Nate Hoffelder

Mike Shatzkin wrote a post this morning on Kobo’s new partnerships (in the UK and in France) and how those deals were going to make Kobo one of the major ebookstore competitors. I had a rather interesting experience yesterday that really makes me wonder if that is true.

I went up to NYC yesterday to attend a comic book convention. While I was there, I attended a conference session on self-pub and how the aspiring writer could use Barnes & Noble’s PubIt to get their content into the Nook Store. B&N organized the session, which is why it focused so heavily on them, but the panelists did discuss B&N’s competitor, Amazon.

They mainly talked about why they didn’t like Amazon’s platform and why they preferred B&N over Amazon, but they did provide reasonably accurate info. But the most interesting detail in the discussion about the various platforms was that Kobo was never mentioned.

Not once – not even as an afterthought. All the authors and publishers on the panel talked as though there was a binary choice: Kindle vs Nook, and that tells me something about Kobo’s market presence. Admittedly, my experience could just be a marketing fail for Kobo, but it could also be a sign that they are not nearly as important as we give them credit for.

I think that the discussion I witnessed was an accurate reflection of how the panelists viewed the ebook market. Kobo isn’t even on their radar. At the very least, I would have expected Kobo to be mentioned as an alternative to Amazon on the international market but they weren’t. This leads me to wonder if  the trifecta of "Kindle, Nook, and Kobo" is really a valid statement.

I’m beginning to suspect that we call Kobo one of the major ebookstore because of the perception that they are important, not because they have a major market share. If I’m right, then the perception that Kobo is a major player comes from the echo chamber that is the publishing press. Everyone has heard enough times that Kobo is a major ebookstore that we have just come to accept it without actually looking at the numbers.

And what limited figures I have for Kobo’s market share independently support this idea. I’m told that Kobo has around 2% to 5% of the US  market, with the vast majority of the market taken up by Amazon and Barnes & Noble (and Apple coming in third with around 10%). And this figures aren’t estimates; they’re based on what publishers are discussing off the record.

What do you think?

It’s been 2 months since Thalia first announced that they were going to release a new Oyo ereader, and earlier this week they finally unveiled the the Oyo II.  The original is on the left, with the new Oyo on the right.

As you can see, the Oyo II looks pretty much like the original Oyo. It has the same button layout, 6″ Sipix screen, capacitive touchscreen, Wifi, and card slot, but the Oyo II also has 4GB Flash storage, longer battery life, as well as a faster CPU.

Thalia had it on display at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which is wrapping up today. It’s going to ship in November, and  Thalia will carry it on all 300 of their bookstores, as well as their website. It’s also going to be available via buch.de and bol.de. Retail is 119€, which is a slight discount from the original Oyo (that sold for 139€). I’d say the price drop is likely due to the new K4 being sold in Germany for 99€.

Thalia also mentioned that they plan to release reading apps later this year, with Android coming in December and iOS app coming in January. Readers will be able to use the Android app and the Oyo II to buy directly from Thalia’s ebookstore, where they stock 300k titles with 100 thousand in German.

I think Thalia should have gotten out of the hardware end of the business.  They’re simply not big enough to be selling enough Oyo ebook readers to justify the price. I would lay odds that they are loosing money on each sale.

It would probably have been better to partner with Sony and sell the PRS-T1.  Redirecting it to the Thalia ebookstore would require minimal work and saved Thalia the development cost.

via Heise.de

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We’ve known ever since the T1 launched that it ran Android, and for the longest time everyone has been saying that it couldn’t be hacked becuase it wasn’t running a full Android install.

Clearly that’s not the case. Do you see that menu at right which shows a bunch of different reading apps? Yeah, the T1 isn’t supposed to be able to do that.

Update: And now you can hack the T1.

My newest best friend sent me a link to this video this evening. As you can see, the Sony Reader has been hacked and it’s now running AWLauncher and a bunch of different reading apps. (I kinda wish that they had included the Kindle app; that would have been funny.) The video isn’t all that great, but it does show that the T1 is well on its way to joining the Nook Touch as a 6″ Android tablet.

But the hacking is still a work in progress; not all Android apps can run on the T1. Angry Birds, for example, will crash. Still, this is excellent progress.

Update: I’ve heard back from the hacker:

The hack is in pretty early stages. Not ready for release yet. I’ve run CoolReader, FBReader, ReLaunch, AWD.Launcher, Android Terminal, that’s pretty much it. For some apps the latest and greatest version wouldn’t work (CoolReader, Terminal), but for FBReader the latest "stable" version crashes while the "experimental" 2.0 alpha works quite well.

So now that we have 2 hacked 6″ Android tablets (Nook Touch and Sony T1), which do you think is better? I’m leaning towards the Sony becuase of the extra buttons, included stylus, and becuase I think it’s a prettier design.

Thanks, kuzelnik!

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It looks like I was right 2 months back when I predicted the end of Stanza; the latest version of iOS was released yesterday and Stanza won’t run anymore.

Update: It took Amazon a month to release it, but there is an update for Stanza.

A friend took the screenshot at right. It shows the Stanza app having a rather impressive crash. To be honest, I’ve never seen such a crash before; most apps just shut down quietly.

iOS5 offers a lot of valuable improvements, new features, and other cool tricks, but it also changed enough that it broke a number of apps. Over the past 5 or so months that it has been available as a beta release, app developers have had the chance to test their apps and fix the problems they found.

But it doesn’t look like Amazon bothered to put any effort into fixing the Stanza app.

There have been numerous crash reports going back 4 or more months and yet no word from Amazon or Lexcycle on when the problems would be fixed. I’d say that is a good sign that Amazon stood back and let the new update kill the app.

All the other reading apps I’ve checked work just fine on iOS5, which means that the developers of the apps proactively worked to identify and correct any issues. Amazon did this for the Kindle app, and I know of a couple other reading apps that even mention iOS 5 in the update notices. The digital textbook developer Kno have even sent out emails warning about possible issues with their app.

This is a time where I regret being right. I had hoped, for the sake of Stanza’s users, that Amazon would come through in the end. Nope. Stanza was last updated back in February 2011, and it looks like that was when Amazon pulled the plug.

Stanza was one of the first best apps on iOS when it launched in 2008, and its success paved the way for all the rest of the reading apps. Amazon bought the company in 2009, for their own reasons. I’d always thought that Amazon bought Stanza just to make sure Apple couldn’t. Given that Amazon appear to have abandoned the app, it looks like I was right.

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This week the hardware news has been coming well, I’d like to say fast and furious but it’s really coming at a trickle. A second ebook reader has launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This time around it’s the Liro Color, a 7″ Android tablet/ereader from Trekstor.

The Liro Color is running Android v2.1 on a 7″ screen with Wifi, a microSD card slot, and 2 GB Flash storage. There aren’t a lot of details available yet, but this ereader reportedly has 7 hours of battery life, can play MP3s, and it supports an integrated ebookstore. It’s due to ship soon with a retail of 99 euros.

Unfortunately, it looks like you won’t be able to buy it directly from anyone just yet. It’s actually part of an ebookstore platform that MVB are promoting at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

MVB are a rather interesting company. They’re a subsidiary of the German Booksellers and Publishers Association. The platform they’re pitching would work something like the IndieCommerce Program that is offered by the American Bookseller’s Association. Booksellers can slap their own label on a stock ebookstore and sell ebooks (and ereaders) to their customers.

In any case, I’ve already had my hands on the hardware. I reviewed it a few months back as the Aluratek Libre Touch. It was an okay ebook reader back then, with a nice screen, good balance, and a responsive touchscreen. I reviewed it strictly as an ereader becuase it was running an old version of Android. Luckily the Liri Color is using a newer firmware than the one I reviewed, so it will likely have an even better performance.

As a tablet, the Liri Color is probably a nice deal. It doesn’t have Android Market, but there are enough third part app sources that it shouldn’t be a problem.  It’s also priced about the same as the European price of the new Kindle, so you could get this instead and load the Kindle Android app.

This is definitely a budget tablet that I’d want to get my hands on.

via

OverDrive are reporting today that they’ve seen a record number of new ebook patrons over the past year, as well as a vast increase in app installs, mobile checkouts, and a vast increase in ebook checkouts.

It’s been a stellar year at OverDrive, with total ebook turnover looking to hit 16 million checkouts, which would be triple that of 2010. They’ve also seen a near doubling of new users signing up, with nearly 2,000,000 already joined this year. Those new users have also added to a spike in installs for OverDrive reading app; there’s now over 9 million copies of the OverDrive Media Console in use, including over 2 million on iOS and Android.

OverDrive continue to maintain their lead in the library ebook market, and they have over 15 thousand  partner libraries sharing thousands of ebooks and audiobooks everyday. Patrons can read and listen on their PC, BlackBerry, Android, or iPad.

But OverDrive won’t be the only game in town for much longer. 3M are working on their own competing platform, and early reports on the beta testing are quite positive. The 3M Cloud Library is intended to go head-to-head with OverDrive, and it can go one better. 3M have also designed the platform so it can lend the ebook readers as well as the ebooks, and let the library staff manage them from the one portal.

Baker & Taylor also launched a library ebook platform this year called Axis 360. it’s being launched in close partnerrship with Barnes & Noble and is intended to work with the Nook ebook readers. It’s still under development though, but it’s going to launch with titles that Baker & Taylor currently distribute through Blio.

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image by mamamusings

I was planning to write a review of the Kobo Touch this week but unfortunately I have encountered a hardware problem.

Over this past weekend I set a new goal for myself. I took all my ereaders out of  storage and stacked up all the ones that I had never written a review for. I plan to use each one for a week and then write a review on the weekend.

By popular request on Twitter, I set out to review the Kobo Touch first. Unfortunately, the review is going to have to go on hold until I get my unit downgraded to an older firmware or I get it replaced.

I don’t know if I am the only one who has encountered this, but I cannot get the touchscreen to respond consistently (with firmware 1.9.11). My Kobo Touch seems to only recognize very specific screen taps and ignores the rest. I often have to tap the screen 3 and 4 times before it deigns to turn the page. This is a problem, because I’m used to devices that let me touch the screen however I want and have it respond.

Normally I might tough it out, but I posted my problem over on MobileRead. Within a couple hours I got this response:

My experience is that I have the most consistent turns when I tap right down into the bottom right corner of the screen. Not sure why that is, but it’s where works best for me to tap ergonomically speaking anyway so it works well for me.

Yeah, that’s not good. The device is supposed to support the user, not force the user to adapt to its quirks. No, wait, if his experience is that extreme then I wouldn’t call this a quirk; this sounds like a major flaw with the Kobo Touch.

If I had to guess, I would say that this is likely a software issue. That’s what the second comment posted over at MobileRead suggests. But I’m not sure, frankly; a sample size of 3 isn’t enough to diagnose the problem. All I can say now is that there is a problem, and that it has rendered my Kobo Touch unusable.

I hesitated to post this complaint, given that I posted someone’s open letter to Kobo Sunday night.  But eventually I decided that the Kobo Touch is a premium ereader, and the public needs to know what they’re getting into when they one.

I hadn’t realized when I first read the letter quite what nesler meant when he said he wouldn’t recommend the Kobo Touch; given the issues I have had I wouldn’t recommend it either.

P.S. If you’ve had issues with the touchscreen or you know how to fix it, please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I’m going to finish out the week on the iriver Story HD, and post that review this weekend.

Pottermore  scored quite the scoop today.

Charlie Redmayne, currently the Chief Digital Officer for HarperCollins, has just announced that he is leaving the company to join Pottermore as CEO. He joined HarperCollins in 2008 with a goal of overseeing their transition to the new digital economy. He did the job so well that he was promoted to CDO in 2009.

And now he’s going to head up Pottermore.

As you probably know, Pottermore is a new digital initiative from J.K. Rowling.  When it launches, it’s going to be the premier online community for Harry Potter fanatics as well as the only place to buy Harry Potter ebooks. The site has had some growing pains, and due to the overwhelming demand the developers have pushed the ebookstore back to next year.

Normally I’d deny the value of a good manager my labor roots are showing), but this was a good move for Pottermore. Redmayne brings a fair amount of practical experience with him. He’s not only led the team which built the digital platforms at HarperCollins, but he also launched a social startup in 2000, which he then sold to BskyB. This is an excellent example of a round peg in a round hole.

HarperCollins announced the move in an internal memo, which I have embedded below.

October 10, 2011

TO:            All Employees

FROM:        Brian Murray

I regret to announce that Charlie Redmayne has decided to leave his role as Executive Vice President, Chief Digital Officer with HarperCollins to return to London full-time.

Charlie has been a tremendous leader in the digital space during one of the most challenging and interesting times in book publishing. HarperCollins is in a terrific position because of Charlie’s efforts and accomplishments across all divisions around the world. We were fortunate to have such a talented digital executive for the last three and a half years, and I understand that we couldn’t expect him to live on both sides of the Atlantic forever.

Of his departure, Charlie said, “I’m very sad to be leaving HarperCollins—it is a terrific company and I have loved my time within it. HarperCollins has made great strides in the digital world over the last few years—because it is well led and has great people. These efforts will continue at pace and I look forward to watching their future success.”

The search for a replacement is already underway. Larry Nevins, Executive Vice President, Operations and Technology, will oversee the group until a permanent replacement is found.

Charlie’s last day with HarperCollins will be November 4. Please join me in wishing him all the best on his future endeavors.

Here’s another nugget of ereader history that you might find interesting.

If you know anything about the history of ebook readers, then you probably know that Sony have been in this industry for quite some time. The released the first Sony reader, the PRS-500, in 2006. And before that they also released the Sony Librie in 2005 (only in Japan). But long before Sony released the Librie, they also released the Data Discman.

Sony have been dabbling in the ereader market for a lot longer than you realize, and they actually released their first Data Discman in 1990. By 2000, Sony had released a number of different Data Discman models. I just acquired another one via  Ebay.

These weren’t the ebook readers you’d expect today and in fact they have very little in common with most ereaders on the market. The Data Discman were conceived in a pre-PDA, pre-smartphone gadget ecosystem. This was so long ago that it even predates modestly priced laptops. They didn’t have many fiction titles available, and they were also rather expensive (prices started around $400 and went up from there).

The DD-S35 was one of the last Data Discman, and it was priced around 44 thousand yen when it was launched 10 years ago. Depending on the conversion rate and inflation, that would be about $600 to $750 today.

The prices limited the market to those who really needed the compact format, and that probably affected the title selection. Most of the ones I’d seen were reference guides, encyclopedias, and other dense information sources.

The Data Discman  used a proprietary cartridge that Sony sold but inside the cartridge was a standard 3.5″ CD. (No, seriously, you can still buy this CD size if you want.) The file format was also proprietary, and while the format has supposedly been hacked, I never had much success in burning my own CDs for the Data Discman.

BTW, there were actually 3 (or possibly 4) file formats for the Data Discman, not one. The base format only supported text, and the more sophisticated formats had images and audio.

The multiple formats made things a little interesting for end user, because the several dozen Data Discman models didn’t all  support images and audio. The various models also came in a variety of shapes, including slabs and clamshell.

I just got a DD-S35 off of Ebay. It’s not the sturdiest of the models, but it’s also one of the few I have that is completely functional. It has a keyboard, a 5″ LCD screen (320×240), speaker, headphone jack, and it runs off 2 AA batteries. My unit was originally released in Japan, so I’m at something of a loss to figure out what the symbols on the keyboard mean. On the upside, the DD-S35 does support the enhanced formats. At least it should; I haven’t found any images or audio to test.

The software is rather limited, but the hardware is quite well done. That’s no surprise; according to one source I have one of the last Data Discman model that Sony ever released. It hit the market in 2000.

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A couple different blogs have turned up the paperwork for the Kindle Fire trademark this evening and unfortunately for me, there’s a know-nothing over at Gizmodo who has misinterpreted what the paperwork means. He’s kicking up all this ruckus over what is a non-story.

First let me tell you what’s getting him all excited. If you go to www.uspto.gov and look up "Kindle Fire", you’ll see that it was registered by a Delaware company called Seesaw LLC. Seesaw also hold the trademarks for Amazon Silk, the new browser for the Kindle Fire.

Please do not get excited about this detail  because it is not news. Lots of companies file for trademarks via a holding company of one kind or another. It doesn’t mean anything.

Barnes & Noble, for example, file all their trademarks under a company called Fusion LLC. That’s just how they have chosen to handle the paperwork; it doesn’t mean anything more than that.

Also, the original Kindle trademark was filed through a dummy company long before the Kindle launched. Amazon used the dummy company to hide the trademark – not because they were planning to spin off the Kindle.

Sorry for getting pissy, folks, but this kind of mindless blogging irritates me to no end.

It looks like Barnes & Noble has decided to take a scorched-earth policy on future Kindle exclusives.

Late last week DC Comics announced that they had worked out a deal with Amazon. 100 of DC Comics' best titles are going to be available exclusively on the Kindle Fire when it launches next month. The exclusive is going to last only 4 months, but it’s going to include Watchmen, Sandman, V for Vendetta, and a lot of other popular graphic novels.

Naturally Barnes & Noble is a little pissed about the matter. They had probably been trying for some time now to get DC Comics titles on the NookColor,and to lose them to the competition? Well.

It took them a few days to decide how to respond. According to Bleeding Cool they first tried to talk to DC Comics about the issue and they were stonewalled. And that’s when they retaliated. B&N corporate sent an email to all stores and ordered them to pull all 100 of the titles covered by the Kindle Fire exclusive, including Dark Knight Returns, Fables, Blackest Night, All Star Superman, and Y The Last Man.

Don’t worry; you’ll still be able to order the comics and graphic novels on the B&N website, but you won’t be able to pick up the novels in store.

This reminds me of last year during the early weeks of the Agency pricing fight. Amazon were fighting directly with Macmillan over the pricing issue, and Amazon responded in a manner just  like B&N. They delisted all Macmillan they wee carrying and turned off all the "Buy Now" buttons. naturally it did not go over well with Macmillan, authors, or the book-buying public.Amazon eventually had to back down and apologize, but I’m not sure they’ve ever been forgiven.

Barnes & Noble might not have taken on as powerful of an enemy as Amazon did, but B&N also picked one that can afford to hold a grudge. DC Comics didn’t have a compelling reason to get their comics on the NookColor, and now they have an emotional incentive to refuse.

Let’s hope B&N didn’t piss off anyone other than DC Comics; they need all the goodwill they can get.

The French ebook reader maker Bookeen have just popped up again after several months of quiet. Now we know what they were doing while incommunicado;  it’s called the Cybook Odyssey.

Bookeen hasn’t released all the details yet, but they did say that the Odyssey  is equipped with a 6″ Pearl E-ink screen (with a touchscreen), Wifi, a web browser, page turn buttons, and it’s running on an 800MHz Cortex A8 CPU. The Odyssey is due to launch in Europe in the next few weeks, according to Bookeen, but the exact retail price has not been set.

The touchscreen tech isn’t named, but I suspect that the Odyssey uses the Neonode zForce touchscreen that has proven so popular on the Sony Reader, Kindle Nook, and Kobo.

This is Bookeen’s 4th ereader, and this time around we’re in for a treat. Bookeen have been mostly silent for the past year or so because they were working on increasing the refresh  rate of the E-ink screen and it looks like they might have really pulled something off here. They posted a demo video all the way back in February which showed off video, and then in May they demoed scrolling on an E-ink screen.

The video ability is old hat now, but I’m still impressed by the scrolling. That could be incredibly cool, assuming it’s fast enough, because it means that the E-ink screen is one step closer to being a functional replacement for a tablet screen.

Bookeen are getting more and more impressive as they get older. Their first ebook reader was the Cybook Gen3, which was based on the original and outdated Netronix design (it looked much like the original Kobo). Then in 2009 Bookeen released the Cybook Opus, a lighter and slimmer model with a 5″ E-ink screen. 2010 saw the release of the Cybook Orizon, which had a 6″ Sipix screen, capacitive touchscreen, and Wifi.

We don’t know the full details on the Odyssey, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

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It looks like I was right on Saturday when I posted that the UK Google eBookstore would open soon; I have to say that it happened faster than I expected. The UK branch of the Google eBookstore is now up and running (here).

According to Google, the eBookstore has hundreds of thousands of titles for sale in addition to the couple million PD titles digitized in the Google Books project. Google signed deals with a number of UK publishers, including Random House, Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette, and others. They’ve also worked out a deal with indie bookstores  via the Gardner Hive network. This deal offers the booksellers much the same terms as a similar partnership with US booksellers; they can earn a commission on customers they direct to Google and they also have the option of selling the ebooks themselves.

Readers can now buy ebooks and read them on all of Google’s apps (iOS, Android, as well as online via a web browser), but there’s no sign that Google have partnered with an ebook reader like they did in the US. The iriver Story HD, while not terribly popular or successful, is available in the UK so there’s nothing stopping Google from using it there.

This launch comes just over a year since the Google eBookstore first launched in the US (December 2010). The exact details haven’t been shared, but by all indications the US eBookstore seems to be lagging behind in the marketplace. Most estimates of ebook market share mention Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, while the Google eBookstore is rarely mentioned.

So now that the UK branch has launched, it’s time to turn our eyes on Canada, NZ, and Australia. We already know that Google are prepping the eBookstore to launch in those countries but we don’t know when.

via Google

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E-Fun have started shipping their latest tablet today, the Next8. It’s an interesting mid-grade tablet that falls somewhere between budget tablets that E-Fun first started shipping last fall and premium tablets like the Xoom, Transformer, Galaxy Tab, and the like.

The Next8  is running Android v2.3 on a Rockchip RK2918 CPU, and it uses an 8″ capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 800×600. It has 4GB Flash storage, a microSD card  slot, Wifi, a front facing 2MP camera, g-sensor, and a speaker.

E-Fun ship their tablets with a decent set of apps, including a file manager, web browser, email and the usual. It also ship with the Kobo ebookstore as well as the SlideMe app store.

The Next8 is retailing for $300, and that puts it in an awkward position. For $100 you can get a 7″ Gingerbread tablet with similar specs, and for $100 more you can get the eee Transformer.

I first got a look at the Next8 when it cleared the FCC back in July. The  Next8 is a decent looking tablet, but it also had the misfortune to hit the market the week after Amazon unveiled the Kindle Fire. That kinda puts the Next8 at a disadvantage because it’s weaker than the Kindle Fire in a couple ways: CPU, screen resolution, and price.

Product Page

I’ve just come across a new tip today and I just knew that someone would appreciate it.

If you’re like me, then you may have bought a subsidized Kindle without realizing quite how annoying the ads are.  And if you’re like me, you’re seriously considering returning the K4 and buying a Kindle without the adverts.

It looks like Amazon noticed that a lot of people bought a K3 SO and hating the ads, and that is probably why they added a solution to the K4 before it launched. You can go into the Manage Your Kindle page and unsubscribe from the adverts.  This only works on the K4 (and probably the kTouch when it is released). It’s also going to cost you the difference between the retail and subsidized price. In this case it’s $30.

Getting rid of the ads is pretty simple. Go to the Manage Your Devices page. There’s a column on the list if devices, and it tracks which Kindles are subscribed to the special offers.  Click the edit button and then click the orange button.

I bought a subsidized K4, all right. What can I say  besides it was cheap? But what I had forgotten until after i turned it on was quite how annoying the ads are. I dislike ads so much that I’ve given up TV, cable, and TBH it’s the main reason I watch all my content online (where I can block the ads).

I forked over the $30 to get the ads off my K4, and it was money well spent, too.