Tag: kindle (Page 2 of 3)

A New Challenger Has Appeared: Google’s eBook Reader Now On Sale

July 18, 2011 / blueZhift

Google is now selling its iRiver Story HD eBook reader exclusively at Target in the U.S.. We speculated here back in January that a Google branded eBook reader may be in the works and now that that shoe has dropped, what does this mean to the larger tablet vs eReader battle that is shaping up in the marketplace?

Well first of all, it may mean that Barnes & Noble, makers of the Nook eBook reader are none too happy to have Google as yet another competitor in its pitched battle with the Amazon’s Kindle. Indeed, I wonder if this is why Barnes & Noble is no longer an advertiser on Google’s Affiliate Network. They’ve moved to Linkshare, which I should note means I have to update the Nook ads on this web site!

The reader itself has so far garnered only mixed reviews. The design is clearly inspired by the Kindle, and in a market that is moving to touchscreen eReaders as witnessed by the recent Nook and Kobo offerings, seems a little dated. But as I previously argued, I don’t think Google is trying to capture the eReader market and their survival, unlike Barnes & Noble, doesn’t depend on that. Like the Nexus smartphones, the iRiver Story HD is probably a hardware reference platform intended to encourage other players to enter the market.

If Google follows form, they’ll probably freely or cheaply license the underlying iRiver Story tech to 3rd parties who want to jump into the eReader market. It seems pretty clear by now that Google wants to be a part of any device that can access the net and consume digital product. Amazon is already giving readers a big price break on Kindles if they are willing to have ads display on the device’s screen saver. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see this on the Google eReader at some point in the future. If 3rd parties in Google’s eReader ecosystem follow suit, then Google wins big time, much as they are with the proliferation of Android based tablets and smartphones.

In the end, I doubt Amazon or Barnes & Noble have much to fear from Google itself. However the legions of eReader competitors Google may give rise to are another matter entirely.

Pottermore Brings Potter And More!

July 6, 2011 / blueZhift

Many Harry Potter fans, myself included, have been waiting for some time to add the adventures of the young wizard to our growing collections of eBooks. But alas, they have remained out of reach, until now. J.K. Rowling recently announced that not only will the collection be available as eBooks, but readers will be able to experience the world of Harry Potter in a whole new way.

In announcing Pottermore, Rowling has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged eBooks to be more than mere words on a digital page. We’ve already seen some glimpses of a more interactive approach to eBooks in children’s books on the Nook Color. And visual novels (aka dating sims) have been around in Japan for a long time. But Pottermore promises to go far beyond that.

Rowling said that the reader will uniquely shape their own experiences as they read through the books. I would guess that the experience will be centered around the web site itself. But there is no reason to believe that it will stop there. While there are no details yet on what or how the current crop of eReaders will be supported, I can imagine the interactivity of Pottermore being extended even there. Both the Kindle and the Android-based Nook are capable of supporting interactive applications. The introduction of touch screen eInk readers can only expand the level of interactivity supported by the devices. And, of course, there is the iPad and other tablet computers.

With the resources Pottermore likely has at its command, we could be seeing something approaching what I’ll call a Literary MMORPG. Rowling’s video gave me the impression that she wants something that retains the “bookish” quality of reading, but reading that immerses and is in turn shaped by the reader. When we read a book, we all imagine the characters and settings in our own unique ways. I think Pottermore will attempt to retain that quality in a way that other media like movies and video games cannot.

Right now, no one knows how this is going to turn out. So like thousands of fans probably already have, I put my email address on the list and eagerly await further news and perhaps the chance to experience Pottermore a little early. ~_^

Touching Off eReader/Tablet Battle

June 3, 2011 / blueZhift

Over the last few weeks, the battle front for eReaders vs tablets has gotten very interesting indeed. The news that Amazon may have a new Kindle in the works, promised that 2011 could be an interesting year for eReaders.

Kobo Touch eReader

This was followed by Borders’ announcement of the new Kobo Touch eReader. An eReader with a touch sensitive E Ink screen? Just as it was looking like the back-lit LCD screen might push E Ink off the map thanks to the iPad primarily, a new twist is added to the mix. Shortly after the Kobo Touch news, Barnes & Noble announced its own new Nook Simple Touch Reader. And at $129 and $139 respectively, both of the new eReaders are competitively priced.

In addition to the infrared touch screens, both new readers tout advanced social media related functionality. It’ll be interesting to see just how usable this is given the slower refresh rate of E Ink displays relative to LCD. The new E Ink Pearl displays are reported to be faster, but will it be fast enough? I can’t wait to get my hands on one for some testing!

Nook Simple Touch Reader

Anyway one looks at it, the Kindle just got some new competition. Amazon is not likely to take this lying down, so I hope we’ll see some news from them soon on the next Kindle. As for the iPad, these new readers are cheap enough that owning one of them plus an iPad is a viable option. Also, as touch screen devices, going from iPad to eReader won’t be as jarring an experience as it is now that we mostly expect tablet or tablet-like devices to have touch displays.

The new eReaders are scheduled to begin shipping next week, so I’ll be planning a trip to Borders and Barnes & Noble for some much anticipated hands on time.

Amazon May Kindle Tablet War

May 4, 2011 / blueZhift

One of this week’s big stories is that Amazon may be getting into the tablet war with its own Android OS powered offering. A large order placed with Taiwan-based notebook maker Quanta may signal Amazon’s plans to enter the tablet market.

If true, I think this says a few things about the tablet market. First at the high end where Apple has successfully fended off any and all competitors for the iPad’s crown, perhaps Amazon sees a threat to its Kindle platform. Kindle books can be read on the iPad, and so far Amazon has been able to avoid giving Apple a cut of the sales because purchases in the Kindle app call Safari to load Amazon’s mobile site. But there’s no telling how long this will remain the case. And as Apple’s own iBookstore develops and matures, Amazon’s share can only decline.

At the lower end, Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color, according to B&N at least, has been very successful. While the Nook Color isn’t going to put the Kindle out to pasture anytime soon, it has proven that there is a market for an eBook optimized, backlit, touchscreen, LCD tablet half the price of an iPad.

So it’s not really any surprise that Amazon is trying to close a hole in its eReader offerings now. Besides great reading, the Kindle has always been about tying the reader to Amazon’s bookstore. No 3rd party device will ever do this as well as a Kindle does.

Reports expect the device to be release in the second half of 2011. I would guess it will be ready in time for the Christmas holiday sales season along with a lot of special publisher partner deals to show off the tablet’s new features. It’ll probably be very similar to the Nook Color, also powered by Android OS, and priced the same or less with promotional offers, or putting up with ads.

It’s unlikely that the battle of $250 eReader tablets is going to dethrone the iPad. The main casualties of the coming war are likely going to be those other tablets that so far have failed to gain much traction. It may get a lot harder to sell Xooms and Playbooks once Amazon starts marketing their new color Kindle that reads books and plays Angry Birds for only $250.

Update: Barnes & Noble is preparing to announce a new eReader on May 24. Begun this tablet war has.

Kindle eBooks Coming To Your Library: Cha Ching!

April 24, 2011 / blueZhift

Soon it will be possible for Kindle readers to check out Amazon Kindle eBooks from their local libraries. eBook lending from public libraries in the U.S. has been around for a few years now, but not in the Kindle format which effectively left most Kindle readers out in the cold.

This is certainly great news for Kindle eBook readers, but I think the timing of this action is the real story here. Recently, publisher Harper Collins sent chills to libraries everywhere by declaring an absolute limit of 26 loans on any of its eBooks in a library’s collection. And much has been made of the maintenance of artificial scarcity of digital goods like eBooks. eBooks don’t wear out, and an unlimited number of copies can be made at virtually no additional cost. So why limit the number that a library can loan out, much less impose some limit on the total number of times a copy may be loaned?

Obviously Harper Collins and other publishers don’t want library eBook loans to kill eBook sales, or print book sales for that matter. And I think there is some validity to that. I have no problem with a library having a limited number of licenses for a given title. But this “wear out” factor Harper is trying to introduce is just stupid. Those eBook loans are more likely than not, going to drive sales, not kill them. Libraries are great advertising, and unlike a bookstore, even obscure titles get shelf space, indefinitely! Libraries help sell the back catalog in physical space.

So what does the entry of Amazon into the fray say? It says that Amazon sees a money making opportunity. During my recent visit to the Myopic Bookstore in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, I saw a puzzling sign in the store. It said that the use of barcode scanners was prohibited. I’d never seen any signs like that before. Later I thought about it and figured that maybe it was to keep competitors from inventorying their stock. But it also occurred to me that perhaps some people were coming into the store using it to browse books that they would later look up and buy on Amazon. There are plenty of smartphone apps to facilitate that kind of activity.

While Kindle readers certainly don’t need to go to libraries to buy or borrow books, it would not surprise me if Amazon’s data shows that a lot of them do. It is also very likely that the libraries that will loan Kindle books, will also have physical copies to browse and loan as well. I suspect that it is much easier to make a sale when a reader has had time to really get to know a book in person. Up until now, Barnes & Noble, and Borders with their free Wi-Fi have probably helped drive Kindle book sales via this access to physical books. If this is true, then Amazon has no doubt seen a slight decline in sales consistent with the declining number of bookstores.

Amazon’s entry into the library then makes good business sense. It’s entry may also send a pause to Harper Collins and other publishers. The Kindle has lost some market share to Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and the Apple iPad, but Amazon still maintains a lot of leverage on publishers. Publishers that won’t play ball with library loans, may find it a lot harder to sell titles to Kindle readers. The large bookstore chains are not coming back. Publisher fortunes will soon rest largely on digital sales. Right now Amazon is to eBook sales what Apple has been to digital music. Until publishers come up with similarly popular distribution channels, the road to eBook sales will continue to pass through Amazon.

That said, Amazon’s endorsement and support of library eBook lending will reap benefits for all readers of eBooks who want to borrow them from public libraries.

Publishing eBooks On The iPad

March 22, 2011 / blueZhift

My first two eBooks, Anime Aftershocks, and Rolled Up Dimensionality, are now available on the iPad! While it is true that the Kindle and Nook versions of these books can also be read on the iPhone and iPad using their respective reader apps, going forward it is important to have an iBooks version available as well.

Despite its higher price, the iPad has become an important eBook reader and platform. And after what I saw at C2E2 this past weekend in Chicago, the iPad is likely to become the dominant eReader for digital comics and manga. So how does one publish an eBook on the iPad? The short answer is with money and some effort. Right now it is harder and more expensive to publish on the iPad relative to the Kindle or the Nook.

Think Different

The first thing you’ll need to publish on the iPad is a Mac capable of running iTunes Producer. This is the application you will use to actually bundle and upload your book to the iTunes Store. You’ll have to join iTunes Connect to gain access to iTunes Producer. So if you do not have a Mac and are not comfortable or inclined to the technical side of things, then you’d be best served to publish your eBook through a 3rd party such as Smashwords which publishes on multiple platforms including iPad. Obviously, this will reduce your share of any sales, but it will take the messy technical stuff out of the equation for you.

Running the Numbers

Next, you’ll need to buy ISBN numbers for your eBooks. Even if you already have an ISBN for a print version of your book, you’ll need to get a unique number for the eBook version. Currently, you can buy a block of 10 numbers for $250 USD from the Bowker web site. The process is relatively straight forward and while you can buy a single number for $125, clearly if you plan to publish more than one book in your lifetime, it is more cost effective to buy a block of numbers. Publishing on the Kindle or Nook doesn’t require an ISBN, but if you feel that you may want to publish on the iPad at some point, it’s a good idea to just bite the bullet and buy the numbers up front. I look at it as added incentive to write more eBooks!

Checking It Twice

In my case I already had my eBooks in ePub format which Apple requires for iPad books. And because these books had already passed muster on the Kindle and the Nook, I thought I was home free to publish on the iPad. This was not the case. I discovered that Apple has more stringent requirements than Barnes & Noble or Amazon. To figure out why my eBooks were failing the ePub checks during my upload attempts, I used the ePubChecker app from Rainwater Soft. The cause of the errors turned out to be pretty minor. In one case it was caused by a missing alt property in an image tag and in another, a div tag nesting issue. This is somewhat reminiscent of how early versions of Internet Explorer allowed some pretty messy HTML that other browsers would not be too happy to display properly. This made it easy to write pages for IE at the expense of teaching some pretty bad page authoring habits. So while finding and correcting the errors was a hassle, the lessons I learned will yield higher quality eBooks in the future.

Wait For It

Once I fixed the errors, uploading my eBooks to the iTunes Store was easy. Then it was time to wait for them to be processed and approved by Apple. As one might imagine, Apple likely receives hundreds, if not thousands of submissions per week. It took about 10 days before the books cleared and went on sale in iBooks. I did not receive a notification email to inform me of this. You just have to keep checking your book status on iTunes Connect.

Link It Up

Now on sale, it was time to do some marketing. This article describing how to link to books in the iBooks Store made it easy for me to construct the proper links to my iPad eBooks. The format required is as follows.

http://itunes.apple.com/[country code]/book/isbn[your book’s isbn]

So my links are

Anime Aftershocks:Â http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9780983358503

Rolled Up Dimensionality:Â http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9780983358510

That’s All Folks!

So that’s it! The first time through was fairly challenging, but having done it, I’m confident now that supporting the iPad won’t require much additional effort. Indeed, it’s actually improved my overall eBook publishing process!

New Manga On The Nook: Lots Of Yaoi!

March 15, 2011 / blueZhift

This morning’s Digital Manga Newsletter brought the welcome news of new DMP manga titles for the Nook and Kindle. Since my eReader of choice is the Barnes & Noble Nook, I’m always happy to hear of new manga titles for it. And because DMP publishes a lot of Yaoi titles, it didn’t really surprise me that nearly all of the titles listed below are of the popular BL (boys love) genre.

A lot of new titles have been added to our digital storefront! There are so many, we’re just going to list the titles here.Â Titles now available on the Kindle: Right Here Right Now 1&2, Love!!, Kiss Blue 2, Endless Comfort, No Touching At All, The Spiral of Sand, Yokan 1&2, Maiden Rose 1&2, Let’s Draw Manga: Sexy Gals, Il Gatto Sul G 2&3.Â Titles now available for the B&N Nook and Nook Color: Candy, Right Here Right Now 1&2, Love!!, Kiss Blue 1&2, Endless Comfort, No Touching At All, The Spiral of Sand, Yokan 1&2, Maiden Rose 1&2, Let’s Draw Manga: Sexy Gals, Il Gatto Sul G 1-3, The Day I Became a Butterfly, Little Cry Baby, Lost Boys, and Same Cell Organism.

Yaoi manga has been on the Kindle for a long time now, and the Kindle still boasts a lot more of them than the Nook. But it is interesting to note that yaoi manga are not available for sale at Barnes & Noble retail bookstores. At least, I did not see any at the Chicago area bookstores the last time I visited. By contrast, Borders carries a lot of Yaoi and BL manga. But with so many of those bookstores closing, the amount of retail shelf space for Yaoi must be rapidly shrinking. Needless to say, going digital is becoming a matter of survival in the already distressed manga market.

I don’t know how big the yaoi manga market is, but from what I’ve seen in online forums and the anime convention circuit, yaoi has a legion of hardcore, mostly female, fans. So there is a good chance that it is a profitable niche to be in. And of course, an eBook of sexually explicit material can be more discreetly purchased online than in person at a bookstore. Just as pornography has often been the driving force behind the mass adoption of new entertainment media (e.g. VHS, DVD, the Web), perhaps Yaoi is paving the way for manga eBooks.

Barnes & Noble’s Conquest of Space

February 25, 2011 / blueZhift

The growing popularity of eBooks, the success of online bookseller Amazon, and the implosion of Borders would seem to argue that large bookstores are more liability than asset. But Barnes & Noble is seeking to refute that logic by hosting in-store events to promote PubIt authors. PubIt is the eBook self-publishing platform Barnes & Noble launched back in October of last year. Michael at Good eReader writes,

Barnes and Noble is taking advantage of their tangible retail spaces and large book stores, that are a great place to showcase their own authors and build their brand internally. Meanwhile Amazon has a virtual website only and cannot put its own authors in the forefront, while their Digital Text Platform continues to be THE most popular self authoring program on the internet.

Marketing eBooks has been a concern of mine from the very beginning of the Learncrest venture. The online avenues are apparent and easily available, but how does an eBook author cross over into 3D space to promote his/her digital works? Now it looks like B & N is providing just that bridge and going somewhere that Amazon cannot easily follow.

In another current promotion, Barnes & Noble is offering a free cup of coffee to anyone who comes into their stores and tries out a Nook Color eBook reader. Again, this isn’t something Amazon could easily match to promote the Kindle. But I think it may also reveal that B & N’s underlying strategy is not very different from that of a movie cineplex. As high as movie ticket prices may be, that’s not really where a cinema makes its money. Movie theatres make most of their money from concessions sales. The profit margins on soda and popcorn are very high, and I suspect that the same can be said for the sales of eBooks relative to paper ones.

People spend a lot of time on the internet, but we are still physical beings living in 3D space. Free Wi-Fi and in-store promotions that encourage customers to bring their Nooks to the store with them, coupled with events to promote eBook authors is a powerful one two punch to promote your most profitable products. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt to have good old fashioned books on the shelves to be purchased in either physical or digital form.

How well this strategy plays out against Amazon remains to be seen. But with Barnes & Noble’s eBookÂ market shareÂ having risen to 25% and strong sales of the Nook Color, they must be doing something right.

Are Physical Books Really Dead Yet?

February 23, 2011 / blueZhift

A new Amazon Kindle ad has Crave writer David Carnoy speculating that Amazon has pronounced the physical book dead. Long live the physical book! He writes,

By saying that the physical book “lives on,” Amazon is implying that it died at some point. That’s not exactly true, of course, but the messaging seems pretty clear, and expect to see more of it going forward.

It seems rather obvious that physical books continue to be printed and sold to millions of readers. But you know what? I think Amazon is on to something here. As an avid book lover, my heart has been torn by my growing love of eBooks and the accelerating disappearance of bookstores most recently due to the Borders bankruptcy.

As I sort through the remains of the store closing sale of my neighborhood Borders, I am filled with the same ambivalence about physical books as I’m sure was in part responsible for the store’s demise. I love the printed book, but these days I prefer eBooks whenever they are available, and in many cases, I am more than willing to wait for an eBook version to come out. As a result, the only printed books I buy now are graphic novels and manga because they are still mostly unavailable in eBook form, at least legally that is.

So maybe Amazon is right. Somewhere along the way physical books died, at least in my heart, but the soul of the book lives on. It lives on in Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and anything that can display the printed word. If that’s not going to heaven, I don’t know what is!

Pump Up The Manga On The Nook!

February 17, 2011 / blueZhift

After reading this excellent review of Sundome on the UK Anime Network site, I popped over to Barnes & Noble’s web store to see if it was available on the Nook. It was no big surprise to me that it was not available as an eBook. But I was surprised and happy to see that there was a “Tell the publisher you want this in Nookbook format” link. Amazon has had a similar link for requesting a Kindle version for years now, so I am happy that Barnes & Noble is now providing the same to its customers.

Barnes & Noble now has "Tell the publisher you want this in NOOKbook format" links

I don’t know just how effective clicking that link is, but I would like to encourage anyone who wants more manga on the Nook and the Kindle to click those links like your lives depended on it! Right now, I don’t know of any better way to demonstrate demand for manga eBooks. And, of course, buy manga eBooks when possible!