walking the walk

After several months, of owning a tablet, I think I have walked the walk and established a pretty good view of what others can expect. My number one comment about tablets for a person like me….a tablet doesn’t replace anything.. that is if you already have a gadget. You’re not going to get rid of the laptop or the phone. You’re not going to stop using the other devices and sources.   Wait, let me take that back. I think the tablet can replace book and newspaper media as the go-to reader. But it won’t replace another device I don’t see.  If you have an ebook reader, you’ll take that with you still. If you have a phone, you’ll still take that with you.

So what have been the exciting parts of a tablet? None. It’s pretty nice to have but nothing is all that exciting because I am surrounded with other devices. I did finally finish a book, my first full length ebook accomplished on a tablet. I read “The Shining” Surprisingly it went by fast. It’s a decent length book.

I own the Notion Ink Adam which has a dual mode screen which just to keep it simple has a normal color screen and an ebook mode. I read the shining using the Aldiko reader app, with the text in reverse color, that is white text on black. I didn’t read it in the ereader mode, but I found that I had a pleasant reading experience.

I’ve had a little trouble with apps since the Android Market is a bit finicky on there.  Because my OS is sort of a hybrid, it’s not picking up all the apps in the market it could.  What matters here is that for some people the apps mean the difference between a useful device and a dusty mistake.

I like a few of the tablets out there. Once Honeycomb is available en masse for all these android tablets, then we’ll see some great things in the apps department.  The ASUS transformer, the Nook Color, and a few others are definitely worth a look.  I’m happy with what I have but it’s not an every day thing for me.  I use my phone for quick looks at emails and messages and my work computers are for when I’m kind of hunkered down into looking up or internet surfing. So the tablet has been kind of a mood device. When I’m in the mood, I’ll use it but I don’t need it.

Does that affect your purchasing decisions?

The Danger of E-books – By Richard Stallman

This is a work by Richard Stallman. I thought it was useful to reprint here because I think it’s interesting and his PDF is corrupting my browser.

In an age where business dominates our governments and writes our laws, every technological advance offers business an opportunity to impose new restrictions on the public. Technologies that could have empowered us are used to chain us instead. With printed books,

• You can buy one with cash, anonymously.
• Then you own it.
• You are not required to sign a license that restricts your use of it.
• The format is known, and no proprietary technology is needed to read the book.
• You can, physically, scan and copy the book, and it’s sometimes lawful under copyright.
• Nobody has the power to destroy your book.

Contrast that with Amazon ebooks (fairly typical):

• Amazon requires users to identify themselves to get an ebook.
• In some countries, Amazon says the user does not own the ebook.
• Amazon requires the user to accept a restrictive license on use of the ebook.
• The format is secret, and only proprietary user-restricting software can read it at all.
• To copy the ebook is impossible due to Digital Restrictions Management in the player and prohibited by the license, which is more restrictive than copyright law.
• Amazon can remotely delete the ebook using a back door. It used this back door in 2009 to delete thousands of copies of George Orwell’s 1984.

Even one of these infringements makes ebooks a step backward from printed books. We must reject ebooks until they respect our freedom.

The ebook companies say denying our traditional freedoms is necessary to continue to pay authors. The current copyright system does a lousy job of that; it is much better suited to supporting those companies. We can support authors better in other ways that don’t require curtailing our freedom, and even legalize sharing. Two methods I’ve suggested are:

• To distribute tax funds to authors based on the cube root of each author’s popularity.
• (See http://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.html.)
• To design players so users can send authors anonymous voluntary payments.

Ebooks need not attack our freedom, but they will if companies get to decide. It’s up to us to stop them. The fight has already started.

Copyright 2011 Richard Stallman
Released under Creative Commons Attribution Noderivs 3.0.

Impressions of Nook Color

The Nook Color at Barne’s and Noble is definitely still in stock at the stores in case you’re looking to buy one for you or as a very generous holiday gift.  It’s becoming pretty well known as a reader and tablet.  The Nook Color is a reskinned Android device. Underneath the engine is Android, the hardware supports it, but what you get with the dedicated Barnes and Noble software is a little more limited. Does that matter? Not really. It’s a very capable device. It does more than you need it to out of the box.

What I really like

It’s a very clean device on the outside and inside. Navigation has a good feel for the most part. I’m mixed on the screen size personally.  I like the mobility of 7″ screen device (which is the Nook) and I don’t think I’d want something heavier, but at the same time, I sort of want a little bigger picture as I’m staring at it. Part of it is getting used to it though. 7″ clearly works for a lot of people.  The rubber backing and corner ring are a plus. The weight is very acceptable. Out of the box, I like that it has a nice browser and touch keyboard. It has folders for things you are storing. Somebody had tried to load a Mac .dmg file in the one I used, so I know it accepts downloads on the net and via USB cable. (Not sure what they were trying to achieve with a .dmg though.)

Searching for books is easy enough on the Nook store. Funny though, you know all the ebook stores boast the number of titles. 2 titles out of 3 that I searched for were not available. That was a bummer. I was looking for Thinking with Type, as it would have been a nice book to preview on the color screen.

A video file loaded in the device in the gallery played beautifully. It was a Nook commercial and it was stunning actually. I was confused by how well that played vs the motion on Youtube. You might first think it was just latency on the Wi-Fi, but I’m only partially agreeing with you there.  So clearly there’s an embedded video player that works better than the on board Youtube player. But that was an optimized video so further testing is needed. I couldn’t even tell (because I was in the gallery) what file format that was.

The Nook color has a headphone jack and Pandora was one of the included apps.  I also played a game of chess on it and lost horribly. Wow I am terrible these days.

I’ve focused on all these things, when the Nook Color is predominantly an ebook reader.  Why? Because I truly think people will be using it for other things mostly. I think they will enjoy reading the books, but they will be more tempted to browse the web and just have fun.  And I think that’s great.  Because the things we own should support what we like to do.

Book reading was pleasant and it worked. Much of the utility functions while reading is accessed through a simple long press of the finger.  I liked the slider to race across the book at the bottom to get to say the end of the book. As you slide it the page counter shows you where  you are. I have to leave it there. See more below.  As great as reading books are, it’s pretty much status quo for me these days.

Limitations & Minor Issues

The browsing experience isn’t say Android 2.2 so Flash is not installed. That doesn’t matter a whole lot because most pages look beautiful, but it does matter to me.  The Android Market is not available, and the touch screen feedback might be suffering a bit, though that part is hard to tell because it’s possible the Nook I used had been on for weeks straight and just needs a reboot. I know that the Nook supports at least 2-finger touch, but browsing does not. There are zoom buttons to handle that. Once you’ve used the double-press to zoom to paragraph on webpages on Android phones, it’s hard to not have that anymore. Nook needs it.

The gallery with Photos was a small problem. It definitely displayed a gallery of photos, that was great.  I wish I knew if this was related to the state of the Nook, needing a reboot, but I didn’t like browsing the gallery as much as my Nexus One Android phone. The first iPhones were also so smooth as compared to this Nook Color. If you have an iPhone, you might be a little bummed.

The photos didn’t appear to be large at all. 2-finger pinch didn’t work all that well on it.

Back to reading books. It was a little boring for me to be honest . I had a little trouble finding the text-size menu at first, but I finally got the type and margins the way I liked.  I’d like to see an animated page flip. It’s stupid but I actually like having some sort of transition. Doesn’t have to be 3D though. If I was designing the page flip transition, I might actually experiment with it a little more to test what readers like. Till now, they’ve all been kind of artificial and repetitive but I think there’s room for testing and maybe even mixing up the animations, with some random motion. I’d even experiment with randomizing the paper shades. give it an earthy feel. One page being a little more sepia than the next. (I mean subtly here not distracting, but interesting.)

Bookmarking was easy, just press the top right corner and a little flag appears.  Oddly, the bookmark persists for multiple pages. I understand if it’s bookmarking based on the real books page, BUT that doesn’t do me any good really. I’m starting to think that a highlight bookmark is really the best way to go with these kinds of devices.  Speaking of highlighting, I was annoyed that you could only highlight a word.  I wanted to be able to drag a highlight across a paragraph at least.

Let me sum up book reading.  Works fine, BUT they haven’t introduced anything new or inventive and that’s too bad. I think they need to be designing the next Nook update and getting on that, so it can be an OTA upgrade. They are at an advantage over phones with Android because all the Nooks are exactly the same.

The original Nook, I ended up taking a crack at again too. I love the way the epaper screens looks and I like the idea of it, fast navigation on the mini screen, with easy-on-the-eyes reading,  but the Nook Color has really overshadowed it’s older brother at this point.

What I didn’t cover

There is a lot of information at the Nook website on specs and what it can do. This is a review of my impressions, but at the store I only had so much to go on. I want to put this thing through a lot of tests. I didn’t get to test various video formats to test playback performance, as well as the gallery browsing with my own personal pictures. Importantly I didn’t get to try PDFs or text files on it.

What about buying it? Do I recommend?

I absolutely recommend buying Nook Color.  Reviews are difficult because you want to tall about nuances in order to satisfy the little feelings of something you experienced. But at the same time, this is a very cool tablet / reader.  Barnes and Noble have really done well in their creation or partnership to make this.  I think it suits a lot of people and I think you can exploit it for a lot more than a reader.  I stand by what I wrote earlier in that, it is a hit because of the fact that it’s not necessarily trying to be everything, but it does do a lot.

The price is a good reason to buy the Nook Color. At $250 USD, it sure it’s close to the cost of a Netbook, but it’s also a large touch screen. Device specs in terms of processor and RAM aren’t too far off the iPad And we now know that it’s possible to “root” the device, basically hacking it so stock Android can be loaded. This might improve the experience for some or just be a necessity for others. (Hacking a Nook will void the warranty and you can break stuff. Use caution and done do it if you’re not comfortable with the risks.) So both a casual reader AND a tech hacker can make use out of this device.

I think that the price fits.  It’s a good gift, as it’s less than an iPad, but offers what you need as a book reader. It’s easier to carry than a Netbook, lighter and simpler to deal with. Battery life, I’m told is rated at 9 hours of use, but apparently it is really low consumption in sleep mode. A shopper told me that hers was in sleep for a week and turned back on was still at 92%.

For the future

I’m going to be generous and say that the Nook color is just fine on it’s own. But I’m also going to say, they better not stop. They need to continue to develop and offer an upgrade. Photo browsing needs improvement. Rotation and touchscreen can be better. I also think they can maybe add more to make owners continue to use it. They actually already are doing that. They have a Nook developer program to make Nook Extras. This is basically it’s own Android Market. It’s exciting and it means that you can extend the device.  Just like the iPad is set hardware this makes developers will have an easier time than they would with 50 handsets to deal with.

Bundles – Time for Barnes and Noble to jump into bundling.  I’ve said this before.  Buying a book for 11.99 isn’t that great of a deal when you can get the real book for that price.  But when you bundle, you maybe can offer 3 genre ebooks for the price of 1.  Publishers own so many titles that bundling is a natural direction. They introduce new titles, they add a ton of value. They promote things that might otherwise be overlooked. And frankly they probably are what is needed to bridge the price gap for a lot of people. 3 ebooks for 10 makes more sense than just 1.

They need to create a page transition for book reading, add full paragraph highlight and experiment with adding new features to ebook reading, see what people are testing.  I also think the add-ons for sharing inside a book are a good idea.  Let me give you an example.  The Google Nexus One is great for sharing across apps. In Seesmic reading Twitter, I can click, hold and share through a bit list of apps I’ve added on. When I”m in a book, I want to share a pargraph, it needs to highlight, share, tweet, and then pass the truncated quote with a short URL linkin to the book on the bookstore. It might be shared on Twitter, Email, Facebook, a blog, whatever app is loaded. The standard apps are important for sure.

And the nice thing is they already have a short URL to start with…  How about  Nook.com/b/shortlink.   On the social networks, people can see the quote, it’s referenced back to the Nook store.  And how about this. Pass the original nook owner an affiliate discount on their next books if people who linked back from that quote actually buy it.

Do the publishers have price drops planned?

Just something to think about. What if the publishers and the larger book sellers already know that the ebook tipping point won’t happen until their books cost $3.  But they also know that they are in a time that they can continue to milk ebook buyers for $10 an ebook as the novelty of e-readers remains fresh and there is still security through obscurity. The average e-book owner hasn’t really seen where books can be acquired outside the normal channels.

But they will. Because when all the college students start sporting tablets and readers, and when the little kids have them, they simply will not tolerate NOT being able to share and educate.  And when sharing is easier than buying, you will see a spike in sharing. Also if purchasing is too restrictive, then people will find alternatives.  The interesting part of the story are the people who aren’t buying the e-readers, not the people who are.  The potential for ebook sales is frightening.  The key is waiting to be turned.  And that key is $2.99.

Publishers are people too. Sure some of them are deluded, but most of them have mortgages and kids and are just average people that don’t like to pay for things. And they probably know they will have to decide when the golden days of $10 ebooks are over and volume is the new plan.

Books can be impulse buys, but only when they are cheap.  If I was giving an ebook reader to a family member as a gift, I’m paying quite a bit of money for that present.  To get the recipient of the ground so to speak, I may load some public domain classics on the reader, but that’s all. They are on their own after that. Now if ebooks were priced closer to their mainstream perceived worth then you’d have people buying five or ten popular ebooks along with the device. At $9.99, I might buy one ebook as a gift.  The question is, does the publisher want me spending $10 or $30 on the transaction that requires no extra leg work for them? (Nearly free digital distribution works this way.)  I’ll spend more to get a bundle of titles.  Because I know that my wife or daughter isn’t going to like some things, and you know maybe I’ll get a book for me or the rest of the family on there, it’s just a couple bucks. Aha!  A new value proposition emerges.

I know some people would read this and be shocked that I’d propose a best seller should be priced at $2.99.  I’ll go further. I think a best seller should be $1.79.  Why? Because it will be sold in massive quantities, downloaded faster than a music file and will contain ads to pay the author and publisher even more. Any author moving a lot of media is a target for sponsors ready to piggyback. Ads work in books where they wouldn’t work in music.  And trust me on this, you might hear people saying they won’t stand for ads in their books, but I assure you they will tolerate them just fine.

Here’s to hope that we see the new economy of ebooks get rational so we can see it take off into something interesting.  Or the publishers could try to hold their current pricing models for a few more years, and see where that leads.

Of course ebooks will have ads

I don’t know why I keep seeing these articles feigning shock, or those that question the new philosophy or acceptance of putting ads in books. Of course ebooks will have ads. It’s been done for over a hundred years in books and it might even bring prices down, or to zero. And it will also not be all that problematic for many of us. Some of us won’t mind and the rest of us know where there are ads, there are ad blockers. And the more sophisticated advertising gets, the easier it will be to block.

Let me state what I mean. In order to help pay me, a struggling author, more, I can get an ad contract from a company. I make the deal, get the sponsorship money, put the ads in as part of the book maybe in the margins, maybe as a footer message on ever chapter front page, and a few pages at the back (just like every high school sports tournament book you’ve ever seen). This set of ads comes as part of the text, doesn’t change, isn’t all that intrusive and has that home grown feeling.  Those who bought my book don’t get too bothered, and at some level connect with it.  I’m probably even thanking my advertisers in the preface. The ads are absorbed or ignores as advertising goes. In the end, it doesn’t effect public opinion of my book.

Then you have the latest massive best seller, the head of the long tail.  It is published under Big Pub, with ads from Big Pharma, Big Oil, etc. The ads are ever changing, they of course have to stand out, they deploy overlays, begging you to ‘touch’ them. You know, anything to catch your eye, because who gives a damn that you’re reading or what you’re reading.

Then something happens. It begins with some frustration a few blog posts, some bad press about a popular book. People expressing distaste. Then plugins start coming out designed to disable these ads, hosted at a snarky website that you can download instantly. Because the Big Pub ad code is  standardized by the partner of Big Pub it just takes a few strokes of code and the dynamic ever-changing ads are routed by the blocker plugins to fizzle out, to turn invisible or are auto-overlayed, display:none whatever technique needed.

How am I able to forecast this? Because I know of the existence of greed. Greed causes people to act irrationally, to force their desires on others.  And where one strong emotion like greed is born, on the other side of the universe, there is born the anti-matter of said emotion. The balancing force. Whitehat hackers, or just industrious people who have had enough. They have the distaste for greed.  And they will focus their weekend spare time on blocking the bigger annoying ad networks because THEY CHOOSE TO. Because where there are vampires, you need vampire hunters.

While this goes on, others will be distributing the open versions of those texts more readily. And where the ads get too ridiculous, the rational, freedom lovers, commonists, and people who just miss the good ole days, will rally against the greed.  And like DRM has in some parts of the spectrum has been beaten down, so will the wrong kinds of ads.

But ads are OK.  And they will be OK, until they are NOT OK. And you’ll all know when that happens if you are paying attention. So stop acting so surprised about it. Books are predominantly niche products and many are written by intelligent people who care about their outcome. Which means there’s a chance that you actually will read books with ads you kinda like. Because the author had some say about it. I wouldn’t bet my farm on it, but I’m optimistic.

14 day loan feature for ebooks are a joke

I remember when I was little I used to wonder what it would be like to have everything I ever wanted.  What would the world be like if I could have it all and so could my friends. Would it be boring? Or would we always have something interesting to do? After a lot of thought later in life, I’m certain that at least having access to everything is better than being left wanting.

In the digital content universe, we figured out a way that we could duplicate and share to our hearts content. Duplication is a requirement for our computers to work, during the transfer, memory and storage processes.  But THEN we began to suffer through a period in which people put locks and chains on information after they realized that now that we truly can have everything, that simply can’t be allowed to happen.

Even worse, for those of us who have enjoyed owning books all our lives, and being able to give them away, share them in our own right for as long as they’ve existed, the ebook industry movement, faced with a flexible product has gone and made it LESS flexible than the physical book.

With a lot of feigned fanfare, Amazon, the maker of Kindle has introduced a feature, previously only available through a competitor, the Nook. The Kindle software will now let you loan the ebooks you own to your friends, (as long as the publisher allows it).  Your friend can borrow the ebook from you for up to 14 days, one time only. After 14 days, the book vanishes somehow.

Only the conniving would spin this inherent and built-in weakness as some kind of benefit rather than the big negative embarrassment it actually is.  Sure on the one hand, we want to get those who made the book paid.  But on the other, why do we insist on pretending that these digital files are subject to the physical limitation of real property. Reality says digital files can be copied infinitely at no cost. Reality for ebooks is even better as their storage is so minimal in most cases.

If you agree with this direction and go through the system like the mindless consumer they hope you are, and you’ll buy the Amazon Kindle ebook, you’ll pay near the full price of the paper book despite getting nothing of its benefits. And you can’t REALLY share your book with people.  And you can’t really give it to somebody either.  Because if you could give it to somebody digitally, then they own it and could give it back to you. And that is where the current industry says “whoa whoa, that’s not the kind of behaviors we can really manage or support, so we’ll just not allow it.”

Because we can’t have pesky reality creeping into our ebook sales numbers can we?

The solution to this problem only works when you can in your mind, fully reorganize book publishing as you think you know it.  But even then it’s a messy mess.  Unfortunately, so is the current path we’re on. Readers  have to have the same rights with ebooks as we do with paper books. Anyone preventing this disrespects people and the reality of the world we live in. It disrespects rational thought and is greedy, malicious and unconcerned. Layers of this kind of ignorance that creates systems of digital product commerce are just weak legs holding up a flimsy table top. One that is unsustainable when faced with any kind of disruption. It’s especially sad being within the industry involved in the spreading of knowledge.

Why not purge your bookshelves and format shift to ebook shelves

Following a favorite author on Twitter, @DaveCullen, we saw this page at Oprah.com. When your book collection becomes unruly. It’s time to purge. They have a useful checklist of what might make a book worthy of keeping or tossing when you must regain some space. But they fail to mention a very clear solution to the problem of annoying book clutter. Ebooks barely take up any space. Your home library compressed properly probably fits on a 16GB Flash drive.

Organizing Ideas for Your Bookshelves – Tips for Clutter – Oprah.com.

Initially I wrote this discussing the possibilities and challenges with book scanning. But except for somebody willing to completely destroy a book by stripping the spine in order to feed into an affordable excellent home document scanner, it’s simply too annoying a process to recommend to most people. The books you are thinking of getting rid of are mostly the ones you don’t really want all that much. Otherwise you’d find a way to make space for them.

If you’ve been collecting hardcovers for years and have a beautiful library, you keep those and save space another way, downsize your bed or something. The problem of books for people are the ones they aren’t using, they’ve partially read and didn’t care enough to continue for the time being. Nothing wrong with that. In that case you simply don’t need that book. If you wanted to read it, you could pick it up at the library.

So the answer really is, to get our public libraries to the state where you can borrow books, all books on demand. This could be many years away though. Right now, borrowing ebooks from the library you need a specific device type and the books available are very small. A company called Overdrive powers many of these systems in place at libraries now.  I’m not even sure the rationale behind the available books actually. Maybe every library website is just showing the boring titles that aren’t checked out in an scroller. I do know this, the system is based on artificial scarcity. People will “return” a book and then you can check it out. This is ridiculous. Say what you want about government money systems and how it’s all artificial. But an artificial scarcity of information is just disgraceful. “The book is right there, why can’t I borrow it?”  Because somebody made an agreement somewhere and it was decided to give one group  the control over the information. I’m willing to entertain the thought that libraries should be able to transmit freely working for the public good outside of the control of copyright.

The situation is sad enough to make you want to create or contribute to a pirate culture for books.  At least until balance can be achieved again.  Until then, desperate times, desperate measures. Scanning looks like a better idea because at least I have the power and the control there. I’m not subjected to the whims of Overdrive and whatever legal limitations are being imposed in these library partnerships. (Note I’m not blaming Overdrive, but the system is a farce when you can get access to all the books whenever you want, at least for a temporary amount of time, that doesn’t amount to permanent download ownership.)

Let’s take a look at another favorite author, Lawrence Lessig and examine the copyright / credits page of his book Free Culture published by Penguin.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Ok, nicely done. Now let’s look at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, of which Lessig is a contributing member and their Fair Use FAQ.

4. What’s been recognized as fair use?

Courts have previously found that a use was fair where the use of the copyrighted work was socially beneficial. In particular, U.S. courts have recognized the following fair uses: criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research and parodies.

In addition, in 1984 the Supreme Court held that time-shifting (for example, private, non-commercial home taping of television programs with a VCR to permit later viewing) is fair use. (Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984, S.C.)

Although the legal basis is not completely settled, many lawyers believe that the following (and many other uses) are also fair uses:

• Space-shifting or format-shifting – that is, taking content you own in one format and putting it into another format, for personal, non-commercial use. For instance, “ripping” an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)
• Making a personal back-up copy of content you own – for instance, burning a copy of an audio CD you own.

So the courts have ruled in favor of making personal backup copies.  “MAKING” backup copies, not trolling the internet for rogue PDFs and ePub files. There’s no ruling in favor of getting the ebook source from a torrent website or newsgroups just because you own the physical book. My opinion, it’s just a legal issue. My ethics tell me it’s perfectly fine to get the ebook file available somewhere and as long as I’m not sharing it, it’s a convenient backup for me. Not everyone sees it that way. But I wouldn’t feel at all guilty about it. For me to obtain it though, remember it means somebody else is infringing copyright. Unless there in one of those countries who doesn’t recognize it.

If you MAKE your own book scan as a backup. You could freely destroy the original and your digital backup becomes your main copy. And since the only way to store a digital backup is in within a personal “retrieval system” then keeping a small library of backup files on USB, SD cards or what have you, is the only choice.

I write this knowing that it’s within a very strange and sometimes incomprehensible framework known as copyright law. And of course I’m no lawyer and cannot be trusted.  Books shouldn’t be so troubling though. We were all fortunate that CDs were digital content widely distributed on a physical entity. Ripping them to a compressed digital file (mp3) to make portable became so easy, it is now most likely an included feature in your computer’s operating system.

The answer ultimately for the public’s future is within portable connected devices, with cameras, scanning and downloading books.  The other thing is to make these books more affordable and in more hands. Either we want to limit potential, or we don’t. If libraries get to where they can’t maintain their inventory due to funding, and books aren’t there, we have to supplant that with downloads. And these downloads need to be instant. Because people have projects, deadlines, interests. I’m not gonna wait for the 89th person to “return” one of the two available copies of the John Steinbeck book when my kid’s paper is due.  If somebody isn’t getting paid, we work that out without stifling the entire population by artificial means from getting to books to make said population richer and more capable.

Borders launching Ebook store around Kobo Reader

Article at VentureBeat

What direction should Amazon go with the Kindle?

The Kindle is less interesting than a tablet. But it has some very good points to it.  Convenience is one, the connection right to the Amazon store is something some people like. It’s light and has a sharp reflective screen that can be read inside or outdoors. On the flipside, though it’s slow and  it doesn’t do media or animation. The iPad, which is selling a lot more units per second than the Kindle these days is more useful to people because it gives them abilities to surf, game, and create. Thousands of apps add to it’s feature list. It appeals to young and old. It’s a device you can experiment with, you can add onto it. The 6″ Kindle is half the price of the iPad, but the big Kindle DX is the same price $500  as the lowest iPad with the same size screens.  Someone ready to buy either one has to answer the question would they rather read in bright sunlight on something like a paper page, or get something with a lot more sizzle, that you can play with, watch video and produce content too?

The point I’ m making is that if people essentially don’t care about the e-paper screen or the sunlight issue, the iPad makes a lot more sense. You can buy the same books, you’ll get a better view of the photos in color. You can quickly get out of that book and switch tasks in an instant. You can consume AND create. Sure the iPad’s LCD will probably strain your eyes faster, but it might also fill a couple niches in your life. Tablets like the iPad can be the perfect living room device for sharing and playing.  (Damnit no camera on this thing?)

So if you were Amazon and you want to continue to sell more Kindles, you need to raise its appeal.  Seth Godin wrote today for his Kindle friends that they should get the Kindle priced down to $49.00 and increase the attractiveness of buying ebooks with book-of-the-month club purchases.  He added that corporations should be able to buy them for hundreds of their employees and be able to push their own content such as technical manuals or maybe annual reports to everyone in the company. Godin’s ideas make a lot of sense. And if the prices were right, you can turn more people into Kindle users if you can make the ebooks more attractive too.

I have one solution for Amazon that might make a biggest difference though. Amazon really needs to take a very close look at Valve’s Steam store and copy the hell out of it. Steam is a website for downloading PC games (Macs now too). Games are like first cousins to ebooks, both are digital content of an unlimited supply. If you have a desire to play a new game, much like you might feel a desire to read a new book, you can go to Steam and see latest best sellers. But something really obvious on the Steam store are nice shiny buttons to take you to games under $10 and under $5.  Something for everyone.

The next great thing Steam has is sales on games on one particular day a week or over a weekend. If you’re visiting the site frequently and paying attention, you can grab a $40 game for $20 for example. Lastly, you can buy packs of games under certain publishers for big discounts too. Valve, the creators of the Steampowered store sell the complete Valve pack. Close to 20 Valve games. Buy the pack, you save a $100.  Actually you’re saving a lot more because many of the games are well below their original retail price already.  The Valve pack at $99 is enough gameplay online and off to keep you busy for a while. It’s instantly downloadable content too. And you can download it to different locations.

This is the trifecta. This makes Steam a very attractive place to shop for games. Books are a little different yes, and it will take a lot of work with the publishers, but it’s the only forward looking move that you can make with ebooks right now.  Amazon has the publisher partnerships, something that Valve had to work really hard to do. Amazon has the advantage of a lot more book titles than games.  Publisher book packs could be in many different flavors of collections. For example Penguin Books, who just finally came to an agreement with Amazon on their best seller prices could sell best sellers as a discounted pack of ebooks, or packs under a certain topic, such as a technical area of expertise and make these collections accessible and affordable. Not only that, but publisher packs also help the reader identify the publisher. Readers might look forward to the next Penguin or Wiley book because that pack they bought last time had all the good stuff.

Think how powerful it would be if Amazon could just layout prices of new books at discounts where you really feel fortunate as a Kindle owner. Say 6 months after a hardback book is released, Amazon could have a 24 hour sale on the book pricing it $5.99 rather than $9.99. It’s still a new book and because it’s a one day only, and perhaps a never repeated sale, the lower price doesn’t devalue the normal price or the physical book price. Anyone who missed out, too bad, but it would be consoling to know another sale will come soon enough and they just need to check back often. Sales can be promoted through all kinds of social channels too. Ebook sales are easy. The supply is unlimited. If nobody buys, who cares! Everything that happens or doesn’t happen is a valuable and instant learning opportunity.

Right now on the web page for the Kindle store, they don’t have a bargain bin, though they do have some cheaper books. Finding ebooks at $7.99 and even $2.49 didn’t take long.  But it’s not presented in a way that’s good for impulses like a retail store is. If you look at the best sellers category for example, they actually think crossing out the other price is a good way to make the Kindle price look better. Look at the price(s) for the top left book in the photo below. Oops! Funny thing is, I’ve hardly ever buy a book at list price. Do they even use the list price at Borders or Barnes and Noble? Seems like all new books there have a discounted sticker of at least 10%.  Amazon fails to entice me with this overused cross-out original price tactic. I’ve never bought a book at full price at Amazon. If that’s what they sold them for, I doubt I would shop there as often.

Next we have a page with best sellers in the Kindle Store. 2 columns. Top 100 paid, and Top 100 Free.  Once again we have a problem. The good news for consumers. About 10% of these top 100 were priced under $5.  The bad news for Amazon, you have to pay attention to see that. Why don’t they just have the $5 or even the $2.50 category?

I love a top 100 free category, but if they have the free column, there’s no reason not to have top 100 under $5.

Multiple surveys I’ve seen have indicated that people think a reasonable price for an ebook is $5 and under.  Why is this category not here and promoted on the front page of the Kindle store?  If it was, anyone getting a Kindle will at least know, hey this is cool and there are a bunch of books for only a couple dollars. They know they’ll have plenty to read, they also know they might be rewarded for paying attention to discount days.

Publishers need to get it through their heads, Unlimited supply changes things. They need to help these e-reader stores become attractive through book pricing and big 50% and 75% off sales.  And they need to start yesterday. If they’d rather wait, they might as well choose to not do ebooks and face the consequences of being paper only.  Ebooks fit the model of selling more at a lesser price. Publisher have repeatedly said that the cost of printed books is negligible, but this is the biggest lie. Because it’s not just printing. It’s shipping, it’s employee and warehouse handling, inventory, real estate, insurance, etc.  Ebooks eliminate much of this and allow for more affiliate marketing opportunities.

JK Rowling says – let’s make ebooks

TheBookSeller.com reports that JK Rowling has seen the light and will allow selling of her Harry Potter series digitally.  Whew good thing, finally people might eventually get Harry Potter as an ebook.

Small problem. Fans have already typed out all the books and made PDFs, ePubs and text downloads long ago. Had this been available earlier from the publisher(s), there would have been sales to take advantage of at the time. But customers have been lost.

There was an interesting point made in the article. To create a book experience unique to the franchise, it’s gotta be more than text, wouldn’t you think?  There’s an entire theme park built around Harry Potter as well as the movies. It’s almost embarrassing if they didn’t dig a little deeper for the ebook version.  The question was, for this book to be successful, does one partner with a publisher, animation studio, app developer or what?

Good question.  If you try to make apps, you’ll be making more than one for the various devices, iPad, Android, Flash / Adobe AIR etc. If you want to reach the e-reader market, you won’t really be able to have anything but text.  If somebody buys one, will they get access to all? Will one be cheaper than another? Will there be a discount over the whole set? Will it be affordable, or is it better to just pick up a used copy somewhere, since there are thousands of those everywhere. Everytime I go to the thrift store, they have Harry Potter books. Plus if you have the DVDs, where does an enhanced book fit in? Might it be a lot of work just for something gimmicky? And when it comes to sales, does that matter?  Will e-books have anything to give to collectors? A gold CD or something? Or how about a dedicated Harry Potter tablet? That could actually work given the popularity of this franchise.