May 27, 2009

Blogs for Sale on Kindle – Selling Ice to Eskimos?

Posted by orionwell under blog to book, blogs & writers, Journalism & Newspapers, open publishing, publishing strategy, readership strategies | Tags: , , |
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blog on KindleAmazon recently rolled out a new program called Kindle Publishing for Blogs.  The beta program offers Kindle owners subscriptions to blogs.  Blogger receive 30% of anywhere from $0.99 to $1.99 per reader per month; so for every thousand readers, a blogger could get $999 to $1,999.  (It’s not clear how Amazon determines the price it charges for a particular blog subscription.)   The setup process  takes about 12 to 48 hours before a blog appears in the Kindle Store. 

For bloggers, it offers potentially wider distribution.  As Shawn Farner commented on GizHQ, “Aside from giving the content creator a weak 30 percent, the new system could present an opportunity for blogs to tap into new audiences and become more widely read, and I’m all for that.”

But it’s unclear how Amazon will get consumers to pay for what they can now get for free.  Kit Eaton of Fast Company wondered about Amazon’s larger strategy:

. . . blogs derive much of their power from their nowness–their real-time relevance is what’s presenting a challenge to traditional media reporting. By offering them to Kindle readers as so much dead text…is this Amazon’s subtle way of propping up the ailing newspaper industry?

Either that, or Amazon is thinking far into the future to a time when people will pay to read blog posts. Hard to imagine, but not outside the realm of possibility.

Some other possibilities:

  • Amazon sees blogs eventually supplanting newspapers (and in some cases magazines), at least in the US.  As these blog based news organizations grow in influence and sophistication, they may begin offering premium content for subscribers.
  • Amazon sees a tie between blogs and books.  Blogs can function as the progenitor of books, and as an extension to a published book.  Blogs by popular authors may command a small subscription price and help drive sales of books.  
  • Amazon thinks readers may be willing to pay for a different blog reading experience – something between a computer screen and a printed page.
  • Amazon isn’t sure what to expect but thinks the experiment is worth a shot.

One thing is sure; if the Kindle blog publishing program is successful, other purveyors of e-readers will soon follow with similar programs of their own.

 

Jeff Bezos and Bestselling Authors Discuss Amazon Kindle

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November 29, 2008

Is Plastic Logic’s Reader a Kindle Killer?

Posted by orionwell under Journalism & Newspapers, open publishing, publishing technology, readership strategies | Tags: , , |
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plastic-logic-e-reader-side-viewNew technology from Plastic Logic could threaten the Kindle’s brief reign as king of the e-reader hill.  Plastic Logic officially entered the e-reader wars when it unveiled its digital reader at the DEMO technology convention in September.  Its reader is based on plastic electronics and designed to display various types of media such as newspapers, e-books and magazines using E Ink electronic-display technology seen in similar devices.  According to Wired, the Plastic Logic’s device is sized like Letter-sized paper (8.5 by 11 inches), measures less than 0.3 of an inch thick and weighs less than a pound (about the size and weight of a pad of paper). The actual display area measures 10.7 diagonal inches.

By way of comparing it to the Amazon Kindle, Gizmodo characterized Plastic Logic’s reader thus:

Here is what the clunky Amazon Kindle should have been since the beginning . . .

Here are a quick overview of the Plastic Logic reader’s capabilities:

Download capability - The company says the device, when launched, will support both wired and wireless download of content.

Readability - High quality, but no backlight which means you need another light source if you’re reading in a location where light is dim.

Battery life - Generally about a week.  In part the longer life is due to the lack of a backlight.

Durability - Plastic Logic claims it is tough enough to withstand being hit with a shoe.  (Gizmodo checked this out and found it was indeed true.)

Interface - Gesture based page navigation, with the ability to type on a screen based keyboard and create markups using your finger or a stylus.

Formats - The Plastic Logic reader supports a full range of business document formats, such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and Adobe PDFs, as well as newspapers, periodicals and books. 

Here a couple ofvideo that demonstrate how the reader works. 

  

plastic-logic-e-newspaperThough the Plastic Logic reader will certainly change the e-book reader balance of power over time, it is probably more likely to impact the newspaper business first.  US newspaper are in a life and death struggle.  A large body of readers already gets their news online and would probably prefer to do so from a trusted source.  An inexpensive, widely adopted, mobile and convenient e-reader would allow newspapers to ditch printing and physical distribution and be profitable with a smaller advertising base.  It would also allow them to partner with online advertising networks in a more meaningful way. 

As far as e-books go, Plastic Logic can do both publishers and readers a great service by avoiding the use of proprietary formats.  While the Kindle has been successfulespecially relative to other e-book readers – e.g. the Sony Reader – it’s closed architecture will ultimately keep it from being a dominant force in book publishing.  And with open format competitors like Plastic Logic sporting a compelling new design and robust feature set, the Kindle could soon join the ranks of other e-book museum pieces.  And of course you can’t rule out e-books on the iPhone using reader software like Stanza.  Gizmodo had an apt suggestion for Jeff Bezos:

[He] should buy these guys and smash his frankenbookreader.

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August 26, 2008

Does Anyone Know How to Price an e-book?

Posted by orionwell under book marketing, publishing analytics, publishing strategy, publishing technology | Tags: , , , |
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What are the components of value in an e-book?  How much of the price depends on format, how much on content?

The debate about the best way to price an e-book seems to be endless.  The digital format severs that convenient anchor to a physical product and makes it more difficult for many consumers to determine what’s a fair price.  So far, there doesn’t seem to be a magic one price fits all formula similar to what Apple has used with its $0.99 per tune pricing for music on iTunes.  Publishers are left to experiment to establish the right price points.

Below are some of the factors that seem to regularly appear in commentaries on e-book pricing:

  • Type of book – Non-fiction seems to command different price points than fiction.
  • Goals of the consumer in purchasing it – If the content of the book promises to deliver special value – e.g. increases productivity or convey a new skill – the consumer might be willing to pay more.
  • Quality of presentation – The more professional the design and marketing of the e-book, the better the odds are that a consumer might pay a higher price.
  • Perceived value relative to a print version (if a print version exists) – If the title or author is well known, and the book is available in print at a substantially higher price, a prospective buyer might pay more for the e-book version because the perception of getting good value is heightened.

Judy Cullins presented a variety of different e-book pricing strategies in her article Top 7 Ways to Price your eBook to Sellon Christopher Knight’s Top7Business e-zine.  Like many who have commented on the price of e-books, she recommends pricing based on the value of the content and cautions against underpricing just becasue the format is digital.

Dvid Hennebery, in his article Setting the best price for your ebook for maximum profit, offers some additional strategies for selling more e-books.  These include offer bonus items with the e-book and bundling several e-books together under one price to effectively lower the price of each e-book if sold separately.  He also recommends that publishers or self-publishing authors survey previous buyers of their e-books to determine the price for a forthcoming e-book.

Perhaps in future, part of the e-book pricing equation will be the platform it’s delivered on and the extra capabilities for the reader that inhere in the platform.  Joe Wikert, commenting on a BusinessWeek article by Sarah Lacy, says:  “social network capabilities are something I’ve been pleading for Amazon to consider when developing Kindle version 2.0, 3.0 and beyond.”  An e-book that can take advantage of such features would have more intrinsic value than the same e-book on a reader that was less capable.

While we wait for accepted e-book price points to emerge from the fog, the somewhat chaotic auction between readers and publishers that is today’s pricing mechanism will continue.

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July 27, 2008

The e-book’s Endless Summer

Posted by orionwell under author tools, book marketing, open publishing, publishing strategy, publishing technology, readership strategies | Tags: , , , , , |
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Has the day of the e-book finally arrived.  There are signs that the answer is a definitive yes.  Though what the long term impact o the e-book will be is still not certain.   The good news has come from several quarters.

Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle

Amazon’s launch of Kindle has been successful.  Though Amazon has not released unit sales of the Kindle, the Silicon Alley Insider reports that some analysts estimate monthly volumes are running at 48,000 units and they could go as high as 72,000 per month by yearend.  As one mesaure of the uptake of e-books on the Kindle, Amazon has indicated that for titles available in both print and e-book form, e-book sales are running at about 12% of print sales.   

In another piece of positive e-book news, Sony has announced it will switch its Reader to the International Digital Publishing Forum’s (IDPF) EPUB standard.  This gives a significant boost to the beleagured format and could eventually put pressure on Amazon to abandon the proprietary format of the Kindle.

wholesale e-book sales US

wholesale e-book sales US

E-book sales figures are also growing smartly, though they still represent a small fraction of print sales.  The latest e-book wholesale revenue figures for the US, reported by the IDPF, show sales on track to reach about $40 million in 2008.  Worldwide e-book sales figures are also growing rapidly.  Ebooks Corp. expects the world market to reach $220 million this year and could be $3-5 billion in the next 5 years.  Macsimum News has specultedtht Apple may be coming out with an e-book reader, perhaps based on an enhanced iPod with a larger screen or a revived version of the iBook. 

Clearly the buzz around e-books is increaing.  So what might it mean for publishers?  Here are a few thoughts on how the e-book may take its place in publishing:

  • Serve as a testing platform for a new title to determine whether a publisher should invest in a print version.  This is already occuring in some areas o the publihsing world – e.g. romance and science fiction.  If sales of the e-book version pass a designated trigger point, a print version of the book is offered. 
  • Provide an inexpensive launching platform for new authors who would otherwise not be able to get their book published in a print format. 
  • Become the format o choice for publishers in fields where content changes rapidly – e.g. books related to computer technology.
  • Act as a viral marketing teaser.  E-books may serve as an excellent way to build interest in the print edition. 

Not everyone will in the industry will welcome a robust market for the e-book.  In the long term, perhaps the group most susceptible to the growing market for e-books will be distributors and wholesales o print books.  Digital distribution of more works will reduce their revenues and importance unless they are able to reinvent themselves.

I love my (print) book!

book love

Though it’s been a happier time for e-books, it is still to early to tell how significant a role they will play in book publishing.  In a recent post, Chris Webb argues that the book publishing industry might not follow the same path as the music industry with regard to digital content.  The book, after all, has been portable and mobile for years.  The experience of reading has changed little and the new crop of readers may not enhance that experience enough to pry customers away from the printed book.  He sums his case thus:

So, I guess the point I’m trying to make is, unlike the music business the relationship customers have with the printed book is still quite strong and have been meeting the experience expectation for hundreds of years. And I don’t say this because I’m overly sentimental traditionalist. But I do think it’s an important time to remind ourselves that the printed book still provides an excellent user experience. And this is a real strength that only enhances our position in a digital age.

But for now, the creators and purveyors of e-books can just be present in the moment and enjoy their summer of love.

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