Nate Hoffelder

Paul over at TeleRead finally beat me to something today. He got an email from one publisher that tipped him to a new Kindle ebook format.

Alongside Kindle (AZW) and Kindle (Topaz), Amazon now sell "print replica" ebooks. This is a completely new format and you need to update to the latest version of K4PC in order to use it.  (It’s also US only, darnit.) If you read the help pages, it sounds like Amazon have created a format that is something like PDF. Also, look at the toolbar that I copied from K4PC. It looks a lot like most PDF tool bars I’ve seen.

Yes, I have one of these ebooks (and yes, I found a way to fix my broken copy of K4PC). It seems to use a different suffix (AZW4) than my other Kindle ebooks. I would take it apart but that’s a little beyond my abilities.The file has about 150 pages (counting the cover) long and 10.8MB in size.

Update: I’ve been told that publishers submit a PDF for this format. My source is also pretty sure that this is nothing more than a wrapper for the PDF, but he’s not sure.

I tried to rename it as a PDF and Adobe couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Oh, and I just noticed that it actually notes the cover by name as well as the front matter (numbered i-xvi). That is most definitely new and strongly suggests that this is somehow based on PDF (or some other fixed layout format).

BTW, before you buy a print replica ebook, keep in mind that it requires the latest version of Kindle for PCOSX. That means that the DRM is very likely  unbroken (at the moment).

So far as I can tell, the new Kindle Print Replica format (KPR)  appears to be a full featured format. It has all of the same annotation options as the other Kindle formats (highlights, notes, copy, etc). It can also use the dictionary/Google/Wikipedia search option.

And it also seems to be mostly concentrated in textbooks and technical manuals. At least, I’m pretty sure KPR are all textbooks; there’s no one single listing so I’m not sure. Here’s a Google search that will help you find some if you like.

Huh. I guess this means that fixed layout formats (like PDF or KPR) have won in academia. And I mean they really won; this new format is Amazon’s concession that reflowable content just isn’t usable for some textbooks.

But I’m not surprised; I’ve seen far too many PDFs with complex content that simply could not be shown in any other format.

And this new format also means that Amazon upset the textbook market again. Forget digital textbook rentals; they’re just ebooks sold under a different contract. No, this new format means Amazon can now go after all the science and math textbooks that they couldn’t sell before.

And that is going to make things interesting.

Amazon

This actually happened a couple weeks ago, but I can’t see that anyone covered it but me.

According to a couple tracking sites, the Android Market now has more apps than iTunes. The margin is not very wide, but it’s real. The Android Market now has just over 480 thousand apps listed, and iTunes has 460,000.

Curiously enough, in the 2 weeks since iTunes fell into second plac, the Android Market added 20 thousand apps (approximately). In comparison, iTunes added only 5,000 more apps in the last 2 weeks.

The story is actually  more interesting now than it was 2 weeks ago. The Android Market is growing 4 times as fast as iTunes. It’s not only unseated iTunes, there’s also a pretty good chance that iTunes will never be able to catch up.

BTW, the Amazon Appstore had around 10 thousand apps in late May. If you were thinking that it was a serious competitor , think again.

via Androlib, 148apps

The Dutch web retailer and ebookstore bol.com accidentally leaked the product page for the next Sony Reader, and that means the FCC filing for the new Sony Reader that I found last month has just turned very real.

There’s no word on when it will be out but retail is listed as €164.95 and there is a fair amount of detail on the technical specs. It looks like this will be another E-ink ebook reader. It has 2GB Flash, a 6″ screen, a capacitive touchscreen, and it has Wifi and a microSD card slot (we knew that from the FCC paperwork). The description very specifically mentions pinch-zoom,but that doesn’t really tell us anything. The zForce touchscreen tech from Neonode already supported multi-touch, according to the press release.

The description mentions 12 dictionaries and that you can search Google and Wikipedia, which suggests a web browser.  The new gadget also has a stylus and when you put it in sleep mode it shows the cover of a book. Battery  life is listed at a month.

I’ve contacted Sony and I’m waiting to see what they say.

Update: I wanted to get this out as fast as possible, so it wasn’t until after I posted that I had a chance to really think about this. I’m disappointed. I feel that Sony continue to remain 1 step behind everyone else. I was hoping for something new and amazing, but Sony gave us an ereader that is only an incremental improvement on the last generation.

via MobileRead

The Australian developer Shifty Jellie posted an update yesterday on the conclusion of their saga with Amazon. You probably recall Shifty Jellie  from a few weeks back, when they were complaining about some fundamental problems in the Amazon Appstore.

Today’s update had a couple rather interesting bits of data. Shfty Jellie asked Amazon to remove their app from the Amazon Appstore and guess what Amazon did?

Amazon asked if Shufty Jellie had also removed the app from other Android app store that served the US market. No, that wasn’t a joke; it’s actually written into the developer agreement.

3.a. Delivery Commitment for Apps. You will deliver electronically to us and continue to make available during the Term all versions of all software applications, games or other digital products (including any special or collector’s editions) (i) that are designed for the Platform, (ii) for which you have the rights required under this Agreement, and (iii) that are the same versions and editions (except as otherwise provided in this Agreement) that you or your affiliates make available directly or indirectly to any Similar Service….

Please respond to confirm that your request for app(s) withdrawal is compliant with our policies. Once we hear back from you, we will verify and then let you know how we will proceed.

Shifty Jellie really should have read the contract before they signed it, but would you honestly have  expected that clause to be in there?

But let’s set that aside. The real issue here isn’t that Shifty Jellie didn’t read the contract; it’s the fact that Amazon included the clause at all. This is just the latest way that Amazon have shown that they are incredibly hostile to the developer.

Developers don’t get to write their product description, they don’t get to control (or even set) the price of their apps, and (as Shifty Jellie reported before) developers don’t get diddly from the Daily Free App promotion.

Damn. At this point I have to wonder why anyone would do business with Amazon at all. I had been hoping that the Amazon Appstore would grow into a serious competitor to Google’s Android Market, but I don’t see that happening.

So long as Amazon continues to mistreat developers, they won’t be able to build anything. Frankly, I’m surprised that Amazon have any paid apps given how they mistreat developers.

The ebook developers at eReaders.nl announced earlier this week that  they are launching a new ebookstore.  This is their second major digital project; earlier this year they launched eLinea, a magazine and newspaper platform.

The new ebookstore is starting small, with only 40 titles, and they will be adding more. Their ebookstore will only be selling DRM-free ebooks, which means you won’t have to pay the Adobe tax when you buy an ebook. Instead the ebooks will be marked with digital watermarks. Traceable user data will be encoded into each ebook at the time it is downloaded. This will enable to track down and punish just the person who who shared the ebook while leaving all the other customers unassailed.

See, this is the nice thing about watermarks as opposed to the other more restrictive types of DRM. When publishers apply most kinds of DRM to their ebooks they are punishing me because someone else _might_ pirate that ebook. And I am being punished even though the DRM doesn’t actually stop the pirates. But with watermarked ebooks publishers can pinpoint and go after just the pirates. This leaves me alone and makes me happy.

via eReaders.nl

What with all the excitement yesterday over the Kindle Cloud Player, it seems that everyone may have missed one of the Kindle’s other new features.

Amazon reorganized the Kindle Store yesterday and launched a new section. Kindle Indie Books is going to highlight a limited selection of title published via KDP.  Books will be chosen for this section through automated techniques and then selected by hand by the editorial staff. The Indie Store is currently limited to 7 of the genres and categories offered by the Kindle Store; according to the FAQ they are the more popular genres.

This doesn’t look like much, but that depends on how you see it. Amazon just launched a store section that emphasizes their direct partners. It doesn’t look like Indies who publish through sites like Smashwords will be included, and that could have some interesting long term effects.

Yep, this is an incentive to deal directly with Amazon, and that means cutting out a middleman. Clever, no?

I got into a discussion on twitter earlier today with a friend, and it inspired this post.

He didn’t understand the design of the eee Transformer, Asus' premium Android tablet. That’s understandable; if all you know about the Transformer is what you read in the gadget blog  headlines then you missed the facts of what it really is. You have to actually put your hands on it before you realize what Asus did here.

First, let me list some of the current eeeProducts. (If you want to understand the Transformer, it first needs to be in context.) It wasn’t until I gathered these details into one place that I realized quite what they meant. Note that this isn’t all the eeeProducts listed on the Asus website, just the ones I’m familiar with.

When you line up the product names (not always mentioned in complete detail), the unique nature of each model should be pretty obvious:

• Asus eee Reader DR900 (ebook reader w9″ Sipix screen)
• Asus eee Note ea800 (digital notepad w8″ unique LCD screen)
• Asus eee Pad Transformer (Android netbook convertible disguised as a 10″ tablet)
• Asus eee Slider (Android tablet convertible)
• Asus eee Slate (Win7 tablet PC)

Do you see how each one has very different specs and how they’re each a one-off product alone in a niche? That’s because each of the devices listed above is an experiment. Much like the original eee 701, Asus is experimenting to find the new product niches, uses, and abilities. In fact, I would bet that the eeeProduct line will be where you find a lot of Asus experiments.

It’s not surprising that few understand what the eee Pad Transformer really is; after all, it’s being marketed as a tablet.  (The keyboard component is even called a Mobile Dock, for reasons unknown.) Yes, it’s a very nice tablet, but it’s also a very nice netbook convertible.

Add the keyboard component and you have 16 hours battery life in a netbook that costs only $50 more than an iPad. It also has a heavily customized version of Android v3.0 Honeycomb. The trackpad, function keys, and other parts of the keyboard are so thoroughly integrated that it clearly wasn’t an afterthought. The keyboard is part of the original design.

I suspect that Asus made the eee Pad Transformer not just to release a premium tablet. I think it’s also an attempt to create a new hybrid tablet/netbook niche. Yes, netbooks are dead, but if you combine the 2 niches then you have a new usability model. And like the eee701, Asus got into the new niche before anyone else.

BTW, you could slap a keyboard on an iPad in order to get similar functionality, but it wouldn’t work this well. An iPad with a keyboard is still an iPad with a keyboard; the Transformer is a netbook convertible.

So if we could go back to the list, I’m not really sure that each of the eeeProducts are actually experiments. But I would give that label to the eeeNote, eeePad, and eeeSlider.

I also suspect that the eeeReader was an experiment in a niche that for the most part died before the eeeReader was released.Whoops. But that’s what happens with experiments; they don’t always succeed.

This, folks, is why I am watching Asus with anticipation. They keep doing interesting things.

Apple released the first beta version of iOS5 a little over 2 months back, and it turns out there’s a problem. Stanza won’t work on iOS5.There are no reports from several different beta releases that Stanza will only just work – so long as you don’t try to download more than one ebook at a time.

Okay, we’re talking beta releases here, not the public release, but this isn’t good. The app is clearly not compatible with iOS5. And when the final version of iOS 5 is officially released, you’re not going to believe the screams of rage.

Update: And now that iOS5 is out, we can see that I was right. Stanza is dead.

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

If you read this blog then you probably know that Stanza used to be a great reading app for iOS. Back when the app was released in late 2008, it was quickly haled as one of the first great successes of the platform, and the app was so good that Amazon bought Lexcycle just to make sure no else could. Unfortunately, Amazon never really supported the app, and it looks like the little ongoing development supported  by Amazon has now stopped.

You might think it’s too soon to start mourning the app, but I’m not so sure. There’s a two month old  complaint thread on the official Stanza support forums about this issue, and even though 8 people have confirmed this problem and 11 have responded in the thread, there’s no word from anyone with Lexcycle on whether the stability issue will be fixed.

It’s been 2 months and there’s not even a vague hint that it will be fixed. I’d say that’s pretty damn conclusive that no one’s awake at Lexcycle. Then again, Stanza was never more than an after thought for Aamazon, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s going to limp off to a slow death.

On the other hand, maybe this post will prod Amazon into making an announcement.

Stanza via MobileRead

image by tstadler

For far too long, bookstores have sold stuff besides books. It’s time that publishers banded together and attacked bookstores, their business partners and primary retail outlet.

Yes, that idea is crazy, but then so was an article I just read in the Chicago Tribune. A misguided book fetishist wants publishers to start an ad campaign to promote paper books and attack ebook readers like the Kindle, Nook, and the Kindle. Aaron Gilbreath rails against the cleverly designed Kindle commercials that show all of its best features vs paper books, and he thinks it’s time for publishers to strike back.

Publishers should tantalize consumers by evoking books' sensory pleasures: the smell; the feel in your hands; that crisp, appealing crinkle of a turned page and smooth snap of a dust jacket. Publishers should elicit the joys of "curling up with a book," the satisfaction of seeing your library on a shelf in your bedroom — the years of your life marked by rows of colorful spines, the pages covered with marginalia. To do this, publishers could borrow vinyl enthusiasts' lines like, "Records have a certain smell. You can’t smell an MP3," and, "I associate certain records' smells with a certain summer, a particular girlfriend." Audiophiles also discuss fidelity, how records sound undeniably better than MP3s. Surely there’s a book analog waiting to be developed.

I wrote the first paragraph like that just to show you how ridiculous the idea is. Publishers shouldn’t take a position for or against any format; it’s not in their best interest. Their job is to sell as much as possible, not to try to convince people one format (unless one format is a more expensive luxury item, but that’s another matter).

It would make as much sense to attack bookstores as it would to attack the Kindle. At best it would simply shift funds from one of income stream to another and at worst it would alienate customers. Attacking one of your products in favor of another is self-defeating. All it accomplishes is to move money into the ad agency’s pocket while shifting a handful of change around in yours.

But if you really want to go through with it, let me suggest a couple themes for the campaign:

via Mimi and Eunice

via GoComics.com

The Sina Tech news blog reported earlier today  that Baidu, China’s home-grown version of Google, now own about 40% of Fan Shu, maker of the Yambook ebook reader. Details haven’t been confirmed, but the deal is reportedly worth 47.6 million yuan ($7.4 million USB).

Fan Shu have a number of different Yambook models on the Chinese market, with specs ranging from Wifi to 3G. They also have their own ebookstore as well as a PC and Android reading apps. The Baidu deal would value Fan Shu at 120 million yuan.

IMO this rumor is very likely true. A couple weeks ago Baidu signed a distribution agreement with a number of Chinese publishers that gave Baidu the right to sell their ebooks. The deal legitimized Baidu’s Wenku  books portal, which had previously been accused of wide-spread piracy.

Baidu are clearly making a push into ebooks. Buying Fan Shu would be a good way to bring the new content to market in the minimum time.

Twitter just rolled out an unannounced update tonight.

If you’ve used twitter for any length of time then you probably know that it can pull content from links in your tweets and show them on the twitter website, right?  I have seen this work with Youtube, Twitpic, and Tumblr (sometimes).Tonight that feature started working with product listings for iTunes and Amazon.

About an hour ago a friend of mine noticed this feature for the first time. We spent the past hour trying a number of retail sites and so far the feature seems limited to Amazon (example) and iTunes (example).

It only works on the Twitter website, not the apps. But it’s still pretty cool.

Update: A reader informed me that iTunes had been enabled months ago, but this i the first I’d seen it.

CBS posted their Q2 financial report yesterday, and one of the high points was Simon & Schuster.

In spite of profits being down 3% last quarter ($183 million from $189 million Q2 2010), ebook revenues were up.  They’re now reported as being ~15% of revenue for that quarter. That works out to about $27.5 million, which is a pretty penny. It’s more than double last year’s reported sales.

Let me put the growth into perspective. Last year the US ebook market averaged around $30 million in reported sales each month. This means that S&S reported sales for Q2 would have been around a third of the ebook market for last year. Considering that they’re significantly less than a third of the general book market, it should tell you how fast the ebook market has grown. Of course, the S&S figures are from the quarter ending in June  and thus they are too new to be considered reliable.

On a related note, Pearson released their earnings report last week, and Penguin reported that ebooks were 15% of revenue.

via

image by Alun Salt

The Ukrainian ebook reader maker Pocketbook held a grand opening this week for 3 new retail locations in and around  Moscow, CIS.

The stores, hopefully staffed by technical experts, sell Pocketbook ereaders as well as ebooks. I recall that the first stores, which opened in the Ukraine  in January 2010, had a web kiosk where customers could buy and download ebooks from Bookland, Pocketbook’s ebookstore.

This is Pocketbook’s third set of retail stores. They also have a couple  mall stores here in the USA, with one in Seattle and another in Kansas City, MO.

via The-eBook.org

The September issue of Consumer Reports arrived on my door step today, and guess what the cover article was? Actually the lead article covered the human heart and related topics, but one of the cover articles was CR's review of ebook readers.

You might recall a few months back when everyone was talking about how the new Nook Touch was the first ebook reader to dethrone the Kindle. That report, and the ratings it contained, was just published in the September issue.

As you can see, the Entourage Pocket Edge ranked behind all the current gen ereaders. But it also managed to beat the Sony 650, which is something of a surprise. I would have thought that the weight and battery life would have taken it down another notch or 2.

BTW,  think I know why the Nook Touch shipped so fast. Look at the list and note which ebook reader isn’t on it. According to CR, the Kobo Touch wasn’t included because it shipped just a few days too late.

That’s a stupid reason, IMO. They should have pushed the article back a month; that would have given them the time they needed. I think a delayed report would be better than an incomplete one, don’t you?

As it stands, the chart is not complete and thus I’m not sure it’s valid. We don’t know where the Kobo touch would have ranked, and that throws all claims about device superiority into doubt.  We don’t really know which is best because they weren’t all tested.