TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for September, 2008

By Chris Meadows

Update, 10/02: The Copyright Royalty Board has decided not to change the royalty rate after all.

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The National Music Publishers’ association has requested that the royalty rate they receive on songs from the iTunes Music Store to be raised from 9 cents to 15 cents per track. The Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, D.C., which sets royalty rates on statutory licenses, is expected to issue a ruling Thursday.

Apple feels that the music market is not mature enough to raise prices beyond the 99 cent price point—that doing so would inevitably lead to declines in sales and profits. Rather than absorb the increase or raise prices to compensate, they say, they might have to close the iTunes music store. In a statement submitted to the board last year, iTunes vice president Eddy Cue wrote:

If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the … royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss – which is no alternative at all. Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.

Many are justifiably skeptical of Apple’s threat, given that the iTunes music store is one of the biggest inducements to consumers to buy an iPod—Apple’s most popular product ever. It seems doubtful that Apple would rather shutter the most popular retail music outlet in the world than work out some kind of compromise. With iPod sales numbering literally into the millions, that is a great deal of money to leave on the table.

But certainly if the unthinkable happened and the iTunes Music Store did close its doors, its overwhelming popularity means that it would have the potential to serve as an object lesson in the drawbacks of Digital Rights Management in ways that Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google’s music or video store closures never could.

Although iTunes does not have to connect to the servers to play each song, new computers or devices do have to be authenticated in order to play already-prchased music on them. If shuttering the store also meant shutting down authentication, it might not take long for millions of consumers to get very angry.

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By Robert Nagle

As you know, David Rothman recently had a heart attack. Also, I have been out of the country for the last three weeks, so Teleread has been kind of slow as a result. But I’m back now and will have more time for this blog.

Obviously, filling in for David will be difficult, and I’m not the only one who hopes he comes back soon.

In the meantime, I’ll be the acting editor. If you have any teleread matters you need taken care of, feel free to contact me. idiotprogrammer at fastmailbox.net

By Paul Biba

I was getting nervous because David hasn’t posted in so long, so I called him at home and his wife told me that he had a heart attack last Thursday night at about 10pm.  Last Friday he had quadruple bypass surgery and is recovering.  Evidently all 4 arteries were 90% blocked.  David didn’t smoke and was a vegitarian, but his wife said he has a family history of heart problems.  She is hoping that he will be released from the hospital this Thursday.

According to his wife, when David comes home he will be very weak and not capable of doing too much.  Therefore please don’t call him or send him email.  His mailbox is already backed up and he won’t be able to spend too much time on it for a while.  However, he is already talking to his wife about the status of his book, so it certainly looks as if he is recovering.

I would suggest that anyone who wants to send their regards to David do so by adding a comment to this post so that David just has to look in one place. If this post gets pushed down by other articles I’ll put it back up at the top again.

For all those who have permission to post on this blog, let’s try to keep things going while David is under the weather.

For those who don’t have permission to post, if you want to send me a post by email, I will put it up with due credit to you.  Keeping the blog running is the best thing we can do for David at this point.  You can send me any postings at paulkbiba at gmail.com

October 1 Update: Check the Medical Status post for the latest information about David Rothman’s medical condition. We’ll try to update it over time.

By Robert Nagle

David Rothman had a heart attack on the weekend of September 25, 2008.  (Read Paul Biba’s initial announcement here).  David will be away indefinitely. This URL  will relay updates about David’s condition.

(By the way, comments are disabled for this post. If you want to wish David good health, you should make a comment on the initial announcement linked above)

(Also, not sure why the sidebar for this page is doing crazy things. Please excuse that for now).

Keep in mind that people at TeleRead may not know the latest information or we may not be in a position to disclose it publicly. But we will do our best to keep you informed about updates.  [If you have TeleRead business which requires action or a response, you should forward it to Paul Biba at paulkbibaNOSPAMgmail.com - TeleRead staff].

• September 30. Initial Announcement.
• October 2. I talked to David Rothman for about an hour. He sounds good although he is still in the hospital and seemed a little less energetic than usual. My guess is that he will be “back” earlier rather than later (in a week or two), but will probably blog much less frequently for the short term. He talked about buying the Dell Mini and was glowing about the wierd gadgets in his medical room. He will probably be moving to a family member’s house today.

By Chris Meadows

On the SF Novelists Blog, author Steven Harper Piziks has posted a rant about e-books and e-publishing that is attracting a fair amount of discussion.

Piziks brings up the same refrain that e-reading critics have repeated since time immemorial: nobody wants to read on a computer screen, and e-reading devices suffer from a "chicken and egg" dilemma where there needs to be a critical mass of e-books to support e-readers and vice versa.

To solve this dilemma, Piziks proposes using a "cellphone" business model for e-book readers: give basic readers away for free, just as cellphone providers subsidize their customers’ cellphones.

On the one hand, this is certainly attractive from the consumer standpoint. Who would not like a free e-book device? But on the other hand, cellphone providers are able to give away the phones because they know they will make enough back on cellphone service over time that the cost is a drop in the bucket.

But whereas most giveaway cellphones are in the $50 to $100 range unsubsidized, we still have not reached the point where dedicated e-book readers can be had for under $200 to $300 yet. It would be necessary to sell an awful lot of e-books to make that amount back.

And on the gripping hand, there is already a burgeoning e-book market with which Piziks is either unfamiliar or unconcerned. If Steve Pendergrast’s estimates are to be believed, there may be more people reading on the iPhone and iPod Touch (and that’s not even mentioning the Palm, Windows Mobile, and other eReader-supported platforms) than on the Kindle.

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By Paul Biba

One of the definitions of irony, according to dictionary.com, is:

5. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
6. the incongruity of this.

According to Wikipedia Lessig is:

… founding board member of Creative Commons and is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.

Put the two together with a DRM’d version of his book from Amazon which has just gone on sale, and we have a perfect example of the definition quoted above.

By Paul Biba

It looks as if DRM has taken away people’s music again. The following letter from Wal*Mart was posted by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing. I’m trusting to Cory’s credibility, because I have been unable to verify it from other sources. I think it speaks for itself:

From: Walmart Music Team
Date: Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 7:42 PM
Subject: Important Information About Your Walmart.com Digital Music Purchases
To: xxxxxx@gmail.com

Important Information About Your Digital Music Purchases

We hope you are enjoying the increased music quality/bitrate and the improved usability of Walmart’s MP3 music downloads. We began offering MP3s in August 2007 and have offered only DRM (digital rights management) -free MP3s since February 2008. As the final stage of our transition to a full DRM-free MP3 download store, Walmart will be shutting down our digital rights management system that supports protected songs and albums purchased from our site.

If you have purchased protected WMA music files from our site prior to Feb 2008, we strongly recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you will be able to access them from any personal computer. This change does not impact songs or albums purchased after Feb 2008, as those are DRM-free.

Beginning October 9, we will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com. If you do not back up your files before this date, you will no longer be able to transfer your songs to other computers or access your songs after changing or reinstalling your operating system or in the event of a system crash. Your music and video collections will still play on the originally authorized computer.

Thank you for using Walmart.com for music downloads. We are working hard to make our store better than ever and easier to use.

By Chris Meadows

Current discussion of DRM in gaming has been dominated by the Spore debacle (as covered extensively here on TeleRead). However, there is a gaming company now starting up that offers another perspective on the issue.

A company called Good Old Games has launched a site, currently in beta, that is selling classic older games with the consent of the games’ publishers. These games are sold inexpensively, for under $10 each. They are DRM-free, and bundled with any DOS emulator or clock-manipulation software necessary to run them properly on modern computers.

Ars Technica has posted a three-page interview with Adam Oldakowski and Michael Kicinski, the people behind Good Old Games (and had previously posted a profile of the service itself). They talk about the philosophy behind their site, and why they feel DRM for computer games is so undesirable.

Lots of people wrote that with the $6-$10 price points [offered by Good Old Games], it’s just not worth searching for pirated editions of those games. You don’t know if they will run properly on your system, and you’ll have a lot of other problems with pirated versions. It’s just easier to buy a game at GOG.com, pay a small amount for it, get lots of cool additional stuff and be a part of a great community of gamers. This is another example of positive motivation which convinced people to give up pirated games.

Though I have not explored the site myself yet (but I have received my beta invitation), I find the idea behind Good Old Games to be an exciting one, and one whose time has definitely come.

Up to this point, older games have been considered "abandonware" because the publishers did not think it worth their time to do anything with them. Hopefully, Good Old Games will prove that the "long tail" applies to computer games as much as everything else, and these games do not have to be "abandoned" anymore.

By Joe Wikert

Now that I’ve had my Kindle for a few months, I recently noticed a pretty dramatic impact on my reading habits.

In my pre-Kindle days I’d spend my reading sessions going through a few magazines as well as a chapter or two of whatever book I happened to be immersed in that week. 

The key point is that the majority of my time was spent reading books.

Book time vs. newspaper time

Nowadays I spend just as much time reading as before, but it’s all centered around my New York Times subscription, my Kindlefeeder RSS feeds and either Time magazine or my most recent addition, MIT’s Technology Review magazine.

I purchased and started reading three other books on my Kindle, but I haven’t touched any of them in at least two weeks.

Information snacking

So for some strange reason, I’m finding the Kindle experience to be more useful when it’s focused on shorter length, more time-sensitive content. Jeff Bezos has spoken before about our current culture’s tendency towards "information snacking", or spending more time with shorter-length works. 

Amazon’s e-reader is supposed to help us embrace longer works (like books) again, but if my experience is any indication, the Kindle (and its wireless functionality) is turning out to be yet another device that enables even more info snacking.

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By David Rothman

DailyLit has started serializing Oxford University Press books via e-mail and RSS. Shown is one of the choices, What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam—96 installments for $4.95 starting with three free samples.

Given OUP’s stature within publishing, the deal is another sign that e-mail/RSS serialization idea is catching on. This is A Good Thing for busy nontechies who might not always be within WiFi hotspot distance. Or they may not want to mess with format conversions.

DailyLit has also announced a bunch of fresh features, such as the ability to spotlight new or especially active members of forums.

Another deal of interest: Arrangements between Tizra and the Association of American University Presses to provide discounts on the Tizra Publisher platform (intended to reduce the amount of tech savvy needed for e-publishing).

By Chris Meadows

Someone on the Mobileread forums pointed out this handy piece of software being given away by Giveaway of the Day: a PDF to HTML converter, normally a $50 value. This could be useful for people looking to convert PDF documents to more readable e-book formats.

The giveaway will only last until the end of Thursday, September 25th in the US Pacific time zone. Be sure and back it up once you download it; you won’t be able to go back and download it again!

By David Rothman

iRex e-readers have won over many a serious e-booker.

The sleek new 1000 series strikes me, at first glance from afar, as a joy for recreational reading at home. Not just the business uses that iRex Technologies  is focusing on. Thin and stylish, the machines boast 10.2-inch screens and can even survive a drop of a meter.

I hated to send back a review unit of an earlier model, the iLiad 2nd Edition. Especially I loved the ease of flipping pages. iRex and Sony, while not perfect, might well be the champs of ergonomics in the E Ink World.

The nonmysteries behind iRex’s mass market challenge

So why aren’t iRex e-readers a mass market phenomenon?

It isn’t just the prices, which start at US$599 for the iRex Book Edition (now out for stock—some hope here?). Nor generic e-book problems such as DRM and eBabel.

Despite pleas from me and others, iRex refuses to simplify its software. Nor has it made its wireless as easy to use as the Kindle’s. Either iRex isn’t using focus groups or is failing to use them properly. I’m baffled. Yes, I am eager to hear from my friends at iRex and others who might disagree.

USA Today: Glitchy even by beta standards

The latest unfortunate result of iRex’s shortcomings, in the ease of use department, could be a USA Today review headlined $749 electronic reader by iRex could be more user-friendly.

I’d like to catch up with a 1000S and see for myself, once iRex has had more time to wipe out glitches (as an aside, there’s also a cheaper $649 model, the 1000, without a stylus). Meanwhile Personal Tech columnist Edward C. Baig’s impressions would certainly jibe with my past ones of iRex devices as a consumer products; I just hope iRex’s business-oriented strategy succeeds. Later in this post I’ll pass on some cool, B2BISH wrinkles from another source.

More from the USA Today pan

But first, as an act of tough love for a company I very much like, let me reproduce Baig’s comments at length, while keeping in mind that B2B apps aren’t his main focus:

The large display and E Ink-based screen are well suited for digital newspapers and other reading materials, though at least one PDF document I added was tough to make out. To be fair, the original document was in color, while the iRex device is gray-scale.

I sampled PDFs of Alice in Wonderland, Crime and Punishment and other works. You can jump to pages in a document by using the stylus to tap on tabs at the bottom of the screen. Or you can use your finger to lightly tap physical arrow sensors on the outside of the screen.

But the system is slow to boot up, and the interface is unattractive and unintuitive. If I turned the machine on when the SD card (with content) was inserted, the first and only thing visible on the home screen is an icon for settings.

Icons for documents, inbox and help showed up only if I inserted the SD card after the machine was turned on. An oddly labeled "up a level" icon on the home screen is a dead giveaway that iRex could use a lesson in designing far-friendlier software.

By summoning a main menu, you can rotate the display, add bookmarks, find words and look up dictionary definitions. But the only way to turn the device off is to summon that menu again and tap or navigate to a turn-off-device icon.

I’ll make certain allowances for a beta device. But I’m hard-pressed to recommend something this expensive and this much of a kludge.

Enough said. Now, far more positively, here are some nifty B2B possibilities passed on to me from Weibe de Jager of Ebookreaders.nl (thanks Weibe!):

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By Chris Meadows

We already knew that consumers were fed up with Spore’s DRM, but it seems that one of them has now launched a class-action lawsuit over it. (A PDF of the complaint can be downloaded here.) The lawsuit alleges that Electronic Arts does not disclose that SecuROM will be installed along with Spore, and that SecuROM cannot be uninstalled by any means short of reformatting and reinstalling Windows.

Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera is dubious about some of the claims made in the lawsuit. He notes that the complaint about uninstalling SecuROM is factually incorrect—there is an uninstaller available—and points out that many of the rest of the claims made in the complaint are unprovably vague. He concludes:

There are are very real and very troubling things about the use of SecuROM and the control it has over your computer. The lack of any specific complaints in this lawsuit makes it seem more like a money grab than anything else, and may detract from legitimate attention paid to the problems plaguing DRM in PC gaming.

It is understandable that the frustration Spore’s DRM provokes might lead to litigation, but worrisome that the litigation could end up hurting more than it helps.

Related: Other Spore coverage on TeleRead.

By David Rothman

Apple still hates Podcaster, the tiny startup that the suits say is an evil threat to iTunes.

Steve Jobs and buddies—or are these "friends" actually saboteurs from within Apple?—continue to ban Podcaster from the App Store.

Door slammed on Podcaster shoppers

And now Apple has zapped Podcaster’s ability to provision more iPhones and Touches. Read more via Techmeme roundups.

Existing Podcast customers, including TeleBloggers who followed up on my enthusiastic review of the beta, can still download and install the program. You just had to sign up before September 23. But thanks to Apple suits, would-be new iPhone/Touch customers are SOL. Here you could have downloaded podcasts directly to your portable gadget!

The legal and dev angles: Bad news for Apple?

Could there be anti-trust issues down the line? Weren’t developers supposed to have a way to bypass the App Store?

Google, moreover, especially after having just seen T-Mobile unveil the spiffy new phones for the Android platform,  should love Apple’s latest missteps. Photo is from Gizmodo’s hand-on ("the screen is fantastic").

And on the e-book front…

Lexcycle (Stanza), eReader and other first-rate developers of e-book apps also may want to consider the implications here.

It’s not as if they’ll stop developing for the iPhone. But at least in their place, I’d start paying a lot more attention to Google’s rival Android platform, the new destination for Podcaster.

Actual thinking at eReader and Lexcyle, right now?

Just as in the case of download stats (here and here), I’d love to hear from Steve Pendergrast at eReader and Marc Prud’hommeaux at Lexcycle about the ramifications of Apple’s Podcast policy, if they care to comment.

Steve and Marc, are you concerned that Apple will muscle in on a business you’ve developed? Not ban you, necessarily—but perhaps restrict you?

Needless to say, both eReader and Stanza have distribution capabilities built-in—eReader directly and Stanza with help from Feedbooks’ API. So what happens if Apple gets serious about e-books and wants all the action, or at least a heftier part of it than it’s getting now?

By Joe Wikert

Have you ever tried to cancel a Kindle subscription?

I originally signed up for the AP U.S. News feed, as a couple of other Kindle owners told me it’s worth the $1.99 per month. This was before the advent of Kindlefeeder, of course.

Much of the "news" this feed sent me it sent me wasn’t exactly news.

So I figured I’d drop that subscription and switch to the Latest News from The New York Times, also $1.99 per month. Switching to the Times feed was a breeze, of course, but how do you stop an existing feed? You’d think it would be simple, right from your Kindle. Nope.

As with so many services these days, it’s easy to sign up but the provider often makes it difficult to stop. It’s not as bad as the old horror stories of canceling an AOL subscription or, more recently, XM Radio, but it’s still more of a hassle than it should be.

Psst! Unsubscribe tips

Here’s how it’s done: Select the Manage Your Kindle option on Amazon’s top nav bar. On the resulting screen scroll down to the heading "Your active Kindle subscriptions." You’ll see a "Cancel Subscription" option for each of your active subscriptions. Just click on that link for any subscriptions you want to terminate.

Canceling a subscription is actually pretty simple, assuming you’re doing it from your computer. And while it’s conceivable to pull up the same screen on your Kindle, that’s more of a hassle than it’s worth. I think Amazon should just add a "cancel subscription" button inside the feed rather than force you to use a browser.

By Chris Meadows

Of the two companies jointly owned under the Fictionwise banner, eReader has had the less confusing discount program up to this point. With eReader, it was always a straight 10% off any book they sold, as long as you had the coupon code from the weekly newsletter. This was not as big a savings as Fictionwise’s 15% discount club plus micropay rebates program, but on the other hand it was a lot less confusing.

Fictionwise and Micropay

Fictionwise’s program combines markdowns from list price, "Micropay rebates" (in which part of the money you spend is credited to a store credit account that you can use to buy more books), and its 15% off discount club. Since some of the percentages are rounded off but others are not, and they are progressive rather than additive, this means that one "15%" discount will actually save you 14.98%, and two of them combined will save you 27.72% on Old Man’s War, for instance.

And even the "cost after rebate" is not entirely straightforward, since the Micropay rebate amount is still taken out of your bank account when you pay. The book may only "cost" you $9.36 (if you belong to the club), but you still pay $11.01 out of your bank account (to get the book plus $1.65 store credit).

eReader’s "Rewards Dollars"

Today, eReader’s discount program takes a step in that direction. Instead of being a straight 10% discount taken at the checkout, it now becomes a 15% "Rewards Dollars" discount. As with Fictionwise’s Micropay, you now pay the full price of the book, but 15% of that amount goes into a store credit account for use against a future purchase. It is no longer necessary to enter a coupon code, just to be subscribed to the newsletter at all.

Ulike Micropay, you can use Rewards Dollars to pay part of the cost and pay the rest yourself. But on the other hand, even if you use up all your "Rewards Dollars" on a given purchase, the purchase itself will generate Rewards Dollars toward the next one. You can never "use up" your Rewards Dollars entirely.

I find it a little sad that eReader is moving from a straightfoward discount to a more confusing rebate system, but on the other hand it is still considerably less confusing than Fictionwise’s program. And eReader’s FAQ page claims that "the overwelming [sic] majority of our customers said they would prefer an automatic 15% Rewards system over a 10% coupon code."

By David Rothman

Native Rites, a mystery set in Kent, is another free novel by David Hewson.

A a best-selling writer, he has also put online a freebie of "a non-fiction account of an environmental campaign I was involved in."

Related: Lively ‘Dead’ mystery: Free download at Scribd.