Nate Hoffelder

Barnes & Noble has been getting a lot of press lately over the departure of several senior managers of Nook Media, but it turns out that the 3 names previously mentioned in the press are only the tip of the iceberg.

In addition to Jamie Iannone, Jim Hilt, and Bill Saperstein, all of whom plan to leave or have left, I have also learned that Nook Media has also lost a couple other senior managers.

My source, who is one of the many engineers that left Nook Media in the back half of 2013, has told me that Nook Media CTO Ravi Gopalakrishnan no longer works for the company. I was also told that Avi Golan Nolan, the head of Nook Press, was booted some time back. If these reports are true then Nook Media is seeing more than just the normal level of reshuffling; people are jumping ship or being made redundant right and left.

This would arguably be a sign that the company is going down and the smart people jumping ship; it’s certainly not a sign that these ex-managers and ex-employees have any confidence in the long term survival of Nook Media.

At this point a sale is probably out of the question (it would have happened by now), so we could be looking at either worst case scenario that Nook Media will be shut down, but the more likely scenario is that it will be allowed to wither on the vine.

Unfortunately I have been unable to confirm either story because B&N has declined to comment on this story. I have also been unable to confirm that Avi Golan Nolan is or was the head of Nook Press, though that position does appear to be available. Also, Ravi Gopalakrishnan’s LinkedIn profile still shows him as the CTO of Nook Media, which would tend to prove my source wrong.

At this point all I have is an unconfirmed (and undenied) report that these senior managers are no longer with Nook Media. Should I get confirmation (or a denial) I will update this post.

Rumors have been circulating since at least October 2013 that Adobe was planning to release a new version of their DRM for Epub ebooks, and it looks like the rumors have come true. Adobe has released a new version of Adobe Digital Editions yesterday, and guess what?

The features page says that along with improved CSS support and better support for vertical languages (Japanese, for example), Adobe DE 3.0 also includes a new DRM which is described as now being "hardened and made more secure".

Yes, after over 2 years 4 years of quietly ignoring the fact that their DRM was hacked, Adobe finally took a step to repair the broken lock. And as part of their effort Adobe also updated Adobe Content Server 5 (there’s also a new RMSDK), thus enabling ebookstores to provide ebooks that use the new DRM and allowing app and device developers to integrate the new DRM.

Some are panicking over the news that there is new DRM, with my competition suggesting that this will drive readers into the arms of Amazon,  but I have decided to take a more realistic approach.

Yes, there’s a new type of DRM out there, and yes we will eventually see ebook readers and apps that support it. But for the near future the devices and apps that do not support the new DRM (and frankly, never will support the new DRM) will far out number the newer gadgetry that does. And that means that the vast body of existing ereaders and apps is going to drive the market. eBookstores will want to sell to the largest number of potential customers, so they will continue to offer the older DRM.

They already know that they’re losing customers to Amazon, Apple, and B&N, all of which have a proprietary DRM schema, so they’ll do their best to avoid losing what few customers they can get.

I can’t see an ebookstore putting up a warning message that the ebooks they sell can only be read on newer ereaders and apps, can you?

No, I think it much more likely that we will see almost no adoption of the new DRM. Instead I expect to see a repeat of the launch of the Nook store in 2009, when B&N announced their clever new DRM which no one else adopted.

Just about the only ones who will adopt the DRM will be the hackers who have probably already started working on cracking the DRM. I would put good money that the DRM will be hacked long before any reader encounters it.

Would anyone care to take that bet?

lesen.net

image by m thierry

There’s a post over at Dear Author that you should read.

Jane Litte used her weekly tech post to put forward the idea that B&N should invest in POD. This idea probably won’t work, but it got me thinking about a related hypothetical situation.

Excerpt:

Barnes & Noble cannot excise the Nook arm completely because its market share in the digital market would be foolish to give up and second a bookstore without a digital component looks backward and incomplete. And the Nook brand is meaningless without Barnes & Noble attached to it. But focusing hundreds of millions of dollars on the development of hardware instead of on selling books is also a non starter at this point.

Instead B&N should pour that money into the development of a low cost, high efficiency print on demand machine. The current print on demand technology requires the installation of a behemoth device that currently costs about $100,000.  Have you paid attention to the posts about 3D printing? 3D printers cost about $10,000 and can print out guns, exoskeletons, and even small planes. How is it that it requires ten times the cost to produce something made of glue and paper?

Jane is proposing that Barnes & Noble should invest in developing a cheaper version of the Espresso Book Machine. If you’ve been following publishing news for any length of time then you probably know that these expensive machines look like a copy machine which has been grafted to an automated printing press. (I’ve written about the topic several times.)

One of these babies can crank out a book in a few minutes:

It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think it would work. For one thing, it’s a technological panacea that doesn’t address the fundamental issues that led to B&N’s current state.

But more importantly, a cheap POD solution won’t help B&N in the short term because this is a long term project.  It’s going to take at least 3 years to develop, and could take as long as a decade. Barnes & Noble probably doesn’t have that much time, and even if they did I am not sure that they have the gumption to commit to a multi-year capital intensive development program.

No, this is the kind of project that someone needed to see coming 4 years ago so development would be about done in 2014 just when B&N needed it the most. Sadly, B&N doesn’t have that kind of foresight.

But Amazon does.

It occurred to me today that Amazon is almost certainly working on a print-on-demand machine. I don’t have any evidence but if you think about it I’m sure you’ll agree that there’s a good chance I’m right.

• Amazon has already invested in POD (CreateSpace).
• They have demonstrated a deep interest in automated retail (delivery lockers, vending machines).
• And they are also willing to throw money at a problem invest in a market for years before seeing any return (Kindle).

If you line up those 3 points, don’t they point in the direction of a print-on-demand machine?

I think they do.

Please note that I am not insisting that Amazon has a definite launch day planned, or even that they have a viable model which could be deployed. I am merely arguing that they are working on a print-on-demand machine.

This is the kind of project which simply makes too much sense for Amazon to not have jumped in with both feet. Paper books are still the major part of the book market, most of which are sold and distributed in a system that is ripe for disruption.

Yes, that’s what everyone has been saying about POD for at least the past 5 years, but if Amazon invested in the technology then it could become a practical reality. In fact, let’s take this one step further and consider how the scenario might play out.

A customer browses on Amazon.com, finds a book they want, and chooses the POD option. The customer is in a hurry, and Amazon can only promise to have this book delivered in a couple days, so rather than wait the customer elects to have the book printed at their nearest FedEx/Kinkos, Staples, UPS Store, or even a local print shop so they can pick it up the same day.

This scenario might sound a little farfetched, but it’s really not. According to one author, Amazon is already using a similar system right now:

What I learned from the (very nice) CreateSpace customer service rep was that my member orders placed directly with CreateSpace get printed in CreateSpace’s own South Carolina facility by CreateSpace’s own team. When I order from Amazon.com, in order to provide that superior shipping turnaround, Amazon sources the print-on-demand printing to other print-on-demand service providers.

Don’t you think Amazon would be looking for a way to replace that contractor with a POD machine which belongs to Amazon and (ideally) costs less to operate?

Rather than partner with a brick-and-mortar operation, Amazon’s POD machine might instead be installed in a local mall and left to run on its own (with regular visits from maintenance and supply, of course). In this scenario we would be looking at a machine which would be able to print a book and then insert it into a shipping envelope, attach a sticker, and then dump it in a (locked) bin for the UPS guy to pick up on his next round.

Edit: Actually, in this scenario it would make more sense to have the Post Office pick up and distribute the ebooks (or a courier).

If Amazon can get that second scenario worked out then they would be able to eliminate most of the personnel, logistics, and time issues involved in printing and selling books. Heck, they might even cut some of their CreateSpace facilities.

Granted, this would also introduce certain QA issues, but that’s an issue which would have to be solved anyway before any type of POD machine was deployed. And it is an issue which Amazon is already facing with the POD books they are already selling. That author who reported that Amazon shops out POD work also complained about the quality of the product:

So, anyway, I get the book from Amazon in an amazingly fast 48-hour turnaround from the time I place the order. I’m very happy with that. What I wasn’t so pleased to discover, though, was a printing defect that had not existed in the proof copy I ordered directly from CreateSpace. The defect is a ridge of excess glue beneath the cover, between the first page and the inside of the cover, within millimeters of the spine. It seems like such a minor issue, but when you set this Amazon.com copy next to the CreateSpace copy, it becomes obvious that the binding on the CreateSpace copy is superior. If you run your fingers along the spine of the Amazon.com-printed copy, you can feel a protrusion of about 1-mm of glue, and looking at the book face-on, there’s sort of a bubbled-out effect of the cover near the spine. It’s not a huge cosmetic defect, but it’s particularly noticeable to the touch, and I imagine that after being pulled in and out of a bookshelf, this could cause the cover ink to wear away around the spine. The CreateSpace copy, by comparison, has a nice, neat, perfectly squared-off spine, with a nice regular ridge pre-folded into the cover to guide the cover crease when the book is opened for the first time.

Amazon is dedicated to offering the best service, and that means they would want to sell the best POD books possible. I think they are deeply interested in replacing the less-than-reliable printing partners.

A POD machine in your local mall or FedEx Kinko’s would fit the bill, don’t you think?

Feedly announced their new URL shortening service this week, and it turns out that they are much more subtle scoundrels than I expected.

Not only is this new service opt-out, it also siphons away page views from mobile visitors.

Update: Feedly announced on the Feedly beta Google+ community (on 21 January) that they are removing the offending Twitter card integration.

This URL shortener service is the same one which Feedly was caught using to hijack links and steal page views back in December (that was during the beta test). Feedly stopped hijacking links after being criticized from all sides, but they didn’t change their behavior. Rather than try not to harm publishers, Feedly found a more subtle way to steal page views and make it difficult for publishers to engage with readers.

It’s so subtle that I missed it, but luckily a reader (Thanks, Alan!) tipped me to a blog post by Martin Hawksey.

Martin wrote his post with a focus on how Feedly is inserting its own twitter metadata in place of the metadata that original publishers can include with links shared on Twitter, but he also posted a couple screen shots which make it quite clear that Feedly is harming publishers in more ways than simply messing with the metadata.

The 2 screen shots below were taken from the Twitter app on an Android smartphone. They show two different tweets which link to the same content. The screenshot on the left shows a tweet that was shared from the original publisher’s website, while the screenshot on the right shows a tweet that was shared from inside Feedly.

Can you see the differences?

I can see a couple key differences, and both are hostile to publishers.

One, Feedly is slapping their brand on someone else’s content, and two, they’re actively discouraging mobile users from visiting the original publisher’s website.

In the screenshot on the left you can see that the inset text lists the author as Doug Belshaw. In the screenshot on the right, Feedly wants you to think that they are the author. In other words they slapped their brand on work they did not create. They want people to think of them as the source of the content, probably in the hopes that this will boost Feedly’s profile and its userbase. And to make matters worse they are pulling this trick both on the Twitter website and in the Twitter apps.

Next, look at the button down below the text. In the screenshot on the left you see a button with the words "View on web", while on the right you see a prompt to open Feedly’s app. (If you don’t have the app installed the prompt will suggest that you install it.)

The prompt to use/install the Feedly app is not visible when you visit the Twitter website, only when you visit via a mobile app.

This might seem like a small issue, but as of October 2013 Twitter reported that 75% of their 218 million users use the service via a mobile app. That means that Feedly has set itself up to steal most of the page views that a publisher could have gained when an article is shared via Twitter.

Feedly is depriving creators of recognition, and they are also stealing page views.

And to make matters worse, I have confirmed that this URL shortener is enabled by default. That means that Feedly users need to go to the Preference menu to disable the URL shortener or they will be inadvertent accomplices to Feedly’s theft of page views.

Feedly is a big fan of opting out. In fact, Feedly CEO Edwin Khodabakchian showed up in the comments for that post last month and defended his company with a justification which is going to sound just as bad to day as it did a month ago:

As I mentioned in the email I sent to Nate earlier this morning, the goal of this feature is to 1) help content creators increase their readership in feedly (when a user discovers your content and adds it to his feedly, they are converting a one time visitor into a repeat engaged user) and 2) help user consume content faster on mobile device.

We are early in the design and implementation of this feature. If you are a publisher and want to work with us on improving this feature (we are working on some interesting features around discovery, call to action, analytics), please email me at (deleted) If you do not want to benefit form this feature, you can also sent me an email and we will quickly opt you out.

He thinks it is perfectly okay to expect publishers to opt out of being punched in the wallet.

I really don’t know what to say to that.

Do you like digital comics, but hate the way that comiXology’s proprietary DRM locks you in (and puts you at risk of their servers going down)?

Then I have some good news for you. I have just read about a Chrome plugin which will download comics from comiXology. It’s called, appropriately enough, Comixology backup, and according to the readme file it can convert the digital comics to a CBZ file (a ZIP file full of page images, basically).

And do you know the best part? The CBZ file will be DRM-free.

Update: Here’s a new version of the plugin.

According to the readme the plugin has to be manually installed; the developer doesn’t think Google would allow this plugin in the Chrome Web Store. I haven’t tested the plugin myself, so I can’t verify its operation. (I also cannot find any mention of anyone using it, so buyer beware.) You will of course need to have purchased the digital comics and logged in to your account, but once you’ve done that you can finally rescue your comics from comiXolgy’s clutches.

Don’t get me wrong, I trust comiXology as much as any other content provider, but I have this rule that I don’t buy ebooks unless I can remove the DRM. I’ve had that rule for longer than I have been into ebooks, and given what has happened over the past few years (closure of Fictionwise and other ebookstores, funky rights issues, content being taken away from paying customers on the whim of a publisher) it’s still a good idea.

The DRM issue is part of the reason why I never bought very many titles from comiXology (mainly freebies), but now that I can protect my purchases this might change.

You can find instructions and download the plugin on GitHub.

Actualitte

New ebook reader launches may be few and far between here in the US but that’s not the case everywhere. The Ukrainian ereader maker Pocketbook has just unveiled their latest gadget, the Pocketbook 614.

Pocketbook hasn’t disclosed all of the details on their new device,  but I do know that this gadget will fall solidly in the middle between budget and premium models.

The  PocketBook 614 will come equipped with a 6″ E-ink screen, a 1 GHz CPU, and 256 MB RAM. In terms of storage it has 4GB internally, and it also has a microSD card slot for additional space. There are no details on Wifi, a frontlight, audio, or a touchscreen, but I would not assume that they are present.

Retails is set at 3990 rubles ($119 USD), and the  PocketBook 614 is due out in the next few months.

 For a blog called "The Digital Reader", I sure don’t post about very many ebook readers, do I? There’s a reason for that.

As much as I might want to deny it, fewer and fewer ereaders are being launched every year. When I was in Las Vegas for CES last year I spoke to reps with Gajah. They used to be one of the leading ereader OEMs (they sold their designs to other companies), but in the past year they have largely given up on developing new ereaders because they don’t sell as many new models as they used to.

This is part of the reason why they turned their attention to tablets and for consumer products like the InkCase and other accessories which add an E-ink screen to a smartphone. There’s a market for smartphones and tablets which dwarfs the ebook reader market, and that’s been true for some years now.

The-eBook.org

Here’s a story I missed while at CES last week.

Japan Display, a specialist in cutting edge screen tech research and development, unveiled a couple new low-power screens last week. The screens measure 1″ across and 1.4″ diagonally, and are pretty clearly intended to go into smartwatches and other tiny mobile gadgets:

 According to the press release these 2 screen modules are based on screen tech which JDI has been working on since at least late 2012. They are reflective (no backlight) LCD displays which are designed to consume very little power, thus making them suitable for ultra-low power applications like smartwatches. These screens also feature a unique low-power trick: each pixel contains a small amount of sRAM. This enables the screen to maintain an image on the screen without constantly having to refresh it.

This tech first appeared in late 2012 when JDI showed off a 7″ prototype. I had been hoping that we might see that screen integrated into a tablet, but so far as I know that hasn’t happened. Instead JDI turned to producing a much less capable version of the screen for the wearables market.

The screen units shown above are only capable of displaying 64 colors, and not the thousands or millions of colors you might expect in a regular LCD screen. The round screen measures .99″ and has a resolution of 180 pixels, while the rectangular screen measures 1.39″ with a resolution of 205 × 148. They are in mass-production now, and with luck could show up in mobile devices later this year.

It looks like Lab126 is about to open a new office in Boston, Mass.

The Boston Globe’s tech blog has discovered that Amazon is holding a private recruiting event at the end of the month. It’s their second recruiting party in Boston in as many months, and it's being held in a restaurant only a few blocks from the MIT campus. The invite for the first event drops a few revealing hints about Amazon’s future plans (or so I choose to believe):

If you cannot see the image, the second paragraph says that Amazon is "working on a revolutionary V1 product that will allow us to deliver Digital Media to our customers in new ways and disrupt the current marketplace." Curiously enough, that quoted section is missing from the invite for the second event.

Update: It’s been pointed out to me on Twitter that 30 December 2013 did not fall on a Thursday.  30 January 2014 does, which means that the screenshot above is the early flawed description for the event coming up in a couple weeks.

Would anyone care to guess what that revolutionary product might be?

Rumors have circulated in the past that Amazon is working on a set-top box, a smartphone, and even more smartphones, Assuming those rumors are true then this new product would have to be something different. And I don’t think a new ebook reader or tablet would qualify as revolutionary, so those are out as well (plus they would be developed by existing teams).

So what do you think the new device is going to be?

I’m thinking that it could be some type of wearable. I don’t think this product niche is ever going to amount to much, but wearables (smartwatches, Google Glass, and the like) are a hot topic right now. Amazon might want to put a team together just to explore the possibilities.

The market for wearables is awfully small at the moment and populated by marginally functional products, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t grow. In fact, the ebook reader market in 2007 looked a lot like the wearables market does today. Perhaps Amazon might be able to upset the wearables market with a new product just like they did with the Kindle?

P.S. Amazon might also be recruiting developers for a software product; an app can be just as revolutionary as a new gadget. Would anyone care to guess what that might be?

Boston.com

My biggest issue with the Amazon retail store rumor is that Amazon has always chosen to make capital in hardware and systems as a way of reducing operating costs.

That’s why they bought the robotics maker Kiva Systems, and that’s why they invested in delivery boxes, so when I learned today that Amazon’s retail footprint now included a vending machine spotted in McCarran Airport I was not at all surprised.

If you should happen to be flying through Las Vegas and in the mood for some uber-geeky sight-seeing, stop by Terminal C. That is where you will see this:

If you should think that vending machine looks familiar, your eyes aren’t tricking you. I think it bears a striking resemblance to the vending machines which were said to be part of the Amazon booth which popped up last month. I only had a single poor quality image to post last month, but I thought the general design was the same.

Geekwire was the first to notice the vending machine in Las Vegas, and they report that they were the second to buy from it (a Kindle power adapter). The machine stocked Kindle ebook readers and tablets as well as accessories, including the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9. While it might surprise you that someone could buy a $380 tablet from a vending machine, it’s not the most expensive item I’ve seen. best buy has similar vending machines in airports and they sell iPads.

According to Geekwire Amazon’s vending machine is operated by Zoom Systems, a company which makes similar vending machines for Media Markt, Reebok, Best Buy and other retailers. This is just one of the vending machines that Amazon has been installing in malls airports, and other locations across the US. They also reported that the shopping experience was not without issues; the machine hung once or twice before finally dispensing their purchase and printing a receipt.

It didn’t, unfortunately, offer to let them enter an email so the sale could be associated with an account, and that is a pity. It would be nice if this machine were capable of vending Kindles and then attaching them to an account; the new user would be able to get them up and running that much faster. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea if the machine offered a Kindle-only Wifi hotspot so customers could register new devices and download content.

P.S. Does anyone want to start a betting pool on when Amazon will buy Zoom Systems?

Remember yesterday when I described the Alcatel MagicFlip as the smallest ereader I had ever handled? I wish I had held that post, because about an hour later I found an even smaller device.

Gajah, a Singapore-based OEM that specializes in tablets, ereaders, and consumer electronics, their InkCase smartphone cases a step further. They did away with the case entirely, and came up with a smartphone accessory which adds a 3.5″ E-ink screen to any Bluetooth enabled Android smartphone.

Gajah’s current InkCase models add an E-ink screen to  either an iPhone, Samsung Galaxy Note 2, or Samsung S4. As I am sure you know, this is a rather limited selection of supported models (there are hundreds of Android smartphones on the market) so rather than try support all Android smartphones with unique covers Gajah instead released one pocketable device which should work with all of them.

The ic3510 has a 3.5″ E-ink screen with a resolution of 360 x 600. This is the same screen as on Gajah’s case for the iPhone 5, only the ic3510 has been stripped of the plastic needed to attach the screen to the iPhone. This resulted in a much smaller device that is about the size of a credit card.

I didn’t think to compare the sizes when I had the ic3510 in my hand, but a standard credit card measures 4″ diagonally, so there’s a chance that this really is smaller. And if nothing else, the ic3510 is much smaller than the Alcatel MagicFlip I saw yesterday.

I got to play with the ic3510 at CES 2014. The firmware was still under development so didn’t do much and it wasn’t stable, but it was still fun to hold it in my hands. Then again, Gajah’s existing InkCase model’s don’t do much either; the cases were announced 6 months ago and there are still only a few apps which work with them.

The ic3510 is intended to pair with an Android smartphone over Bluetooth, and aside from the screen and BT the only other notable features are the 3 buttons on the front and the USB charging port. This is a very tiny and light ereader, almost dangerously so. Do you recall how one of the early Macbook Air review units got mixed in with a Sunday NYTimes and was accidentally thrown away? That could happen with the ic3510, only you wouldn’t need nearly as much paper. This device could disappear into a single paper bill, and that could be a problem.

Then again, maybe not. This device is small enough that you can carry it around in your pocket and never notice the weight. So long as an owner habitually puts the ic3510 in their pocket it should have little risk of getting lost.

The ic3510 is scheduled to hit the market in the first half of this year. If we’re lucky we’ll get reports from users, explaining what they did to avoid discarding their new gadget.

Here’s a head scratcher for you.

News is breaking today that indie ebookstore Zola Books has bought Bookish, the book marketing site owned by Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Random Penguin Solutions. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed but they would have to be rather unusual.

Both Zola Books and Bookish are rather new to the ebook scene and they both launched to much fanfare but later fizzled. Zola Books launched in mid-2012 with the goal of being a major ebookstore by the end of 2013 (they missed), while Bookish officially launched in February 2013 after several years development.

According to the Zola Books blog:

At Zola we’ve been working to build the tools for that kind of serendipity for many months now. And we are about to take a huge step forward by joining forces with Bookish, a book discovery site that has the most sophisticated and unique book recommendation system on the web.

Bookish works differently from other recommendation sites.

They’re absolutely right; Bookish is more of a marketing channel than a book recommendation site.

According to recent numbers given to Publishers Weekly, Bookish has relationships with approximately 50 publishers and some 600,000 titles in its recommendation engine. It was clear from the moment Bookish launched that it existed to promote books published by its 3 owners as well as anyone else who has a marketing dept. This leaves me a little puzzled because I’m not sure how that will jive with Zola Books, which promotes itself on the strengths of its exclusive content.

And that’s not the only thing that has me puzzled today. To start, Bookish was originally started in 2010, then announced in 2011, but didn’t formally launch until February 2013. The site was sold only 11 months later, which means that the site was under development for well over twice as long as it was operational before being sold.

And it seems to have sold for a very low price. Techcrunch has a statement from a Zola Books spokesperson which says that there were several bids for Bookish, but I find that hard to believe. Zola Books simply doesn’t have the resources to get into a bidding war.

According to their Crunchbase profile, Zola Books has raised somewhere under $15 million in financing (it’s not clear how many funding rounds they have had). That rather limits what they can afford to pay for Bookish, leading me to wonder if perhaps S&S, Random Penguin, and Hachette even recovered their initial investment and development costs.

Update: Publisher’s Lunch is reporting that the 3 publishers sank "at least $10 million to $20 million in funding" into Bookish, so it’s pretty clear that this was a boondoggle for them. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Zola Books will have equally bad luck.

In any case, Zola Books is saying that Bookish will continue to operate as an independent site, while at the same time its recommendation engine will be incorporated into the Zola Books ebookstore. Zola Books will also be taking over Bookish’s content deals, which means their ebookstore will offer a larger catalog.

For the second year in a row Barnes & Noble is renting a booth at CES. Once again they will be occupying a booth in the lobby of the Las Vegas Convention Center, and once again they won’t be showing off the Nook (or so the exhibitor listing and scheduled event suggest).

I know that last year I said that it was crazy to come to a gadget trade show and not bring a gadget to show off, but I think there may be a method to B&N’s madness.

This post finds me stuck home for a night due to a weather -induced flight cancellation, and that delay has given me time to sit and think about B&N’s latest crazy stunt. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not as crazy as it looks. I’m beginning to think Barnes & Noble came to CES this year to promote their core business:

Bookselling.

Sure, the Nook platform gets all the attention but the reality is that Barnes & Noble has always made more from their stores than from the Nook. That was true even before the Nook started its decline last holiday season, and it is even more true today. And that could be why B&N is coming to CES this year.

Much to my surprise, Barnes & Noble is acting like a bookseller. They even have an all day event scheduled for Tuesday where they promise that prominent leaders in tech will be autographing their books.

Now, the next question that comes to mind is whether this is a good investment. I tend to think it’s not, but even though I think it is ill-advised I also have to say that it is not a dumb idea (how I described it last year).

B&N might not see a direct monetary or marketing gain from exhibiting at CES, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have something to gain from showing up.

Would anyone care to guess what that is?

I know that more than a few of my readers run businesses of one type or another, so I am betting that you have a better idea what B&N stands to gain. What do you think they’re going for?

As the calendar year comes to a close, many pundits have turned to prognostication and published lists of predictions for 2014. Here’s my list:

1. Some things will change. Some things won’t change.
2. New fads will replace old fads.
3. One in four of 2013’s rumors will turn out to be true, while the rest will be forgotten.
4. 10% of the rumors which first circulated in 2012 will come true. The rest have already been forgotten.
5. Everything that happens in 2014 will become 2015 predictions.  (h\t to @willentrekin)

Snarkyness aside, I can’t actually make many predictions that wouldn’t be obvious as soon as I wrote them down. (Mark Coker, on the other hand, did a fairly good job on identifying how current trends will be reinforced.)

Here are the three of my predictions that I think are worth repeating:

One: Amazon will announce a program, buy a startup, or launch a product that will surprise everyone at the time but will be an obvious expansion on what they have done before.

Sunday deliveries, buying Goodreads, and Kindle Matchbook all could have been predicted had someone phrased the right question. Launch a smartphone / set-top-box? This will almost certainly happen; it makes too much sense for Amazon not to follow through.

My (un)surprising prediction for Amazon for 2014 is that they will buy an indie ebookstore/platform. I don’t know the name, but this store will probably outsell Amazon in certain markets or with certain types of content. The company will be acqui-hired less for its market share and more for its technical skills. (This prediction is not a surprise because I already made a similar prediction months ago.)

My other (un)surprising prediction is that Amazon will buy a startup that is working on clear solar panels (if they don’t already own one). Again, this prediction should not come as a surprise. Amazon will want to put the panel on a Kindle’s screen, but the tech will probably have too many engineering issues.

Two: The hot buzz word for 2014 will be the global ebook market.

Lots of people spent the last 6 months of 2013 pointing at the AAP statistics and bemoaning the flattening ebook market.  Starting some time in May or June 2014, those same folks are finally going to notice that the ebook markets in much of the world are actually on the rise.  You can expect to read a lot of buzzworthy stories about how this market or that market is the next great opportunity. DBW 2015 will focus an entire track on international expansion.

Three: The US ebook market will also increase in terms of dollar value, unit sales, and market share.

This is a pretty safe bet to make; the US ebook market was down in 2013 in part because of the 2012 market bubble and because of increased price competition from the majors. Christmas gadget sales and new lower prices for big name titles will combine to boost the US ebook market above the reported AAP figures for 2013.

Will the US ebook market in 2014 match the high point reached in 2012? Maybe, but probably not unless there is a surprise blockbuster hit. The next Hunger Games movie isn’t due out until November 2014, and while it will have a positive effect the sales bump won’t be quite as large as when the first movie was released in 2012.

Update: This post was written in late 2010, a time when it was difficult to find a PDF app for a cheap Android tablet. That is no longer true.

If you need a PDF app today, look in Google Play. If you can’t access it, try the Amazon Appstore. If that is inaccessible then the apps mentioned below will tide you over until you find something better.

If you are reading this then you have probably found yourself in need of a PDF reading app. (If you’re in a hurry, scroll down to the end.)

So did I, and after looking here and there I found a number of free PDF readers. In order to save myself some trouble next time around, I pulled together a list of 7 apps. All are free and can be downloaded from your web browser.

Is this every PDF reader? No. Just the ones I could find easily and link to.

I ended up getting the apps from only 2 sources. One is the SlideMe App Store and the other is Freeware Lovers. In total, I checked 7 sites. The other 5 had poorer selections and didn’t have any app that I couldn’t find at the first 2.

Update (29/5/2011): Amazon has launched their Appstore, so you might want to check there for free PDF Readers. I found Aldiko there, but it requires a later version of Android than i have on my Pandigital tablet.

If you can, you might want to look at the Android Market. I’m sure there are PDF apps in the Marketplace but since I can’t access it I couldn’t test them.

I was disappointed with all the apps. None of the apps had any annotation abilities, support for table of contents, or a zoom setting that cropped the white space. I was also surprised that only one had text search. I have a 6 year old version of Adobe Reader for WinCE that could meet or beat all of the abilities of all of these apps. That’s pathetic.

Some apps I didn’t test

Several of the office suites for Android include PDF viewers. If you have one then you might want to check it and see if it works for you. I also didn’t test anything that I couldn’t find outside of the Android Market. I’m sure there are PDF apps in the Marketplace but since I can’t access it I couldn’t test them.

Update: Kindle, Montano, Bluefire Reader for Android, and Aldiko can display DRM-free PDFs.

DroidReader

(SlideMe, v1.5+) Page turns and opening the file were reasonably fast. It has a go-to-page and zoom options, but it lacks reflow, search, and TOC support. Also, whenever I tried to zoom in, it crashed. (It’s still under development). But it does have little on-screen page turn buttons in the bottom corners.

Update: The developer behind DroidReader left a comment about features he’s planning to add.

Update 29/5/2011: It appears to be broken. I can’t get it to open any PDFs.

PDF Viewer

(SlideMe, v1.5+) It doesn’t do page turns, only scrolling. It has zoom,  go-to-page, and text search options (this may not be working right) but no reflow or TOC support. I think this one would be good for a smaller screen (under 5″), but it was a waste on a 9″ tablet. On a smaller screen the scrolling could be a useful feature.

Update 29/5/2011: This app has been updated since I reviewed it last, but it doesn’t appear to have any new features.

Adobe Reader 9.0.2

(Android Freeware) Based on the ones I’ve tried, this was the best app if you have a large screen tablet. It only has the fit to page width option, but it also has text reflow. There’s no search, page jump, or TOC support. But I like that you can either scroll or turn the page. This was also the only app to find my PDFs and list them without having to find them manually.

Adobe Reader 10.0

(Android Freeware) This couldn’t install. It requires v2.1, unfortunately.

VuDroid

(Android Freeware) This is a basic app with only a page jump option, but no search, reflow, TOC support, zoom. You can scroll but not turn the page.

PDFDroid

(Android Freeware) This is pretty much the same app as VuDroid. It only had a page jump option, but no search, reflow, TOC support, zoom. You can scroll but not turn the page.

Addendum

All of the PDF readers were tested on a 9″ Android tablet running v2.0 and the Spare Parts app. I couldn’t find compatibility info on several apps so I don’t know that they will work with earlier versions of Android. Also, some of these apps might require the Spare Parts app  in order to display full screen on a large tablet so you might want to install it.