That’s probably a worthwhile subject for a future post… For this post, I’d rather think out loud about altering the pricing models for e-reading devices and e-content.

I won’t buy a Kindle edition of a book that’s more than $9.99. Why? Besides the fact that I’m a cheapskate, I guess I’m still bitter about paying almost $300 for an original Kindle, so I expect to “make it up” with cheaper content. I wonder how many others like me are out there.

I’d say quite a few. Look at the Kindle book bestseller list. Even though there are plenty of Kindle editions priced above $9.99 they rarely make the bestseller list. In fact, as I type these words 14 of the top 25 have a price of $0.00, one is $0.01 and the rest are at or below $9.99. I only found three books in the top 100 priced above $9.99. Three.

Why can’t a device vendor go with more of a cell phone model, where the low price of the device is subsidized by the longer-term commitment to buying content? How many Kindles do you suppose Amazon could sell if they priced it at $99, or $49? The device costs more than that to make, not to mention the cellular charges they pay Sprint, so why would Amazon price device so low? Hoping that they “make it up in volume” won’t help…they’ll just lose that much more money in total.

But what if all the ebook editions Amazon sells for the Kindle weren’t $9.99 but something much closer to the print book’s price on Amazon? So a $30 book at 33% off would be $20 for the Kindle edition (as opposed to $9.99 currently), pretty much the same as what you’d pay for the print version. Now there’s a bigger margin left over for Amazon to keep part of (to cover the loss on the sale of the device), share some with the publisher/author and even pay Sprint. And oh, btw, we’d put an end to the model where some publishers are delaying the e-version so as not to cannibalize the print version’s sales. Publishers would be indifferent, if not prefer the e-version since there’s no cost for manufacturing, inventory or returns. Hallelujah!

Additionally, in order to qualify for that low price on the device, the customer would have to commit to a minimum volume of econtent purchases over the next 2 years. Opt out early and pay a penalty. It’s sounding more and more like a cell phone plan, isn’t it?

What’s not to like about this model? The first vendor to adopt it would likely sell a boatload of devices, maybe more than they could manufacture. It would also protect the value of the intellectual property. Amazon’s $9.99 price on Kindle editions is really cheapening the value of the content. I used to think it was OK because you can’t share an ebook with a friend, but B&N is about to address that problem with the Nook (sort of). I still think we publishers need to figure out how to add value to ebooks and not just live by quickie p-to-e-conversions, but that was the subject of at least one earlier post.

What do you think? Is this in the cards? Will a hardware vendor go this route? I sure hope so.

>Editor’s Note: The above is from Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog and is reprinted with permission. PB

Author Francis Hamit emailed me recently about a major frustration he recently ran into with Amazon. Although Amazon generally offers a terrific customer service experience, Francis’ story sheds light on the challenges faced by authors and other content providers. I asked him to write a guest post about his experience and here’s what he had to say:

I’ve pulled the Kindle edition of my novel “The Shenandoah Spy”. Although it was priced at six dollars less than the print version, it sold less than one percent as well as that edition. I saw a post from another author who said he was selling thousands of copies of the Kindle editions of his novels, but at a much lower price. I thought that perhaps if I dropped the price, sales would improve.

One of the problems with distributing your work on Kindle is that Amazon.com makes thousands of public domain classics available at 99 cents each. Forget about your contemporaries, you’re competing with Dickens and Trollope and the like, and they have the price advantage. If you have a print edition at $18.95, you don’t want to compete with yourself by going too low on the e-book edition. There is a previous serialized version of this novel, in 14 parts, still available on Amazon Shorts. I decided to lower the price to match at $6.99.
I also noticed that the text-to-speech version had been enabled. This is something that was not part of Kindle when I uploaded the file last year, and something that I have already said I will not permit in a letter to the ‘Los Angeles Times’ earlier this year. But without notice or permission, there it was. My concern again reached back to that “competing with myself” thing. I’m currently negotiating with another publisher for audiobook rights. If there is a text–to-speech feature enabled for the Kindle version, then that will have a negative impact on the sales of an audiobook version that sells between thirty and fifty dollars a copy. And the Kindle sales to date have been, well, pathetic. Less than one copy per month.

But it’s not the reality but the perception that cheapens your brand in the marketplace. Amazon plays power games with vendors like myself. They induced about 400 authors to participate in the Amazon Shorts program and failed to promote the site even within their own pages. (A search for that term will more likely produce links to underwear.) They created quite an uproar over print-on-demand books, threatening to not distribute any that were not bought from their in-house provider. That left me with interesting choices: create separate editions for Ingram and Amazon with different ISBN numbers or lose significant parts of our distribution. Or, as we ultimately did, get a smaller distributor like Pathway Book Service to provide the book to all comers. That meant an offset print run and greater total cost, but more margin per unit.

When I objected to the text-to-speech feature on the Kindle edition I got this in reply:

Hello from Amazon DTP.

I see that you’ve entered the new price for your book, however, it is not updated on our website, as your book was not re-published after changing the price. Please note that your new changes will not be updated on our website, until it is saved and published again. Also, note that whenever any book is published / re-published with new changes, it has to go through the review process by our kindle operations team, it takes up to 5 business days for the review to be completed.

Please note that at this time we are not supporting the feature to manage Text-to-Speech (TTS) settings through Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP), by default all the books are published with TTS enabled, we are unable to turn it off. We will continue to evaluate options for adding this to DTP customers in the future. If you still have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us at dtp-feedback@amazon.com.

Thanks for using Amazon DTP.

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.

To contact us about an unrelated issue, please send us a new e-mail.

Best regards,
Padmanaban Guruswamy
http://www.amazon.com
That’s a document simply amazing in its arrogance. It makes the simple act of changing a price a bureaucratic nightmare. Uploading the original DTP file took three days, and I won’t say we ever got it right because the interior map that is a feature of the print edition could not be included.

That they will not even try to write a line of computer code that could disable the text-to-speech function is simply another example of their disregard for authors’ rights. But, when I asked, they did take the file down, which relieves me of the burden of filing a lawsuit. Copyright reserves the right to control distribution to creators. If you are distributing a Kindle edition of your own original work, it’s a good thing to keep in mind. It’s yours, not theirs.

Amazon.com did send offers to do that file conversion for me, for the amazingly low fee of $99.00 marked down from $299.00. I was not persuaded that this would be a good investment. And while Kindle only produced about one percent of our sales to date, Amazon.com is responsible for less than ten percent of our total sales. Surprised? I was.

I can’t fault their advertising either. They do try hard with all of their book titles, create author blogs, and so on, and I’m pretty sure it’s not the book itself since I have more than a dozen favorable reviews including those five star ones on Amazon.com. (Click here to read them.)

The brick and mortar space still generates more book sales than any other channel. We have the good fortune to have done 16 book signings with the Hastings Entertainment chain, which does stock “The Shenandoah Spy” on the shelves of its 152 stores. We’ve been very aggressive about promotion, and we are following a “slow and steady” marketing plan to build word of mouth because it is the first of five books in a planned series.

I’ve been publishing e-books, mostly recycled trade magazine articles, since 2004. I have to say that this is not the financial bonanza that everyone thought it would be. Although available in multiple channels, these titles are very low demand and produce only a trickle of revenues.
That’s true of the fiction as well as the non-fiction.

We continue to experiment with e-book publishing, but it’s no longer a priority, and any future Kindle offerings will be through Smashwords.com.

The problem with these devices is that they encourage quick print-to-e content conversion and nothing more. In fact, they even discourage some of the simplest ways of enhancing print-to-e conversions. Embedded links are a great example. If you’re a Kindle owner how often do you click on those links? More specifically, how often do you groan as you click on those links, knowing that the browsing experience ahead is painful at best? The irony is that although the Kindle was the first to include wireless functionality, that feature is really only good for one thing: buying content from Amazon. Every other time I’ve used the “experimental” browser I’ve been disappointed. That’s because, at its heart, the Kindle is a reader and it doesn’t encourage any other use.

If you love your Kindle you’d probably say, “so what?…it does what I need it to do.” My point is that as long as we’re willing to accept this extremely limited functionality, and not ask for more, there’s no incentive for Amazon to enhance it and there’s no incentive for publishers to build richer content.

Are you really thrilled with the content that’s available on today’s dedicated e-readers? I’m not. And it’s not just color and video that I crave. I want to see a major leap forward, like when entertainment went from radio to TV, for example.

Transportation is another great analogy. Years ago, trains were not only a great way to travel, they often represented the only way to get from point A to point B. Then cars came along and totally changed the transportation industry. It didn’t happen overnight, but think about how much you take for granted now that you’re not limited by train schedules, tracks that only go certain places, etc.

Trains still exist today, of course, and they serve an important need. One-trick dedicated e-readers will probably exist for a long time too, but we desperately need the flexibility of something more than dedicated devices. Smart phones and netbooks are nice too, but the form factors aren’t perfect and battery life is often an issue.

The consumer experience could be greatly improved by a multi-function device with rich content options. If you’re a publisher and you’re worried about the race to lower prices for quick print-to-e conversions you too should want more powerful devices since they’ll allow you to charge more for the additional functionality of your content.

Editor’s Note: The above is from Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog and is reprinted with permission. Paul Biba

Which ebook format do you prefer?

PDF rules the day. It wins out for a variety of reasons including portability, how it renders and even the fact that it’s so mature. Epub was probably second on this list, but it was a distant second at best. And out of the 2K+ responses I only noticed a few references to “Kindle” or “mobi”.

What other publishers are doing innovative things with ebooks?

Both Pragmatic and Manning were cited frequently in response to this question. A number of responses also noted O’Reilly’s “liberal and useful ebook policy” though, so our DRM-free approach definitely resonates with this crowd. I say that mostly because other publishers were criticized in responses here for their use of DRM. Btw, Pragmatic and Manning mostly got kudos here for their respective “beta book” programs where you get access to the content before the book goes to press. We offer the same feature through our Rough Cuts program but we apparently haven’t communicated it as effectively as we could, at least according to these survey results!

What can we do to improve your experience with O’Reilly’s ebooks?

Price was a common theme here. Customers definitely want to see the prices remain low, but I think that’s largely because the products are mostly quick conversions from print format. I still believe there’s an opportunity to increase prices, but only if there’s added value to what exists today. Another popular answer here was the ability to share notes with others. I’m still blown away by the fact that Amazon built wireless functionality into the Kindle but didn’t offer this sort of collaboration option.

What features should the next generation of ebooks include?

Just to show how simplistic today’s ebook offerings are, some of the most common responses here were simple things like including links and adding video. Not exactly rocket science but these are also things that are currently missing in ebooks. I also liked the suggestion of improving the errata process in books, mostly through automatic updates and/or overlays that show what’s changed from one version to the next. Think of it as version control brought to books. Again, not revolutionary but it’s not something you typically find in most ebooks right now.

Editor’s Note:  the original of this post can be found at Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog. Paul Biba

But what’s with the two-panel hinged display? Why take a relic of the print book and force it into an e-reader? Think about it. There’s not a single time in the past year where I’ve said, "gee, I really wish this Kindle had a second display that hinged onto this one." Never.

Why? First of all, I can only read one screen at a time. OK, things get more interesting when you can have full color with hi-res so that images pop. Um, that’s not the current state of the Kindle (or Sony) technology though, is it? So a second screen is just there, waiting for me to get to it. Oh, and btw, it costs more to make. And since this new device won’t be using E Ink display technologies, it’s basically a pair of LCD screens that suck more juice from the battery. What’s there to like?

They talk about using the second screen as a virtual keyboard. Anyone who owns an iPhone will tell you the thing they like least about it is the virtual keyboard. Heck, even the chicklet Kindle keyboard is better than a virtual one. (Wow, did I just say the Kindle has an interface feature that’s better than the iPhone’s?! That’s the only one, btw.)

The article goes on to talk about how the device will have speakers, a webcam and a microphone built in. Sounds great, but isn’t this starting to smell a lot like a netbook? Asus has been in the netbook space for a few years now and they’re just tweaking their product a bit and calling it an e-reader.

I’d rather just have a netbook. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in 2009 it’s that the dedicated e-reader doesn’t have much of a future. Sure, they’ll still be around in a few years but the real action will be with the multi-purpose devices like mobile phones and tablets.

I discovered the NY Times iPhone app when I got my first iPhone. As is the case with most apps, they keep updating and improving it. The latest version has me wondering why I bother paying Amazon $13.99/month for the Kindle version. I hear there are elements in the Kindle version that don’t appear in the (free) iPhone version but I’m hard-pressed to tell you what they are. All the articles I read in yesterday’s Kindle edition are right there in the iPhone version.

The iPhone version has ads and the Kindle version doesn’t. So what? If that’s one of the key differences and it saves me $14/month, bring on the ads!

The Kindle version comes automatically and can be read without a live web connection (once the issue is downloaded, of course). The iPhone version let’s me save individual articles for later offline reading. Close, but not quite the same. Of course, if the iPhone app ever comes with a setting that lets me save the whole edition automatically, well, I’d pay at least $5/month for that, maybe even $10.

Amazon hasn’t exactly set the world on fire with new and exciting Kindle features. The ones that exist on the K2 and DX are pretty much the same that debuted with K1 almost 2 years ago. Meanwhile, Apple is rumored to have a sexy netbook/tablet coming next month. It will undoubtedly build on the success of the iPhone and unless Apple lays an egg it’s likely to be the product I upgrade to from my Kindle 1.0.

Editor’s Note: this post originated at Joe Wikert’s Kindleville Blog PB

Walt is right that many of the problems we see today are the result of corners being cut and the e-opportunity viewed as nothing more than a way to squeeze a few more dollars out of the investment we already made in the print product. That’s OK to a certain extent, but for some publishers that’s their entire e-strategy.

Here’s the fundamental problem I have with this: As long as customers view these products as cheap copies of the originals they’ll never even achieve the same value as the originals. So if that’s your strategy, get used to the $9.99 ceiling because it’s not going up.

Cleaning up the conversion process is important but it’s not going to change the $9.99 ceiling either. What’s really needed here is a fresh look at the way content is designed, acquired, developed and produced in the e-world. And as a visitor wisely commented recently elsewhere on my blog, this issue will become even more important as ebooks become a larger percentage of the overall book market. All that overhead and fixed costs found throughout large publishing houses simply can’t be supported if the industry switches to a $9.99 model.

Ebooks won’t become 50% of the market overnight, but the percentage is growing and isn’t likely to stop. There are a couple of options here. Publishers can get leaner and meaner as they adjust to the new model or they’ll choose to invest in the future and start building more compelling eproducts and eplatforms. The ultimate winners will attack both of those fronts.

Editor’s Note: the original can be found at Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog. – PB

The company I work for, O’Reilly Media, Inc., sells Kindle editions on Amazon’s website.  We don’t rely on Amazon as our only means of access to Kindle owners though.  We also sell e-book bundles on our site and those bundles feature all the popular formats including .mobi for the Kindle.  Magazine publishers (and newspapers too, for that matter) should take the same approach and sell Kindle content right from their own websites.

Granted, we’re talking about a single block of content with a book vs. an ongoing subscription with a magazine or newspaper…and that’s where things get interesting…

Amazon has a document conversion service for all Kindle owners.  I can e-mail a PDF to my Kindle address (joewikert@kindle.com) and Amazon will convert that PDF and wirelessly send it to my Kindle.  The service used to be free but now it costs 15 cents per meg for the upload.  Each of the magazine issues currently on my Kindle (The New Yorker and Technology Review) are less than one meg, btw.

Here’s how the model would work: Each magazine website would simply add another option to their new subscriber page.  This option would be for Kindle delivery.  Choose it, give the magazine publisher your @kindle.com address, set your Kindle e-mail account to accept incoming messages from that magazine’s server and you’re done.  The result is a direct relationship (again) between magazine publisher and customer; it’s just that this particular customer happens to receive issues via their Kindle.

That’s how the front-end works, but how about the back-end?  The magazine publisher could prep the issue in PDF format, send it to the customer’s @kindle.com address and let Amazon do the conversion and upload work for them.  Sure, Amazon gets 15 cents/meg, but each magazine publisher would simply have to figure out how much that translates to per issue and price the subscription accordingly.  Btw, if you want to avoid the Amazon charges, have the subscription sent to your @free.kindle.com address and simply move the content from in-box to Kindle via USB cable.  Another option is to take that last option a step further, automate it a bit, and go back to wireless delivery, like KindleFeeder now offers.

As a magazine publisher you’d keep 100% of the subscription price.  You’d also do away with printing and postage fees, so please keep that in mind when setting the subscription price!  Finally, you could determine how much advertising you want to keep in the digital edition.  Maybe you’d want to offer two plans: A higher-priced subscription with no ads and a lower-priced one with all the regular ads.  As an added bonus, those ads could now have live links to the advertiser sites; good luck pulling that off in the print edition.

Speaking for Kindle owners everywhere, I hope magazine publishers will follow O’Reilly’s lead and start offering a direct-to-Kindle-customer subscription plan.  What do you have to lose?!

P.S. — Why am I so comfortable publishing my Kindle e-mail address here?  Because every spammer in the world can send messages to it and they won’t get through.  I give Amazon a list of acceptable incoming e-mail addresses and none of them are from spammers.

Whether we want to admit it or not, Amazon is carefully training us to think of $9.99 as the “right price” for a Kindle book. We can jump up and down and scream at the top of our lungs that “the intellectual property is worth far more than $9.99″ but that doesn’t change the perception that $9.99 is a ceiling for a lot of people. So should we all just hunker down and figure out how to make money in a $9.99 (or less) ebook world? No!

Here’s the problem: In 2009 Kindle editions are nothing more than quick ports from the print edition. As a consumer, I see no value added and I rarely (if ever!) see how the publisher is taking advantage of the medium to offer me something that’s better than the print edition. In fact, the DRM that’s wrapped around most Kindle editions means I can’t pass the book along to someone else, so that makes the product worth even less to me. (Also for the record, at O’Reilly we’re proud to say that we sell all our ebooks DRM-free.)So what’s the solution? Figure out how you can add value to the ebook. Leverage the medium! As long as you keep looking at ebooks as incremental to the print business you’re much less likely to make the investments there that are required. Quick p- to e- ports will cast off revenue that’s nothing more than a rounding error to your print business. If you’re OK with that, well, that’s your problem!

I’m convinced that one day we’ll look back at this $9.99 ceiling and the limitations of the early e-reader devices (current generations of Kindles, Sony Readers, etc.) and chuckle. Rich products that fully leverage the platform they’re delivered on could be priced much higher than $9.99 and potentially even higher than the current print pricing levels. The future belongs to the publishers who are willing to invest in products that aren’t just quick-and-dirty p- to e- conversions.

P.S. — Amazon hasn’t exactly developed an “insanely great” platform for us to make excitingly rich Kindle editions for, have they? And although that platform has been around for about 18 months now I can’t say I’ve seen much progress on this front. That’s yet another reason why I wish they’d open things up like Apple has done with the iPhone. Sure, Apple still controls the platform but look at the awesome lineup of third-party apps that have resulted from their approach. And I’ll bet the iPhone OS 3.0 update due later this summer will live up to all the advance hype. How come we never see sexy platform updates like that from Amazon?

Editor’s note: this article originally appeared in Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog and can be found here. PB

Part of the problem is the physical presence a publisher (as well as author and bookseller) feels a book needs to have on the shelf. Imagine a book like Freakonomics as a 40-page work instead of a 336-page one. I read that one though, and despite the fact that’s it’s a terrific book, the authors easily could have condensed it down to about one-tenth its length.

You might say that a good book is all about storytelling and I don’t completely disagree. Freakonomics is loaded with great stories, btw, but a 40-page version would have been just as effective at conveying the key points. And frankly, most lengthy business books don’t have much of an engaging story to tell at all; the authors just go on and on, seemingly in an effort to puff things up to 300 pages or so.

A 40-page version of Freakonomics would be lost on the shelves. Couple that with the theory that no one is willing to spend $25 or $30 on a “business book” and you now know two of the key reasons why these things all have very similar form factors.

That’s how the market has operated up to now, but how will it work in the future? The more we move from print to e-books the less important something like spine width becomes. There’s no shelf to have a physical presence on, so why force every business book to be 300-400 pages?

How about the price? Would you pay $25 for something you could read in well under an hour? I would, especially if it delivers all the knowledge that’s so diluted across the 300-400 pages we have to read through now.

I can see a model where the typical work is longer than a magazine article but much shorter than a book. In fact, I think that’s the sweet spot for the future. A magazine article (2-3 pages) typically doesn’t allow for enough space to adequately cover many of the topics you find in business books today, but I’ll bet 30 or 40 pages would do the trick, and many authors might not need that much space.

So what will we call these products? A new name is required. They’re not books and they’re not articles. There’s no elegant way to splice those two words together so I think we’ll have to come up with something brand new. In the mean time, I very much look forward to the day when these new products dominate the market and we’re no longer forced to read 300 pages to gain 30 pages of insight. I know I’ll read much more in that world. How about you?

P.S. — I realize this model doesn’t work for all types of books. For example, fiction is definitely all about storytelling and doesn’t apply. Then there’s the world of how-to books. I’d argue this model isn’t ideal there either. In fact, I believe a totally different e-model will evolve there over time, one without boundaries and something that takes us in a totally different direction…but that deserves its own separate blog post, so stay tuned for more…

Editor’s note: this article is reprinted, with permission, from Joe’s Publishing 2020 Blog. PB

I’m still scratching my head over this comment about Google though:

The crucial thing here is that most people have no idea what the free services are costing them.

Come on.  I’m no Eric Schmidt fanboy (is there such a thing?!), but I get a chuckle out of conspiracy theories like this.  What exactly are these free Google services costing me?  It this is a hint that Google is to blame for the rapid decline of the newspaper industry, well, cry me a river!  I’m in the technology how-to book publishing industry and as I’ve often said, my biggest competitor isn’t another publisher—it’s Google.  But I’m not going to sit around and whine about how big, bad Google is forcing our industry to innovate.

Book biz: Really a high priority for Google?

I’m also not convinced that the book industry is a high priority for Google.  Would Google like to participate in it more?  Absolutely, but it’s not likely to become an enormous revenue generator for Google, particularly compared to the money the company rakes in from search.  Then again, wouldn’t it be interesting if Google were to come out with their own e-book reader?  Think about an open platform that encourages third-party app development and gives Amazon more than a run for its money.  Now that’s something I could get excited about!

I’ve had more people ask me about my Kindle (in airports, conferences, etc.) than I’ve ever had ask me about the print book I happened to be reading; and don’t forget I’ve had a Kindle for less than a year but I had been reading print books all my life prior to that.

How about this little gem from the article?:

Will they (Kindles) help or hurt book sales and authors’ advances? Cannibalize the industry?

It’s called “progress”, people, and it’s not a bad thing. The same fears probably kept some people from making that scary jump from horses to automobiles 100+ years ago. I’m glad nobody squashed that idea, although current GM shareholders might disagree.

I laughed out loud when I read this excerpt:

Publishers will no longer get the bump that comes when travelers see someone reading, say, the latest James Patterson and say to themselves: “I’ve been meaning to get that. I think I’ll buy a copy at Hudson News before I hop on the train.”

Just how many people does the typical commuter influence like this? And isn’t that number kinda tiny when compared to the more modern forms of e-promotions, including e-mail blasts, Twittering, etc.? Maybe this Times columnist is living in the era of horse-and-buggy transportation after all.

I nearly cried though when I read the part about David Rosenthal, EVP and Publisher at Simon & Schuster. Here’s a publishing executive who owns a Sony Reader, uses it to read manuscripts but won’t read a published book on it. Yeah, you read that right. I wonder if he trusts his computer’s spreadsheet to analyze P&L’s or if he still insists on doing things the old-fashioned way, with a sliderule, pencil and paper.

Meanwhile, back to the snobbishness of carrying around a book rather than reading it electronically. Maybe there’s a market for someone to produce an e-reader cover with a see-through slot in front where you can print out and insert whatever book cover you want to impress everyone with. I’d put a Mad magazine cover on mine, just to be different.

Editor’s note: the original post can be found on Joe’s Kindleville Blog here. PB

I need to preface this by saying that the E Ink technologies I got a peek at are still a ways off. Don’t look for them in a new Kindle version anytime soon. IOW, if you’re thinking about buying a Kindle today but wondering if a new version is about to arrive with any of these display capabilities, forget about it! You’re better off buying a Kindle 2 today, not waiting for this stuff to arrive.

First up, I saw a display that supports animations. You probably know your Kindle can’t show anything other than static text/photos. A prototype I saw allowed for simple animations. I say “simple” because I’m talking about animated line-art, not video like you see on YouTube. Nevertheless, it was implemented in a manner that lends itself nicely to simple, motion-filled ad blocks on a portion of the display. Although the Kindle’s content is currently ad-free, I’d like to see Amazon enable ad support so that publishers/authors will have a new way to monetize their content.

I saw several prototypes and all of them offered crisper renderings of text and graphics than what I’ve seen on either Kindle 1 or Kindle 2. And it’s important to note that the animations described above were done without the need for the annoying reverse-out (and ghosting) effect we’ve all grown accustomed to on first- and second-generation Kindles.

Most importantly, I’m here to tell you I’ve seen a color display and it was very attractive. The colors were a little washed out but the clarity was excellent…and don’t forget E Ink has plenty of time to address the colorization before a device ever ships. Like today’s E Ink displays, the color prototype had no backlighting. As a result, I can see where it too will be much easier on the eyes than staring at my backlit LCD laptop all day.

So for anyone wondering whether progress is being made on color displays for e-readers, I’m pleased to report the answer is “yes.” And don’t be surprised if you see a post-2 Kindle display that’s still monochrome but has more bells and whistles than today’s model. Just don’t look for it anytime soon!

Editor’s Note: You can read the original post on Joe Wikert’s Kindleville blog here. PB

This program stands out to me because St. Martin’s is doing something every publisher should be involved with: finding new ways to reach their audience.  We’re living in a rapidly changing marketplace and content sampling will only grown in importance as more and more devices take hold.  I’m not just talking about the Kindle and Sony Reader, btw.  Thanks to the iPhone’s success, every cell phone maker is waking up to the App Store model opportunities.

If you’re a publisher, what are you doing to build on-ramps to these new devices?  And are you thinking about more sampling options?  If you’re an author, you should ask your publisher what their plans are for e-content, sampling, etc.  I’m proud of O’Reilly’s efforts on this front.  You can follow the developments on our website as well as the O’Reilly Radar and TOC blogs.

One of the toughest issues to resolve hinges on pricing.  What’s an eBook worth?  That’s the question posed in this SF Signal blog post.  Even though the blog and the question are framed around SF, many of the comments apply to numerous genres.  Here are a few comment excerpts and my thoughts on each:

I will not pay hardcover prices for an eBook. It isn’t the same. I buy books for the shelves, and will pay more for collectibles. I buy eBooks to read; they are not the same.

I’m amazed at how many publishers still think they need to charge the same for an eBook as they do for the print version.  The typical argument goes something like this: “We don’t want to cheapen our IP just because it’s presented in a different format.”  While this might, and I emphasize might, apply to a very small number of products, you’ve really got to think about the usability issues involved.  For example, a lot of complaints are made about how a customer can’t pass an eBook along to a friend after they read it.  (Watch for that limitation to change at some point, btw.)  But I feel that as long as we’re talking mostly about quickie ports from print to e-format, with no added value, you’re probably looking at a lower price for the e-version.  The key here is to start thinking about how to add value to your content and take advantage of the e-platform.  That’s where the new riches will be found.

And no stinking DRM, either, please!

Amen!

Take the cost of a paperback, subtract out the cost for printing and distribution and you are left with royalties for the author and some markup for the publisher.

Regardless of whether you agree with the previous statement, and I admit that I don’t, you still have to acknowledge that this point of view is pretty common out there.  Perception is reality and this statement must be carefully considered.  I’d like to think that my team and I represent something more than “some markup” though.  There’s a lot of work that goes into crafting most books.  A short list of important steps would include the development of the outline with the author, the massaging of the manuscript by a development editor, the copy edit and clean-up that makes it much more readable or the page design and layout efforts that also improve readability.  That’s a lot to cover in a “markup for the publisher.”  But again, until you can add more value to the e-version you’ll probably be stuck fighting this uphill value proposition battle with your customers.

If printed books were to disappear outright, well, then some other method of covering the hidden costs of acquisition from authors, editing, promotion, etc., must be covered and unit prices for audio and e-books would naturally rise as a result.

Very insightful.  For the time being, most publishers treat eBook sales as a bit of an afterthought, mostly because they typically represent such a tiny percentage of the publisher’s overall sales.  This allows the publisher to absorb many of the expensive editorial and production steps on the print side of the P&L.  But if print revenues decline, those expenses have to be recouped somewhere else.

If Amazon really wanted to get people onto the Kindle, they would offer backwards compatibility/customer incentive. By that I mean that the registered buyer of a book on Amazon.com would also get a Kindle copy that they could read on their Kindle device, iPhone, or desktop app. Books aren’t like CDs where you can put all of your existing music on your iPod.

I’ve been lobbying for this since the dawn of the Kindle.  The problem is, I’m not sure many publishers or authors would buy into the idea.  But it sure would help drive more interest in the Kindle!  How about a compromise solution?  What if Amazon were to offer you the Kindle version of the book for $5, or about half the going rate, when you buy the print version first?  There have got to be some interesting bundling models here that have yet to be tested.

Btw, I’m a consumer who’s also frustrated with this issue.  As I mentioned in a tweet the other day, it seems like most of the books I’m looking for on the Kindle aren’t converted (yet?), and many of the ones that are now have prices over $9.99.  I’ve never bought a Kindle book for more than $9.99 and unless there are some interesting bells and whistles that come with it, I’m not sure I ever will.

Side-by-side, the K1 text is bolder and jumps out at you. It’s as if the low fidelity, dot-matrix-like typeface of the K1 is better suited for the reading experience than the feathered, crisp, 16-shades of gray of the K2. After 30 minutes of reading on the K2, my eyes get tired and I actually experience mild dizziness, headaches. Never experienced that with the K1.

Is anyone else out there finding the Kindle 2 provides a less pleasant reading experience than Kindle 1?