Tagesarchive: October 8, 2013

I have been reporting since April of this year that Amazon is quietly working to explode the audiobook market, and today Amazon gave me more proof. They’re now putting more effort into building their audiobook catalog while simultaneously working to sell more audiobooks.

The Bookseller reported yesterday that Amazon is no longer satisfied with signing book contracts with the best performing authors; they’re also using Audible to pursue audiobook rights directly from authors or their agents:

Pandora White, audio publisher at Orion, said the area had become “a battleground” with “a fight all round for unabridged rights”. She said: “Audible is now approaching agents and offering a better royalty. It looks at what titles aren’t available in audio, then goes and looks to get hold of the rights itself . . . It is forcing us to change how we work. We have to emphasise the quality of our product, the fact we can link in to the publicity and marketing of the print book. It also means we’re exploiting the rights more to show agents we can, and our list is growing, which is a good thing.”

This effort has reportedly grown out of customer requests for audiobook editions for particular titles. According to Laurence Howell, director of content at Amazon-owned Audible, “Customers also drive us—if they ask us, ‘Why can’t I buy an audio version of this?’, we will go and look to see who has the rights."

Amazon has been using customer demand to drive their author and publisher recruitment efforts ever since the Kindle Store opened, so it comes as no surprise that they would expand that to include audiobook editions.

In other news, Amazon has relaunched their audiobook/ebook bundling program and expanded it with new features. They’ve gone beyond simply suggesting a bundle when you buy an ebook or audiobook and are now offering retroactive bundles based on ebooks you already own. The new program is called Matchmaker, and it is going to work similar to the much-maligned Matchbook program.

Matchmaker is the name given to the algorithm that is going to troll your Kindle library and look for titles that have matching audiobook titles and are compatible with Whispersync for Voice. Amazon says that you will be able to buy an audiobook and add narration to your ebook with only a single click.

They’re also going to be offering limited time deals on select titles, drawing from a catalog of 30,000 compatible titles.

I wonder if they’ll be basing the deals on the audiobook best seller list they launched in May? It would make sense, I think, to offer deals on the most popular titles.

image by Paul A Hernandez

The Japanese telecom NTT Docomo got a lot of press attention last week when they announced a Google Glass alternative, but it looks like the early coverage may have missed about half of the story. NTT Docomo is exhibiting at CEATAC this week and they are showing off not one but 4 Google Glass competitors (at least).

Charbax shot this video in their booth and he caught at least 4 distinctly different devices on camera. There might have been more, but it’s not completely clear whether the extra devices were different models or simply differently colored shells. He didn’t get a chance to use any of the device due to the long line, unfortunately.

Update: At first I thought there were 3 demos, but that was because I was skipping back and forth and managed to miss one.

The total video is over 22 minutes long and covers more than just the Google Glass competitors, but I am really only interested in them. From what I can tell a couple of the designs take a radically different approach to wearable tech than does Google Glass.

There is the auto-translator which got a lot if attention last week, but there is also another model which appears to function as an augmented reality interface for whatever computer you may be using. That is a far more ambitious and capable design than Google Glass, which is not capable of much more than posting notifications at the edge of your vision.

There was also at least one face recognition demo, and a spatial interface demo.

I didn’t catch any info on when these demos might hit the market, but I think I did hear that NTT Docomo  would like to get all of the functions into a single device.

Watch the video for more info.

Update for 18 July 2014: With Amazon having launched the Kindle Unlimited service this morning, it was high time that I updated this post to reflect the changed market.

The following post matches up 5 different services that are available in the US or globally:

• Kindle Owner’s Lending library
• Kindle Unlimited
• Oyster
• Scribd
• Bookmate

Content

• Oyster offers 500,000 titles, but few are frontlist and few are bestsellers.
• Amazon boasts that the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library stocks over 550 thousand titles, most of which were added via KDP Select.
• Scribd has a catalog of over 400,000
• Kindle Unlimited has 650,000 titles at launch, many of which are also found in KOLL. There are also 7,300 audiobooks.
• Bookmate offers 400,000 titles, but they tend to be concentrated in certain markets.

Cost

• Oyster costs $10 a month for unlimited access.
• Kindle Owner’s Lending Library comes as part of an Amazon Prime membership, and in the US that costs $79 per year but includes other extras like free 2 day shipping and free streaming video. You are limited to borrowing a single ebook title each month.
• Scribd costs $9 a month for unlimited access.
• Kindle Unlimited costs $9.99 for unlimited access, but limits you to only having 10 titles at a time.
• Bookmate costs $5 a month, which is usually billed through a subscriber’s cellphone company.

Availability

Oyster and Kindle Unlimited are only available in the US. Scribd is available globally, and the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library is only available to Kindle owners in the US, UK, and other select markets.

Bookmate is technically available globally but the company is concentrating its attention on certain markets: Russia, the Ukraine, Turkey, and Kazakhstan. They plan to expand into Scandinavia and Latin America by the end of 2014.

Apps

• Oyster launched their pilot with an iPhone app, and later released iPad and Android apps.
• Scribd has iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, and iPad apps, and you can read in your web browser.
• Kindle Owner’s Lending Library is only available on a Kindle.
• Kindle Unlimited is available on any Kindle device or app.
• Bookmate offers apps for Android and iOS.

Amazon made some changes to the Kindle HD when they relaunched it a few weeks ago and thanks to iFixit we know how what’s different.

The repair experts at iFixit posted a set of teardown photos last week which revealed that the new tablet has many of the same components as last year’s model and is easier to disassemble for repair.

The new Kindle Fire HD is a 7″ tablet running Amazon’s own FireOS on a dual-core 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4 processor with half the storage but most of the same hardware specs as last year’s model. While some might describe it as not exactly a state of the art, it’s current asking price of $139 makes it one of the better tablets in for under $140.

By the time iFixit was done they reported that this tablet was relatively easy to repair (just like its predecessor). The back popped off with a little effort applied by a plastic disassembly tool, revealing that the new KFHD has its speakers, circuit board, and battery all located in about the same place as on last year’s model. The ports and buttons have of course been moved, and the new KFHD has an angular back rather than a smoothly curved back.

They also found that the front glass panel was relatively easy to disassemble, which should make it easier to perform a DIY repair without having to buy an expensive LCD screen component. That is an improvement on last year’s KFHD, which iFixit described as having a difficult to repair screen.

You can read more details about the guts of the KFHD 2013 (and view more photos) at iFixit.

Europe is rapidly replacing the Far East as the source of the most interesting ereader news and the ImcoV6L is no exception.

This ereader might look rather ordinary but it is running Android on 1GHz Rockchip CPU. It has 256MB RAM, 4GB of Flash storage, and a microSD card slot. It’s built around a Pearl HD E-ink screen with a resolution of 1024×758. It also offers a capacitive touchscreen, frontlight, speakers, a headphone jack, and Wifi.

According to the press release, this ereader will include support for DRMed ebooks and audiobooks (via the eLibrary WMA App). It will also let users install their own apps, though I am not sure that will be worth much. This ereader has a CPU comparable to a cheap tablet and a limited amount of RAM, so I am not convinced that anyone will really be that interested in installing apps.

The imcoV6L is expected to be available soon, and it will be sold in Germany at eBook.de with a retail of 99 euros.

That is the same price as the Tolino Shine, the 6″ ereader launched earlier this year in Germany. Both devices have about the same hardware specs and can similar support for DRMed Epub ebooks. They can even buy ebooks from all the same ebookstores.

eBook-Fieber.de

Barnes & Noble has put out a press release today that has me scratching my head. The purported reason for the pr is that B&N wants to tell you that B&N College has contributed to EpubCheck, but I am interested in this release because some details don’t add up.

Excerpt:

Barnes & Noble College, a subsidiary of NOOK Media LLC, the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, announced today that its digital education team has made significant updates to the open source EPUBCheck tool, creating a new way to evaluate EPUB files to ensure they adhere to industry standards. Originally created by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), EPUBCheck is a tool to validate and detect types of errors in IDPF EPUB files. The updates created by the NOOK Digital Education team make it more manageable and easier to facilitate the tool’s integration into publishing workflows and workflow management systems.

EpubCheck is the open source tool everyone uses to make sure their Epub ebooks comply with the Epub spec. Lots of companies and individuals have worked on it, so B&N’s contributions aren’t really all that newsworthy.

But as I read this press release I started wondering why B&N wanted to tell us about this. That is a simple question; they wanted the free advertising from the news coverage.

And I am also wondering why B&N made sure to include a mention of B&N College. This is a B&N subsidiary that runs 600 or so college bookstores under contract to various colleges and universities. It originally belonged to B&N and then was sold off to B&N Chairman Len Riggio before being bought back by B&N. It was later merged into Nook Media, for reasons I never understood.

Why did B&N choose to mention the college bookstore subsidiary? Sure, this division did develop NookStudy in 2009 so they do have some digital chops. But why mention them when B&N could just refer to Nook Media?

I can’t help but wonder if B&N is laying the groundwork for something. Maybe they’re selling off B&N College and want to raise its profile first? Or maybe they plan to launch something related to digital textbooks?

Or maybe I am reading too much into this. What do you think?