Nate Hoffelder

Amazon made a move today which shows that they’re nit just trying to cut publishers out of the ebook market; they’re horning in on the audiobook market as well.

They’ve just announced a new $20 million fund for authors. They’re calling it Audible Author Services, and authors who sign up will get a buck for each copy of an audiobook sold via Audible. Clever, no?

The program is going to formally launch on Sunday, and it really is that simple.  Authors don’t have to do anything other than sign up, and what’s more, Amazon says that they don’t have to share their earnings from the program.

I wonder why Amazon is doing it? I confess to not knowing much about audiobooks, but I would guess that Amazon has noticed how the market is growing and wants to give it a push.

Downloadable audiobooks is the one category besides ebooks that has grown over the past couple years. While I don’t have current stats in front of me, the monthly AAP reports have consistently shown a solid increase each month. In January 2012, for example, the AAP reported $8.4 million for the category, up 30% from $6.5 million in January 2011.

And while it’s obvious Amazon wants to bypass the publishers, I suspect that they are also working to build the social aspects as well. Authors can be their own best salesmen, but first they have to be interested in doing it and I’m not sure that was happening before. While I can easily recall authors pushing their latest ebook, I don’t know the last time one pushing the audiobook at the same time.

And yes, I do think the long term goal is to bypass publishers. Amazon wants authors to sign in with their existing Amazon accounts, you know, the ones they use to submit their ebooks to KDP. This is going to let Amazon connect 2 possibly unrelated details about each author.

Also, this new program is being administered via Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), Audible’s new self-pub platform for audiobooks. There are even a few subtle hints that authors might want to check the ACX help pages for tips on promoting their work. Clearly Amazon is looking to build a direct relationship.

All in all, publishers are going to hate this.

via

I think the publishing industry is finding out today the true meaning of the phrase "when it rains, it pours". The Connecticut State’s Attorney General issued a press release today.

He’s leading a coalition of 16 states, led by Texas and Connecticut, in filing an antitrust lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Texas. They’re suing Apple, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster for price-fixing. The other 2 conspirators, Hachette and HarperCollins, have already reached an agreement with the 16 states.  The specific details have not been worked out, but the publishers have agreed to pay restitution to consumers.

Gee, maybe they did conspire to raise prices.

The one odd part about this announcement is that S&S is still being sued. They’ve already settled with the DOJ under terms that basically killed off the fixed price component of the agency model.

States eBook complaint

Press release to follow:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Attorney General George Jepsen announced today that 16 states, led by Texas and Connecticut, have filed an antitrust lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Texas alleging Apple Inc. (Apple), and publishing companies Macmillan Publishers Ltd. (Macmillan), Penguin Group (USA), Inc. (Penguin) and Simon & Schuster engaged in an anticompetitive price-fixing scheme for marketing electronic books.

At the same time, Jepsen said he and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott have reached agreements with two other publishers: Hachette Book Group, Inc. (Hachette) and HarperCollins Publishers, LLC, (HarperCollins). Although the details will be worked out over the next several weeks, the publishers have agreed to provide consumer restitution using a formula based on the number of states participating and the number of eBooks sold in each state.

“Publishers deserve to make money, but consumers deserve the price benefits of competition in an open and unrestricted marketplace,” said Attorney General Jepsen. “Those interests clearly collided in this case and we are going to work to ensure the eBook market is open once again to fair competition.”

The lawsuit and agreements by the states stem from a two-year antitrust investigation coordinated among the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (DOJ) and the offices of the Connecticut and Texas Attorneys General.

Jepsen made the announcement at a news conference in Washington with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced that Department of Justice had filed a civil antitrust lawsuit on similar charges in the Southern District of New York against Apple, Penguin, Macmillan, Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. The Department of Justice also filed proposed settlements with Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster that, if approved by the court, would resolve those lawsuits.

If accepted by the court, the DOJ’s proposed settlement would be in effect for five years. It would restore competition to eBook sales by ensuring that retailers agree to certain business reforms. In addition, the settling publishers would be required to establish effective antitrust compliance programs.

The states’ complaint alleges that the defendants conspired to raise eBook prices. For years, retailers sold eBooks through a traditional wholesale distribution model, under which retailers – not publishers – set sales prices for eBooks. However, the states’ investigation found that Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster conspired with other publishers and Apple to artificially raise prices by imposing a distribution model in which the publishers set the prices for bestsellers at $12.99 and $14.99.

The complaint alleges that when Apple prepared to enter the eBook market, the publishers and Apple agreed to adopt an agency distribution model as a mechanism to allow them to fix prices. To enforce their price-fixing scheme, the publishers and Apple relied on contract terms that forced all eBook outlets to sell their products at the same price. Because the publishers agreed to use the same prices, retail price competition was eliminated.

The complaint alleges that the coordinated agreement to fix prices resulted in eBook customers paying more than $100 million in overcharges.

The States’ lawsuit seeks damages, restitution, civil penalties and injunctive and equitable relief to prevent the illegal business practices from continuing.

Joining Texas and Connecticut in the lawsuit are: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont and West Virginia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
Assistant Attorneys General Joseph Nielsen, Gary Becker and Kirsten Rigney, Paralegal Holly MacDonald and Assistant Attorney General Michael Cole, head of the Antitrust Department, are assisting the Attorney General in this matter. Jepsen is co-chair of the Antitrust Committee for the National Association of Attorneys General.

So the news finally broke today that the long rumored Dept of Justice anti-trust lawsuit against the Price Fix 6 really does exist, and the DOJ is indeed suing the 5 publishers and Apple for colluding to fix ebook prices in the US market.

Surprise, surprise.

I haven’t covered this story in much depth but I have been reading all the hand-wringing coming from the legacy industry players like Scott Turow, Joe Wikert, and others. I’ve also been watching Twitter today as the news broke and many bemoaned the coming death of publishing as Amazon is released from the restrictions of agency pricing. So many of the tweets are based on half remembered, mis-stated myths about the ebook market that I cannot take it anymore.

Many things have been said about this story, but few of them are true. In this post I will correct that oversight. Here’s the big one:

Amazon isn’t going to kill publishing; they have in fact done more to create the new publishing industry than any of the 5 legacy dinosaurs being sued today.

I will work my way up to proving that premise, but first I will start on the smaller misconceptions. For example, there is an assumption made by many people decrying the end of agency pricing that Amazon can now do whatever they want with prices. Well, many appear to have forgotten that Amazon already could do that with a lot of the ebooks they sell because:

•  Agency ebooks are not the totality of ebook market.

The reality of the matter is that the only publishers who got agency pricing were the ones big enough to bully Amazon into it. These are basically the few who are big enough that they could hurt Amazon by walking away. Everyone else gave Amazon the right to price the ebooks however Amazon wanted. That includes thousands of small publishers as well as hundreds of thousands of self-published authors.

And that leads me my second point, which is:

• No one knows how many agency ebooks are currently on the market.

For the past week I have been asking around, trying to find out what percentage of the US ebook market was covered by these pricing restrictions.I did not find anyone who had been tracking this or knew of a way to find the numbers.

That means no one who has spoken out on this topic knows either the number of tittles or the dollar value of agency ebooks in the US market. No one who opposed ending the agency system has a single fact to back them up. (I really hope they don’t run their businesses in such a sloppy manner.)

• If Amazon is out to destroy publishing, then where are the corpses of their victims?

Given that Amazon can already abuse many thousands of publishers and authors, I’m sure you can find hundreds of stories of Amazon crushing the will of the innocent. What, there are only a handful of stories, which stand out because they are uncommon? I’m sure that’s not right. Amazon is evil, so clearly they must be hurting everyone.

And that brings me to my final point.

• Far from killing publishing, Amazon has created a whole new publishing industry.

Amazon has enabled literally hundreds of thousands of people to get their work to readers and get paid for it. No legacy publisher can make that claim, nor would they have even tried.

Are all the new authors good? No, but that point is irrelevant – unless you are willing to argue that everything put out by the legacy publishers  is also good. I am only crediting Amazon with creating the possibility; what everyone does with their opportunity is their business.

If anything, Amazon is out to kill legacy publishing. I am ambivalent to that; I don’t own any of the companies so I don’t have a horse in this race. My view if the Amazon-legacy  struggle would best be described as "root hog, or die".

And yes, self-pub existed before Amazon. You could even have submitted your ebook to Mobipocket or other ebook distributors. But you know and I know that self-pub didn’t become socially acceptable until Amazon launched the Kindle Store. That is when everything took off.

Now, I fully agree that Amazon is going to extract as much as they can from their dominant position in the market. But I also know that Amazon won’t be dominant forever. It won’t be too long before some faster, nimbler, and better competitor dethrones Amazon. It has happened before in other industries and it will happen in this one.

Update: This is an early response from Twitter that I thought summed my post up succinctly.

If you want to see how wrong current views are on Amazon’s dominance… rewatch "You’ve Got Mail" if you can stomach it.

And that is how I feel about the topic.

Yes, B&N is beating Amazon to the punch.

Late last week Techcrunch reported that the next Kindle might be getting an integrated frontlight so people can read in the dark. I never really liked the idea, but apparently Barnes &Noble does. I now have a photo of new signage that B&N stores are just beginning to get in store.

It’s important to note that the new Nook isn’t getting a backlit screen like that on your LCD based tablet. The Nook, like many ereaders, uses an E-ink screen and that means that you cannot have the light behind the screen. The new Nook is going to have a front light embedded over the E-ink screen and it’s probably going to work much like the FlexLight concept video which I showed you back in December.

I don’t have any firm details on the price or release date, but I have heard that it will be a Thursday launch. That likely means tomorrow, but it might refer to next week.

P.S. As fascinating as this story is, I have to say that I’ve been hearing rumors of it for a while now. My competition reported last week about this very product. He only had a rumor, but his details were surprisingly accurate.

Polaroid’s second 7″ Android tablet hit the market about 2 weeks ago and I got it the morning it was available.

This is a rather ordinary black slab of a tablet with a 7″ capacitive touchscreen, 4GB Flash storage, microSD card slot, g-sensor, speaker/mike, and a TV out port (no cable is included). It’s running Android 2.3 Gingerbread on a 1GHz CPU.

Update: There’s now a later version of this tablet with Android 4.0. The hardware is the same and the hack works fine.

It doesn’t have Bluetooth or a camera, which puts it solidly mid-field for $99 tablets.

The speaker is on the back, with the microphone alone on the one long side. All the ports and slots are found on the upper short side, with the power, home, back, and menu are on the right edge. The general build quality is good. The screen is responsive, and I had a minimal number of miss-touches.

Apps

The PMID701 comes with a good suite of apps, including the Kobo app, but it doesn’t come with Google Play or the Amazon app store. That puts it at something of a disadvantage when compared to the other good budget tablets like the IdolPad ($99, 7″, ships with Google Play).

I really wasn’t happy with the apps that came on the device; the Twitter and email apps were rather poor. Luckily for me there’s a hack which makes it possible to install Google Play. That radically changes my opinion of this tablet, making it one of the better ones in this price range.

Angry Birds loaded and played just fine. So did the Youtube app, which loaded several clips and played them without trouble.The stock media player is worth replacing, but it played video files without dropping frames. Audio was quiet and missed some of the subtleties, but it worked adequately (this is a budget tablet after all).

User Experience

If you get this tablet, don’t expect it to be more than a basic tablet.  But as a basic tablet it is a decent one. I have found that the only place where it comes up short is in the hardware it lacks.

It has no volume buttons. I know that is a strange complaint, but a lot of reading apps (including Aldiko, Kindle, etc) now use the volume buttons as page turn buttons. That makes it a lot easier to use a tablet to read on. And this isn’t limited to just reading apps; some of the feed readers and aggregators also use the volume buttons in clever ways.

All in all, this tablet is as good as the IdolPad, another $99 Android tablet.

Battery

I didn’t get a chance to take this tablet on a trip, which is my preferred way to test the battery life. But I have been using it as my main tablet for these past 2 weeks.I didn’t have any issues with the battery mysteriously draining (like on some other cheap tablets).

I would estimate that the battery lasted at least a day under moderate use. That is fairly good for budget tablet, considering that a premium tablet like my 7″ Samsung GTab has only 2 days battery life under similar usage.

Specs

• 7″ capacitive touchscreen (800×480)
• 1GHZ CPU
• 4GB Flash, microSD card
• Wifi
• speaker/mike
• g-sensor
• TTS
• Video out (but no cables provided)

I’ve had this tablet for a couple weeks now, and I have to say that the out of box performance is a little lacking. While it does ship with a basic suite of apps they’re not very good. Even the free ones I’ve gotten from Amazon’s Appstore are rather lacking when compared to the official Google apps (gMail, gReader, etc).

Luckily for me there’s a way to install Android Market and thus get the official apps. It’s also really easy.

Note that this isn’t  a set of instructions on how to hack the tablet; I’m only interested in achieving a certain minimum level of ability with the least work required.

Update: There are now at least 2 related Android tablets with the PMID701 moniker. These instructions have been confirmed to work on the PMID701C and the PMID701I.

A few days back one commenter pointed me at this page, which has both a set of instructions and the necessary apps. I’ve installed them without a hitch and I am now much happier about this tablet. I followed the instructions on that page and got the exact same results. Here’s how you do it.

1. Download this ZIP file to your computer.
2. Open it and copy the contents of the ZIP file to your Polaroid tablet over USB. Then unplug your tablet.
3. Once you’ve done that, open the file manager on your tablet and go to the folder where you put the files. Try to install the following apps in this order (double click on the files in order to run them):

• OneTimeInitializer-signed.apk
• SetupWizard.apk
• vending-3.1.3-signed.apk

As a 4th step you might want to press the home button, select the checkmark which says "open always with", and then select Launcher. This will guarantee that whenever you press the home button you will see the home screen and not be prompted with a menu.

All 3 apps installed okay, and I now have the Android Market working. I’ve downloaded and installed several apps. I know that it’s weird that the icon and app still says Android Market, not Google Play, but it works so I do not care.

But there is one small problem. For some reason the Setup Wizard app is listed as an alternate home screen. This does not impact the functions of the tablet, but it is a little annoying so I checked the box to always open the home screen with the other item (Launcher).

All in all, this is a much nicer tablet now. It doesn’t quite have the vibe of the IdolPad but at least it’s no longer coming up short in the apps department.

Devin Coldewy of TechCrunch has just gotten back from a tour of Lab126’s offices. This Amazon sub is where Amazon has been developing the Kindle since before it was a gleam in Jeff Bezos' eye, and while Devin was there he was shown a new Kindle prototype with a front-lit screen.

He didn’t get to see any part the device itself, but someone did demo the front light in action. Devin The touchscreen equipped device hs shrouded by cardboard with just the screen visible, and Devin reported that:

With a tap, a slider popped up on the screen, and as it was dragged to the right, the screen lit up evenly with a rather cool light. In the dark, it was plainly noticeable as a glow, and in uneven light — say, shade or a shuttered room — the slight illumination made the screen much more readable. At full blast it was definitely projecting some light (technically speaking it was reflecting it), but it was still a soft glow and not the harsh flashlight of a backlit LCD.

The light itself is based on tech developed by a company that Amazon bought a couple years back. The company, Oy Modilis, was founded in 1991 and then quietly snapped up by Amazon in 2o10. The company is described by Amazon as being"the world leader in light-guide technology". On a related note, I suspect that Amazon bought Oy in the same tech buying spree as the touch screen company they reportedly bought in early 2010. Amazon was probably looking for the next great tech and bought everything that looked like it had a shot.

When I first read this report I thought that here’s a product idea that I hope isn’t going to come to market. I’ve seen any number of front light screens and I’m not sure any of them worked all that well. They were always a compromise between power conservation and effective lighting thatI ut up with because I needed them rather than because I liked them.

But this one might be different. Devin was impressed by the evenness of the light. He thought that the lower settings would help make the screen much more readable in dimly lit rooms. This might be worth getting, if Amazon really does have the bugs out of it.

As for me, if I want a lighted screen I will get a tablet with lots better color and refresh rate. Also, I suspect that the front light Amazon’s working on is probably going to be enough of a power drain that tablets might be a viable competitor.

So it looks like Google didn’t see the growth they wanted in the reseller program they launched with the Google eBookstore back in 2010; today they announced that they plan to end the program in January 2013.

The news broke today with  the letter that Oren Teicher, the CEO of the ABA. (I’ve added the letter to the end of the post, in case you’re interested.) Google has also confirmed the news in a blog post.

Google’s going to be cutting ties to all 16 reseller partners, including Powell’s Books and the ABA IndieCommerce program (which supports about 150 indie bookstores). The ABA is promising to have an alternative in place before the end comes around.

Google had this reseller program for about 18 months, and while that isn’t long period of time it’s still 18 months longer than B&N or Amazon, who have never expressed interest in launching similar programs. On the other hand, today’s news  shows that they might have had the right idea; this program didn’t generate the sales Google expected.

Now, I’m running a few minutes behind everyone else on this story because I took some time to confirm details with Google. You might recall that a couple months back Google thinned the ranks of their ebookstore affiliates.  The surface details of the 2 stories sound enough alike that I got to wondering how they are related, so I asked Google.

According to a Google spokesman, the affiliate program and the reseller program are not the same thing. Today’s news only affects the bookstores who were resellers (like the ABA IndieCommerce). Any bookstore who was a Google affiliate will not be affected by this closure.

If you’re not sure whether your local bookseller will be affected, there’s an easy way to tell.  If that bookstore sends you to Google to buy the ebook then they are an affiliate. They will still be able to send you to Google to buy the ebooks.

***

Dear Bookseller:

We were notified Tuesday afternoon by Google that they will be discontinuing the Google eBooks reseller program, worldwide, effective January 31, 2013. As you may be aware, the reseller program is Google’s program as an e-book wholesaler to numerous online retailers, including IndieCommerce, as well as Powell’s and other partners in the United States and around the world, including partners in Canada, the UK, France, and Australia. Google’s decision to discontinue the program is, therefore, far larger than just IndieCommerce and the users of our product. After January 31, 2013, Google will sell e-books through Google Play only.

To say the least, we are very disappointed in Google’s decision, but, we have every confidence that, long before Google’s reseller program is discontinued, ABA will be able to offer IndieCommerce users a new alternative e-book product, or choice of products, that will not only replace Google eBooks as it currently works on IndieCommerce sites but that will be in many ways a better product.

From the start, we have recognized certain realities of our working with Google. As an enormous, multinational corporation, Google has interests far beyond independent bookstores, and the book world at large, and, at times, it has lacked understanding of many basic principles of our industry. Also, recognizing that it is never advantageous to rely too solely on only one vendor, throughout the time of our relationship with Google, ABA has been actively engaged in talking to many other potential industry partners, in case the need arose to replace or to supplement Google’s offering.

As you recall, we partnered with Google in 2010 because it was the only viable means for us to enter the e-book market, but, like so much else in our industry, things have changed rapidly, and we have options that simply did not exist 18 months ago. While we know that our volume of e-book sales has been modest, we also know that being able to offer e-books to your customers is an indispensable feature of any bookstore’s web offerings, and this capacity has helped drive online traffic that has contributed to increased overall sales. Moreover, we’ve all learned a lot about selling e-books in the last year and a half, and we’re looking forward to the opportunity to build an improved product.

We are totally committed to providing IndieCommerce stores the means to continue to sell e-books, and, at minimum, we expect to move forward quickly with one or more partners who will better understand — and who will maintain closer ties to — your stores, and to the book industry in general.

We recognize that this is a significant development, and I want to underscore that, in this transition period, Google eBooks will continue to be available via your websites. We also have every reason to believe that e-books purchased from your store will persist in your customers’ Google Accounts after the reseller program ends. We will share additional details as we learn them.

I know that change can be disconcerting and disruptive, but with input from the ABA Board, our Digital Task Force, and our Indie Commerce Advisory Council, we will get through this, and, in the end, I am confident that we will be able to offer a better and more robust e-book product.

If you have any questions, please, don’t hesitate to contact me or Matt Supko, ABA’s Technology Director.

best regards,

Oren J. Teicher
Chief Executive Officer
American Booksellers Association

This morning I was reminded why I check my email, even on the weekend. A source inside B&N thought today was a good day to leak hints about Barnes & Noble’s newest device, which it looks like they plan to call Nook Audio.

I’m still not quite sure what this device is, but I do know several things about it.

First, B&N filed trademark for "Nook Audio" back in February. I didn’t post about it at the time because B&N was going through a phase where they trademarked everything (I think there was even a trademark for "Nook Kitchen Sink"). I didn’t know which of the terms would be used, so I decided to wait and see what happened.

Also, Barnes & Noble hasn’t passed any new devices through the FCC, and the lack of FCC paperwork indicates that it won’t be a Wifi equipped device such as an ereader or mp3 player.

But I’m posting about it today because now I have the product page. There’s hardly any info on it, but the fact it is there tells me that the product is coming. We also now have a model number, OE250, and that tells us a couple things.

The model number is different from any of the Nooks, so this likely isn’t a Nook with sound. It’s probably not even an mp3 player; B&N would probably have built Wifi in and had it run Android (it would have been a mini Nook Color).

So what we have here is an audio accessory. The Nook Touch doesn’t have sound, so this would have to be for the NC or NT.  It might be as boring as headphones, but I’m hoping for a stereo dock. A couple different companies have them in the works for the KF and Nook Color (here, here), so there’s a good chance that B&N also thought now would be a good time to offer one.

B&N

Forty-two hours. That’s how long it took for the first pirated copies of the official Pottermore Harry Potter ebooks to show up on a pirate site.

A reader tipped me to the story this afternoon. One not terribly intelligent pirate uploaded a complete set of the Pottermore ebooks, in Epub, last night. I looked them over, and they are clearly not one of the earlier sets of  pirated ebooks.

Now, I’m not being rude in calling the pirate stupid; he didn’t put all that much effort into anonymizing the Epubs before he pirated them.  All he did was remove the warning statement from the copyright page. He didn’t do anything to remove the digital watermarks I reported on yesterday. I found the serial numbers in the title elements of the images, right where Booxtream put them.

And BTW, now that I have a second copy of HP1, I can see that the files inside that Epub have different file names than in the Epub I bought. This tells me that the file names might be another watermark added by Booxtream. Good. That means that the DRM embedded in the Epub is more subtle than I thought.

Frankly, I’m surprised this took this long. I recall that the later additions to the Harry Potter series were pirated within a day of hitting the bookstore shelves. In fact, I believe it was HP7 that was pirated before the print edition officially shipped.

I’m also surprised that someone would pirate these ebooks at all, given the widely known DRM buried inside. I mean, there already were pirated copies of these ebooks available, if you know where to look. Posting a new set doesn’t make much sense, given the risks involved.

If anything, this act of piracy tells me that I don’t understand pirates as well as I thought I did. The risk is too high and the need too low, and yet someone still pirated these ebooks. If anyone happens to think that increasing the penalty for piracy is going to have an effect, think again. This pirate is almost certain to get caught and yet he did it anyway.

It’s not as flexible as the rollable screen from Polymer Vision, but it is a step in the right direction.

LG announced this morning that they’re about to start mass production of a new E-ink screen. This screen is promised to be more durable than anything currently on the market and it can flex at an angle of up to 40 degrees.

So how does this differ from older E-ink screens? LG buys the screen source material from E-ink in giant rolls. They then cut out the 6″ screen size and mount it on their own backplane. With the screen mentioned above, it’s the backplane that is flexible. That is also why this screen is more durable than past E-ink screens, which had a glass backplane.

On a related note, I’m pretty sure I already showed you the new screen.  NextPapyrus has been working on an ereader that uses this new, more durable screen with this resolution, and I’ve posted on it once or twice. The LG screen mentioned above is likely the same screen being used by NextPapyrus. And it is durable. A few weeks back NextPapyrus posted a Youtube video showing the screen being repeatedly hit by  baseballs. It survived.

The new screen is going to have the same resolution ( XGA , 1024×768) as on LG’s current E-ink screen, which is being used on the iriver Story HD.  LG is planning to have it on devices in the European market next month.

Press release:

LG Display Begins Mass Production of World’s First Plastic E-Paper Display

With advancements in functionality and design, Plastic EPD to revolutionize E-Book market

Seoul, Korea (March 29, 2012) – LG Display [NYSE: LPL, KRX: 034220], a leading manufacturer of thin-film transistor liquid crystal display, announced today that it has started mass production of the world’s first plastic electronic paper display (EPD) for use in E-Books. The 6″ XGA (1024×768), e-ink, plastic EPD is expected to revolutionize the E-Book market with its advancements in functionality and design.

"With the world’s first plastic EPD, LG Display has once again proven its reputation for leadership and innovation with a product we believe will help greatly popularize the E-Book market," said Mr. Sang Duck Yeo, Head of Operations for LG Display’s Mobile/OLED division. "Based on our success in mass-producing plastic EPD, we are excited as we look toward applying concepts from this experience to future developments like plastic OLED and flexible displays."

Innovations in Functionality and Design
The world’s first plastic EPD from LG Display offers users a paper-like reading experience with a plastic substrate that is as slim as cell phone protection film, and a flexible design that allows bending at a range of 40 degrees from the center of the screen. Compared to glass EPD of the same size and resolution, LG Display’s plastic EPD realizes a super slim thickness of 0.7mm which is 1/3 slimmer than existing glass EPD; as well as a weight of 14g which is more than 1/2 lighter.

E-Book users have long expressed a desire for more durable EPD, since around 10% of them have damaged their product screens from accidentally dropping or hitting them. When LG Display’s plastic EPD was put through repeated drop tests, from 1.5m above the ground or the average height of reading when standing, no damage resulted. When put through a break/scratch test involving hitting the display with a small urethane hammer, no scratches or breakage resulted.

As EPD gets thinner, lighter, and more durable with the introduction of plastic EPD, E-Books will be able to offer certain unique benefits compared to smart devices and tablets, including reduced eye fatigue and more efficient electricity consumption in addition to lower prices.

A Manufacturing Breakthrough
LG Display developed a unique technique to utilize the high TFT process, typically employed in general LCD manufacturing and with temperatures exceeding 350 degrees, in the production of its plastic EPD. By overcoming the obstacles associated with applying the existing production process to heat susceptible plastic, LG Display achieved a breakthrough with the successful mass production of plastic EPD able to maintain strong durability in high temperatures.

Availability
The world’s first mass-produced plastic EPD from LG Display will first be supplied to ODM companies in China, followed by completed products to be released in Europe at the beginning of next month.

It never takes long for DRM to be identified and cracked, and the Harry Potter ebooks sold by Pottermore are no exception. It took a couple hours of disassembling the Epub and going over it line by line, but it’s pretty clear that the digital watermarks, a benign form of social DRM, are being provided by Booxtream, a several year old Dutch tech company.

When Pottermore was announced last summer, one of its big selling points was the ebookstore where you’d find DRM-free ebooks. That promise turned out to be not completely true, but the Epubs you buy there are free of what you would expect to find in most ebookstores.

Instead they come with something called a digital watermark. These watermarks effectively are little bits of data buried inside the ebook. It’s a benign form of DRM that doesn’t bother the average user. Unlike other forms of DRM, a unique digital watermark is created when each copy of an ebook is generated. This lets the ebookstore add something to the ebook which can still be to track down who originally bought (and then pirated) a particular copy of an ebook.

Similar tech has been used for some time now in music, documents, and other content, but Pottermore is the first high profile ebookstore to use it (that we know of).

In the case of Pottermore, the digital watermarks are almost certainly provided by Booxtream. eReaaders.nl has taken apart an Epub and identified the particular details as being the work of that Dutch firm. I also looked into this, and my findings match theirs.

In case you’re interested, the digital watermarks use by Pottermore are serial numbers added to various files. There’s a warning statement on the copyright page, but the true watermarks are slightly better hidden. You can find them as strings of text in the title element of some of the images. Also, eReaders.nl identified an element in the CSS file as being from Booxtream. I believe they’re referring to "boekstaaf". That’s the only element that is clearly not based in English. I believe it’s a Dutch name, which for obvious reasons would likely have come from a Dutch company.

Update: I’m pretty sure the file names are also used as a digital watermark. I just got my hands on a second copy of HP1 and the internal files have different names.

Booxtream has been supporting a Dutch ebookstore for the past 18 months or so, and so far as we know Pottermore is the first major use of their technology. Let’s hope it’s not the last. Let’s also hope they also added a more subtle digital watermark; the one I found is far too easy to remove.

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Do you recall the promise made last year that HP ebooks would be available in Epub & Kindle formats, DRM-Free? Yeah, it looks like that didn’t happen.

Pottermore launched their ebookstore this morning, and I bought an ebook right away. I know that I complained about the prices, but I started looking at the Kindle Store integration and I got curious about how it worked. So I bought one.

And that’s where the troubles began. First, I’m sure you know that when you buy an ebook from Pottermore, you can transfer it to your Amazon account. When you do that, Amazon will then push out a copy of the ebook to all the apps and devices registered to your account.

But this might take awhile (it did for me), given how much traffic those ebooks are generating today.

I didn’t want to wait, so I downloaded a copy and tried to open it in Kindle for PC.  It didn’t work. I then transferred it to the Polaroid Android tablet I’m reviewing right now and it wouldn’t work in that Kindle app, either. But the app did give me a clue as to why it couldn’t read the ebook. It showed me the same message that I’ve seen every time I’ve tried and failed to read a DRMed ebook on an unauthorized device:

Please remove the item from you device and go to archived items to download it again.

Yep, that is most definitely not the DRM-free ebook we were promised.

Update: So I’ve heard back from Amazon, and guess what they told me?

All titles that are pushed wirelessly from Pottermore to Kindle, or to other retailer’s eBook services and readers, are DRM encrypted at Pottermore’s request.

So what we have here is an ebook which is DRM free until you push the ebook through one of the ebookstores. Then it stops being DRM free. That is not what Pottermore said at the press conference. You can check any account from any of the press who attended. All reported that the ebooks would be DRM-free.

I’m waiting to hear back from Amazon and Pottermore, but until then I’m going to be downloading the Epub so I can convert it myself. That much vaunted Kindle Store integration isn’t worth it, given that the ebook is locked down with DRM.

The Nook Touch can do a fast refresh (and even play video) and the Kobo Touch can play Tetris, so today’s news that the Kindle Touch has been hacked to play video probably shouldn’t come as a surprise.

An enterprising hacker has posted an early demo video. There are no details yet on when it might be available to the average user, but this is still a really cool bit of news.

Update: The hacker posted several new videos. This one is much better quality than the first, and as you can hear the audio is now working, too.

The frame rate of the video doesn’t appear to be quite as high as that of the Nook Touch video, but I’m not sure.  On the other hand, the resolution of this video is clearly higher than the Nook Touch demo and it has audio.

Pretty soon you’ll be able to throw out your tablet and carry around just an E-ink ereader. Who needs color, anyway.

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Polaroid’s second budget 7″ tablet showed up on store shelves yesterday morning and I was there to get it.

The PMID701C is a bland looking black slab with a 7″ capacitive touchscreen and it’s running  Android 2.3 on a single core 1GHz CPU.

I’ve spent the morning playing with it, and it’s not bad.  I’m a little concerned about the battery life, but other than that it’s an okay budget tablet.

It’s an almost featureless slab with all the ports on one short end, the buttons on the long end, and the speaker on the back. It has a solid feel to it. The touchscreen is quite responsive and I’ve really come to like the general vibe of the device.

This tablet has a few quirks that have me scratching my head. I’ve looked through the setting menu and it  options for Ethernet and 3G, but it doesn’t have the hardware for either. It also has a port where you should be able to plug in a TV out cable, but no cable was included. It also has text to speech, but I don’t see an app that can use it. Weird.

It comes with Kobo and a lot of other apps (see photo for more details) but no app store. I’ve installed the Amazon Appstore as well as a number of apps, including games, Kindle, Aldiko, an RSS reader. Youtube worked, and so did the email client. I’ve downloaded a couple ebooks. I’ve even set up my Twitter account on the included app.

It’s rather bland but I like it enough that I plan to set aside my Galaxy Tab for the next week and use this in its place. The Galaxy Tab has a camera and Google Play, but I don’t expect to need either feature this week.

Specs

• 7″ capacitive touchscreen (800×480)
• Android v2.3 Gingerbread
• 1GHZ CPU
• 4GB Flash, microSD card
• Wifi
• speaker/mike
• g-sensor
• TTS
• Video out (but no cables provided)

P.S. Polaroid’s first 7″ budget tablet came out around black Friday 2011, but it didn’t get much attention. It was the PTAB7200, and I noticed it for the first time at CES 2012.