Westport, Connecticut offers its residents many benefits, one of which is an excellent public library that has become an ever more central component of our community. As prime local retail storefronts have been overtaken by national and regional chains and the Web absorbs much of our attention for personal contact, our library serves as not just a repository for knowledge but increasingly as the primary pubic facility used by many citizens. A storm knocks out your power for a few days? Camp out at the library and use the wireless and PCs to keep in touch with the world. Need a place to socialize or hold a business meeting in a place that's not too commercial? Grab a coffee at the library cafe or use one of its meeting rooms - that is, if you're lucky enough to be able to book one.

Labels: books, connectictut, curation, eBooks, knowledge management, libraries, local, patrons, services, westport

My wife was bugging me before Christmas for a nice toy that I would like as a gift, so I thought that it couldn't hurt to get Barnes & Noble's new Nook ebook reader, which, at the time, was due for delivery before the holidays. With a hybrid eInk display for text and Android-driven touch interface for navigation combined with ePub-formatted documents, at least it would be a "walking the talk" gizmo that reflected how I saw what publishers should be doing with ebook distribution.

Labels: Android, apple, barnes and noble, eBooks, eInk, epub, Google, ipad, nook, readers, wireless

With the media industry salivating over Apple CEO Steve Jobs' announcement of the new iPad as if it were awaiting an injection of Viagra, you'd think that the machine would do everything except change a flat tire. Well, the hoopla is over, and the iPad is...a large iPhone, essentially. Nice, sexy, though functionally not really a breakthrough device compared to the impact that the original iPhone had on mobile markets. However, then the other shoes started to drop after the klieg lights on the announcement stage began to cool off a bit. The two key factors: price and e-book packaging.

Labels: amazon, apple, eBooks, epub, Google, ipad, iPhone, standards, Web

This year's International Consumer Electronics Show was awash in more tablets than a local pharmacy, with both actual models being shown and overarching buzz from Apple's anticipated iSlate tablet offering expected later this year. While many of the new tablet models were largely warmed-over versions of netbooks or smartbooks, some were oriented towards executives and (presumably) wealthy students who would be willing to pay close to a thousand dollars for a tablet that "acted" like a paper document. Two key models making their debut at CES in this column were the Hearst-sponsored Skiff newspaper and magazine reader and the Que document and e-book reader from Plastic Logic.

Labels: 3-d, apple, avatar, cinerama, eBooks, ereader, facebook, hearst, islate, magazines, mobile, newspapers, pc, plastic logic, que, skiff, tablet, television, Twitter

As exciting as Amazon's Kindle has been for many early adopters of content technologies, its screaming limitations and awkward business model have been threats all along to its long-term success. But as long as really viable alternatives were not available, few people seemed to focus on the potential for Amazon to be painted into an uncomfortable box. With the nearing launch of the Nook device from book retailer Barnes & Noble, that time of unchallenged supremacy for the Kindle seems to be drawing to a close.

Labels: amazon, Amazon Kindle, Android, barnes and noble, eBooks, Google, nook, readers

While there's been enormous buzz about Kindle eBook readers from Amazon and, now, the new eBook platform offering from Barnes & Noble and an updated eBook reader from Sony, the broader truth is that eBooks represent just a sliver of the book industry as a whole and an even smaller portion of online attention. With USD 118 million in U.S. eBook sales last year versus USD 24.3 billion in overall book sales, electronic books have barely scratched the economic surface of publishing, in spite of all of the Silicon Valley bluster about their potential. Yet this isn't stopping major retailers and publishers from experimenting with eBook technologies again and again - and continuing to pull their punches when it comes to realizing the possibilities for books in electronic forms.

Labels: amazon, Amazon Kindle, barnes and noble, books, eBooks, eInk, Google, plastic logic, Publishing

BookExpo America is one of the premier U.S. trade events, encompassing more than a few Wal-Marts of display space wherever it sets down. This year's event in New York was no exception, but more than ever there was a pall in the air of its exhibit halls as much of the paper-based world of books began to come grinding to a halt in recessionary times. The other key factor, of course, was the meteoric rise of premium ebooks on Amazon's Kindle device, a blessing for publishers needing quick revenues without inventory commitments but a curse with its draconian revenue cuts and control over unit pricing. Who would have thought, then, that the name of Google would come along to offer the book industry...some hope?

Labels: amazon, Amazon Kindle, bookexpo america, books, eBooks, Google, marketing, publishers

The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberger and other prominent lights are weighing in on the launch of an application on Apple's iPhone that enables reading e-books compatible with Amazon's Kindle mobile device, with many analysts cooing about this as a huge event. There's no doubt that Kindle e-books have everthing to gain from leapfrogging out of a pond of half a million Kindle devices into a lake of thirteen million-plus iPhone owners (just in time for "Content Nation," which is now available on Kindle). Better yet, since the Kindle application does not tie down Amazon to any exclusive marketing deal with Apple, the doorway is open for Amazon to march onto Nokias, Blackberries and phones equipped with Google's Andriod application. As people owning Kindle-compatible book titles move from one mobile device to another, the Kindle Store on the Web will make it possible for them to use their e-book on any equipped device, "closing" their book on one gizmo and being able to "open" it on another one at the same spot. Think of it as an iTunes for books that's not tied down to any particular player. Not much to complain about here at first glance: it's the creation of the first true mass market platform for electronic books from major publishers. Kudos to Amazon and to the publishers that are playing with them to advance Kindle sales.

But let's look past the first glance and get to what this really means for book publishing. The good news is that Kindle books can now reach the relatively affluent and educated audience that has enough money to buy iPhones - many of whom may have the money for both an iPhone and a Kindle reader but not necessarily the desire to lug around two book-reading gizmos all of the time. Now e-books get to take a major step towards the "nearly everywhere" profile that Web content has on both Internet and mobile-based devices. The bad news, though, is that the book industry, already beholden to Amazon almost as much as music companies are beholden to iTunes for electronic sales, appears to be repeating the mistakes that are likely to prevent their revenues from growing quickly enough to sustain their business models. Put simply, book publishers have turned over the keys to their electronic printing presses to Jeff Bezos and said, "Knock yourself out, you know what to do more than we do." E-books will progress only as quickly as it suits Amazon - and on only those platforms that suit them.

A benevolent monopoly of this kind for electronic book distribution might be beneficial for publishers if it had global reach, but those 13 million iPhones represent only about half of the greater New York City metropolitan market. A good chunk, to be sure, but a far step away from, say, the 1.6 billion people using the Web or the billions of mobile phone users around the world. And even within that universe of 13 million iPhone users, a fair amount of those people fall into the category of folks who Steve Jobs believed would never really read much of anything. In the meantime the audience for books continues to get grayer and grayer. To put it another way, I don't see all that many people in book stores toting around iPhones. The Kindle packaging for iPhone solves a key licensing and distribution problem for book publishers that's likely to improve their profits in the short term, but it does not come even close to building marketable exposure for books on a scale that is likely to draw attention away from other forms of electronic content.

This brings us back to those music publishing companies which had such high hopes for the DRM-enabled iPhone agreements that they signed only a few years ago. This "magic bullet" seemed great at the time - and it certainly has been great for Apple's profits. But it did little to slow the rapid erosion of profits from music sales at most of the major music publishers. Put simply, the insistence on having packaging that seemed to protect their existing business models only delayed the point at which music publishers had to face that their models were going to miss the lion's share of revenues that could be generated online from music. What they saw in the Web was the world's largest music store. What they should have seen was the world's largest theatre and radio station rolled into one.

Book publishers in general don't suffer from the electronic piracy problems that plagued the music industry, so no doubt it seemed like a logical step to move into rights-protected distribution that enabled book publishers to manage industry metrics in much the same way that they have managed metics on print book sales. But in focusing on protecting their existing business model, like the music industry the book industry is largely delaying the more troubling question of how they can make the most money possible from the global audience of billions who engage the Web and mobile devices daily.

Kindle book packaging is useful for traditional reading, but how, for example, can it facilitate even the most basic collaborative use of books? Basic uses of books such as discusions via book clubs, classroom discussion, fair-use excerpting, note-sharing and other value-add services are nowhere near the surface of the stack of potential Kindle developments. Beyond replicating basic uses of print books there is little if any thought given as to how multimedia can be integrated into Kindle books effectively. For example, the online version of the "Content Nation" book has about a dozen video clips embedded in the text. Even still photos of most of these clips did not make their way into the print edition because of traditional print publishing standards. Yet these same clips would be great to have in an electronic, Web-enabled version of the book.

While it's possible that an aggressive roll-out of Kindle readers on most major mobile devices could help to stave off some of the worst problems that are looming for book publishers, the truth is that they are years behind in developing the real opportunities for books in electronic format. Book publishers are facing the same revenue gaps that confront music, newspaper and magazine publishers that waited far too long to build robust online revenue models that could sustain them as their traditional revenue sources moved into legacy status. In the meantime the Google e-books initiative that builds on their book-scanning initiative promises to put millions of book titles on electronic devices that are no longer controlled by book publishers. In other words, Kindle may just turn out to be the "eight track tape" solution for books - a technology that seemed to be extremely popular at first with the public for listening to tape-recorded music but that turned out to be a dead end for early adapters when more flexible and higher-quality technologies came along.

Every time publishers resist the fundamental dynamics of the Web, they usually come to regret it. Traditional book publishers still have an opportunity to redefine their future independent of the Kindle, but it's more likely that the explosion of alternative online book publishing services will begin to overtake Kindle-based books over the next few years as sources of content that are more flexible, more shareable and more attuned to the needs of new generations of readers to whom the term "cracking the books" is largely a metaphor. Traditional books and book publishers will live on, and Kindle will help them to live on for many years to come. But in the meantime a new book industry is being defined that will be the true future of books - with or without Kindles.

Labels: amazon, Amazon Kindle, apple, books, business models, eBooks, iPhone, Jeff Bezos, Publishing, Steve Jobs

This year's BookExpo America in Los Angeles featured much of the usual multi-story ballyhoo of years past, with a thinner crowd and thinning expectations for the book industry in general, though with a few bright exceptions. One of these exceptions has been Amazon's Kindle eBook reader, which has become the Pet Rock of the 2008 book industry. Still inscrutable in terms of its limitations (no PDFs, no general Web content) and as awkward as ever, the Kindle is the darling of book-readers on the go who can't afford the space, time or trouble of loading multiple books in their overnight bags and pocketbooks (and yes, one of them might be me when I break my el-cheapo mental barriers).

It's also becoming the darling of traditional media outlets, which have the ability to push print-like materials into a medium that's unbound from print production limits, enabling them to maximize revenues when a title gains its peak value in a very short period of time. AP notes that former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book on his experiences in the Bush administration sold out quickly at Amazon in print format but that the book continued to sell briskly in Kindle eBook format, albeit at a lower price. There's some question as to exactly how much Amazon really makes on the book sales themselves (the New York Times claims along with others that Amazon takes a bath on each Kindle book sale), but as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos noted that the Kindle is still in its developmental phase it's likely that book publishers' existing business models are considered a part of the platform's developmental cost at this point.

Silicon Valley Insider's back-of-the envelope model for Kindle sales noted that if the Kindle business scales as quickly as Apple's iPod/iTunes business scaled it's possible that Amazon could be enjoying more than USD 740 million in combined Kindle device and content sales by 2010. That's highly speculative, especially given that there had been more than a decade of well-established consumption of music via online portals before the iPod came along to become a cool fashion tool for content amongst the young. Book publishers face a far tougher proposition of moving beyond a graying population of book enthusiasts still young enough to value technology as a status symbol towards younger generations that have yet to discover books at all in a big way. A whole generation of college students is now coming of age that has not ever turned a paper page on a regular basis. So Kindle's ability to grow rapidly beyond its early adopters into iPod-like growth is still in question.

That may suit book publishers just fine in the short run, given their need to maintain a pricing structure that covers the 99 percent of their sales still done in print. But now that they have locked themselves into a proprietary DRM-secured format for Kindle content they have in essence handed Amazon the keys to the paper mill for electronic content. Certainly Sony's eBook platform provides a "Brand X" that will generate the illusion of consumer choice in eBook reading, but with the extensive infrastructure and branding of Amazon people wanting to purchase content rapidly for their eInk-displayed content will have but one real choice. If in fact eBook sales rise rapidly enough to push Amazon into a position of dictating book industry pricing, then book industry executives may be wondering why they didn't consider the music industry's death at the hands of iPod's proprietary 99-cent downloads as a lesson to have been studied more carefully.

Fortunately the book industry has the opportunity to adapt to these changes in relative slow motion compared to the music industry's fast-forward realization that Apple had stolen their business model. In doing so book publishers may want to consider how music companies are learning to benefit more from broader artist management services as a supplementary line of business. As noted in The New York Times recently Universal Music Classical Artists Management and Productions has been formed as a unit to produce and profit from live performances of music and artist fan items other than CDs. Thinking of the good fortune my friend David Meerman Scott has had on the speaking circuit in the wake of his runaway hit business book "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" (available as a Kindle book also, of course), how much more could his publisher have profited from his management as a speaker as well as from his imprinted word?

At the same time book publishers are becoming smarter about benefiting from the value of book content in pre-print communities as well. My own relationship with John Wiley & Sons has enabled content from my own forthcoming book "Content Nation" to be posted online and publisher programs such as O'Reilly's Rough Cuts are well into developing pre-print subscription communities for tech book consumers that act more as knowledge exchanges than peeks at books before publication - artist management for art still in the making, if you will. So although there are certainly exposures that publishers face via Amazon's proprietary eBook platform they are already developing more diversified revenue channels to maximize the value of their content.

Future iterations of the Kindle are no doubt going to change the shape of this debate significantly, but for now it's probably good that the intense interest in Kindles from a relatively narrow band of book readers is probably going to grow more slowly than some would think. It opens the possibility that book publishers will be able to develop an approach to eBooks that will open the marketplace to far greater competition amongst technology platform providers - and more opportunities for more ways to package and sell content on eBook platforms.

Although the Kindle itself is proprietary it is using the Sprint telecommunications company's broadband wireless network in the U.S., a strong network with standardized communications technology that could easily accommodate any number of services providing downloads of eBooks and other media. Enabling any media service to provide subscription or on-demand downloads into any device at a cost lower than typical broadband Internet services via such a network might accelerate a market for competitive platforms before Amazon gets to flood the market with cheaper Kindles at a not-so-distant future point in time. Here's hoping that publishers of books and other media jumping in the Kindle bandwagon think carefully about who should be in control of their distribution mechanism before locking themselves into being curators of content proprietary to emerging mobile platforms.

Labels: amazon, broadband wireless, eBooks, kindle, publishers

At a business meeting recently I encountered an Amazon Kindle device in the hands of a prosperous executive eager to show off his new gizmo. It was...pretty much what I had expected. Its eInk display technology makes for an easy-on-the-eyes reading surface, through not super-bright, and the monochrome display has all the charm of an under-engineered Apple Newton. But the device as a whole impresses one as more easy to handle than photographs would imply, with a nifty little sidebar LED display blipping away as pages load to give it that Star Trek feel for those folks who need to be reminded that this is a neat-o device. The keyboard is about as bad as I had expected, but given the Blackberry era that we're living in most people who are already mobile fanatics will probably find it to be plenty easy and familiar enough for the rare times that it will come into use.

Amazon's recent acquisition of spoken word distributor Audible for a hefty USD 300 million price tag underscores that Amazon is only at the very beginning of its journey into mobile content platforms. As it is there are a fair number of publications available already on Kindles, but in spite of its still waiting-list-only sales status after a rousing round of Christmas holiday sales it's not clear that we're seeing the beginning of a stampede to Kindles any time soon with its hefty price tag and slow production schedule. This makes it harder for Kindle enthusiasts to turn their love for the device into sales any time soon. That's probably just as well, given that more beefy functionality is required in the device to make it more universally appealing. It's a bit reminiscent of when U.S. Robotics first introduced the Palm Pilot, a trendy device that sparked the PDA fad but one that lacked a keyboard, a factor that opened the door for more traditional input interfaces from Microsoft and RIM's Blackberry.

While an intense media blitz and Jeff Bezos' personal commitment to the product launch helped to kick Kindle into a well-hyped introduction, I sense that my take from last Fall is still pretty much on track. Kindle is largely an effort by Amazon to go to the "King Gillette" model of making sure that there is a nifty handle (read: mobile platform) on which to sell razor blades regularly. It works for Steve Jobs over at Apple, the thinking goes not doubt, so why shouldn't Amazon have its own content device-cum-captive content channel? Well, why not indeed - at least for now. Kindle will help Amazon to cater to publishers trying to find new walled gardens for their content in an increasingly open digital world, but at the end of the day the value in content is not just in one-time sales but in being able to build a relationship with a content brand or author over time in whatever context an audiences desires that relationship. Kindle will do very well for publishers still in the "we publish things" business but for those who are beginning to realize that they are in the business of providing valuable experiences to audiences Kindle may turn out to be a platform that's more of an experimental bridge to a more interactive and profitable future.

Labels: amazon, eBooks, eInk, kindle, mobile

The image of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the cover of Newsweek clutching his new Kindle as if it were "the new, new thing" is designed to get us thinking that the new portable device from Amazon is going to revolutionize the way that we use books, etc.

In short, it's not.

The article in Newsweek is filled with gushing praise for Bezos' efforts to "revolutionize" book reading as we know it, but little of what it promises requires a Kindle to make it happen. As the article acknowledges eventually:

In 2007, screens are ubiquitous (and less twitchy), and people have been reading everything on them—documents, newspaper stories, magazine articles, blogs—as well as, yes, novels. Not just on big screens, either. A company called DailyLit this year began sending out books—new ones licensed from publishers and classics from authors like Jane Austen—straight to your e-mail IN BOX, in 1000-work chunks.

In other words it's fair to say that the cat has been out of the bag for books on mobile platforms for quite some time and that from a book perspective there's not much new to say about Kindle other than it's another new device for eInk technology and a good way for people to view Amazon-scanned books in a proprietary viewer. Other than that, you're looking at an Apple Newton with built-in wireless that costs $100 more than a comparable eBook reader from Sony.

Ah, but that wireless. Probably the most interesting things that the Kindle can handle have less to do with books and a lot more to do with other content and marketing opportunities via its wireless capabilities. The Kindle will be able to download newsstand content such as newspapers and magazines as well as books via a wireless system that can use both wireless hotspot technology and broadband wireless. While at launch time the downloads are going to be coming from the Amazon online store, there's the potential in this platform to be a device that could interact with "bricks" environments as well as "clicks." When the Newsweek article says:

Amazon has designed the Kindle to operate totally independent of a computer: you can use it to go to the store, browse for books, check out your personalized recommendations, and read reader reviews and post new ones, tapping out the words on a thumb-friendly keyboard. Buying a book with a Kindle is a one-touch process.

it means Amazon's Kindle Store online site. Not exactly Buck Rogers stuff.

But what if instead the Kindle were a device that you could use to point at items in a retail store to learn more about them and then click on the Kindle to enable immediate purchasing of either a physical or virtual version of that item? What if you were reading an interesting eBook at your favorite coffee shop and then picked up a hard copy of it at the counter from their print-on-demand machine while you ordered up your second latte? Or, better yet, if you're in Toys 'R Us you could browse online reviews of toys and games on your Kindle and use in-store electronic purchasing via the Kindle to speed up the checkout process. Given the enormous investment that Amazon has in retailing all kinds of manufactured goods you'd think that they'd focus on how to improve margins across their entire catalog of merchandise via an electronic gadget.

Given the premium price tag for one of these units it's not clear that there's going to be much of any thunder at the cash register for Kindles this holiday season. Consider this a modest step by Amazon to get into the mobile platform business in a way that could position it in a very interesting way over time as an alternative to Microsoft, Apple and Google - a positioning that would make Amazon more attractive as an acquisition target for a publisher-friendly online service. Say, like, Yahoo? With Yahoo's brand-friendly approach to content, it would be a natural fit. So consider Kindle less of a revolution in eBooks and more of an evolution of Amazon towards a marriage that can bring its investors to a new level in the marketplace via acquisition.

Labels: amazon, broadband wireless, eBooks, eInk, kindle, mobile

I've been waiting so long for eBooks to take off that it's begining to feel like a scene from a comedy sketch or an existential play, but current sales trends offer some moderate optimism that the medium may be building steam. While USD 8 million for eBooks sales in July is still a rounding error for the book trade as a whole it's double what it was a year ago, and showing strong movement towards cracking USD 100 million in eBook sales next year. Helping along eBooks will be improving players such as Sony's new PRS-505 platform, which Engadget indicates is
now available at a USD 299 sticker price.

The 505 features improved paper-like image resolution from eInk technology and perhaps most importantly a USB port to allow uploads and downloads between the reader and one's PC - at last simplifying the process to snatching content off the Web and transferrring it to the reader. That content can include MP3 files, but with ultra-low power consumption - you could go weeks between needing extra juice for this unit - the main appeal is to the monochrome text world of readers.

Yet for all of the niceties added to this improved model it's still a far cry away from what is likely to be adopted as a mass-market device for book consumption. One significant barrier remains the price point - with communications companies subsidizing the cost of mobile phones heavily to promote usage, why hasn't the book industry considered the same for devices that would promote eBook growth? The answer comes in part from the tradition of booksellers working with balkanized networks of distributors - they're comfortable with retailers who want to lock in their own comfy margins with book products, each with their own quirks and formats.

In the process of helping their vendors remain proprietary, though, the industry is slipping away rapidly from any real opportunities for eBooks to take off in a big way any time soon. Amazon's Kindle platform, slated for a launch (of sorts) this month, will do hardly better than Sony in making people love yet another device to clutter their world - and in fact may do worse, given the device's positively retro look: think of a cross between an IBM PCjr and an early Star Trek Tricorder. Then again, for those attached to print perhaps this is flashy enough.

The real problem with eBook readers lies with their inability to provide any sort of useful reading experience beyond simple book pages. With Adobe PDFs still the widely used standard for premium eBook materials, too many publishers are trying to format information with print-like rendition in mind and leaving eBook readers to try to figure out how to scroll through or otherwise make sense of materials not well adapted for the relatively low resolution of eBook displays. There's a long ways to go before we can even begin to think of this medium as truly "electronic paper."

Mobile devices such as phones are the real portable eBook and eMagazine platform of choice, but even here displays can disappoint. I was watching an iPhone enthusiast demonstrate recently how "easy" it was to read a magazine through the slick new device - a magazine that was formatted for print reading and utterly unnavigable on the tiny iPhone screen. Publishers born of the print world just cannot, cannot give up the notion that print-formatted materials will work great on anything that's smaller than their original format.

With all this said, there may be a niche for eBook readers amongst people who want to make sure that they have something to grab when their mobile phone needs a recharge. In the meantime eBooks are thriving on phones and in online venues where printable formatting is considered a plus. eBooks will do particularly well as materials that can encourage previewing a title that someone would like to consider for on-demand printing. But still, even at this highly developed stage in the electronic publishing era, it's hard for most publishers and technologist to think of books as anything other than a relic that will be accomodated reluctantly by new technologies. This leaves plenty of room for people to reinvent what a book really is - but that's for another post, perhaps.

Labels: downloads, eBooks, mobile, Sony