Tools of Change for Publishing: Ebooks

Ebooks

Q&A with Developer Who Turns Ebooks into iPhone Applications

Mac Slocum
August 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Ebook files and e-reader software usually exist as separate entities, but Tom Peck of AppEngines merged the two to create individual ebook applications for the iPhone App Store. In the following Q&A, Peck discusses his ebook software development process, consumer response to his apps, and future ebook projects.

Why did you opt to bundle individual ebooks as software applications rather than create a single e-reader program?

I have been reading ebooks (mostly from eReader.com) for many years. I wanted to make a book reader program for the iPhone that was as simple to use as possible. I feel that the way existing ebook solutions work is too complex for many users: they have to download the ebook software, then go to a separate Web site and create an account, enter credit card data, and then find and purchase content.

The iPhone App Store sales and distribution process makes it simpler and more convenient to have an ebook reader as part of an ebook itself. Developers can only distribute applications through the App Store; there is no way to distribute data files like ebooks. Therefore, it made sense to me that each book had to be a complete application.

Although this is more convenient for App Store customers to get a book, the process of making each book into an app takes more time for development. Each book becomes its own Xcode project, requires testing, and requires time to load all of the data (descriptions, screen shots, application file) to the App Store. I have developed tools and techniques that automate as much as possible, but each book takes several hours to complete, not counting the many hours spent writing the ebook reader itself.

Have you used any of the e-reader applications available through the App Store (e.g. Stanza, eReader, etc.)? If so, how do these compare to your own apps?

I have used the eReader software. I am a long-time eReader customer, having purchased dozens of their books and read them on my Treo. I have not used Stanza.

The biggest difference is that those products let the user download content from the Internet. Some let users create their own content and download it to the iPhone, which is nice. My reader is purely a book reader.

The eReader app supports a bookshelf list, showing all the ebooks. With my apps, each ebook appears as its own icon on the home screen.

My current reader program compares nicely to eReader. At the moment, I do not support landscape mode, which eReader does. Both offer text search and table of contents. I admit that the search function in my first batch of books was not very usable; newer books have a much better implementation, even better than eReader's. Both programs support different font sizes, images embedded within the text, layout options such as indenting and centering, and font styles.

One feature my reader has is instant repagination when the user changes font size. Using my reader, the user can increase or decrease font size using the "pinch" gesture, similar to zooming in and out of photos, and the results are immediate. I spent a lot of time to make this very, very fast. Changing the font size in eReader requires the program to repaginate in the background, a process that can take over 30 seconds for the entire book.

How many ebooks have you made available through the App Store?

Currently, about 140. More are in the pipeline; all newer, copyrighted works from other publishers and authors.

What has the response been like?

Response has been very good. My current download numbers for all books (not counting several free books) is almost 1,000 books a day. The numbers per book vary day by day, with some books having as many as 50 downloads a day. Most of the public domain titles have counts around five per day.

Most encouraging are that the newer works are selling just as well as the classic stuff. iPulp, a publisher of science-fiction and adventure short stories for young adults, has four works in the store right now with six more in review. These are priced at $0.99 and $1.99 and have sales of about 10 per day. The two Max Quick novels sell for $5.99 each. Currently they are selling about 13 copies per day and the numbers are increasing (they've been in the store for less than two weeks).

Are you selling ebooks or ebook applications through other platforms?

Right now, I am only working with the App Store. I am watching to see what other cell phone vendors and carriers do. As some of your blog postings have noted, the success of the App Store is making other carriers look at copying Apple.

I have spent time with Google's Android platform and have a version of the ebook software that runs on Android.

How much of your ebook content comes from Project Gutenberg?

My initial group of books, about 110, were all from Project Gutenberg. I constantly get requests from customers to add new books, so I have added more Project Gutenberg stuff. Now that I am working with publishers and authors to produce their works as ebooks, I will focus primarily on new works.

Can you list some of these publishers/authors? How did your relationships with these publishers and authors come together?

In the store now are a book on computer security by Neal Puff and a memoir by Teresa Wright. All relationships came about because of my presence in the App Store with the initial set of ebooks. I've been contacted by small publishers and individual authors to turn their works into ebooks for the iPhone. I work with them to get the content in an appropriate format, get the various graphic elements (cover art, icons, etc.), produce the ebook app, have them review the app, and put the app into the App Store.

Do publishers pay you a flat fee to prep App Store titles or is it a revenue share?

Revenue share.

Did you anticipate this type of publisher response?

I was a bit surprised at how quickly publishers contacted me. I thought I would have to market to them.

Are there other content sources or types you'd like to incorporate?

One publisher I am working with offers textbooks. That would be an interesting type of content. A textbook could take advantage of the ebook being a standalone app, offering more interactive content for quizzes that would appear within the book.

Some App Store reviewers complain that you're making money off of public domain content. How do you address these complaints?

The Project Gutenberg license clearly allows people to sell works based on the Gutenberg files. I am following the license, and I do send 20 percent of the revenue earned to the Project Gutenberg Foundation. Mobipocket, eReader and Amazon Kindle all sell public domain works for much more than $0.99.

Each book requires a lot of manual work. The Project Gutenberg text files are a good starting point, but I have to edit each one to add information about chapter starts, poems, songs, emphasized text, etc. Many files have extra data like page numbers that have to be cleaned up. I tried to automate this part, but there is so much variety in the files that only hand editing can get the correct results.

Since your ebooks are applications, and iPhone apps are stored on the device's docking screens, is there a concern about clutter? Do you have any organization tips for people who buy multiple ebook apps?

I would say that this is a general problem with the iPhone Home Screen user interface. iPhone blog sites describe users with 100 apps or more on their devices, and finding a specific app can become a problem.

iTunes does allow users to selectively install apps on individual devices. This is probably the best way to deal with lots of apps: for users to only install the apps they need, and keep the rest on their desktop machine. Personally, I tend to read about two books at a time, then I remove them from the device when finished.

What near-term features or products are you planning?

I am working on a new version of the reader software that adds many new features: bookmarks, notes, landscape mode, etc. Once completed, I will re-release all existing books with the new features. Customers will get the updates for free.

I also am working on several non-ebook iPhone apps.

Books Fail to Crack Top 100 in iTunes App Store

Mac Slocum
August 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Over at Radar, Ben Lorica analyzes sales and category data for the iTunes App Store and makes an interesting discovery about the store's book section:

The Book category is comprised mostly of ebooks and while there are over 150 such "apps", it was the only category not represented in the Top 100 rankings ...

As Ben notes, most of the applications in the App Store's book category are individual ebooks -- most drawn from Project Gutenberg -- wrapped up as stand-alone software packages. The user reviews attached to these ebook apps fall into two camps: critics who cry foul over public domain titles repurposed with a price tag, and advocates who see value in the applications' low cost (most are $0.99) and easy access.

A Big Boost to Books as Apps?

Andrew Savikas
August 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Perhaps inspired by Apple's success with their iPhone App Store (which is already bringing in $1 million a day), T-Mobile has announced plans to add a similar storefront across all of their phones -- reaching more than 30 million subscribers. From Silicon Alley Insider:

This fall, T-Mobile is planning to gut its current, lousy method of distributing mobile apps -- favoring software companies that it has revenue-sharing deals with, according to MocoNews. In its place: An iPhone-like app store that's organized by popularity, not payola. The platform will be open to "almost any developer" that agrees to T-Mobile's revenue split, which one developer says is "very generous."

Books as standalone apps (and as collections, such as Shakespeare) have already proven popular enough for Apple to add "Books" as a category. There are several important implications of this for publishers:

Disintermediation. This is yet another channel for individual content creators to reach an audience, and some part-time app developers are already earning a nice payday. Surely some will be vanity press material; just as surely some will not.
Pricing and discount structure. Right now Apple takes a 30% cut, and paid app prices are settling around tiers like $0.99, $1.99, $4.99 and $9.99 (amusing $1,000 outliers aside). The thrashing continues on this front, and consumers will be the ultimate arbiter.
Distribution. Publishers are rightfully wary of Amazon's growing power, and the wireless delivery is arguably the driver behind the bullish outlook on the Kindle. The iPhone App Store and now T-Mobile are welcome competition, though carry a double-edged sword as gatekeepers controlling which content gets in front of their customers.
Form, not just format. Smart publishers (and as usual, I use the term loosely) will go beyond just displaying printed book content in these new devices. Digital, networked environments require rethinking how best to do the "job" of a book.

The distinctions between content and software are falling away, and smart publishers need to begin adjusting accordingly.

Optimizing Web Content for the Kindle Browser

Liza Daly
August 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Amazon's Kindle store is convenient, easy-to-use and stocked with thousands of titles. But what about publishers and content distributors who want to reach the estimated 240,000 Kindle users without going through Amazon's program? And what about content formats that the Kindle does not directly support?

One selling point of the device is its free, ubiquitous Internet service and Web browser. Amazon has filed the browser under "Experimental" but it's quite usable as-is. With a few simple changes to a Web site's HTML code, it's even possible to specially cater to Kindle users.

The screenshots used in this article are from the mobile version of Bookworm, my Web application for reading ebooks in the EPUB format. Although what's being displayed is ebook content, it's being delivered by the Kindle's browser, not the Kindle ebook technology, which does not yet support EPUB.

Because the mobile Web version is already heavily optimized for small devices, the layout is simpler than a traditional Web site. What works for an iPhone or other wireless device will also be a good starting point for the Kindle, although we'll see there are some special considerations that don't apply to any other device.

Default or Advanced Mode?

When the Kindle ships, its Web browser is in "default mode." It will not load images or CSS styles, but it does render basic HTML tags like the italic tag <i>. Personally, I prefer "advanced mode," which displays Web pages more like a traditional browser, but some sites can be unreadable in this mode.

When optimizing for the Kindle it's best to consider that most users will not change from "default mode," or even realize that the option exists.

How different are these modes? Here is a comparison shot of the same screen from Bookworm in both modes:


My list of books in Advanced mode, showing tabular layout and more advanced font styles	My list of books in Default mode

In Default mode, all the information about the books runs together. It would be better to present this as a simple vertical list, the way the Amazon Kindle store does, rather than as a table.

Font Size Considerations

You can choose from six font sizes in the Kindle browser. As a content creator, you can provide a wider range of font sizes in your Kindle-formatted Web page, but take care that they aren't too small. The device doesn't clearly display fonts that are smaller than its default six sizes.

In this screenshot, the table of contents for a Bookworm book is not readable, even though this page has already been tailored for the small display of mobile phones:

This problem is only likely to occur in Advanced mode where stylesheets are activated.

Usability

The Kindle's method of selecting and traversing hyperlinks is unique. The user activates links by selecting along the vertical, or Y-axis, using the scroll wheel. When multiple links fall on the same line, the Kindle will open a dialog box so the user can clarify which link is the target.

In Bookworm, users move to the next or previous chapter by selecting navigation links lined up horizontally (see the top row of the first image). In the Kindle, this presentation forces the user to click a second time to select the appropriate one:

For commonly-used navigational items like this, line up the links in a vertical row:

Next
Contents
Previous

Now no second click (and accompanying page refresh) is necessary.

It's also important to remember that the Kindle is a black-and-white device. If your site uses text color to convey any useful information (such as what is or is not a hyperlink), re-work the design to accommodate a grayscale display.

Finally, keep pages short. The Kindle cannot scroll; long Web pages are paginated like books. Pagination with E Ink devices is slow relative to scrolling on a computer screen. If possible, keep all your content on the first Kindle "page" when viewed at the default font size.

Targeting the Kindle

Web browsers are identified using their "user-agent" string. The current version of the Kindle is broadcasting this user-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Linux 2.6.10) NetFront/3.3 Kindle/1.0 (screen 600x800). It's beyond the scope of this article to describe how to set up your Web site to deliver different kinds of content to different browsers, a process that varies considerably with your site's technology.

How do you test your layout if you don't have a Kindle? There's no substitute for having the real device (tell your boss it's for "research"), and currently Amazon does not offer any kind of browser emulator. Some possibilities:

Disable stylesheets on your browser and look at the output. Does it still make sense? (Instructions for disabling stylesheets; Firefox users should install the Web Developer add-on)
Use a text-only browser like Lynx

Some Last Advice

Don't spend too much time on this process. The next version of the Kindle is expected soon, no doubt with an improved browser. Indeed, Amazon could offer a new version of the existing browser at any time. Most of the changes recommended above should take little time and money to implement, and can make a great difference in user experience.

In addition, optimizing your site for small-screen browsers can have other benefits: they allow an increasing number of mobile users to get quick access to your content, and aid accessibility for screen-readers and other non-standard browser types.

Pricing Digital Book Content: Where's the Sweet Spot?

Andrew Savikas
August 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (5) | Listen

A recent post from Adam Hodgkin over at the Exact Editions blog on book pricing kicked off a great thread on Peter Brantley's Reading 2.0 list. (Pricing also popped up quite quickly in the comments thread around our recent ebook pilot.) Adam argues that deriving digital prices from print ones is the wrong way to go:

At this stage in the development of the ebook market, book publishers who think about digital pricing tend to work back from the print price, to find a satisfactory, ebook price at 50% or 60% or X% of the list price of the print work (think of £195 annual subscription as the mortgage payment on a book -- I bet that is the way OUP fixed their subscription price). It will take a bit of time before publishers and marketers realise that the cost of production, in the sense of 'unit cost', has no conceivable bearing on the digital pricing, whether for outright sale or for an annual subscription. The chances are that in the medium term ebook prices will migrate to some more or less fixed pricing levels: $2.99, $4.99, $9.99, perhaps $19.99. Simplicity will be a virtue and digital books will be seen as having some natural price points (cf CDs or DVDs).

Mike Shatzkin followed up with his own insights:

This triggers a few thoughts about ebook pricing which are neither conclusive nor particularly consistent.

Ebook pricing for IP that is sold in single-title print book form (i.e.stand-alone trade and professional books) will inevitably refer to the unit cost of manufacturing the print book. Since that was a component of the print book price, it becomes a factor in the publisher's formulation of the ebook price. Why?

Because the author and the retailers will expect it to be that way and anything that fails expectations results in friction, contentious conversation with important trading partners a publisher would prefer to avoid.

Amazon is doing their best to break this linkage by having seized control of Kindle book pricing in ways that only they can. (It is highly unlikely that Sony would see value in selling a book below cost in order to establish a $9.99 pricing standard, as Amazon has done.) So far, publishers have not been forced to alter their pricing to Amazon to make wholesale prices conform to that retail price.

There is a "Soapbox" piece in this week's PW -- not available online as far as I can tell -- by superagent Andrew Wylie advocating (with flawed facts and flawed logic, in my opinion) that ebook retail prices should be the same as printed book retail prices and that the author's royalty should go up to 22.5% on the ebook. That's the author expectation I was referring to earlier, expressed by a powerful agent.

Wylie's argument is that if ebooks are cheaper than the corresponding print book, printed books will be abandoned and publishers will then and therefore no longer be necessary.

There is actually an analogy between Kindle pricing and book club pricing. Publishers told retailers for generations not to worry about lower prices offered by book clubs, because club membership (the obligations...) created a hurdle that left most book readers out and the PR generated by the clubs were a catalyst to sales elsewhere. Similarly, Kindle pricing is only available (useful) to people who plunked down their $349 or $399 for the Kindle, which relatively few people have done. So the Kindle pricing shouldn't affect the printed book pricing. In fact, with overall sales levels still having trouble cracking 1% of the total, NO ebook pricing should have much impact on printed book pricing. Yet. Despite the concerns of retailers and authors.

We are many experiments away from settling this question, which is a moving target. What makes sense when ebooks are 1% of the market may not when they are 10%, or 30% (and we'll be working our way up to those levels for a VERY long time.)

Bill Janssen, who addressed this recently in a post of his own, then weighed in:

Excellent point.

But there are many facets to this. It's interesting that many booksellers for the iPhone (well, eReader, Stanza) are essentially repeating what they did with the Palm, by distributing an app that is both a bookstore and a reader. The books are hidden behind the retailer's icon. Is that the best idea? Would authors prefer their books to be "first-class" apps? That is, the book would have its own icon on the iPhone "desktop"? Perhaps the app would have links of some sort to other works by the same author? Author branding instead of publisher/distributor branding?

I still feel that there's a powerful economic pressure for more disintermediation here...

But i2s' Alain Pierrot isn't quite ready for publishers to step aside:

I'd hate having the narrow space of any of my mobile devices clogged by a dozen or more 'disintermediated' author's egoes...

Which doesn't mean either that I'm not a faithful 'fan' of individual authors. (I used to buy anything Julio Cortázar would issue and wait for the next...) But I do appreciate branding from a publisher as the good mix between time saving, quality warranty (whatever this can mean for each individual) and serendipity: obviously, some readers used to make a safe and fast bet when they bought latin american litterature from Gallimard's "La Croix du sud" collection without having been introduced to such or such an author.

Author branding might be a very short-sighted fantasm, nearer last century's most silly situations such as Enver Hodja's control of Albania's publishing, than any realistic situation where a brand offers good value to save time and attention.

Pricing also popped up in the comments thread around our recent ebooks pilot, including this one:

It seems to me though that your attempts to price "at a discount" from print books are misguided at best and silly at worst.

You need to start thinking in terms of "at an increment" from ZERO. The web is a huge place and offers amazing content for free. You would be wise to consider how much EXTRA you want to make from your existing paper publishing business. If you were only publishing digitally then I do agree that you need to take the discount approach.

I'll add that within our own Safari Books Online (our joint venture with Pearson), subscription pricing is not directly related to print prices, though the formula for paying out royalties to publishers does include the book's MSRP.

A lot of people are trying to figure out where prices are headed for digital book content, and to date there's not much consensus (among publishers or among customers). Add your own thoughts in the comments section -- what do you think?

Reinventing the Book and Killing It are Separate Things

Mac Slocum
August 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Richard Cohen has a bone to pick with Amazon, the Kindle, digital books, and anyone who threatens the welfare of bookstores, children and unknown literature. From Cohen's Washington Post column:

... over at Amazon they are inadvertently thinking of ways to make the world worse for children and for the grown-ups who love them to pieces. What Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon's founder, wants more than anything is to do away with the book as we know it. "Jeff once said that he couldn't imagine anything more important than reinventing the book," said Steven Kessel, one of Bezos's top guys. Kessel is in charge of digitizing everything in sight.

Nothing more important than reinventing the book? Not ending world hunger? Not taking Rush Limbaugh off the air? None of these? What's wrong with the book? I understand that it's bulky and expensive to ship and that it entails the consumption of paper, which is probably not green, but then what is? The book has been around for a very long time (Google the exact number of years, please), and I love it so.

Cohen's column adheres to the "book lover overreaction" we've discussed previously. Market forces and changing consumer tastes may indeed signal the end of traditional bookstores, and that's something to lament and fight against. But this idea that digital books have been set loose by entrepreneurial masterminds -- diabolical sorts intent on destroying the print universe -- is overwrought. "Reinventing" the book is not synonymous with "killing the print book." Digital books are nothing more than alternative delivery mechanisms for content. Their intent (if ebooks can have intent) is to expand choice, not eradicate the printed volume.

I can't tell if Cohen is saying goodbye to print books or bookstores or some combination of the two. His column is clearly a cathartic exercise, not a market analysis, but the association he seems to make between a downturn in bookstores and the rise of digital books is incorrect. Bookstores are in decline partly because consumers are purchasing their core product -- print books -- through online retailers like Amazon. Ebooks may eventually achieve widespread adoption and, by extension, lead to the shuttering of traditional bookstores, but that's not currently the case.

(Via Shelf Awareness)

What if Ebooks Were the Dominant Platform?

Mac Slocum
August 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (6) | Listen

I recently came across an old blog post from Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee that discusses the utility of the "technology flip test". McAfee writes:

At a conference years back I was sitting on a panel that was asked to talk about future of the book. As the discussion was heating up about the inevitability of the electric media, someone on the panel (I wish it had been me) proposed a flip test. He said "Let's say the world has only e-books, then someone introduces this technology called 'paper.' It's cheap, portable, lasts essentially forever, and requires no batteries. You can't write over it once it's been written on, but you buy more very cheaply. Wouldn't that technology come to dominate the market?" It's fair to say that comment changed the direction of the panel.

The ebook vs paper flip test is intriguing for a number of reasons:

It inverts the offense and defense: Ebook advocates become defenders and paper-book supporters become disruptors. Shaking off the vestiges of a default argument is always a good idea -- think of it as a "debate cleanser."
It amplifies the strengths of each format ... initially: When I ran through the flip test on my own, I at first honed in on the cost savings of ebooks (no paper, no printing, no shipping) and the sensory aspects of print books. But further review revealed deeper complexities to this debate. And that led me to ...
It upends assumptions: Print's dominant position in the real world causes me to challenge pro-print arguments, most notably the tactile experience overreaction that often derails discussions. But placing ebooks in the hot seat gave me a new perspective on ebook defenses. For example, if my default reading environment was electronic and networked, would I want (or need) a disconnected outlet? Would I crave solitude and a languid pace? Does the upside of ebook economics supersede the other reading/storytelling experiences I'm looking for, or would I welcome a print alternative the way I now welcome an electronic option?

What's your take on the flip test? Does inverting the argument open the discussion, or is this a diversionary trick that detracts from the issues at hand? Please share your thoughts in the comments area.

(Original idea and McAfee link via Reading 2.0 list.)

Tech Publisher Asks "Are Ebooks Ready for Technical Content?"

Andrew Savikas
July 29, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4) | Listen

Dave Thomas from the Pragmatic Programmers is mulling whether to make their books available on the Kindle, and encountering many of the same issues we faced here at O'Reilly regarding technical content and the limitations of current ebook devices:

In fact, we've had a prototype form of that capability for a while now, but we've always held back. Frankly, we didn't think the devices worked well with our kind of content. Basically, the .mobi format used by the Kindle is optimized for books that contain just galleys of text with the occasional heading. Throw in tables, monospaced code listings, sidebars and the like, and things start to get messy.

Dave's post has sparked a great conversation within the comments, including one from Shelly Powers, whose book Painting the Web was among those included in our pilot program:

I think that providing the package deal that O'Reilly does (with PDF, epub, and mobi), in addition to downloadable code is the way to go. If you sell Kindle books, you definitely need to make both your figures and your source available, separately. For instance, I have my Painting the Web figures in an online gallery and the examples are available at O'Reilly--takes care of a lot of issues related to Kindle. Another approach could be to make available (for no additional cost) a PDF of just the figures, or the figures and code.

Preparing a book for the ebook market may seem like a lot of work, but you have the potential to reach a new audience of book buyers. Buyers used to the internet and having access to immediate information; who may not want to order a book and wait a week for it to arrive, but who will buy a book if it means they can have access to it now. I wouldn't have considered myself an "impulse buyer" when it comes to books, but I have probably at least a dozen books I bought because the ebook format was cheaper (that's a key element), and I could get the book _right now_.

On one hand, merely working to replicate a print experience isn't the right way to exploit the benefits of the new platform; on the other hand, publishers (and as usual, I use that term quite loosely) should be able to expect at least minimal rendering of common elements like tables, along with support for at least the same core 14 fonts available in Acrobat (speaking of fonts, if you're looking for a laugh check out this mock "font conference").

Survey of Book Industry Reaction to New iPhone and App Store

Mac Slocum
July 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Kassia Krozser struck a nerve earlier this week with criticism of the publishing industry's slow approach to the new iPhone and the just-opened App Store. From Booksquare:

Call me crazy, but I'd expect an industry that salivates over moving 150,000 units to be all over the potential for reaching seven million "mobile is the future" customers. Are you not out there, listening to readers, gauging their interest? They want, you have, and you're still hiding the goods. I get this isn't the largest market you have, but is that an excuse to sit on the sidelines?

Sara Lloyd doesn't see long-term value in this current burst of iPhone excitement. From thedigitalist:

... apart from a few digital PR points scored against competing publishers, there doesn't seem to me to be any huge value in first mover advantage here for publishers, unless we want to make the decision to become software developers. The perception is that the App Store has 'opened up' the iPhone to publishers and to e-reading. The reality is that the iPhone has always been enabled for e-reading ... So, whilst we have been awaiting the launch of the App Store with interest, we didn't see enormous advantage in, for example, creating a reading app ourselves or Being There on Day One, just for the sake of it.

Expanding on the software theme, James Bridle says book publishers are uniquely positioned to develop ebook applications that meet consumer needs. From booktwo.org:

... who better than publishers to craft such software? Most ereader technologies are built by techies who put the technology before the reading experience: the combined skills of typesetters, print designers, editors and technologists that only publishers possess could, with the right direction, produce a far superior ereader app than any we've seen so far.

Broadening the analysis, Michael Cairns says the "silo" mentality displayed in this iPhone debate is a competitive obstacle that needs to be put aside. From PersonaNonData:

To bring us back to the iPhone circumstance, as long as publishers continue to think in terms of traditional functional silos and roles and responsibilities they limit themselves in their ability to leverage their assets. In contrast witness Amazon which has never considered any aspect of the publishing value chain to be off limits and more publishers need to think in this manner if they want to redress some of the advantages Amazon and others retain (or new competitors develop) in the marketplace.

(Many of the links and call-outs in this post were provided by Peter Brantley via his Read 20 list.)

Ebooks and Print Books are Not Mutually Exclusive

Mac Slocum
July 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Ebook discussions invariably lead to the "tactile experience" counter argument. Many folks love the sensory associations of a printed book, and they'll defend those feelings vociferously -- even when no one is challenging them. The simple suggestion that an ebook could offer functionality beyond the scope of a printed book causes some book lovers to pull up the castle gates and light the moat on fire.

But here's the odd thing: A small group of bleeding edgers believe print's demise is imminent, but in many more instances the people taking a pro-ebook stance are also fans of printed books. They're not looking for printed books to go away, rather, they want to consume content in the best possible format for their particular needs.

I've witnessed a number of lively discussions in which the sensory argument overwhelms a broader analysis of future reading behaviors, and that's where the problem lies. In each case, the print defenders run through the "sensory checklist":

Reading in bed
Reading to your children
Slowing down, sitting down, curling up ...
Holding, feeling, smelling, experiencing ...

All of these are excellent print book defenses, but each is a counterpoint to debates that were never raised. The bigger conversation -- and something that often gets pushed to the back burner -- is about the reading ecosystem. Print books, ebooks, Web sites, mobile and whatever emerges down the road are merely conduits for content. Unnecessary defense of one format of another obscures the opportunity to customize and improve the reading experience on a title by title and consumer by consumer basis.

Sara Nelson summed up this same idea in a recent column:

... the e-worriers are, I predict, way wrong, just as those who worried that audiobooks would supplant "real" books, and DVDs would demolish cinemas were wrong. Sure, there is some cannibalizing and crossover, but just as there are certain books you would rather listen to than read (and vice versa) and some movies you'll rush to the theater to see, there is room in the world for another way to enjoy written narrative.

30 O'Reilly Titles Now Available as Ebook Bundles; Many In Kindle Store Later Today

Andrew Savikas
July 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (27) | Listen

Update: ~~According to Amazon, the O'Reilly Kindle books can now be pre-ordered, but won't be available for download until Friday.~~ The 12 titles listed below are now available in the Kindle store.

O'Reilly Ebook Bundles As promised last month, O'Reilly has released 30 titles as DRM-free downloadable ebook bundles. The bundles include three ebook formats (EPUB, PDF, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket) for a single price -- at or below the book's cover price. And for a bit more than the cover price, you can get the print version too along with the ebook bundles.

Since we began selling PDFs directly some time ago, we've given those customers free updates to the PDFs to reflect published changes in the books; the same will apply to the ebook bundle, which will replace the PDF option on those titles. These files (like all our PDFs currently for sale) do not include any DRM, though we continue to experiment with custom watermarking options.

With these three formats, customers should be able to read the books with most current ebook software and devices, including Adobe Digital Editions, Kindle, Blackberries, and Sony Reader (Sony announced in May that EPUB support is forthcoming in a firmware update for their Reader).

Twelve of those 30 titles ~~will also be available through the Kindle store later today~~ are now available.

Ebook Bundles Now Available

The titles now available as ebook bundles are:

Ebooks Abound in New iPhone Apps Store

Andrew Savikas
July 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Today my email inbox (and the twittersphere) is brimming with comments about ebooks comprising 8% of the currently available apps in the new iPhone Apps store. These are not all ebook readers, mind you, some appear to be individual public domain titles available for $.99. This may well just be low-hanging fruit for developers (packaging up text and/or html into an app is probably a great way to get your feet wet with the iPhone SDK), but it's still worth noting. There's already been some interesting activity around ebooks on the iPhone (like Readdle and TextOnPhone), but iPhone 2.0 may prompt a real surge in ebook activity on the iPhone.

ALA 2008: Librarians and Patrons Want More Openness

Liza Daly
July 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

At this year's American Library Association (ALA) conference in Anaheim, Calif., one theme emerged in talk after talk: librarians and the readers they serve demand more flexibility, transparency and openness in publishers' offerings. This affects not just digital-only reference works, but the book acquisition via library catalogs and standalone ebooks.

Reference publishing and resource discovery -- Reference publishers invest time and money in bespoke search interfaces for advanced users, but are users finding them? In the ALA panel "The Future of Electronic Reference Publishing," librarians repeatedly commented that multiple reference sources are confusing to users, and that resources must also be discoverable via Google and the library's own digital catalog.

If users do go directly to an individual resource or platform, the search interface should behave "like Google." Although the panel of major reference publishers did state that they are converging on Google's query language, many legacy systems remain that would be economically infeasible to re-tool.

Library catalogs and systems -- The need for more transparent, network-based services applies to the library catalog as well. In the marathon session, "The Ultimate Debate on the Future of the Library Catalog," speakers identified a critical need for geo-based services and APIs for finding what's in my local library -- now. Once a book is located I should be only a few clicks away from reserving it or even ordering it for delivery to my home.

That dream is still far off -- even with a service like WorldCat it's not currently possible for me to find and reserve a book at my local library. The closest offering presented on WorldCat is Harvard University's library, which is not about to lend to the likes of me. The problem is even worse for rural libraries. As for my local library -- I love books and this post is the first time it even occurred to me to visit their site. I'm not alone in that.

Ebooks -- This is a transitional time in publishing, and while many patrons still prefer print, an increasing number are asking for electronic books, especially in university libraries. Students and academics emphatically reject DRM and restrictions on usage, but many ebooks sold to libraries have technical barriers to printing, cut-and-paste and downloading.

Licensing and subscription costs are also a concern for libraries. Ebooks may be re-priced or re-bundled, challenging the basic assumption that once a library buys a title, it owns the book indefinitely. Librarians want assurances that the products they purchase are either available perpetually, or at least have clearly-stated licensing terms that do not change without notice.

The ability to safely and permanently archive electronic books has been a long-time concern of some librarians, but the floods in New Orleans and Iowa have changed some minds. Off-site electronic archiving would save at least some resources, especially for very small or rural libraries can't afford state-of-art preservation facilities.

Google Book Search: It's All About the Index

Mac Slocum
June 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Adam Hodgkin says the grand design of Google Book Search is aimed at creating a massive index, not an all-encompassing, locked-down reading system. From Exact Editions:

Some of Google's critics suppose that the aim of the GBS [Google Book Search] project is to capture, corale [sic] and deliver to readers the whole of the world's literature in a readable format. But perhaps the business goal has all along been to produce a complete searchable index of literature, not the monopolistic reading medium. [Bold text included in original post.]

Google's initiatives have always focused on the creation and expansion of digital content platforms rather than individual content products. The public's mistaken focus on Google products -- rather than Google platforms -- was noted in Wired's recent story about Google's mobile project, Android:

Those hoping for a new gadget to rival the iPhone finally understood that Google had something radically different in mind. Apple's device was an end in itself -- a self-contained, jewel-like masterpiece locked in a sleek protective shell. Android was a means, a seed intended to grow an entire new wireless family tree. Google was never in the hardware business. There would be no gPhone -- instead, there would be hundreds of gPhones.

I can understand where the confusion comes from: The creation of a gargantuan reading service seems to be in Google's wheelhouse because they're one of the few companies that can actually attempt such a project. But as we learned with Android, Google isn't a product-centric company -- all those individual tools and services plug into bigger platforms. Development of a searchable full-text book index that can be distributed across all sorts of devices is more in line with Google's history and its focus.

Open Question: How Can Ebooks Improve the Reading Experience?

Mac Slocum
June 24, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (6) | Listen

In "Random thoughts about the Kindle," Seth Godin suggests three ways the Kindle could improve the "act of reading a book":

* Let me see the best parts of the book as highlighted by thousands of other readers.

* Let me see notes in the margin as voted up, Digg-style, by thousands of other readers.

* Let me interact with hyperlinks and smart connections not just within the book but across books.

What suggestions do you have? How can digital books -- or, more broadly, digital content -- improve the reading experience? Please share your thoughts in the comments area.

Exploring DIY E-Reader Platforms

Liza Daly
June 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

I've been working with the EPUB open ebook format a lot lately, but when I want to read a book in it, I have to use my computer. There just aren't any devices which support it yet. Naturally this leads me to wonder whether I could build my own e-reader.

I'm not a hardware person, but the last few years have seen an emergence of open hardware platforms designed to allow even ordinary programmers like me to modify and customize small devices. As far as software goes, an e-reader is pretty straightforward: it's just some text on a screen. That shouldn't be too hard, right?

Surveying the landscape of hardware options, I've ranked below a variety of devices from "friendliest" to "most-intensive DIY." I'm not addressing PDA or phone devices here, largely because I consider their screen size and text rendering insufficient (but plenty of people disagree).

The Chumby -- With a 3.5" touch screen and reasonable $175 price tag, this little wireless computer in a bean bag is an obvious candidate. There's a full-fledged development environment and large community of users. Most Chumby applications are written in a lightweight version of Flash, which is easy enough to develop in.

It has a few downsides, though. The Chumby doesn't have much storage space at all, so any ebooks would have to be saved online and streamed to it, a page or a chapter at a time. Since it's meant to be an always-on wireless device, that seems doable. The screen might be too small to comfortably read lots of text, as it's meant for short bursts like RSS feeds or Twitter updates.

Unfortunately, it's powered by a wall outlet, with only a small 9-volt battery for emergency backup. People on the hardware forums have managed to hack in rechargeable batteries, and I wouldn't be surprised if a totally-wireless Chumby is forthcoming. [Disclosure: O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures is an investor in Chumby Industries.]

BugLabs -- The most open of the commercial hardware platforms, BugLabs sells individual pluggable modules that support various features, from touchscreens to cameras to GPS. It looks like a great platform, but it's very expensive ($349 for the base module plus $119 for the 2.5" touch-sensitive screen). The screen is probably too small for comfortable reading, but the company Web site promises a larger display soon.

Both the Chumby and BugLabs have touchscreens, which is key for making small screens more usable.

The Kindle -- All the heavy lifting has been done already to get into the Kindle filesystem and peek inside. It's probably too difficult to extend the existing Kindle environment without true source code, but it might be possible to do some simple things, like add new fonts. Few people have really explored hacking on e-ink devices, largely due to high cost and low availability. I suspect when the first color e-ink devices come out, used black and white ones will become popular playthings for enthusiasts.

YBox2 -- For the ultimate DIY experience, the YBox2 platform is a pile of electronic parts you solder together and assemble in an Altoids tin. It doesn't come with a touch-screen, or any screen at all: you connect it to a television or monitor. It uses the tiny Propeller chip, which powers many hobbyist devices and small robots. Like the Chumby, YBox2 comes with networking capability but little storage, and would need to stream book content from the Internet. The networking isn't wireless and of course there's no handy rechargable battery, but if you are the kind of person who can build a YBox2 you probably know how to make those too. I am not that kind of person.

While I'd be happy to crawl around a hacked Kindle, I know I'm not ready to program my own microcontroller. BugLabs seems great from a developer standpoint, especially when they release a larger screen, but I'm unwilling to shell out almost $500 just to experiment. The Sony Reader doesn't have networking, so that's much less interesting. Perhaps a Chumby is in my future. Any other options?

Select O'Reilly Books Soon on Kindle, and as DRM-free Digital Bundles (Including EPUB)

Andrew Savikas
June 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (21) | Listen

Update (7/15): 30 O'Reilly titles are now available as ebook bundles. Full information is available here.

Update (6/19): On his New York Times blog, David Pogue has noted O'Reilly's pilot in the context of the recent discussion prompted his column on ebooks and piracy (which brought insightful responses from Adam Engst and Mike Masnick, along with a follow up from David).

Ebooks are certainly nothing new for us at O'Reilly. We've offered PDFs of hundreds of our titles for some time now, and until quite recently Safari Books Online, our online-publishing joint venture with Pearson, generated more revenue than was typically associated with the entire downloadable ebook business.

But it's clear that things are changing in the ebook market (though precise numbers are proving hard to come by), so we've decided to officially announce two new e-publishing programs that have been in the works for some time:

First, through oreilly.com we will offer a select number of books as a bundle of three ebook formats (EPUB, PDF, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket) for a single price -- at or below the book's cover price -- starting in early July. Since we began selling PDFs directly some time ago, we've given those customers free updates to the PDFs to reflect published changes in the books; the same will apply to the ebook bundle, which will replace the PDF option on those titles. That also means that although the ebooks aren't yet available, if you buy the PDF now, you'll receive the EPUB and Mobipocket versions as a free update once they're available in early July. These files (like all our PDFs currently for sale) will be released without any DRM, though we are exploring some custom watermarking options. With these three formats, customers should be able to read the books with most current ebook software and devices, including Adobe Digital Editions, Kindle, Blackberries, and Sony Reader (Sony announced in May that EPUB support is forthcoming in a firmware update for their Reader).
Second, O'Reilly has agreed to sell select ebooks for the Kindle through Amazon. We hope to see those ebooks available for sale through the Kindle store in the near future.

Q&A with Susan Danziger, CEO of DailyLit

Mac Slocum
June 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

DailyLit is a digital service that delivers short, scheduled book installments to subscribers by email and RSS. The company offers free and pay-per-read titles in plain text, which makes them accessible through nearly all email clients, browsers or mobile devices. In the following Q&A, DailyLit CEO Susan Danziger discusses the company's philosophy, process, and upcoming services.

How many titles do you offer through DailyLit? How many do you hope to have by the end of 2008?

We currently have over 950 titles (450 or so which are available on a pay-per-read basis), and by the end of this year, we're targeting several thousand pay-per-read titles.

Releasing titles in plain text seems like a simple way to avoid the formatting needs and device restrictions that come with proprietary ebook formats. Was this your intention, or was plain text just an easier way to get started?

It was definitely our intention to allow the installments to come in on any device, which is an important part of how we designed the experience. We started with plain text because it was the easiest to implement, and we will be launching HTML shortly as well.

Do most DailyLit users read installments on mobile devices?

10%-20% of our readers currently read their installments on mobile devices, but as the reading quality on mobile devices improves (the iPhone is a great start), we're confident that more and more people will be reading their installments on these devices.

Can readers purchase print editions or ebooks through the site/service?

At this point, only DailyLit editions are available. We're starting to allow publishers and others to sponsor certain titles, which would allow a link to purchase other editions. With this sponsorship model, instead of readers paying for the title, sponsors would pay for them instead.

How will the sponsorship model work? Also, in regards to "other editions," are you only referring to printed editions, or does this include different ebook formats as well?

DailyLit readers would have access to free DailyLit versions of the books under the sponsorship model. Sponsors of titles would be able to include links that would lead to their sites (or other sites that sponsors indicate). "Other editions" could be printed editions or other digital formats.

How many DailyLit users receive updates via email? How many via RSS?

About 90% of our readers receive installments via e-mail; 10% via RSS.

How much time goes into prepping books for delivery? Is production handled in-house?

The production time depends on the format in which the book is delivered. If the book is delivered in PDF, the production time can be up to eight weeks. We prefer it if books are delivered in EPUB or XHTML, which greatly reduces the production time, not to mention cost. Production is handled in-house for certain titles, but for most titles we use an outside production house.

How are installments defined? Is it by word count? Average reading time?

Installments are usually around 1,000 words, which is under five minutes of reading. If a chapter is about to end, we'll adjust the length of the installments accordingly. Certain books, such as books of quotes, have much shorter installments. Under the "Manage Your Subscriptions" feature, folks can personally adjust the length of each installment (to 2 times or 4 times the length), so an avid reader can read more.

Are fiction titles the easiest to serialize, or does any chapter-based book work?

Fiction titles are probably easier to serialize since they're more straight forward. With non-fiction titles, we need to account for footnotes and other ancillary materials. That said, we're featuring titles from all different genres, from science fiction, such as books by Cory Doctorow, to such non-fiction best-sellers as Skinny Bitch. We also feature language books, such as titles from Berlitz, business books, as well as romance titles from Harlequin.

What types of books don't lend themselves to serialization?

Reference books that readers do not want to read cover to cover don't work in serialized form. Apart from that, since DailyLit is intended for those readers too busy to read (or who want to sneak in an extra book during the day), any other kind of book works well. After all, folks are avidly reading War and Peace, Moby Dick, The Art of War and Pride and Prejudice, and none of these books were originally intended to be serialized.

Who sets the pricing for titles?

Since we've structured this as a licensing deal with publishers, DailyLit sets the price.

Are you licensing a specific version of a book (i.e. "text-only" or a particular ebook format)?

We characterize it as "digital serialization rights" so it's a combination of serialization (typically understood as a license) and a digital rendition of the book. Depending on rights available for the title, we might license text only or with illustrations/photographs.

How have publishers responded to DailyLit?

We've had a great response from publishers. On the whole, they've been really excited about this new format, which combines marketing and potential incremental revenue. We've also been developing innovative technology -- several initiatives will be rolled out shortly -- which will help the publishers market their titles and expand their reader base.

What sorts of tools will you be releasing?

One such tool is public subscriptions, which will allow publishers, authors or third parties to serialize a book publicly on their site. Each day on that site, folks will be able to view a new installment of a book. This is a way to build community on their site and would be an alternative to giving away free PDFs of books. We'll also offer readers the opportunity to receive a personal e-mail or RSS subscription to that title if they don't want to return to the site each day, but for that they [consumers] would need to pay. As such, it's a neat viral marketing tool as well as having potential for incremental revenue.

Do you use digital rights management (DRM) on titles?

We put the reader's experience first, which means that there are no attachments or files that need to be opened with a special device or software. With respect to illustrations or photographs, we are able to track where they go and, in the event of a hot link, we can disable use of an illustration associated with a particular subscription.

Have you run into any piracy issues? Is this a concern?

We haven't run into any piracy issues. Since books are divided into hundreds of installments, there is less concern that individual installments are copied or forwarded. In fact, any installments forwarded by readers have been viewed by publishers and authors as a way to virally market their titles.

In addition to books, you feature Wikipedia tours, language lessons and SAT prep. Are other non-book projects in the works? Where do you see DailyLit expanding?

We're in the process of adding newly created titles for DailyLit, including allowing authors and publishers to create content that work well in the serialized format. We're also developing lots of interesting technology to help market books and expand the current reach to additional readers. For instance, we recently launched via Twitter a group read or virtual book club so that folks can read books according to the same schedule. Folks can sign up now to participate.

Putting Ebook Piracy into Perspective

Mac Slocum
June 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Adam Engst from TidBits offers a comprehensive rebuttal to David Pogue's concerns about ebook piracy. Among the many notable points:

... the harder you make it for someone to buy an easily replicated digital commodity, the more likely they are to share that commodity as a way of making things easier for others. Look at the parallels in the music industry. Apple made legitimate purchases of music both easy and inexpensive via the iTunes Store, and anyone who was on the fence about whether it was acceptable to share music suddenly had a viable alternative. Providing a legitimate purchase path for electronic versions not only generates revenue, but also reduces illicit copying.

The teeth gnashing associated with publishing's transition to digital continues to obscure an important -- and simple -- point: publishing isn't the first industry to confront digital issues. Businesses in the music, film and media worlds have been tackling these concerns for years, and there are important lessons to be learned from their failures and successes.

Engst's argument about ease of use -- especially as it relates to iTunes -- deftly illustrates this. Regardless of your opinion of iTunes and Apple, it's hard to argue with the equation they've developed: make money by giving people easy access to quality digital material. This trail has already been blazed; publishers just need to pay attention.

On another topic ... Pogue's post cites two examples of scammers who, posing as blind readers, requested book PDFs and then copied them to piracy sites within 48 hours. Engst's experience with piracy is considerably different:

I have found our ebooks available for download on a handful of occasions; each time it was someone who had put the file on a server without realizing it was open to the public or who was transferring the book from work to home and had forgotten to take it down. I periodically search the file sharing services too, but it's exceedingly rare to find any of our ebooks there, and those I have seen were wildly out of date.

In short, far from the foregone conclusion that publishing an electronic book will result in rampant copying, our years of experience show just the opposite.

Engst notes that his company's subject matter (tech) and its size (small) likely minimize piracy, but there's an underlying point in this passage that's relevant on an industry-wide scale: blanket statements about the ills of piracy -- or the opportunities from piracy -- fail to recognize the nuances at play.

Whether we're discussing Pogue's run-in with "blind" con artists or Engst's limited issues with accidental piracy, it's important to remember that singular examples do not define trends (or unmask ebook cabals). Publishers need to look at ebook distribution, and the potential for piracy, on a case-by-case basis. To paraphrase Tim O'Reilly, certain titles from certain authors may benefit from increased exposure of any sort (that's the idea behind this experiment), but well-known authors with blockbuster titles might be undercut by widespread copying.

When it comes to piracy, free, and other unusual models, the only real mistake is embracing a closed-minded, all-or-nothing perspective. Doing so limits both the threats and the opportunities.

Engst's post touches on a variety of other piracy-related topics, all of which are worth considering.

Treating Ebooks Like Software

Mac Slocum
June 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3) | Listen

Peter Kent, DNAML's senior vice president for U.S. operations, brings a software-centric perspective to ebooks. In the following Q&A, Kent discusses the merits of in-book transactions, affiliate marketing, and other digital initiatives that can benefit book publishers.

Q: In your presentation at last month's IDPF Digital Book '08 you discussed treating ebooks like software. Do you feel the software model is directly related to ebooks, or are there specific aspects of the software model ("try before you buy" trialware, download ebooks through multiple outlets, etc.) that are more in line with ebook/publishing goals?

Not sure of the distinction you're making here. I think that there's much about software distribution that applies to ebooks, and why not? Ebooks are, of course, pieces of software. In particular, providing ebooks in a trialware format makes a lot of sense, and is a proven model. That's why Amazon let's people view a portion of a book, that's why Barnes & Noble likes having people in their stores hanging out reading. And of course, download through multiple outlets makes a lot of sense, too. Why wouldn't you distribute your products as widely as possible? If trialware works -- and it does -- then you naturally want as many people as possible to get the books in their hands. The large, established publishers are going to have a shock when they see the new book-distribution world. It's no longer a gentleman's game in which everyone hands over their books to a bookstore, and then they all compete on the same level. In the future the more aggressive publishers are going to go out and find book buyers even before the buyers have thought about buying!

Q: Do publishers focus too much on the "book" aspect of ebooks? Would a shift toward a file/software perspective open things up?

Some do. The more advanced publishers understand what's going on, but I do think there's still a bias toward the old method of distributing books: give your books to a retailer who puts the books on shelves. Certainly up until recently most publishers have had the idea in their mind that in order to sell ebooks they have to create the ebooks and then give them to Amazon and other retailers to sell. Little thought has gone into new methods of distribution. What may save the publishers is that new distributors will come on the scene: distributors who understand the new landscape and go out and push the books.

Q: Are ebooks available through sites like Download.com, Tucows.com and other software-specific hubs? If not, should they be?

You can already find ebooks in many software download sites, though most do not yet have specific ebook categories. ZDNet's download site doesn't have an ebook category, for instance, though it does have an ebook "tag." Download.com has a music category and a games category, why wouldn't they have a book category? Of course they will eventually, as more and more books become available. But one thing holding back the creation of ebook categories is that only free books, or trialware books, will fit. Once books from major publishers are commonly sold as trialware, you'll see the download sites pay more attention.

Q: What about ebook availability through P2P sites/mechanisms, such as BitTorrent?

Trialware books are perfect for this form of distribution.

Q: In your conversations with publishers and others in the industry, do you feel most people understand the basics of internal ebook transactions and affiliate tagging? How do you describe these concepts to newcomers?

Most publishers haven't the slightest idea about this. When I ask publishers "do you know what affiliate marketing is?" I typically get a response such as "um, well ...". So if they don't understand what affiliate marketing is, they certainly don't understand affiliate tagging. This isn't true of all publishers; Harlequin, for instance, is really good at online marketing, and certainly understands affiliate-marketing well.

So, how do I explain these things? Well, by internal transactions, I mean that each ebook is its own shopping-cart system. You reach a point inside the book that you cannot get past without paying. You enter your credit card information into the book itself (though the actual form is retrieved from a server so, for instance, the book price can be changed at any time), and when you submit your card and it's approved, the server automatically unlocks the book, so you can continue reading.

As for affiliate tagging, this is the ability to add a code to each book you distribute -- one code for each specific distribution channel -- so the publisher or distributor knows where that book came from. If you distribute through Web Site A, 10,000 people download the book, and 500 buy it, you know that those 500 people came from Web Site A. If you put the book in a magazine insert, 100,000 people buy the magazine, 10,000 copy the book to their computers, and 500 buy it, then you know that those 500 customers came from that particular magazine insert. Thus you can pay the right company the required affiliate commissions.

So these two components, along with the ability to partially lock a book, allow you to create trialware books -- try-before-you-buy books -- that can be distributed widely, through many different channels.

Q: Is there an opportunity for competing publishers to generate affiliate revenue by selling other publishers' books?

Absolutely! Books can be bundled within books -- certainly our DNL format allows this -- so a publisher might bundle several locked books at the end of the book. Those books might belong to the publisher or, in appropriate cases, from another publisher. In particular, of course, small publishers could benefit from these sorts of relationships with other publishers.

Q: What is the upside of "try before you buy" in ebooks?

A try-before-you-buy book with built-in transaction processing, and built-in affiliate tagging, opens up a whole new world of distribution options. All of a sudden, the book can go anywhere. Sell computer books? Talk with computer manufacturers about putting your books on the desktop of every new computer sold, and talk to software manufacturers about bundling the books in their software downloads. Sell photography books? Put them on the software CDs inside digital-camera packaging. Sell wine books? Give away try-before-you-buy books on wine Web sites. Science fiction novels? Give books away on fan sites. Those three things -- try-before-you-buy, internal transaction processing, and affiliate tagging -- free books from ecommerce Web sites, and provide almost limitless marketing opportunities.

Q: What viral/social aspects does your company include in ebooks? (Email to a friend, etc.)

We include Email-to-a-Friend, of course. If you try a book, like it, and buy it, that book is now unlocked. But if you email it to a friend or colleague, when it lands on the recipient's computer it's now locked. Word of mouth is hugely important in book sales; it always has been. Email-to-a-Friend is essentially a modern-day word-of-mouth feature. We also allow people to share notes. Members of a book club could highlight areas of the books, add notes, then email the highlights and notes to each other. Members can import these things, and see who said what based on the name at the top of the notes.

Q: Are ebook giveaways useful?

Of course. Companies such as Harlequin use giveaways to build interest. I think, though, that these giveaways will get more sophisticated, as publishers learn more about try-before-you-buy books. For instance, if you're giving away a book, you're hoping that the reader will come to your site and buy another one at some point. But why not create a giveaway book, a single file, that includes a book for sale at the end of the free book? Or several books from which the reader can choose?

Q: Do you recommend user tracking and registration? How in-depth should this tracking/registration be?

Of course you want as much information as possible; we're in business, after all, so we need to create relationships with buyers. Amazon does this. I like to point out to publishers that someone owns the relationship, it's just not them. If you sell photography books and someone buys one of your books through Amazon today, tomorrow Amazon will start promoting other photography books to this buyer. Some of these books will be yours, perhaps, but most won't! So Amazon's tracking, and Amazon's benefiting. Publishers are going to learn to do the same for themselves, and some already are.

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