Category: readers

A Stephen King story just for the Kindle 2?

It’s unclear whether this will be a permanent exclusivity arrangement or for a limited period. According to the WSJ, the new story features a Kindle-style ebook reader playing an unspecified role

Oh, if only Stephen King would write a story about a DRM server that became self-aware, killing millions before a plucky little hero saved the day and showed us all a new business model for infinite goods.

I’m actually a big fan of Stephen King, and this is a cool promotion.  What would be even cooler is if Amazon had just paid him to write the story, then released it to the world for free.  After a few months, less maybe, they could still sell paper copies of the book.  Everyone wins.

Article: Kindle 2 to debut with exclusive Stephen King story? – SlashGear.

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The new Kindle will disappoint

By managing both the content and the device on which to consume it, Amazon is in a fantastic position to do great things in the electronic publishing market.  Later today, they’re expected to announce the new version of their ebook reader, the Kindle.  The speculation is that it will be thinner, lighter, and easier to use.  “The “Previous Page” and “Next Page” buttons are smaller and less intrusive, to prevent accidents.”, Forbes says.  Most other articles about it are even less interesting.

The new Kindle will probably be the best ereader on the market.  The current model is already arguably the best available, so improvements should cement that position.  But until Amazon stops thinking about how to sell books in a new format and starts thinking about what fundamental changes to the way people read are now possible, whatever they might announce will be a disappointment.

It may be great for their bottom line – Amazon’s stock is doing quite well – but for everyone who isn’t a stockholder, incremental improvements to an expensive device that displays expensive words isn’t nearly as exciting as Amazon would like you to think.  It’s still just a slightly more convenient way for people to purchase and read books.

What about enabling things that just weren’t possible with books made of paper?  Interactive book clubs, automatic updates to serialized novels, communication with the author, or any number of things that become possible when you have an always-on internet connection.  But Amazon, like everyone else in the market, is too focused on protecting the old way of doing things instead of embracing everything new.

Today, and in the days to come, you will hear a lot about how wonderful the new device is, how this one is really “the iPod for books”, and how great Amazon is.  And then you’ll go back to reading books in more or less the same way you did before.

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My Kindle 2.0 Wishlist

If you’e been paying attention to the ebook world lately, you’ve no doubt heard that Amazon is expected to announce the second generation of their Kindle reader on February 9th.  Rather than add to the already rampant speculation, or further insult the UI (I haven’t seen a Kindle, so I’m not really qualified to judge the UI anyway), I thought I’d talk about the things that I’d like to see in the new device.

SD card support – It’s a great feature that they back up all your files in case you lose or delete them, but every other device on the planet supports some kind of removable media.  I already have a half dozen SD cards lying around, so that’s my removable media of choice.

No charge for stuff that’s already free – Ten cents to put a PDF on your Kindle?  99 cents a month to read an RSS feed, and only for approved blogs?  It’s like they built a big fence around your house, and then told you they had to charge you a dollar every time you want to go to the grocery store so they could pay for the fence.

WiFi – Even Amazon admits that their Whispernet connection only works in 48 states, and nothing international.  Montana, Alaska, and the entire rest of the world is left out.  The Whispernet is a fantastic idea, but with WiFi available in more and more places, it would be nice to be able to take advantage of it.

Improved user interface – As I said, I’ve never used it.  But with so many complaints, it must need improving.

A reasonable pricing structure for books – $9.99 is highway robbery for a book that you can’t resell, can’t loan to a friend, can’t do anything with but read.  Amazon is one of the few, if not the only, company that has the opportunity to completely change the way the market works.  It would be wonderful if they did it the right way.  A subscription service like Netflix would probably work.

Aside from the user interface, I don’t expect to actually see any of these things.  And that’s why I don’t expect to buy one.

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A failure for Amazon

kindlefeeder.com is a service for Amazon Kindle owners that lets you aggregate your favorite feeds and have them delivered to your Kindle in a convenient, easy-to-navigate format. You can also have your feeds delivered to your Kindle automatically on a schedule.

While most of the Amazon-related news these days is about the next-generation Kindle that everyone expects to be announced on February 9th, there are still things going on with the old version.

The mere fact that kindlefeeder.com exists and is not a part of Amazon means that Amazon isn’t meeting all the needs and desires of their customers.  That’s okay, and to be expected.  They can’t think of everything.

But the fact that the site owner is now afraid that what he’s done (make the Kindle more valuable by providing additional services for it) is actually against Amazon’s terms of service means that Amazon probably did think of this, and decided they didn’t want people doing it.

This insistence on controlling every word that goes onto your Kindle is the main reason I didn’t buy one, and won’t buy generation two unless it stops.  It means that Amazon hasn’t figured out how to properly monetize the Kindle.  In general, the company is pretty open with how you use their services – they try to help people sell their stuff in the Amazon marketplace, they provide online storage and processing power for people to purchase, as well as numerous other things.  These services are very open because Amazon knows how to charge you.  Each gigabyte of data you send or store using their service has a calculable price.

But the money is much fuzzier with the Kindle, and so it’s much more restricted.  In the long run, this is a mistake.  Basing your business on preventing people from doing what they want with your device will always limit your market.  You may make more money now, but you leave so much potential on the table.

Link: kindlefeeder.com – RSS and Atom Feed Subscriptions For Your Amazon Kindle, via MakeUseOf.com – Cool Websites and Tools (#258)

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All signs point to a new Kindle

Amazon press conference on 2/9: I can haz kindle too?.

Interesting article at CrunchGear about the upcoming Amazon press conference.  It seems very likely that the second generation Kindle will be announced.

More interesting, though, since it’s been widely assumed that the new Kindle is coming out early this year, is the wish in one of the comments for the ability to resell an ebook purchased for the Kindle.  This is not going to happen, and it’s a big reason why ebooks are going to have to wait to become a real part of the mainstream.

There are two possible ways in which it might be possible to resell ebooks, and neither of them works.

First, you could apply DRM to the ebooks.  This removes the concept of ownership – it is impossible to own something that can be revoked by the “seller” at any moment (see here, here, here, and here).  Without owning the ebook, any reselling would have to go through the original “seller”.  The DRM would have to be transferred in some way, and the new “owner” would still depend on some indifferent third party to allow access to the content.  This third party will be incurring costs for each transaction, and would be crazy not to pass these costs onto the customer.

So every time you “sold” the property you “own”, the original seller would take another cut.  And what happens when they decide to stop supporting the DRM anymore?  It’s bad enough if you’ve bought from someone and they take back what you bought.  What if you buy from someone and someone else takes back what you’ve bought? In almost every case, the reseller could make more money than the original seller.  The reseller has no costs beyond the original purchase price, and therefore can sell at a much cheaper price.  Since the copies are exactly as good as the original, only one original need ever be purchased.  This is not a sustainable business model.  Bargaining on irrational behavior on the part of all of your customers will not get you very far.

Clearly reselling DRMed content doesn’t make sense.  So what are the alternatives?

You can resell content without DRM.  But why would you?  You can copy it as many times as you want.  If it was worth $10 to you, surely you can find twenty people to buy it for $0.60 and make a profit.  Or you can give it away, since it doesn’t cost you anything, and the new friends you might make would be worth more than your initial investment.

So reselling non-DRMed content doesn’t make sense, either.  Where does that leave us?

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Ebooks anytime, anywhere

Shortcovers, Indigo Books & Music tells Internet Retailer, is a new division of the company with its own e-commerce infrastructure. Shortcovers in February will launch its web site and a mobile application for the iPhone.

Shortcovers seems to have the right idea.  They’re looking to support the iPhone first, then expand to other smartphones – Blackberry, and phones running Google Android or Symbian.

Michael Serbinis, executive vice president and chief information officer at Indigo Books & Music, says, “Shortcovers is a service for anyone who wants instant access to content with the convenience of having that access from the device they already own.

A software approach is certainly more adaptable to changing markets.  It won’t be long before everyone has some sort of device with them all the time that could be used for reading ebooks and other digital content.  Just because readers using E-Ink are popular now doesn’t mean it will continue.  As mobile phones become more and more like full computers, with larger screens and more powerful processors, and more and more people find that a data plan is just as vital as a voice plan, those same people will realize that any reading they might have done before on paper or on a computer screen can be done on the mobile screen, as well.  The companies that are positioned to take advantage of that before it becomes mainstream will be ahead of the competition.

What isn’t so clear is what exactly they mean by “shortcovers”.  They offer previews – first chapters and things like that – with the focus on mobile devices.  But it’s difficult to see what will set them apart from simply using Amazon.com on a mobile browser.

Article: InternetRetailer.com – Daily News for Tuesday, January 20, 2009.

Un-leveraged synergies

Motley Fool | Where’s Your Kindle Now, Oprah?.

However, according to The Register, less than half of her monthly book club recommendations are presently available for the e-book reader. Winfrey magazines O and O at Home also aren’t available for the Kindle.

It seems that either Amazon wasn’t expecting the endorsement, or Oprah’s marketing people didn’t really take full advantage of the possibilities.  Her magazines aren’t available on the Kindle.  Most of the books on her book club aren’t available (Although that’s likely due in part to Amazon’s insistence on controlling the flow of books to its device).

The biggest winners here may be resellers on Ebay, who probably make a bigger profit on sales of the Kindle than Amazon does.

And the strangest part is that, despite the obvious demand for similar devices, no one has brought anything to market that really competes.  Even in this economy, there seems to be a lot of money left on the table that people would be willing to put towards ebooks and ebook readers, and no compelling (and avialable) products to meet the demand.

iPhone vs. Kindle – Are they both wrong?

via New iPhone e-book application takes aim at Amazon’s Kindle – TechFlash: Seattle’s Technology News Source.

The New York Times today explores the growing visibility of electronic books, with the Kindle leading the way. Amazon doesn’t disclose Kindle sales figures, but the Times says estimates range from 260,000 to a million units sold. The story also notes that iPhone applications gave a boost to electronic books this year and “are already starting to generate nearly as many digital book sales as the Sony Reader, though they still trail sales of books in the Kindle format.”

The iPhone and the Kindle are two very different approaches to the ebook market.  The Kindle is a dedicated gadget for reading ebooks that happens to do other things.  The iPhone is coming from the other direction – a device that everyone wants that now happens to do ebooks.

While both are great for the industry as a whole, neither has yet done for ebooks what the iPod did for digital music.  When it was released, the Kindle might have been that game-changer, but it hasn’t quite worked out that way.  Hope remains for the new version of the Kindle, rumored to be released early this year.

But which is a better approach?  Should you make a device specifically for ebooks?  Or should you take a device that can be adapted to do ebooks, and find a software solution?

The iPhone’s software-based solution is closer to the ideal, but it has a long way to go.  First of all, it can’t just be for the iPhone.  It may be the hottest smartphone out there, but it’s not the only one, and Apple has always been stingy with their software.  And there are more and more screens in our lives, and more and more of the screens are connected to the internet.  Why limit yourself to your phone or your ebook reader?  In a decade, your toaster will have a four-inch LCD.  Maybe you’ll want to read an ebook there.

If we focus on the software solutions, and the problems common to all readers – ease of use, reformatting text for different size screens, etc – then we grow the entire market, and the next time something like the Kindle comes along, it has much bigger shoulders to stand on.