Much has been written over the last couple months about the controversy surrounding Amazon's decision to remove its "Buy now" button from POD book listings that don't print from its own BookSurge subsidiary. Long story made short, if you're a POD author, your books can receive preferential treatment if you use Amazon's POD printing subsidiary as opposed to using a competitor such as Lightning Source or any of the dozens of alternatives. POD printer BookLocker even filed suit in May to block prevent Amazon from, we suspect, wielding unfair and anti-competitive powers against its POD printing competitors.
The New York Times in Monday's issue provides an update to the ongoing saga, this time with news about how Amazon is cracking down on publishers in the U.K.
Our take: Amazon is the biggest single threat facing book publishers and book stores today. First, they're going to try to own the indie author POD and digital publishing segment of book publishing, and next I suspect they'll try to recruit mainstream published authors to bypass traditional publishers for future works and do their original publishing through Amazon. With Amazon's Digital Text Platform service, it's already as easy for an indie author to publish on the Amazon Kindle as it is to publish on Smashwords.
Some in the industry have suggested that Amazon should acquire Borders. I don't see that happening. Instead, I think it's only a matter of time before Amazon starts acquiring ailing mainstream print publishers and their catalogs. Amazon would acquire authors and backlists and could then disintermediate multiple members of the book industry supply chain in one fell swoop. To authors, this might at first appear a favorable outcome, considering the current system is broken from the perspective of most authors, and Amazon pays better royalties than its traditional print cousins. However, longer term, reduced choice and monolithic near-monopolistic industry control are seldom good for anyone but the monopoly.
Showing posts with label Amazon Kindle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amazon Kindle. Show all posts
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader to Sell 1 Million Units Combined in 2008?
Evan Schnittman over at the Oxford University Press blog has an interesting post from earlier today that estimates Amazon and Sony are on track to sell a combined one million ebook readers in 2008. If correct, or if even half-correct, Schnittman's calculations offer clear evidence that the ebook market has entered a hyperbolic growth phase.
Schnittman's estimates are based on quotes from executives from Prime View International, the Taiwanese manufacturer behind the 9 inch displays used by Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader.
What does the news mean for indie authors? Simply put, if you're not working today to build your digital publishing presence, you could be missing out on an important future sales channel for your works.
(Hat tip to Tim O'Reilly who wrote about this for O'Reilly Radar here)
Schnittman's estimates are based on quotes from executives from Prime View International, the Taiwanese manufacturer behind the 9 inch displays used by Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader.
What does the news mean for indie authors? Simply put, if you're not working today to build your digital publishing presence, you could be missing out on an important future sales channel for your works.
(Hat tip to Tim O'Reilly who wrote about this for O'Reilly Radar here)
Thursday, May 22, 2008
IDPF Reports Wholesale Ebook Sales Up 35%
The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), a non-profit industry group, reported this week that U.S. wholesale ebook revenues grew to $10.1 million in the first quarter of 2008, up 35% over the same period a year ago and up an impressive 23% sequentially over the fourth quarter of 2007. Since these are wholesale numbers, actual retail sales could be up to twice the reported figures.
Are we starting to see the impact of ebook sales through the Amazon Kindle?
Separately today, Barnes & Noble, the country's largest book seller, announced a 1.1 % decline in same store sales and lowered revenue forecasts for the remainder of the year. See the press release here and read the earnings conference call transcript here.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Amazon Kindle Sales to Approach $1 Billion by 2010?
Amazon has revealed little data about Kindle sales, but now, according to TechCrunch, Citigroup Analyst Mark Mahaney has issued a report predicting that Amazon will generate up $750 million in Kindle revenues by 2010, with half of that coming from device sales and the other half book sales.
Based on my look at the Kindle, I think it's going to be a huge hit and will expose hundreds of thousands of readers to the joy of digital books. Sure, the device isn't perfect, but with few more simple tweaks and a price reduction Amazon has a killer device on its hands.
Smashwords books are easily readable on the Kindle.
Based on my look at the Kindle, I think it's going to be a huge hit and will expose hundreds of thousands of readers to the joy of digital books. Sure, the device isn't perfect, but with few more simple tweaks and a price reduction Amazon has a killer device on its hands.
Smashwords books are easily readable on the Kindle.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Digital text vs. printed text
I just read two books from my Amazon Kindle (George Soros' thought provoking The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 from the Amazon store and the excellent World Voyagers from husband and wife Smashwords authors, Phil and Amy Shelton, and have found myself thinking more and more about the future of the printed word.
For years, pundits, know-it-alls and nay-sayers have been preaching a gospel that digital ebooks will never catch on because nothing can match the pleasurable look, feel and experience of print on paper. I think the conventional wisdom is wrong.
Will Kindle do for ebooks what the iPod did for digital music? Not the current version.
Although it offers a better-than-expected reading experience, it certainly isn't a must have reading device, at least not yet. The screen, while acceptable, still doesn't match ink on paper. The screen is a bit dark. The crisp black letters lack contrast against the too-dark gray background. To call the user interface clunky would be an understatement. It's difficult to hold the thing without flipping pages by accident.
On the plus side, it's easy to adjust the Kindle's font size for more comfortable reading, and the wireless download feature is superb. I bought my first book from the Kindle store while sitting in the sand on Waikiki beach. Imagine having thousands of books to sample or purchase, at your fingertips, anytime and anyplace. That's powerful and you can have that today with the Kindle.
I see a clear path for Kindle or its competition to achieve greatness with a couple more iterations. If you've got an extra $399 sitting around and you love to read books, buy a Kindle, you won't be disappointed. Otherwise, hold off for another year or two because we're that close to the killer, must-have ebook device. And in the meantime, you can still have a good ebook reading experience on your smart phone or laptop.
For years, pundits, know-it-alls and nay-sayers have been preaching a gospel that digital ebooks will never catch on because nothing can match the pleasurable look, feel and experience of print on paper. I think the conventional wisdom is wrong.
Will Kindle do for ebooks what the iPod did for digital music? Not the current version.
Although it offers a better-than-expected reading experience, it certainly isn't a must have reading device, at least not yet. The screen, while acceptable, still doesn't match ink on paper. The screen is a bit dark. The crisp black letters lack contrast against the too-dark gray background. To call the user interface clunky would be an understatement. It's difficult to hold the thing without flipping pages by accident.
On the plus side, it's easy to adjust the Kindle's font size for more comfortable reading, and the wireless download feature is superb. I bought my first book from the Kindle store while sitting in the sand on Waikiki beach. Imagine having thousands of books to sample or purchase, at your fingertips, anytime and anyplace. That's powerful and you can have that today with the Kindle.
I see a clear path for Kindle or its competition to achieve greatness with a couple more iterations. If you've got an extra $399 sitting around and you love to read books, buy a Kindle, you won't be disappointed. Otherwise, hold off for another year or two because we're that close to the killer, must-have ebook device. And in the meantime, you can still have a good ebook reading experience on your smart phone or laptop.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Publishing Smashwords books on the Amazon Kindle
I bought one of the first Kindles available, though I'm embarrassed to admit it's been sitting in a pile of unread magazines for the last few months. I'm on vacation this week in Hawaii, so I brought it along for some real-world beach testing (I'll do a review later). This morning, I tested it with Smashwords, just to see for myself how easy it is to move a Smashwords book to the Kindle. Initial results were quite favorable, though I did discover a small bug that perplexes me. Here's a step by step of how to move Smashwords ebooks to a Kindle:
1. Go to smashwords.com.
2. Go to the book page of your book. Click on the .mobi file. Choose "save to disk" and download the file to your desktop.
3. Connect your Kindle to your computer via the USB port cable that comes with the Kindle.
4. From your deskop, click on "My Computer" and you'll see the Kindle appear as a hard drive. In my case, it appears as the D: drive. Click on the Kindle drive and then click on "Documents" to open up that folder on the Kindle. Drag your book's file, which ends in .mobi, into the Kindle documents folder.
5. This is what the Kindle screen looks like as it's connected to the USB cable.
6. Next, unplug the cable from the Kindle. Voila, your book is on the Kindle, accessible from the Kindle home button along with your other Kindle books!
Observations:
The book renders beautifully in the Kindle. I can alter the font size and get good pagination. The only problem I discovered is that the book's title, Boob Tube, doesn't appear as the title within the Kindle menu. Instead, I got gobblygook. And the gobblygook appears as the header on every page of the book on the Kindle. It's a minor annoyance but something I'm sure Gordy our CTO can fix if I'm unable to debug it myself.
Bottom line, it's quite easy to save your Smashwords books to the Kindle. If I had had my Kindle attached to my computer as I was saving the book to my desktop, I could have just as easily saved it straight to the Kindle to save a couple steps.
1. Go to smashwords.com.
2. Go to the book page of your book. Click on the .mobi file. Choose "save to disk" and download the file to your desktop.
3. Connect your Kindle to your computer via the USB port cable that comes with the Kindle.
4. From your deskop, click on "My Computer" and you'll see the Kindle appear as a hard drive. In my case, it appears as the D: drive. Click on the Kindle drive and then click on "Documents" to open up that folder on the Kindle. Drag your book's file, which ends in .mobi, into the Kindle documents folder.
5. This is what the Kindle screen looks like as it's connected to the USB cable.
6. Next, unplug the cable from the Kindle. Voila, your book is on the Kindle, accessible from the Kindle home button along with your other Kindle books!
Observations:
The book renders beautifully in the Kindle. I can alter the font size and get good pagination. The only problem I discovered is that the book's title, Boob Tube, doesn't appear as the title within the Kindle menu. Instead, I got gobblygook. And the gobblygook appears as the header on every page of the book on the Kindle. It's a minor annoyance but something I'm sure Gordy our CTO can fix if I'm unable to debug it myself.
Bottom line, it's quite easy to save your Smashwords books to the Kindle. If I had had my Kindle attached to my computer as I was saving the book to my desktop, I could have just as easily saved it straight to the Kindle to save a couple steps.
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