Nate Hoffelder

Apple released their annual report last night, and mixed in with the generally good news were a few misleading statistics.

With revenues of $37.4 billion for the June quarter, Apple generated a profit of $7.7 billion dollars. Apple sold 35.2 million iPhones in the third fiscal quarter, up 13% from last year, and they sold 13.3 million iPads, down 9% from last year.

All in all Apple’s news was mixed but not necessarily bad (not unless you are an analyst). But there are a few details that I would like to quibble over. In particular, during the earnings conference call following the release of the quarterly report, Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that:

In education, iPad remains the tablet of choice with 85% share of the U.S. education tablet market according to the latest published estimate from IDC. We’ve now sold 13 million iPads to education customers globally.

While that is strictly true, it’s not the complete story. Yes, Apple leads the academic market for tablets, and schools are buying tablets by the truckloads to equip classrooms and launch 1:1 programs. But not all schools are buying iPads to give to students; they’re also buying laptops, including Chromebooks.

Google has been interested in the educational market since 2011, and their primary focus is on a type of laptop called the Chromebook. Chromebooks run ChromeOS on what would best be described a cheap laptop hardware (although there are a few premium models like the Pixel) with an Intel CPU. Google has a number of hardware partners, including Acer, which lead the pack with 30% of the Chromebook market last quarter.

Google has been so focused on laptops that they only belatedly added tablets, including the Nexus 7 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab, to their Google for Education program in November 2013.

Given how Chromebooks and iPads are used in schools, they are direct competitors. So while Apple is dominating the educational tablet market, that is only because one of their leading competitors for school district dollars isn’t focused on tablets.

Google reported a few days ago that they sold a million Chromebooks were sold to schools last quarter (another 800,000 were sold to consumers). While that might not look nearly as impressive as Apple’s 13 million iPads, the numbers suggest  that Google could be selling as many Chromebooks to schools as Apple is selling iPads.

We don’t have specifics on how many iPads Apple sold to schools last quarter, we do know that Apple last reported in February 2013 that they had sold 8 million iPads to schools around the globe.

A quick back of the envelope calculation tells us that schools bought 5 million iPads in the 17 months since February 2013, which means Apple averaged under a million iPads sold to schools each quarter – an average which is less than the million Chromebooks sold.

So while Apple may be dominating the education tablet market, they’re not dominating the larger educational gadget market. And that is the real story here, and it comes as no surprise.

Based on what I saw at the Computers in Libraries conference a couple months ago, Chromebooks are getting a lot more buzz in edtech at the moment than iPads. Clearly that has translated into sales. For example, only today a school district in MD announced that they would be spending $15 million to buy 40,000 Chromebooks.

But will it continue? I think so. Chromebooks are cheaper, they are supported by educational publishers, and iPads are great but they lack keyboards, which limits what you can do with them.

With analysts predicting 5 million Chrombooks sold by the end of the year, I am expecting that Chromebook sales will outpace iPad sales for at least the next year and possibly even longer.

Question

Have you used a Chromebook? What did you think?

Amazon is regularly cast as the bully in coverage of its contract dispute with Hachette, but a new survey shows that all the negative press is not having much effect.

Peter Hildick-Smith of the Codex Group recently released the results of a survey of 5,300 book consumers in the US, and it turns out most respondents  had never heard about the unresolved contract negotiations. Over 60% of those surveyed indicated that they were unaware of the standoff, and of the 39% who had read or heard about most didn’t care.

Of that 39%,  a sizable number (39%) had no opinion, while 37.5% said that the dispute had not changed their buying habits and 4.4% said they were buying more books from Amazon. Only 19% of those book buyers aware of the contract dispute said they were buying fewer books from Amazon.

In other words, all of the media coverage has only managed to convince around 8% of book buyers that Amazon was at fault. That is a lot of ink spilled for not much effect.

The indifference does not bode well for groups like Authors United, which recently formed with the goal of pressuring Amazon to acquiesce to Hachette in the negotiations. Organized around authors who had signed the open letter drafted by Douglas Preston, the group plans to continue their campaign with a full-page advert in the New York Times (funded out of their own pockets). I would wish them luck, but the results mentioned above would suggest that they are wasting their time and money.

This survey confirms earlier reports from early June that Amazon’s brand image was largely untarnished by the press coverage, although it does seem to have had an increasing effect over the past 7 weeks. Perhaps if the dispute drags on for a few additional quarters, Amazon might begin to feel the pinch.

Publishers Lunch

The Dutch ereader retailer Icarus is back again today with their second device launch in as many weeks.

Icarus is launching a 9.7″ ereader called the Excel 2. It improves on the model launched last year with a faster CPU and more RAM, but it is still unfortunately using the same screen and touchscreen panel.

The Icarus Excel 2 sports a 9.7″ E-ink screen with a screen resolution of 1200 x 825. It runs Android 4.0 on a 1GHz CPU with 512MB RAM and 4GB internal storage, and it has a Wacom touchscreen, Bluetooth, Wifi, and a microSD card slot.

In short, the Icarus Excel 2 is a rebranded Onyx Boox M96 and thus has the same limitations (no frontlight, undesirable touchscreen, etc). Like the M96 Universe which was announced earlier this month, the new Excel is on my don’t buy list.

Here’s why I recommended avoiding the M96:

To put it simply, the M96 Universe is hobbled by the fact that it is really an updated version of an older Onyx ereader – one that was developed before frontlights and capacitive touchscreens were readily available.

If measured spec for spec, the M96 Universe would come up short when compared to the T68 Lynx. The larger device sports a screen with a resolution of 825 x 1200, which is a significantly lower resolution than the 6.8″ screen on the T68 Lynx. The smaller device has a screen resolution of 1440 x 1080, and I think you would appreciate the difference.

As I reported earlier, I would suggest you get the T68 Lynx. I reviewed it a couple weeks ago, and I have found it possible to turn it into a nifty little E-ink Android tablet.

Of course, that is simply my opinion which is an opinion and not a decree.

But if you do get the larger ereader I would recommend buying the M96 Universe, and not the Icarus Excel 2. I plan to avoid buying from Icarus because I have had a couple bad experiences with their retail operation.

The M96 Universe is sold by Arta Tech, a Polish company, and can be pre-ordered from Onyx-Boox.com for 309 euros. That alone makes it a better buy than the Icarus Excel 2, which is going to sell for 399 euros.

Lesen.net

In a stunning upset, used ebook marketplace Tom Kabinet has survived its first round of legal battles today in the Netherlands. A judge for the District Court of Amsterdam has ruled today that Tom Kabinet can continue to operate while it is being sued in court.

Launched just over a month ago, Tom Kabinet enables users to resell ebooks, both DRM-free and ebooks protected by digital watermarks (but not ebooks encumbered by Adobe DRM). The site was in operation for only 8 days when it got its first legal nastygram from the Nederlandse Uitgeversverbond (NUV), the Dutch Trade Publishers Association, which believes that the site is out and out illegal.

That legal notice was inspired in part by a letter that Tom Kabinet had sent to publishers. The operators of the site explained what how the site worked and noted that the site earned a 10% commission on ebooks sold there. They offered to pay a 5% royalty to authors for each ebook sold in Tom Kabinet’s marketplace.

Believing Tom Kabinet to be illegal, the publishers either declined or ignored the offer and instead responded with a promise of a lawsuit. I’ve covered their legal arguments before, so I won’t repeat them here.

I would have tended to agree with the arguments presented by the GAU in their letter to Tom Kabinet, but I guess the judge isn’t as convinced that selling ebooks is illegal.

Even though Tom Kabinet won today, the odds are still stacked against it. The site is going to have to win the lawsuit in both local and EU courts, a process which will likely take years. What’s more, the Dutch courts have a history of supporting industry trade groups  whenever the topic of piracy comes up, including repeatedly ordering ISPs to block The Pirate Bay. That blockade was only lifted in January of this year when EU courts overruled Dutch courts, saying that the blocks were disproportionate and ineffective.

Tom Kabinet is in a much more difficult position than ReDigi, which faced a similar lawsuit in 2012. ReDigi lost that lawsuit in 2013 and changed their business model to comply with the ruling. The company is still in operation today, and they were even awarded a patent earlier this year for their marketplace platform.

eReaders.nl

In the two days since Amazon officially announced their ebook subscription service, everyone and their cousin has posted an editorial on the question of whether KU is good or bad for authors.

Being neither an author nor a publishers, I sat out the debate,  but as I looked over the links I collected for tomorrow’s Morning Coffee post I realized that had an excess of links for this one topic. And even though I have no opinion either way on the question, I can see that I am in the minority.Here are 6 different takes on this question, including a couple which address the point from unusual tangents.

But first, some background.

Kindle Unlimited is a $10 a month subscription ebook service from our favorite ebook retailer, Amazon. The service boasts over 600,000 ebook and audiobook titles which can be read on Kindles or Kindle apps. KU is currently limited to the US, but that is almost certainly going to change in the next few months.

Like the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, Kindle Unlimited draws most of its catalog from KDP Select. This is a special subsection of Amazon’s ebook distribution platform which offers additional promotional opportunities, requires exclusivity, and pays authors from a pool of money when an ebook is loaned in KOLL or KU. (That pool is worth $1.8 million in July, and will be increased next month).

Many of the posts focus on whether subscription ebook services are a good idea, while  others question whether anyone should be giving Amazon an exclusive.  I tend to think that is a bad idea, but I also think that this is a self-correcting issue which will fix itself in the long run. I’m basing that prediction on reports like the one from Nick Stephenson, an author who recently removed one of his ebooks from KDP Select:

I’m still a fan of free, but I’ve found that having books out of Select is (so far) having a positive effect. With KDP Select free days, I can drum up $1,500+ of extra cash in a 48 hour period, but that’s relying almost entirely on Bookbub, and things go back to normal almost immediately. And I can’t guarantee that the ‘Bub is going to feature me every month. With books up on other vendors and a permafree title to keep readers coming in, I’m seeing much more consistent results – and I can use the smaller advertisers to keep the permafree’s performance “topped up” when it starts to drop, removing my reliance on Bookbub to a certain degree.

If other authors are sharing Stephenson’s experience, then I would bet the issue of Amazon exclusivity is probably going to solve itself in the long run. Or at least that’s what I think, but not everyone is willing to let the market sort itself out.

Mark Coker, for one, is as much against exclusivity now as he was when KDP Select launched in late 2011, Writing on Friday:

Exclusivity is great for Amazon, but it’s not necessarily great for authors and readers.  Exclusivity starves competing retailers of books readers want to read, which motivates readers to move their reading to the Kindle platform. This is why Amazon has made exclusivity central to their ebook strategy. They’re playing a long term game of attrition.

Most indie authors recognize the value in fostering a diverse ecosystem of multiple competing retailing options.  Yet every book enrolled in KDP Select is a vote to put Amazon’s competitors out of business. You know this to be true if you believe, as I believe, that indies are the future of publishing.

Not everyone thinks it’s a bad idea; Will Entrekin, the publisher at Exciting Press, has not only signed up to use KU as a customer he has also submitted some titles from his catalog to KDP Select:

Look, I’ll be candid: of that I’m not sure yet. For quite a while, Exciting Press titles were in Kindle Direct Publishing Select. They were exclusive to Kindle, could only be bought from Amazon. We publish without DRM — always have and always will — so readers could convert their books for whatever device they were using, but let’s be honest there and note how tedious that is (if you even know how to do it in the first place, which a lot of readers may not). But if I may be further honest here I would argue that Amazon’s gained dominance in the ebook marketplace simply because its experience is so superior for readers, and I think that makes a difference.

I don’t think his decision is a good idea (see the Stephenson quote above), but I also am well aware that there’s no one size fits all solution.  We cannot discount the possibility that someone is making KDP Select work for them and generate more revenue than if their ebooks are available elsewhere.

Not everyone, though, is looking at this in terms of its affect on authors; some commented on how it might affect the ebook amrket as a whole. Saying he is "cautiously optimistic", Chuck Wendig wrote:

a) Amazon is interesting because it is a big company and yet it moves like a spry, tiny company. Which is awesome and scary because when big companies move quickly, it is often tectonic.

b) I don’t know yet if this is tectonic. It is interesting to me as a reader and a little scary to me as a writer because all new things are scary to me as a writer because writers are ultimately flinchy since being whacked in the nose so many times with bad deals. I think if this becomes a truly dominant model, then it will be tectonic, shaking How Books Are Consumed and How Authors Are Paid to the molten, trembling core.

c) I think it’s a good price point.

d) I think there’s an argument to be made where this devalues books.

e) I think there’s an argument to be made that high e-book prices hurt authors more than low e-book prices, so, blah blah blah book value exposure something snore.

f) I think Spotify was bad for bands but this isn’t Spotify.

Wendig isn’t the only one who is optimistic; the team at Archangel Ink were in high spirits when they read about Kindle Unlimited:

I’ve noticed several of the articles on Amazon’s bold decision to offer a subscription for unlimited eBook downloads seem to claim that this move is “bad for authors.” That’s probably because these articles were written by people who aren’t authors or publishers and certainly not indie authors. We’ve published 40 books here in the last 70 days, and I’ve been active in the publishing industry since before there was such a thing as en eBook. I can assure you my predictions about how this will affect authors and the publishing industry in general is much better informed.

In short, don’t worry authors. Bezos hasn’t suddenly declared war on you. In fact, Bezos is continuing to take bold steps to declare with no ambiguity that indies are his friends, and publishing companies are his bitter rivals–at least until they change their business model and start publishing exclusively on Amazon instead of trying to sell books on every retailer imaginable. And no, Archangel Ink is not necessarily a “publishing company” so we’re not threatened either. We’re more like a steroid dealer for indie authors. Do you even lift Poe?

Some like Chris McMullen are more ambivalent:

The only way to really know for sure is to try it both ways. (Note that you can experience lengthy delays and problems trying to unpublish your e-book from other retailers in order to switch back into KDP Select.)

Kindle Unlimited may be a compelling reason to enroll in KDP Select. There will be many authors returning to KDP Select to try it out. There are also authors opting out with the introduction of KDP Select. Everyone is trying to decide which side of the fence has the greener grass. By the way, I’m staying in KDP Select.

So what do you think? Who is right?

The Chinese gadget maker Hisense thrilled gadget buyers last year when it released the Sero 7 Pro, a $149 Android tablet that set the standard for the budget tablet market last year.

I for one was expecting Hisense to repeat that trick in 2014, but that hasn’t happened. Now that I’ve had my hands on the Sero 8 for a week I can see that Hisense has made a good tablet, just not one which deserves the praise lavished upon the Sero 7 Pro last year.

Hisense has only launched a single tablet in the US and Europe (a second tablet just cleared the FCC). The Sero 8 isn’t quite what I would expect in a replacement for the Sero 7 Pro; it is a mid-sized tablet with a budget price of $129 and (aside from the cameras) the specs and performance of similarly-priced mid-grade 8″ Android tablets like the Acer Iconia A1-830.

Review Date: 20 July 2014 – Review unit purchased from the Walmart store in Manassas, VA

Hardware

The Sero 8 is taking over the reins as Hisense’s flagship tablet from the difficult to find Sero 7 Pro, and in several ways it is a better tablet. The Sero 8 sports a 1.4GHz quad-core Rockchip CPU with 1GB RAM, 16 GB internal storage, and two cameras. It has both Wifi and Bluetooth, a microSD card slot, and an 8″ screen.

At first glance and at second glance, the Sero 8 looks like a generic Android tablet. It’s made to be held in landscape position, and it has a simple black glass front with a textured plastic back. The single speaker is on the lower back of the tablet, along with a 2MP camera. The front-facing VGA resolution camera is centered over the screen, and on the upper edge you’ll find the power button, headphone jack, USB port, and microSD card slot.

The Sero 8 has a more powerful CPU than most tablets in this price range (including the Sero 7 Pro), and it also ships with better cameras and more storage. The cameras are admittedly weaker than on the Sero 7 Pro, but then again that tablet had better cameras than what you could find on a $99 budget tablet.

Screen

The quality of the screen is one of my chief concerns for budget tablets, and the Sero 8 doesn’t disappoint. This tablet has an 8″ display with a resolution of 1280 x 800. Unlike cheaper tablets, the color quality is great, and the viewing angle is on par with the iPad.

The Sero 8 can be viewed from virtually any angle (including close to 90 degrees to the left, right, up or down) without any decrease in color quality or the viewing experience.

Not only is the screen good, this tablet could well double as a flashlight. At maximum setting the backlight is somewhat brighter than the one on my Kindle Fire HD, and at its dimmest the backlight on my Sero 8 Pro is also somewhat brighter than the one on my Kindle Fire HD.

Cameras

The Sero 8 is equipped with a 2MP camera and a VGA resolution webcam. I tested both cameras outside, and they are quite good. There’s no LED flash on the rear camera, so it won’t be much good for less than brightly lit situations, but it still takes a high quality photo.

The cameras are supported by the basic camera app, with the usual minimal features.

Battery

According to the specs posted online, the Sero 8 has a 4Ah battery, with an estimated battery life of 7 hours. I think that is a conservative estimate.

My tests suggest that the Sero 8 has a video run time of over 6 hours. Regular runtime will likely exceed 8 hours and can be extended by avoiding intensive tasks like watching movies or playing games. My estimate is based on playing a 1080p video with sound at full volume and Wifi on. While this isn’t the most intensive use of the battery, but it does offer a good yardstick because most activities short of 3d gaming will need fewer resources.

I have also noted that the Sero 8 has a standby time of around 5 days, which is fairly common for budget Android tablets.

 Software

This tablet ships with Android 4.4 KitKat, Google Play, and a minimum of bloatware. In addition to Google’s mandated apps (Play Newsstand/Music/Books/Games/, Voice Search, Hangouts, maps, etc) Hisense has only installed 4 apps, three of which belong to Walmart (Vudu and two shopping apps for Sam’s Club and Walmart.com). The 4th app is a TV remote app which could prove useful for anyone who still owns a TV.

I installed a few apps myself, but I will admit that I didn’t test the software features as extensively as I could. I didn’t really see the need. The Sero 8 runs a stock version of Android 4.4 with few additions. There’s not much to say about it.

 Performance

With an Antutu score of 17,712, the Sero 8 promises a performance superior to that of the Hisense Sero 7 Pro (as well as other cheaper 7″ tablets I reviewed last year).

And it delivers. The Sero 8 is noticeably peppier than the 7″ Android tablets sitting on my desk.  It more than fills my needs for a budget device, and if nor the my discomfort over the screen size I would be sorely tempted to keep the Sero 8 and see if the extra power enabled me to get more done, faster.

Audio & Video

The Sero 8 comes equipped with the basic gallery app, the stock media player, Youtube, Vudu, and a video player app which I somehow managed to get to display in a window (I have not managed to get it to repeat that trick).

I haven’t tested the Vudu app, but the first three work just fine. Given the Sero 8’s score on Antutu, we already knew that it was more than powerful enough to handle virtually any video thrown at it, even 1080p videos or higher. They look great, but the audio is another matter.

The Sero 8 only has a single rear-facing speaker, and it was (at its loudest) very quiet. This is not a speaker you can use in a quiet room; it’s simply not loud enough. I think you will need to plan on using the headphone jack, or a pair of BT headphones.

On the plus side, the audio quality of that quiet speaker was generally good; I listened to several songs with tricky audio and most of the keywords came through clear.

 Verdict

This is a solid tablet. The build quality is great, and Hisense used decent components (especially the cameras) and they added more storage than I would have expected. The Sero 8 even scored well on the performance test.

But I for one don’t like the screen size.

Yes, I know this is picking nits, but the Sero 8 is too heavy and too large for me to comfortably pick up by gripping the edges. This is one of the things I like about 7″ tablets, which I can easily scoop up and carry one-handed. The Sero 8 is bigger, and yet it doesn’t offer a significant increase in screen real estate in trade. What’s more, the Sero 8 has the same screen resolution as many 7″ tablets, spreading the same number of pixels over a larger area.

But still, this is a good tablet – just not as good of a deal as the Sero 7 Pro was last year. At $149 the Sero 7 Pro was incomparable, while the Sero 8 has at least one 8″ tablet that offers a similar value.

Right now I also have the Acer Iconia A1-830 sitting on my desk. This tablet has similar performance and comparable specs (better cameras but no card slot), and only costs $10 more on Amazon.com than the $129 list price for the Hisense Sero 8.

I can see the good points in the Sero 8, but I wouldn’t recommend rushing out and buying it right away – not when you should also consider what else is on the market in the same price range.

Update: Now that I have reviewed the Iconia A1-830 I can say that the Sero 8 is a better buy.

Where to Buy

Walmart is supposed to be the exclusive retailer, but they do not sell it on Walmart.com nor is it carried in most stores. You’ll need to check the Walmart website and see if any stores near you have this tablet in stock.

It could be rather difficult to get your hands on a new Sero 8; you might want to check Ebay. You could also look for a refurb, but I don’t know that any were available when I wrote this post.

Specs

• Screen: 8″
• Screen Resolution: 1280 x 800
• Capacitive touchscreen
• OS: Android 4.4 KitKat
• CPU: quad-core 1.4GHz RockChip RK3188
• GPU: Mali-400 MP
• 1GB RAM
• Storage: 16GB internal (actual: 12.5GB), microSD card slot
• Cameras: VGA (front-facing), 2MP (rear-facing)
• Wifi, Bluetooth
• speaker, microphone
• Battery: 4Ah
• Dimensions: 8.2″ x 7.6″ x 0.4″
• Weight: 450 grams

Not one to close the barn door after the horse has left, Amazon has sent out a press release this morning announcing the launch of Kindle Unlimited.

With Kindle Unlimited, readers can read as much as they want (but can only have 10 titles at a time) on their Kindle or Kindle app, all for a low price of $10 a month (with a 30 day free trial). I have reports that the service is currently limited to only US customers, but I also have a report which says that will change later this year.

As I reported when I broke the story 2 days ago, Kindle Unlimited offers readers access to a catalog of over 600,000 titles, including (according to Amazon) over 2,000 audiobooks. Curiously, I can see a count for 7,300 audiobook titles on the Kindle Unlimited page, so that might be a goof on their part.

In addition to the unlimited reading and listening, Kindle Unlimited is also bundled with a complimentary three-month Audible membership. Audible has a catalog of over 150,000 professionally narrated audiobook titles.

That catalog of 600,000 titles seems to mostly consist of indie titles distributed through KDP Select and titles published by Amazon, leavened with a number of titles from a few medium and large publishers, including Wiley, Scholastic, HMH, Open Road, Workman, WW Norton, and Bloomsbury.

As I reported on Wednesday, I can’t find any titles from HarperCollins or Simon & Schuster (nor are there any titles from the other major US trade publishers). Both S&S and HC have deals with Oyster and Scribd, Kindle Unlimited’s leading competitors, so I expected them to also have deals in place by the time KU went live.

I am still looking for books from those publishers, and I will update this post if they are found.

For now, here is the promo video from Amazon:

At this time Kindle Unlimited is still limited to the US, but Nicolas Gary, editor of Actualitte, reports that his sources with French distributors are saying that the Kindle Unlimited will launch in France in September or October. That September or October launch will likely be part of a global launch.

To be honest, I was expecting a global launch on day one, so perhaps that future expansion date was the original planned launch date which was bumped when Kindle Unlimited leaked earlier this week.

So will you sign up (when the service is available to you)?

I don’t plan to commit to Kindle Unlimited today, but that doesn’t mean that won’t change in the future. Right now it seems KU consists of mostly the same titles I can already access for free as part of the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, one of the fringe benefits of my Amazon prime membership. Admittedly, I can only use a single title each month and I am limited to Kindle hardware, but the selection in KOLL is not appealing. Most months I don’t even use the one free title, so I don’t think I will be interested in spending $10 a month to get unlimited access.

Kindle Unlimited

It’s been just over a day since I broke the news that Amazon had a Netflix style ebook service in the works. We still haven’t gotten a comment from Amazon, but both of Amazon’s smaller competitors have commented on Kindle Unlimited.

The comments are pro forma, but they still say more than the loud silence coming out of Seattle.

Trip Adler, CEO of Scribd believes the entrant of a new competitor will be good for ebook subscription services as a whole:

The apparent entrance of Amazon into subscription market is exciting for the industry as a whole. It’s validation that we’ve built something great here at Scribd. Publishers, authors and readers alike have all seen the benefit, so its no surprise they’d want to test the waters. Successful companies don’t fear competition, but rather embrace it, learn from it and use it to continue to fuel their own innovation which is exactly what we intend to continue doing.

Oyster CEO Eric Stromberg agrees:

We’re not surprised. They have pivoted from transactional to subscription-based in other media, and have had limited success. They really paved the way in ebooks, and it’s exciting to see them embrace the market we created as the future of books.

Based on the leaked details, Kindle Unlimited is expected to cost $9.99 a month and offer a 600,000 title strong catalog when it launches. No one when exactly that will happen, but I am expecting that the service will go live in August or September.

Here’s Amazon’s promotional video for Kindle Unlimited, which as you can see suggests that KU will be available on the iPad, Android devices, and Amazon’s own Kindle Fire Android tablets.

When the service launches it is going to cause an upheaval in this nascent market.

While some companies like 24Symbols have been providing a subscription ebook service for years (Safari Books Online has been around for over a decade) the market really only took off last Fall with the launch of Oyster and Scribd. They had the market to themselves for nearly a year, but soon these two established players are going to find themselves in the same position as Amazon’s other ebook competitors: fighting it out for second place.

Of the two, I would say Scribd is better positioned to play second fiddle to Amazon. With 400,000 titles in their catalog, Scribd has a smaller selection but they also are available internationally. Oyster, on the other hand, is still only available in the US, so even though it offers a catalog with 500,000 titles it is still at a distinct disadvantage.

Also, Scribd got into this market after building a business in online storage. That gave them a head start in developing the tech and the engineering skill needed to compete in this market on an equal footing with Amazon. Oyster, on the other hand, launched with only an iPhone app and belatedly added an iPad app and (much later) an Android app.

But to be honest, it is really too early to say who will come in second to Kindle Unlimited; there’s still time for Oyster to take its service international and work to catch up to Scribd.

Word is circulating on Twitter and the KBoards forum  today that Amazon is about to launch a new ebook service.

Update: Kindle Unlimited went live on Friday.

Details are still vague, but at this point I know that about 6 hours ago several authors noticed that there was a new page in the Kindle Store. That page was shortly taken down, but while it was up it was titled Kindle Unlimited, and it offered readers access to a catalog of 600,000 ebook and audiobook titles for $9.99. Thanks, Zara!

Update: Actualitte has screenshots which confirm Kindle Unlimited, including:

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the Kindle Freetime Unlimited service which Amazon launched in September 2012. That is a different service which offers a kid-safe selection of apps, videos, and ebooks. KFU is only available on Kindle hardware, and it costs $2.99 a month and up.

Update: Here’s the promo video for Kindle Unlimited:

You can find the Kindle Unlimited page here. There’s nothing to see at this time, but if you click through I want you to look at the search bar at the top and note the letters "KU" as the dept. That confirms the reports, I think.

Update: If the page did show something it would probably look like this:

I’m still waiting for comment from Amazon, but at this point it looks like Kindle Unlimited is an expansion on the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library which will be made available to all Amazon customers (KOLL is a free benefit for Prime subscribers only, and is bundled into the $99 a year cost). At launch Kindle Unlimited will likely be limited to the US.

A number of authors on KBoards have confirmed that the titles they submitted to KDP Select had been added to Kindle Unlimited, and not just KOLL. There is also a report that the sales reports on the KDP admin pages now includes a mention of the Kindle Unlimited service, which apparently is going to be counted in combination with KOLL revenues.

Speaking of revenues, that is another question we cannot answer yet.  Kindle Owner’s Lending Library pays indie authors from a pool of money based on the number of times their books have been borrowed. The pool for July is $1.2 million.

Update: There is now confirmation from Scholastic that their titles will be included in Kindle Unlimited under the existing contract they negotiated with Amazon.

As with KOLL, Scholastic will get paid their full wholesale price every time one of their ebooks is opened by a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.

It’s possible that Amazon will expand the pool, but this still raises questions. Prime members can only borrow a single title a month from KOLL, but clearly that limitation will not apply to the Kindle Unlimited service.

In order to compete with services like Scribd and Oyster, Kindle Unlimited will either have to be a lot cheaper or offer similar unlimited reading. Both Scribd and Oyster offer a buffet-style reading experience for $8.99 and $9.99 a month, and they boast catalogs of 400,000 and 500,000, respectively.

If Amazon is launching a direct competitor to Oyster and Scribd then Kindle Unlimited will have to be truly unlimited.

Update: GigaOm found an active test page for Kindle unlimited, and it looks like I can now confirm that this service expands beyond indie titles.  Many publishers who have signed with Oyster and Scribd are also showing up on the test page, including Scholastic, HMH, Open Road, Workman, WW Norton, and Bloomsbury, as well as titles from Amazon’s own imprints.

I have yet to find titles from S&S or HarperCollins, both of which have deals with Scribd and Oyster, but there are also 7300 audiobook titles listed.

I will update this post as I get more details.

Thanks, Zara!

The publishing world was thrown into a tizzy Tuesday night with the news of new negotiations between Amazon and S&S.

Few details are known at this time, and all we really know is what the WSJ has reported:

Hachette isn’t the only book publisher facing down Amazon.

The country’s largest bookseller is also in talks with Simon & Schuster, said Leslie Moonves, CEO of the publisher’s parent CBS Corp. at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo. Moonves added that he’d personally met with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at a recent conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

“Amazon has a definite point of view about what should be done in the publishing business,” said Moonves. “It’s going to be a very interesting thing to watch.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what the nature of Amazon’s talks with Simon & Schuster are, and a spokesman for the book publisher declined to comment. An Amazon spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

No one yet knows why Amazon is in talks with Simon & Schuster, but as DBW pointed out Amazon isn’t pulling any dirty tricks with S&S print titles. The responsible thing would be to wait for leaks from S&S which add details to the story.

In the meantime, let me float an idea past you: Could this be a deal for Amazon to buy S&S?

That is a crazy idea, yes, but hear me out. Before you send for the trank guns, just remember that in the past 6 months I accurately called the Dropbox-Readmill deal, the Comixology acquisition, and the Nook Media spin off.

And now I wonder if Amazon is going to buy S&S.

One thing I’ve never shared is that in the back of my mind I keep a list of countries companies Amazon might want to buy. S&S is on that list under the heading major trade publisher.

To put it simply, Simon & Schuster is the smallest of the Big 5, and there’s no real connection between it and its parent company –  not like there is for the 4 other major US trade publishers.

With $800 million in revenue in 2013, S&S is the smallest of the major US trade publishers (in terms of revenue). It is a wholly owned sub of CBS, a $15 billion a year company with operations mainly in the US.

Assuming Amazon were in the market to buy a major trade publisher, S&S would be the easiest target. It’s smaller than HarperCollins and it’s not owned by or part of a multinational publishing conglomerate (unlike PRH, Macmillian, and Hachette).

Of course, we don’t know Amazon is in the market to buy a major trade publisher so this is purely speculative. This could just be a contract negotiation for book and ebook distribution, and if that is the case someone will leak something.

Until we know more, I plan to hold this as a possibility and not a probability.

If you are in the market for a case which adds a second E-ink screen to your smartphone then you might want to head over to Kickstarter tout suite. There’s a funding campaign going on right now which is already oversubscribed and is about to run out of prizes.

A certain quietly reputable ereader design firm launched a Kickstarter project this morning to fund their next product. Oaxis is taking their expertise in devloping gadgets with E-ink screens and turning it towards a new product category: smartphone cases.

A number of smartphone cases with E-ink screens have been announced over the past few years, but they all shared one flaw: each case was designed to fit a certain model smartphone. Given that there are hundreds of models on the market, this is something of a troubling problem – one which Oaxis has solved.

Initially announced in February 2014, the Inkcase Plus is designed to be a modular product. It combines a 3.5″ ereader (with a speaker and Bluetooth) and a smartphone case. The two parts are designed to snap together like so (click the image to see an animated gif):

The ereader unit is reversible, and can be mounted facing in either direction.

As I told you back in February, the ereader component sports a 3.5″ Mobius E-ink screen with a screen resolution of 360 x 600, or around 200 ppi. (Or at least that is what the spec sheet said when I put my hands on the device at CES 2014.) The screen, battery, and circuit board are the most expensive parts of the Inkcase Plus, and by separating them into a modular component Oaxis has both reduced the manufacturing complexity and multiplied the number of smartphones they can support.

This is a far better design than the first-gen Inkcase, which was launched last year for the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy Note 2. I reviewed one last fall, and found it to be disappointing, especially in the software department.

If you want to add an E-ink screen to your smartphone then this is the project to get behind. Unlike PopSlate, which has been around for a couple years without shipping a damned thing, Oaxis has a history of producing and licensing their hardware designs. its partners include many different companies in the US, Europe, and around the world.

But Oaxis doesn’t have such a good record when it comes to software, and that could be the one area where the Inkcase Plus falls down. According to the Kickstarter page, the Inkcase Plus can act as an ebook reader, display notifications and photos, and interface with sports/fitness apps (the data is sent over Bluetooth). The model I reviewed last fall didn’t work nearly well enough to justify its $99 price tag, but almost a year has passed so there’s a good chance that the software has been expanded and improved.

But we’ll have to wait for hands-on reports to be sure. The Inkcase Plus is scheduled to ship in October 2014.

Kickstarter

Late last week Publishers Weekly posted an article on the growing trend of indie bookstores expanding into publishing. Some are acquiring an Espresso Book Machine, but not all.

This article caught my eye both for the innovating booksellers and because their innovations were once quite common.

Here’s an excerpt:

Books & Books, headquartered in Coral Gables, Fla., also earns money on every book, or at least doesn’t lose any, according to Ausbert de Arce, who oversees the store’s publishing program, Books & Books Press. To cover the manufacturing costs, Books & Books Press asks authors to contribute to the cost of production. In return, authors are deeply involved in the publishing process. The press takes advantage of bookstore owner Mitchell Kaplan’s retail acumen, de Arce’s expertise in marketing and production (he founded Taschen America), and photographer and designer Petra Mason’s creativity. It also uses freelance designers and editors on its book projects, most of which come in through contacts between the store staff and authors. De Arce said that publishing 10 books a year has worked well and that every book is guaranteed shelf space at Books & Books, adding that the press can add more distribution if authors want. For a few titles, Books & Books acts as a packager for major trade houses.

And:

An early adopter of the Espresso, Village Books in Bellingham, Wash., returned to publishing with a local printer and IngramSpark after removing its machine. “To be honest,” said publishing director Brendan Clark, “sometimes I miss the EBM. Its unique ability to bind a single copy in minutes was extremely handy, and it constantly drew in new clients just by being there. But our off-site production partners now give us access to a diverse array of options, including hardcover binding and color pages, that the EBM simply doesn’t have the capacity for.” In addition to its publishing operations for self-published authors, the store maintains a separate traditionally oriented publishing program with royalties, Chuckanut Editions, which publishes books selected by Village Books owner Chuck Robinson, general manager Paul Hanson, and Clark.

It’s a neat read but they missed a historical aspect which I think adds depth. There was a time when it was not unusual for a publisher to also be known as a printer and bookseller

In the early printing press era it was common for someone to be known as a publisher, printer, and a bookseller. This extended into the 18th century, in fact. Benjamin Franklin is one example, and he’s not the only one.

That era ended in part due to advances in printing tech which enabled economies of scale, and by improvements in transportation tech which enabled distribution.

And now new technologies, both POD (printing tech) and the Internet (communication and distribution), are reviving an old idea and making it viable once again.

image by Gastev

If you didn’t get a chance to buy an Onyx Midia Inkphone before the first shipment went out of stock, count yourself lucky. Early user reports are coming in from MobileRead, and the news is not good.

One early adopter is reporting that they cannot make phone calls:

Got my e43 ink phone today. Very disappointing. I can’t make or receive calls or browse. Only attaches to network and allows to perform *xxxxx# type ussd operation.

Can’t believe I paid good money for this . Sent mail to customer support, they sent it to their service guys and I’m still waiting for response.

That user went on to add in a follow up comment:

Still cannot use phone or SMS function. further as per my provider the phone is not legal as the imei they are using is licences to Nokia in fact it is same imei range as Nokia 7610. A mail from GSMA tech support confirm this. So it’s a matter of time before they block this phone from networks.

Some users are making calls without issue, but this is still a serious issue.

An IMEI number is a unique 15 digit serial number which belongs to a specific cellphone – not just a model but a specific unit. The numbers are managed by an international body, with companies often requesting a range of IMEI numbers for certain models.

Onyx neglected to register their company as a smartphone maker and request the unique serials numbers that would identify Onyx’s smartphones to telecoms around the world. This has been confirmed by other Inkphone owners , and it presents a serious issue for Onyx. As a result, Inkphone owners are at risk of their smartphone being identified as hacked, stolen, or fake by their local telecom.

In short, Onyx can’t guarantee that their E-ink smartphone will function as a smartphone.  Whoops.

Nearly 2 years in development, the Onyx Midia Inkphone is a nifty-looking smartphone errr PDA with a 4.3″ E-ink screen. It runs Android 2.3 on a 1GHz CPU with 512 RAM, and 4GB internal storage. It retails from Onyx’s Polish partner Arta Tech for 149 euros, or at least it did when it was still available.

This PDA had gone up for pre-order in late June, and quickly went out of stock. Something tells me it is going to stay out of stock for quite a while.

If you have an Inkphone, I would suggest that you treat it as a collectible. It’s going to be a rare commodity for quite some time.

Arta Tech was queried for this post but did not respond.

A new survey report was released in the UK this week which appears to show that writers are eaning an average of 29% less in 2013 than they did in 2005. The report comes from the ALCS, an authors' rights group in the UK, and includes details like:

The typical (median) income of the professional author has also fallen dramatically, both in real and actual terms. In 2013, the median income of the professional author was just £11,000 [$18,834], a drop of 29 percent since 2005 when the figure was £12,330 [$21,111] (£15,450 [$26,450] in real terms). According to Joseph Rowntree Foundation figures, single people in the UK need to earn at least £16,850 [$28,847] before tax to achieve a Minimum Income Standard (MIS).

That sounds bad, right?

Not necessarily. I’ve read the report (it was only 12 pages long), and I have serious doubts that it accurately reflects what writers are earning.

For one thing, the report is only 12 pages long and doesn’t include the original survey questions or granular details on the survey group. Respectable organizations (the Pew Research Center, for example) would include this info, and without them the ALCS report is more of a propaganda piece than a survey report.

And that’s not my only concern. I’ve read the report, and I think the survey group was skewed towards older writers, and towards book authors.

If you look on page three of the report you’ll see that 2,454 writers were surveyed, and that 83% of the survey group reported their ages as 44 or older. A full 29% are over 64 years of age. Tell me, does that strike you as a representative sample of all the writers in the UK? I can’t find data to the contrary but based on my gut feeling I would say no.

And speaking of a skewed survey group, the LACS left an important detail out of the report. They say that the survey group totaled 2,454 writers, but they do not say how many are book authors vs freelance journalists, bloggers, etc. As everyone knows, writing a book pays a lot less than (for example) writing for an ad agency or other business. So if the survey group skewed to book authors then it probably does not reflect the state of all writers in the UK.

Unfortunately, we don’t know that for sure. The closest the report comes to answering this point is to say that 69% of respondents retain the copyright for their works, and that 57% have sought a reversion clause in their contracts. That suggests they are either freelancers or book authors, and that would seem to change the importance of the detail concerning the number of professional authors (writers who spend their full time writing) having dropped:

For the majority of people, their ‘profession’ and the way that they earn money are one and the same thing. For writers however this is increasingly often not the case. In 2005, 40% of authors earned their income solely from writing. By 2013, this had dropped to just 11.5%.

The report doesn’t explain the drop; it merely mentioned it and predicts the death of western civilization should it continue.

All in all, this report looks less like a true survey of writers and more like a hatchet job from a group with an axe to grind. I suggest that you ignore it.

found via TeleRead

image by gadl