TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Print on demand’ 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.

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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 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.

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By David Rothman

A rival of the Kindle e-reader is to come from a Hearst-backed venture called FirstPaper, which PaidContent describes as a “stealth start up” with offices in Palo Alto and New York City.

If speculation pans out, the new e-book reader will use a flexible color screen nearly as big as a tabloid paper, and you’ll be able to change “pages” by touching the screen. True? Such were the possibilities brought up by the Crosscut news site in Seattle in a May 2007 story on Hearst’s plans to test-market a wireless newspaper “sometime in the next two years.”

Supposedly Hearst’s Seattle P-I was to be a testbed. Kenneth Bronfin, president of Hearst Interactive, denied anything was planned for Seattle. But what about the basic technology? And would the Seattle-related report tie in with the news of the First Paper startup? Not sure.

Media giant backing First Paper

What is clear is that giant Hearst corporation (headquarters shown) is backing FirstPaper. It’s an investor in E Ink, the original developer of the display technology that the Kindle, Sony Reader, iLiad and Cybook Gen3 and similar machines use.

Might E Ink or companies using the technology, such as Prime View International PVI, favor the First Paper device over the Kindle—by way of newest technology? I don’t know. If that happens, however, many in the Print on Demand community would consider this to be wonderful payback for someone with monopolistic ambitions such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

The involvement of a content company like Hearst in a rival e-reading device might also reduce Bezos’s power over details such as pricing and distribution. The startup is calling itself “well funded,” according to PaidContent, and I wonder if  other media corporations might be involved. One way or another, I’d be be surprised if the FirstPaper device didn’t debut as a distribution vehicle for newspapers and magazines, not just books. The more content you can get from one platform, the more chances of success. But you can bet that e-books will show up via the FirstPaper project, for the SVP is none other than Lee Shirani, who headed Sony Reader’s e-book store.

No format info known—but reader will be Linux-based, with Mozilla-related tech

On the technical side, I don’t see any information about formats to be used. If Hearst is sensible, however, it will join other major companies in the IDPF and press for robust .epub standards not just for books but also newspapers and  magazines. Let’s hope that it rejects a proprietary approach similar to the one that Bezos is favoring for the Kindle. As shown by the decline of America Online, such a strategy would most likely be a loser in the long run. Nonproprietary standards would reduce the same fears that Hearst would use its size to strong-arm publishers.

Use of .epub would be consistent with Heart’s plans to rely on some open technologies. PaidContent says that FirstContent “is developing this device based on Linux and will have some variation of Mozilla browser or its underlying technology (XUL) in it. Some hints about the company’s plans are here and here in the job listings.” The second “here” now longer works. But ahead, I’ll reproduce, verbatim, the first link:

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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.

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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.

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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…

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By David Rothman

Could print on demand, shown in action in this Lightning Source video, be the new mainstream someday? Boosters say POD is catching up with regular printing in quality and speed and price. All but the Clancys and the Grishams may be POD candidates. “Wherever there are books just sitting on a shelf, that’s a problem that we can solve,” a Lightning Source executive tells Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly. “There will be a tipping point for POD frontlist printing. We can service any print run but those of the largest-selling authors.” Not all publishers would agree. What do you think? Could POD make even more of a difference in the profitability of the publishing industry, near term, than E could?

PW on Lightning Source’s rise: “Walking into Lightning Source’s sprawling plant just outside of Nashville, Tenn., CEO J. Kirby Best recites a list of print-on-demand milestones: Lightning Source has grown from three employees in 1997 to more than 500 today; the company digitally scans about 2,000 books a week and prints 1.2 million books a month. ‘It took us seven years to print 10 million books,’ says Best as we stroll through the 159,000-sq.-ft. building. ‘This year we published 10 million books in the first 11 months.’”

And a reminder: POD is a technology, nothing more. While it’s the new norm for self-published books, including many amateurish ones, good little publishers such as Drollerie Press are also using it.

Related: Via POD you can obtain printouts of books in the public domain, via Public Domain Reprints.org. Some 1.7 million titles are available. I’m trying out the service and will let you know how it works out.

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By David Rothman

Time Magazine is all agog over the Espresso Book Machine (”meaning ‘fast,’ not ‘coffee’) because it can “churn out a 300-page paperback on demand, complete with color cover, in just 3 min. The $50,000 machine could transform libraries into minibookstores, making hard-to-find titles as accessible as cappuccinos. At $3 a book they might be cheaper too.” In fact, the machine is a Time “Inventions of the Year,” based on reader votes.

On-the-spot, instant print on demand excites me, too, and I know that the people behind the machine will make lots of progress. For a jolt of realism about the machine’s current capabilities, however, check out an if:book post from August 3. (Time item found via Peter Brantley.)

Related: Time snubs e-books for Invention of the Year, in MobileRead. Oh, come on, folks. It’s not one or the other. No need to cancel your subscription. Remember that the number one Gadget of the Year is the e-book-capable iPhone. And OLPC’s even-more capable XO laptop is a winner in the computer category (even though the mentioned price of $150 is currently $38 or so less than the price of the day). “The stripped-down machine with its sunlight-friendly screen,” says Time, “is perfect for kids in the developing world, and the low price encourages governments to buy in bulk.”

Technorati Tags: POD , print on demand , Expresso book machine , book machine , Time Magazine , OLPC , OLPC laptop , $100 laptop

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By David Rothman

“Truthfully, when I see a book that is self published, either in e-book format or print format, I tend to believe it is simply not good enough for a publishing house and therefore not worth my time. This may be completely inaccurate and I might be missing out on great books, but with the enormous number of books available from NY and reputable ebook publishers, I can’t think of a reason I would take a chance with my time and money on a book neither set of publishers wanted.” - Jane at DearAuthor.com, who, in a related vein, also wonders about the economics of POD books. So, gang, what do you think?

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