Publishing

Scribe Media discusses the future of books, and how e-books could possibly be the future - or at least part of it.

Its a fascinating discussion with Bob Stein who is the Director of the Institute for Future of the Book - futureofthebook.org - and it well worth listening if you have a spare 40 minutes.

Source: Scribe Media

If e-book readers are to ever catch on then they must be able to display all kinds of documents and information, from novels to picture albums to technical documents. This presents a challenge for publishers right now because whist e-book readers are catching on, they don’t posses the technology to display anything other than just words and simple black and white images. A lot of publishers are wanting to put their technical documents on to e-ink devices, however technology in the e-ink industry is limiting how those documents can be displayed.

Once such publisher is Dave Thomas from Pragmatic Programmer which publishes technical programming books, as you can imagine, programming books will be full of diagrams, tables, code lists and images — they are really tricky to reproduce for e-book viewing.

This is what Dave had to say

About once a week, we get a request from a reader to have our books available in a format that can be read on an eBook reader (typically, nowadays, the Amazon Kindle).

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. The .epub format (used, for example, by Adobe Digital Editions) is slightly more capable, but it also has issues.

You can see exactly what Dave is talking about because he has uploaded his tests, you can see the results here;

Dave goes on to say getting to this stage required a lot of hacks, for instance the code listings have been converted to images so that they render better, however they don’t scale when the user changes the font size — i’m sure many more hacks were used to get to this stage, Dave finises with a good question:

So… what do you think. Is this workable? Should we make these available, even though they’re not very good, or should we wait for a later generation of eBook that’s closer to the capabilities we need? Comments are open… :)

What do you think, should publishers wait or press on knowing this is the best possible outcome given the current technology?

Source: O’Reilly, PragDave

The Kindle has been around since November 2007 and Amazon has yet released any sales figures. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Amazon has sold anywhere between 40,000 - 140,000 Kindle units per month and that e-book sales are on the increase accounting for 12% of title sales at Amazon.com. Whilst the Kindle hasn’t been a runaway success for Amazon, it has been a hit amongst readers and is slowly gaining acceptance amongst consumers.

Since its launch in 1995, Amazon has become a leviathan in the publishing industry, this spelt good news for the consumers, but not so good for the publishers. Amazon flexed its might in March this year by declaring that if publishers didn’t use Amazon’s in house print on demand wing called BookSurge then the “Buy” button on the Amazon page for their books will be removed. They could then only sell their books on Amazon through a third party.

This amounted to a antitrust suit being filed against Amazon in March of this year, the case is ongoing, Amazon filed for the case to be dismissed, the judge will decide on August 21st if the case can proceed.

The once mighty publishing industry is facing troubling times, with tighter margins on books and more competition from magazines and online publications, publishers are left with little option but to bow to Amazons wishes. Amazon’s cut is 65% when publishing book on the DTP and 25% when published on Mobipocket which gives Amazon even more power over the publishers. Removing their books from Amazon is not an option for many publishers simply because of the amount of revenue they will lose, precious revenue they cannot afford to lose.

The Kindle seems has tightened Amazons grip on the publishers, and as Kindle growth surges it will put the publishers in an even worse position.

Esquire Magazine celebrates its 75th birthday this year. To celebrate this milestone Esquire has partnered up with a Cambridge, Massachusetts based technology company, E Ink Corporation (the same company which makes the Kindles e-ink display), to become the first magazine to be printed-or should I say manufactured-with an e-ink cover.

The special 75th anniversary issue will focus on exploring the ideas, people and issues that will be the foundation of the 21st century.

“This cover is both a breakthrough for magazines and an expression of the theme of our anniversary issue,” said David Granger, editor-in-chief of Esquire Magazine. Whilst the cover uses “rudimentary e-ink technology” primarily because the cost associated with having a high resolution e-ink display is still very high, Mr. Granger hopes this is only the beginning of an explosion in the use of e-ink technology.

Mr. Granger, also has high hopes for the covers place in history saying “I hope it will be in the Smithsonian [...] Magazines have basically looked the same for 150 years,” adding “I have been frustrated with the lack of forward movement in the magazine industry.” - you can include the publishing and the newspaper industry’s to that also.

Whilst some might see this as a marketing gimmick, Esquire is hopeful that the technology behind the device will last, Mr. Granger thinks “The possibilities of print have just begun. In two years, I hope this looks like cellphones did in 1982, or car phones.”

Esquires publishers have had to invest a six figure amount in order to get the project off the ground, so a big-time sponsor was needed in order to turn a profit, Ford was brought in to help with some of the costs in exchange for a 2-page e-ink advertisement.

The Esquire team has been planning to use an e-ink cover for a long time, back in 2000, Mr. Granger visited E Ink Corporation in Cambridge for a technology demonstration, but conceded that it was too premature for magazines. In 2006 the technology had improved sufficiently that only limitation to creating an e-ink magazine was having a battery small enough to power it-and the associated costs-, so for the past 16 months Esquire has been working with a Chinese manufacture to create a battery which will fit inside a magazine, the battery is expected to last 90 days.

It would be interesting to see what magazine stands would look like in a decades time if the e-ink cover catches on. Magazine stands are already a visual assault on the eyes, every magazine is competing for you attention with bright colours and scantily clad women, one can only imagine the stands if they were filled with animated e-ink covers!

Now I suspect that the e-ink display will be a segmented type as opposed to a high resolution graphic type available on the Kindle, given the cost of manufacturing. The Esquire cover will probably have a few frames of animation or some flashing text - nothing fancy, but still quite cool. Esquire has an exclusive deal with E Ink Corporation on the use of e-ink technology in print through 2009, however only a 100,000 e-ink covers will be produced, they will only be available on Magazine stands and the 620,000 Esquire mail subscribers will get a printed copy of the issue.

Source: New York Times

Back in May we got wind of a new social fanzine site especially for science-fiction and fantasy readers, Tor.com was due for launch we were told imminently, but as with these things the launch actually didn’t happen for a couple of month - over the weekend Tor.com was launched.

If you read the earlier post you know that had you signed up for the newsletter, Tor was giving away a free e-book every week in their weekly newsletter. Now that the site has launched, Tor will make available all 24 titles that were given away in the newsletter–only till the 27th of July, so head on over to the site and download them–in their Freebies Bonanza, there is a selection of artwork for download as-well, some would make an excellent desktop wallpaper.

Here is the list of all the available e-books;

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

PDF || HTMLnew! || HTML zipnew! || Mobinew!

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Farthing by Jo Walton

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

The Outstretched Shadow by Mercedies Lackey & James Mallory

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Lord of the Isles by David Drake

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Through Wolf’s Eyes by Jane Lindskold

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

The Disunited States of America by Harry Turtledove

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Reiffen’s Choice by S.C. Butler

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Spirit Gate by Kate Elliot

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Starfish by Peter Watts

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Touch of Evil by C.T. Adams & Cathy Clamp

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Orphans of Chaos by John Wright

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

In the Midnight Hour by Patti O’Shea

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Battlestar Galactica by Jeffrey A. Carver

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Flash by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Soul by Tobsha Learner

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Darkness of the Light by Peter David

PDF || HTML || HTML zip || Mobi

Three Shadows by Cyril Pedrosanew!

PDF || ePub

If your a fan of science-fiction and fantasy  books then you might want to bookmark Tor.com, and sign up for access to more advanced community features, whilst the site is still in officially in beta there is a lot there for you to look at and read. There are already some lively discussions going on in the community forum with Tor and Macmillan employees and the blog on the front page is filled with interesting news and stories.

An Amazon.com press release today revealed that 11 top Christian publishers are to make available thousands of e-book for the Kindle.

From the Amazon.com press release;

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced that Christian book publishers Augsburg Fortress, Crossway Books & Bibles, David C. Cook, Gospel Light, Group Publishing, NavPress, Strang Communications, Thomas Nelson, Tyndale, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. and Zondervanp have committed to making the majority of their catalogs of books available to Kindle owners by the end of 2008.

….

The response to our Kindle editions has been remarkable,” said Alan Huizenga, Director of Digital Publishing at Tyndale House Publishers. “We are excited to know that for readers who own a Kindle, they can download and begin reading bestselling Tyndale authors such as Joel Rosenberg, Tony Dungy, Francine Rivers, and Tommy Newberry in under a minute!”

“For years Eerdmans readers have enjoyed our extensive selection of titles from the scholarly to the popular,” said Sam Eerdmans, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Eerdmans. “Now Eerdmans is excited to announce that many of our titles will be readily available on Kindle. Fans of Eugene Peterson or Joan Chittister can quickly find and access their new books using the extremely easy interface of Kindle.”

“Thomas Nelson is excited to offer our books in the digital format on Kindle,” said Robert Edington, Vice President of Internet Channel, Thomas Nelson, Inc. “Our readers have enjoyed works by Max Lucado, John Maxwell and Ted Dekker for a long time, and now those who have a Kindle can quickly and easily download them in 60 seconds.”

It looks like more and more publishers are jumping on the Kindle bandwagon, the more the merrier!

Source: Amazon.com

BookExpo, the US industry largest annual trade exhibition ended last month in Los Angeles without a clear strategy to revive the industry.

The book industry which is going through troubling times lacks a clear strategy to move forward, with the advent and popularisation of new technologies like the Kindle and the internet challenging the traditional ways of publishing it is forcing the industry to evolve and adapt to change.

Simon & Schuster CEO and President Carolyn Reidy said about the event: “It was quite, very quite”, in fact the entire even lacked interest in the absence of a “buzz book”. Amazon could have been that “buzz book” or should I say “buzz e-book”, in fact the event lacked such interest that the highlight of the event was a pop concert by Prince.

Amazon was praised throughout the whole event with its Kindle reading device, however since Kindle e-books only account for 6% of total book sales it was hardly exciting anyone, having a bigger stage at BookExpo could have increased e-book exposure as a viable alternative to traditional books and as a way of kick starting the industry back into gear. Perhaps Jeff Bezos could have delivered the keynote address instead of the Prince pop concert.

However popular novelist Ray Bradbury expressed some reservations about e-books saying: “There is no future for e-books because they are not books.”

Should Amazon Kindle have had a prominent position at the BookExpo in LA to promote the use of e-books and e-book readers?

Princeton University Press has announced that it will start publishing Kindle edition textbook this fall, according to Inside Higher Education, Princeton will follow other prominent educational establishments like Yale, Oxford and UC Berkeley in offering Kindle edition textbooks to students and faculty. Depending on the success, more university are likely to follow.

The Kindle seems like the ideal device which would appeal to the university demographic more so than any other gadget out there, students and faculty can both benefit from the Kindle. Image if every student had a Kindle, all the course lectures and textbooks could be downloaded the instant they were available, with the amount of reading an average student goes through in an average semester they may be grateful for a device which can help them reduce the weight in the already heavy bags. And university lecturers could add reading material for next week lecture which could be automatically downloaded to a students Kindle, just like a newspaper.

With Kindles search feature students can easily find the right passages instead of searching through the library archives for 3 hours, it can be noted, annotated and bookmarked for later reference.

Anything that help with learning and education gets the thumbs up from us

Source: cnet

Whilst tracking Kindle sales is like guess work, tracking US e-book sales is a bit easier, the above graphic shows US e-book sales from Q1 2002 - Q1 2008. Whilst there was a healthy upward trend, the last 5 quarters (Q4 2006 - Q4 2007) only showed a 17% increase in sales according to industry statistics compiled by The International Digital Publishing Forum. However just in the last quarter alone, the industry saw an explosion, up from $1,887,900 in sales in Q4 2007 shooting up 23% to $2,460,343 in sales in Q1 2008.

I think the most interesting results will be Q2 2008, if we see another 20% spike in sales like we saw in Q1 2008 then it’s quite reasonable to theorise that the Kindle is having an effect on e-book sales in the US.

Bear in mind that The International Digital Publishing Forum only collects data from 12-15 trade publishers and that the real retail numbers could be as much as double the figures reported above.

A commenter, rizchamps, from the Silicon Ally Insider article on the report writes:

So if we ascribe all the incremental revenue from $2.5M to $3.1M = $600K to Kindle, and assume that $3 a piece wholesale cost, that would be 200K ebooks currently in service. In addition, assume that those with kindles are early adopters who would buy more than 1 book, say 10 book per kindle for the three months period, that would put the active kindle number around 20K.

Then, those 20K in service probably was mostly sold during Xmas season, give it 15K, meaning for an average month, there are 5K kindles entering service (summer time could be less because Kindle has not proven itself on the beach yet). That would translate into annual sales of 70K units(generic), give it a multiple YOY 30%, that would be 80K.

That would mean 90k (units)* (500 (price) + 50 (book per year, since adopters love books)* 10 (price per book) = $90M gross revenue

rizchamps numbers seem well worked and seem entirely reasonable, more so than a certain Citigroup analyst.

Of course all this is still guesswork and we wont know for sure unless Amazon releases Kindle sales figures. Do you think the Kindle is having an effect on e-book sales?

Source: The International Digital Publishing Forum, Silicon Ally Insider

Tor Books is a major hardcover and paperback science fiction and fantasy publisher, one of the largest in the English-speaking world, it announced recently that it was working on a new community website which would be a “go-to site, a central community” for science fiction and fantasy fans, this website will act, in part, as a form of branding and promotion for Tor book titles. The site will also implement light social networking elements and publish original short fiction and nonfiction for free online, all DRM free.

Here is the hook from the front page of Tor.com

A science fiction and fantasy site not quite like any you’ve seen before, mixing news, commentary, original stories and art, your own comments and conversations, and more. A place on the net you may find yourself wanting to visit—and participate in—every day.

While there isnt any more information on the site Patrick Nielsen Hayden is on the team that is developing the site, he had this to say;

But we know several things. We know that the site will use a blog-like architecture to present an ongoing stream of news, opinion, and observation from various Tor people, myself included, about the SF and fantasy events of the day—and about perhaps less-current things that are nonetheless of interest to SF and fantasy readers, such as medieval siege engines, the Van Allen Belt, hoisin sauce, XKCD, and the novels of Georgette Heyer. We know that there will be non-Tor bloggers also posting to the “front page”; in fact we’ve already recruited several in order to ensure coverage of particular niche areas. (Some of these individuals will be familiar to Making Light readers—wave hello, Bruce Baugh—and we haven’t finished recruiting, either.) We know that the site will also feature new original fiction on a regular basis, illustrated under the supervision of art director Irene Gallo, and that these original stories—free of DRM, offered as part of the blog feed and also Available For Your Convenience in a variety of other formats—will have their own associated open comment threads, just like everything else on the blog. We know that there will be lightweight “social networking” features for registered users, including the ability to form mutual-interest groups through tagging and the ability to create journals and/or discussions of their own. Most of all, we know that the real point of the exercise isn’t to create yet another blog, but rather, a place and a context for the lively, ongoing, wide-ranging, and profoundly self-organizing discussions that have characterized the science fiction subculture since its earliest days. In other words, it’ll be a lot like Making Light, except with original fiction and art, more front-page bloggers, a more direct connection to SF and fantasy, and run out of the middle of Tor Books.

From what I have gathered from various sources a few dozen authors have already been approached to submit their work, Tor is possible paying upward of 25 cents per word for some of the stories from the prominent authors. Once the titles are published on the site they will also be accompanied by commissioned artwork.

Beta testers can apply to join the private beta by sending an email to tor.betatest@gmail.com, however that maybe unnecessary since the launch may be imminent - it is due for launch sometime in May.

As part of the effort to get users to sign up, Tor is offering a free e-book every week for users who sign up for the weekly newsletter, this weeks offering is “Touch of Evil” by C. T. Adams, in previous weeks you could have got your hands on “Mistborn” by Brandon Sanderson, “Old Man’s War” by John Scalzi and “Spin” by Robert Charles Wilson - all of them great books, all of them DRM free and all of them work with the Kindle.

The concept of the site sounds amazing, and there isn’t anything remotely like it anywhere on the web. Even if they implement half of what they are trying to do, the site will be a huge success. So if you love your science fiction and fantasy book, sign up for the newsletter and stay tuned in for the launch.

Source: Making Light

Today BookLocker.com has filed an antitrust suit against Amazon.com on behalf of POD (Print On Demand) publishers.

It all started in late March when Amazon contacted a number of US small presses and self-publishers to say that if they didn’t use Amazon’s in house print on demand wing called BookSurge then the “Buy” buttons on the Amazon page for their books will be removed. They could then only sell their books on Amazon through a third party.

You can read the filing via this link. [PDF Document]

We will keep our eye on this as the story develops we’ll let you all know what happens.

Source: TheBookSeller.com via Mobileread Forums