Entries tagged with “digital platform” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Survey of Book Industry Reaction to New iPhone and App Store
Mac Slocum
July 17, 2008
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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.)
News Roundup: Foldable E-Reader Coming Soon, New "Libraries" Bring New Privacy Issues, Analyst: Digital Change Targets TV and Film
Mac Slocum
July 11, 2008
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Foldable E-Reader Launching in Europe This Fall, U.S. in '09
The New York Times takes a look at the Readius foldable e-reader:
... the Readius, designed mainly for reading books, magazines, newspapers and mail, is the size of a standard cellphone. Flip it open, though, and a screen tucked within the housing opens to a 5-inch diagonal display. The screen looks just like a liquid crystal display, but can bend so flexibly that it can wrap around a finger. (Continue reading)
New "Libraries" Bring New Privacy Implications
As Google, Amazon and others become de facto digital libraries -- and lawsuits emerge -- Jeff Jarvis wonders what this means for users' privacy. From BuzzMachine:
Any site with content -- Google, Amazon, a newspaper, a blog, an ISP -- is now the moral equivalent of a library or bookstore, two institutions that try hard not to hand over information on what content we seek and consume arguing that that would violate our First Amendment rights. The controversy in the telco immunity legislation is that those searches were made without warrants. In this case [Viacom/YouTube], there is a warrant. When I ran sites, we got subpoenas all the time and handed over IP addresses when ordered; that was company policy. I always found it troubling and as a result ordered that we would change our data retention policy and get rid of IP addresses as soon as possible. Should Google and other sites erase IPs and rely only on cookies without personally identifiable information?
Analyst: Digital Disruption Has TV and Film in Crosshairs
In the wake of Lehman analyst Anthony DiClemente downgrading a wide swath of the entertainment industry, paidContent.org provides some blunt analysis:
Boiled down, the core argument is basically: You saw what happened to the music industry and the dramatic fall-off in CD prices. You've seen what's happened to the broadcast TV and newspaper industries. Now it's time for it to happen to TV and filmed entertainment. Hopes that digital revenue might somehow make up for lost physical sales are misguided, he [DiClemente] says, and again, you just have to look back at the music industry. (Continue reading)
Rhapsody Courts Apple Crowd with DRM-Free MP3s
Mac Slocum
June 30, 2008
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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.
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