Three articles have sparked my thinking on this post. The are: The Charlie Stross piece entitled Cutting their own throats, Joseph Esposito's insightful post on How B&N Can Take a Bite Out of Amazon, and The New York Times article, The Bookstore's Last Stand Stross talks about how the publishing industry has allowed Amazon to use DRM as a tool against itself. Esposito suggests "B&N needs an MCI solution" while the Times piece encourages B&N to have a sense of urgency in avoiding the same fate as Borders. Rolling all of these together I have a radical, three-step suggestion for William Lynch, CEO...

  Peter Meyers is the author of our latest TOC publishing project. His ebook is called Breaking the Page and a Preview Edition of it is now available for free. How does Peter's ebook differ from the other TOC ebooks we've been working on? Let's start with the opening statement from his introduction: Some days I feel like a better title for this project would be "Breaking the Book: How eBooks Botch the Reading Experience." Why the pessism? As digital screens replace printed pages, the results often disappoint as much as they delight. Yeah, that pretty much sums things up. When Peter first pitched...

There, I said it. I'm betting most consumers and quite a few publishers don't realize that Amazon has limits in place to prevent you from loading one Kindle ebook on more than 6 devices within the same account. You're probably wondering why I have so many devices connected to the same account. The answer is simple: I like to test new devices and the old ones become hand-me-down's to family members. They all remain on the same account though. Amazon has a default maximum of 6 devices for any given Kindle ebook. Once you try to get it onto the 7th...

They didn't create the first ebook device. Sony's original Reader had more than a one year head-start on the Kindle. What they were first with though was a platform that made wireless ebook buying a snap; Whispernet was a game-changer. Next, they had the vision to create a Kindle reader app for every platform known to man. Want to read a Kindle book on your Windows laptop? No problem. On a Mac? Absolutely. On an Android device, an iPhone, iPad or Blackberry? Check, check, check, and check. This, btw, is what made me comfortable building up a library of Kindle content....

I admit it. I check Amazon's Kindle Daily Deal every day. Every single day. Why? As a publisher I'm curious to see what they're offering and as a consumer I don't want to miss out on a great deal. (In the spirit of full disclosure, at O'Reilly Media we offer an ebook or video deal-of-the-day too. In fact, our program was in place long before Amazon started theirs. Everything I'm about to say below pertains not only to Amazon's program but O'Reilly's and everyone else's as well.) As a publisher I worry about the mindset we're...

Felix Salmon recently wrote an article talking about how the New York Times paywall is working because it's porous. He contrasts that to other paywalled sites who haven't enjoyed the same success as the Times. As I read Salmon's article I was thinking less about pourus vs. rigid paywalls and more about DRM'd vs. DRM-free books. There are definitely some similarities here. At O'Reilly we believe in a DRM-free world because we trust our customers and we believe they value our content enough to pay for it rather than steal it. It would be naive...

Apple forces Amazon to remove their in-app purchase button from the Kindle app and Amazon complies. Meanwhile, Amazon was obviously developing their HTML5-based Kindle Cloud Reader for all platforms. Advantage, Amazon! If Apple ever had any hope of grabbing 30% of all Kindle content sales taking place on iPads/iPhones that dream just crumbled.If you're a Kindle device user this development doesn't mean a whole lot to you...yet. You'll continue using your Kindle hardware like you always did. But if you own a tablet like the iPad you'll find Kindle Cloud Reader is a terrific alternative to Amazon's native app for those...

Why are e-reader apps so dumb? They pretty much let you read the content, make a few highlights/notes and that's about it. Btw, by "e-reader apps" I'm talking about dedicated devices (e.g., Kindles, Nooks, iPads) as well as apps on other platforms (e.g., Kindle apps on Windows, Mac, iPad, etc.). I feel like these apps and devices are at the same stage the mobile phone was prior to the iPhone's release. They're not as smart and powerful as they could be. Let me give you a few examples: Automatically gathering collections. Let's start simple here. The original Kindle just placed all...

Amazon is introducing an advertising component to the Kindle platform.  I love it.  Kudos to Jeff Bezos & Co. for their forward thinking on this initiative.  I'm talking about the less expensive ($114) device currently known as "Kindle with Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers."  (It's not the sexiest name but it certainly describes the product!  Still, I wonder what Apple would have named this...) I've blogged before about how advertising and its close cousin, sponsorship, will take on a larger role in the ebook world and most people have criticized that logic.  They say "books aren't magazines", "the book reading experience...

I'm back.  It's been one year to the day since my last Kindleville post and I've decided to resurrect this blog.  After using my iPad exclusively for ebook reading for a year I went out last week and bought a new, $139, wifi-only Kindle.  I'm not abandoning my iPad.  Far from it.  But after playing around a bit with a friend's graphite Kindle I decided I needed one too.  I'm glad I bought it as we just wrapped up a family vacation and I was able to give my wife my first-gen Kindle while...

While flying home from Bologna for our TOC event I couldn't help but think about some of the similarities between digital rights management (DRM) and airport security.  Here are a few common points that come to mind: False sense of security -- Seriously, does anyone today still believe any DRM system is hackerproof?  Heck, even books that have never been legally distributed in any e-format are out there as illegal downloads.  Just Bing the phrase "harry potter ebook downloads" and you'll see what I mean.  Scanners are everywhere, so if physical books can...

I can't tell you the last print book I bought.  Ever since I got a Kindle more than 3 years ago I've gone almost exclusively with ebooks.  Despite that fact, I visit any one of several local bookstores at least once a week.  I go there because I'm able to browse and discover products in a way that I simply can't do online. My iPhone is always with me when I'm in the bookstore.  Many times I've found a book that interests me, I pick it up and browse through it, then pull out my...