Entries tagged with “applications” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Google Opens Mobile Access to Public-Domain Books
Andrew Savikas
February 5, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (2)
|
Listen 
Via a Google press release, word that visiting books.google.com/m provides mobile access to 1.5 million public-domain books from within Google Book Search:
Today, we're making it possible for anyone with an Android or an iPhone to find and read more than 1.5 million public domain books in the US (more than half a million outside the US) in the Google Book Search index for free on their mobile phone, from anywhere with Internet access. It's possible for a commuter on a passenger train to read classics like Pride and Prejudice right along with lesser known works like Novels and Letters of Jane Austen, or for a student in India to read Shakespeare's "Hamlet" on her iPhone, all via a simple website accessible from your mobile phone.
So far, the mobile edition only offers browser-based access (Web-style scrolling, no offline access, no remember-my-place), but an interesting addition to the emerging and important mobile reading space. Screenshot below (or click here if you can't see the screenshot).
Google will be at next week's TOC Conference talking about the past, present and future of GBS.
Popping the Hood on the iPhone Missing Manual App
Andrew Savikas
February 4, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (2)
|
Listen
Over on Teleread, Chris Meadows has a nice review of our iPhone Missing Manual app, which echoes several other reviewers (and my own personal experience with the app):
How helpful is the book? I have already found a lot of remarkably useful information just in the space of a few chapters. It would be no exaggeration to say I learned things over the course of a couple of hours of reading that I never learned in months of iPod Touch ownership.
But the neatest part of the review is the tutorial Chris provides for popping the app open and getting at the EPUB content inside:
Once you've unzipped it, it can be read in ePub-reading software such as Adobe Digital Editions (looks flawless) or FBReader (formatting a bit messed up), or even synced into the iPhone version of Stanza by sharing from Stanza Desktop. (Though as the book is almost 9 megabytes in size thanks to all the illustrations, the Stanza app may choke and require a reboot the first time you load it, but after that it opens fine. I suspect the wrapper version of Stanza is optimized for the book's large size.)
Chris is right that the electronic version available from oreilly.com is $24.99, compared with the $9.99 app (on sale right now for $4.99 in conjunction with the TOC Conference), though our "ebook bundle" includes EPUB, PDF, and Mobipocket formats, along with free updates. That said, we're tracking sales and price data across formats and platforms, because it's clearly a critical issue. The App Store has provided an easy way to measure price elasticity of demand, and that's just with one app!
iPhone Updates: Missing Manual Already #2; More Book Apps Hit iTunes
Andrew Savikas
December 23, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (8)
|
Listen
We released David Pogue's iPhone: The Missing Manual as an iPhone App on Friday, and by Saturday it was already the #2 for-pay App in the Books category on iTunes (where it has remained, behind only the Classics App), and it continues to gain ground. In just four days, it has become one of our top sellers of the year in electronic format. Notably, even at the promotional $4.99 price, it is the highest-priced app among the top 50 paid book apps. While $0.99 pricing clearly moves merchandise, it's unlikely that kind of pricing is sustainable for most Apps, including books (for more, see this excellent post from Andy Finnell on app pricing).
Yesterday brought news that several other major publishers are rolling out iPhone Apps of popular titles, including the Twilight series (which right now is priced at $10.99), via an app development company out of New York, ScrollMotion. I haven't tried their reader, but the annotation feature shown in the screenshots looks pretty neat. We've been very pleased with how our books render in Stanza, especially for computer code, cross references, and tables -- all of which are quite common across our catalog.
Not everyone is enthusiastic about the news of more iPhone book apps, most vocally TeleRead blogger (and TOC Conference panelist) David Rothman:
Some consumers may want hundreds of books on their iPhones. Should publishers put such a crimp on their purchases? And will apps be the easiest things to organize into libraries? I'm open minded about the O'Reilly iPhone guide as an app, given its connection with the machine. But please don' make an app of every book!
While I share David's concerns about format lock-in (a big reason we offer many of our books in a variety of DRM-free formats), I think his distaste of standalone book apps is misplaced. Yes, it's true that right now the iPhone can only hold 148 apps. But given the nature of the device, I don't think it's likely that most customers will begin using it to manage/consume large numbers of books they intend to keep for long periods of time. Books on the iPhone likely serve the same function for readers as games do -- temporary entertainment, likely to be replaced by the next cool thing that comes along. I've deleted dozens of apps myself, at least a few of them ones I paid for.
But regardless of where your personal opinion lies on that issue, if you're a publisher there are several things to keep in mind as you consider the App Store as a distribution channel:
- Apple has tremendous power in this relationship. They're taking 30 percent right off the top, and they alone decide if and when your app appears. For many of your potential customers in this new market, that's just fine. They don't care about you or your other products. They care about entertaining/amusing/informing themselves.
- The App Store is a vibrant and thriving marketplace, but it's still in its infancy. There is a lot to learn about how to price and promote books this way. For example, here's a list of sites that promote new apps. Some are pay-to-promote, which sounds kinda gross, but isn't much different from co-op. Here's more from the same site on pricing.
- While this depends a lot on the types of books you publish, it's likely a small but very active segment of your audience feels the same way David does, and will reward you for offering standards-based, DRM-free versions of your books that they know will outlast you, the device-of-the-month, or the DRM format you're using.
- Speaking of DRM, stop worrying about piracy. One of our best selling books in electronic form this year is Real World Haskell, which was written out in the open, and is still available in its entirety from the book's website. For free. This is not an isolated case, and this book has been a commercial success not in spite of its open availability but because of its open availability.
If you're interested in reviewing the iPhone Missing Manual App, and are willing to share your review on your blog and in the App Store, drop me a line at andrew AT toc.oreilly.com. I have a limited number of promo codes for free access to the App, and it's first-come, first-served.
History Repeating with Book Publishing's Mobile Efforts
Peter Brantley
December 10, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (3)
|
Listen
A Computerworld blog post from Mike Elgan looks at recent mobile announcements from book publishers. From the perspective of technology, watching book publishers slowly grapple with the tentative migration of books to mobile platforms is painful. Interestingly, the comments attached to the piece are almost all more conservative.
The music industry was holding on to physical CD sales so tightly that they let Apple run away with control over digital distribution and the future of their industry.
It looks like the book publishing industry is about to do the same thing.
Publishing industry: The book isn't the paper. It's the content! Why don't you understand your own product?
Amazon iPhone App Uses Crowdsourcing for Product IDs
Mac Slocum
December 3, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Amazon's new iPhone application has an experimental feature, dubbed Amazon Remembers, that blends product discovery and crowdsourcing. From the New York Times Bits blog:
The tool lets users take a photograph of any product they see in the real world. The photos are then uploaded to Amazon and turned over to the far-flung freelance workers in Amazon's Mechanical Turk program, who will try to match them with products for sale on Amazon.com. The results will not be instantaneous (between 5 minutes and 24 hours, the company says), but the idea is to entice consumers to buy products from Amazon instead of its offline rivals.
Human-generated Mechanical Turk results can be a wildcard -- and the lack of instant gratification is a disadvantage -- but this method could theoretically expand mobile product apps beyond text messages and barcode readers.
Open Question: Standalone iPhone Ebooks vs. E-Readers
Mac Slocum
December 1, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (9)
|
Listen
Ebooks as iPhone applications started as a novelty/workaround, but the technique is now being used by Houghton Mifflin for a full-fledged digital rollout. From Wired's Epicenter blog:
The publisher recently partnered with a design and development company called ScrollMotion to launch a series of bestselling in-copyright e-books for the iPhone where each title is its own app and a reader is bundled with each download. Thus the iPhone itself, despite the small screen and lack of E Ink technology, becomes the reader.
On the other side, the recently released Classics app uses the iPhone's software update to load new ebooks, and a number of publishers (including O'Reilly) deliver ebooks to the iPhone and iPod Touch through the Stanza e-reader.
Both methods have their pros and cons (e.g. storage limitations, selection, interface), but I'd like to know what TOC readers think: Which format holds the most promise? Which do you use?
Q&A With Co-Creator of Classics iPhone E-Reader
Mac Slocum
November 26, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (3)
|
Listen
We've covered iPhone-based e-readers in the past, but the Classics application offers a few twists: it's not free, and the app's book content is updated along with the software itself. Classics co-creator Phill Ryu discusses the application's design and development in the following Q&A.
Why did you develop a book-centric application?
When we started comparing the iPhone to the Kindle, it was immediately clear to us that we could take advantage of the iPhone's brilliant color screen and touch capabilities to create a reading experience that would stand out from the crowd, so it began as a very, very tempting challenge almost, and eventually turned into a months-long passion project.
How many books do you offer?
We're currently offering a dozen books. They're handpicked favorites of ours, but we'll be adding more with free updates to the app.
Are these books all in the public domain?
Yeah, they are public domain. At the start, [co-creator Andrew] Kaz and I thought we could really do something radical in terms of the digital reading experience, but we couldn't start working with publishers based on the strength of some cool interface ideas, so we settled with the "Classics" name and created this as essentially the first prototype of our reading engine.
Did you consider releasing this application for free?
Yes, for a moment. Then someone knocked on my apartment door and slipped in a rent payment notice letter. The reality of the situation was, we had gone basically broke over the summer working on a pretty cool desktop app, and had to halt development on that until we could find some income. At that point, we came up with the brilliant plan to develop an iPhone app in a few weeks to generate some income, to continue the aforementioned desktop app. Classics of course ended up turning into a serious passion project lasting months of development time, and we went extra broke due to it, so going free was hardly an option. We're rather painfully aware that free apps tend to gather something like 25-50 times the downloads of similarly charting paid apps, and we'd like to reach that audience someday, but most likely it'll be with a spinoff app, and not with Classics.
Are you still developing the desktop app? Does this app also focus on books/content?
I really can't (and shouldn't) talk details, because the app might never fly depending on how talks with some content publishers go, but no, it's not book related.
You're using Apple's built-in software update process to load new books into the application. How did you come up with this idea?
For a variety of reasons. One thing that drove us toward this was gentle but insistent prodding from Apple throughout the dev process to stay away from selling books through our app. We'll be transitioning to server-hosted books later on though, once the collection has grown further.
Did Apple explicitly guide you away from selling books?
They guided us away from selling books directly through our app, which is against the terms for iPhone developers. We're hoping we can figure out an elegant workaround that they are fine with, but I want to stress that overall, they've been very supportive of this app, and have even been showing it off in the ongoing iPhone tech talks around the world.
How often will books be added?
I would expect to see several new books with each app update, the first of which should come later this month or so.
Will updates be free?
Yes. The app may become more expensive later on as it matures, but updates will remain free for all existing customers.
Since the books update along with the software, will users be able to keep/archive titles previously loaded into the application?
We have no plans to remove any books we release. Once the library size becomes prohibitive, we are planning to shift to server hosted books.
Apple requires applications to be under 10MB for download over cellular connections. Does this restriction limit the total number of books you can make available through Classics?
Not really, in that we are already pushing 20MB. We're hoping that we can eventually transition to server-hosted books while retaining the user experience though.
How many people were involved in the development of Classics?
Beyond Kaz and I, there were four designers who helped with various parts of the app (including the cover art, interface, and even processing illustrations for the books), as well as a friend and Web programmer who helped us create some in-house tools for correcting and formatting these books.
The Classics bookshelf interface has a unique look. How much effort went into this design?
Probably more than most people would think! The bookshelf interface for book management was inspired by Delicious Library's visual shelves (an app that Kaz worked on when he was 14). So starting from there, we worked with David Lanham on realizing our own flavor of bookshelf, and slowly refined the look over the next couple months, experimenting with various levels of decoration, tints, etc.
Of course, the other half of the bookshelf view are the custom book covers. As I mentioned before, Classics ended up being a passion project for all of us, and the designers really went overboard with the covers. (In a good way.) We started with the idea of procedurally generating each leatherbound book cover with different colors, sizes and such, with a unique "cover image" for each book designed to look like they were embossed on this set of leatherbound novels. Unfortunately, this ended up looking extremely bland. So after literally weeks of going back and forth on this with Dan Goffin, who was drawing concept art for book covers from the start, we settled on a much more colorful, and less restrictive style of fully illustrated covers.
I think this is the point where it gets a bit crazy. At this point, the concept books were looking much nicer, but we began to feel that the slightly simplified style made them look more like icons than real books. They looked a little fake. So the designers ended up illustrating these in high res, as if they were real books. The user for now actually never sees the vast majority of the detailing, but I think this level of detail adds a really unique level of polish to the app.
Will you port Classics to other systems, such as Android?
We haven't even investigated Android at all yet, but it's certainly a possibility. For now though, this remains an app we just personally really wanted on our iPhones!
Have you used/seen some of the other book-based iPhone applications? What's your impression of these?
Yes. And I feel like you are leading me on a bit with this question, but I'll take the bait and bite. I've tried a bunch of the other book apps out there, and frankly, the overall quality of these apps (in particular the "one-offs") horrified us, and only further motivated us to go full out with Classics. The only other book app out there worth picking up is Stanza.
How many copies of Classics have you sold? Have book publishers or others approached you about including their material in the app?
We've sold over 20,000 copies so far, though there hasn't been so much in terms of profit yet due to our initial investment in the app. We're optimistic though, and we're hoping some leads work out with publishers. There are publishers who want to work with us and sell books on the store, but the main issue for now is that there aren't many viable options for them besides selling one-off book apps, which is not ideal. If there's a nice way to do this though, we'll find it.
Mobile First, PC Second
Mac Slocum
November 17, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (2)
|
Listen
Over on Radar, Tim O'Reilly says the mobile tipping point is upon us:
I think about the web as experienced on a PC, and then about mobile as an add on. The tipping point has come; that notion has to flip: if we're trying to get ahead of the curve, we need to think first about the phone, and then think about the PC browser experience as the add-on.
Tagging the Real World through Barcode Apps
Mac Slocum
November 14, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Earlier this week, Peter Brantley noted an interesting barcode application for Android phones that connects the ISBN data on a physical book with Google Book Search listings. This merging of the physical and digital worlds isn't novel -- other companies offer similar applications -- but the discussion surrounding these apps tends to focus on retail threats and opportunities rather than broader uses.
Speaking as an unabashed content geek, I find the information curation possibilities from this digital-physical merge particularly interesting. The Web has provided an assortment of organization tools -- RSS feeds, readers, tags, categories, etc. -- that help me find and synthesize a vast amount of information. But the same can't be said for the real world. If something pops onto my radar while I'm sitting in front of the TV or shopping at a store, I need to open a browser (assuming I have a computer or phone), punch in the information and save it for later retrieval. This isn't an arduous task, but it lacks the elegance of scanning and tagging Web-based data.
My online efficiency increased exponentially a few years ago when I incorporated RSS feeds and readers into my daily routine. Instead of tediously visiting particular sites or running open-ended search queries, I could now gather useful sources in one application and sort that data into segments geared toward my own needs. Not to get too syrupy here, but it was an eye-opening experience that revealed a new depth to the Web. These barcode apps offer similar possibilities for seamlessly accessing the physical world's stored information. Armed with a cell phone and a data plan, those of us who are curation minded can expand the boundaries of discoverability into an untapped region.
Open Question: Digital Ownership vs. Digital Subscriptions
Mac Slocum
October 1, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (12)
|
Listen
Two tips in Dear Author's recent post "10 Things Epublishers Should Do for Readers" caught my attention:
1. Eternal Bookshelf. An eternal bookshelf means that every purchase you have bought can be downloaded at any time. Most of the larger etailers have this feature but not all.
2. Mass Downloads. Along with the eternal bookshelf should be the ability to re-download all of your books. This is necessary in the case of a computer crash or some other computer related malfunction.
The focus on ownership is interesting, particularly since the concept of "owning" a digital file is inherently quirky. You can purchase and download books, music, TV shows, movies and software, but the tangible qualities of ownership don't apply in the digital realm. You don't categorize your digital movie collection on a DVD shelf and you don't thumb through a just-purchased ebook.
There's a weird dichotomy at play here. Many people (myself included) have come to terms with the ambiguous aspects of digital purchases, but a significant portion (again, myself included) gravitate toward digital ownership over digital subscriptions (e.g. the iTunes model vs. the Rhapsody model). The only clear difference between these models is access: purchased files are accessed from your local storage, subscriptions are accessed from a company's servers. But if your chosen material is available through your chosen device at your chosen time, does ownership really matter?
I'm interested in hearing how members of the TOC Community view the differences between ownership and subscriptions. Here's a few questions toward that end:
- Do you purchase digital content and store it on your own devices?
- Do you expect retailers to allow you to download additional copies of your purchased content?
- Do you subscribe to digital content?
- What would it take for you to switch from ownership to subscription?
Please share your thoughts in the comments area.
Amazon and Google Challenging iTunes through Mobile
Mac Slocum
September 23, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
T-Mobile's Android-based mobile phone will include a connection to Amazon's MP3 store. From Wired's Listening Post:
Owners of the device will be able to browse, search, preview and purchase music on the Amazon MP3 store using the phone's cellular connection. In order for purchased MP3s to download, the phone must be connected via Wi-Fi. (The mobile iTunes store, on the other hand, remains completely offline without WiFi.)
Stanza E-Reader Catching On with iPhone Users
Peter Brantley
September 22, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
VentureBeat writes about the success of Lexcycle's Stanza e-reader for the iPhone, and speculates that this type of platform will be far more successful than dedicated reader devices:
Stanza is currently the number one ebook app for the iPhone, and chief operating officer Neelan Choksi shared some other impressive stats with me. In its first six weeks, Stanza was downloaded 200,000 times -- compare that to Amazon's Kindle, which is seen as building momentum because it sells 40,000 units per month. Okay, that's a totally unfair comparison, since Stanza is a free app. But if you can get a free ebook reader for your iPhone, why bother paying for the Kindle, or even a more cutting-edge reader like Plastic Logic's? (Though of course the Amazon's and Plastic Logic's readers offer bigger screens, which is better for long-term reading.) People are actually downloading books, too -- Choksi says one of Stanza's content providers reports 20,000 downloads per day.
Moving Ebooks into Mobility Culture
Peter Brantley
September 3, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Sherman Young writes about how ebooks should be seen in the context of mobile platforms and as part of mobility culture. From M/C Journal:
Instead of seeking to make an e-book culture a replacement for print culture, effectively placing the reading of books in a silo separated from other day-to-day activities, it might be better to situate e-books within a mobility culture, as part of the burgeoning range of social activities revolving around a connected, convergent mobile device. Reading should be understood as an activity that doesn't begin with a particular device, but is done with whatever device is at hand. In much the same way that other media producers make content available for a number of platforms, book publishers should explore the potential of the new mobile devices.
Over 45 million smartphones were sold globally in the first three months of 2008 ("Gartner")--somewhat more than the estimated shipments of e-book reading devices. As well as allowing a range of communications possibilities, these convergent devices are emerging as key elements in the new digital mediascape--one that allows users access to a broad range of media products via a single pocket-sized device. Each of those smartphones makes a perfectly adequate e-book reading device, and it might be useful to pursue a strategy that embeds book reading as one of the key possibilities of this growing mobility culture.
Tim O'Reilly: Social Networks as Infrastructure, Not Apps
Mac Slocum
August 27, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Using Amazon's acquisition of Shelfari as a jumping-off point, Tim O'Reilly stresses the need for social network interoperability. From Radar:
Some of my friends prefer LibraryThing. Others may prefer Shelfari. But I only network with those on Goodreads because that's the service I ended up using first. What a shame that I can't see what my friends on LibraryThing and Shelfari might be reading! I'd love to see a firm commitment to cross-application connectivity, with the social network as infrastructure rather than application.
Open Question: Do You Read Books on a Cell Phone?
Mac Slocum
August 27, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (13)
|
Listen
Mobile book reading is already popular in Japan and anecdotal evidence suggests it could be catching on elsewhere. I'm curious to see how prevalent phone-based book reading is within the TOC community.
- Have you ever read an ebook on a cell phone? (This doesn't include Kindles, Sony Readers and other standalone e-reader devices).
- Have you read more than one ebook on a cell phone? If yes, how many do you typically read in a year?
- What inspired you to first read books on your phone?
- In your opinion, what are the pros and cons of reading books on phones?
Please share your thoughts in the comments area.
Q&A with Developer Who Turns Ebooks into iPhone Applications
Mac Slocum
August 21, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (5)
|
Listen
Ebook files and e-reader software usually exist as separate entities, but Tom Peck of AppEngines merged the two to create individual ebook applications for the iPhone App Store. In the following Q&A, Peck discusses his ebook software development process, consumer response to his apps, and future ebook projects.
Why did you opt to bundle individual ebooks as software applications rather than create a single e-reader program?
I have been reading ebooks (mostly from eReader.com) for many years. I wanted to make a book reader program for the iPhone that was as simple to use as possible. I feel that the way existing ebook solutions work is too complex for many users: they have to download the ebook software, then go to a separate Web site and create an account, enter credit card data, and then find and purchase content.
The iPhone App Store sales and distribution process makes it simpler and more convenient to have an ebook reader as part of an ebook itself. Developers can only distribute applications through the App Store; there is no way to distribute data files like ebooks. Therefore, it made sense to me that each book had to be a complete application.
Although this is more convenient for App Store customers to get a book, the process of making each book into an app takes more time for development. Each book becomes its own Xcode project, requires testing, and requires time to load all of the data (descriptions, screen shots, application file) to the App Store. I have developed tools and techniques that automate as much as possible, but each book takes several hours to complete, not counting the many hours spent writing the ebook reader itself.
Have you used any of the e-reader applications available through the App Store (e.g. Stanza, eReader, etc.)? If so, how do these compare to your own apps?
I have used the eReader software. I am a long-time eReader customer, having purchased dozens of their books and read them on my Treo. I have not used Stanza.
The biggest difference is that those products let the user download content from the Internet. Some let users create their own content and download it to the iPhone, which is nice. My reader is purely a book reader.
The eReader app supports a bookshelf list, showing all the ebooks. With my apps, each ebook appears as its own icon on the home screen.
My current reader program compares nicely to eReader. At the moment, I do not support landscape mode, which eReader does. Both offer text search and table of contents. I admit that the search function in my first batch of books was not very usable; newer books have a much better implementation, even better than eReader's. Both programs support different font sizes, images embedded within the text, layout options such as indenting and centering, and font styles.
One feature my reader has is instant repagination when the user changes font size. Using my reader, the user can increase or decrease font size using the "pinch" gesture, similar to zooming in and out of photos, and the results are immediate. I spent a lot of time to make this very, very fast. Changing the font size in eReader requires the program to repaginate in the background, a process that can take over 30 seconds for the entire book.
How many ebooks have you made available through the App Store?
Currently, about 140. More are in the pipeline; all newer, copyrighted works from other publishers and authors.
What has the response been like?
Response has been very good. My current download numbers for all books (not counting several free books) is almost 1,000 books a day. The numbers per book vary day by day, with some books having as many as 50 downloads a day. Most of the public domain titles have counts around five per day.
Most encouraging are that the newer works are selling just as well as the classic stuff. iPulp, a publisher of science-fiction and adventure short stories for young adults, has four works in the store right now with six more in review. These are priced at $0.99 and $1.99 and have sales of about 10 per day. The two Max Quick novels sell for $5.99 each. Currently they are selling about 13 copies per day and the numbers are increasing (they've been in the store for less than two weeks).
Are you selling ebooks or ebook applications through other platforms?
Right now, I am only working with the App Store. I am watching to see what other cell phone vendors and carriers do. As some of your blog postings have noted, the success of the App Store is making other carriers look at copying Apple.
I have spent time with Google's Android platform and have a version of the ebook software that runs on Android.
How much of your ebook content comes from Project Gutenberg?
My initial group of books, about 110, were all from Project Gutenberg. I constantly get requests from customers to add new books, so I have added more Project Gutenberg stuff. Now that I am working with publishers and authors to produce their works as ebooks, I will focus primarily on new works.
Can you list some of these publishers/authors? How did your relationships with these publishers and authors come together?
In the store now are a book on computer security by Neal Puff and a memoir by Teresa Wright. All relationships came about because of my presence in the App Store with the initial set of ebooks. I've been contacted by small publishers and individual authors to turn their works into ebooks for the iPhone. I work with them to get the content in an appropriate format, get the various graphic elements (cover art, icons, etc.), produce the ebook app, have them review the app, and put the app into the App Store.
Do publishers pay you a flat fee to prep App Store titles or is it a revenue share?
Revenue share.
Did you anticipate this type of publisher response?
I was a bit surprised at how quickly publishers contacted me. I thought I would have to market to them.
Are there other content sources or types you'd like to incorporate?
One publisher I am working with offers textbooks. That would be an interesting type of content. A textbook could take advantage of the ebook being a standalone app, offering more interactive content for quizzes that would appear within the book.
Some App Store reviewers complain that you're making money off of public domain content. How do you address these complaints?
The Project Gutenberg license clearly allows people to sell works based on the Gutenberg files. I am following the license, and I do send 20 percent of the revenue earned to the Project Gutenberg Foundation. Mobipocket, eReader and Amazon Kindle all sell public domain works for much more than $0.99.
Each book requires a lot of manual work. The Project Gutenberg text files are a good starting point, but I have to edit each one to add information about chapter starts, poems, songs, emphasized text, etc. Many files have extra data like page numbers that have to be cleaned up. I tried to automate this part, but there is so much variety in the files that only hand editing can get the correct results.
Since your ebooks are applications, and iPhone apps are stored on the device's docking screens, is there a concern about clutter? Do you have any organization tips for people who buy multiple ebook apps?
I would say that this is a general problem with the iPhone Home Screen user interface. iPhone blog sites describe users with 100 apps or more on their devices, and finding a specific app can become a problem.
iTunes does allow users to selectively install apps on individual devices. This is probably the best way to deal with lots of apps: for users to only install the apps they need, and keep the rest on their desktop machine. Personally, I tend to read about two books at a time, then I remove them from the device when finished.
What near-term features or products are you planning?
I am working on a new version of the reader software that adds many new features: bookmarks, notes, landscape mode, etc. Once completed, I will re-release all existing books with the new features. Customers will get the updates for free.
I also am working on several non-ebook iPhone apps.
Books Fail to Crack Top 100 in iTunes App Store
Mac Slocum
August 15, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (1)
|
Listen
Over at Radar, Ben Lorica analyzes sales and category data for the iTunes App Store and makes an interesting discovery about the store's book section:
The Book category is comprised mostly of ebooks and while there are over 150 such "apps", it was the only category not represented in the Top 100 rankings ...
As Ben notes, most of the applications in the App Store's book category are individual ebooks -- most drawn from Project Gutenberg -- wrapped up as stand-alone software packages. The user reviews attached to these ebook apps fall into two camps: critics who cry foul over public domain titles repurposed with a price tag, and advocates who see value in the applications' low cost (most are $0.99) and easy access.
A Big Boost to Books as Apps?
Andrew Savikas
August 14, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (1)
|
Listen
Perhaps inspired by Apple's success with their iPhone App Store (which is already bringing in $1 million a day), T-Mobile has announced plans to add a similar storefront across all of their phones -- reaching more than 30 million subscribers. From Silicon Alley Insider:
This fall, T-Mobile is planning to gut its current, lousy method of distributing mobile apps -- favoring software companies that it has revenue-sharing deals with, according to MocoNews. In its place: An iPhone-like app store that's organized by popularity, not payola. The platform will be open to "almost any developer" that agrees to T-Mobile's revenue split, which one developer says is "very generous."
Books as standalone apps (and as collections, such as Shakespeare) have already proven popular enough for Apple to add "Books" as a category. There are several important implications of this for publishers:
- Disintermediation. This is yet another channel for individual content creators to reach an audience, and some part-time app developers are already earning a nice payday. Surely some will be vanity press material; just as surely some will not.
- Pricing and discount structure. Right now Apple takes a 30% cut, and paid app prices are settling around tiers like $0.99, $1.99, $4.99 and $9.99 (amusing $1,000 outliers aside). The thrashing continues on this front, and consumers will be the ultimate arbiter.
- Distribution. Publishers are rightfully wary of Amazon's growing power, and the wireless delivery is arguably the driver behind the bullish outlook on the Kindle. The iPhone App Store and now T-Mobile are welcome competition, though carry a double-edged sword as gatekeepers controlling which content gets in front of their customers.
- Form, not just format. Smart publishers (and as usual, I use the term loosely) will go beyond just displaying printed book content in these new devices. Digital, networked environments require rethinking how best to do the "job" of a book.
The distinctions between content and software are falling away, and smart publishers need to begin adjusting accordingly.
Cloud Computing's Potential Impact on Publishing
Mac Slocum
July 22, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
If you use Google Docs or access email via a Web browser, you're already versed in cloud computing. Access to Web-based material is taking the place of downloads.
Cloud computing focused in the early going on software as a service (SaaS) applications, but Amazon, Netflix, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others are now tapping the cloud for content delivery (some of these companies focus on streaming entertainment, while others focus on content creation/management).
An interesting conversation about the cloud's impact on content publishers popped up recently on Peter Brantley's Reading 2.0 list. Peter, by way of an an article link, noted that Amazon is moving some of its video distribution business into the cloud. From Last100:
Not only is Amazon utilizing streaming in order to deliver "instant" playback but it also means that content doesn't have to be permanently stored on a user's hard drive. As a result, Amazon is able to offer another potential benefit to customers: a virtual video library of previously purchased content, stored in the 'cloud' (on the company's own servers) ready to be streamed as many times and to as many compatible devices as the user has access to. While this will initially consist of PCs running Mac OSX or Windows, along with select TVs from Sony, in the future this could extend to many different devices, either through specific partnerships like the one currently forged with Sony, or by utilizing browser-based standards or any other technology or protocol Amazon chooses to support.
Expanding on Peter's post, Mike Shatzkin said the centralization of cloud-based content raises issues around digital rights management (DRM) and other access limits:
The cloud changes everything in terms of piracy and copyright. We are living in a transitional period where computer storage is decentralized. When that period is over, and the time is now not far off, everything is accessed from the cloud and it will be a relatively easy matter for rules about content access to be enforced by the content originator or distributor.
As others on the Reading 2.0 list pointed out, cloud computing brings up additional questions around copyright and ownership. Toss in concerns about system reliability, open vs. closed clouds, and the potential for lock-in (or lock out) and you can see this rabbit hole growing deeper.
Cloud adoption may also represent an important moment in book publishing's digital transition. Publishers have enjoyed the past luxury of learning digital lessons from the media, music and film industries, but the wait and see approach may not work this time. If consumers come to expect access to their content -- all their content -- anywhere/anytime, publishers will need to meet that expectation ... or risk watching an unaffiliated company or industry step in.
Open Question: Should Publishers Develop Software Apps?
Mac Slocum
July 21, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (6)
|
Listen
Book publishing's response (or lack thereof) to the iPhone 3G and the App Store has stirred up an interesting question around publishing and software development: namely, should publishers create their own software applications?
Sara Lloyd from thedigitalist says a focus on content, not software, is key:
Interestingly the price of apps [in Apple's store] is already plummeting as free apps get more highly and more frequently rated and the paid-for apps drop down the ratings. Perhaps this suggests even more strongly that the App is not The Thing; it is merely a container or a channel for the content, which will still be The Thing.
On the other side, James Bridle from booktwo.org says publishers are the natural source for e-reader apps:
Most ereader technologies are built by techies who put the technology before the reading experience: the combined skills of typesetters, print designers, editors and technologists that only publishers possess could, with the right direction, produce a far superior ereader app than any we've seen so far.
What's your take? Should book publishers move into the software domain? Please post your thoughts in the comments area.
- Stay Connected
-
TOC RSS Feeds
News Posts
Commentary Posts
Combined Feed
New to RSS?
Subscribe to the TOC newsletter. 
Follow TOC on Twitter. 
Join the TOC Facebook group. 
Join the TOC LinkedIn group. 
Get the TOC Headline Widget.
- Search
-
