Ever wanted to have a colour display on an eReader? The wait is over. The Ukrainian company Pocketbooks has just launched its Pocketbook Color Lux, an eReader using e-Ink but with a colour display that can show 4.096 colours. The backlit, 8’’ reader so far is only available in Russia and it is questionable how successful it will be, given the strong competition of all the tablets on the market, that have much better colour displays and high resolution (just think of Apple’s retina display). However, for the fans of e-Ink, who want to read magazines, children’s books or other highly illustrated books on an eReader rather than on a tablet, this might just be the solution they have been waiting for. They will be able to read PDF, ePub, Word and Txt files on it and to play MP3 audio files. Overall it is not exactly a stunning device, the design being fairly standard (available in black and white) and it has a rather chunky look to it. I am not convinced that people will be willing to pay 250 euros for it, when they could have e.g. an iPad Mini for only 80 euros more. But I guess it was a gap in the market that has now been filled and after all e-Ink is much easier on the eye than computer or tablet LCD screens. Technical details: Manufacturer: Pocketbook Launch: 2013 Available colours: black and white Size: 202 x 170 x 9mm Weight: 300g Display technology: eInk Triton 2 Display size: 8” Display resolution: 800 x 600 pixels Colour depth: 16 grey shades, 4096 colours Touchscreen: yes, capacitive Integrated light: yes USB: yes, USB 2.0 (Micro USB) Bluetooth: no Wifi: yes, 802.11 b/g/n GSM/UTMS: no Internal memory: 4GB Operating system: Linux Speakers: yes Text-to-Speech: yes Supported file formats: EPUB DRM, EPUB, PDF DRM, PDF, FB2, FB2.ZIP, TXT, DJVU, HTM, HTML, DOC, DOCX, RTF, CHM, TCR, (MOBI), JPG, BMP, PNG, TIFF, MP3 Battery life: 3.000 mAh Position sensor: no Integrated eBook store: yes Other: dictionary, browser Source: http://allesebook.de/datenblatt-2/pocketbook/pocketbook-color-lux/
Since the growth of the eBook market and Amazon’s predominance in that area high street bookstores have struggled to come to terms with these developments. They felt that they weren’t able to provide a viable sales platform for eBooks and therefore focused more on demonising Amazon and promoting their print books (1). However, this meant that publishers were forced to sell their eBooks mainly through Amazon, which again gave Amazon an even stronger position in the market— quite a doom loop really. Of course most bookstores offer eBooks on their websites and it is now very common that shops have free Wi-Fi access so customers can buy the eBook while they are in store but to me that seems to be little more than a stopgap solution to the problem. This year Waterstones have also partnered with Amazon and now sell Kindles and Kindle eBooks in their stores (2). Although this might have been a sensible move, it means for both Waterstones and publishers that they are still very closely tied to Amazon. The German start-up company EPIDU has come up with a very simple and very clever way of selling eBooks that doesn’t involve Amazon or in fact any online retailer at all. Last year they launched their eBookCards, which allow bookshops to “stock” eBooks in store. While the idea of selling gift-card vouchers for eBooks isn’t entirely new these gift-cards were normally the size of a debit card, were worth a certain amount of money and could be redeemed online. EPIDU’s eBookCards are quite something else. They have the format of a folding greeting card with the full book cover, blurb and author biography printed on them. Inside are a barcode and a reference number so buyers can either scan the barcode immediately to download the eBook or they can go to ebookcards.de and type in the reference number to download the book. They will also be able to choose in which format they want to download their eBook (PDF or ePub). Two months ago EPIDU also launched the Joker eBookCard, which means that if the bookstore doesn’t stock the eBookCard for the book that one wants one can simply buy the Joker card and at purchase the bookseller will load the wanted eBooks onto the card. The cards are produced and distributed through EPIDU and they have partnered with ceebo— an online platform that is responsible for the deployment of the eBooks. All that publishers have to do is to get in touch with EPIDU. This invention is advantageous for all parties involved: Publishers gain a new distribution channel for their eBooks but don’t have to learn anything new— they already know how to sell books to bookshops. They can also reach a new target market: The bookshop fans who also like to read digitally. The bookstores suddenly have an opportunity to partake in the eBook business and can use their existing infrastructure for it. And finally the readers can now buy their eBooks the same way they buy print books: They browse the shelves, look at the cover and read the blurb, ask bookshop staff for suggestions and help, they can pay in cash and without having to register anywhere and they can also buy the eBookCards as gifts. The beauty of this concept is that it is so simple and still addresses almost all issues that have ever been raised with regards to the selling and purchasing of eBooks. Publishers, bookstores and readers stick to their traditional ways of selling/purchasing, except that the product is an eBook. No bookstore or publisher will be able to compete with Amazon online but Amazon has one weakness: They have no physical retail space. The concept of the eBooksCards shows that with a little bit of creativity bookstores and publishers can find ways of competing with Amazon and that they don’t even have to involve high investment costs or difficult business models. It is not a question of either Amazon and eBooks or physical bookstores and print books, as many assume nowadays (3)— bookstores and publishers just need to concentrate on what they do best and adjust these strengths to current developments. word count: 697 1 Huffington Post (12.12.11) Local Bookstores Ask Customers To Boycott Amazon Over New Price Check App Offer [online]. Accessed 26.11.12, available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/08/bookstores-boycott-amazon_n_1137773.html 2 P. Jones (21.05.12) Waterstones signs Kindle deal with Amazon, The Bookseller [online]. Accessed 26.11.12, available at: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/waterstones-signs-kindle-deal-amazon.html3 A. Flood (19.06.12) Independent Bookshops in crisis, as eBook sales rise, The Guardian [online]. Accessed 26.11.12, available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/19/independent-bookshops-in-crisis-ebooks
Even though eBooks have long become an integral part of every publisher’s life there are still many unresolved issues. How should they be sold? How should they be protected from piracy and copyright infringement? And maybe most importantly: What is the right price for an eBook? Publishers struggle a lot to find solutions for these problems. They fear Amazon’s predominance, yet they are dependent on Amazon because of its position in the eBook market. They know that their customers want products that can easily be transferred from one reading device to another, but they don’t want to loose control over the way their products are used and distributed (1). And finally they seem to be completely lost when it comes to finding the right price for eBooks. But while the big print publishers still try to adapt their old business models to the digital world, small start-up companies are developing interesting new and creative sales models. The company I want to look at today is StoryBundle. StoryBundle is a website based company, launched earlier this year, which sells eBooks of independent authors in bundles of 5-6 books. This alone wouldn’t be so extraordinary, but two things make them special: They have no DRM on their eBooks and they let the customers choose how much they want to pay for the bundle, starting at $1. The incentive to pay more is that you get two bonus books if you pay a minimum of $9. They also let you choose what percentage of the price goes to the author and to StoryBundle respectively. There is also the option of donating 10% of your purchase to a selection of charities like e.g. Trees for the Future. Each bundle has a theme and is only available for a certain time. After that you are referred to the authors’ websites to buy the books there individually. StoryBundle’s direct competitors are HumbleBundle, who are better known for successfully selling online games this way, and SnugNugget. But not only is StoryBundle’s website much clearer designed, when I looked at the other two websites, neither of them had any eBook bundles on sale, while StoryBundle is using Halloween to sell a Horror/Dark Fantasy themed bundle. This suggests that StoryBundle is better equipped to succeed with its enterprise than its competition. But are people really interested in this kind of thing? And why should they pay more than the absolute minimum? Well, I don’t have any sales figures from StoryBundle, but HumbleBundle have already sold 84,220 bundles for an average price of $14.28, making a whopping $1,203,050.01 from their first Humble eBook Bundle, so clearly this is more than just a little experiment (2). People seem to like it and they also seem to be prepared to pay a fair price! Of course $14 for 5 or 6 books still isn’t a lot and I am not entirely sure, how StoryBundle and the other companies manage to cover their costs, but it is a good indicator of how much people are prepared to spent on eBooks. And how does the DRM free concept work? Of course there is no guarantee that people won’t abuse this system, but by letting people decide what they want to pay for their books, the incentive to pirate copy them is much smaller. After all, you can have a bundle for a dollar (so roughly 20 Cents per book) if you want, so there isn’t really a point in pirating them (3). So what can traditional publishers learn from all this? While this concept might not work for big publishing companies with much more staff and more highbrow authors, it shows that with a little bit of creativity new ways can be found to reach customers, ways which might not have anything to do with Amazon or Apple. It also shows that readers appreciate it, when publishers and authors show them their trust rather than treating them like potentially criminal misers, who must be kept in leading strings. eBooks are not just digitalised print books, they can be the starting point for completely new business models if publishers can let go of their antiquated presumptions how books should be sold and if they dare to be creative and try new things. If not then they might very soon find themselves on the backbench of the digital publishing world. word count: 697 1 J. S. McDougall (13.09.12) Fear of Piracy is Pushing Book Publishers into the Clutches of Amazon, jsmcdougall.com [online]. Accessed 01.11.12, available at: http://jsmcdougall.com/fear-of-piracy-is-pushing-book-publishers-to-drm-and-into-the-clutches-of-amazon/2 The HumbleBundle (2012). Accessed 01.11.12, available at: http://www.humblebundle.comSince I last accessed this page it has been updated, so now the sales figures for the Humble eBook Bundles have been removed!3 StoryBundle (2012) On DRM [online]. Accessed 01.11.12, available at: http://storybundle.com/nodrm
With the technology boom of recent years parents, teachers and researchers have become increasingly concerned with the effect that technology and the consumption of digital media has on children. Although it is hotly debated to what extend children should be allowed or even encouraged to use digital media, certain developments speak for themselves. While children generally spent more and more time in front of televisions, game consoles and computers, their interest in books has declined rapidly and their attention spans have drastically decreased (1). Are eBooks the solution? Well, yes and no. Of course children are attracted to tablets and e-readers and as a result of that eBooks also become more interesting than print books. The format promises to make reading more interesting, cool and entertaining.No wonder that according to the Scholastic Kids&Family Reading Report almost two thirds of children between the age of 9 and 17 are interested in eBooks and a third of them think that they would read more if they had access to eBooks. But on the other hand nearly three-quarters of parents who read eBooks with their children say that they prefer reading print books with them and more than half of the children agree (2). Also children still believe that they will always want to read print books even when they have access to eBooks (3). So the case for children’s eBooks isn’t quite as straightforward as one might think. There are also some intrinsic problems with current eBooks and apps for children, which have nothing to do with preference: The trend for children’s eBooks at the moment is clearly towards highly interactive reading experiences, where children can play games, watch videos and do all kinds of things with the content. But all these features do more to distract the children than help them to get into reading. There have even been studies, which showed that children remember less content after having read an enhanced eBook than they do after reading print books or plain eBooks (4). So while apps and enhanced eBooks are very engaging they don’t really help with the reading problem and just mean that children spent even more time in front of a screen without gaining very much from it. But isn’t it a good thing to engage the children and let them have fun with the content? It is, if children are meant to playfully learn things that they would normally find boring. But it isn’t if the children are meant to learn how to read and how to engage with text. Therefore I think it is necessary that publishers and also parents make a clear distinction between these to aims. There are already many really good educational apps out there like e.g. Barefoot Books’ Atlas of the World. These help children discover things and bring them to life in ways that print books never could. But they do not so much encourage children to read but to play around and explore. If children are meant to actually read on e-readers or tablets and stay focused on reading for longer periods of time then they should be provided with more ore less plain eBooks that contain only the most basic extra features. Of course there can be illustrations, there could also be features like difficult words being read out loud or explained when clicked on, but the focus should absolutely stay on the stories with as little distraction from the text as possible (5). However, if parents hardly ever read stories to their children, as surveys suggest (6), then the best eBooks won’t help. What we really need are campaigns like Pearson’s “Enjoy reading” campaign that encourage parents and children to read more. I am convinced that once a child has discovered the magic of a good story the format won’t be as important anymore. This hypothesis is confirmed by the survey results quoted above, which show that children, who do read, like print books as much as eBooks. word count: 661 1 C. Paton (19.10.12) Parents 'shun bedtime reading' in favour of TV, The Telegraph [online]. Accessed 29.10.12, available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9617868/Parents-shun-bedtime-reading-in-favour-of-TV.html2 J. Greenfield (18.09.12) Parents and Children Prefer Reading Print Books Together Over E-Books, Study Finds, Digital Book World [online]. Accessed 29.10.12, available at: http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/parents-and-children-prefer-reading-print-books-together-rather-than-e-books-study-finds/3 Scholastic (09.2010) 2010 Kids & Family Reading Report [online]. Accessed 29.10.12, available at: http://mediaroom.scholastic.com/themes/bare_bones/2010_KFRR.pdf4 J. Greenfield (18.09.12) 5 Ibid. 6 C. Paton (19.10.12)
For publishers going into digital publishing the perhaps most important decision is in which format and on which platform they want to publish their digital products. Since the format in which an eBooks is bought usually depends on the eReader/tablet that the buyer owns, publishers also have to establish which tablet they expect to be most successful and therefore be the best platform for their apps and eBooks. In August 2012 Apple’s share of the global tablet market came to almost 70%. Its closest competitor was Samsung with only 9.2% (1). No wonder that many publishers, who experiment with apps and enhanced eBooks publish them for iPad (e.g. Touchpress apps). But until now Apple had missed out on an important part of the market- the small tablets. Amazon has its Kindle Fire, Samsung the Galaxy Tab 2 and Google the Nexus7. But Steve Jobs notoriously dismissed the idea of a small iPad. Now, almost exactly a year after his death Apple has launched the iPad Mini. Of course there are already many critics out there finding all kinds of problems with the iPad Mini. But who of them have a point? •There is already too much competition out there... The Independent (2): "Fancy an iPad but find it just too big and heavy? Apple has an alternative. Mind you, so does Google. And Amazon.” So far that has never stopped Apple from successfully creating products that can stand up to or even outdo their competition. However, they usually invented completely new products for existing concepts while the iPad Mini offers little to distinguish itself from existing tablets. •The iPad Mini is too expensive… The Guardian (3): “The price may prove a barrier for potential buyers considering it against its rivals: the iPad Mini will start at $329 (£269 in the UK), against $159 for the cheapest Kindle Fire and $249 for the Nexus 7.” Yes, it might but the problem isn’t the competition. There have always been cheaper computers, laptops, phones or mp3 players on the market, yet people still buy iMacs, MacBooks, iPhones and iPods because they know they are buying great quality products. The problem with the iPad Mini is that it sadly has some quality issues. •The iPad Mini isn’t as good as it should to be… techradar (5): “Apple has made some significant sacrifices for the iPad Mini, be it the low-res(olution) screen or last-gen(eration) processor.” This, I think, is the most critical point. The iPad Mini neither lives up to Apple’s own standards nor does it meet the standards of some of its competition. Yes, it is lighter, has larger memory, longer battery runtime and a larger screen than most other 7” tablets (6), but how can a company that has become famous for its ultra high-resolution (retina!) displays launch a product with lower resolution than the competition? I know that this means that every app for iPad can be run on iPad Mini without having to update them. But I think that they will need to do these updates sooner or later anyway and it would probably have been worth going that extra mile in order to get a product that can stand up to its competition. The same goes for the outdated processor. Apple will need to find a way to fit a faster processor in there sooner or later, so why not do it sooner? Apple definitely needed to get into the small tablet/e-reader market now- in fact they should have done so years ago and set the standards themselves like they did with the iPod, iPhone and iPad. But I still don’t really get the iPad Mini. If Apple want to seriously compete with the Kindle Fire, Nexus7 etc. why then is it still in a price range that is in no way competitive? The iPad Mini has the potential to become another great high-quality product and Apple has the necessary resources to turn it into one, so why haven’t they done so from the start? The iPad Mini appears to be a very decent product and its design is brilliant but Apple has set such a high standard over the years that this simply isn’t good enough for me yet. However, despite these obvious problems with the iPad Mini, Apple has shown that they do not intent to let their competition outrun them any time soon. The iPad Mini may have come late and with much room for improvement but I think that any publisher thinking about producing apps and enhanced eBooks can safely assume that Apple tablets will continue to dominate the market for quite a while longer. word count: 701 1 D. Graziano (14.08.12) Apple's share of the tablet market nears all-time high, BGR [online]. Accessed 27.10.12, available at: http://bgr.com/2012/08/14/ipad-market-share-all-time-high/2 D. Phelan (24.10.12) Hands on: First review of Apple's 'iPad mini' - can it snatch sales away from Google and Amazon?, The Independent [online]. Accessed 27.10.12, available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/hands-on-first-review-of-apples-ipad-mini--can-it-snatch-sales-away-from-google-and-amazon-8223021.html4 C. Arthur and B. Quinn (23.10.12) iPad Mini: Apple launches smaller tablet, The Guardian [online]. Accessed 27.10.12, available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/23/ipad-mini-apple-tablet-google-amazon5 G. Beavis (20.11.12- updated version) ipad Mini Review, Techradar [online]. Accessed 27.10.12, available at: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/ipad-mini-1096514/review/1#articleContentSince I last accessed this page it has been updated, so now the wording has changed!6 New York Times (23.10.12) The iPad Mini and its competition [online]. Accessed 27.10.12, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/23/business/The-iPad-Mini-and-Its-Competition.html
If someone were to explain a new business model saying “It worked two-hundred years ago, therefore it will work today” it probably wouldn’t sound very convincing to anyone. Yet if Amazon, the Kindle and eBooks are involved this is not only accepted as a perfectly reasonable assumption, it is presented as another great step in the progress of digital publishing. What I am talking about is Amazon’s launch of the Kindle Serials, a concept inspired by Charles Dickens' publishing methods back in the 19th century, as Jeff Bezos explained at a press conference in September (1). Just like Charles Dickens published many of his novels as newspaper serials the Kindle Serials are stories that are published in installments while the book is still being written. Once the book is finished it will be re-edited and published as a normal eBook and also as a paperback. Although the concept of publishing serialized eBooks isn’t entirely new, the Kindle Serials distinguish themselves in being delivered to the consumer in a “seamless and hassle-free” way: Readers only pay a one-off sum of 2-3$ for the first episode and each new episode is automatically downloaded onto their Kindle. They also have the possibility to comment on the story in a forum thereby participating in the origination process. In previous attempts at serialized eBook publishing, readers had to pay for and download each episode (2). So far, so good but the venture is not without flaws. It may be true that “serialized content, whether it’s a TV show, movie trilogy or written work, is a great and much-loved form of entertainment” (3), as Jeff Belle, Vice President of Amazon Publishing, says but the comparison with Dickens and the expectation of a similar success with the Kindle Serials seem to be rather unrealistic. First of all Amazon’s choice of books for their new concept doesn’t exactly match the standards of a Oliver Twist or David Copperfield: The list is filled with Thrillers, Mystery and Crime scattered with the occasional dystopian Zombie story, none of which appear to be very original or of great literary value- appealing to the current mass market taste perhaps but nothing that could come even close to Dickens. Secondly, even if people are interested in reading a book like e.g. Z2134 which appears to be a zombie version of The Hunger Games, there will still be the problem that everyone reads at a different speed, so while some people might already be losing interest in the story because for them it takes too long until the next episode is published, others might not even have finished the first episode before the next one comes out so the effect of the serialization is lost on them. And finally, as L. Hazard Owen points out, it is very questionable “whether anything can achieve Dickens-like popularity in an age where there are a lot more books and other forms of entertainment competing for people’s attention” (4). I am not saying that the concept won’t work at all. Authors seems to like the idea of publishing fast and of interacting with their readership (5) and the books are reasonably cheap so there will probably be enough people who will buy them even if it is just out of curiosity. But I am convinced that Amazon have set their sights to high when aiming for a Dickens-like success with their Kindle Serials. word count: 562 1 L. Hazard Owen (06.09.12) Amazon's Kindle Serials: probably not the next ‘Great Expectations’, Paid Content [online]. Accessed 11.10.12, available at: http://paidcontent.org/2012/09/06/amazon-kindle-serials-probably-not-the-next-great-expectations/2 S. Kessler (07.09.12) Closer Look at Amazon's New Kindle Serials: Part Dickens, Part TV , Fast Company [online]. Accessed 11.10.12, available at: http://www.fastcompany.com/3001130/closer-look-amazon%25E2%2580%2599s-new-kindle-serials-part-dickens-part-tv3 Amazon Press Releases [online]. Accessed 11.10.12, available at: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?ID=1732582&c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle4 L. Hazard Owen (06.09.12) 5 N. Pollack (12.09.12) Kindle Serials: What's it like to write one, Huffington Post [online]. Accessed 11.10.12, available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neal-pollack/kindle-serials-write_b_1877125.html
People read eBooks and will do so increasingly in the future. This is a fact that no publisher can ignore nowadays- whether they like it or not. Even in Germany, a country that has been very slow to pick up the eBook trend, eBooks have generated 10% of the turnover of major bookselling chains in 2011/12 (1). But not only the demand for eBooks is increasing, readers also expect that their eBook is available in every format on any device in the same quality. Given how quickly the digital market is developing and growing it can be extremely difficult for publishers to keep up with these changes. Especially small publishing companies struggle to cope with the rapid transition in digital publishing because they lack the necessary staff, technical skill and financial resources to create the multi-platform products that their readers are expecting (2). Small university presses like the Edinburgh University Press try to tackle the problem by partnering with Amazon and signing up with online platforms like UPSO, Cambridge Publishing Online and JSTOR but the problem is that they all use different formats. David Rodgers, chief executive of Manchester University Press, says that “digital at the moment is just costing me money, not making me money" (3). But solutions seem to be on their way. One company that addresses exactly the kind of problems mentioned above, is Gutenberg Technology. Although the media have not picked up on them yet they have been present at several important events for (digital) publishing such as the IDPF Digital Book 2012 conference or the Book Expo America and will be at the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Tool of Change conference in New York (4). They have developed an end-to-end platform called Gutenborg 3.0 that “allows publishers to create, edit, and store their content online” and to publish it simultaneously on every platform (website, printed book, tablets, e-readers and smartphones). While the publisher has full control over the process Gutenberg Technology undertake the technical aspect of it. Their pitch is that “with the Gutenborg Platform and its configurable system options you can benefit from an online and collaborative writing process. The book is a database from which you can automatically inject the content simultaneously into various media”*. Although not very well known yet several publishing companies, among them Pearson and Hachette Livre, have already partnered with Gutenberg Technology and to me it seems to be a good way of outsourcing the “digital problem”. Gutenberg Technology’s ultimate success will probably depend on how good their service is in practice but especially for small companies this could be a way of finally being able to cope with the dozens of different formats and platforms, which currently make it so hard for them to turn digital publishing into a profitable enterprise. *Since this article has been written Gutenberg Technology have changed their website and this quote is no longer online, however the same information in different words is available at http://www.gutenberg-technology.com/index.php?page=mybookfactory
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