Something to sell, something to give away

I love Techdirt.  Many of the ideas I present here are based on (or, honestly, stolen from) things I read there.  If you don’t read Techdirt, you should.

Here’s a good article to start on.  It helps that it’s about both my favorite band and one of my favorite concepts.  Nine Inch Nails has made a lot of money recently since ditching the record label and experimenting with new ways to sell music.  Giving away MP3s and other digital content and selling collector’s editions, cds, dvds;  Recently they’ve made concert footage available for people to mix and edit and do whatever they want.

This concept of taking things that you can copy as many times as you want and using them to promote the things that can’t be easily copied, the things still worth paying for, is the future of most media.  TV, movies, books, music – new technology means that you can do so much more with your content, things that weren’t possible even a decade ago.  It just takes a little innovation and good ideas on how to make people want to give you their money.

Take the example of two of my favorite authors, Charles Stross and John Scalzi.  I became fans of both by reading novels they were giving away in electronic form for free.

I first read Stross’ Accelerando a few years ago.  It was, and still is, available as a free download.  Since then, I have had a beer with Charlie, and read most of his books.  I own probably half of them (including a paperback copy of Accelerando, though that’s because I inadvertently put it on my Amazon wish list, and someone bought it for me for Christmas).  I will continue to buy his books as they come out.

I first read Scalzi’s Agent to the Stars at about the same time.  It, too, remains available for free online.  I have not had any personal contact with him, but not because I couldn’t – his blog is widely read, and he really communicates with his commentors.  I haven’t spoken with him because I haven’t really had anything to say, though I read his blog regularly.  I own a few of his books, too.

Both of these authors gave things away for free, connected with fans, and made me want to buy their books.  Will this work all the time, for every author?  Well, maybe not in exactly the same way.  But the model has so much possibility.  Eventually, no one will pay to simply watch a movie or read a novel.  People will still pay to see a movie in the theater, or see a musician in concert.  But the content itself will be free.  Some people won’t be able to make any money any more, and that’s unfortunate.  But many will, and some will make much more than they ever thought possible.  In the end, society will be better off.

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It’s not clear that reading is really evolving

CBC said Shortcovers is like a bookstore in your pocket – no matter you are, in the back of a cab, at a Starbucks or Tim’s – you can find your next great read, click, buy and get it downloaded instantly. You only need your existing mobile device: like an iPhone, Blackberry, or a web browser. That’s a huge convenience for consumers, especially because you can use the mobile phone you already have vs some special ereader.

Perhaps it’s sour grapes because their PR people didn’t reply to my inquiry, but I don’t find very much exciting or innovative about Shortcovers.  Or maybe they’re just being secretive leading up to their big launch, promised sometime this month.

The idea seems to be very similar to what Amazon has done with the Kindle, except not restricted to a particular device.  While this is a fine service that’s sure to get some use, it’s hardly ground-breaking.

However, they hint at “surprises” when they launch, so we could still see something amazing.  At the very least, increased competition in the market should be good for consumers.

via Shortcovers — Leading the evolution of reading.

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Ebooks – will we ever learn?

There’s a long and interesting article at Ars Technica from a guy who’s been in the ebook business for a long time.  His point is, basically, that everyone has gotten it wrong for the last ten years, making the same mistakes, over and over.  And the big players today are still making those mistakes.

He lists many of them, and most will sound familiar – Ebooks are too expensive;  DRM hurts honest customers and doesn’t do a thing to stop piracy, which is a vastly overstated problem anyway;  No one has tried anything really and truly new with ebooks.

It’s all a little depressing.  I was hoping he’d get to some brilliant idea to save the book industry, but he never really does.  But he gets it – he sees the ridiculous state of the industry now, stubbornly clinging to the old way of doing things instead of embracing all the new things you just couldn’t do before.

The world is still looking for publishing business models that work and will continue to work when all books are ebooks.  Someone could make a lot of money . . .

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Ebooks and strange bedfellows

If your lover is an erotica-lover, get him or her one of the incredibly sexy erotic ebooks available at Adultebookshop.com. Starting at $2.65, these ebooks can be downloaded and enjoyed with privacy on the computer, iphone or ipod touch. (Or, if you really want to splurge, pair the ebook up with an ebook reader, $265 and up.)

A nice ebook reader could do the same thing for erotic literature that the internet-connected computer did for erotic movies.  Never underestimate the power of the porn industry to drive technological innovation.

via Denver Sex and Romance Examiners: Unique, sexy gifts for Valentine’s Day.

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The Kindle wouldn’t have happened without the iPod

But even the 500,000 estimate would mean that the Kindle is outpacing iPod unit sales in the iPod’s second year on the market, when it sold only 378,000 units. That means if you turned back the clock and launched both at the same time, the Kindle would be outselling the iPod by 32 percent.

The problem here is that you can’t compare sales figures.  The Kindle is, in some sense, standing on the shoulders of the iPod.  The iPod changed the way people thought about buying and listening to music.  The Kindle hasn’t even yet earned the “iPod of books” title that was nevertheless bestowed upon it almost immediately.

Yes, Amazon has sold a lot of Kindles.  Yes, they sell them so fast they can’t keep them in stock.  But the Kindle is just a pretty slick new package on essentially the same old business model.  It hasn’t fundamentally changed the market.

If you had released the two at the same time, Kindle sales would have been much lower because people would have had no idea what to do with it.  The iPod paved the way for the very idea of the Kindle.  It gave it a context in people’s minds, something similar that it could be compared to.  It’s impossible to measure what this did for Kindle sales, but it did something, and you can’t ignore that something in making hypothetical projections.

Article: Is The Kindle Outpacing Early iPod Sales? – washingtonpost.com.

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Free Kindles and no newspapers

If [T]he [T]imes killed its paper print-run and followed the Kindle-only model, that would leave the newspaper with $346 million in its pocket. Okay, distributing the newspaper electronically in a secure way needs some electronic infrastructure…let’s stick a figure of $10 million on that. That still leaves $336 million to spare–a figure not to be sniffed at.

While it’s true that printing and delivering a newspaper is a huge cost that makes less and less sense by the day, this analysis still misses the point.  Replacing one ridiculous expense with a more ridiculous but smaller expense is not the way to succeed.  Newspapers must accept that the only way forward is to focus on the the scarce things they have to sell, and give the rest away.

And no, I don’t mean selling the printing presses and the buildings that house them.  While these things are scarce, and might bring in some extra cash, they won’t solve the problem.

But what do newspapers have that they could sell?  They have experienced reporters who will do more than scan Google and Technorati for the latest news.  They will actually investigate, research, and report.  These are all valuable things that take time and effort.  Businesses would pay for extensive, accurate, and timely information about their respective industries.  They already do pay for information like this.  Collecting this sort of information, weeding out what’s not important, presenting it in a readable way, these things are all hard.  These things are all valuable.  These are things you can sell.

But how does everyone else get their news?  For free.  Delivered via blogs and RSS feeds and however else people find it convenient.  Some will still pay for paper copies, at least for a while longer.

The difference is that, instead of trying to figure out ways to restrict your content, to keep people from getting at it, to inflate the price with artificial scarcity, you get it out there.  You use your content to build your reputation as a great place to come for good information.  And when people want to pay for your reporting and researching skills, you keep giving the content away.  Those who are paying you can have it first, maybe, but after that it goes out onto the internet where others can use it and build on it and consume it and keep building your reputation and naturally inflating the prices, sustainably inflating the prices (provided you continue the high level of service).

Saving the newspaper industry won’t really be about the newspaper at all.  It will be about transitioning an old industry that focused on putting things on paper into a new industry that focuses on collecting information and putting it together to be consumed.

Article: Fast Company – Should The New York Times Ditch Paper, Distribute Kindle E-readers?

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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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New site all about e-paper

Today, EpaperCentral.com (www.epapercentral.com) announced it is now available to the public. EpaperCentral.com is a hub for news, analysis, information and discussion on all things relating to electronic paper. The site is also dedicated exclusively to delivering the newest, most up-to-date information about electronic paper’s nearly endless applications ranging from next generation newspapers, textbooks, signage and mobile devices, to more obscure applications such as windshield navigational displays.

Why anyone would put out a press release on Sunday is beyond me.  And doing it on Super Bowl Sunday is utterly insane.  But I’m not in marketing, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.

In any event, the site looks pretty slick, and they’ve got details on products that I wasn’t aware of, so definitely worth watching.

via EpaperCentral.com Launches Dedicated Hub for E-Paper Developments.

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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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Fiction isn’t just going to disappear

If electronic publishing—and that includes the reality that it’s very easy to “pirate” electronic text—is a form of publishing that some authors and publishers have a hard time adapting to, then that’s just too damn bad for them. As my father liked to say whenever I’d whine about something as a boy, “things are tough all over.” If they can’t cut the mustard, then it’s just a fact that over time they will fade away.

A comment I left at Teleread prompted a contributor there to send me to an interesting article on the future of novels.  My first thought was, “that’s the biggest and most obnoxious tip jar I’ve ever seen on a website”.  That led me to think, “There’s no way the person who wrote this article has any concept of infinitely copyable digital content”.

But I was very wrong.  And the article comes from an author, someone who has experienced some of the changes in the world of publishing fiction, which puts him in a much more qualified position than many to speak about the industry.

He makes the point that some will be harmed by changes – the electronic revolution will mean that some won’t be able to make a living by writing any more.  That’s unfortunate – no one wants anyone to lose their livelihood.  Certainly when I say that you can’t charge for an ebook, I don’t mean that I think authors should work for nothing just so I don’t have to spend $9.99 at Amazon.

I do think that authors need to find new ways to make money, and it’s nice to see some authors agreeing with me.  People are thinking about new ways to publish fiction.  It’s not going to be the end of fiction, but it might be the beginning of the end of the way the publishing industry does business today.

Luckily, many authors will adapt, and many publishing companies will adapt, and people will still get to consume fiction.  But the way it gets paid for will probably be very different.  Not scary, but different.

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