TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘POD’ Category

By Marion Gropen, owner of Gropen Associates

Moderator: Our newest contributor is Marion Gropen, a Simon & Schuster alum well versed in publishing’s business side. Welcome, Marion! - D.R.

Espresso machine: POD printing someday at your local FedEx Kinkos?

David touched on an interesting point. Can fiction be profitably published using POD printing or as e-books? In general, and in my opinion, not yet.

Larger presses rarely want to launch fiction in the small numbers associated with POD printing and e-publishing. They do use these tools for backlist or ARCs (Advance Reading Copies), but when they sign a novel, they put so much money into preparing it for publication that they need to sell many thousands of copies. That requires offset printing.

“Self” and “smaller” as POD  and E users: Big overlaps

Let’s look at smaller publishers and self-publishers—in terms of fiction sold as POD and E.

I lump these publishers together, because successful self-publishers are nearly indistinguishable from all the other very small presses. The so-called “self-publishing companies” have other drawbacks for the novelist, but that’s not for today’s entry.

(more…)

Popularity: 2% [?]

By David Rothman

The Espresso machine is a print-on-demand gizmo, a forerunner of what you may see someday at the corner FedEx Kinko’s. So is the demand out there for it? Todd Anderson, director of the University of Alberta Bookstore, is a believer, judging from PW’s write-up of his comments to a Book Industry Study Group seminar.

Cost of machine: $144,000.

Date of installation: November 1.

Number of books printed through early February: 2,364 books, totaling 537,754 pages, 1,500 more titles printed since then.

No, I haven’t analyzed the economics. I’d welcome thoughts on this. I still think the real action will be in e-books, but the POD alternative is great to have around for the holdouts. Meanwhile how about the eco angle of E vs. POD? Your other comparisons? Of course, for physical bookstores, on-site POD comes with an inherent appeal—less competition.

Popularity: 3% [?]

By David Rothman

Amazon, as we’ve noted, wants to be the Standard Oil of the book trade, whether it’s E, P or POD. Here’s a copy of a statement the Author Guild has just released.

Last week Amazon announced that it would be requiring that all books that it sells that are produced through on-demand means be printed by BookSurge, their in-house on-demand printer/publisher. Amazon pitched this as a customer service matter, a means for more speedily delivering print-on-demand books and allowing for the bundling of shipments with other items purchased at the same time from Amazon. It also put a bit of environmental spin on the move, claiming less transportation fuel is used (this is unlikely, but that’s another story) when all items are shipped directly from Amazon.

(more…)

Popularity: 5% [?]

By David Rothman

“Without the opportunity to benefit from competitive pricing, small publishers risk at best an expensive and needless overhaul of their manufacturing process, and at worst, the loss of their livelihood.” - Terry Nathan, director of PMA, the Independent Book Publishers Association, as quoted in Publishers Weekly.

Popularity: 4% [?]

By David Rothman

In the most laughable of ways, Jeff Bezos and friends have tried to justify their Rockefeller-style POD power grab. Check out Amazon’s excuses and a write-up in PaidContent, then watch commenters like Glenn Fleishman and Angel Hoy tear Bezos apart. Amazon claims the new arrangements will result in quicker shipping to customers. But does it really have POD printers set up in all 24 of its distribution centers? If so, then maybe the note isn’t so laughable. But the ethical issues still abound despite Amazon’s new statement saying publishers can sell pre-printed titles for stocking, or that Amazon need be the exclusive POD outlet. Current arrangements are still discriminatory against Amazon’s POD competitors. (Updated 11:57 a.m.)

Related: Amazon: What do we do next?, in ex-Bowker president Michael Cairn’s PersonaNonData blog. Should publishers work with other retailers to develop enhanced content not found on Amazon?

Popularity: 4% [?]

By David Rothman

What will Amazon do next in the name of “enhancing the customer experience”? Right in the middle of Amazon’s POD controversy, the company has announced proprietary reading glasses—a “revolutionary technology” that currently works only with certain Kindle titles but with all BookSurge-printed books.

“Even people with 20/20 vision will benefit from this breakthrough,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is quoted today in Publishers Weekly. “Our AmGlasses will double the readings speeds of our customers.

“The glasses contain enhanced electronic and are finely tuned to work with E Ink displays and Kindle fonts and take advance of the Kindle’s wireless WhisperNet capabilities, so that you can absorb the books not just through your eyes but also a special magnetic field.”

eBabel angle

The blogsophere is abuzz with indignation. In the e-book realm, it seems as though AmGlasses initially will work only with Kindle books from Random House, S&S, HarperCollins and other special partners.

“We’re planning to extend this option to other publishers in the next six months,” Amazon spokesperson Heather Huntoon assures PW.

As usual, Ms. Huntoon refused to talk to the TeleBlog, but what really dismays me is AmGlasses’ use of proprietary technology that is compatible only with certain Kindle-format content and with BookSurge p-books and deliberately excludes digital titles using the .epub standard.

On the BookSurge side…

Meanwhile Amazon is assuring customers that it retains a respect for the Long Tail. “In fact,” says Huntoon, “our enhanced electronics will work even now with all paper books printed by our BookSurge division—opening up new opportunities for us among those who are not yet ready for e-books. Reading speeds are not as fast as with Kindle books but should still increase a good 75 percent, and in time we expect them to be double the usual rate.”

Amazon stock was up 2.1 percent (1.54) at close yesterday on the NASDAQ, following the AmGlasses announcement, Oprah Winfrey’s videotaped endorsement of the new product, and talk of a forthcoming cover story in Newsweek.

In a related development, a Kindle competitor has surfaced in the U.K., the e-reads iWash, and you can get the details from our friends at if:book.

Update, 10.a.m.: April Fool’s Day alert.

Technorati Tags: BookSurge,reading,book publishing,publishing,Amazon.com,Holly Huntoon

Popularity: 5% [?]

By David Rothman

“Here is my major problem with the situation—their insistence on dictating to us, and everyone else, these new terms over the phone in a high-pressure manner. The fact that they were unwilling to put anything in writing seem to me to suggest that, at a minimum, they knew what they were doing was questionable. Moreover, we are not Amazon’s customers. Lightning Source is their customer. That is who they have the relationship with to distribute our books. They stepped over that business relationship to pit us against Lightning Source. I consider that unethical.” - Post from Booklocker co-owner Richard Hoy to pod_publishers list.

Details: That’s me, not the BL guy, alluding to the Standard Oil comparison made in the TeleBlog post headlined Of oil lamps, Print on Demand, and e-book machines. Furthermore, I’ll not accuse Amazon of violating restraint of trade laws, Rockefeller fashion, or of any other crimes. That’s for lawyers to determine. But in the ethics department, Jeff Bezos is getting deeper and deeper into Standard territory.

In fairness to Amazon: The arm-twisting, while deplorable, might be limited in reach at this point. So far the real pressure seems to be against subsidy-book publishers, according to a list post by Pete Masterson, a publishing expert—as opposed to single book publishers or smaller publishers. True? And what about larger publishers? Comments welcome.

Popularity: 5% [?]

By David Rothman

How can Amazon bully publishers? In the wake of Jeff Bezos’s POD power grab, here are four ways listed by Andrew Savikas of O’Reilly Media—a publishing tech expert and general manager of O’Reilly’s Tools of Change conference. Would the International Digital Publishing Forum and the Association of American Publishers kindly take notice?

All four ways would apply to one extent or another to e-book publishers—if not now, then in the future—and consumers, too, could suffer. Okay, here are the four:

1. “Data-driven lock-in”—for example, reader reviews. As Andrew notes, that can be good for end users. I’ll not quarrel with that. In fact, while I’m not an Amazon affiliate, I regularly link to Amazon pages because the interests of my readers come first. I’ll not play games. Credit where credit’s due!

2. “Format lock-in.” eBabel territory! Actually this would apply especially to e-books, as shown by Amazon’s refusal to let the Kindle render the IDPF .epub standard natively. Publishers may not get excited, until, as, as Andew notes, this “leads to…

(more…)

Popularity: 4% [?]

By David Rothman

Jeff Bezos and friends have already bullied e-publishers into dumping non-Amazon formats for the books sold within its main store.

Now we have this month’s POD power grab, the talk of the blogosphere and beyond. “Amazon is a latter day mill owner,” writes consultant Michael Cairnes, former president of R.R. Bowker, in his PersonaNonData blog. I agree. The new deal from Amazon is that you’d better use Jeff’s BookSurge if you want his big store to carry your print-on-demand books.

Is there any other nastiness that Amazon can pull off on the E front? Plenty, and ideally the International Digital Publishing Forum, the main e-book trade group, will stop being polite and speak out to get Amazon to respect mainstream e-book standards. I’d suggest the same outspokenness from the Association of American Publishers, with which IDPF often cooperates on such matters as industry statistics.

Bullying ahead for the IDPF’s big stakeholders?

The more Kindles are sold, the more Amazon can bully e-publishers and exert new pricing pressures. Not to mention gouging publishers in the future on promo expenses. That wouldn’t be the best of news for the publishers in the IDPF.

Amazon’s growing influence may also set back the IDPF’s .epub standard for e-books, and that could hurt tech companies, including Adobe—which has been a big .epub supporter.

Nor will Amazon’s pushiness in E help public libraries, which right now can’t even lend Kindle books.

Bringing .epub rendering to the Kindle

Simply put, Amazon as it exists today is a threat to all the main constituencies of the IPDF, and it’s high time that the group mount a major campaign to commit Amazon to making its Kindle able to render .epub natively—without translation.

Just remember the successful Toys “R: Us lawsuit, a strong reminder that Jeff and friends don’t always play fair. Amazon’s adoption of .epub for the Kindle would be one way to show good faith, especially if Jeff Bezos were open to the future use of nonproprietary DRM—or if that can’t be happen, no DRM, which I consider the better solution anyway. While other companies, too, need to do .epub, Amazon is the gorilla and should stop thumping its chest and set a better example. Mobipocket’s ability to import .epub is no substitute for  native .epub rendering on the Kindle, which could happen in a very short time via firmware updates.

(more…)

Popularity: 4% [?]

By David Rothman

“Authors and publishers who use Print-On-Demand printers in the U.S. have recently been hearing that Amazon will only continue to carry their works if they switch to Amazon’s own POD property, BookSurge. WritersWeekly has the full story.” - Booktwo.org.

The TeleRead take: Amazon has its share of good traits, but as shown by its bullying of Toys R Us and the related legal findings, this is no charity—in many respects, not all, just the usual robber barons at work in the Seattle haze. TeleBloggers might want to revisit Matthew Josephson’s writings or download a freebie from Manybooks.net, Burton Jesse Hendrick’s Age of Big Business. Hendrick vividly tells among other things how John D. Rockefeller dominated the oil business, not just by financing and running huge refineries like the one shown here, but also by playing dirty against competitors. Far from an enemy of big business, Hendrick often glorifies it—thereby making all the more credible his depiction of Rockefeller’s sleazy side. Oh, and don’t forget the muckraker Ida Tarbell’s classic, The History of the Standard Oil Company, with details far beyond Hendrick’s or Josephson’s. That’s her photo below.

The Standard (Oil) of E?

Now let’s do the inevitable extrapolation from Amazon’s reported POD misdoings, with some 19th century history thrown in. The Amazon Kindle and other e-readers aren’t oil lamps, and e-books and their formats aren’t oil, and, no, I’m not saying that Amazon can achieve as complete a control of e-books as Rockefeller did of oil, but if you go by WritersWeekly’s account of the BookSurge move, Amazon comes across as a bully who can be predatory with both E and P. Consider that someday most p-books may be POD, and that BookSurge is hardly the cheapest choice for writers and publishers. If the WritersWeekly account is accurate, and I see that the Wall Street Journal has apparently confirmed it, I hope Jeff Bezos and crew will reconsider the POD action and also stop trying to inflict his brand of eBabel on the rest of us. Amazon’s track record is bad enough. The main Amazon store abandoned Adobe PDF and Microsoft Reader in favor of its own Mobipocket—forcing publishers to switch.

NonDRMed MP3s—but shackled e-books

Amazon’s monopolistic ways should give publishers all the more reason to get serious about the IDPF’s nonproprietary .epub format at the consumer level and experiment with alternatives to DRM, which is better at protecting monopolies and near-monopolies than at safeguarding books. When, oh when, will the book business catch up with the music business and back off from DRM and proprietary formats? Amusingly, Amazon is now the second-biggest seller of online music or close to it, partly because—guess what?—it is selling nonDRMed MP3s. Time to apply the same commonsense to e-books? Amazon’s share of the pie might not be as big as with DRM, but it’ll be a bigger pie, given all the hassles DRM creates for consumers. Jeeze. Ingenious rascal that Jeff can be at times, who’s to say that a 19th-century Bezos wouldn’t have sold oil lamps designed burn only his oil and able to illuminate only Amazon-blessed books?

(more…)

Popularity: 6% [?]

By David Rothman

Baen has partly crowd-sourced the selection of manuscripts. But what about the ultimate crowd-sourcing—letting buyers choose from an enlarged pool of books? Can the right Web-tools then enable customers to find the right gems? It’s a debate now happening on the eBook Community list. See list moderator and TeleBlog contributor Jon Noring’s initial post and responses from Zumaya Publications Executive Editor Elizabeth K. Burton, publishing consultant Marion Gropen and others.

My take: We need a variety of business models and book selection methods. Can we automate the search for the next Moby Dick? I’ve told of the potential of algorithms, but they’re just one tool to consider, especially when looking for works of literary distinction.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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

The first Borders concept store has been open about a week now and I wanted to take a look at one service that’s part of a new “digital center” feature.  Borders is partnering with Lulu on an initiative called “Personal Publishing.”  If you consider visibility and distribution two of the key challenges in the self-publishing world, the Borders Personal Publishing program addresses both of these issues…sort of…

I like the fact that Borders is lending its brand name to a self-publishing platform like Lulu.  It helps build credibility and avoid the obvious question I’ve heard a few times: “what the heck is a lulu?!”.  This is also a first step in converting a destination buying service into one with more impulse buying potential.  Up to now it’s been pretty difficult to find a self-published title in a brick-and-mortar store.  Even though the Borders program isn’t set up to provide immediate access to physical inventory just yet, I’d like to think that one day the stores will have a high-speed POD machine in the store for those of us who always look for instant gratification.

Personal Publishing would be a nice addition to any bookstore and a good way for Borders to help distinguish themselves from all the other brick-and-mortar outlets.  Be sure to visit the Borders Personal Publishing FAQ (accessible from this page) for more details.

Popularity: 4% [?]