TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Amazon Kindle’ Category

By David Rothman

“Speaking of libraries,” Philip Gulley writes in a mostly lighthearted essay in Indianapolis Monthly on Kindles vs. traditional books, “what will become of them if the Kindle succeeds? Copyright laws, written by lobbyists and passed through a Congress beholden to big money, will prevent libraries from downloading books and sharing them for free with patrons, which will effectively make literature and information inaccessible to the poor. Books will become like healthcare in this country, available to some and not others. Congress might eventually remedy this, but it will take 50 years, and in the meantime three generations of poor children won’t know the pleasure of curling up with a good book, expanding their minds, and broadening their opportunities.”

The TeleRead take: Well, Philip, you’re off on the details, but I like the spirit of the above, which, alas, considering the copyright lobby’s influence in D.C., turns out to be less of a joke than you thought. TeleRead, anyone? And new business and access models for libraries, with fair compensation to creators?

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By David Rothman

The positives of Ezra Klein’s CJR article and related video: He’s a new Kindle user and hails the machine as “credible. As a product of Amazon, it’s intertwined with the world’s largest online bookstore, legitimized by the one company that can lay some claim to having already changed the way we use, or at least acquire, books. The real question, though, is what took so long?”

In general, the Klein article is upbeat on E and notes the possibilities of  adjustable font sizes, outbound links, interactivity and updated books (albeit, I’d assume, not the 1984ish variety). At the same time his CJR piece correctly recognizes that the Kindle and the like are not perfect replacements for paper books, given the screen-contrast problems of E Ink, among the other flaws.

The negatives—blindness to the eBabel and DRM issues: Um, Ezra, I mostly liked your piece, but as an e-book newbie, you unwittingly left out a few details. Unless we want the whole bleepin’ e-book world to revolve around Jeff Bezos, we deserve nonproprietary e-book standards in areas ranging from the basic format to guidelines for shared annotations and interbook linking.

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By Joe Wikert, a VP in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons

The Silicon Alley Insider is speculating that Amazon is currently selling about 48,000 Kindles per month. For the record, even though I’m in the publishing industry, I have no insider knowledge about the device’s sales rate. That said, 48K/month sounds extremely high to me.

Why? I’m pretty sure I’m tracking all the Kindle-related blogs and message boards, and I’m just not seeing any significant up-tick in postings, traffic or buzz. Although the Kindle has been back in stock and shipping for at least a couple of weeks now, I’m seeing roughly the same number of weekly posts/comments on the Kindle Forum and Kindle Korner as there were when it was out of stock.

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By David Rothman

So is it possible to get $30 off your Kindle, bringing the total down to $369? That’s the offer from Wallet Buddy. One catch, and there may be more, is that you need to be approved for an Amazon Visa card. And will the free two-day shipping apply?

Actually this offer is far from new (also see here), even if it isn’t necessarily common knowledge. Expiration date is listed as May 31, 2008, but I suspect the fun will continue past then, based on past extensions. One MobileReader speculated in the past that Chase, not Amazon, was behind this, and in fact the two companies do have a credit card connection.

Reminder: We’ll continue to point out both the pros of the Kindle (such as easy wireless access to e-books where coverage is available, a big help for technophobes) and the cons (format-and-DRM-related tricks—including the inability to read your purchased books off your cellphone or even your desktop).

And a question: If you haven’t bought a Kindle yet, just how low will be price have to go before you do, assuming you can stomach the DRM and the rest?

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By David Rothman

Drat those evil techies—interfering with the get-a-horse-style forecasts of hardworking Luddites!

While academic librarians focus on the current prices of e-readers, let’s remember that PVI will be churning out 120,000 six-inch displays per month in the second half of ‘08, and meanwhile better tech is on the way. We ran a somewhat similar item earlier, but here’s an accidental jog from MobileRead with a link to a few extra details. Remember, displays are the highest-priced part of e-readers. Hello, American Libraries? Are academic librarians—at least those who’ve never even used a Kindle—the ultimate e-book authorities?

Other links of interest:

–”Waterstone’s is believed to have signed a deal to stock Sony’s e-book reader when it is introduced into the UK later this year,” reports the Bookseller. “It is understood that the retailer will be the exclusive vendor of the device in the UK.”

–OCLC introduces high-priced digital archiving service is the headline over Barbara Quint’s clueful article in Information Today. Maybe those costs are what the academic librarians should be ranting about. Quote from Barbara on annual fees: “Charges for the new service fall into 100-gigabyte chunks with each chunk priced at $750—one hundred and one gigabytes and the price jumps to $1,500.” Too bad that OCLC can’t contract this out privately and use the power of permanent links to help libraries build a true Web of enduring content. That would be better than just letting libraries entrust local content to Amazon or Google without librarians calling the shots. But libraries and coherent information strategies are too often like oil and water. Somehow they don’t always mix. The same—for the most part—with libraries and e-book standards. May that change! Libraries need to tell book-related vendors, “Go ePUB or else…”

–Guess who’s now writing a Publishers Weekly blog that democratically appears in the same location as the others. None other than Sara Nelson, the editor-in-chief. But, Sara, isn’t that risky, even if you’re linked in now to the power people at Reed Business Information? We know how ephemeral blogs can be. Care to restore the Web visibility of E-Book Report—my PW blog that mysteriously disappeared to the dismay of unsuspecting folks who were linking to EBR, in the Web sense? All those tens of thousands of words vanished in a flash, not the best move for PW’s credibility online or off. Reversing PW’s decision would a helpful precedent—and insurance for time when new owners take over PW and perhaps make a few personnel changes. Along with my blog archive, PW zapped those of the former publisher and the woman who hired me. Care to get PW back on the right track on these matters, Sara? Or were your bosses the real ones who ordered the massive link kill? Just who controls PW’s link-preservation policies? Whatever the case, PW, so savvy on many other matters, looked like Idiots Central when it so eagerly murdered the links. No need for a linkocide law, but disappointing just the same. I’m rooting for PW to survive, and I’m afraid, Sara, that Web-hostile linking policies won’t cut it. Smartening up about e-book standards would help, too, just as it would for libraries; does PW really want Amazon and the like to run the book business, Standard Oil fashion?

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By David Rothman

“We are a public school district with a corporate Amazon account. In good faith we purchased a Kindle. When it came time to download books, we discovered Amazon would only allow customers to order by credit card. Public school libraries, academic libraries and public libraries do not have corporate credit cards. So, bottom line, Amazon won’t let us buy Kindle books on our corporate account via a purchase order. Our Kindle is useless to us and our students have no access to this great technology. So much for innovation and Amazon’s lack of leadership in emerging technologies! And now we have a $400 loss at our taxpayers’ expense.” - A school librarian in New York.

The TeleRead take: Read the comments (appearing below her post), which overwhelmingly defend Amazon. I’d agree with them for the most part. That said, Amazon would do well not to allow purchase orders without warning customers of the complications—including the Kindle’s licensing terms, suggesting that this is really machine for individual use. See a LibraryJournal article and Rochelle Hartman’s thoughts on these matters. Psst! If the librarian and her school really want to keep the Kindle, they could download free nonDRM classics or buy nonDRMed books in Mobipocket format or DRMed ones from sources such as Fictionwise. Carefully read the format-related information in store FAQs. Confusingly, the Kindle can read nonDRMed Mobi for public domain sites and many stores but not the “protected” type unless the store has arranged for this.

Meanwhile, if nothing else, we know that the Kindle is in use at a New Jersey library—presumably one with a credit card—despite the legal questions. No, this isn’t the most school-and-library-friendly machine, but as long as you know the risks and workarounds, it’s far, far from useless. Of course, the Kindle will be more useful if Amazon gets behind the ePub standard, which could increase the number of books available for it.

Two public domain sites with Mobi/Kindle books: Feedbooks and Manybooks.net.

Image: Kindle with Sony Reader—CC-licensed from Jblyberg.

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By David Rothman

Amazon is suing the State of New York over collection of sales taxes—in a case that could have important repercussions for sellers of both e- and p-books. That’s a long way from the POD and ePub issues, but meanwhile here’s a tip for Jeff Bezos.

Perhaps a kinder, gentler Amazon, in those two areas, would help your company come across as more likable and yield benefits in seemingly unrelated legal controversies. If you’re gonna fight people who say you’re killing off small bookstores, you’d better cut back on your Standard Oil act.

Housekeeping: Stay tuned later today for Ficbot’s e-book-oriented review of the Asus Eee PC. I’ll also have e-book-related thoughts on Adobe’s loosening of Flash restrictions.

Technorati Tags: Amazon,Amazon.com,Jeff Bezos

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By April Hamilton

Moderator: April Hamilton self-published two novels as Kindle e-books recently. The views here are her own, and we’ll welcome other perspectives. - D.R.

Read many good books lately? Me neither, and as both a reader and novelist, I wanted to know why. What I’ve learned is by turns shocking and troubling.

Thanks to over two decades of consolidation, the U.S. publishing industry is now lorded over by just six media megaconglomerates, Viacom, Time Warner and News Corp. among them. If these names sound familiar, it’s because they belong to the artistic visionaries who brought us The Moment of Truth TV show, virtually every Adam Sandler movie ever made, People magazine and much more of the same. They’ve made a lucrative science of cranking out the media equivalent of junk food: overpackaged, overhyped, disposable distractions that never turn out to be quite as satisfying as they looked in the ad, and sometimes even leave you feeling a little guilty. To the media megas, the decision of whether or not to acquire any property, be it a manuscript, screenplay, or video of the starlet du jour going commando, hinges on just one question: how much money do we stand to make on this?

Greedy and blockbuster-centric

Media megas have a right to make a buck just like any other business, but the greedy, blockbuster-centric mentality they’ve used to bring the mainstream film and TV industries to heel is now being forcibly applied to book publishing. In a 2006 Wall Street Journal piece entitled The Hot New Advance: $0, Vanguard Press publisher Roger Cooper said, “Publishing is now very much like opening weekend grosses in the movie business, it’s about exploding out of the box and selling as many copies as possible.” The article spoke of the casino-like environment of the new publishing world, in which newly-released books have only a week or two to hit big before being relegated to the back of the store. As National Writers Union VP Phil Mattera said in his eye-opening 1998 article ‘Crisis of the Midlist Author in American Book Publishing,’ “Hardcover publishers lose money on most of their titles and depend greatly on a few bestsellers…the large publishers are increasingly inclined to concentrate their resources on books that have the greatest potential to become bestsellers. Like Hollywood, book publishing has become a business driven by the quest for blockbusters.”

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By David Rothman

Amy’s Tech Store, apparently an Amazon seller, is offering a $20 Kindle rebate. Caveat emptor. Remember, I didn’t go through with the transaction and don’t know about the rebate. Price of the Kindle is still the usual $399.

What the rebate form says:

“To Receive Your Mail-In Rebate:

1. Purchase a Kindle between 5/1//2008 and 5/31/08 at amystechstore.com.

2. Requests must be postmarked by 6/30/08. Claims postmarked after this date will not be honored.

3. Please allow 4-6 weeks for processing. If you do not receive your rebate after 6 weeks, you may email amy@amystechstore.com and you will receive a prompt response.

4. Please keep a copy of all materials submitted for your records.

5. Mail this completed certificate along with a photocopy of your packing slip and the original Kindle UPC (cut out from the box) to:

Amy’s Tech Store
Kindle Rebate
PO Box 56612
Atlanta GA 30343″

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By David Rothman

Congratulations to Michael Chabon, author of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, for nominations for the Edgar, Hugo and Nebula within relevant categories. In fact, as noted in Media Bistro’s Galley Cat blog, he’s already a Nebula winner.

Now here’s the e-book angle. TYPU fits not just within the mystery genre (the Edgar) but also the SF-and-fantasy area (the Hugo and Nubla). It is, after all, alternate history. During World War II, the U.S. donates land for a temporary Jewish settlement in the then-territory of Alaska; and within the settlement, a murder takes place. Couldn’t e-help, since it’s a lot easier to juggle around electrons than the atoms of a multi-genre book?

E-stores vs. p-stores

At an old-fashioned paper bookstore or library, just where do you put TYPU? On the mystery shelf? The SF-and-fantasy-one? Perhaps both, but then you’re taking away space from other books.

But at an online e-book store? TYPU can show up in a number of categories without this problem. Of course, there might be less space for other titles on the Web pages for most-featured titles, but the hassles are fewer—you would not be reducing the number of titles carried. Same for e-libraries.

The medium for hyphenated books

E-books, in fact, as shown by the abundance of vampire-romances, SF-thrillers and so on, are the medium to think about for hyphenated genres.

HarperCollins, Chabon’s publisher, should be making hay with E, right?

Now the kicker–no e-book of TYPU, apparently.

And now the kicker: So far I can’t find an e-book edition of TYPU, not even in the Kindle format. Am I missing something? What’s taking HarperCollins so long? Is Chabon or his agent resisting, or the problem in-house? Strange. Isn’t HarperCollins supposed to be open to experimentation? In fact, timely releases of e-books at this point are hardly just an experiment at many publishers. Come on, HarperCollins. Get with it or at least explain the apparent delay in releasing Chabon’s TYPU in E.

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By David Rothman

Just one e-book format may not be enough for your PDA, cellphone or other gizmo—thanks to the Tower of eBabel. Even Amazon’s Kindle store has its limitations. The 110,000+ books, newspapers and blogs buyable there are a fraction of the millions of books and other items available. While Amazon wants everyone to be represented in the store, I doubt that will happen before Jeff Bezos is colonizing Mars.

Defenders of eBabel would say, “Just download another e-reader.” Or if you must, buy and learn another gizmo; never mind the several hundred dollars. Meanwhile, deaf to user pleas, defenders of DRM might add, “Just contact tech support if you run into problems.” Yes, of course—with all the spare hours people have on their hands today. I won’t swallow, either, the argument of Amazon defenders that we can just wipe out the DRM hassles by standardizing the whole world on the Kindle and letting Jeff monopolize e-books, the way he’s tried to nuke POD competitors.

Empathy, please—not just technology

Here’s the big problem, not technical, but something more basic: simple lack of empathy with users. For the techies and business people of E-Bookdom, I would recommend The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend experiment, where the author of the Content Consumer blog finds that his far-from-dumb girlfriend can’t even figure out how to download a YouTube video. And here some Ubuntu advocates keep saying their OS and related apps are consumer-ready! In fairness to Ubuntu, the YouTube problem seems to have been mainly others’ fault, not the OS’s, but do people like the girlfriend really care? Oh, well, at least the GF was able to use Gimp to “photoshop a picture of her face onto my body.”

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By Joe Wikert, a VP in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons

Why couldn’t Kindle 1.0 owners get $150 in trade-in credit when they bought the next-gen Kindles? That’s a great idea posted on the Kindle forum earlier today. It’s like the loyalty programs of some automakers. “Trade your 2005 Red Barchetta”—great Rush tune, incidentally—”and you’ll qualify for the Barchetta loyalty discount of $1,000, addition to the usual rebates we’re offering.”

Kindle 1.0 will have to be supported long after Kindle 2.0 arrives. In fact, could you imagine being told at some point that your Kindle 1.0 device isn’t supported any longer? Now that would cause a ruckus!

The people Amazon should value the most

So, since Kindle 1.0 will be viable for many years, what’s the harm in Amazon buying back a bunch of them as owners upgrade to 2.0? They could easily sell them to new Kindle customers, albeit for something much less than the $399 charged for new units today. And what a great way to reward the customers you value most, your early adopters! They’re the ones out there showing off their new purchase and you can bet they’re evangelizing your product to their friends.

Apple has never done something like this, as far as I know. Jeff Bezos, why not use this opportunity to set a new standard in customer loyalty and rewards?

Moderator’s note: Blame me, not Joe, for the car not being an exact fit. CC photo credit: Storem. - D.R.

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