Google book settlement: What's it all about? Pros and Cons

CNet's Greg Sandoval reports on the Google book settlement plan drawing fire in court.

For those who wonder what it's all about, CNet describes the "disparate and dissenting constituencies" that showed up in federal court Thursday, Feb. 18, to comment on Google's plan to create an all-encompassing digital library.

After giving a description of the scene in court, Cnet states the basics:

' Google wishes to create a vast and unprecedented digital library and has reached an agreement with groups representing book publishers and authors that would allow the search engine to display digital snippets of out-of-print books still covered by copyright.  Their representatives appeared before U.S. District Judge Denny Chin to seek approval for the deal.

Perhaps best known for presiding over the Bernie Madoff securities-fraud case, Chin is now tasked with determining whether the controversial settlement is fair to authors, publishers, Google's competitors, and the public.

  One main issue is that Google would have the right to exploit titles belonging to authors who have not given their approval. '

Chin wasn't about to issue a ruling before first hearing from stakeholders, an important one being the U.S. Department of Justice, which has not been smiling on Google's plans for what is termed the "orphaned books."

Supporter Lateef Mtima, a Harvard law professor and director of Harvard's Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, told the Judge:

  "Copyright was intended to be an engine of cultural development,
    not a brake."

Paul Courant, a professor at the University of Michigan who oversees the school's libraries, said that digitizing books frees knowledge from the restrictions of geographical locations.  Most books at the University can't be read unless you are there, in Ann Arbor.

However, of those who addressed the court, settlement opponents outnumbered supporters 3 to 1.  CNet continues:

' Detractors claimed Google's plan poses an unprecedented threat to the privacy of book readers.  Several authors argued that the agreement would desolate copyright law.  Competitors, such as Microsoft and Amazon, said the settlement is an attempt by Google to set itself up as the all-powerful emperor of digital information.

Nothing drew more fire than the settlement's plans to force authors to "opt out" in order to prevent Google from scanning snippets of their books.  Critics say that Google has everything backward here.  They ask why is it that authors must go out of their way to opt out in order to prevent Google from exploiting their work?

Doesn't copyright law already require that they give their permission first before someone can license their work? '

One might think the Dept. of Justice opinion carries some weight...

' William Cavanaugh, an assistant U.S. attorney general told Chin that the publishers and the Authors Guild do not have a right to enable a third party such as Google to use an author's work without their permission.  "This (settlement) has the effect of rewriting contracts," said Cavanaugh, who also told the judge that the government continues to investigate whether the agreement violates antitrust laws. '

Privacy is another concern.

' Representatives from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Center for Democracy & Technology described worrisome scenarios whereby information about people's reading habits could be tracked with Google's proposed service.  For example, Google would possess records of a person who read a sexually explicit book or some other controversial title.  In addition, Google would have the ability to log even the pages the person read. '

Google's attorney told the court that the company IS interested in getting rights to the "orphan works," titles for which the author isn't known or can't be found.

CNET closes with

' The question of properly paying someone who is entitled to compensation under Google's plan but may not be aware of it has been a hot issue. Google said that the money earned from orphan works is what will make the digital library a feasible business. Google's attorney said that others, such as Microsoft, who attempted to digitize books in the past couldn't monetize their efforts this way and that's why they failed. '

FROM COMMENTS AT CNET
1. 'By smilin - Out of print doesn't mean what you think.  It just means a book isn't being printed at the time.  Almost always the copyright holder does an additional run.

What if the publisher doesn't want to opt-in?  If you do an opt-out policy then you have essentially forced an opt-in.  The logic one would use to make this seem OK just makes my brain lock up.  Copyright owners would likely not opt in because they OWN the rights and intend to excercise them to make money.  If you take said right away then you have just stolen that opportunity from them." '

  I've got a friend who is an author of a recent yet out of print book.  They have plans to publish this as an e-book on Amazon.  What happens when they try to sell such a book and the customer has already found a copy of it for free on Google?

2. By orbital_bruiser - February 19, 2010 1:18 PM PST
  '...At issue is people [Authors Guild and non-related publishers] that don't own the copyright on material giving Google the right to scan and charge access without permission.  Not only that, the people that don't have the rights to works in question are agreeing to allow ONLY Google to do this...'

3. By ACLU_NorCal - February 19, 2010 9:39 AM PST
  'There are serious privacy implications of google book search that were raised yesterday by the ACLU, EFF, and CDT.  Because the settlement does not contain any privacy protections for users, Google's system will be able to monitor which books users search for, and even which pages they read and how long they spend on each page.  Google could then create a massive "digital dossier" that might be vulnerable to fishing expeditions by law enforcement or civil litigants.

Read more about the privacy implications on the ACLU-NC's website: bit.ly/9LCadq

- ACLU of Northern California '

4. By job514 February 20, 2010 12:04 AM PST
  'Opt-In is a ridiculous concept for this occasion.  These books have fallen out of print because the publisher in most cases has neglected it.  Google is offering a way to monetize these books again.  If the author is dead and/or the publisher is out of business then who is going to represent the rights of this book?  No one!  Who gets to see this book?  Depending on how many copies are left in existence... and how close you are to the library that has it.

  For a repository to be of true value it must include as many works as possible.  If I am researching the occurrence of the word "communism" in books from 1970's-1980's, and half of the out of print books are missing because the publisher neglected the work then I'm S.O.L.  Then again... if these books do indeed have continuing value then the author/publisher if he/she is still around will have incentive to claim it.  Google doesn't get the money in the mean time either...  It is set aside for a period of time for the right-holder to reclaim.  Copyright has failed us. Google has come up with a win/win solution. ' '

Amazon won't be undersold on book pricing

The New York Times's Nick Bilton confirms what many of us suspected: that Amazon would not have agreed to a fixed pricing that allowed Apple, Barnes & Noble, or any other bookstore to offer a lower pricing than Amazon's despite Macmillan's insistence on higher pricing while Apple has negotiated a $9.99 pricing for bestsellers.

There were several news stories that asked if Apple might have 'burned' or 'undercut' Amazon by suggesting that publishers raise e-book prices, with four publishers then pressuring Amazon to go along with this because they'd have Apple to rely on based on Apple's recommendation of those higher prices.

MacNewsWorld, in an article Feb. 18, titled "Apple's E-Book Pricing Flip: Chaotic or Cunning?," wrote:

'Apple's reasons for the pricing change, if the report is correct, remain murky.  They could be evidence that Apple's gaming the market.  "Apple's trying to play both sides of the fence," Andrew Eisner, director of content at Retrevo, told MacNewsWorld.  "On the one hand, it's trying to appear friendlier to book publishers with its willingness to let them charge higher prices; on the other, they know they're going to be out there doing battle with the likes of Amazon and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), who already skirmished in a book price war late last year."

Or, Apple could be wracked by internal dissension. "It sounds like there could be several different people working on this, and I wonder if Steve Jobs was involved at all," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told MacNewsWorld. "It does seem like the change is kind of fast, and it's scaring all the publishers." '

  After the ensuing brouhaha with Macmillan's John Sargent insisting on his $15 new e-book pricing, the NY Times found that Apple had inserted language into their "Agency" agreements that the publishers, whom they'd encouraged to raise their pricing, would have to allow Apple to sell e-books for $9.99 once they hit the bestsellers list.

  What?  Yes.   They'd be allowed to do what has been Amazon's policy all along.  Note all the Amazon Kindle marketing about NY Times bestseller books for $9.99 since the birth of the Kindle.

  So, we're to think that the publishers had no idea of the $9.99 bestseller-provisions going into their 'Agency' agreement with Apple?  If they weren't aware, then Apple inserted these in a later version.

At any rate, I'd opined in the comments-area here that Amazon's lawyers would have added language to ensure that Amazon would not be undercut by any other book-selling entity   (if any new changeover to the Apple-style "Agency" agreement effective March 2010 had been signed or finalized with Macmillan so soon after the iPad launch and corresponding Macmillan deal with Apple's Steve Jobs).

 In fact, the NY Times wrote at the time that there was "likely" some kind of language to protect Amazon plus a bit more:

' So what did Amazon hold out for?  The company would not comment, but it is likely that Amazon demanded that no other e-book vendors, such as Apple, get preferential access to new titles, or any kind of pricing advantages.
  Amazon may also have negotiated terms into its agreement with the publisher that would allow users of Kindles or Kindle software to lend e-books to each other. '

Today's NY Times article by Bilton makes it clear that Amazon hasn't been standing still in this area:

' Amazon...is determined not to be out-priced by Apple or any other rival.

Since December [before the iPad launch], Amazon has been pushing publishers to sign a new round of legal agreements that would guarantee that the Kindle price for their content is always the same or lower than the price on other electronic reading devices, such as the iPad or the Sony Reader.  The clause, a variation of a legal concept known as “most favored nation,” would guarantee that Amazon’s customers would always get the best price for electronic versions of magazines, newspapers and books. '

What I didn't know was that "many e-publishing contracts with Amazon are still in a month-to-month cycle as the publishers negotiate to try to gain more revenue or more control over their content."  For some reason I had just (wrongly) assumed they were yearly or at least quarterly (which Macmillan's appears to be).

The article also notes Amazon's more complex negotiations with newspapers and magazines, which has to do with the "tiny slice" of revenue (typically 30%) for the publishers.   I've written earlier that insiders have been quoted as saying that Amazon shares the rest of the revenue with the wireless providers, who deliver the subscription content on a daily (or more frequent) basis.

  Despite subscription-publisher discontent with the Amazon contracts, some are considering signing the new Amazon contract while offering for the iPad a free, limited application for their content, as they'd rather not lose their current subscribers on the Kindle.  Also, the publishers have not been ecstatic about their current negotiations with Apple.

When the Kindle can display richer types of media (probably near the end of this year), subscription publishers could then, Bilton writes, release a paid product that looks and works the same across multiple devices.

British Library's 65,000 free books for Kindle: Update3

This is an update to (1) the detailed original report, the (2) follow-up story on reactions and questions about the file format used and (3) a look at what the Penny Dreadfuls collection is.

Information Today's Barbara Quint reports on The British Library's press release of February 23.

Much has been written about the final product looking exactly like the copies of the original editions, but in my mind it hasn't been totally clear from the Library whether that pertains to the Kindle edition or to just the print-on-demand copies that one can buy.  In an earlier update I wondered about the file-format and how they would retain the look of the originals without their being images rather than text.  I still haven't found anything solid on that, though I did quote NextWeb as writing that "...users of their Kindle eReader" would be able to "access historically accurate digital representations" but that could mean the printed copies available on-demand (and for $) to Amazon Kindle users.  Let us know if you hear anything definitive on that.

 Will the subsidiary of Amazon that provides printed copies be printing from Kindle copies or the copies that Microsoft originally scanned?  Could be the latter.  The Kindle copies are being made secondarily.  I guess we'll know fairly soon as they're due out in the Spring and the Library's press release is otherwise full of info. The provider of printed copies will be CreateSpace.com (originally CustomFlix Labs and BookSurge, Inc. and now a DBA for On-Demand Publishing LLC).  BL will receive some revenue from the Print-On-Demand sales, which will help it fund more digitization.

Quint writes:

'  How would you like to read a copy of a book by Charles Dickens or Jane Austen that looks exactly like the copies those authors held in their hands, ink fresh from the printers?  How would you like to read some of the books that the first readers of those books probably wouldn't admit they read-the so-called "penny dreadfuls"?  Last year, Microsoft completed its digitization obligations to The British Library (BL; www.bl.uk) and handed over 25 million pages in 65,000 19th-century books.  As yet the digital copies, like the hard copies, have only been readable by visitors to The British Library Reading Room.

  Later this spring, however, the digital copies will be available to any and all users of the Amazon Kindle ebook reader for free. A print-on-demand service will provide optional paperback copies to readers in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and France. Expect to see the digital collection appear elsewhere as well. The Amazon arrangement is nonexclusive. '

As was said in the first newspaper report, "To meet the ever increasing demands of our users the library is negotiating with other key industry players to ensure we maximise potential for access."
  The Kindle is just the first e-reader for which an agreement was reached.

Today's article by Quint explains how it happened that Microsoft arranged to digitize the books, begun in 2005-2006.  After they halted their "Live Search Books" project, which was begun to compete with the new Google Books project at the time, they finished the scanning of the books and, per BL, completed the agreement but "gave us the content to do with what we wish and waived all their rights."
  Jacob Lant, The British Library's press officer, pointed out that BL "...provided the space and expertise in preservation and collection management, while the third-party scanning was paid by Microsoft."

As we know, about 35-40% of the items are unique to the Library or inaccessible in major libraries elsewhere.   The 65,000 Kindle books will cover, Quint writes, philosophy, history, poetry, and literature.

You can go to the Library press release and the Information Today article (links above) to read much more about this, including details of the offerings

Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of The British Library, again referred to the deal with Amazon as a "landmark agreement" in many ways.  The Library is talking to other potential partners, and they expect to supply more content to Kindle and Amazon.

NOTE:
  Interestingly, Lant mentions that Google had approached them in the past but the Library didn't agree to the terms.  "In the future, we might talk to them, but all deals must be on our terms as rightsholders."

Microsoft and Amazon sign a patent cross-license agreement

Microsoft announced it's signed a patent cross-license agreement with Amazon, which gives each company access to the other's patent portfolio.  This covers the Kindle, "which employs both open source and Amazon's proprietary software components ... and Amazon's use of Linux-based servers."

  Specific terms of the agreement are confidential, but Amazon will, in addition, pay Microsoft an undisclosed amount and gets access to Microsoft's patent portfolio, described by its deputy general counsel for Intellectual Property ("IP") and Licensing, Horacio Gutierrez, as "the largest and strongest in the software industry."

I guess so.  Microsoft's press release reports that it has entered into similar agreements with such companies as Apple Inc., HP, LG Electronics, Nikon Corp., Novell Inc., HOYA CORPORATION PENTAX Imaging Systems Division, Pioneer Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Fuji Xerox Co. Ltd.

TechSpot.com says, "Some suggest Amazon agreed to the terms to avoid a patent-infringement suit from Microsoft" and points out that Microsoft sued Tom Tom (GPS devices) over 8 patents, 3 of them related to Tom Tom's implementation of the Linux kernal, which Microsoft claims violates some of its patents.

TrustedReviews.com says that the agreement

'... allows Microsoft to get its hands on the Kindle tech, so expect it to be heavily integrated into the Windows environment over the coming months.
  For its part Amazon gets to dive into Microsoft's monstrous array of IP as it looks to expand its range of services, software and hardware ...
  All of which makes core Kindle integration into Windows Phone Series 7 about as nailed on as the chance of rain in London this decade. '

Kindle DX review from Gadgeteer

I've noticed in my rounds that people are still buying Kindle DX's despite the iPad's expected release in March for the WiFi network version though the cellular-wireless 3G one is not due until June.  The interest is still there, despite the iPad's lowest-step basic model being only $11 above the DX, but I think some reasons are:

  1. The type of screen. For people interested in reading books rather than surfing tidbits on the web, many have seen the difference between an admittedly unexciting grayscale screen with sharply etched-looking text that can be read outdoors and without light shining into the eyes (it was never about "refresh rates" as a NYTimes article's quote mentioned the other day) and the laptop style LCD screen -- when having to read sequential text for prolonged periods of time.
  I'll add a link here for some photos of mine with web and PDF content in both portrait and landscape orientation.

  2. Cellphone-style wireless access to information sites, free 24/7 even if slow.  There is nothing slower than something that doesn't exist.
  The fact that with the Kindle, in the U.S., there is no extra fee for a cellular modem for the wireless, nor any monthly data charges.  And outside the U.S., there is at least free Wikipedia for Kindle International users who just want more information on what they're reading, wherever they might be (many don't have home WiFi networks).
  If you have a smart phone with web-access and monthly data plan, you won't need this for web lookups, though Wikipedia access from a book you're reading on the Kindle can be useful.

  3. Outside the U.S., Apple is not currently selling e-books from their iStore even if someone buys an iPad (and many will).   Nor have they announced they will be selling e-books internationally in March or June.  They just haven't mentioned it.  This is of importance only to people who would buy a gizmo specifically out of a desire to read e-books on it.  The iPad would still be fun, even with all the missing features and connectors.

  4. The iPad's missing pieces, as listed here.  It's dampened enthusiasm, overall, as seen in columns and comments, even in the U.S., although I think subsequent models will add those items.  As mentioned, the item will still be popular with Apple fans and people who just want to surf and do email while watching TV.  But most of us know what buying a basic lowest-rung model means - it's missing something you'll wish you had after paying quite a bit.  Apple device buyers seldom put the budget first - it's quality and capabilities that are key.

GADGETEER REVIEW
So, today I saw yet another Kindle DX review, this one actually more like a detailed report, one of the most through I've seen (I usually ignore them now, seeing DX reviews as 'old news').
  But this article will be useful for (1) DX owners who want to become more acquainted with what it can (or can't) do and (2) for people who wonder if it would really be something they'd want (or not).
  There are many photos in the review that act as guides and there are also video clips showing how to use a feature or showing how fast/slow the feature might be.
  They're silent videos but they show the steps.  The review is by "cobinrox" (whose first name is Robin) and it's well worth a read.

 While going through it, I saw that there were some questions, and some observations made by cobinrox brought other things to my mind, so I wrote a fairly lengthy comment on it.  Some parts of that might be of interest to people reading this blog, so I'll include the full comment (with links added) here:

' A lot of really good work you put into this. Probably the most thorough report on the DX that I've seen. Very helpful !

A few comments:
1. The reflection you showed. Doesn't that come from the flash on your camera when taking a picture? My DX is matte finish and doesn't show much of a reflection unless a light bulb is right over it

2. Weight of holding it, with cover
I agree. As a result I don't use the cover when reading. Also, M-Edge has a 'Platform' cover for the DX, which lets you just sit it up on your lap or on a table.  Photos of that cover in use for my smaller, 6" Kindle are at this page, and I did buy the version for the DX also.  I usually just use it at a table

3. Yes.   .mobi and .prc files do have the same viewing and annotation features as the Amazon Kindle books - it's essentially the same format but without Amazon's digital rights or book-identifying numbers on them as they are downloadable from elsewhere. So, yes, the zoom feature works on images in those also.

4. True.   mp3 files are played in the order in which you put them into the Kindle's 'music' folder.  Primitive.  But that would allow you to read an mp3-book with multiple separate chapters (or you can get a free utility to combine mp3 files and also save the combined mp3 as encoded-32k which will usually make it all smaller).

  Some say that you can put an mp3 in the 'audible' folder or in the 'documents' folder and then play it on-demand. But if you do, it'll play as foreground material and you can't read a book at the same time that way.

5. Annotations: if you haven't tried it yet, go to http://kindle.amazon.com and sign in.  You can go to the bottom left of a list and ask that ALL those for a book be shown on one page.  I've added a sample of what you'd see (from my own Amazon Kindle page.

6. Web browsing -- since [the reviewer likes] the CNN news feature, try the free download of my file with several mobile-unit-focused websites.  Go to http://bit.ly/mobiweb.  There's a guide to faster Kindle web-browsing in that section too.

7. Absolutely right re folder organization or the lack of it (though we can choose to see only Books or Personal Documents or  Subscriptions [Periodicals] -- sorted by title, author, most recent).  Kindle support has written on the forums and Facebook that they expect an update for organizational capability will be due by the summer.

8. My books that have figure boxes etc. (I have history books) -- these usually have a link.  If they do and you click on one, then you press the 'Back' button to get right back to where you were before the "link-jump" via the 5-way button.

9. When paging ahead or backwards, doing a search for a word or content you're looking for can help.  Press 'Back' button to get back to where you were after looking at the various results. I sometimes set the location numbers back or ahead.

10. No, the iPad won't be allowing multiple screens. It can't multitask at all, which is odd for a web-browser.  No listening to Pandora FM while web browsing or reading a book.  Some say the iPad music playback can't be done at the same time either but I don't know if that's true.  The iPad also doesn't have USB ports or Flash support.  [On the Kindles, you can listen to mp3s on the Kindle while reading, though it takes more battery use.]

Thanks again for this helpful page. I'll let people know about it. '

Photo credit: Gadgeteer

UK Kindle someday + Kindle-Blackberry review + Apple-Adobe conflicts

Amazon to launch a non-import international launch for the Kindle, writes Martin Bryant for The Next Web, UK.  No date was given, but Amazon's Brian McBride "has confirmed that plans are definitely afoot for a proper international launch for the device."

' “Will Kindle become a bigger thing in the UK?  Absolutely, because we have not yet launched a UK version.” '

Instead of importing Kindles and paying higher prices for the books, Kindle owners in the UK would be able to buy locally.

  In the meantime, Apple is currently selling e-books only in the U.S.


KINDLE FOR BLACKBERRY REVIEW AND A WORKAROUND IF NEEDED
We already have a review of Kindle for Blackberry and a fix for a possible downloading problem, by James C. of Kindlelove.

While I will sum up what James says in the report, please go to the site for the full lowdown, well-written, and for Shortcuts that he has there for this app, as well as details of the fix for an app-download-to-Blackberry problem that some might encounter.

Basically, James finds that the Blackberry app loads quickly (2.5 seconds), the books open and download quickly, and you can select Fullscreen display by pressing 'F'...

There are 6 fonts available and James goes into detail re number of locations shown for each size.

Non-copyright-protected MOBI format files from other sources downloaded or transfered to the Blackberry do open in the Kindle app but they should, as that is the basic format that the Kindle uses.

"eBooks, calibre-created newspapers/magazines/blogs, Instapaper files—all work and include the navigable table of contents.  Hyperlinks open in the BlackBerry browser."

Again, go to the page for his clear instructions on what to do if this new app doesn't download to your Blackberry, giving instead an error message.


APPLE CHOOSES OWN DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT ("DRM") OVER ADOBE'S FOR "STANDARD" EPUB FORMAT
Computerworld's Eric Lai headline the other day was that Apple disses our DRM for iPad, Adobe says (and Adobe's Flash too).

Word has been that Apple Inc. will offer publishers its own FairPlay DRM technology to copy-protect iBooks for its iPad and this seems to confirm that.  FairPlay, a source told Computerworld, has been used by Apple to protect TV shows and movies and was used until 2009 for songs sold via iTunes.

' ...But Apple's plan to use FairPlay instead of Adobe's flavor of copy protection will lock customers in to Apple's ecosystem, says [Nick Bogaty, senior business development manager at Adobe], as iPad owners will only be able to buy from Apple's iBookstore, and will not be able to transfer their purchases to other devices.

"With iBooks, there's no freedom of choice," he said. [That's the complaint some have lodged against Amazon's kindle format.]

While Adobe's flavor of DRM isn't an official standard, it's widespread enough, argues Bogaty, that consumers will "be able to use any e-reader they want, and purchase from any point of sale that uses [Adobe] Content Server."
  ...
Opponents of copy protection for e-books decry Apple's use of digital locks. "[FairPlay] is another in a varied number of DRM schemes that will ultimately confuse the consumer and harm e-book adoption," said Paul Biba, editor of the e-book blog TeleRead. '

Apple's Steve Jobs has refused to include support for Adobe's Flash, despite its use all over the Web, which led some to wonder how he could promise at the iPad launch "the best" web browsing experience you've ever had, since it will be displaying empty rectangles where flash videos are (ESPN, Hulu, JibJab etc.)
  There can be workarounds with apps created for that and also with the increasing use of HTML5 in place of or in addition to Flash (which Jobs and others consider bloated and buggy).

' ...Apple blocks the Safari Web browser for the iPhone and iPad from using any plug-ins but Apple's own Quicktime and Preview (for PDFs). That keeps out Flash, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer and Adobe Acrobat Reader.

That's despite claims by Adobe that 7 million people hit its Web site in December alone looking to download a Flash player for their iPhone.

Bogaty says that while e-books that contain interactive elements such as Flash videos might not play fully on the iPad, they should still be able to sell via the iBooks app.  Readers will see a static screenshot of the video, he said, while the text will be unaffected. '

There are solutions for Flash video support in e-books and publications though, as detailed in the article.  Flash-enabled publications would be sold through the App store.

' The advantage is that it will let the Times and Wired directly track what customers are reading.
[ Oh, that's nice, and Plastic Logic's Que is planning that too.. ]

Such usage data is key for newspapers and magazines, who can use it to more effectively demonstrate to advertisers the value of the space for sale in their publications.

Such data would be harder to get if they were sold via the iBooks app's digital newsstand, something those publishers already fear, the Financial Times reported earlier this week. '

A new 99c Kindle book. Publisher says E-reader buyers can afford higher book prices.

New Kindle book offerings in the news - PR releases, maybe of interest:

Essondale - by Canadian psychiatrist and novelist David Laing Dawson.
  "Is this hell, or just a psychiatric hospital? Dr. Robert Snow isn't sure.  Waking from a drunken stupor in a small green room, the doctor finds he's on the other side of the diagnosis..."
  Description from PR release.  The book is a small one, at 207 KB file size, so you may want to get a free sample first.
  $0.99  (The paperback is $19.95 and a Used copy is offered for $29.)


Legion by UK Author B.J. Kibble
  Full description from PR release.
  His expensive paperpback, Dry Rain, has 4 customer reviews and 5-stars average from regular readers, so it may be worth trying a free sample of Legion.
  $5.56   (The paperback is $13.95.)

The Consumerist's Chris Walters reports on what a publishing industry expert advised in a piece about e-book pricing written last weekand and, worse, what he said about people who buy e-readers.

 Walters' article links to a summary of Professor (and publisher) Michael Cader's piece written for Publishers Lunch's paywall area.  The Consumerist article is quite long and interested readers ought to go there for the full piece and for the link to a summary at Idealog.com (which consults for the publishing industry), as it's too easy to take things out of context in a very polarized atmosphere.

  Having said that, I will quote a bit from Walters' piece to give the gist of the Consumerist response.

' Among [Cader's] advice to the industry is this one:

"People who can afford an ereading device can afford all proposed ebook prices."

By that, Cader means that it's unreasonable for a consumer to say he can't afford to pay more for an ebook.  Cader and other publishers may be justifiably upset that Amazon rolled their products up into its own marketing for the Kindle, but the truth is that there are plenty of customers who indeed bought a Kindle to save money over the long term.  The idea is to invest in a special device that can serve as the physical manifestation of any book you load onto it.

On a more basic level, what consumers are willing to pay for a device and what they're willing to pay for an ebook are two different matters and can't be compared.  But since Cader is doing so, let's take a look at them... [ A good listing ]
...
So you're right, publisher;  maybe I can afford to buy an ereader device.  That doesn't mean you can jack up the price on your crappy digital copy that currently offers less usefulness than a physical copy, and then hide behind the device's potential and cry, "I want to be treated like I make expensive baubles too!"  Because you don't.  You currently make poorly proofread digital files stripped of most of the qualities that make digital content awesome. '

Then Walters gives some great advice to publishers.

The next point is especially strong:

' For example, the fourth Twilight book came out in August 2008, but as of February 2010 the publisher feels the digital version should cost the same as the hardcover--an astounding $22.99.  (And yes, that publisher's owner is one of the companies arguing for more control over pricing.)

It's true that in the recent spat between Macmillan and Amazon, the publisher pointed out that it would price new releases at $15 or less--but based on past pricing patterns, there's no reason to believe that any publisher would subsequently drop the book to a $10 or less price point after it's been out for a while. '

Do go read this.  And, in the meantime, maybe write acknowledgement notes to Random House for supporting customers against the 'Agency' plan.
  Random House's imprints include Crown, Knopf/Doubleday, Ballantine, Bantam, The Modern Library, Fodor's Travel, and many others.   See the Kindle Community Forum topic for the full listing.

---

LINKS FOR SEARCHING FOR FREE OR LOW-COST E-BOOKS
  As ever, here is the ongoing set of links for various Searches for free or low-cost Kindle-compatible books.

Free Kindle for Blackberry "beta" is ready for download - Update2

UPDATE, 2/19/10 - I've added links below for each supported Blackberry model to its product description pages, as forums are showing many who now want to upgrade their Blackberrys to get the free Kindle for Blackberry app.

The app is available only to customers in the U.S.
  Here is Amazon's list of future improvements to be added soon (still promised for the Kindle for PC as well, and the Kindle for Mac was to be ready soon too).

Future Improvements - as listed by Amazon:

"As with all our services, we will continue to improve the Kindle for Blackberry application.  Below are some of the features to be added in the near future:

* Scrolling
In addition to page-by-page navigation, you will be able to scroll text line-by-line.
* Create Notes and Highlights
Along with viewing the notes and highlights you created on other Kindle devices, you will be able to create and edit notes and highlights.
* Search
You will be able to search within your book."

---

Original posting of Feb. 17, at 7:52 PM follows.
The free Kindle for Blackberry (or, for some of them) is finally ready for download.  The information was first tweeted by Bufo Calfin.

Note that you can type "amazon.com/kindlebb" into your BlackBerry browser to download it.

The models supported, all available at Amazon, are the
Bold 9000,   Bold 9700,   Curve 8520,   Curve 8900,   Storm 9530,   Storm 9550,   Tour 9630

Now, where is the Kindle for Mac ? Soon, I imagine!

UPDATE2, Feb. 19 - An email reply from Kindle Customer Service to a customer requesting info on the Kindle for Mac app was received today:

' We're working on a Kindle for Mac application, which will be available in the next few months. If you'd like us to e-mail you when Kindle for Mac is available, sign up for that e-mail notification here. '

A bit of sun with Apple provisions for lower ebook pricing

NY Times's Motoko Rich reports today that Apple's prices for e-books may be lower than expected.

The image I used for this is a bit over-optimistic, but Rich begins her article by saying that "Maybe e-book prices won’t be rising so much after all."

We've seen public statements by Macmillan; Simon & Schuster; Murdoch for HarperCollins; and Hachette, expressing happiness over eventually being able to push Amazon to change their traditional Bookseller-Publisher wholesale price agreements to the 'Agency' fee contract modeled on Steve Jobs' Apple plan with publisher-set customer-prices of $13 to $15 for new bestseller e-books.

 The aim was to prevent Amazon -- Macmillan said -- from 'devaluing' their books by selling the e-books for only $9.95.

  Motoko Rich wrote in an earlier NY Times article (Oct '09):

'But some publishers worry that the convenience of borrowing books electronically could ultimately cut into sales of print editions.
  ...
  As digital collections grow, [John Sargent, chief executive of Macmillan] said he feared a world in which “pretty soon you’re not paying for anything.”

  Partly because of such concerns, Macmillan does not allow its e-books to be offered in public libraries. '

  In the current NYT article, Rich explains the Apple loophole:

' ... When Steven P. Jobs showed off the iPad last month, he announced agreements with five of the six largest publishers to offer their content through a new iBooks application. Those publishers ... agreed to terms under which they would set e-book prices and Apple would serve as an agent to sell the books to consumers...
  ...
Publishers indicated that e-book editions of most newly released adult general fiction and nonfiction would sell in a range from $12.99 to $14.99, under a complicated formula that pegs e-book prices to the list prices of comparable print editions.  Publishers liked Apple’s deal because it resulted in a marked increase above Amazon’s $9.99 price for most new releases.

But according to at least three people with knowledge of the discussions, who spoke anonymously because of the confidentiality of the talks, Apple inserted provisions requiring publishers to discount e-book prices on best sellers — so that $12.99-to-$14.99 range was merely a ceiling; prices for some titles could be lower, even as low as Amazon’s $9.99 [AB: All emphases mine].

  Essentially, Apple wants the flexibility to offer lower prices for the hottest books, those on one of the New York Times best-seller lists, which are heavily discounted in bookstores and on rival retail sites. So, for example, a book that started at $14.99 would drop to $12.99 or less once it hit the best-seller lists.

Moreover, for books where publishers offer comparable hardcover editions at a price below the typical $26, Apple wanted e-book prices to reflect the cheaper hardcover prices.  These books might be priced much lower than $12.99, even if they did not hit the best-seller list.

Tom Neumayr, an Apple spokesman, declined comment.

  ... Amazon has effectively lost money on each sale at [$9.99] because it buys and resells e-books as it purchases printed books, by paying publishers a wholesale price generally equivalent to half the list price of a print edition.

  That means that on a $26 hardcover book, Amazon would typically pay the publisher $13, losing just over $3 on a digital edition it sells for $9.99. '

I quoted a lot of that rather than try to paraphrase it, as the NY Times did an unusually clear piece on the traditional pricing arrangements.  Read the full article on their site for more details.

Amazon has used the $10 pricing as a loss-leader, with sometimes higher pricing on some of its older e-books -- and earnings over the past year (in a bad economy) show that's worked very well for the stockholders and customers.

  It's a hardball tactic that has left publishers fearful that other bookstores can't compete on that basis and Amazon would have too much control over the e-book market.  After seeing the attempt at a 50% increase in bad times, I'd rather the publishers not set the customer prices but continue to set the wholesale ones and get their money, which they say is more money for them than with the agency plan.  I would think authors would like that too, unless Macmillan is not sharing that added amount with them.

  NO small factor is Random House's recently stated position that it does not plan to go to the Agency plan, leaving one big publishing house selling e-books at considerably lower pricing, putting more pressure on the other large publishers.

New post to make an update show up in Google Reader

Google Reader is not seeing the Update (10th) to the Free and Low Cost books made today.  So this is just a link to the blog update for people using that reader.  Apologies for the eye-sore

Authors and Kindle publishing

In A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, Joe Konrath, aka Jack Kilborn, continues to write about how he has managed to do very well on Amazon book seller lists with the many books and short stories he releases through the Kindle Digital Text Platform ("DTP") feature, and this is before Amazon starts paying 70% to publishers using the platform in June 2010.

The current blog entry, titled "Kudzu and Kindle," explains:

' There's a plant known as kudzu, which is widely hated in the south because it takes over cropland. It grows fast, and uses runners to spread. Kudzu can quickly saturate an entire field. One patch becomes two patches, then four patches, then sixteen patches, and pretty soon it's everywhere you look.

I'm noticing a similar phenomenon with writing in general, and ebooks in particular. '

There have been a number of success stories though the weed-like aspect threw me, including (of the ones I've run across) one writer whose Kindle book was doing very well, partially with the help of some exposure at the three most-attended Kindle community forums, and he subsequently was signed with Simon and Schuster, an end obviously helped by the attention his Kindle book was getting at Amazon.

  Here's a far more detailed story of how a very proactive Morrison marketed his books (and himself, an important factor) to build on his writing and some great blurbs from bestselling authors (whom he'd met years ago at a writer's conference) for books that had received rejection slips.

  In the Q&A session quoted, he mentions and links to the Kindle forums in which he received very positive responses and gives tips on how not to overmarket ('spam') the forums since that would only irritate the assembled who will associate some bad things with the titles of one's novels :-)

  As his writer friend, Susan Tunis, describes at her blog, he took his rejection slips in stride and just started working on a new story.  But he was

' a pretty savvy guy... He didn't just offer them for sale, he joined several online Kindle user's sites and made contact with potential readers... Before he knew what was happening, unknown, unpublished author Boyd Morrison was climbing the Kindle bestseller charts.  His agent thought it might be time to shop The Ark again.

Suddenly the New York houses were a lot more receptive.  And Boyd may well have made history.  He may be the first author to turn Kindle success into a major publishing contract!  Boyd has a two-book deal with Simon and Schuster and The Ark has also been sold in seven foreign markets!   You'll see the hardback release of The Ark on store shelves next summer... '

Obviously, some very effective writing was at the heart of the success but the Kindle provided the opportunity.

The Kindle book A Scattered Life, by Karen McQuestion, was recently optioned for a film - announced by the author in the Kindle forums.  It's been quite popular and has 25 customer reviews, with an average of 4-1/2 stars, and is #2 under 'Family Relationships.'

Jan Curran, writing of her new life in what's termed an "active senior living facility," has had an enthusiastic response from Kindle readers on the forums, and her book, Active Senior Living, currently has 14 customer reviews, and an average rating of 5 stars out of 5.

The level of success varies of course but it's at least easier to find an audience now and actually be read -- and be paid for it.

Joe Konrath ends today's advice on his blog with:

' I used to be known as the guy who wrote nine unpublished novels and got over five hundred rejections before landing a book deal.

Now I'm known as the guy who pays his mortgage selling books on Kindle that NY rejected.

Be the kudzu. Join the revolution before everyone else figures this out and it's harder to get noticed. '

AND FROM A KINDLE READER'S POINT OF VIEW
I noticed the following comment under JA Konrath's blog post on "Kudzu and Kindle" and remembered that I see this change of heart on almost a daily basis as I wander the news columns and comment areas.  It usually comes from writers, those for whom words are Life, but who love traditional books and have resisted the Kindle.

' I just received a kindle for my birthday, and I had a very negative view of the thing.  Now that I'm using it, I LOVE it. I can see more and more people moving in this direction. '

The Motley Fool on Apple's $15 e-book price plan / Free Kindles?

The Motley Fool is a website that gives investment advice.
  Wikipedia says of Motley Fool: "According to Mark Hulbert of The Hulbert Financial Digest,  for the past five years the brothers have earned an average return of 22%, annualized, versus a comparable return of 7% for the Wilshire 5000."

  The Wikipedia article also points out that in 2003, The Motley Fool Investment Guide was called the "#1 All-Time Classic" by investment club members of the NAIC

A couple of days ago, they posted a column by analyst Rick Munarriz, titled Don't Put Up With a 50% Price Hike."

Some choice excerpts (they don't mince words at that site):

' The e-book revolution is about to be tested. Now that Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) has apparently caved to one publisher's request for higher selling prices, the days of $9.99 digital best-sellers may be numbered.

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has to be loving this.   It's the one that has been feeding publishers with dreams of pushing e-books for $12.99 to $14.99 a pop when its iPad comes out in a few weeks.

It's a brilliant move on Apple's part.  No one is going to pay at least $500 for an e-book device.  If the iPad succeeds it will be because it's a jack-of-all-leisure-trades...

Apple's new pricing, though, is a dagger to dedicated e-book readers.  Publishers will make sure that its digital reads are priced identically across platforms, and that means that it will be harder for Amazon, Sony (NYSE: SNE), and Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) to market their gadgets...Buying a digital book for slightly less than a physical hardcover won't be a difficult economic decision.

The thinner the pricing disparity, the less likely that consumers will make the switch.  Bibliophiles aren't dumb.  I hear they're well read.  They will also be quick to realize that digital books can't be resold, swapped, or shared like physical reads.  This will make it even harder to justify the higher prices.

Next of Kindle
Amazon can fight back. It can reach out to newspaper companies and offer highly subsidized -- perhaps even newspaper-branded -- Kindles for folks committing to long-term digital subscriptions. [See 2nd article below.]
. . .
Ultimately, consumers will rebel.  They won't pay $14.99 unless ALL publishers play along.  Even then, there are the free public domain or nearly free indie author works put out through the store.
. . .
This doesn't mean that Apple will get away with this tricky feat.

If the digital migration of music and video taught us anything it's that CDs and DVDs got cheaper and still sold fewer copies.  Physical book prices will gravitate lower and sales will begin to shrink.  If $9.99 is the magical price point for books -- as it was digital albums -- the marketplace will make it happen. If not, say hello to the playing field leveler's little friend: Piracy.

Consumers always have the last laugh

There is no law that states that publishers need to sell digital books at the same thin margins as their leafy reads.  However, $15 for an e-book is going to be harder to swallow than a bowl of poi.
. . .
Publishers should be embracing $8-$10 price points for digital books for many of the same reasons (lack of reselling, swapping, or permanent sharing) that will drum up incremental sales.  It's also hard to deny the huge costs savings of not having to print, ship, and gobble back returns on physical books.

If the publishers don't get it now, readers will let them know.

However, the move to inch prices higher after Amazon has already sold millions of Kindles isn't right.  Folks will rebel.  Apple may laugh now.  Real world superstores Borders (NYSE: BGP) and even Nook daddy Barnes & Noble may be chuckling on the sidelines.

But it won't end that way: Amazon -- and more importantly e-book readers -- will have the last laugh here. '

FREE KINDLE WITH AMAZON PRIME BEING CONSIDERED??
The TechCrunch article by Michael Arrington of CrunchPad infamy has been reposted by what seems hundreds of blogs and tweeters.  The article is based on information from "A reliable source " that Amazon "wants to give a free Kindle to every Amazon Prime subscriber," once they "work out how to do it without losing money."

Yes that could be an obstacle.  One clue is that in the earlier trial, in which they gave heavy Amazon buyers a chance to buy the Kindle but KEEP it for a full refund if they didn't like it, they chose what some called "best customers" and in that case it included having bought many books from Amazon, showing an interest in reading.

The article explains:

' Amazon Prime is a subscription product that gives customers free two day shipping on everything they buy from Amazon. The current fee is $79/year.  

These are Amazon’s very best customers – the ones who tend to make multiple purchases per month.  And they are also likely to buy multiple books per month on their Kindle devices.  If those users buy enough books, and Amazon gets the production costs of the Kindle down enough, Amazon can get Kindles into “millions” of people’s hands without losing their shirt.  At least when the goal is to break even or better over the course of a couple of years, the expected lifetime of a Kindle. '

My first thought a few days ago was what a good idea it might be to leak this, as many might join Prime right away and I wasn't sure I wanted to contribute to that.  After a couple of days, I felt it is probably worse to not even mention the possibility, so here it is.  On the Amazon forums, customers are saying they'd love to have another Kindle for the spouse, family, etc.  In that case they'd be sharing e-books on one account often, so that's probably not the ideal situation for Amazon, for almost giving away the device.

As for the Prime membership feature, "Up to four household members may share this membership."  The normal free-trial period is one-month but they sometimes offer a longer trial to those who buy a lot.  Other aspects of it are explained under the Amazon Prime FAQ there.  But I would not get one just because an unnamed source said that eventually a free Amazon Kindle might come with it.  The plan makes sense for heavier buyers who want their products right away.  It would not be ideal for people who buy only e-books from Amazon :-).

 Still, if they can swing this somehow, it'd be nice, though I guess some large publishers and competitors wouldn't agree.

Kindle Software Update v2.3.3 (maintenance update)

My Kindle quietly updated from v2.3 to 2.3.2.

  I went to look at what the latest was all about, and I saw only that they are saying

" We're sending automatic wireless 2.3 series updates to all eligible devices. Our most recent version update is 2.3.3.

If you want to start enjoying it now, you can download and install the update manually from the Applying Kindle Software Updates Manually section below.

Automatic Wireless Updates
We send out wireless software updates in batches, so rest assured that you'll receive updates automatically. "

They go on to explain how that works and again give the option to do it yourself, manually.  It's not difficult - but if you need help, you can ask at the Amazon Community forum where a lot of help is available 24/7 from many other Kindle owners.  Another place you can ask for help and get very good support from Kindle owners is at the Kindleboards forum

The basic version 2.3 firmware update was first explained on their software update page.

 The "v2.3.2" and "v2.3.3" updates would be "maintenance" updates or refinements to make the recent v2.3 update work a bit better, after feedback from customers and what they find themselves.  They don't give details on that, though I wish they would.  But I'm also glad they're continuing to send updates to people.

All right, having downloaded the file, I see that the awake-process takes less time with less of that spinning thing at the top left.  It seems more responsive again when starting out and in general.

If you want to get it wirelessly, just remember it's done in batches and it can take WEEKS for them to get this on everyone's Kindle.  These updates are for the Kindle and Kindle DX (US & Global) models) but not for the Kindle 1, as the v2.3 update did not apply to that model due to the hardware on the Kindle 1 having a slower processer limiting users to indirect access to words on the screen and because it has less internal storage memory.

  If, instead, you want to do this update yourself, manually, by moving a file from Amazon to your Kindle with the USB cable that is part of the basic power cable (except for Australia), follow their quite good instructions on the software-update page.

  It's essentially the the way you'd move a file to your Kindle for reading EXCEPT that you'd put the software-update file ABOVE the "documents" file, at the "root".   If your Kindle is assigned "f:\" on your computer, then you'd put the file right on "f:\" but it can be assigned any drive letter from "e:\" to "i:\" usually.

TROUBLESHOOTING
Amazon also says at the page:

" If you cannot successfully update your Kindle software using the instructions above or encounter any difficulty with your software update, please contact Kindle Support.

The very best, and quickest, way is to PHONE Kindle Customer Support.

  * Inside the United States:   1-866-321-8851
  * Outside the United States: 1-206-266-0927

  Otherwise, click the "Contact Us" button in the right-hand column of the Amazon Kindle software-update page to ask for a callback from Amazon (usually done pretty quickly).

Free and low-cost books reminder 2/12/10

Well, this is not exactly the kind of free book that most would be looking for, but Amazon has announced that The Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2011, and Economic Report of the President are both available now as free wireless downloads in Amazon's Kindle Store.   $0.00

I haven't lept at this offering at this time as it isn't likely to raise my sense of well-being to read it ;-), but there it is.  And am I reading something into Amazon's recommending to me Crossing the Gates of Alaska or Devotions for Lent when looking at the page for this particular "product"?

Another book that's gone on the $0.00 list temporarily is what looks to be a rather glib (and even admirers say 'redundant') book, which at $12.95 has had 24 reviews and an average rating of 4-1/2 stars.
  The title is Love Yourself and Let the Other Person Have It Your Way, by Lawrence Crane and Lester Levenson, with a sales ranking of #4 in the Kindle store.  I'm not recommending it, just letting people know it's being offered for $0.00 for probably a short while and that people who paid for it seem to have liked it.

The weekend reminder:

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LINKS FOR SEARCHING FOR FREE OR LOW-COST E-BOOKS
  As ever, here is the ongoing set of links for various Searches for free or low-cost Kindle-compatible books.
  If you use the "2.b" link there for finding newest non-classics, you can see the latest non-classic and non-public-domain ones coming onto the free listings.  This lets you find them whenever you decide to call up the Free & Low Cost Books page.
  You can also just bookmark that page while there, to make that easier.

Kindles gather at Madison Square Garden

Kindles Hold Meeting in NYC, Discuss Plans to Get Gifts from Owners

"Madison Square Garden was Kindle-ized yesterday, as the electronic readers from Amazon had the first of a series of one-day solidarity meetings to discuss common concerns.  This time the concern was how to get gifts from their owners."

  Well, this little spoof was obviously written by a Kindle owner as it goes through all the items that many owners 'give' their Kindles and a few of the little attention-getters that Kindles can sometimes give inattentive owners :-)

' "Just because we're machines it doesn't mean we don't need a little love," one of the Kindles told a reporter...

The gift reminder technique they developed, the Kindle explained, is really quite simple. First, the Kindle misbehaves just a little -- blurred copy, involuntary shut-offs, a garbled text-to-speech feature. The brazen little Kindle added: "Just enough disruption to let our owners know we mean business. What will happen permanently if they don't take the hint and give us the appreciation we deserve."

The Kindle said the next step involves letting the owner know exactly what is wanted. That could range from wardrobe additions (new covers, decorative sleeves or skins, etc.) to ... '

Read the rest here...

Quick Tip: More space on your PC or laptop screen

Haven't been able to get to the blog though I've collected several items.

  But I'll be doing one on an easy way to maximize viewing space on your computers (mostly PC, alas) and even rotate the screen on a vertically shorter netbook, when using a web browser.

Until then, the basic, easiest tip, for times when you're using your web browser, is to temporarily get rid of toolbars and status line:

  Press function key F11

    That toggles off the toolbars.

    And to get back the toolbars, you press F11 again.

To get even more space, check your Options or Preferences in your browser.

On Firefox, it's Top Menu TOOLS/Options/Tabs/
And when you're there, UNclick "Always show the tab_bar"

  This way, you won't need to see the Tabs while viewing an image or text you want to concentrate on, including any newspaper.

  The best thing for me is that you can arrow up while viewing a picture or text and the top toolbars will reappear so that you can do something with them if you want.  As you arrow back down, they'll disappear again.

Again, to get back your toolbars, just press function key F11 again.

If anyone knows how this is done on the Mac, let me know. Before OS X or 10 there was a way but it was removed, for at least a couple of years.

Random House OK w/ $9.99 books. What are Penny Dreadfuls?

RANDOM HOUSE SIDES WITH AMAZON AND KINDLE CUSTOMERS ON PRICING
Daithi, posted a report at MobileRead forums on statements by Madeline McIntosh, President of Sales, Operations and Digital for Random House, at the American Booksellers Association’s Winter Institute meeting Feb 5.

On the subject of the Macmillan/Amazon conflict, she said that publishers "have no real experience at setting retail prices."  Daithi writes that she also revealed that one of the reasons Random House did not participate in the iPad iBookstore had to do with the pricing issues.

Daithi reported further that:

' In regards to delayed releasing of ebooks, McIntosh said, "Our current policy is we release e-books at the same time as physical books," followed by "I haven't been convinced that it's good for the author or consumer to delay the release. My fear is that the consumer who has fully embraced the technology will buy another e-book that is available or lose interest altogether. What if I train the consumer that the best scenario is to get it free?" '

He adds that McIntosh had worked for Random House for 18 years, left to work for Amazon less than 2 years ago as their Director of Kindle Content Acquisition for Europe, and Random House hired her back last year as President of Sales, Operations, and Digital.  While she may have had personal empathy with Amazon's position, Random House apparently agrees with her take.
  If only they were not usually choosing to disable the Kindle's impersonal-sounding text-to-speech feature, an action which is unfair to the vision-impaired.

E-BOOK PRICING:  IS LESS MORE?
In an interesting piece on how, to his "surprise," the Kindle became his "preferred reading mechanism for both periodicals and books" Robert Robb, a columnist for Arizona Republic, writes that he has doubts that the book publishers are reading the market and the potential of e-books correctly.  In his experience, at $10 a book, he's become "much more of an impulse buyer of books" and buys new books he has an interest in, at $10 but not at the list prices. In closing, Robb dispassionately (as opposed to vociferous forum discussions) describes a decision most of us have made and will be choosing more often after March:

' However, the difference between $10 and $15 seems to make the difference between an impulse buy by me and skipping it. I recently read a reference to a history of financial crises. It sounded interesting so I immediately went to the Kindle shop to see if it was available.  It was, but at $15.  At $10, I would have bought it.  At $15, I gave it a pass.

As a quantitative guy, I don't believe in reading much into anecdotal experience, even my own.  But I doubt that I'm alone.  The primary effect of e-books, if the pricing is gotten right, might be to substantially expand book sales, rather than shifting them between formats.

PENNY DREADFULS - WHAT ARE THEY?
Asked this the other day, I looked it up, having only a vague idea myself, and tweeted back "penny dreadfuls" were "dreadful," often "salacious" books priced low & quite popular. [For a fuller, more colorful description, see http://bit.ly/pdreadfuls]."

 These are books that will be offered by The British Library to Kindle owners, for free, along with the historically-accurate digital representations of first editions of more 'classic' books.  The Seattle PI newspaper has a long, detailed report by Nancy Mattoon on the penny dreadfuls, with sample books. Excerpts:

' Happily, along with the high class fiction, the UK library's freebies will also include the world's finest collection of cheap, tawdry, lowdown, lowbrow, Victorian trash. Get ready to heat up your cold Kindle with a torrid "Penny Dreadful."
. . .
If horror-master Stephen King fathered a child with "true crime" queen Ann Rule, and the kid became a comic book illustrator, you'd end up with a Penny Dreadful. The British version of a dime novel, these serialized stories were originally aimed at working class readers who couldn't afford the one shilling freight for mainstream monthly fiction produced by authors like Dickens. Instead of costing the equivalent of 12 pennies a month, these weekly cheapies gave avid readers of lurid tales a taste of their drug of choice for a penny a pop.
. . .
The most popular of the dreadfuls included highly glamorized sagas of real-life criminals like highwayman Dick Turpin, take-offs on folk heroes like Robin Hood, and horror variants like Varney the Vampire, an English version of Count Dracula.  The original Sweeney Todd, Demon Barber of Fleet Street, was a character in one of Edward Lloyd's most successful weeklies, The String of Pearls. Another popular anti-hero was based on a London urban legend. "Spring Heeled Jack" was half-man, half-devil, with superhuman strength, and like a later pop culture icon, the "ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound." '

There's a lot more in the article, so if intrigued be sure to follow the link to the Seattle PI story.

British Library, Apple iPad pricing, Nook update, Macmillan ebooks

This is an update on the British Library project and some reactions to it. Crunchgear's Devin Coldewey has a personal reaction to it which matches other ones that I saw in Twitter discussions but he has a bit more room to describe it.

  Momentarily forsaking computer-gadget-blogspeak, he writes:

' Got a Kindle? Get thee to the British Library! Not only are they giving away a ton of old 19th-century literature in e-book form, but they’re a special “first edition” e-book with the original typeface and illustrations baked in. The 1800s encompass nearly all of my favorite literature, so this is actually making me want a Kindle pretty bad right now. Original typefaces! O lawd!
...
... Whatever the case, they’re going to be beautiful copies that make good use of those high contrast e-ink screens ... They’ll be made available in the spring, at which time I’ll probably post again because I love love love this. '

I'm puzzled by what the Library and Amazon have decided on as the file format, since Amazon's normal generic font is used in all books except for the 'Topaz' ones (.azw1) which use embedded fonts but those would be simulated.

  If PDF (and with longer loading time and fatter e-books for image-scans) those would be available on other e-readers, though of course even if they're free to Kindle-book buyers, Amazon might put their own DRM (Digital Rights Managemetn) on them for these specially formatted files.

 There's also the remote possibility of Blio, which will be supporting PDFs and EPub and is focused on preserving a book's original format - layout, fonts and images...  Who knows?  But I imagine Amazon has something up its sleeve.  I'm personally hoping Amazon supports non-DRM'd ePub format files very soon, for its own sake.  If not, the first developer app I'd want to see is one that converts ePub files, upon downloading them, to Amazon's basic MOBI format (the way it's easily done by users via Calibre).

WIRED: APPLE WOULD CONSIDER LOWERING IPAD PRICE IF INITIAL SALES ARE SLOW
Wired/Gadgetlab's Brian X. Chen writes that Bill Shope of Credit Suisse, in recounting his meeting with Apple executives, said that "Apple indicated it would consider lowering prices if initial demand appears to be slow."  Actually, that was credited at the bottom of the article to the Wall Street Journal's Matt Phillips, who has a quote here:

' “While it remains to be seen how much traction the iPad gets initially, management noted that it will remain nimble (pricing could change if the company is not attracting as many customers as anticipated),” Shope wrote. '

  The reason that's of interest is that various analysts have adjusted down their sales estimates for the iPad since it was launched after various features expected were missing from it.  As a thin/light web-browser (w/o flash support, multitasking, USB ports) for at home networks, at a lower price, I'd get one - but not for book-reading.

NOOK NOW BUYABLE AT THE BARNES AND NOBLE STORES - BUT A CAUTION
As a card-carrying Barnes and Noble member and hoping to see them survive some very tough times currently (3 of 4 stores in my area closed this year), I wish they would invest more time in Quality Control.

All this time, with personal documents, there has been no way to sort the nook files by title, author or anything else.  We give Amazon a bad time about the lack of folders but at least the Kindle had sorting by Title, Author, and Most Recent (the Nook doesn't have the latter at all) since the beginning.

  When the nook was new and the reviews weren't exactly ecstatic, they released firmware version 1.1 to fix initial problems, and it was quickly decided that yet another firmware update should be done because suddenly the Adobe digital-rights reading was not working with libraries anymore -- but there was an easy workaround for that.

 Still, they then released v1.11 suddenly and w/o fanfare to correct that.  But, as a result, something else was broken in the code, and the Barnes and Noble forums became filled with reports of bookmarks and annotations being lost, paragraphs and pages missing, and more problems though nook users are very patient, since the unit has other qualities they like and which are important to them.

 I went to see how firmware version 1.2 is faring since it was released just yesterday to nook owners after the store models were updated.

Here's the current page of reactions to that update and there are some workarounds that nook owners are recommending to others as they encounter new problems.  This is the actual current page of discussion of the new update when I went to look just now (page 10).

BUY BUTTONS FOR MACMILLAN KINDLE BOOKS ARE BACK ON MOST OF THEM
There are many reports that the ebooks have been showing up and that the prices (some had pre-orders before the brouhaha) are as they were before the negotiations with Macmillan's insistence on the higher pricing for best sellers.

In the comments areas, PRW has been reporting on personal tracking of a couple of Kindle books and noted the pricing is now as it was.  News reports are that the higher sell-prices for Macmillan books -- and for other publishers' who want the same deal they get with Apple or they'd delay e-books for many months -- should take place in March 2010 with no further ability by Amazon to discount those books under Steve Job's and Macmillan's "Agency" program for customer prices set by the publisher with the bookstore now out of that area.  Macmillan has said that ALL its book partners have agreed to the new Agency plan and the higher pricing.  That would include Barnes and Noble.

The British Library and Amazon: forgotten literary gems for free on the Kindle

Amazon Kindle owners discussing in the forums how the Kindle is like "literary crack" for them will find a bit more to enjoy now that the The British Library’s new joint venture with Amazon will make more 19th century fiction available for free through the Kindle ebook reader.

Dame Lynne Brindley, writing for The Times (UK), describes it as opening up

' a new global readership for forgotten literary gems.  Kindle users will be able to download, free of charge, 25m pages of digitised books, from noteworthy editions of well known authors like Dickens, Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy to rare early 19th century fiction and even the UK’s best collection of ‘penny dreadfuls’.
  People who want their own copies can also have them despatched direct through Amazon’s print-on-demand service. Super Saver Delivery meets the gothic novel. '

Microsoft worked with the Library to digitize 65,000 out of copyright books and to develop enhanced online offerings of collected works.

Partnerships with higher educational organizations also made possible the digitizing of the Library's historic newspaper collections, already online.  Click on the link to see what that's like.  In describing the importance of the latest partnership, Dame Brindley writes:

' Looking back 10 years from now, the agreement with Amazon could represent a significant landmark on the journey that is now underway.  Freeing historic books from the shelves has the potential to revolutionise access to the world’s greatest library resources. '

A second story at The Times gives additional details.  The 65,000 newly scanned works are available for free download to the Kindle this spring and will be readable online by the public for free.

' Like the onscreen versions, the paperbacks, costing £15-£20, will look like the frequently rare 19th-century editions in the library’s collection — including their typeface and illustrations. Originals of works by Austen and Dickens typically cost at least £250.
. . .
  Altogether, 35%-40% of the library’s 19th-century printed books — now all digitised — are inaccessible in other public libraries and are difficult to find in second-hand or internet bookshops. '

UPDATE - The Next Web describes it this way:

' As for Amazon, not only will they enable users of their Kindle eReader to access historically accurate digital representations of thousands of famous books, but Amazon customers will also be able to order printed copies for between £15 and £20 including original typefaces and illustrations. '

UPDATE2 - Here's a follow-up article with more information on the books.

In the meantime, a weekend reminder:

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LINKS FOR SEARCHING FOR FREE OR LOW-COST E-BOOKS
  As ever, here is the ongoing set of links for various Searches for free or low-cost Kindle-compatible books.

  I've added a search there for non-classics or non-public-domain books which are under $9.99 and are sorted by bestsellers.  This search is for a time when Macmillan and others of the Big6 publishers (and Apple iBookstore as driving force) have pushed Amazon to the "Agency" model of prices from $13 to $15 for NY Times best sellers, which means they probably won't sell that many.

Macmillan hard cover books return

NY Times: Macmillan Books Return After Dispute.  Brad Stone and Motoko Rich report on the end of negotations, though it's not clear what was successfully negotiated.  

They write:

' So what did Amazon hold out for?  The company would not comment, but it is likely that Amazon demanded that no other e-book vendors, such as Apple, get preferential access to new titles, or any kind of pricing advantages.
  Amazon may also have negotiated terms into its agreement with the publisher that would allow users of Kindles or Kindle software to lend e-books to each other. '

Emphases mine.  The words 'likely' and 'may' are used to mention concessions, the concepts of which wouldn't have come from thin air.  It seems the NYTimes probably got SOME kind of word but isn't free to say so outright.

Also, while hardcover books are back, the Kindle edition copies have not shown up as of mid-Friday evening.

OTHER NEWS REPORTS - Follow links for full stories
1. Why (And How) Apple Killed The $US9.99 Ebook

' Publishers joining Apple’s iBooks store are turning their back on Amazon and its vision of the flat $US9.99 ebook. Apple forced the music industry to charge 99 US cents per song, so why are they helping publishers set their own prices?

To screw Amazon. '   [From Gizmodo.com]

2. Apple iPad Helps Publishers Get Better Price from Amazon

' Gizmodo reports that the move could mean the end of the $9.99 book.  The conventional wisdom is that publishers will set the ebook prices first proposed by Apple—from $12.99 to $14.99.  I suspect that Penguin and Simon & Schuster will follow suit and that Amazon will be forced to migrate to the agency model and match Apple pricing.'   [From beforeitsnews.com]

3. Epicenter The Business of Tech Panacea or Poison Pill:
    Who Gets to Decide About $10 E-Books?

' Hachette has become the third major publisher to publicly denounce Amazon.com’s $10 e-book model.  It joins Macmillan and HarperCollins in what seems now like the death blow to a price point that had less to do with the inherent value of the content than it did with finding a magic number readers could not resist in droves. '   [From wired.com]

It's Friday night and Len Edgerly's The Kindle Chronicles weekly podcast is up, with the final part of the 2-part interview with Forrester's James McQuivey, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.
  The first part is at Len's The Reading Edge podcast, which reports on all e-readers -- this last week's podcasts being especially germane, as mentioned in the last blog entry here. Part 1 of a 2-part interview there is titled "Amazon Brings a Knife to a Mud Fight."
  In Part 2 James McQuivey also shares his thoughts on the Apple’s new iPad's place in all this as well as what the next Kindle may shape up to be.

The Macmillan and iPad Effect on the Kindle

At a time when the large publishing houses are rushing to charge Kindle customers 50% more for e-books because e-books are "cannibalizing" hard cover sales (yet they like to dismiss them as a tiny percentage of book sales), some Kindle owners -- especially new ones, for whom the $10 bestseller Kindle book price was a lead feature -- have wondered out loud if they should not have bought their Kindles.

In a current forum thread, Kindle owners are asked if they would take an offer at this point to return their Kindles to Amazon for a refund (not that this is being offered but Amazon does have a 30-day return policy).
  The resulting forum discussion is an interesting read.  Click on the link to read it.

A really interesting Listen is this week's edition of the new, weekly Len Edgerly The Reading Edge podcast, which reports on all e-readers -- this week's podcast being especially germane: Part 1 of a 2-part interview with James McQuivey, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.  It's titled "Amazon Brings a Knife to a Mud Fight."  Edgerly mentions that

' He also shares his thoughts on how Apple’s new iPad figures in to all this.

 I’ll have the second half of this interview on The Kindle Chronicles episode 81, which will be uploaded as usual on Friday, February 5.  In that portion, James will discuss what he and his teammates at Forrester are calling “The Kindle Flame,” by which they mean the next generation of Kindle that might, if it gets certain things right, set the eBook market fully ablaze as opposed to merely kindled." '

I also browsed news articles analyzing the effect of the last week on Amazon and the Kindle.  Here are excerpts from a few:

BARRONS - "Amazon's Overblown E-Book Tussle" Excerpts:

' We believe concerns over the impact of the potential change in e-book pricing and Apple's (AAPL) iPad launch have been overblown.

Even if all of the publishers move to the agency model, which is unlikely, we still expect Amazon to capture a large share of the e-book market. We also expect physical book sales, in which Amazon has a leading market position, to significantly exceed digital book sales for at least the next five years. In addition, the iPad costs two to three times more than the Kindle, and its liquid crystal display screen provides an inferior book-reading experience...
. . .
Among our takeaways is that Amazon will likely sell fewer titles at higher prices and a higher margin from publishers instituting an agency pricing model. Some publishers are likely to maintain the current wholesale pricing structure in order to capture share, which could put pressure on companies using the agency model. '

To read the full article, click the top result of the linked Google results page if you're not a subscriber yet.

PAIDCONTENT - BARCLAYS CAPITAL
- "More Than 3 Million Could Be Sold This Year: Analyst"

' ... according to updated estimates from Doug Anmuth, analyst at Barclays Capital, in light of Amazon’s Q4 results and recent accounting change. Anmuth says he estimates 3.1 million Kindles will be sold this year ((62 percent growth Y/Y)
. . .
- Increased competition from the iPad, but Kindle is significantly cheaper & will continue to appeal to somewhat of a different market given the e-Ink screen, smaller form factor, better battery life, & lower weight.

- While the recent pricing dispute with Macmillan could signal a broader shift toward an agency model of eBook distribution, we believe higher margins will partially help offset the lower volume resulting from higher eBook prices. '

(See the customer forum thread mentioned, for reactions to how they plan to deal with this this.)
  At the general Amazon Kindle discussion forums, you'll see an avalanche of reactions, which include authors from Macmillan adding their input, with the unfortunate result that too many wind up alienating customers via posts that are hostile to the customer reactions to the 50% price increase for Macmillan, and likely for Rupert Murdoch's Harper-Collins as well as Simon & Schuster, all making similar noises to Macmillan's now.

SEEKING ALPHA - Interesting Stock market results for Apple

' Apple’s (AAPL) revenues surged 32% on better-than-expected computer sales. It beat its earnings estimate by $1.60 per share. It even introduced the iPad, a new product it hopes will take market share from Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle. After an initial rally, the stock dropped 5% below where it was before the company announced all this news. '

TUAW (The Unofficial Apple WebLog)
"HarperCollins pressuring Amazon to hike Kindle prices"

I guess the below does again explain why Steve Jobs was so cocky in announcing in that video that Amazon and Apple's iBookstore would have the same prices despite the current $5-lower Amazon pricing:

'...now HarperCollins is putting the pressure on that same site to raise eBook prices from $9.99 up to $14.99 or higher. Amazon finds itself in between a rock and an iPad -- if they don't give in to publishers' demands, they could find themselves abandoned for an exclusive Apple deal, but if they do raise prices, sales will start dropping even before the iPad appears. Jobs predicted about this much last week in an interview with Walt Mossberg, saying that publishers would run afoul of the Amazon store, and Jobs would be more than happy to pick them up in iBooks.

. . . At the Apple event the other week, Jobs said on stage that prices on the Kindle and the iPad for books would be "the same," so while fleeting images of the iPad showed bestsellers at around $10 (which is what Amazon charges), it's possible that Jobs would go with the $14.99 price to woo publishers over to his side. '

[ Methodology: In asking the publishers to raise the prices, as he did, Jobs wouldn't care how few he sold, only the margin for each.  In Apple's case the focus is on the hardware. ]

THEWRAP - "Amazon Slow to Restore Macmillan Titles"

' . . . It's now been four days since Amazon said it would reluctantly “capitulate” to Macmillan, and though the publisher's books began to trickle back onto the site Tuesday, many titles were still unavailable for hardcover purchase directly through Amazon’s store.

Whether Amazon was being passive-aggressive or just lazy isn't clear. But Amazon's snit with Macmillan is just only the tip of the iceberg: Not only has Apple said its iBooks store will charge $14.99, but News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch said on Tuesday's call with investors that he doesn't like HarperCollins' deal with Amazon -- and may challenge the bookseller's discount pricing, too.
. . .
Apple intends to price e-books at $14.99, essentially siding with book publishers in the hopes that they’ll cut deals with the iPad for exclusive releases, putting a dent into the Kindle’s market dominance. ("Publishers will actually withhold their books from Amazon," Steve Jobs told the Wall Street Journal, "because they are not happy with the price.")

But will Apple’s Kindle-killer strategy work?

That question could ultimately depend on e-book customers. There’s already a small movement organized by Kindle enthusiasts to boycott any e-book that is priced over $9.99.

“I think Amazon has quite successfully burned the $9.99 price point into the brains of digital readers,” said Jason Boog, editor of mediabistro.com’s book industry blog, GalleyCat. “If people are actively organizing boycotts against a certain price point, for better or for worse, Amazon has already won the price war.”

Boog predicts publishers “will be forced to offer a bare-bones $9.99 eBook edition for most books, and then build fancier ‘enhanced’ e-books for tablet computers and sell for a premium price... '

The next week should be interesting.