discount e-books?

Technorati Tags: Henry Blodget,Crown Books

By David Rothman

Tech-hip people in the book business are looking forward to OLPC’s XO-2, which, as you can tell from this photo, could be a promising p-book replacement.

But the current e-reading software supplied with the XO-1 is pathetic. OLPC should have risen above "Not invented here" and have adapted the existing FBReader—simplifying it for young users. Unlike the current PDFcentric mess FBReader can read the IDPF’s new ePub standard.

OLPC News writer’s complaints

Now I see that I’m not the only one grumpy about the software’s failing. In the independent OLPC News, Hilaire Fernandes notes:

1. "There is no obvious way to switch full screen the page view
2. Navigating from one page to the previous or next one is far to be perfect. Indeed, when asking for the next page of the book with the appropriate button, it is sort of buggy as the user found itself in the middle of two pages, and not at the next one as expected."

Wait! That’s just the start of the problems. Kids, especially those with special needs, should be able to choose fonts and color combinations and otherwise make the software their reader.

Note: You can also use the XO-1’s browser to read books, if you know what to do. But it still doesn’t offer the full flexibility that an FBReader approach or other alternatives could.

Related: How the 2nd gen XO could succeed as a boost for e-books and How OLPC laptops could give commercial e-publishers an iPod moment.

By David Rothman

Upvise Mobile Wikipedia lets you "type in any word on your mobile and download instantly the entire Wikipedia article specially formatted for your mobile device. You can also bookmark any article to a create a list of favorites in your account."

Among the features are search, four languages besides English, adjustable fonts and the ability to follow even links outside Wikipedia.

UMW, now in beta, is downloadable in versions for Java and Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and—get this—Android.

Related: Offline Wikipedia for the iRex iLiad, in MobileRead, and Uh-oh! No e-book apps among ‘Top 50′ for Android phones.

By Damien G. Walter

Moderator: Damien G. Walter, a much-published U.K. writer of "weird and speculative fiction," is our latest contributor. Welcome, Damien! – D.R.

The other day my self discipline failed, and after weeks of craving I bought a video game. Addictions are never broken; they are only tamed. Eventually they will escape the leash and savage a passing pedestrian. For weeks I’ve been browsing the game shops, debating the for and against of giving in to temptation. This time the for side won, but for a very simple reason: giving in to the addiction was also the best way of kicking it.

I avoid video games for many reasons, but primarily because I am a writer. If you want to write professionally, video games are the kiss of death. Writing requires the investment of time, and video games are the world’s greatest time waster. Worse, video games aren’t good for the upper brain functions that provide advanced language skills. I’m not saying that video games make you stupid, but they certainly don’t make you eloquent.

Functional reading—the Web kind—vs. the advanced variety

As a writer, I also follow closely the continuing debate about the demise of reading. Not functional reading, which is fine and dandy, what with the Internet bringing people in the billions to text-based Web pages, forums, chat and so forth. But advanced reading, of the kind that will empower a person to access the incredible knowledge and joy of reading a novel or work of creative non-fiction, is rumored to be in sharp decline.

Those are rumors I’ve seen corroborated first-hand, having spent the last five years working to develop literacy with young people. Teenagers simply do not read for pleasure in the numbers they did even twenty years ago. And the cause of this titanic shift away from reading can be squarely placed at the foot of the digital revolution, of which video games are a leading part.

No matter how beautiful the graphics…

My video game addiction started as a teenager. I was part of the first generation to grow up with video games. When I look back at the Sinclair Spectrum games that got me hooked, followed by the early 16-bit consoles, I’m amazed by how excited I was by games like Manic Miner or Target:Renegade, and how basic they were compared to the spectacular graphical feats of modern gaming. But I also always found gaming frustrating, as though I were aware even then that something was missing from those games, something that is still missing, and something that graphics no matter how beautifully rendered can never provide.

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By Marion Gropen, owner of Gropen Associates

Two years ago TeleRead ran Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti’s post on Why a distinguished small press isn’t publishing e-books yet: Godine designer speaks out. A small literary house, heavy on poetry collections like the one shown here, Godine did not feel that it was ready for the technology or vice versa.

How about today? Are traditional independent publishers, not the born-digital variety, going for e-books in a major way?

Based on my experiences at PMA Publishing University, which piggybacked on BookExpo America in Los Angeles, I would say that the indies still have a long way to go. E just didn’t come up at the core of the many interesting discussions. Typical small publishers still do not think the format is going to grow fast enough to be a major factor in the book business for several years.

Indies behind a high percentage of the 400,000 new titles a year

In a keynoter at the PMA gathering, Michael Healy, executive director of the Book Industry Study Group, observed that there are 102 thousand active small book publishing companies in the United States. Collectively, they control and produce a very large portion of the nearly 400,000 new books produced each year in the U.S. If they, as a group, decide to put that content into e-book formats, the effect on the market will be significant. 

Whether it would be good, bad, or both is yet to be determined, but change we can guarantee.

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By David Rothman

Simon and Schuster will be offering 5,000+ titles in the Kindle format—more than double the current number. Bottom line? The titles bringing in the majority of S&S revenue will now be Kindle-available. Wise move. Publishers mustn’t neglect the here and now. At the same time, however, S&S and other publishers need to persuade Amazon to prepare to offer books in the IDPF’s new ePub format, too, and make the Kindle able to read it natively.

More details: Press release, The Bookseller and Google News. Ahead I’ll repro the release in full. S&S, by the way, has an e-book blog focused on hot new titles.

Related: An idiot’s guide to DRM and eBabel: UK’s Bookseller magazine brilliantly explains the mess. The Kindle worsens the problem.

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By David Rothman

Is it time for the Brits to re-colonize the United States? Absoutely! Bring ‘em back, Redcoats and all.

Some of the wisest utterances on topics like DRM and colliding e-book formats are coming from the British publishing community.

A gutsy PW equivalent in the U.K.—far braver and smarter than the wimpy Yankee variety, which zapped my anti-DRM, anti-eBabel blog—has just published a memorable article on the very problems that so many American book people are sweeping under the carpet.

In eBabel on and on, The Bookseller explains the mess in terms that even the dumbest blockheads on our side of The Pond ought to understand. And it does so without ignoring the nuances.

"It’s the DRM, stupid"

Under a subhead that might have come from the TeleBlog—"it’s the DRM, stupid"—Features Editor Tom Tivnan warns: "…Even within format, different publishers’ DRM can vary, affecting device readability. Files wrapped with DRM also contain a variety of restrictions, such as whether a customer can print or not, if the file can download to other devices, or whether it can be emailed.

"Even within formats, DRM continues to evolve. As Martyn Daniels, vice-president of sales and marketing at digital content management specialist Value Chain International, explains: ‘Mobipocket, for example, has gone though several incarnations. If you are using, say, a Mobi 3.0 file and the device you are using reads Mobi 6.0, it will still be able to read it, but there will be subtle differences that affect performance.’"

Tivnan even provides a glossary of formats—from ePub to eReader. Guess which he lists firsts? Nice priorities, Tom.

The Moi angle: My opinion—and perhaps yours, too

While PW has made me a nonperson in the best Orwellian tradition—the cowards at PW actually killed the online archives of my E-Book Report blog—the Bookseller has the nerve to quote me. Tivnan nicely sums up what’s on my mind and yours, if you’re like many members of the TeleRead community.

"David Rothman, an American writer who runs the e-book blog Tele-read.org, believes that DRM is anti-consumer and is relatively in-effective against piracy. He says: ‘DRM penalises legitimate owners with various restrictions, such as limits on the number of devices. If a book is truly popular and big money is at stake, then both amateur and professional pirates can scan paper copies, or even type them out, as happened with Harry Potter.’"

Social DRM mentioned

The Bookseller goes on: "Rothman has called for publishers to agree to ’social DRM’—an idea mooted by Bill McCoy, the general manager of Adobe’s ePublishing business—no technical restrictions other than stamping a file with ‘This e-book is the property of . . .’ Social DRM, Rothman believes, would open up the e-book market, and prohibit one dominant player such as Amazon from elbowing others out. He says: ‘The real irony with Amazon is that they have been doing wonderful things with music MP3s and anti-DRM on music downloads. The damaging thing is that Amazon is using DRM to herd customers into the Kindle away from other devices. This is not good news for publishers.’

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By David Rothman

Microsoft’s killing Live Search Books. But could its book search have been hurting publishers? And what about online freebies of books—complete or excepts? The help-or-hurt question was among the topics of a panel at BookExpo America, where, by the way, Jeff Bezos will be speaking (ugh, about those K-numbers, Jeff?).

PW mentions cases from Harlequin and HarperCollins. At HC Barbara Lilly warns not to extrapolate too much, but says 1,177 people out of 83,000 visitors decided to buy a Neil Gaiman book after seeing it online. What do you think of that ratio, gang? The book—not offered as a downloadable file—drew four million page views.

83K visitors, just 1,177 buyers

So this is what HarperCollins needed to move just 1,177 copies of a well-established writer’s work? Even considering the promo’s E-Book Museum approach—look but don’t download—that’s pretty pathetic compared to what the optimists would want.  But then again, mail-order response rates aren’t so awesome either,

Here’s my take. Unless a book give-away can be a hit on P2P sites, and not every title can, writers need to consider whether the Cory Doctorow model of free-E/paid-P will work for them as the main promo tool. As one tool? Maybe.

Update, 11:44 a.m.: Tor and Baen have the right idea in using freebies to promote series. That’s when the model can work since there’s less need to make the money upfront.

Related: Our posts on Richard Herley’s shareware experiment.

By David Rothman

Penguin’s e-book sales for the first third of ‘08 exceeded the total for last year.

The increase was "more than five times the overall growth in sales, year-on-year, through April 2008" and linked partly to new e-book hardware. Hmm. The Kindle, the Sony Reader or both? My guess is, mostly the Kindle—along with the publicity it stirred up.

Penguin, by the way, has started offering "enhanced"  versions of such classics as Pride and Prejudice, in E, complete with such extras as recipes and etiquette notes. I keep dreaming: Will the publishers themselves see the wisdom of killing the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. Don’t hold your breath, but, long term, no pun intended, you never know.

"Hardcover book market goes soft"

Meanwhile, around the same time Penguin was celebrating its E triumphs at Book Expo America, the Marketplace program on American Public Media was running a text and audio segment titled Hardcover book market goes soft.

Yet another argument for ending DRM and and tearing down the Tower of eBabel? With E, publishers will never have to worry about paper book stores returning books.

It’s an opportunity, dummies

Alas, the Marketplace segment ends with publishing consultant John Rose’s warning—in the reporter’s words—that "the threat to book publishing isn’t about returns and refunds of printed paper. It’s that new technology can bypass publishing companies altogether. Rose says publishers should think about a world where any writer can publish a book cheaply online and any reader can download it freely." Jeez. Someone tell Rose about the possibilities that E is opening up for Penguin, not to mention the value publishers can add through editing and promotion. Or did the segment leave out a little context? Let’s hope his next few words were, "But there’s an opportunity here."

Happy story from p-book word: Local bookstore’s support on the rise, another seg from American Public Radio (found, like the other items, by Bibliofuture for LISNews). Also see a TelePost, How Politics & Prose, a clueful indie bookstore, survives Amazon.

Image: Pip R. Lagenta’s CC-licensed photo of Copy Doctorow signing p-books—aided, some might say, by the free copies he’s given away online.

By Paul Biba

My MacBook is off to see the doctor and probably won’t be back for at least a week. It developed a faulty fan and started to sound like a playing card rattling against the spokes of a bicycle. Luckily I invested in the AppleCare plan, so the repair will be free. But I’m still left without my main machine.

That leaves my Eee PC. How to make it usable in the interim? The first thing I did was hook it up to my 23" LG display and it is running just fine at 1280×1024. Using the trackpad isn’t much fun, so I found a Logitech cordless mouse. The Eee PC doesn’t have Bluetooth, so I’m using one that is connected to a wireless USB receiver. The nice thing about this unit is that you can scroll left and right by pushing the scroll wheel in those directions. I don’t need it with my big monitor, but it is definitely useful when using the machine by itself, as sideways scrolling is often needed with the small screen. The photo, by the way, I took with my little Canon and then I pulled it off the SD card onto the desktop by using a USB card reader.

The keyboard issue

Now, what to do about the keyboard. I am the proud owner of two old IBM buckling spring keyboards. They are one of my most treasured possessions. I took one out and connected it to a USB to PS2 adapter and it works just fine on the little machine. I would never attempt doing much typing on that tiny keyboard. As a matter of fact, I love this old keyboard so much that when the MacBook comes back I’m going to see if I can use it with that. The Apple keyboard has all sorts of special keys so I’m a bit skeptical.

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By David Rothman

"Asustek computer has stopped taking orders for its Eee PC 900, launched just one month ago, in order to prepare for the upcoming launch of the Intel Atom-based Eee PC 901, according to industry sources." – Digitimes (link added).

The TeleRead take: The 900 apparently was more or less a placeholder—to keep Asustek competitive while it awaited deliveries of the Atom CPU from Intel. The Atom could be a big boost for small, portable devices that can do justice to e-books, including the multimedia variety of the future.

More on the Eee PC 900: Trusted Reviews.

Price comparisons: Here. Let’s see if the $550 floor drops. Anyone able to do better?

Related: Intel CEO’s thoughts on the Atom and WiMax, at Physorg.com. Excerpt: "A centerpiece of the strategy is the Atom processor, which packs the power of a PC-class processor from six years ago into the smallest space yet—25 Atoms will fit on a square inch. It’s intended for Mobile Internet Devices—iPhone-like tablets that provide a ‘full’ Internet experience, better than that available on cell phones." Atom chips can run faster and use less power than current kind-of equivalents.

Correction: Google’s shopping service came up with the wrong model when I used it for the price comparison. I’ve plugged in a better proper link.

By David Rothman

"eMusic, the world’s largest retailer of independent music and the second-largest music service after iTunes, announces today that it has added nine new publishers—Simon & Schuster Audio, BBC Audiobooks UK, Reagent Press, Hay House, L.A. Theatre Works, Tantor Media, Phoenix Books, Inc., Listen and Live, Brainsync and Audio Evolution–to its rapidly expanding audio books roster." – News release on the continuing success of eMusic’s DRMless approach.

Other delicious details: We’re not talking minor players here. Philip Roth, shown above, is among the authors whose audio books eMusic is handling.

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By David Rothman

"Between 2002 and 2007, production of traditional titles rose 29% compared to a 313% increase in the on-demand segment resulting in an overall increase of 66% in the five-year period." - Publishers Weekly.

Related: Some earlier posts on Amazon’s POD grab. Also see yesterday’s item, Don’t horse with our POD biz model, equestrian publisher warns—and complains about Amazon to U.S. Justice Dept.

By David Rothman

"It’s worth noting that even after more than five years of development and digitization, Google Book Search is still classified as a beta project. Making book content available on the web is, now more than ever, just a work in progress." – "DB" in the University of Chicago Press blog on the death of Microsoft Live Search Books.

The TeleRead take: Life and books go on. Still, nothing would beat the permanence of a well-stocked national digital library system—decentralized and with funding from local systems as well as Washington. Even then, we’ll still need a vigorous private sector. But the killing of "Live" shows the perils of over-reliance on it.

By Joe Wikert

Walt Mossberg did a fine job interviewing Jeff Bezos at this week’s D6 conference.  Here are a few notes I made while I watched the two-part video of the interview:

Sticking with tradition, Bezos declined to provide any sales specifics on the Kindle but he did offer one moderately interesting tidbit. If you take the 125K titles that are currently offered for the Kindle and look at the total sales (print and Kindle) for just those 125K titles, Kindle sales represent about 6% of the total.  Good luck using that figure to come up with an estimate of the number of Kindles sold to date!

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By David Rothman

Microsoft’s Live Search Books tried hard to make a splash, with regular ads in Publishers Weekly and elsewhere—a major marketing effort. And it recruited Theresa Horner, a key e-book exec from HarperCollins. Now Live’s going dead. So what’s a publisher to do? Regardless of how certain Luddites may feel, many and perhaps most publishing houses want their titles to be discovered online in a book-oriented area (on their terms). And many prefer not to depend on Google alone for tasks such as scanning and digitization.

The tugboat angle

A possibility worth investigating is from Ingram Digital, a branch of the Ingram conglomerate known for its huge p-book distributor. Would you believe that Ingram Industries is actually in the barge business as well? Makes sense, come to think of it. Books and coal andwhatnot—just different collections of atoms (that’s an Ingram-owned tugboat to the right).

Back to the book kind of atoms—or, rather, electrons or the change from one to the other. Ingram is "offering to transition all participating Microsoft Live Search Books publishers into its Ingram Search and Discover platform at no cost, enabling publishers to continue making their content searchable and available to readers." I’d welcome people’s thoughts on this and other discovery possibilities; I understand that 1,100 publishers are now using Ingram Digital’s services, which, on second thought, might aspire to be a digital Mississippi rather than a mere barge shop.

The BookStore and annotations factors

Among other things, it will be interesting to see if Ingram Digital and Macmillan’s BookStore service end up butting heads eventually in a big way, and also if either tries to develop interbook links, and whether the two could work together in this and other and areas and maybe even cooperate with librarians in link development. OCLC involvement as well? Or contract work someday for a TeleRead-style digital library system?

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By a TeleBlog Contributor

News release:

LibreDigital, a division of NewsStand, Inc., and OverDrive, the leading eBook and digital audiobook distributor, today announced that they will enable publishers to generate revenue by offering complementary services to deliver eBooks, audiobooks, music and video titles to consumers. As a result, publishers will be able to automatically package for resale digital content from the LibreDigital Internet Warehouse and link to OverDrive’s large worldwide distribution channel of more than 7,500 libraries, schools and retailers such as Los Angeles Public Library, Borders, WHSmith, efollett.com and others.