The 7″ Kindle Fire HD has been in consumer’s hands for less than a week. We still don’t have a quick and easy way to hack it and install Google Play but today I did come across a way to install some of the core Google Apps.

XDA Forums member abhijitxp gets the glory here for taking some standard apks and tweaking them so they run on the KFHD. This trick will not let you install Google Play, but it will give you a basic set of Google apps.

I don’t know about you but I desperately needed this. Without Gmail and Google Reader (which is not yet included in this hack) this tablet is useless to me. Even a partial addition of a few apps is enough to tide me over until a more thorough hack is released.

So here’s how you do it.

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

You’ll also need to allow the installation of 3rd party files, but this is a bridge which you can cross when you come to it. It’s not hard to figure it out.

1. Go download this RAR file and unZIP the RAR.
2. Copy the folder full of files to your KFHD over USB.
3. Open ES File Explorer on your KFHD and find the folder you just copied. Open it.
4. Install the file called GoogleLoginService.apk and reboot your KFHD. You can reboot by pressing and holding the power button until the menu comes up.
5. Install the rest of the apps, including the Youtube file. That’s the one which the hacker who developed this trick says  is needed to log in to your Google account so you can do things like access your Gmail.

And now you should have Gmail, Google Maps, and Youtube running on your KFHD. It worked for me. I’ve just double checked and the Gmail app is now working on my 7″ Kindle Fire HD. That is a marked improvement from Monday, when my first attempt at installing the app failed.

P.S. The instructions above don’t include Google Reader, but I found another way to install it. I downloaded the file from 1Mobile app store. It’s this one, and I am sitting here looking at Google Reader the app while I type.

XDA Forums via Liliputing

While 3 of the Price Fix 6 are still fighting the antitrust lawsuit here in the US, it looks like their resolve is wavering in Europe. The rumor reported last month that an anti-trust settlement was in the works is true.

The European Commission announced this morning that they have received a settlement offer from 5 of the conspirators involved in the Price Fix 6. Apple, S&S, Macmillan (von Holtzbrinck), HarperCollins, and Hachette have all signed on with a set of term which would basically mirror the US settlement.

This settlement grew out of a nearly year long investigation by the EU into allegations that Apple and 5 of the major publishing conglomerates conspired to bring about agency pricing in the ebook market back in 2010.

The publishers would agree to cancel existing contracts with ebook retailers allow the retailers to set the retail price for ebooks for at least the next 2 years, and they also would agree to not allow a most-favored-nation clause in contracts with retailers. There’s also a clause in the settlement which would prevent any ebookstore from selling ebooks at a loss. This settlement would also require Apple to renegotiate their contracts with their ebook suppliers.

But there’s a couple details which aren’t clear to me. I don’t see where fines for the publishers are mentioned, nor does the settlement mention Apple’s punishment (did I miss something?). The device maker is still fighting the accusation in the US that they acted as the center of a hub and spoke conspiracy, but this settlement offer makes it pretty damn clear that the accusation is true, not alleged. Since they clearly are guilty of arranging the conspiracy (or at least guilty enough that they’re not going to fight the case in the EU), I have to wonder how much they will be fined.

This settlement doesn’t mention fines at all, and that’s the real story here. I’m told the EU tends to levy steep fines against convicted corporations, and that is likely what this settlement offer is trying to avoid. While in the US the 3 settling publishers will be paying $70 million back to customers, the fines in the EU could start at around $100 million each and go up from there.

While the actual financial impact on the market was small, each of the conspirators is a rather large company and I suspect the EU might decide to slap them with a fine which reflects the corporation’s income, not the benefit gained from the conspiracy.

In any case, the proposed settlement has been posted so 3rd-parties can offer feedback over the next month. If the response is positive, the Commission will end its investigation.

The new black Kindle has been out for not even a couple of weeks and it has already been hacked for a new project. This weather station is the work of a hacker by the name of  Matthew Petroff. He had always been wanting to use an E-ink screen in a project but until the $69 black Kindle was announced the cost was too high.

Michael’s project requires a jailbroken Kindle and a server. There’s a fair amount of work inveigled, including writing scripts for the server which gather the data, make a screen shot, and pass it to the Kindle.  More scripts on the Kindle listen for the new screenshot and then display it on screen. Michael notes that while he could have set up the Kindle to do the entire task, he already had the server and using it saved him the effort of setting up a development environment for the Kindle.

Of course, if you don’t want to put all this work into setting up this project you could get the Accuweather app for the Kindle. It’s not nearly as good for this purpose but it does cost only a buck.

And if you don’t have a Kindle, you could actually be better off. This idea could possibly be copied by running a weather app on a hacked Nook Touch. This ereader runs Android, and it should be able to use one of the many free weather station apps.

In fact, I have a hacked Sony Reader T1 handy. And since I’m not using it as an ereader I think it would make a handy weather station.  Unfortunately, I still have not found one that looks good on an E-ink screen. Any suggestions?

Source

As much as I am online everyday I am still reminded that offline still rules the roost. Wikipedia is accessible from any web browser, but even this knowledge aggregator still has to offer a download option,  hence yesterday’s news.

Late yesterday afternoon the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization for Wikipedia, announced that their Book Creator service now supported Epub as an output option. So far as I know it only works on the English language part of Wikipedia, and it lets you gather associated wiki articles and automatically generate an ebook.

Wikipedia has long offered an  option for making PDFs from wiki articles. The service launched in May 2010 as part of their effort to offer print copies via PediaPress. While the PDF file was generated with the goal of getting you to buy a copy in paper, you were always able to download and use the PDF.  And while we’re on the topic, you can also download the content as an ODF file (Open Office). That could prove very useful for converting to your preferred ebook format, though I would likely start with Epub.

It’s a useful service, no? If you are interested in gathering articles from other sites in a manner similar to the one which Wikipedia allows you to do here, let me recommend a couple sites. There have been other websites which offered a similar service including GrabMyBooks and a Readability spinoff called ReadLists.

It’s been a while since I tried either, so I am at a loss to recommend one. I’d say try them both and see which you prefer.

Gardner Books is a UK based book and ebook distributor as well as, via Gardner Hive, the UK partner for Google Books. For some time now they’ve been wanting to make a deeper mark on the ebook market and yesterday we got to see their first effort.

And it’s a curious little beast. While one might think an ebook distributor would announce an ereader, Gardner is instead launching an Android tablet. The Gardner GoTab has a 6″ (800×480) screen with a capacitive touchscreen. It’s running a reasonably current version of Android 4.0 ICS on a 1GHz CPU with a Mali graphic chip, Wifi(n), a g-sensor,  4GB Flash, a microSD card slot, and a VGA webcam.

Gardner Books is supporting the GoTab with Hive Reader, an app which ties in to the Gardner Hive ebookstore. But since this is an authorized Android tablet it should also support any of the other reading apps found in Google Play.

Gardner is calling it an ebook reader, which is itself an interesting detail. I’m not saying they’re wrong so much as wondering if the definition has shifted.  I mean, the GoTab comes with Google Play and complete support for Android apps. It even has decent specs for the bottom of the barrel Android tablet niche. But while cheap tablet like the GoTab do make decent ereaders I would never call them that.

It’s due out in October for a startling price of £59. That translates to roughly $95, and once you deduct the VAT which is built into the price you end up with the cheapest Android tablet on either the US or European markets. While that is an impressive achievement it could also be a sign that too many corners were cut on this device.  Take the battery life, for example. The GoTab is specced for only 4 hours of web browsing. That’s not a lot, and it’s a sign that this design skimped on the battery.

My first $80 Android tablet was a terrible device to use and this one might be as bad. But that remains to be seen.

product page

via

It looks like the 7″ Kindle Fire HD will be following in the footsteps of the original Kindle Fire in capturing a large part of the Android tablet market in the US. Sadly, Amazon also repeated the mistake of not including a number of basic apps which I for one need on a regular basis.

Here’s a handful of apps you"l probably need on the KFHD, including a couple very basic apps like a camera and a file manager. Yes, the KFHD doesn’t have an accessible camera app. Apparently Amazon didn’t realize that you’d want to use it.

Fix the Settings

First things first. You’ll want to allow for installing outside apps and you’ll want to change the default search engine to Google. You can find these options by first pulling down the notification bar on the upper edge of your Fire tablet home screen. Press the settings button.

Scroll down for the Apps & Games sub menu. Select the "Amazon Apps Settings", and then select the Silk option. Finally, select the search engine. Change it to Google.

• This isn’t just a petty anti-MS suggestion; I’ve been playing with Bing on this tablet and I find it laughably inept for the simple reason that it does not find what I am looking for. For example, I searched for "Dropbox app" and the first few results were from box.net, one of Dropbox’s competitors. Funny, yes, but clearly not what I was looking for.

Back out a couple menus until you get to the Settings menu again. Scroll down and select the Device submenu. Select the "Allow Installation of Apps" option and change it to On. now you’ll be able to  get the Apps you need.

Install Some Apps

The first few apps are available in the Amazon Appstore, so you shouldn’t have any trouble installing them.

ES File Explorer

• Amazon doesn’t exactly make it easy to find the various files, folders, and apps on your device, and frankly the main menu carousel is only good for basic operations like opening an app.  For anything beyond that you need a file manager. This is one of the good ones, and I recommend getting it so you can access parts of your KFHD which Amazon doesn’t think you should use.

OverDrive

• The KFHD has the same support for library ebooks via OverDrive as the rest of the Kindle platform. But it doesn’t support any of the audiobooks offered by OverDrive’s library partners, and it specifically lacks support for ebooks from Penguin because that publisher refuses to allow it. So if you want the full range of content support you’ll need to install the OD app.
• On the upside the app will also let you search for and download ebooks and audiobooks from inside the app. That cuts out a couple steps, which is nice.

Next up are some apps which you will have to find elsewhere. At this point you might want to pause and continue reading this post on your KFHD. It will make installing the apps easier.

Dropbox

• Amazon includes access to the Amazon Cloud Drive in the price for the KFHD but I prefer to stick with my existing setup at Dropbox. For this you’ll need to go to the Dropbox website and download the app from them.

Opera Mobile

• The KFHD ships with the Amazon Silk web browser but it’s just not cutting the mustard for me.  Luckily there are quite a few other web browsers for Android. Unfortunately not all can be found easily. There are a bunch in Google Play, but we cannot get them yet, and there are bunches in the Amazon Appstore, but Amazon won’t let you install them on your KFHD. So that leaves Opera as the easiest browser to find and install.
• You can choose between Opera Mini and Opera Mobile. I’d choose Mobile because while both apps will let you use Opera’s servers to speed up your browsing experience the Mobile version also lets you turn off the acceleration. That option could be useful at some point.
• Note: If your KFHD refuses to install this app, don’t worry. Open ES File Explorer, select the Downloads folder, and then double click on the Opera icon. The app will install, trust me.

Aldiko

• I have lately come to feel that one should always use the best  and easiest way to read ebooks. If you like reading DRM-free ebooks from websites like O’Reilly, PG, Munsey’s, or more, download the Aldiko app. It supports Epub, not Kindle, but when it comes to downloading free ebooks it is much easier to use than Amazon’s own Kindle app.

ADW Launcher

• Don’t like the home screen on the Kindle Fire HD? This app acts as a replacement home screen. It will let you arrange the icons however you like, but it doesn’t quite work right with the KFHD’s ebook library.

But That’s Not All

The above 6 apps are the ones I wanted the most, but they are by no means all the apps you might need. I left out some obvious choices like Facebook and Twitter as well as media apps. The KFHD doesn’t support all the audio and video formats out there, but I’m not familiar enough with the what’s available to make a recommendation.

What would you recommend for media apps? They have to be easily findable online or available in the Kindle Store.

I also left out competing reading apps. Amazon won’t let you install the apps from the Amazon Appstore, and they are not easy to find elsewhere. I’m told that 1mobile.com is good, but I’m still looking at it myself.

I still don’t have a press release yet, but a local Brazilian source is reporting that Kobo now has a bookstore partner in Brazil. The partner is indeed Livraria Cultura, just like I predicted last week.

Livraria Cultura has a chain of 14 stores as well as a website where they sell all sorts of media in addition to books and ebooks. They will beselling all Kobo models in Brazil, including the new Kobo Arc as well as the new ereaders which have not yet been released. I can’t see any details on prices, but they’re reporting that the prices will be competitive.

The formal launch of the Kobo ebookstore in Brazil is scheduled for the end of next month. Until then Livraria Cultura will be selling ebooks on their own. They’ve had an ebookstore since 2010, and they currently stock around 330 thousand titles. The also sell several different ereader models, all of which are expensive thanks to Brazil’s steep import duties. Do you know how Amazon is building plants in Brazil? Those duties (and Brazil’s population) are the cause. Brazil has a population of 190 million, making them a very attractive market for both gadgets and content.

But the ebook market there is just getting a start. The most recent data shows that there are about 16,000 locally produced ebooks in Brazil. Even when you factor in Kobo’s several million plus titles, the local language selection is going to be limited. And that is simply something Kobo will have to change. That’s why they’ve hired Camila Cabete (LinkedIn) to recruit publishers to the  Kobo eBookstore. Camile was hired away from Xeriph, a Brazilian content distributor.

But even if Kobo does recruit enough publishers, prices will still be a problem.  I’m told that it’s not unusual for ebooks to cost more than the same title in paper in Brazil, with some titles from the major publishers costing $20 or more.

So with all these issues, why is Kobo getting into the Brazilian ebook market? One, because of the growth opportunity, and two, to beat Amazon. The retail giant also has a local staff in Brazil to recruit publishers, and depending on the rumor Amazon is either going to launch the Kindle Store  in Brazil this fall or some time next year.

Fun times ahead.

via Estadadao.com.br

It’s been some 6 months since the last time the major publishers issued an assault on library ebooks, and today fired another salvo.

Overdrive sent out an email today to their library partners with the sad news that Hachette was raising the wholesale price of ebooks. While this increase won’t be as bad as the one Random House handed out earlier this year, but it’s still going to be painful:

Dear Library Partner,

Hachette will be raising its eBook prices on October 1, 2012 on their currently available eBook catalog (~3,500 eBook titles with release dates of April 2010 and earlier). On average prices will increase 220%.

Orders for Hachette eBook titles at current pricing must be submitted in Content Reserve by 11:59 pm US Eastern Time on Sunday, September 30, 2012. This includes any orders that are currently in your Content Reserve work queue as well as new orders created during the remainder of the month. Any orders with Hachette eBook content left in your work queue and submitted after September 30th will be processed under the new pricing.

Effective October 1, 2012, the new prices will be reflected in Content Reserve.

Regards,

OverDrive Collection Development Team

Hachette used to be one of the bright lights in library ebooks because they charged the regular retail price for their ebooks. And even though they wouldn’t sell their front list titles to libraries, at least we knew the titles would eventually be available. Only now those titles will be terribly expensive.

So the current state of the library ebook market is this:

• 2 major publishers which charge high prices (Hachette, Random House)
• 2 major publishers which won’t sell at all (Macmillan, Simon & Schuster)
• Penguin, which is only selling ebooks to ibraries grudgingly and with support for the Kindle explicitly blocked
• HarperCollins, which imposed a 26 checkout limit for library ebooks

And of course there are the many other publishers who sell ebooks and other digital content to libraries. Those 6  titans are not the whole of the ebook market, and it’s important to keep that fact in mind. And thanks to their non-presence in the library ebook market, they’re not even a majority of that market.

via

image by (vincent desjardins)

It’s not exactly a secret that I’ve been somewhat skeptical of Unglue.it’s selections and model for soliciting crowdfunding to unlock various e-book titles into free Creative Commons release. Most of its titles didn’t seem well-enough known to attract many people, and were generally already available inexpensively enough as e-books that most people would be more likely to buy the e-book to read for themselves than to kick in so everyone could read it free. And the recent cancellation of its payment processing by Amazon seems to have necessarily put its plans on hold for a while.

That being said, Unglue.it did hit one big success early on, when it was able to crowdfund the release of a 1970 non-fiction book, Oral Literature in Africa by Ruth H. Finnegan. This book had a funding goal of $7,500, which it met with the help of 291 donors, and work proceeded apace to “unglue” the book into free public release under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. This means that the work may be used for any purpose, including commercially, as long as the new use is careful to make clear where it got the original material. Today, Unglue.it made that e-book available for free download in Mobipocket (Kindle), EPUB, and PDF formats.

Needless to say, this is quite a great accomplishment. The book had been out of print for decades and fetching high used prices on Amazon. The sorts of people who would have wanted to have it available would have had quite a lot of incentive to donate—for example, college professors who wanted to use it in their courses, or academics and students of Africa, oral traditions, and related matters. And people are accustomed to paying more for scholarly nonfiction works like this anyway—just look at how much college textbooks cost these days.

All in all, it’s not too surprising that the sort of people who would have wanted it free would have wanted it enough to make it happen. I would go so far as to say that even if Unglue.it never “unglued” another book, it will still be fondly remembered for this—at least in certain academic circles.

The only puzzling thing to me is why Unglue.it didn’t try to do more projects like this one. I’m sure there must be other academic books out there that are just as highly sought-after, and whose authors might be just as amenable to taking part in such a project. There might even have been some donors who crossed over from one project to another, deeming both academic nonfiction books to be equally worth supporting.

But apart from this one, all or most of Unglue.it’s books (in the original batch, anyway) tended to be self-published or indie-press published fiction—with completely different demand profiles. Not only were these not in as much demand as an out-of-print academic work, but there wouldn’t have been much crossover between people wanting to support a scholarly treatise on African folklore and people who would be inclined to support freeing some random self-published fantasy novel.

Anyway, I’ve downloaded the book and glanced through it. It’s not exactly the sort of thing I’d choose for light reading, but it seems to be very professionally formatted, with footnotes, black and white and color photos (lots of photos—the EPUB file clocks in at 5 megabytes), and block quotes. If I were to want to read a book about the oral literature of Africa, this is exactly the sort of book I would want to read. If this is a sample of the quality Unglue.it will bring to the table, then I certainly hope that Unglue.it can get past its payment processor snafus and is able to unglue many more books.

If Unglue.it is able to get back on track, I’d suggest it might want to learn from its success as well as its failure. If it wants to build a name for itself based on successful projects, it ought to choose more of the kinds of projects that are likely to be successful. Once it gets a reputation for succeeding, then is the time to branch out and take chances.

Do you remember how at one point Apple was censoring the word Jailbreak  from book and song titles and how they’ve banned some books because of a mention of Amazon? Apple’s back at it again, only this time the results are hilariously juvenile.

Mike Cane tipped me to a new censorship regime in iTunes, iBooks, and basically all of Apple’s content stores. Apple, out of the deep concern for the sensitive virgin eyes of some readers, is now using asterisks to hide certain words when they show up in titles. So far as I know Apple is only blocking two words.

I don’t want to offend anyone with these words, so I’ll just share this screenshot and let you draw you own conclusion:

What’s particularly amusing is that  Apple also sells textbooks, including books on human anatomy. And they also sell erotica, some with quite explicit covers.  So really I’m not bothered by the censorship so much as I am amused by how inept Apple is at coming up with a policy and enforcing it. The very concept of bleeping out these 2 words is making me laugh so hard that I have trouble typing right now, and yet Apple still decided to do so.

I used to smack around Amazon because they have banned certain types of manga while continuing to sell explicit erotica, but I think Apple’s policy is worse. They’ll sell you the content but they don’t want to let you know what the word is.

Tell me, has anyone bought one of thee ebooks? I’m wondering if Apple also removed those words from the iBooks dictionary. I know that sounds strange, but it’s not impossible. Does anyone know?

For those who have not read The Onion today, I have your daily dose of crazy all ready for you.

Jazan Wild, a comics creator who is most well known for suing NBC in 2010 for $60 million over copyright infringement, is now pursuing a different lawsuit against HarperCollins. Wild is claiming that one recent HC title, Carnival of Souls by Melissa Marr, infringes upon his trademark.

Not copyright – trademark.

Wild is claiming that HarperCollins is using the trademarked phrase as the title of a book to intentionally confuse readers into thinking that a fantasy novel which was published last week was related to a comics series which Wild had published in 2006.

Crazy, right?  Any sane person would have put a few minutes thought into the matter and realized that such an obvious phrase as Carnival of Souls would likely have been used as a title many times before. In fact, Bookfinder turned up at least a couple dozen different books, movies, TV episodes, and more – some of which dates back to 1962. And if you look inside books, Google says that it found the phrase no less than 5600 times (with some duplication, obviously).

But that’s not the end of the craziness. No, it’s with the book reviewers that the crazy truly begins.

Wild is now sending cease and desist letters to any book reviewer who has mentioned or posted an excerpt from the new novel. He’s accusing them of trademark infringement.

The Bookalicious blog posted a copy of an email they got from Wild today. This blog posted a review of the new novel, not an excerpt, and Wild is freaking out over the fact that they mention the title of the book:

To whom it may concern,

This is a cease and desist. “Carnival Of Souls” is a trademark owned by Jazan Wild and Wild alone has the exclusive right on the United States of America to use the mark in classes 16 and 41 of which a novel is included. Posting a chapter from a novel using this mark is a willful and malicious infringement of Wild’s mark. Please remove.

The Trademark Infringement:
http://bookalicious.org/2012/09/review-carnival-of-souls-by-melissa-marr/

The guy also shows up in the comments thread following that notice to continue the craziness. For a raving lunatic he is quite a nice person.

I probably don’t have to say this but:

Authors, don’t be this guy. First, don’t file frivolous nonsensical lawsuits but most importantly don’t threaten book bloggers. One threat sent to one blog and everyone is going to know about it. The book community is large but juicy stories like this will spread fast.

In the past I’ve pointed to the Lendink lynch mob as an example of how not to react to piracy, and one of my recommendations was to figure out who to ask for advice.  I’ve already pointed out a couple law blogs, so let me add a third source.  Dear Author is a book review blog run by a lawyer, Jane Litte. In addition to the book reviews each week she posts on a legal topic relevant to authors. I’m going to pass this along to her and see if she thinks it’s worth explaining just how crazy this guy is.

via Bookalicious

image by mlcastle

For the longest time now Amazon has been releasing updates for their apps, new Kindles, and the Kindle Fire while sadly neglecting the now 2 year old K3.  This ereader didn’t die last year when Amazon released the newer models, but was instead kept around as the Kindle Keyboard. But that was about all Amazon did as they turned attention to the newer gadgets. Today that changes.

Amazon has rolled out a new update for the K3 which gives it all the latest features. If you’ve been holding on to your old device, today you get rewarded.

The K3 now supports the KF8 ebook format, which offers near Epub quality of formatting. (Dropcaps, wrapped images, and embedded fonts, oh my!) And this update adds support for the Kindle fixed layout format. Now you can read the digital comics, children’s books, and magazine titles introduced with the Kindle Fire last fall.

This update also adds the parental controls features which Jeff talked about so much last week. Parents can now restrict access to the web browser, Kindle Store, or Archived Items. Even if you’re not a parent, I’m sure you can appreciate not having to worry about some fool buying stuff on your Amazon account.

And the K3 also now can support Whispersync for voice. Now you can switch back and forth between reading and listening without losing your place. Whispersync for voice will sync your reading position on any Kindle with Audible playback on Kindle Keyboard, Kindle Fire, or in Audible apps for iPhone and Android. Of course, you have to buy both the ebook and audiobook, so there is a downside. But this is still going to be a fun feature.

Last but not least, the K3 also gets the improved fonts which rolled out to the K4 back in June. That’s the one that has been improved to have more contrast and be more crisp.

There’s a lot to take in, so much so that I almost didn’t notice that the K3 still lacks X-Ray. And I’m also half expecting that this update will take away the free web browsing over 3G. But I don’t have a K3 handy to test so I will have to wait for user feedback.

Say what you will about Bob Kohn, he’s certainly persistent. PaidContent reports that he’s filed a last-minute request for a stay on Judge Cote’s ruling that the Department of Justice’s Agency Pricing settlement can go into effect. He wants the imposition of the settlement suspended until the Second Circuit appeals court can rule on it. If the appeal is rejected—as it probably will be—then that will go to the Second Circuit. And if it strikes out there, too, then the fat lady will have officially sung, because by the time the appeals court gets around to ruling on the settlement itself the market will already have been changed by months of new e-book prices.

I suspect that, with Amazon starting to cut prices on settling publishers’ e-books, it’s already too late. A more interesting question is what the settlement will mean in terms of overall e-book prices. Will the publishers still using agency pending the DoJ lawsuit lower their own prices to compete with the settling publishers? Might publishers even raise prices on some of their e-books, to “use up” allotted retailer discounts more quickly?

In his most recent blog post, Mike Shatzkin gives the devil his due, noting that Amazon has done a remarkably good job of synergizing a lot of its different properties and capabilities together for new features in its new family of Kindle products. Of particular note are the abilities to synchronize or pair the e-book and audiobook versions of a book—which will not only make both more useful, but will also induce consumers to make two purchases instead of one.

He also thinks Amazon will discount aggressively, using “bots and algorithms”, those e-books covered by the settlement—and that Apple lacks the expertise to match them at that game. (This is a bit interesting given that Nate thinks that, with its newly-cheap ereader hardware, Amazon won’t be doing that sort of aggressive discounting. I wonder who’s right?)

At any rate, our times just got more interesting. I can’t wait to see what Amazon does next.

Image by cliff1066.

It’s only been 4 days since Judge Cote approved the anti-trust settlement between the 3 publishers and the Dept of Justice and it looks like Amazon has wasted no time in cutting prices.

There are reports on Twitter that HarperCollins titles are no longer showing the all important "This price was set by the publisher" note. Now there are quite a few books which instead say that is simply by HarperCollins. Jane Litte of Dear Author was the first to comment on the change, and she posted this screen shot which compared a Penguin title and an HC title:

There’s no sign yet that Amazon has signed deals with other publishers, but I can report that HC titles appear to have gotten an across the board price cut. There’s a fair number of $9.99 ebooks now selling for $8.02, and there’s also quite a few $13.99 titles now selling for $10.94. There’s also a handful of other HC titles with different discounts, so there does not seem to be a pattern. Nor does this does not include all titles, but nearly all the HC ebooks I checked in the Kindle Store have gotten a price cut. The rest might just be waiting for Amazon’s servers to get around to them.

So Amazon is cutting prices. That comes as no surprise, but what I do find interesting is that B&N appears to be matching those price cuts as soon as they happen. B&N is also dropping prices, and of the 8 HC ebooks currently in my browser, B&N has only 1 which costs more than the Amazon price. And that could change at any moment.

Update: And they’re not alone. One reader has told me that BooksonBoard has sent out an email today to announced a sale on HarperCollins titles. BoB is offering 24% off all (most?) HC titles. The sale is going to run this week.

Second Update: A reader pointed me at the iBookstore, where Harpercollins titles are now being discounted. I’ve spot checked a half dozen titles and whenever Apple discounted them Apple was the one who usually had the best price – sometimes by several dollars. For example, the Kindle edition of Men are from Mars sells for $8.89, while B&N has it for $9.99 and Apple sells it for $7.99. And it’s not the only one, either.

Final Update: It’s Tuesday morning, and the prices are now showing up at Kobo as well.

The settlement required the publishers to cancel their existing contracts and start negotiating new ones. It only took Amazon 4 days to start the discounts that will bring about the end of publishing, so I have to wonder whether they had a new contract with Harper Collins worked out in advance. That could be true, but it would not explain how B&N responded with similar speed.The settlement also blocked publishers from controlling the retail price of ebooks for the next couple years, and they also can’t sign a contract which specifies a most favored nation clause.

That last condition is potentially a good one for everyone but Amazon; it gives publishers the option of selling to different ebookstores at different prices.  They could p[ossibly set the Amazon price higher than elsewhere in order to slow down the doom they probably see coming. On the other hand, it also opens up the possibility that Amazon might get the lower price.

And we might already see the effect of the end of the MFN clause. BooksonBoard has discounted HC titles enough that some prices are below that of  Amazon. It would not surprise me to learn that they cut a special deal with HarperCollins.

P.S. I’ve just double checked and it does not appear that Hachette (test title) or S&S (test title) have signed a new deal with Amazon or B&N, but that is liable to change at any time. The only evidence I have one way or another is the price listings, and that’s subject to error.

image by Akira Ohgaki

Amazon has just announced that they’re pulling back on the one of the less well received new features for the new Kindle Fire.

You’ve probably heard in the past couple days that Amazon had planned to inflict ads upon all owners of the new Kindle Fire HD Android tablets. I have some good news and bad news. You don’t have to see the ads, but it’s going to cost you $15 to get rid of them (according to TechCrunch). Here’s what an Amazon spokesman said:

We know from our Kindle reader line that customers love our special offers and very few people choose to opt out. We’re happy to offer customers the choice.

Well this was a short-lived story.

So, do you think the $214 Kindle Fire HD is as good of a value as it was when that same tablet cost $199?