Entries tagged with “apple” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Would an Apple Tablet be an Ereader? Yes and No.
Andrew Savikas
July 28, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (5)
|
Listen 
Last Friday the latest round of rumors of an Apple Tablet swelled considerably after a piece from Apple Insider asserted the device is now on the 2010 product roadmap:
However, the past six months have reportedly seen the critical pieces fall into place. Jobs, who's been overseeing the project from his home, office and hospital beds, has finally achieved that much-sought aura of satisfaction. He's since cemented the device in the company's 2010 roadmap, where it's being positioned for a first quarter launch, according to people well-respected by AppleInsider for their striking accuracy in Apple's internal affairs.
That means that the device, which is expected to retail for somewhere between the cost of a high-end iPhone and Apple's most affordable Mac notebook, is bound to turn up any time between January and March, should there be no last minute setbacks. Analyst's following the Cupertino-based company may consider factoring first full-quarter sales of the device into their models for calendar Q2.
The news sparked considerable interest among publishers, who apparently see this development as a "Kindle killer" that will upset Amazon's apparent dominance of the ebook ecosystem. It's understandable from the perspective of a publisher, but if this device actually exists, it's doubtful anyone at Apple sees it as an "ereader" any more than it sees the iPhone as "a GPS device." (The speculation stems from a piece in the Financial Times quoting an anonymous "publishing executive" and saying Apple has been talking to publishers.) Apple also talked to major newspapers before the iPhone launched, but they didn't build the iPhone as a mobile newspaper.
Some have been speculating about whether Apple would ink deals with aggregators like OverDrive or Ingram Digital to secure ebook content for a tablet. But that assumes that Apple sees a need to directly deal with ebooks the way they deal with music, and I don't believe that's likely. While it's possible they'd beef up the native PDF capabilities in a larger device, I think it's much more likely they'll establish the market (the App Store) and the platform (some variant on the iPhone SDK), and let developers and content creators take care of the rest, the way they have already on the iPhone with games.
Seeking Alpha has a nice analysis of Tablet Fever, and correctly places any discussion of news or books in the context of the App Store, where it firmly belongs:
Steve Jobs has mentioned that he has never seen anything like success of the App Store in his career. If he is saying that, then I'm saying that this 9.7 inch iTouch that has been designed to optimally utilize the apps will become the flagship Apple product... The order of operations for the iPhone are phone first, iPod second, Apps third, and Internet browser fourth. This new iTouch is principally designed to take advantage of the App Store gaming, books, news, entertainment, social networking, etc...
Long Tail Evidence from The App Store
Andrew Savikas
July 20, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (5)
|
Listen
Last week we released 16 of our books as iPhone Apps (and on Saturday added The Twitter Book), and there's some interesting Long Tail data coming in. We've seen Long Tail behavior in the data from Safari Books Online and from Google Book Search, though in this case it's about geography: even though regions like Colombia, Belgium, and Greece are individually generating a small number of sales, together they add up to more than the total number sold in the US:
CrunchPad Tablet Prototype Coming Together
Mac Slocum
June 4, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
The low-cost tablet project ("CrunchPad") from TechCrunch is nearing the working-prototype stage:
This launch prototype is another significant step forward from the last prototype. The screen is now flush with the case and we've decreased the overall thickness to about 18 mm. The case will be aluminum, which is more expensive than plastic but is sturdier and lets us shave a little more off the overall thickness of the device ...
The next time we talk about the CrunchPad publicly will be at a special press and user event in July in Silicon Valley.
The post's associated pictures and video are worth viewing. CrunchPad looks like something Apple would cook up.
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.
Apple is Now a Phone Company
Peter Brantley
October 22, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Apple reported stunning results for the last quarter, and it has clearly become a dominant phone company in a very short space of time. John Gruber from Daring Fireball has the real punchline, but his analysis of the results is excellent reading as a whole:
My answer: Not long.
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.
Commentary: Apple Could Own the Ebook Category
Mac Slocum
August 20, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (5)
|
Listen
A recent discussion on the Reading 2.0 list examined Amazon's place within the ebook universe and the threat Apple poses if it enters the same space. In the following excerpt, John Conley looks at the fundamental differences between Amazon and Apple:
The debate as to how successful Apple is in selling music through iTunes and its impact on the music industry provides insight into Steve Jobs' strategy. People speculate that iTunes is contributing significant incremental profits to Apple even though Jobs says that it is not. Since the total results as far as costs and sales are really buried in the detail none of us may ever really know.
What is going on is that Apple is determined not to make the mistakes they made when they first came out with the Apple I in the '70s. They are using Mac, iPod and now iPhone to incubate a user base that is growing at a remarkable rate. They own the mind share of the next generation of power users, which is this generation. I have five children, age 27 to 13. When the oldest went to college he went with a PC, as did the next child. That was before iPod. My third child will be a senior in college this year and has been a Mac user since 14. The 13 and 15 year old are Mac users. The two oldest, one who is a PhD candidate, have converted to Mac. As this generation ages to the point of conspicuous consumption they will be all Apple in their information needs. They look at my briefcase with its multiple chargers for numerous devices and laugh. They know that Apple will provide them with the ultimate device. They have a level of loyalty to Apple that speaks of the incredible consumer power that now exists with the brand.
Whatever the current functionality of any Apple device the user belief that the next generation of iPhone will continue to innovate and provide the functionality that this next generation of users will require is why the Kindle will never have the success required to make it the mainstream device for end users.
The law of numbers will apply here in that if you have the largest installed base and strong brand loyalty you will provide the most desirable sales channel for those companies that are looking to sell product. Consumer product companies may not like dealing with Wal-Mart because they set all of the rules, but they do it anyway because they are the most powerful channel. Amazon desires to be the Wal-Mart of Web distribution, but they have no value added other than price. Apple provides the connectivity, software, platforms, and most important, loyal customers. If and when they decide that ebooks are a viable driver or requirement to meet the needs to their tens of millions of incubated users they will dwarf the efforts of any other ebook service provider in the market and the publishers will readily come to them with content. (They will also not make the mistake of asking the publishers to provide the content in some proprietary format.)
Apple's profit model is dependent on selling hardware and software. They bring more value added to the equation then a company like Amazon who, is only a distributor and a technology wannabe. Hardware is not Amazon's core competency and they do not have the infrastructure or money to fight a technology war. In the end they will be happy to be a partner in distribution of ebooks to an Apple device that meets the needs of e-readers and without a doubt be more functional than any device that Amazon would attempt to market.
Distribution is what Amazon has as its core competency. The Kindle, like all of its predecessors, will not rise in success beyond the early adopters because Amazon does not own the brand loyalty within the consumer electronic market segment that is required to make the next big step in creating meaningful demand.
(Excerpt reprinted with John Conley's permission.)
Survey of Book Industry Reaction to New iPhone and App Store
Mac Slocum
July 17, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Kassia Krozser struck a nerve earlier this week with criticism of the publishing industry's slow approach to the new iPhone and the just-opened App Store. From Booksquare:
Call me crazy, but I'd expect an industry that salivates over moving 150,000 units to be all over the potential for reaching seven million "mobile is the future" customers. Are you not out there, listening to readers, gauging their interest? They want, you have, and you're still hiding the goods. I get this isn't the largest market you have, but is that an excuse to sit on the sidelines?
Sara Lloyd doesn't see long-term value in this current burst of iPhone excitement. From thedigitalist:
... apart from a few digital PR points scored against competing publishers, there doesn't seem to me to be any huge value in first mover advantage here for publishers, unless we want to make the decision to become software developers. The perception is that the App Store has 'opened up' the iPhone to publishers and to e-reading. The reality is that the iPhone has always been enabled for e-reading ... So, whilst we have been awaiting the launch of the App Store with interest, we didn't see enormous advantage in, for example, creating a reading app ourselves or Being There on Day One, just for the sake of it.
Expanding on the software theme, James Bridle says book publishers are uniquely positioned to develop ebook applications that meet consumer needs. From booktwo.org:
... who better than publishers to craft such software? 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.
Broadening the analysis, Michael Cairns says the "silo" mentality displayed in this iPhone debate is a competitive obstacle that needs to be put aside. From PersonaNonData:
To bring us back to the iPhone circumstance, as long as publishers continue to think in terms of traditional functional silos and roles and responsibilities they limit themselves in their ability to leverage their assets. In contrast witness Amazon which has never considered any aspect of the publishing value chain to be off limits and more publishers need to think in this manner if they want to redress some of the advantages Amazon and others retain (or new competitors develop) in the marketplace.
(Many of the links and call-outs in this post were provided by Peter Brantley via his Read 20 list.)
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
July 17, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Sittin' Here, Watching The Market Go By (Booksquare)
Since there has been significant interest in using the iPhone as an ereader, I was, well, expecting amazing things from the publishing industry. Hopes. Dashed. On a weekend when headlines were there for the grabbing and customers were searching for both toys and content, the publishing industry, perhaps practicing summer hours, was curiously silent. Not a single major initiative, announcement, horns-blaring call to check out these great offerings on iTunes.
Queue and Apple: Excitement over the newest iPhone (Print is Dead)
But when's the last time you -- if you ever have -- saw someone dressed up as a book itself? When's the last time someone posed as a dust jacket rather than as a figure posing on a dust jacket? Of course, this doesn't happen. Why? Because people don't love books themselves; rather, they love the characters and worlds found inside of books. So despite all of the talk of books being amazing technological devices, you never see people waiting outside all night in order to buy a blank one.
You Don't Build Communities, You Enable Them (Techdirt)
What the rest of the internet has shown is that you build community not by building a community, but by enabling a group of people to do what they want. And that can include commenting on the news, creating the news or sharing the news among many other things.
Ebook Adoption Could Come from Mobile Apps, Not Hardware
Peter Brantley
July 11, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Martyn Daniels speculates on the real breakthrough for Apple -- its store -- and the ramifications for ebooks; particularly, who is best positioned to take advantage of providing tools to the market:
Many have said that if Apple were to create an ebook reader then the market would take off. Others have agreed that the content and it[s] packaging would need to change also to fit the mobile demands. What is clear is that the mobile applications market is hoting and opening up and it may not be Apple who now has to create that magic connection. Interestingly it is not rocket science to understand that the reason that Adobe back[ed] the epub standard so heavily and developed the only DRM to support it today was to have re-flow text that can be rendered on the mobile platform.
Rhapsody Courts Apple Crowd with DRM-Free MP3s
Mac Slocum
June 30, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Rhapsody, a digital music subscription service, is now offering MP3 downloads with no digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.
Rhapsody's subscription service remains under digital rights protection, but Reuters says the company is looking to expand its reach into the Apple-dominated music sector by making its downloads compatible with iPods.
Amazon, Wal-Mart and Napster also offer DRM-free MP3 downloads, but to date no company has challenged Apple's iPod/iTunes model. An industry analyst offers Reuters one potential explanation for Apple's dominance, and it has nothing to do with DRM:
[Apple's] success has been due partly to a seamless interface between iTunes and the iPod and because it provides a good user experience, said analyst David Card of Jupiter Research.
News Roundup: Apple vs. Kindle?, OLPC 2.0 as an E-Reader, B&N Studying Borders Acquisition
Mac Slocum
May 23, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Will Apple Challenge the Kindle?
Rex Hammock re-launches consideration of why Apple would give Amazon a run for ebook readers and content distribution:
... a slightly larger iPod Touch [view concept image] linked to eBooks distributed via the iTunes store would match and raise the game with Amazon. (Continue reading.)
Next Generation OLPC: E-Reader in Waiting?
[Nicholas] Negroponte didn't share many details about the XO-2's hardware, but the new system has two touch-sensitive displays. As you can see from the video and the pictures, the XO-2 will be much smaller than the original machine (half the size, according to the press release) and will have a foldable e-book form factor. “The next generation laptop should be a book,” Negroponte said. (Continue reading.)
B&N Considering Borders Acquisition
When Borders announced its exploration of "strategic alternatives" in March, speculation marked Barnes & Noble as a possible suitor. The Wall Street Journal says B&N is taking that speculation seriously -- it's assembled an advisory team to study an acquisition of its brick-and-mortar competitor. (Continue reading.)
Will Apple Challenge the Kindle?
Peter Brantley
May 20, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (1)
|
Listen
Rex Hammock re-launches consideration of why Apple would give Amazon a run for ebook readers and content distribution:
Apple won’t stand still and let Amazon have this market [e-readers] all to itself. As I’ve written about ad-naseum, a slightly larger iPod Touch [view concept image] linked to eBooks distributed via the iTunes store would match and raise the game with Amazon. At that point, Amazon would be competing with the iTunes distribution channel, but with Amazon hardware that looks and feels like it was designed in Soviet-era Russia.
Also, with Apple in the game, its eBook format would be readable via the Mac or iPhone, as well. The Kindle format is locked into a Kindle device.
- 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
-
