TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Amazon’ Category

By Chris Meadows

A comment on a recent post comparing Kindle 2 and Kindle 3 screens noted that the near-black background of the graphite version caused the background on the Kindle 3’s screen to seem brighter, though it was actually exactly the same.

However, it turns out that the Kindle 3 is also available in a white model, and Andrys Basten at A Kindle World has posted a head-to-head comparison photo of both devices showing a screensaver, as well as pictures of the Kindle 3 by itself displaying the New York Times. These photos make it a lot easier to judge the Kindle 3 against the Kindle 2 without the different case colors complicating things.

It is clear from the photo that the Kindle 3 has significantly better contrast than the 2, though I kind of wish Andrys had posted some more comparisons, depicting how text looked on both screens next to each other.

I found the comparison via a post by Tim Carmody at Wired’s Gadget Lab blog. Carmody also talks about a few of the interesting tips he worked out from the photos of the Times, and some of the annoying things the Kindle’s web browser can’t do.

By Chris Meadows

A New York Examiner blog post looks at the continuing order backlog on the Kindle 3, quoting a post from Amazon’s Kindle Community Forum in regard to shipping schedules:

• Orders placed before 8 p.m. Pacific Time on August 1st will still ship by the August 27th release date.
• Orders placed before 10 p.m. Pacific Time on August 5th will ship on or before September 4th.
• Orders placed before 12 p.m. Pacific Time on August 12th will ship on or before September 8th.
• Orders placed after 12 p.m. Pacific Time on August 12th will ship on or before September 12th.

The bottleneck in this case, the post states, is PVI, the company making the Pearl e-ink screens. It is not able to keep up with current demand, especially given that other e-reader companies are ordering Pearl screens as well. Given that it is unlikely PVI is going to be able to ramp up production for the Christmas season, there may very well be a dearth of Kindle 3s under the tree save for those that were ordered early.

But on the other side of things, 9 to 5 Mac notes that the shipping date on the iPad has, over the last few weeks, dwindled from 7-10 business days to “within 24 hours” as of August 27th. Is this because Apple has ramped up production to meet demand? Or has demand simply fallen off, especially as consumers have been more impressed by the higher-resolution iPhone 4?

Of course, I know that the two products are aimed at different demographics, and someone who wants one wouldn’t necessarily want to settle for the other instead. But all the same, it’s interesting to note that anyone who might be frustrated with the long shipping wait for the Kindle 3 can now get an iPad faster than ever.

By Chris Meadows

A couple of days ago, David Pogue had a look at the Kindle 3, positively comparing it to the iPad: it might do less, but it costs a lot less—a great bargain for people who just want to read e-books. Though he doesn’t pull any punches about the prices of e-books themselves, mostly up to $13 from the $10 they used to be.

Those prices seem high. The fact that e-books involve no printing, binding, shipping, distributing or taking back and shredding unsold copies ought to save you something. And it’s outrageous that you can’t sell or even give away an e-book when you’re finished with it. You paid for it; why shouldn’t you be allowed to pass it on? (End of rant.)

Pogue notes that the Kindle’s real competition is actually not the iPad, but rather all the other e-ink readers that have been coming out lately. Even compared to these, it is still doing well. Pogue writes that “the new Kindle offers the best E Ink screen, the fastest page turns, the smallest, lightest, thinnest body and the lowest price tag of any e-reader. It’s also the most refined and comfortable.”

Related: NYT’s David Pogue: Kindle 2 better choice than Sony Reader PRS-700

By Chris Meadows

I didn’t notice this David Pogue article from August 12th until Techdirt and Slashdot pointed it out just the other day. Though most of the article is about other cool features offered by iOS 4 (unified contacts, Facetime tricks), in the last section Pogue talks about the VoiceOver “spoken books” feature on the iPad and wonders why the Authors Guild and publishers hasn’t freaked out about it. I previously looked at the matter back in March; you’d think they would have had time to speak up by now.

Yes, this is exactly the feature that debuted in the Amazon Kindle and was then removed when publishers screamed bloody murder. But somehow, so far, Apple has gotten away with it, maybe because nobody’s even realized this feature is in there.

Why is it all right for the iPad to read books aloud, but not the Kindle? Because it’s more obviously part of an overall accessibility system for the blind, whereas the Kindle’s was meant for the convenience of the sighted (and indeed, the rest of it proved to be so inaccessible to the blind that colleges were prohibited from adopting it for textbooks), perhaps? Or is the Authors Guild more willing to give Apple a pass since it helped them stand up to the “man” on the matter of e-book pricing?

Since Pogue explained how to do it, I went ahead and gave it a try myself. It read a little fast to be understandable on the default setting, though that is adjustable by slider. The odd emphases and pauses also didn’t help understandability, and I didn’t really like the way it changed the device’s default gestures. It’s not going to replace a talented audiobook actor any time soon.

Still, I did like how loud and fairly easy to understand the individual words were, and it’s good to have the capability available even if it’s not one I would ordinarily choose to use.

By Chris Meadows

The Bookseller notes that Penguin is now negotiating with the Wylie Agency over e-book rights for the three Penguin titles Wylie was publishing through Odyssey Editions. This comes shortly after Random House struck a deal with Wylie over its 13 of Odyssey’s 20 books.

If Penguin succeeds in extricating its e-book rights from Wylie’s clutches, that only leaves Odyssey with four titles—and it’s anyone’s guess how long those will stay once their print publishers come calling now that Wylie’s been shown to be willing to deal. Not really so much of a publisher anymore, is it?

By Chris Meadows

I’ve been learning a lot in my new job as a tech support representative so far. It’s kind of funny—before I took this job, I thought I “knew” what tech support was, from my limited exposure to humorous tech support stories, and my work supporting a small web hosting company. But exposure to everyday people with common computer problems has given me a whole new perspective—or at least the start of one. The biggest thing I’m sure of is that I’ve still got a lot left to learn.

It’s surprising, though perhaps it shouldn’t be, just how many people have exactly the same problems. A large percentage of calls I take relates to inability to set up wireless routers. These complicated, cantankerous devices, and the convoluted way in which they relate to people’s computers, cause a lot of trouble and misunderstandings, not to mention frustration. Small wonder that some companies can charge as much as $100 simply to have someone come out and set up a home network. There have been some times when even I’ve felt like it might be worth it to pay someone that much.

Another frequent stumper is the way Microsoft now bundles a trial version of Microsoft Office with every installation of Windows 7. Except it isn’t really a “trial” version so much as it is a “Schroedinger’s version”—when presented with a product key, it’s the real deal; if not, it’s a trial. It looks exactly the same either way when you start it up; the only difference is that some computers have a card with a serial number bundled with them.

Since it doesn’t look like a trial when you first run it (it says it wants a product key and there’s a little tiny button in the corner saying “Trial”) and the only place it says it is a trial, before purchase, is in the very fine print on the item’s description (and who reads that), it’s only natural for anyone who buys a new computer and sees the Microsoft Office icon on their desktop to assume their computer just “came with it”.

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By Chris Meadows

I’ve written about using a MiFi or similar device—pocket routers that channel cellular Internet into secure WiFi—to “retrofit” 3G-style everywhere-connectivity to WiFi-only e-book and other devices. While there is a monthly charge for this Internet service, unlike the Kindle and Nook’s 3G, it is available for many more potential uses than the freebie connectivity baked into those devices. You can use it with any or every wireless device you own—at the same time.

At least, as long as your bandwidth holds out. At the time I wrote the aforementioned article, Verizon was offering 250 megabytes per month for $40, or 5 gigabytes per month for $60. A few other wireless providers have entered the fray, but most of them have similar caps. (Clearwire does not, but is currently limited to a relatively few metropolitan areas—nothing like the cellular network coverage of competitors.)

Even AT&T recently went from unlimited bandwidth for its iPhone and iPad plans to 200 MB for $20 or 2 GB for $25 bandwidth caps, and some people have been making noises about how bandwidth caps will probably be implemented for all mobile services sooner or later.

However, Virgin Mobile has decided to shake up the mobile bandwidth market, in a big way. Back in June, I reported on the prepaid contract-free MiFi broadband services Virgin was beginning to offer. At that point, bandwidth plans ranged from $10 for 10 days of 100 megabytes, through $60 for 5 gigabytes per month. Yesterday, however, Virgin announced it was going to keep the $10 plan but replace all its others with a single $40/month plan for unlimited bandwidth.

Think about that. That’s unlimited bandwidth for mobile data applications of any kind, not bound by contract lock-in so you are free to start or stop at any time—for less than the cost of many capped cell phone voice plus data plans.

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By Paul Biba

AmazonCrossing is their new publishing venture specializing in translated fiction. Here’s the description from Amazon:

Tierno Monenembo’s The King of Kahel was originally published in France in 2008 and was the winner of the French literary prize, the prix Renaudot, which is awarded to the author of an outstanding original novel. Loosely based on the life of Olivier de Sanderval, a man who journeyed to Guinea to build an empire by conquering the hostile region of Fouta Djallon, the book exposes how Sanderval braves all dangers to build a railway that will bring modern civilization to Africa.

Also at the link above you will find an interview with the translator, Nicholas Elliott. It will be available on the Kindle on November 2. The print list price is $13.99, the “digital list price” is $9.99 and the Kindle price is $7.99. I just pushed the button to pre-order it for my Kindle.

One of the really fun things about the Kindle is the ability to pre-order books. It’s a nice little fillip to the day to have a book you’ve completely forgotten about just show up when you wake up in the morning!

Via Conversational Reading

By Chris Meadows

With the launch of its UK e-book store, the controversy over Amazon’s pricing has finally jumped the Atlantic. The Bookseller reports that Amazon has priced a number of books at less than £3 ($4.67 at current exchange rates), sparking a price war in which retailer W.H. Smith dropped its own e-book prices drastically, too.

[An unnamed] senior publisher attacked the pricing strategies of W H Smith and Amazon. He said: "It’s absolutely absurd to devalue our product but I’m not surprised because our industry is populated by nincompoops."

This publisher thinks that the low pricing might actually make the agency model less attractive to publishers, since the publishers are still getting paid wholesale rates no matter how low Amazon or Smith set the retail prices. However, I’m not so sure about this—after all, wasn’t that also the prevailing school of thought in America, too before Macmillan called Amazon out early this year?

And other publishers claimed they did not expect the low prices to set future expectations. Again, I wonder where these people have been while American publishers and authors have been scrambling to raise prices and then accusing unhappy consumers of having an “astonishing […] sense of entitlement” when they protest. It seems pretty clear some expectations were set over here.

I find it interesting that Amazon is going so low. £3, the equivalent of $4.67, is less than half the $9.99 price that got Amazon into so much trouble over here—even more unusual given that prices tend to be higher in general in the UK. It’s no wonder that UK publishers are going ballistic.

By Chris Meadows

iReaderReview reports on a seriously cool idea that could get a lot of e-reading devices in the hands of soldiers overseas. E-Books for Troops is running a Kindle 2 donation drive, asking readers who are upgrading to Kindle 3s to send in their working Kindle 2s so that they can be shipped to soldiers. (Kindle 1s are not accepted; the donation page does not mention the Kindle DX.)

I’ve seen a number of paper book drives for soldiers (including ones by Baen aficionados, many of whom have military ties themselves), but an e-book reader drive might have them beat in a particular key area: book for book, it will be a lot cheaper to ship an e-book reader overseas than to ship boxes upon boxes of dead trees there. (And the Kindle works just fine with the Mobipocket version of Baen’s Free Library and Webscription e-books, too!)

It occurs to me that Amazon could get a lot of good publicity out of this if it were to donate its remaining stocks of refurbished Kindle 2s, if it has any left, to this group. Or maybe even kick in some new Kindle 3s, even if only the wi-fi version. (Will the Kindle’s 3G network even work over there?)

Regardless, it’s good to see e-book devices going to soldiers who will undoubtedly appreciate them.

By Chris Meadows

The UK e-book price of the last Twilight novel, Breaking Dawn, has been “defanged” by consumer protests. The Bookseller reports that publisher Little, Brown is dropping its e-book price from £13.99 ($21.79 at current exchange rates) to £4.49 ($6.99).

Graeme Neill of The Bookseller writes:

Publishers have said they want to see e-books priced at close to parity with the prevalent print edition, but the publisher has been criticised by customers on Apple’s iBookstore for its pricing of Breaking Dawn, with the Kindle edition available for £3.59 [$5.59], and the hardback priced at £7.49 [$11.67] on Amazon, and on Waterstones.com for £8.29 [$12.91].

The suggested retail price for the paperback version of the book is £7.99 ($12.45) suggested retail—considerably more expensive than the e-book, and even more expensive than Amazon’s price for the hardcover.

I agree with the vampire fans that high e-book prices “suck”. Hopefully publishers will follow suit with other e-book markdowns, rather than “bleeding consumers dry.”

By Chris Meadows

On Slate, Farhad Manjoo is making a rather bold prediction concerning the pricing of Amazon’s Kindle. Only a short time after Jeff Bezos dropped the price to $189 and introduced a lower-priced wi-fi version for $139, Manjoo predicts Amazon will go even lower in time for the holiday season:

I rarely make predictions about the tech business, but here goes: Before the holidays, Amazon will cut the price of the Wi-Fi Kindle to $99, and the 3G version will go for $150 or less. Amazon will do so, I think, not only to sell a lot of Kindles but also to cement its online store as the iTunes for books—the dominant force in the publishing business for the foreseeable future. A $99 price tag will make the Kindle the hottest gift of the season—much cheaper than the $499 iPad, more useful than an Xbox Kinect, and a lot more fun than a cable-knit sweater.

The price drop will be possible, Manjoo believes, because the cost of producing e-ink screens has fallen dramatically since the Kindle was first introduced, and the wi-fi version can simply leave out the pricey $30 3G module of its bigger brother.

Also, competitors such as Copia are dropping their own prices, and Amazon also dropped the price on its Kindle for the holidays last year making the Kindle the “‘most-gifted’ item in the company’s history.”

And by dropping the price to $99, Amazon could cement its already considerable hold on the e-book business, given that $99 is one of those threshold prices that would get a lot of people to jump off the fence. (Maybe not as many as the $49 Kindle that Seth Godin wants, but baby steps are the way to get there.)

Will we see a $99 Kindle in time for Christmas? Good question. It would certainly rock the e-book market to have a big-name reader go that low. And it’s going to happen sooner or later—so from Bezos’s perspective, why not sooner?

By Chris Meadows

Several reports on forthcoming or no longer forthcoming hardware hit the news yesterday.

Most notable is the report from Nick Bilton at the New York Times “Bits” blog that notes the Kindle is just the beginning of the range of devices Amazon wants to invent to make it easy to purchase digital content of all kinds, not just e-books. According to anonymous sources, Amazon’s “Lab 126”, the division responsible for the Kindle, was originally intended to create lots of projects, though it has focused solely on the Kindle so far.

“Jeff’s original goal for the lab was to build a range of other devices,” said one person, referring to Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive. “There was talk of music players and other electronics.”

However, a number of job postings indicate Amazon may now be in the process of expanding. Nearly 80 job openings in various positions were listed in the company’s hardware division, and its earlier acquisition of multitouch company Touchco suggests there are touchscreens in Amazon’s future.

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By Joe Wikert

Over the course of this summer I’ve read a couple of great Yankees books: Munson and The Bronx is Burning.  The former was read on my iPad and the latter, because it’s not available digitally, was read from a dead tree.  After seeing countless references in both to another Yankee classic, The Bronx Zoo, I decided that should be on my reading list too.  Unfortunately for me, that’s another book that’s not available digitally.  I also was unable to find a copy at the local brick-and-mortars or even the second-hand bookstore, which got me thinking…

What’s the definition of “good enough” in the digital and print-on-demand (POD) worlds?  Ideally, when I couldn’t find The Bronx Zoo in my local bookstore they would have offered to create a POD copy for me while I sip a cup of coffee.  On-site POD solutions like the Espresso machine have been “a year or so away” and I’m starting to think they always will be.  Not only are they prohibitively expensive but I’m also told they require 24×7 on-site tech support; think of the copy machine guy who’s frequently at your office, only worse.

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By Chris Meadows

On GigaOm, self-described midlist author Simon Wood sets out his opinion on e-books. He notes seeing a number of authors being either pro-e-books at the expense of print, or vice versa, while to his mind e-books are simply another revenue stream. It makes sense to make them available for people who want them, just as it makes sense to do the same for printed books or audiobooks.

(As if to prove his point, an advertising box in the middle of the article included links to two of his e-books on Amazon, for 99 cents or $1.99 respectively. Oddly, it also included a link to a $9.99 e-book by John Shirley. Presumably it was auto-generated by the article’s context, not created specifically because Wood was writing the story.)

Wood likes the lack of barriers to entry for publishing e-books, and the ability to self-publish rather than having to find a publisher. He also points out that it is a great thing to do with the backlist of books whose rights have reverted to him, or which did not have the electronic rights sold to begin with.

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By Chris Meadows

One of the job hunting sites I used during my 16 months of unemployment was, of course, Monster.com. Through a savvy marketing campaign (including a number of Superbowl ads) Monster has gained a reputation as the place to go for posting jobs or résumés. I can’t say it particularly helped me (I got my current position through a local job fair), but I’m sure that it’s been helpful to plenty of others.

Mediabistro’s eBookNewser reports that Monster is selling an e-book, Six Fundamentals to Building a Lifelong Career, exclusively via Amazon for $7.99. It seems to be about, well, building a lifelong career. (Maybe I should read it.) Amazon has exclusivity for one year.

It is interesting to see Amazon continuing to sign these exclusive deals. This makes several Amazon e-book exclusives to hit the news, including the controversial Wylie Agency deal, and I haven’t heard about any such exclusives on Barnes & Noble or even Apple’s side. While exclusivity might be bad for the consumer, it’s certainly got to be helping Amazon.