They’re Going to Kill Us

Interesting post over at PandoDaily, with a purported publishing industry insider commenting on Amazon’s game plan. The context is the usual (I’ve done it too) list of what ails book publishing, but with the author suggesting that Amazon will emerge as the sole survivor. Don’t know about the source, but the smell of death is in the air:

We can’t pay $1 million for books anymore. Amazon could probably afford to lose $20 million/year in their publishing arm just to put the other publishers out of business. I think that’s what they’re trying to do–throw money around in an industry that doesn’t have any, until Amazon becomes not only the only place where you buy books, but the only place that publishes books, too.

Kindle Library Update

Amazon launched its kindle lending library in November last year and is now reporting that in conjunction with its Direct Publishing scheme, independent authors are earning reasonable money via the lending of their books. At $1.70 per borrow, there’s some money to be made – albeit within the confines of the Amazon ecosystem. From readwriteweb:

Amazon says that total sales of titles in the KDP Select lending program grew faster than KDP titles that aren’t in the lending program, but they don’t say how much. But the $200,000 bonus to the KDP Select fund is a signal of optimism. The fund is divided between the authors each month depending on their percentage of total books borrowed. One author, Carolyn McCray, earned $8,250 from the fund in December.

McHappy Books

A report that mcDonalds in the UK is giving way books instead of toys in their Happy meals:

McDonald’s UK is to hand out around nine million popular children’s books with its Happy Meals, as part of a new partnership with publishing house HarperCollins. The promotion aims to get books into the hands of families and support mums and dads in reading with their children.

Of course, a book is never enough:

Each book comes with a finger puppet to help parents bring the stories to life for their children, and to encourage children of all reading abilities to use their imagination and create their own tales.

Lending eBooks…

Also from the NY Times, a piece from Randall Stross on the challenges facing publishers and libraries in lending ebooks:

… we can also guess that the number of visitors to the e-book sections of public libraries’ Web sites is about to set a record, too.

 

And that is a source of great worry for publishers. In their eyes, borrowing an e-book from a library has been too easy. Worried that people will click to borrow an e-book from a library rather than click to buy it, almost all major publishers in the United States now block libraries’ access to the e-book form of either all of their titles or their most recently published ones.

Takeoff and Landing

One of the arguments for paper books is that airlines prohibit the use of electronic devices until the aircraft has reached cruising altitude. But are the technical reasons cited by authorities grounded (sorry!) in fact? The NY Times has a look here:

The F.A.A. does allow some electronics during takeoff and landing. Portable voice recorders, hearing aids, heart pacemakers and electric shavers are permitted during all times of a flight.

So I took a Sony voice recorder that I bought at Best Buy and tested that too. The results? The voice recorder puts off almost exactly the same electrical emissions as the Kindle. In many instances of the test, the voice recorder actually emitted more.

 

Lean Back versus Lean Forward

One of the old debates about the emergence of the personal computer as a media device centred on the lean-back (think television) versus lean-forward (think PC) distinction. The meme was that computers would never replace television because of that difference in engagement. In some ways the tablet (think iPad) has shattered that as it has very clearly become the couch computer. But it’s not just television that will feel that change. An interesting Guardian interview with the CEO of The Economist suggests this:

He says they came to realise that there was a distinction between what he calls the “lean-back, immersive, ritual pleasure” of reading the Economist in print compared to the “lean-forward, interactive” way people used the site.

It was, says Rashbass, the difference between “snacking on the net as against the gourmet meal of reading in print”. That convinced him and his team to offer an entirely different experience to website users. Rather than lecturing the audience, they set out to build a community of people eager to participate in discussions with the magazine’s journalists and with each other.

Then along came the e-readers and tablets. “We suddenly realised that if we were making a distinction between lean-back and lean-forward, here was lean-back digital or lean-back 2.0. We made a conscious choice to avoid the web-style interactive approach. Instead, we saw the potential of delivering a better lean-back experience than we have ever achieved in print.”

Print versus Electronic

The argument over reading print versus reading on screens continues. Some remain convinced that paper has no peer. But recent research from Germany suggests otherwise:

There are no disadvantages to reading from electronic reading devices compared with reading printed texts. This is one of the results of the world’s first reading study of its kind undertaken by the Research Unit Media Convergence of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in cooperation with MVB Marketing- und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels GmbH. “E-books and e-readers are playing an increasingly important role on the worldwide book market…

Professor Dr. Stephan Füssel, chair of the Institute of Book Studies and spokesperson for the Media Convergence Research Unit at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz [says] “This study provides us with a scientific basis for dispelling the widespread misconception that reading from a screen has negative effects…”

The name of the University that did the research is, of course, noted

 

(via the Common Room Blog)

Amazon the Publisher…

Not content with selling books, Amazon is increasingly playing in the publishing space. An interesting New York Times article has details:

Amazon executives, interviewed at the company’s headquarters here, declined to say how many editors the company employed, or how many books it had under contract. But they played down Amazon’s power and said publishers were in love with their own demise.

“It’s always the end of the world,” said Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon’s top executives. “You could set your watch on it arriving.”

He pointed out, though, that the landscape was in some ways changing for the first time since Gutenberg invented the modern book nearly 600 years ago. “The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader,” he said. “Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity.”

New Kindle reviewed

Here’s a link to a review of the $79 Kindle by Marco Arment:

Knowing that this new Kindle costs less than the cover for my Kindle 2 is freeing: I can just carry it around uncased and unprotected in a (large) pocket, use it anywhere, and not worry about damaging an expensive electronic item, because it’s not. And it’s so inexpensive that I have no hesitation recommending it to pretty much anyone who ever reads books, because I know that if they end up disliking it or not using it much, it wasn’t a lot of money.

Like it or not, price matters…

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Steve Jobs wasn’t a geek’s geek. Rather he was one of the few in the industry who understood that computer technology was most useful when it touched our humanity, and empowered ‘the rest of us’ to do things we otherwise could not have done. Perhaps more than anyone, he ushered in an era when the personal computer became the pen and paper of my generation. Every creative endeavour of my adult life has involved an Apple Computer – and I suspect I’m not alone.

Thanks. And rest in peace.