Entries tagged with “software” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Google Opens Mobile Access to Public-Domain Books
Andrew Savikas
February 5, 2009
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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
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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
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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.
Open Question: Standalone iPhone Ebooks vs. E-Readers
Mac Slocum
December 1, 2008
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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?
Ebook to iPod to Hard Copy Purchase
Peter Brantley
November 18, 2008
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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.
Mobile First, PC Second
Mac Slocum
November 17, 2008
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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.
New York Times Movie Reviews Released as API
Peter Brantley
October 30, 2008
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The New York Times has released an application programming interface (API) to its movie reviews, which is a rather significant feature. From the Times' Open blog:
Finally -- and this is the key -- we're giving you access to our Movies search feature, containing all 22,000 reviews indexed by title, reviewer's name, director's name, names of the top five actors, and plot keywords. So, if you'd like to build a list of what The New York Times thinks of Pedro Almodóvar or Lindsay Lohan, we've got you covered. And this is only the beginning: in the next few weeks we'll be rolling out better lookup and search features that will let you call up reviews based on publication date or the movie's release date, just to name two.
The Times also released campaign finance and metadata APIs earlier this month.
Band to Release iPhone Album App
Mac Slocum
September 2, 2008
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Snow Patrol and its label Fiction/Polydor will release an interactive iPhone/iPod Touch application to coincide with the band's next album. From Music Week:
The application, which will be downloadable online, will enable fans to access a raft of extra content including artwork, behind-the-scenes images and lyrics via the touch screen of their handsets, marking the first time a music artist has made use of the iPhone's extra capabilities.
Turning content into an iPhone application initially seemed like a loophole in the iTunes App Store, but Snow Patrol's effort could signal a wave of new applications that blend interactivity, content and branding.
Q&A with Developer Who Turns Ebooks into iPhone Applications
Mac Slocum
August 21, 2008
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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.)
Release Early, Release Often: Agile Software Development in Publishing
Liza Daly
June 12, 2008
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"How do Web startups release three or four new versions of a product in the time it takes publishers to launch just one new feature on their online platforms?"
This question framed "The Agile IT Organization," a lively and well-informed discussion at the recent Society for Scholarly Publishing annual conference in Boston. As a software engineer, I've used both agile and traditional product development methodologies and I was interested to hear the perspectives of other programmers as well as publishers who've gone through the process.
Geoffrey Bilder of CrossRef provided an introduction to agile development practices, which are concisely summarized in plain English by a core set of principles.
Summarizing even further, agile development means:
- Minimal up-front specification. A project has high-level goals (e.g. "make our back catalog searchable and available for print-on-demand purchase"), but is not fully described before development begins.
- Frequent, short-cycle releases. A project is broken up into mini-projects, each with a small set of features that take only a few weeks to implement. Every release ("iteration") has a specification, development and testing phase. This means that every couple of weeks the software is fully usable, although it may have very few features at the start.
- Change to the product design is accommodated and even expected. Market conditions, corporate re-organization or user demands may mean that new features are added or old ones are re-worked. Changes are treated as just another iteration.
The panel at SSP focused on two approaches: internal, IT-driven products, and those developed by a third-party vendor. Larry Belmont, manager of online development at the American Institute of Physics, gave an excellent presentation on the in-house approach. His organization ran its first agile project with a timeline measured in days rather than weeks or months.
Leigh Dodds, CTO of Ingenta, provided the vendor perspective, and described the principles of a formal type of agile development known as Scrum.
The panel was, to their credit, enthusiastic about the approach, but agile development requires commitment and is not right for every
organization or project. Some caveats that need to be emphasized:
- Short development cycles come with a price: you will be asked to review and comment on small pieces of the larger project, and be involved on an almost daily basis. Many publishers need vendors they can treat like plumbers: "I want a new sink put here, it should look like this, call me when it's done." If someone in your organization isn't prepared to think very hard every day about copper pipe fittings, agile isn't right for you.
- Project managers must be empowered to make decisions. Whether the project is in-house or vendor-driven, every day the PM will be asked to make calls without appealing to higher powers. When editorial buy-in is required, or when the product needs a larger review, consider a hybrid approach: appoint a single decision-maker with deep editorial knowledge to work on evaluating, testing and approving each iteration, but use a more traditional alpha/beta/gold release process for the wider group.
- Product features may change, but time and budget should be invariant. Hard deadlines might seem to be antithetical to the free-wheeling, change-friendly agile approach, but in my experience they're critical. They focus the entire team: key decision-makers cannot spend weeks in committee, IT personnel don't fear the "death march" project with no end in sight, and it's more difficult to introduce budget overruns that cause friction with management and vendors. If an agile project does run out of time, you will still have a launchable product that's been thoroughly tested and reviewed all the way down the line, not something just out of beta with weeks of QA ahead. Many agile methodologies use the hard deadline, or timebox, as the primary method of structuring the project.
"Release early, release often" can sound a lot like "throw whatever we've got out the door." This is one reason why the iterative approach has been so embraced by Web startups: each small release has been thoroughly tested and evaluated, and there's never a moment where the software doesn't work. It's possible to to go live with a project that might not be "finished" according to the original master plan, but might otherwise be caught up in insurmountable technical hurdles or tied up in editorial review.
If publishers are going to be ready for an "iPod moment," this kind of flexibility and responsiveness is critical.
Treating Ebooks Like Software
Mac Slocum
June 5, 2008
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Peter Kent, DNAML's senior vice president for U.S. operations, brings a software-centric perspective to ebooks. In the following Q&A, Kent discusses the merits of in-book transactions, affiliate marketing, and other digital initiatives that can benefit book publishers.
Q: In your presentation at last month's IDPF Digital Book '08 you discussed treating ebooks like software. Do you feel the software model is directly related to ebooks, or are there specific aspects of the software model ("try before you buy" trialware, download ebooks through multiple outlets, etc.) that are more in line with ebook/publishing goals?
Not sure of the distinction you're making here. I think that there's much about software distribution that applies to ebooks, and why not? Ebooks are, of course, pieces of software. In particular, providing ebooks in a trialware format makes a lot of sense, and is a proven model. That's why Amazon let's people view a portion of a book, that's why Barnes & Noble likes having people in their stores hanging out reading. And of course, download through multiple outlets makes a lot of sense, too. Why wouldn't you distribute your products as widely as possible? If trialware works -- and it does -- then you naturally want as many people as possible to get the books in their hands. The large, established publishers are going to have a shock when they see the new book-distribution world. It's no longer a gentleman's game in which everyone hands over their books to a bookstore, and then they all compete on the same level. In the future the more aggressive publishers are going to go out and find book buyers even before the buyers have thought about buying!
Q: Do publishers focus too much on the "book" aspect of ebooks? Would a shift toward a file/software perspective open things up?
Some do. The more advanced publishers understand what's going on, but I do think there's still a bias toward the old method of distributing books: give your books to a retailer who puts the books on shelves. Certainly up until recently most publishers have had the idea in their mind that in order to sell ebooks they have to create the ebooks and then give them to Amazon and other retailers to sell. Little thought has gone into new methods of distribution. What may save the publishers is that new distributors will come on the scene: distributors who understand the new landscape and go out and push the books.
Q: Are ebooks available through sites like Download.com, Tucows.com and other software-specific hubs? If not, should they be?
You can already find ebooks in many software download sites, though most do not yet have specific ebook categories. ZDNet's download site doesn't have an ebook category, for instance, though it does have an ebook "tag." Download.com has a music category and a games category, why wouldn't they have a book category? Of course they will eventually, as more and more books become available. But one thing holding back the creation of ebook categories is that only free books, or trialware books, will fit. Once books from major publishers are commonly sold as trialware, you'll see the download sites pay more attention.
Q: What about ebook availability through P2P sites/mechanisms, such as BitTorrent?
Trialware books are perfect for this form of distribution.
Q: In your conversations with publishers and others in the industry, do you feel most people understand the basics of internal ebook transactions and affiliate tagging? How do you describe these concepts to newcomers?
Most publishers haven't the slightest idea about this. When I ask publishers "do you know what affiliate marketing is?" I typically get a response such as "um, well ...". So if they don't understand what affiliate marketing is, they certainly don't understand affiliate tagging. This isn't true of all publishers; Harlequin, for instance, is really good at online marketing, and certainly understands affiliate-marketing well.
So, how do I explain these things? Well, by internal transactions, I mean that each ebook is its own shopping-cart system. You reach a point inside the book that you cannot get past without paying. You enter your credit card information into the book itself (though the actual form is retrieved from a server so, for instance, the book price can be changed at any time), and when you submit your card and it's approved, the server automatically unlocks the book, so you can continue reading.
As for affiliate tagging, this is the ability to add a code to each book you distribute -- one code for each specific distribution channel -- so the publisher or distributor knows where that book came from. If you distribute through Web Site A, 10,000 people download the book, and 500 buy it, you know that those 500 people came from Web Site A. If you put the book in a magazine insert, 100,000 people buy the magazine, 10,000 copy the book to their computers, and 500 buy it, then you know that those 500 customers came from that particular magazine insert. Thus you can pay the right company the required affiliate commissions.
So these two components, along with the ability to partially lock a book, allow you to create trialware books -- try-before-you-buy books -- that can be distributed widely, through many different channels.
Q: Is there an opportunity for competing publishers to generate affiliate revenue by selling other publishers' books?
Absolutely! Books can be bundled within books -- certainly our DNL format allows this -- so a publisher might bundle several locked books at the end of the book. Those books might belong to the publisher or, in appropriate cases, from another publisher. In particular, of course, small publishers could benefit from these sorts of relationships with other publishers.
Q: What is the upside of "try before you buy" in ebooks?
A try-before-you-buy book with built-in transaction processing, and built-in affiliate tagging, opens up a whole new world of distribution options. All of a sudden, the book can go anywhere. Sell computer books? Talk with computer manufacturers about putting your books on the desktop of every new computer sold, and talk to software manufacturers about bundling the books in their software downloads. Sell photography books? Put them on the software CDs inside digital-camera packaging. Sell wine books? Give away try-before-you-buy books on wine Web sites. Science fiction novels? Give books away on fan sites. Those three things -- try-before-you-buy, internal transaction processing, and affiliate tagging -- free books from ecommerce Web sites, and provide almost limitless marketing opportunities.
Q: What viral/social aspects does your company include in ebooks? (Email to a friend, etc.)
We include Email-to-a-Friend, of course. If you try a book, like it, and buy it, that book is now unlocked. But if you email it to a friend or colleague, when it lands on the recipient's computer it's now locked. Word of mouth is hugely important in book sales; it always has been. Email-to-a-Friend is essentially a modern-day word-of-mouth feature. We also allow people to share notes. Members of a book club could highlight areas of the books, add notes, then email the highlights and notes to each other. Members can import these things, and see who said what based on the name at the top of the notes.
Q: Are ebook giveaways useful?
Of course. Companies such as Harlequin use giveaways to build interest. I think, though, that these giveaways will get more sophisticated, as publishers learn more about try-before-you-buy books. For instance, if you're giving away a book, you're hoping that the reader will come to your site and buy another one at some point. But why not create a giveaway book, a single file, that includes a book for sale at the end of the free book? Or several books from which the reader can choose?
Q: Do you recommend user tracking and registration? How in-depth should this tracking/registration be?
Of course you want as much information as possible; we're in business, after all, so we need to create relationships with buyers. Amazon does this. I like to point out to publishers that someone owns the relationship, it's just not them. If you sell photography books and someone buys one of your books through Amazon today, tomorrow Amazon will start promoting other photography books to this buyer. Some of these books will be yours, perhaps, but most won't! So Amazon's tracking, and Amazon's benefiting. Publishers are going to learn to do the same for themselves, and some already are.
Hacking the Kindle
Mac Slocum
June 4, 2008
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Reversing Everything popped the hood on the Kindle and poked around the underlying software. If you like to tinker (and don't mind putting devices in peril), this three-part Kindle series is worth a look:
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