TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘on-line books’ Category

By Jon Noring

AAP’s recent open letter strongly supporting the use of ePub by publishers was covered by David Rothman in a separate blog article.

Reading the letter, it was unclear to me whether AAP supported ePub as a consumer format. The letter focused mostly on using ePub as an intermediary format to be converted by wholesalers and retailers into various proprietary end-user formats currently in vogue.

The letter did imply support of ePub as a consumer format, by the use of the word “IF” in the second paragraph, but it was not explicit and some might have interpreted the letter differently. If so, they should read the clarification by Ed McCoyd, the Director of Digital Policy at AAP, who signed the AAP open letter. With his permission I am quoting part of his reply to the letter I wrote him:

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By Aaron S. Miller, CTO of BookGlutton, a Web-based community of readers

Tim O’Reilly is a publisher and web entrepreneur who has proved himself in both worlds, and I always admire his dead-on observations of Web technology and its possibilities for entrepreneurship. Before this last Web 2.0 Expo, he did some nice checks and balances on the hype. It’s always bittersweet to have someone reminding us that we have a long way to go. As an entrepreneur, this is the constant joy and lament.

In the interest of getting past both hype and disdain, we should all take a minute to speculate about what Web 2.0 means for books.

Some might say we missed the boat, but let’s be more hopeful than that. And set aside, for a moment, privacy concerns. Those revolve around critical issues, but they require sustained metaphysical wrangling, and for our purposes, as representatives of the big medium which definitely missed the 7:32 express, it’s better to learn something from the innovation that has already taken place. As O’Reilly wisely points out, we’re not at 3.0 yet.

Looking past the “distractions” issue

How about the “interruptions” and “distractions” that Web 2.0 supposedly brings to books: advertising, twitters, chat, graffiti, or other 2.0 trappings? These things are actually part of the hype, and therefore also objects of disdain. We need to look past both.

The book/screen device/laptop convergence is an imminent catalyst. We need to realize that first. And the Kindle embodies the first major dilemma on the path to the really big changes. Will locked-down architecture and content be the industry standard, or will there be a Book 2.0 approach to things? For most book-lovers, both of these choices are reprehensible, yet one must be chosen.

Apple to break into E?

Don’t equate the Kindle with other e-book devices. The Kindle is a product of a company which came into the world proclaiming “Earth’s Biggest” Web catalog. This device comes to us from a Web company, founded on Web technologies, fed by Web communities and Web shoppers. There’s no doubt Kindle is going to evolve faster than those jellyfish from hardware manufacturers with relatively undeveloped Web properties. For Amazon to step into the hardware space is huge–so huge that I don’t need to spend many more keystrokes on it. The next huge thing would be for Apple to step into the e-book space, something more imaginable now, given Amazon’s monopolistic decrees to publishers and Apple’s good relationships with content distributors. The arena for the big battle will be the Web.

And while much of what we think of as Web right now consists of so-called “social networks,” many of which may seem to have nothing to do with books (or when they do, nothing to do with the actual texts of the books), the core innovations of these properties can still be applied to our own enterprises. And being at the back of the pack, we have the advantage of foresight for the pitfalls.

Here’s a brief map of where “Web 2.0″ is taking us:

• E-book devices will be web-enabled. They’ll be using modern browser engines, like Webkit. They will be open, so that book authors and vendors can reach people the way they want to. They will be on-line as much as we need them to be. They will function offline, even when accessing web content. They will, by default, offer access to the whole Web, not just one vendor’s content.

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