Entries tagged with “mobile” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Despite recent gains for books, Games still dominate in the App Store (via @dliman)
Andrew Savikas
November 3, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen 
"While it might be true that the number of Book apps is growing at a faster rate, Games continue to dominate the list of popular U.S. iTunes Apps. Games accounted for about a fifth of all iTunes apps over the past week†, but the category continued to have a disproportionate share of the Top 100 charts, accounting for 52% of the Top Grossing, 56% of the Top Paid, and 50% of the Top Free apps."
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/games-top-the-charts-iphone-android-markets.html
O'Reilly Ebooks Now in Aldiko Online Catalog for Android
Andrew Savikas
November 2, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
The iPhone gets a lot of the attention when it comes to smartphones, but signs point to Android playing a huge role in the growing smartphone market, with 20+ new devices by the end of this year worldwide (like the Motorola Droid). O'Reilly readers with an Android device can now browse and buy via the online catalog in the Aldiko ereader app.
Buying through Aldiko gets you the same DRM-free ebook bundle offered on oreilly.com (and there's even a 15% discount applied at checkout).
The catalog is implemented using a prototype of the OPDS spec, part of the BookServer architecture.
Hard Numbers Behind the Current and Coming Mobile Future
Andrew Savikas
October 20, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Every year at Web 2.0 Summit, Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker does a fantastic whirlwind tour of economic and technology trends she's watching, and in addition to a terrifying look at the US Income Statement, her presentation this year spent a lot of time looking at mobile trends. Mobile is the next "computer cycle" (think Mainframe, Mini, PC, Internet), and the numbers are just staggering.
Of course, the news won't be good for everyone:
Mobile-Related Share Shifts Will Create / Destroy Material Shareholder Wealth: Massive technology changes typically shift dynamics between incumbents / attackers creating winners / losers.
If you want to know where the future of paid digital content is, read this now.
Customer Loyalty for Mobile Devices
Andrew Savikas
October 8, 2009
| Permalink
|
Listen
Some of the most interesting data on trends in mobile development has been coming from Flurry, an app analytics company (developers insert little snippets of Flurry code in their apps to gather usage data).
They've plotted frequency of usage against app "retention" (what percentage of buyers returned to the app within 90 days of downloading it), and put each category of app into a corresponding quadrant:
They note that books fall squarely into the "use a lot for a short period of time" category, which is not unexpected:
In Quadrant II, we find categories like Books and Games, among the two largest app categories in both the App Store and Android Market. These application categories are characterized, on average, by intense usage over a finite period of time. Because games and books offer content that typically is consumed only once, the user usually moves on after reading a book or finishing a game.
They also draw some interesting conclusions on which categories are suitable for subscription vs. a la carte models.
Note this data comes from the set of apps using the Flurry software (they say more than 2,000), so is by no means a scientific sampling. Interesting reading nonetheless.
Do the Math on Your Mobile Apps
Andrew Savikas
October 1, 2009
| Permalink
|
Listen
One of my favorite sources of interesting reading material these days is Hacker News (follow them at @newsycombinator), and this week they pointed me to a piece from Derek Sivers that applies to many of the emerging digital and mobile markets for media:
He kept saying, "If only one percent of the people reading this magazine buy my CD... that'll be 10,000 copies! And that's only one percent!"
...
Over the next few weeks he received four orders. Total CDs sold: 4
....
I think of this every time I hear business plans that say, "With over 30 million iPhones sold, our app is sure to..."
On the one hand, putting a one-click bookstore in 30 million pockets means someone is bound to buy your app. On the other hand, if it costs you $25K to develop the app (a typical and realistic investment for a greenfield app), you're probably not going to have enough income to build any more apps for awhile.
Economist on "Mobile Marvels" in Emerging Markets
Andrew Savikas
September 29, 2009
| Permalink
|
Listen
Though here when we talk about mobile it's usually in the context of mobile reading and media, that's just a small piece of what's happening as we move to the age of the mobile web, especially in emerging markets.
This week's Economist has a special report on Mobile and Telcoms in Emerging Markets that's worth a read. For example, in about two years mobile is forecast to eclipse fixed broadband as the way most people use the Internet:
Worth particular note are the Beyond Voice and Internet for the Masses stories (from which the graph above is taken):
HOW long will it be before everyone on Earth has a mobile phone? "It looks highly likely that global mobile cellular teledensity will surpass 100% within the next decade, and probably earlier," says Hamadoun Touré, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, a body set up in 1865 to regulate international telecoms. Mobile teledensity (the number of phones per 100 people) went above 100% in western Europe in 2007, and many developing countries have since followed suit. South Africa passed the 100% mark in January, and Ghana reached 98% in the same month. Kenya and Tanzania are expected to get to 100% by 2013.
Mobile as New Medium
Andrew Savikas
September 7, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (21)
|
Listen
While prepping for my talk tomorrow on mobile publishing at the Digital Publishing Group in New York, I was also popping in and out of a related ongoing email conversation about textbooks and iPhones, and couldn't help but weigh in on the question of how to handle some the issues like cross referencing and annotations on the iPhone compared with in a textbook. Several people suggested the comments were worth sharing with a larger audience:
These are relatively minor technical problems that generally already have solutions. The bigger issue I see is that thinking of the problem as "how do we get a textbook onto an iPhone" is framing it wrong. The challenge is "how do we use a medium that already shares 3 of our 5 senses -- eyes, ears, and a mouth -- along with geolocation, color video, and a nearly-always-on Web connection to accomplish the 'job' of educating a student." That's a much more interesting problem to me than "how do we port 2-page book layouts to a small screen."
Mobile is big on the agenda at TOC Frankfurt, TOC New York, and I'm sure will come up during the upcoming TOC online event.
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.
Report: Large-Form Kindle to Target Textbooks and Newspapers
Mac Slocum
May 5, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (5)
|
Listen
The Wall Street Journal says a large-form Kindle -- rumored to make its debut tomorrow -- will be partially targeted at the textbook market:
Beginning this fall, some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be given large-screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar already installed, said Lev Gonick, the school's chief information officer. The university plans to compare the experiences of students who get the Kindles and those who use traditional textbooks, he said.
There's also considerable discussion about the impact a large-form Kindle could have on newspapers and magazines. Large-form e-readers from Plastic Logic (due in 2010) and iRex (currently avaialble) are aimed at the same business/media-consumer market.
We'll know full details after tomorrow's Amazon press conference.
Jakob Nielsen: Kindle Content Must be Kindle-Specific
Mac Slocum
March 16, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (1)
|
Listen
Jakob Nielsen offers an in-depth look at Kindle formatting best practices:
For Kindle, it's certainly unacceptable to simply repurpose print content. But you can't repurpose website content, either. For good Kindle usability, you have to design for the Kindle. Write Kindle-specific headlines and create Kindle-specific article structures. [Link included in original post.]
Kindle Comes to the iPhone
Mac Slocum
March 4, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (6)
|
Listen
Users of the iPhone and iPod Touch can now tap into Amazon's Kindle store with the free Kindle for iPhone application. From The New York Times:
The move comes a week after Amazon started shipping the updated version of its Kindle reading device. It signals that the company may be more interested in becoming the pre-eminent retailer of e-books than in being the top manufacturer of reading devices.
Amazon is positioning the iPhone app as a gap filler: nibble on book content while waiting at the airport, in line, at a restaurant, etc., but settle in for deep reading with the original Kindle (or, presumably, the printed edition). Toward that end, the Times says Amazon is using a bookmark feature that keeps a reader's spot as they switch devices.
Reaction to the Kindle iPhone App
I'll be adding to this list over the next few days as more coverage appears (I highly recommend following the real-time Kindle trend on Twitter). Please share additional links and your own Kindle/iPhone analysis through the comments area.
Hands on: Kindle for iPhone a great Kindle companion
(Chris Foresman, Ars Technica)
Clicking on the "Get Books" button on the Home screen instructs users to got to Amazon's Kindle Store via a computer for "the best shopping experience." And they aren't kidding; while there is a link that will open the Kindle Store in MobileSafari, browsing and buying books this way is just plain frustrating. The Kindle's own integrated buying is far simpler in comparison. Apple presumably has this restriction in place so that developers don't abuse the App Store system, giving away free apps on Apple's dime and then selling content elsewhere. Perhaps Amazon can build an iPhone-browsable version of the Kindle Store and display it via an embedded browser, or better yet, perhaps Amazon and Apple can come to some sort of agreement to allow in-app purchasing.
First Impressions of Kindle on iPhone
(Walt Mossberg, AllThingsD)
... it is a solid basic app for reading books, and is especially valuable if you already own a hardware Kindle, as I do. In my brief tests, the iPhone app synchronized rapidly and perfectly with my purchased library of Kindle books on Amazon's servers, and allowed me to retrieve a previously purchased e-book, without paying again, just as my hardware Kindle does. It also synchronized to the furthest page I had read in that book on my Kindle. After reading for awhile on the iPhone, I performed that process in reverse, and my Kindle took me to the same spot where I had quit reading on the iPhone.
Kindle for iPhone Review
(Perrin Stewart, 148Apps)
Read more…... it's worth having the app on your device for the access to Amazon's virtual library alone. In many cases, the pricing on Kindle versions of books are much cheaper than other ebook stores (compare the Kindle version of "The Graveyard Book" for $9.99 to the Fictionwise version which is $17.99 and the stand-alone iTunes store app which is $17.99, for instance), and they often have books that other stores do not.
The "O'Reilly Bump" and Bookworm
Andrew Savikas
February 12, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
During his TOC Keynote, Tim O'Reilly talked about how the status he confers through "retweets" on Twitter are really just another form of publishing, not much different from the status we confer on authors by publishing them, or speakers by featuring them (especially at multiple conferences), or hackers by inviting them to Foo Camp.
On the Web, the effects are easily measured, and Liza Daly has a post over at O'Reilly Labs talking about the bump Bookworm got from the association with O'Reilly. Her graph tells the main story, but digging deeper reveals some notable nuggets (emphasis in the original):
Because of this integration [with Stanza], iPhone and iPod Touch users account for 10-20% of all visitors to Bookworm on any given day
Safari Books Online Goes Mobile
Allen Noren
February 9, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (9)
|
Listen
Like much of the publishing world, I'm eager to hear about Amazon's latest version of the Kindle. But that's not the only news today. I'm sitting here at TOC and talking to John Chodacki from Safari Books Online and, with a smile on his face, he's showing me beta version of m.safaribooksonline.com. (In full disclosure, Safari is a joint venture between O'Reilly and Pearson.)
The smile is well deserved. It looks great, it's fast, and I love the stripped-down navigation and lack of clutter. It's got a couple of bugs, and I don't like that I can't read our highly designed Head First books, but it's a Beta.
The mobile version will be released on 23 February, and if you're a Safari subscriber and have feedback, send it to safarimobile AT safaribooksonline DOT com. If you're not already a subscriber, you can get a free trial.
Computerworld: The Coming Ebook Revolution
Andrew Savikas
February 7, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (2)
|
Listen
Last week I linked to a phenomenal piece over on ArsTechnica on the future of digital books (and in the process neglected to thank Peter Brantley for the link). Today Mike Shatzkin (a co-author on the StartWithXML Report) passed along a pointer to another great article, this one from Computerworld's Mike Elgan listing six reasons that ebooks are about to explode . His reason #5 mirrors the theme of this year's TOC Conference, which starts on Monday:
5. A rise in books written for electronic reading. The shift from print to electronic will change the nature of the book itself. Many books will be shorter. They'll be more timely and culturally relevant. They'll be more colorfully and engagingly written. And they'll go after young readers like nothing before.
Elgan left off what I believe is the most important aspect of writing for electronic reading, which is hyperlinking, but the thrust here is that all publishing is becoming digital publishing, and existing publishers ignore or delay dealing with this at their peril. Or as Elgan puts it:
Like the move from silent pictures to "talkies," the transition to electronic publishing will prove fatal to laggards. Those aggressively pursuing and developing e-books will rise to take control of the publishing industry.
I agree completely, and am reminded of a line from Michael Porter's seminal article, Industry Transformation:
Because early experiments can be highly influential, companies that hope to be eventual industry leaders must think carefully about the precedents they set during this period.
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.
"Kindle Killer" Might be Hyperbole, but a Lot to Like About Shortcovers
Andrew Savikas
January 20, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (7)
|
Listen
The email invitation I received to check out shortcovers -- a new hybrid Web/mobile reading site from Canada's Indigo Books & Music -- touted it as a "Kindle Killer." While there's a lot to like about shortcovers, there's some shortcomings to that moniker. First, it's not a device, it's a Web site with a companion iPhone app (presumably wending its way through Apple's approval queue) and eventually other mobile apps as well. Second, while I was very impressed with their execution, I didn't see much that Amazon couldn't match with a similar mobile App.
That said, I really liked what I saw of shortcovers (though to be fair, it's hard to truly judge something you've seen only via Webex -- my comments are based on a brief demo, and apply primarily to books). In particular:
- iTunes-style previews and a la carte purchasing. Buying single chapters won't make much sense for some kinds of content, but we know from experience at Safari that a lot of readers like that kind of chunking.
- Online/offline options. Adding "buy the print version" to the iPhone equation might be shortcovers' biggest contribution to the mobile reading market. Sure you can buy books from Amazon's iPhone app, but you can't also buy/read an electronic version at the same time. A lot of our ebooks are sold bundled with the print version, and it's a great option to offer customers. (Print orders are fulfilled by Indigo in Canada, and by an as-yet-unnamed partner in the U.S.)
- Cloud-style syncing. Buy from your phone, and the book appears in your online "Library" accessible from a browser. Offline downloads won't be available initially, though apparently are on the way.
- Recommendation and annotation. This was key to Amazon's rise to dominance in online book retailing -- its database of reviews and recommendations, a system that got smarter the more people used it.
- Support for the EPUB standard, and the option for publishers to make their content available without DRM. As long as there's a choice, the market should take care of the rest.
Overall, shortcovers probably isn't the revolution they're implying, but it is a big next step for mobile reading and ecommerce.
For additional viewpoints, The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg recently reviewed shortcovers, and Chris Meadows on TeleRead has this counterpoint.
Palm's webOS Represents Major Shift for Syncing and Data
Peter Brantley
January 12, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
In an article covering the Palm Pre mobile device, Ars Technica makes a very important point about how devices utilize network connectivity, and what the assumptions are underlying their models of data storage and access:
Users just make changes to their data (contacts, calendar, mail, etc.), and Palm's webOS handles committing those changes to whatever canonical data source it is accessing in the cloud. And herein lies the most important difference between the webOS and Apple's iPhone OS: the iPhone was originally designed under the assumption that the canonical source of a user's data (contacts, calendar, music, tasks, etc.) is a Mac. Palm's webOS, in contrast, presumes that cloud-based services are the canonical source for your data (with the possible exception of media, which we don't know about yet) ...
Palm's webOS does not presume any sort of tether at all. The company has totally ditched the idea that you will use this phone in conjunction with a specific "main PC" that contains the canonical, authoritative repository of your data. Instead, webOS draws seamlessly on a variety of data services--not data repositories, but cloud-based services that actively feed the device both data and critical context.
This is a deep, fundamental break with both the iPhone and previous, repository-based smartphone usage models, and it's important enough that other smartphones are bound to follow.
iPhone App Outperforms Most Print (Computer) Books This Holiday Season
Andrew Savikas
January 7, 2009
| Permalink
| Comments (20)
|
Listen
Conventional wisdom suggests that when choosing pilot projects, you pick ones with a high likelihood of success. It's hard to argue that iPhone: The Missing Manual was a reasonable choice for testing the iPhone App waters. But while we knew it would do well, we've been quite pleased with just how well:
- If the iPhone App by itself had been a book, it would be a top 10 seller in BookScan for Computer Books this holiday season, based on just 17 days of sales
- The print version appears to have been unaffected, retaining a solid position in the top 3 for Computer Books in BookScan
- A full 1/3 of those buying the app are outside the US, mostly in countries where the print book is not readily available
There are certainly some who don't care for the book-as-app approach, preferring the library model (where one app enables reading multiple titles). It's also clear there's substantial customer interest in both options, and we strongly believe that offering a variety of options and letting customers choose is the right approach. This is a time for experimentation, and we'll be doing quite a bit more of it (format, pricing, content) in the digital -- and especially mobile -- space in the coming months.
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.
O'Reilly Ebooks: 130 Top Titles Now Available, Plus an iPhone App and Head First PDFs
Andrew Savikas
December 19, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (27)
|
Listen
While there will always be a demand for printed books, few of those books will have a life entirely disconnected from the wider digital Web. In that sense, all publishing is becoming digital publishing, and all writing is writing for the Web. That's a big shift, and it will take time for the existing players to make the transition (and we'll almost certainly lose some along the way). For now, here's a roundup of where things stand for us at O'Reilly on the ebook front:
- David Pogue's iPhone: The Missing Manual is now available as an App in the iPhone App Store. It's available for a limited time at an introductory price of $4.99 (the regular price will be $9.99). The App was built by Lexcycle, creators of the popular Stanza App, so you get the same rich reading experience (including live linking and cross references) as when you read our other books on Stanza. More titles will follow in the coming weeks.
- More than 130 titles, including many of our best sellers, are now available as ebook bundles, which can be read on a variety of ebook devices and systems, including Stanza on the iPhone, Bookworm, Amazon Kindle, and the Sony Reader. A full list is available at oreilly.com/ebooks, and includes the following: We're working to release the bulk of our backlist as ebook bundles during the next 90 days.
- All of our in-print Head First books will be available for purchase as PDFs within the next 24 hours (two of them already are via the Rough Cuts program). Those of you familiar with our Head First titles know their layout would not translate well to reflowable formats like EPUB. We regularly evaluate alternatives, but in the interim, we're happy to finally deliver something a lot of customers have requested--the option to purchase Head First books in digital form.
- In total, more than 700 of our books are currently available for sale as DRM-free PDFs or Ebook bundles (and even more are available through Safari Books Online). As more Ebook bundles become available, those are included as free updates for anyone who's already purchased just the PDF from oreilly.com.
- Our "Media Management" account pages for customers who have purchased ebooks from oreilly.com are now much more mobile-device friendly, and are accessible from oreilly.com/e. A screenshot from my iPhone below:
In the coming months we'll be working to make more of our new book content mobile-friendly, better integrate our book content with the Web, and continue exploring how to deliver our content in ways that take advantage of all that being digital has to offer.
If you're a publisher trying to figure out how to deal with digital, registration is open for our 2009 Tools of Change for Publishing Conference. Lexcycle's Marc Prud'hommeaux and Neelan Choksi will both be speaking. New York area publishers should also check out StartWithXML, our one-day forum deep-diving into how and why to move to flexible formats for more nimble book content.
Questions? Comments? Drop us a line through Get Satisfaction
- 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
-
