Tools of Change for Publishing: Devices: September 2008

Devices: September 2008

Taking the Leap into All-POD

Mac Slocum
September 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4) | Listen

James Bridle has launched Bookkake, a print-on-demand (POD) publisher focusing on transgressive literature. From booktwo.org:

... Bookkake is not in the fortune-building or the fortune-breaking business. Print-on-demand and direct sales mean that we cut out much of the warehousing, distribution, and discounting costs that are currently causing so much trouble in the trade. Order a book from the Bookkake website and it is printed and shipped directly to you.

POD editions can be ordered in the UK and US with free shipping. In addition, all Bookkake titles are available as free ebooks in DRM-free PDF, EPUB and MIDP formats:

... I firmly believe that by supplying interesting readers with the best version of what they can get elsewhere for free, I'll be rewarded with customer appreciation and loyalty.

(Via the Reading 2.0 list)

The Kindle, the Cloud and Mixed Signals

Mac Slocum
September 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Adam Hodgkin notes a discrepancy between Amazon's cloud-computing efforts and the Kindle. From Exact Editions:

If Amazon decides to switch tack on the Kindle and treat it simply as a blank slate on which users can rent rather than outright buy titles, they will have the infrastructure in place to make this change. Amazon is a true believer in the 'cloud' for next generation computing, but it apparently thinks that digital books are different: droplets on the ground rather than nodes in the cloud network.

(Via Jose Alonso Furtado's Twitter stream)

Q&A with Hadrien Gardeur, Co-Founder of Feedbooks

Mac Slocum
September 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Feedbooks is a Web-based service that converts, catalogs and distributes ebooks in a variety of formats. Co-founder Hadrien Gardeur discusses Feedbook's system and future services in the following Q&A.

How would you define your company? Is Feedbooks a distributor? A digitizing service? A social network? Something else?

Probably all three. We already distribute a massive number of ebooks and most of our users currently use Feedbooks to discover and download public domain or Creative Commons licensed ebooks. But we're also working on various tools for authors and small publishers to create ebooks. We'd like to turn our readers into potential authors, and create a service where new authors can distribute their creations to a large user base.

Who is your typical user?

Do we really have a typical user? We probably used to have typical users when we mostly provided ebooks for dedicated reading devices: heavy readers. But that's not the case anymore, now that we've extended the service to the iPhone, too.

Why did you start Feedbooks?

We've seen a lot of very exciting services for music and video these last few years and I really believe that there's a huge potential for ebooks too, thanks to E Ink-based devices and multi-purposes platforms such as the iPhone and Android. I love reading and I'd like to create a great service where anyone can discover new books, and where authors can easily connect with readers.

Your Web site lists support for the Kindle, the Sony Reader, the iRex iLiad, the Cybook Gen3, the iPhone and other smartphones. How are you able to support all of these devices?

We use an abstract representation, somehow similar to DTBook, to store all of our books. We can generate a file on the fly based on this representation. Adding new formats is fairly easy thanks to this technology. We were the first service to distribute books in EPUB for this reason.

Which ebook format is most popular with your users? Which e-reader is most popular?

EPUB and the iPhone are probably the most popular right now thanks to our seamless integration into Stanza. The most popular dedicated device is the Kindle.

Have established book publishers used your service to create ebook editions?

No, we're still working on those features. I expect major publishers to use XML+XSLT or Adobe InDesign rather than a dedicated service. We're creating our publishing feature with the end-user or small publishers in mind rather than major publishers.

Do you plan to sell ebooks?

We do. I believe that free content and user-generated content in general shouldn't be in a different environment than the rest of ebooks. It makes a lot more sense to have both in the same environment and create an optimal experience for the user.

When will sales begin?

No specific date yet, we'd rather focus on building a good service first and then add this component.

Print on demand (POD) services seem like a logical extension for Feedbooks. Is this something you're planing?

Sure, I consider POD as another potential format for our platform. It's a lot easier to turn an ebook into a POD book than the other way around.

The Feedbooks RSS tool appears to be targeted at Kindle users who want to receive updated news and information from RSS feeds. Do you anticipate other uses for this tool, such as a blog-to-book service?

It's not targeted at Kindle users only. I use it every day on a Sony Reader, and it's actually quite popular with the iPhone, too. I've been experimenting with blog-to-book, there's a lot of such "blooks" (blog+book, serialized novels using blogs) out there. I created a catalog entry for Stanza to test how the readers react to these serialized novels. Such a tool could probably be very interesting for publishers, too.

Feedbooks and Lexcycle, the company behind the Stanza e-reader, have a close working relationship. How did this come together?

Lexcycle launched the iPhone version of Stanza a few days before we decided to release the first version of our new API. Marc [Prud'hommeaux, principal developer at Lexcycle] contacted me: they were looking for content that could be directly integrated into Stanza's online catalog. We exchanged a lot of e-mails with various information, and did a lot of work together to make sure that this would work from day one. There's still a lot of new features that I'd like to introduce and we'll continue improving both the API and Stanza in the future, to create an optimal experience.

How are publishers and others using the Feedbooks API?

I would describe our API as read-mostly for the moment. It's mostly useful for reading systems such as Stanza. Once we turn it into something that's read/write, the situation will be quite different and I can imagine various innovative publishing techniques based on this.

What publishing techniques do you foresee?

Publishing should be more of a seamless experience. We already use a lot of publishing tools (blogs, social networks etc...) and we shouldn't have such a gap between these tools and ebooks.

What are the biggest issues with digital conversion?

There's a lot of formats, and you can expect standards such as EPUB to evolve in the near future. But I believe that the biggest issue for publishers is to find the right balance between what users are allowed to do and the ability to preserve the layout and design of a book. The holy grail for publishers is probably something as powerful as PDF, but reflowable. Ebooks allow users to customize a lot of things and preserving the design of a book shouldn't be at the cost of this flexibility.

Kindle vs Sony Reader: Battle of Distribution Channels

Mac Slocum
September 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Listen

The face-off between Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader is broadening beyond tech specs and ebook formats. Now it's a battle of distribution channels.

Sony started selling its PRS-505 e-reader and related accessories in Target stores earlier this week. Sony Readers are also available through Borders, Waterstone's, and Web retailers, including third-party sellers on Amazon.

Amazon's Kindle push is limited to one very large Web channel: Amazon. But will that be enough to seize the e-reader market? Joe Wikert recently touched on this topic:

... Amazon has an awareness problem. They might be thrilled with the device's sales rate up to now. It may have exceeded their greatest expectations. They apparently insist on capturing 100% of the revenue for it though, hence their direct-only sales model. Meanwhile, Sony is chipping away by embracing the EPub format and striking distribution deals with Borders and now Target.

The Web has a tendency to amplify messages beyond their natural boundaries, sometimes to the point where Web hits are incorrectly projected as surefire mainstream blockbusters -- be they devices or movies or anything else that generates ample Web interest. Amazon's reach and the Kindle's technology -- especially its wireless capabilities -- have painted the Kindle as the dominant device in Web circles. But hit products need to resonate with the millions of people who don't pour through RSS feeds on an hourly basis, and Sony knows a thing or two about nurturing the mass market. Assuming we eventually receive confirmed e-reader sales figures, it'll be interesting to see how Amazon's mix of online publicity and Amazon-only distribution stacks up against Sony's traditional approach.

Open Question: All-in-One Devices or Single Use E-Readers?

Mac Slocum
September 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (9) | Listen

Comparisons between the Kindle and the iPhone often touch on functional differences: the Kindle is a dedicated reading device with a few extra features; the iPhone is a bundled gadget that can serve as an e-reader.

The gap between single- and multi-use devices raises key questions about the future of e-readers and ebooks:

When it comes to reading digital books, do consumers prefer a dedicated device or an all-in-one gadget?
Is the market big enough to support both types of devices?

On the Print is Dead blog, Jeff Gomez says dedicated e-readers work well for book reading:

One thing that I don't mind about the Kindle is that it's an extra device. I used to think that I wanted an integrated device -- one thing that did everything -- and that I wouldn't want to carry around yet another device or gadget. But I actually like the fact that the Kindle is (more or less) just a device for the reading of content. Maybe this harkens back to the fact that every book is a destination; you get into bed and pick up a book because you want to read. You don't pick up a book to take pictures, record video or get your voicemail. So the fact that I don't use the Kindle to play solitaire is fine with me. True, that means I can't read something if I leave the house and have just my cell phone in my back pocket. But then again, a cell phone screen is too small, and most books are too big, so carrying a Kindle seems the right compromise.

Alison Flood from The Guardian casts a vote for bundled devices:

I'm waiting for an e-reader that bundles many uses into one: music player, phone, BlackBerry, internet, ebooks. That's what will really make the market take off. Of course they won't ever replace books, but then they're not meant to. It'll be something new and different and very exciting. Just don't drop it in the bath.

Which type of device do you prefer? Please share your thoughts in the comments area.

What Does Esquire's E Ink Cover Mean for Print Publishing?

Mac Slocum
September 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3) | Listen

I've been noodling on the implications of Esquire's E Ink cover (video available here), and for the life of me I can't see how this is anything more than a small change in a mature technology. It's on par with terrestrial radio's embrace of HD Radio and the music industry's attempts at super-high-fidelity discs (SACD and DVD-A).

Esquire deserves credit for experimenting with E Ink, and I certainly think E Ink itself has a variety of uses (Kindle and Sony Reader owners would agree). But the merging of E Ink displays and traditional print formats garners the same level of interest as National Geographic's hologram covers: neat idea ... nice execution ... but beyond the publicity and potential newsstand sales, what's the long-term point?

Future E Ink screens are projected to be ultra-light, interactive and updateable via Web connections (the Kindle offers a variation on this), but millions of consumers already own mobile devices with the same functionality. Even if these features come to pass, why would I purchase a print-digital hybrid or a separate digital-only device when I have easy access to content on a device I already own?

Bolting digital elements onto an analog medium may yield new ideas -- and there's value in that -- but there's something to be said for adaptation within a format. Radio has survived by adapting its content. Television, newspapers and magazines are in the midst of their own adaptations, and what these formats become will be influenced by the content they deliver, not the technological add-ons they incorporate. E Ink may someday emerge as a vital aspect of print material, but only when it furthers the essential elements of storytelling, information delivery and clear consumer value.

What's your take? Do you see opportunities in the merging of E Ink and print material? Please share your thoughts in the comments area.

Stay Connected

	TOC RSS Feeds News Posts Commentary Posts Combined Feed New to RSS?
	Subscribe to the TOC newsletter.
	Follow TOC on Twitter.
	Join the TOC Facebook group.
	Join the TOC LinkedIn group.
	Get the TOC Headline Widget.