Nate Hoffelder

Intel didn’t mention how much they paid for digital textbook startup Kno when they announced the acquisition last week but inside sources are now saying that the digital textbook startup was picked up for a song. GigaOm reported earlier today that their sources told them that Kno sold effectively for pennies on the dollar:

Well placed sources who were in the know told us that the company sold for $15 million with some retention bonuses for the employees. Intel bought the company mostly for its hardware-related intellectual property and the employees. Intel also was one of the largest investors in the company — having pumped in $20 million via its Intel Capital arm.

Just to put that sale price into perspective, Kno had raised $73 million in venture capital since it was founded 4 years ago, and it picked up another $20 million in debt.

This deal was nothing less than a fire sale, and that does not bode well for the digital textbook market or other startups in this niche. Inkling, for example, just raised $20 million dollars this summer in order to compete in a market that murdered one of their competitors.

GigaOm notes that the death of Kno was a long drawn out affair. The startup almost managed to revive itself with a merger with Coursesmart, but that deal fell through because Coursesmart was reportedly even less healthy than Kno. That digital textbook distributor is supposedly being propped up by the publishers who own it; if that is true then it is news to me.

While I didn’t technically predict the demise of Kno I have been writing about how the digital textbook is a worse value for students than paper textbooks. I wrote that close to 3 years ago and I am still correct today. To put it simply, students are avoiding digital textbooks because buying and then reselling paper textbooks offer a better value. And even when students did use digital textbooks, they tend not to use the flashier components.

I’ve also written that the ongoing trend of students buying fewer textbooks, which I have been tracking for a couple years now, was not a sign of a healthy market. That trend has shown up time after time.

With all that in mind I am not surprised that Kno failed. And given the general lack of growth in that market (only 7% of college students use digital textbooks) I would also bet that they will not be the last.

 images by hackNY, vancouverfilmschool

Several Swedish language sources have reported that Amazon has been quietly negotiating with Swedish publishers, and that the retail giant is planning to launch a local Kindle Store in Sweden in early 2014.

I called it.

Late last month Svenska Dagbladet broke the news that Amazon was interested in the Swedish market. They posted a stump of an article which cited the trade magazine Svensk Bokhandel, and its source Claes-Håkan Johansson. They don’t include much in the way of details, but they do report that it is a widely held belief that Amazon was interested in that market.

And in addition to Svenska Dagbladet, there was a new article in Dagens Nyheter on Saturday. The article cites numerous sources in the Swedish publishing industry, including Christer Perslöv, the CEO of the publishing services company Bokrondellen. All are saying that Amazon is negotiating with publishers and distributors, with Perslöv stating that negotiations with his firm had been ongoing for a year.

Update: A reader left a comment with a better translation: "Bokrollenden is owned by all the biggest publishers and therefore has a monopoly-like position for book data there. They say Amazon has come closer in negotiations to Bokrollendens demands, before that Amazon had set “tough demands”. Both p and ebooks have been discussed." Thanks, Jussi!

While no one has any solid info on when Amazon will launch in Sweden, the general consensus is that it will happen early next year. And from the way some of the sources are talking, Amazon might also be interested in selling pbooks as well as ebooks.

Aside from that last detail, none of this comes as a surprise to me; back in September 2013 I was the first to report on Amazon adding new language support to KDP, including Swedish. I suggested that the new support indicated that Amazon was interested in launching more local Kindle Stores.

Right now there are exactly 2 international ebookstores in Sweden, iBooks and Google Play Books. Apple launched there in September 2011 and Google expanded into the country in July 2013.

According to the latest stats, Sweden has a population of around 9.7 million. While that is a relatively small market (compared to the English speaking world), Sweden is probably higher on Amazon’s list than you might think. This is one of 4 countries in the EU that have the highest percentages of consumers who buy paper books online according to a recent poll. With 38% of respondents buying books online, Sweden is right between Germany (41%) and the UK (36%).

Tell me, which are the 2 most developed ebook markets in Europe?

Sweden is also one of a handful of European countries that doesn’t have a fixed price law for books, so if Amazon does launch in Sweden there will be no law to stop aggressive discounting. Publishing contracts might block it, though, so I would not assume Amazon is going to be their usual rapacious self.

images by clunkygirl, axmai

The hot ed tech story of the week is something of a shocker.

Looking to boost their academic division, Intel bought digital textbook provider Kno for an unknown sum. An early report from TechCrunch says that the Kno staff will be integrated into Intel’s existing ed tech division – with the exception of the CEO Osman Rashid, who will be leaving the firm.

While tonight’s news is a shocker, it’s a well-known fact that Intel has been interested in Kno since at least April 2011. The chip maker led the Series C funding round and invested $20 million out of the $30 million raised. All in all Kno has raised just over $73 million in financing; I don’t know whether they were self-supporting yet.

TechCrunch is pitching this deal as being focused on the educational content market, or more specifically the 225,000 interactive textbook titles that Kno sells on behalf of 75 publishers. I don’t think that is quite what Intel is interested in.

It’s my guess that Intel has a broader interest than just textbooks. Look over their website and you’ll see that they aren’t just focused on selling hardware; they pitch a complete solution. Their educational division is akin to NewsCorp’s Amplify,  which is a platform consisting of hardware plus software plus a half dozen different types of academic content besides textbooks.

I think it’s the software that has Intel interested, not the textbooks. Or I could be wrong; I will admit that I am basing that on a couple sentences in the official statement:

… We are working to create an ecosystem of hardware, software and digital content specifically designed to help students learn and to offer educators the tools to effectively integrate technology into the classroom. …

… Even more, the Kno platform provides administrators and teachers with the tools they need to easily assign, manage and monitor their digital learning content and assessments. …

Kno was initially launched in 2009 with the goal of launching a custom tablet as a digital textbook platform. They went public with their dual 14″ screen tablet in late 2010 and then scrapped in in early 2011 after realizing that it wasn’t competitive against the iPad.

Ever since then Kno has been focusing on developing digital textbook apps (first for the iPad and later Android, Windows 7, Windows 8, and web browsers) and the back end to support them, and it is probably that back end that has Intel interested.

I think Intel is interested in kno’s abilities to do things like:

Kno for Schools enables districts to seamlessly deploy and manage devices, engage students with enhanced digital textbooks and empower every teacher and administrator with analytics and insights to make informed decisions.

Whether you’ve moved 1:1, are deploying a BYOD program, or simply helping teachers and students integrate digital content into their classroom activities, Kno provides the end-to-end solution to support the unique needs of every learning environment.

Intel probably feels that they have the hardware end nailed down (or if not then they have an acquisition in mind) and today they moved to strengthen the software components of their complete solution.

Intel, as you may or may not know, has been directly interested in the academic computing market since at least 2006. That’s when they unveiled the first Classmate PC reference design. This was also about the time that OLPC first started showing off their idea for a low-cost, low power educational computer, the XO-1. At the time it seemed pretty clear that the Classmate PC was inspired by the much hyped XO-1.

Since 2006 Intel has released several new educational laptop designs, each one an improvement on the last, while also improving the software they bundled with it. And over the past couple  years Intel has also been dabbling in developing tablets for the educational market. They announced one tablet in April 2012 and released it in early 2013, at which point it was overpriced and under-specced.

And then in August 2013 they announced a couple new tablets (7″ and 10″); no release date has been set. These tablets have relatively unimpressive specs compared to say, the new Nexus 7 or the Nexus 10, but I guess they meet Intel’s standards.

Today’s deal combines Kno’s software with Intel’s hardware, and that has the potential to create a major player in the ed tech market.

But before that can happen Intel is going to have to get serious about this market for its own sake and not as a way to sell more computer chips. They need to stop looking at it from the viewpoint of a chip maker, and until they do I don’t think they’re worth taking seriously.

Feedly is often touted as being the reigning champ of feed readers now that Google Reader is gone, but for a company that is winning the market they sure can make some boneheaded decisions.

Late last night Feedly updated their blog with the news that they had switched from letting users log in with their Google account to requiring that users log in with a Google+ account.

Google has been slowly transitioning from Google OAuth to Google+ as their unifying identity system. This transition opens the door to interesting opportunities like simpler login across devices – and a lot more.

We are following on Google’s lead and transitioning feedly from Google OAuth to Google+ login. You will see this transition surface on cloud.feedly.com this week and on Android and iOS later this month.

The browser version of Feedly has already transitioned to requiring Google+, and that presents a problem for the unknown number of Feedly users that don’t have and don’t want a Google+ account.

Like me, for example. I have been avoiding Google+ because of Google’s obsession with real names and the way that they have cut people off from Google Reader, Gmail, and other Google services for violating the Google+ name policy.

Like many people I depend on Google services on a daily basis, so I wouldn’t dare sign up for Google+. There is simply too great of a risk that Google+ might come up with some dumb reason to decide that my last name (Hoffelder) is too much like a town in Germany (Hoffeld) and thus must be a fake name (stranger shit has happened, I swear). Or Google could decide to cut me off because in some places I use Nathaniel as my given name while in others I use Nate.  Google could cut me off with no recourse, and I can’t risk it.

And based on the responses to Feedly’s blog post I am not the only one to balk. Feedly’s post is only 10 hours old and it already has over 180 comments, the vast majority of which are from unhappy users. Some have even payed to use Feedly, including Lifetime subscriptions, and an unfortunate few are now cut off from their account.

But even if you ignore the users who quite reasonably refuse to sign up for Google+, Feedly’s decision is also a serious issue for anyone that has Google+ blocked in their workplace. At least 3 different commenters have reported that they can’t use Feedly at work any more.

This really should have come as no surprise; not all companies approve of all social networks. LinkedIn, sure. And they might have a Facebook page, but there’s also a chance that some companies will be using a filter service that blocks Google+.

Update: Feedly has updated their post with the news that they are reverting. They expect to let users sign in using a Google account by around 4pm eastern. Thanks, Heather!

There hasn’t been any word from Feedly on how they plan to respond to this fiasco, but I am hoping that they either revert to using a Google account or launch their own log in system. (Why they didn’t launch with one is beyond me.) The blog post also mentions that they are working on enabling users to log in with their Twitter or Facebook accounts, but that doesn’t matter much to those who cannot access their account today.

But if Feedly doesn’t fix this I would bet that their many competitors will pick up a number of new users.

Amazon launched a new affiliate program for indie booksellers yesterday. They’re paying booksellers a small commission on hardware sales and a 10% commission on ebook sales, all the while pitching the program as a great idea. “Now your customers don’t have to choose between e-books and their favorite bookstore,” Amazon says in its pitch to booksellers.

Booksellers, on the other hand,  see things differently.

A number of indie bookstores across the US have spoken out about the program, and there have even been a few negative responses from the UK. (Even though this program is only available in the US, and not even the entire country).

The responses so far (as reported by Wired, PW, MobyLives, and even The Bookseller) have been uniformly negative (with a single neutral response). It’s not clear whether the coverage is biased, but I would tend to think it is not. All of the responses I have found so far match with what I was expecting to read.

Lissa Muscatine, co-owner of the Politics and Prose bookstore in DC, said: “We are not enticed in the least by the latest ‘offer’ from Amazon. It’s a dagger disguised as an olive branch – the latest effort by Amazon to gain traction with indie customers and loyalists.”

Her opinion was echoed by Suzanna Hermans, co-owner of Oblong Books & Music in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and president of the New England Independent Booksellers Association: “If Amazon thinks indie bookstores will become agents for the Kindle, they are sorely mistaken. There is no way I will promote Amazon products in my stores after the havoc they have wreaked on our industry as a whole. Sorry, Jeff. I’m not buying it.”

Several booksellers iterated the "Amazon is out to steal customers" theme. Michael Tucker, president and CEO of Books Inc., a 12-store indie chain based in San Francisco, described it as more or less a form of suicide. "In the long term, for anyone who gets into it, they would be losing their customers for what would end up a very small return."

Steve Bercu, co-owner of BookPeople in Austin, Texas, and current president of the ABA, agrees: "They’re attempting to acquire independent bookstores’ customers for two years of commission. This is simply in general not aligned with the interests of most independents."

I must say that my favorite response was the one from Left Bank Books.

Author and owner Kris Kleindienst has a skill for sarcasm that exceeds my own: "Left Bank Books announces its new program whereby Amazon.com buys its books from us at a fifty percent markup over list price. They will also be charged shipping. We believe this will allow Amazon to be a part of the bricks and mortar experience that they can’t do without. Prior to this program Amazon was forced to make do with warehouses in tax free environments that did not leave their customers with that satisfied,  ’I supported my local economy’ feeling they increasingly want. Now with the innovative Left Bank Books program they are easily able to stay relevant in a world that demands more integrity from its retail experience."

And finally, the generally negative response is coming from more than just US booksellers. While this program is still limited to the US, booksellers in the UK have already weighed in with their opinion.

 Tim Walker, owner of Walkers bookshops, said: "One would have to ask the question ‘Why would Amazon want to take that step? Where is the motivation?’ Because at the end of the day, they haven’t really ever given a stuff about everyone else in the book trade . . . My worry would be that by selling Kindle devices, we would be converting customers to using Amazon for their physical book sales as well as e-books. I would be very reluctant to jump in."

Sheila O’Reilly, owner of Dulwich Books in London, said: "I think I would search my heart and find that morally I just couldn’t stock the Kindle. I know Amazon employ lots of people in this country but they also have head offices in Luxembourg and Ireland for tax avoidance reasons and I couldn’t ignore that. If it was more of a level playing field between Amazon and independents then maybe I would think about it, but it isn’t."

To be honest, none of this comes as a surprise. The general tenor of the responses matches with what the very first bookseller said when news about this program broke in June.

Though I do find it strange that a few of these booksellers participate in the ABA partnership with Kobo; I don’t see how only Amazon is going to steal away customers.

Sources:

• Amazon’s New Kindle Offer Rejected by Indie Bookstores (Wired)
• Booksellers Say “No” to Amazon Source (PW)
• "We are not Amazon franchises": booksellers respond to Amazon Source (MobyLives)
• UK indies: 'We won’t stock Kindle' (The Bookseller)

Kobo doesn’t have a large hacking community to support it but what the hackers lack in mass they more than make up for in inventiveness.

One such hacker is reporting that they have Android running on his Kobo Glo. SyreKron posted a proof of concept photo over on Mobileread a couple days ago. For the record, this is not the Kobo Glo’s normal home screen:

This hack, which has been attempted on other Kobo hardware like the Mini without success, is based on the extracted firmware from a Tolino Shine. That 6″ ereader runs Android, and apparently it has enough hardware in common with the Kobo Glo that the code could be ported over with minimal effort.

The Shine runs Android 2.3, and it has a frontlight, touchscreen, internal storage, a microSD card slot, and Wifi. And like the Kobo Glo, it is intended strictly as an ereader.

Of course, the firmware for the Shine isn’t worth much unless you root it and gain access to the underlying Android, which is exactly what someone has done. Yes, there are now at least 2 hackers playing with Android on a Kobo Glo:

Pretty cool, huh?

This is the second replacement firmware hack for the Kobo Glo that has been discovered in the past few months. Back in September I psoted about a firmware hack that turned the Kobo Glo and the Kobo Mini into Linux tablets.

This hack is much more useful, IMO. While it will probably reduce battery life it also offers readers the opportunity to load other reading apps besides Kobo.

Mobileread

Amazon is getting a new competitor in China today, and it’s one that cribs from Amazon’s own playbook.

The Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has launched a new ebookstore and pay-as-you-go reading app. The ebookstore is integrated into MIUI, Xiaomi’s forked Android firmware, and as developed by Duokan, the ebook/AppleTV developer that Xiaomi acquired last year.

It’s not clear how many titles are in the catalog, but we do know that Xiaomi is using a rather unusual sales model. Rather than simply sell the ebooks, Xiaomi charges readers .03 yuan for every thousand characters read, with the revenue evenly split between Xiaomi and the content provider. That is far closer to a Spotify model than a typical ebookstore, and at this point there’s no way to tell that it will generate enough revenue for the authors.

Xiaomi is not a major player outside of China, but when it comes to that market they present a serious threat to Amazon. This 3 year old company now has a valuation of over $10 billion and recently snagged Google’s VP for Android, Hugo Barra, who was likely hired to oversee Xiaomi’s international expansion.

In China Xiaomi is known for selling high end smartphones with specs comparable to Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones but only charging about half the price. Like Amazon, Xiaomi makes their profit not from hardware but when users buy apps and other content.

Back in September 2013 Xiaomi boasted of selling 7 million smartphones in the first half of 2013. They generated revenues of over $2 billion from content and hardware sales in that period, or about what Xiaomi reported earning for all of 2012.

I’m keeping a list of potential movers and shakers in the international ebook market, and Xiaomi is going on it. This is a company to watch.

TenCent Tech

The greatest publisher in the UK has announced a new partnership with Foyles, a London based bookseller.

Foyles, a chain of 8 bookstores, will be running a pilot bundle program. They plan to sell 8 HarperCollins titles, including Catastrophe by Max Hastings, The Demon Dentist by David Walliams, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Faster Than Lightning by Usain Bolt, as paper/ebook bundles. Each paper book will come shrink-wrapped and include a voucher which can be redeemed online for a digital copy of the book.

The voucher will only be valid in Foyles' own ebookstore, which is powered by txtr, and cannot be redeemed in the Kindle Store or elsewhere. A Foyles spokesperson said the price of the bundles will be around £5 more than buying the hardback title alone, but that’s not quite true.

A quick comparison of Foyles and Amazon UK reveals that the bundle price for, say, Americanah is higher than if you had bought the Kindle edition and hardback separately on Amazon (£25 vs £22.20). The bundle for Catastrophe by Max Hastings also costs more at Foyles than at Amazon UK (£36 vs £23), and that’s not the only example.

Charlie Redmayne, CEO of HarperCollins UK, said the bundling scheme was a first for a UK bookshop. He said: “HarperCollins is always keen to experiment with getting our authors’ work into the hands of readers in as many different formats as possible. We are delighted to be part of this industry first with Foyles, and are very much looking forward to seeing how readers respond.”

If these prices are any indication then readers will probably respond by buying content elsewhere. While I am all in favor of bundles, I would think that the point would be to offer customers a better deal. This program certainly doesn’t seem to do that.

The Bookseller

image by fadilbotak

Amazon has long been the parent of a number of publishing imprints as well as a few niche book and gadget blogs, and today they added a weekly magazine to their stable.

Day One, which was initially announced in March as a short fiction publishing imprint, is going to be published weekly and will only be available in the Kindle Store. It will include poetry, works from debut authors, and stories from around the world translated into English.

This magazine, which could arguably be considered a subscription-based extension of the Kindle Single Store, is produced by Amazon Publishing. It will showcase one writer and one poet in each weekly issue. The first issue is available today and features the short story Sheila by Rebecca Adams Wright, and Wrought, a poem by Zack Strait.

Day One will cost $20 for an annual subscription, and is currently available at an introductory price of $9.99.

Amazon has long been rumored to be planning to launch more blogs, but this is probably not what anyone was picturing when that rumor circulated. But even so, Day One will give Amazon a toehold in yet another part of the publishing industry.

Remember how I wrote back in May that if B&N released an amazing ereader it could have revitalized the Nook platform?

Apparently that idea didn’t occur to B&N, because on Wednesday they are releasing a new Nook Glow that features a few anemic improvements but is lacking much of the hardware details that set it apart from the pack.

You don’t have to take my word for it; the new device should be in B&N stores on Wednesday morning. Retail is $119. And if you’re interested, here is the briefing doc (PDF) and fact sheet (PDF).

The new Nook Glow has an improved frontlight, a higher resolution 6″ Pearl E-ink screen (1024 x 758), twice as much storage (4GB, with 2GB reserved for B&N content and 1.5GB taken up by software), and somewhat improved software. It’s about an ounce lighter and it has the Regal screen refresh tech found on the Kindle Paperwhite and the Kobo Aura. B&N also talked up the improved fonts and tweaked reading app.

All in all, this would not have been a bad ereader – if B&N had released it last year. In fact, a release last Fall would have made up for all the hardware features that the new Nook Glow doesn’t have.

The new Nook Glow is still running Android 2.1 and it has an 800 MHz CPU, which is underpowered in comparison to the 1GHz CPU found in the Aura, Aura HD, and the new Paperwhite. And to make matters worse, the new Nook Glowlight is missing the card slot and page turn buttons found on last year’s model.

Oh, and it has a white shell which will attract fingerprints while making the E-ink screen look gray. This is the exact opposite of Amazon and Kobo, both of which went with a gray and then black shell because black makes the E-ink screen look whiter (this is ereader design 101).

Yes, Barnes & Noble has basically thrown away everything that made the Nook Glow special and better than its competition while at the same time releasing a device that is on par with what Amazon and Kobo released last year.

Folks, I know that some might say that it is unreasonable for me to expect a 6.8″ Nook, but wouldn’t that have been cool? Wouldn’t it have been more exciting than this Nook Glow retread?

This isn’t a device from a serious competitor; what we are looking at here is an example of B&N treading water. Stick a fork in B&N; they’re done.

***

Update: I finally got my hands on the new Nook Glowlight.

Barnes & Noble launched their latest and meh-est ereader this morning, but I wasn’t able to get my hands on it until this evening. I’m still not impressed, but I can say that I am no longer quite so as underwhelmed as I was before.

I caught up with the new Nook Glowlight in my local B&N store in Manassas VA. The staff didn’t seem to give a damn about selling any ereaders, but at least they did have the new Nook Glowlight on display. Of course, they also had the wrong pamphlet and they had neglected to configure one of the display units, but at least the hardware was there.

I spent a good 20 plus minutes playing with the new device, and here’s what I noticed. First, it readily passed the drop test. As you might recall the previous model had a fragile frontlight, but B&N has fixed the problem. The NGL2 also has a much more even frontlight, just like the press release said.

I then pulled out my KPW2 and compared the 2 devices. After comparing them from several angles I concluded that the KPW2 has a dimmer frontlight than the NGL2. I also noticed that the KPW2 was faster at turning the page – most of the time. There were times that the NGL2 was nearly as fast, but I could not see a pattern t explain why the difference was so inconsistent.

After that I went noodling around in the menus to see what I could do about the screen refresh. A number of commenters have called me out for dismissing the media claims that "B&N has axed full-page flashing in the new Nook", so I wanted to see just how true that was.

First, there’s no way to alter the screen refresh settings on the NGL2 that I saw in my local store.

I didn’t see any full page flash while reading (or any ghosting for that matter), but I did see it in the menus. While that does agree with what B&N said in the press release, it is a far cry from what the media is saying. It’s also completely different from what B&N’s defenders have written in the comments below.

Based on what I have seen, I think B&N is using the same Regal waveform tech found in the new Aura and the KPW2, only B&N has decided to take it to an extreme. Rather than minimize the full page flash, they disabled it when you are reading. Some people are going to like that, but I prefer the flash because it guarantees me a whiter screen.

Remember earlier this month when Adobe revealed that someone had hacked the software giant’s servers and stolen info on 2.9 million customers? It turns out the leak was significantly larger – by over an order of magnitude, in fact.

Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security is now saying that the leak has impacted at least 38 million users, a group 13 times as large as previously announced. And that’s not all.

Besides the hacked accounts, Krebs' sources at Adobe are saying that the hackers made off with some or all of the source code for Photoshop. This is in addition to the massive (over 40GB) amount of source code already uncovered, including source code for  Acrobat, Cold Fusion, Adobe’s web app platform, and Reader.

Yes, someone made off with a copy of the source code for a PDF reading app that has grown uglier and less useful with each release. If we are lucky the hackers might be planning to release a new and improved version of the app.

Over the weekend AnonNews.org posted a 3.8 GB file online that Krebs says looks identical to the stash of stolen Adobe info he stumbled upon earlier this month. It contains more than 150 million username and hashed password pairs, raising serious questions just how many accounts were compromised.

Adobe has been contacting all the customers that might have been affected with a warning and a request that passwords be changed. Pretty much everyone who has bought an ebook with Adobe DE DRM got that email, including me.

They have also offered a free year of credit monitoring for any customer whose credit card info may have been stolen. Of course, this offer is only good via Experian, which has its own history of selling consumer info to an online identity theft service.

The latest word from Adobe is that there was no sign that there has been any unauthorized activity on any Adobe ID involved in the incident. “So far, our investigation has confirmed that the attackers obtained access to Adobe IDs and (what were at the time valid), encrypted passwords for approximately 38 million active users,” Adobe spokesperson Heather Edell said. “We have completed email notification of these users. We also have reset the passwords for all Adobe IDs with valid, encrypted passwords that we believe were involved in the incident—regardless of whether those users are active or not.”

The investigation is continuing, so the number of affected users could still grow.

Amazon was embarrassed in publishing news circles a couple days ago when the news broke that Larry Kirshbaum, the high profile head of Amazon Publishing, was going to leave the company next Spring.

Shelf Awareness broke the news, adding:

In connection with his departure, the most ambitious part of Amazon’s publishing operations will be scaled back. Already several editorial people have left or been let go, and Amazon has not been a factor in bidding on major books the way it had been just two years ago.

This lead to a flurry of news stories about how Amazon’s publishing performance in New York has failed to meet the initial expectations as well as headlines proclaiming Barnes & Noble Is Now Amazon’s Biggest Publishing Problem and Amazon Publishing reportedly retreating in NYC, with the addendum that the new head of AmPub is now located in Seattle.

I disagree with most of what has been written about Friday’s story.

First, I am frankly surprised that so many journalists have forgotten that we live in the Internet age. The idea that the head of a publishing house has to be in NYC is a false assumption; it was inherited from the legacy publishing industry and reflects a different era. Physical location has almost nothing to do with how a company operates; all that is necessary is a fast internet connection (and a decent airport).

But more importantly, since when is a staffing issue an example of retreating?

To use a military term, replacing the general in command of an army isn’t a retreat; it’s a personnel issue. And in this case we might have the publishing equivalent of Grant replacing Halleck.

Tell me, have you looked at Kirshbaum’s replacement?

Her name is Daphne Durham, and based on the coverage of this story I think I was the only one who checked out her work history. Update: No, DBW covered the basic facts in their follow up post.

A brief glance at Durham’s LinkedIn profile tells us that she has worked for Amazon for 14 years, starting first as an assistant book buyer and then working her way up to Editor of AmPub and now Publisher of Adult Trade and Children’s Books.

Durham is replacing a fellow who had previously headed a Big 6 publisher. Until 2006 Kirshbaum ran Time Warner Books (or Hachette, as they are called since being sold to Lagardere in 2007).

What Durham might lack in industry connections and prestige she more than makes up for in having survived a Darwinist working environment for the past 14 years. Furthermore, she lacks Kirshbaum’s industry blindspots but instead has a decade of retail experience. She knows what sells and will be able to use that knowledge to run AmPub.

Replacing Kirshbaum may have doomed Amazon’s plans to have a quote unquote Major East Coast Publishing House, but that’s okay. Instead Amazon is going to have a publishing startup with all the same staff and funding, and run by a publishing industry outsider. Now things can get interesting.

In fact, I would say that the news of Kirshbaum leaving could not have been leaked better if Amazon had tried. His departure was going to look bad no matter what happened (unless he left for medical reasons), but at least this way Amazon gained the maximum benefit from the public shame of AmPub being a failure.

Yes, Amazon benefited from all the bad news. The word of the day, folks, is disinformation.

While I don’t know for sure that this was a deliberate operation on the part of Amazon, I do think that the resulting fallout from this story has created a meme. Many people in publishing will now be thinking, on a subconscious level, that "Amazon Publishing is a failure".

This could lead to underestimating Amazon’s publishing efforts – not just the one publishing imprint that Durham is running but all of Amazon’s other publishing imprints as well.

P.S. And if nothing else, let me remind you that Amazon’s publishing efforts are intended to disrupt the publishing industry simply by existing. Exhibit A: Amazon’s decision to pay royalties monthly.

image by St_A_Sh

The Kindle Fire HDX sports a high resolution screen, a very fast processor, and generally excellent media abilities, but one thing it lacks is support for Google apps.

Update: This post is originally from 2013, and it won’t work with the latest models. But if you simply want to install free apps from Google Play, I have another post that will help.

Luckily for us Amazon still lets users install apps downloaded from sites other than the Amazon Appstore, because one blogger going by Android Cowboy has found a way to add Gmail and a few other Google apps to Amazon’s tablet.

His trick is similar to the hack which let me install Gmail, Google Reader, and other Google apps on the Kindle Fire HD last year. He’s gotten Gmail, Google Play Books, Chrome, and Google Search working on the Fire HDX, but at this point Google Play Store and Google+ still don’t work.

Here’s how you do it.

First, you’ll need a file manager or some other way to access the install files on your Kindle Fire HDX. Amazon won’t let you do this via their setup, unfortunately, so I recommend that you head over to this post and install the 5 apps I suggested for the Kindle Fire HD. Or you could skip that and install ES File Explorer, an app which you can find in the Amazon Appstore on your Fire HDX.

1. Download the following files and transfer to your Kindle via USB connection to your PC. I suggest that you copy them to the “download” folder of the Kindle Fire HDX; it will be the easiest to find again.
   • Google Account Manager
   • Google Play Services
   • Google Service Framework
   • Gmail
2. Open the ES File explorer app and then open the download folder. Select and install Google Account Manager.
3. If you are prompted by a warning that app installs are blocked, follow the prompts to go to the settings menu and change the appropriate setting. Then go back to ES File explorer and try to install Google Account Manager again.
4. Reboot your Kindle Fire HDX by pressing and holding the power button and then selecting the shutdown option.  Then restart it.
5. Install Google Services Framework.
6. Reboot.
7. Install Google Play Services.
8. Reboot.
9. Install Gmail.
10. Reboot.

At this point you should be able to open the Gmail app and log in to your account. You can ignore any warning messages.

Once you’ve logged into your Gmail account you can then download and install other Google apps. If you need help finding the apps, check out the 1Mobile app store. That is one of the better sources of free apps, including reading apps, utilities, and even Google apps.

Last year I reported on a similar trick which let me add Google apps to the Kindle Fire HD, but unfortunately it turned out to be less useful than I had hoped. The Kindle Fire HD (2012) didn’t support notifications and running Google apps in the background, and as a result some apps (Gmail, for example) would only check for new content when they were open.

I am concerned that the HDX might have the same issue. I’d love to hear back from anyone who tries this. How well did it work?

Liliputing

Kobo’s 6 month reign as the only ereader maker with a 6.8″ ereader is about to come to an end. A friend has just sent me the spec sheet for the T68, Onyx’s not-yet-announced 6.8″ ereader.

If you are like me and were pining for the rumored Android-powered Nook Glow HD then you might want to sit down.

The Boox T68 is running Android 4.0 on a 1Ghz Freescale i.mx6 processor. It comes with 512MB RAM, 4GB of Flash storage, and a microSD card slot. This ereader has the same 6.8″ Pearl HD E-ink screen as on the Aura HD, and it also has a capacitive touchscreen and a frontlight.

According to the spec sheet the T68 also has an audio jack, Wifi, and Bluetooth. That last detail brings this ereader closer to being a true E-ink Android tablet, IMO.

In terms of content, the Boox T68 maintains Onyx’s standard for broad format support. In addition to Epub and PDF, the T68 also supports FB2, Mobi, CHM, PDB, and DJVU ebook formats. It can also read txt, html, RTF, and MSWord Doc files, and it can play mp3 and wav music files.

I’m told that the T68 will let you install apps, and that it also comes with a reading app that supports text-to-speech, annotation, and dictionary look-up. This ereader weighs in at 230 grams, or slightly less than the Aura HD.

I have been looking forward to reading about new 6.8″ ereaders ever since Kobo announced the Aura HD back in April, but so far this is the only model I have seen. I first discovered that it existed a couple weeks ago when Charbax visited the Onyx booth at a trade show. He happened to catch a demo unit for this ereader on film, and he  spent a few minutes playing with it:

Onyx is reportedly ready to make this ereader, but before they can do that they need to get orders. They are quoting a price of $145 for a minimum order of 1,000.

I really hope that someone picks up this model and offers it in Europe; I want to buy one. Can you say E-ink Android tablet? Swoon.

When Oyster launched their ebook subscription service last month it was widely hailed as a boon to readers, who were now able to access a large selection of ebooks for only $9.99. Much less was said about how authors were going to be compensated, with many wondering if this service would be as good of a deal for creators as it is for readers.

Today I can lay their fears to rest.

Earlier today Smashwords sent out an email to their author and publisher partners with details on Smashwords' deal with Oyster. SW was one of the launch partners for Oyster last month, but it wasn’t until this week that all the technical bugs had been worked out so the deal could move forward.

The contract terms are much better than I had expected, and if I had written a book it would definitely be included in this deal. Mark Coker of Smashwords informed SW authors and publishers that the titles would begin rolling out to Oyster in the next 72 hours. He also shared the payment terms:

A single Oyster user could conceivably read multiple books by the same Smashwords author in a single month, and the author will be paid for each book. As a Smashwords author or publisher, you’ll earn 60% of you book’s retail list price whenever an Oyster subscriber reads more than 10% of your book, starting from the beginning of the book forward.  It’s an author-friendly model.  That’s the same rate Smashwords authors earn when we sell ebooks through the major retailers such as Apple and Barnes and Noble.

That is fairly author-friendly (especially when compared to Spotify), but I am also not sure whether it is financially sustainable.

I can picture myself starting and abandoning a handful of books each month, and that would be more than enough to eat away at the $9.95 monthly subscription.

On the other hand, Pew reported in June that half of American readers reported consuming 6 or fewer books in the previous year, and that book readers as a whole consumed an average of 15 titles in the previous 12 months.

This tells us that Oyster’s success will depend on signing the lighter readers, obviously. But it also suggests that Oyster does have a real chance of success.