I don’t really have insightful things to say about it. I just wonder if this made the Kindle obsolete. It sure seems like it (even if the price is initially high). So, you know, I wonder what it will mean for publishing. I still think that we’re on a course where publishers have no warehouses, but instead have a giant printer/binder on-sight. A book will be printed when there’s some indication that a customer wants it.
I still wonder if we won’t see a flip in the “publishing” model, too, where, instead of the publisher basically “hiring” a stable of writers, if we won’t see a stable of writers pool their resources to hire an editor, marketer/publicist, and copyeditor/designer (and, presumably, some kind of accountant).
I don’t know.
Strange times.
When the Professor and I were talking this weekend, I remarked, yet again, about how we all got email addresses my junior year of college, which we never used, because no one had computers and you had to go to the library to check your email. And they talked of some far off time in the future when everyone would have a whole gig of memory and you’d have every bit of content you ever generated with you for always and even then, you’d never be able to use a whole gig.
And now, not even 15 years later, we know, soon enough, you’ll carry around access to almost every book ever created, almost every bit of information generated by anyone else on a computer.
My own past seems so ancient. It’s hard to believe that my Grandma was born into a house without indoor plumbing or electricity and her family was wealthy.
I will never forget when my cousin M. and I asked my Grandma to tell us about the good old days and she said, “you can pry my microwave from my dead hands.”
Filed under: America how can I write a holy litany in your silly moo
I’m not so sure, as everyone else is, that this necessarily kills the Kindle right away. It’ll certainly make anyone considering buying a Kindle hold off until the iPad is released. But Apple only indicated that the battery life would be 10 hours, and didn’t say whether it’d be any longer if you’re just using it to read iBooks. To me, the fact that you can go a whole week without needing to charge your Kindle is its big selling point, and what makes it better for travel. I will hang on to mine for now but I’ll be interested to see.
I still wonder if we won’t see a flip in the “publishing” model, too, where, instead of the publisher basically “hiring” a stable of writers, if we won’t see a stable of writers pool their resources to hire an editor, marketer/publicist, and copyeditor/designer (and, presumably, some kind of accountant).
The analyst that I was listening to on Nice Polite Republicans this morning was saying that this was really making Amazon nervous — since the Kindle is heretofore unchallenged in the digital publishing/ebooks marketplace, Amazon has pretty much been able to set the price of an ebook and to declare terms that the publishers will have no choice but to accept if they want to play in Amazon’s marketplace.
In the iPad v. Kindle scenario, this gives the publishers something of a negotiating lever — if Amazon won’t budge on their terms/conditions, I’ll go to Apple. Etc.
It will also force Amazon to open up the Kindle API for 3rd party development (or, at least, if they’re smart).
It’s all so very Jean Luc from Star Trek when he’d read Shakespeare on his gadget. With that said, I don’t know about this. I know I can’t afford either the Kindle and the iPad at this period of time but I do know that I’m watching what is going to happen with this in the next 18 months.
One question I do have is: Do smaller publishing firms have all their stuff available for download? And did the deal with ATT create a monopoly to a degree? Those questions are on my mind about this.
Yeah, but here’s what I don’t get about that. Right now, Amazon basically sets their own prices for all books. I can say my book is $50, but, if Amazon decides to sell it for $25, that’s their business.
And that’s how it works with the ebooks for Kindle. Unless the trade publishers have some special deal, the Kindle set-up is pretty much the same. You tell Amazon what you charge for the book. They decide what they want to charge for the book, and they pay you an agreed upon price–usually some percentage of your list price.
So, all I can guess is that the trade publishers must have worked some special deal with Amazon that is now screwing them, because I don’t see why non-trade publishers would give a shit what Amazon charges for the book. Amazon’s paying them based on a percentage of what the publisher charges for the book.
Ebooks have always been a loss-leader at Amazon as a way to sell the Kindle. That’s what will screw Amazon, at least in the short-term.
But Amazon IS the ebook market at this point. It’d take a ballsy publisher to forgo them for Apple. And publishers aren’t usually ballsy.
I think you can just expect to see publishers going with both and letting the marketplace decide which it prefers.
the price model that interests me is that the NY Times announced not so long ago they’d be charging for content – then the NY Times shows up at the Apple event.
Coincidence? I think not.
Heh. I just wrote my own post on why this doesn’t make my Kindle obsolete. As an Apple and Kindle lover I think I’d be the first person to jump ship. But I’m not for several reasons.
Newscoma, smaller presses usually do not.have everything available. Well, I take that back. That’s part of the underlying mess with Google Books. Presses may have everything available and not know it!
But basically every part of the publishing industry is in flux and every part is going to look a lot different in five years.
The thing is, if you can read a pdf on an iPad, publishers can get their content to people with iPads w/out having to go through Apple’s designated channel.
The content distribution model is what makes me nervous at this point. The iPad is talking about retailing books at $14.99 base price. That’s more than I can get hardcovers for at CostCo, more than I can get hardcovers for at Target at 50% more than I can get frontlist titles for on my Kindle.
I can see more casual readers (like my husband, who is texting me on the subject as I type this) being fine with getting their 4 or 5 books a year for their iPad there are a number of things that put it out of the realm of consideration for a more intensive reader like myself. And that, I think, will continue to give Kindle an edge with publishers in setting their price.
As a writer I definitely see the models changing. I know of several writers already who are bypassing the traditional publishing models and just throwing all their efforts at the Kindle market. With astounding success. Granted, you have to be savvy at self-marketing and a lot of writers aren’t. But this guy sells all his books for $1-3 on the Kindle and has made more money doing that than the bulk of traditionally published authors have with their $1-3 per book royalty terms.
My main concern is that if Apple tries to dominate the book distribution market what their higher pricepoint will do for the readers of the world.
[...] Interesting discussion over at Tiny Cat Pants about how this device war will affect the publishing business. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Do you e-read?The next big thing in e-readers [...]
I don’t think any backlit LCD screen will render the kindle/nook obsolete.
I’d heard rumors that iPad was to have a screen that could switch from color LCD to B&W eInk on the fly. Had that been true, then Amazon may have had more to worry about. Of course victory will go to the first to create color eInk.
The iPad seems better set up to compete with the plethora of netbooks on the market.
The bigger kindle has a 9.7″ screen and sells for $489. I just bought the Missus an Acer Netbook with a 10.1″ screen, 250GB hard Drive, 1GB RAM, webcam w/mic, wireless, Windows 7. All for $228.
Why would I buy a Kindle?
You would buy a Kindle if
–you wanted a longer battery life
–you planned on reading on your device for more than 2 hours at a time
–you buy more than 3 new books a month
It’s definitely a device with more of an appeal to intense readers and students. But it still has definite plusses.
I’m just happy that everyone here is talking about the product rather than its (admittedly giggle-making) name. As a friend of mine said “yeah, I’d use it, but probably only three or four days a month.”
Where the hell were the women in that “branding” focus group?
My own past seems so ancient. It’s hard to believe that my Grandma was born into a house without indoor plumbing or electricity and her family was wealthy.
My mother was born into a house with no indoor plumbing and no refrigerator (they were middle-class and urban – there are still houses where I live with no indoor plumbing or electricity, but those families could get those services if they wanted). My dad grew up in colonialist Africa with African servants to do every little thing. I’m only 34, but my life is so far apart from theirs sometimes – then again, my grandfather started being a pharmacist before there was penicillin, and, by the time he retired at 88, was sending prescription claims online!
I’m just happy that everyone here is talking about the product rather than its (admittedly giggle-making) name.
I saved all that for Facebook. :) Apparently the entire office of a local technology firm spent all day making jokes about it. And they’re 95% men. If they could see what a bad idea the name was, why couldn’t Apple?
I agree that cholesteric displays are nifty. There’s definitely an advantage to having more of that “paper look”. The netbook lists it’s battery life at 8 hours. Some reviews listed 6 hours. Either way, I’m not going to need it for anywhere near that long in one day, so a nightly charge is no big deal.
I’m sure it’s a better fit for someone that reads as much as you do, Kat. I was trying to get my boss to buy me a Kindle in order to read pdf docs on it (he wouldn’t, the cheap bastard).
Other than that, though, the wiz-bang-ness of the display doesn’t cover the cost difference.
At least for me.
I don’t think Kat’s “more than 2 hours at a time” was a question of battery life, but of eye strain. Staring into a light source (like a back-lit screen) why trying to focus your eyes enough to read for a prolonged period of time is pretty fatiguing to the muscles of the eye.
I guess my biggest question about the iPad is – how secure is it? Should I risk keeping all my sensitiveish data on it or should I keep carrying my secure USB flash drive?
Yes, dolphin, that’s the beauty of bistable cholesteric; no backlight flicker or vertical refresh flicker, so you don’t get the eye strain that can come from it.
ICE: a smart guy I used to work with once said, “Putting important information on a PDA is like keeping it on a chalk board and hoping it doesn’t rain.”
In a rare occurrence, I completely agree with Exador. One should not keep sensitive data on a PDA and the iPad is a big PDA.
I hate I no longer get paid to think about this shit because I have a lot to say.
The story here isn’t Kindle vs. iPad. It’s Amazon vs. iBooks. How much music does Amazon sell? Get used to the higher price point.
Publishers don’t like having Amazon tell them what their books are worth. A $9.99 price point for frontlist will never allow a publisher to recoup money spent on advances and marketing for those books. Also, those blockbuster books help fund smaller books so that more gets published. Amazon is already making sure publishers have fewer resources to do that…and those authors will flock to CreateSpace.
iBooks allows for publishers to control pricing a little better and have another retail outlet that allows them to cut out the middleman (including the one I used to work for). And iBooks will run on those netbooks people seem to think will be rendered obsolete because consumer research indicates that dedicated ereaders will soon go the way of the 8-track in favor of more multi-function devices. Additionally, the ePub format is a lot more publisher friendly than Amazon’s proprietary Kindle format. More content will be available (frontlist).
Mark my words…the Kindle is the new Zune.
Maybe I’m biased because I already have one, but I don’t see how the iPad kills the Kindle (or e-readers in general, which is really the better comparison).
What we’re talking about is single-function devices (kindle, sony e-reader, etc) vs. convergent devices like the iPad. I’m all about convergent devices, but unfortunately it looks like the iPad is a closed, limited convergent device that kinda sucks, so I wouldn’t get one.
Twice as much for only 10 hours of battery life? Not competitive with a kindle or sony for merely reading books. Maybe for other stuff.
Lesley: the difference between the kindle and the zune (imo) is that the kindle is saved by being an actually decently usable device, whereas the Zune was basically a hunk of crap. If you ignore amazon’s proprietary format and just focus on it as a general-purpose e-reader like any other, it compares pretty favorably. At least, it did for me. The GPRS wireless put it over the top of the Sony when I was comparing them.
In a rare occurrence, I completely agree with Exador.
I keep holding out hope, you’ll get wiser with age.
Chris–the Kindle (now) is a decent product. They’re going to continue trying to keep up by improving the product, by buying apps to run Kindle books on Apple devices, etc. But the main point is that it’s an Amazon product. Amazon is really good at a lot of things, but manufacturing tech gadgets isn’t one of them.
And I still say that dedicated ereaders are just not going to last in the long term. Example–how many people (aside from you, Chris) who have awesome camera but most of their pictures are taken with their phones? See, people don’t want to have to carry around a bunch of devices. They want one thing to do everything, particularly people who use mass transportation.
The Kindle is a good product – several friends at work have them and love them and what they pay for books. That’s not the issue I see. Being an electronic book, paper, and magazine format combined with a browser and a computer that’s able to also do spreadsheets, documents and presentations (with their iWork apps) do make this an ideal device for lot of people.
Developers and designers and photographers who need power apps like Photoshop won’t buy it but they aren’t the target – they’re too small a group. The target is people like me – I’ve got a power laptop my employer provides. I don’t need power. I need something to suff the web, answer email, Read a book, do the occasional spreadsheet or Christmas letter, and get to Turbo Tax online once a year.
Sure, I can do that with a netbook (though I’d rather it ran system 10.5) and a Kindle but then I also have to pay for broadband at home ontop of buying those two pieces of hardware.
I don’t think so. I’d rather go for the iPad and have 3G access than the alternative. When I go into Borders or Books a Million, I pay more than $15. I could go to Target, WallyMart or wherever and pay less, but they aren’t convenient to me and I’m not going to go through huge numbers of books on it. Enough to make it an attractive option, maybe.