Tools of Change for Publishing: Search Results

O'Reilly iPhone App Tips and Tricks

Adam Witwer
September 4, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

As Andrew has discussed in some detail recently on this blog, O'Reilly has started publishing many books as iPhone/iPod Touch apps. Over the past couple of months, we've received a considerable amount of feedback from customers who have purchased the apps.

To address some of the most common questions we get, I recently added a page on oreilly.com. I cover three main topics:

"Hidden" features -- handy things you can do that aren't always obvious in the UI
Long code lines -- my attempt to help users deal with the question we get most often on the support queues
Extracting the EPUB files -- yes, there is an EPUB file in that app, and you can get to it quite easily

I hope this page is useful to you. As we continue to receive feedback from our customers, I plan to add more tips and information.

Ebook to iPod to Hard Copy Purchase

Peter Brantley
November 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3) | Listen

Hugh McGuire is loving Stanza, the free ereader app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. From the Book Oven Blog:

40,000 ebook dowloads-a-day. I've got 35 of them sitting on my iPod. If you are a publisher, think long and hard about that number.

The reason I have 35 books downloaded onto my Stanza is: a) it is easy, b) it is free.

What does this mean for your business model? I don't know, but I assure you that when I finish War & Peace, I'll be buying a hard copy. And I also assure you: I love reading on that little thing.

Tags: app store ebooks ereader iphone ipod mobile software stanza

Open Question: Have You Seen a Kindle in Public?

Mac Slocum
August 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (7) | Listen

A flurry of new Kindle guesstimates and analyst predictions has reignited the Kindle number debate (something I'm not fond of). One of the oft-cited arguments is: "How can the Kindle be so popular if I've never seen one in public?"

There are big holes in this line of inquiry, but since it gets raised so often I figured a few device-spotting questions were worth posing to the TOC community:

Have you seen a Kindle in public? If so, where did you see it?
Have you seen a Sony Reader or other standalone e-reading device?
Have you seen more than one e-reader?
When did you first see an iPod in public? How about a cell phone?
When did iPods and cell phones transition from public novelties to commonplace items?

Please share your thoughts in the comments area.

Tags: cell phone ebook readers ebooks ereaders ipod kindle sony reader

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.

Tags: app store applications books ebooks iphone ipod software

Technology's "Killer" Distraction

Mac Slocum
July 29, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3) | Listen

A new search engine, Cuil, is attracting the requisite "Google killer" coverage. Thankfully, Seth Godin provides some much-needed perspective:

I have no doubt that someone will develop a useful tool one day that takes time and attention away from Google, but it won't be a search engine. Google, after all, isn't broken, not in terms of solving the iconic "how do I find something online using my web browser" question.

I have no beef with Cuil itself (the handful of queries I ran worked fine), but this "killer" business is another matter. In the history of tech prognostications, has an upstart killer ever successfully terminated its target? More importantly, what possible benefit do any of us get from this type of analysis?

I can only imagine the useful commentary we would see if the killer oeuvre could be stricken from the record. The bombastic flavor-of-the-day cycle might be replaced with actual thoughts about the future of particular applications and their accompanying industries. Perhaps we'd even stop shoehorning lightning-in-a-bottle success stories into unrelated products (e.g. the Kindle/iPod comparisons). And maybe we'd finally see that the exciting developments -- the products and experiments that really stir things up -- come from people who focus on creation rather than dominance.

As Seth eloquently notes:

... success keeps going to people who build new icons, not to those that seek to replace the most successful existing ones.

Tags: disruption disruptive technology google ipod kindle technology

Publishing Industry Not Prepared for "iPod Moment"

Mac Slocum
June 6, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

From Times Emit:

... in the light of consumer demand, there is actually very little [ebook] supply - then surely an "iPod for books" moment could actually be a disaster for the publishing industry, forcing keen and hungry consumers to find their electronic content from other (possibly illegal) sources - as with happened with the ipod moment for, um, music?

Tags: devices digital books digital content ebooks ereaders ipod

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Entries tagged with “ipod” from Tools of Change for Publishing