…

Whenever any industry goes through a paradigm shift of disintermediation, one has to ask what is the function of the intermediary and can it really be eliminated or replaced by someone else in the value chain, or is the function of the intermediary so critical to the entire experience that to disintermediate it would do the end consumer a disservice?

In the case of publishing, I’ve heard publishing execs boast about how only they can pay author advances (critical for authors seeking to make a living from writing, but less so for enthusiastic hobbyists), and only they can get a book onto that front table at a big bookseller chain (also important, but less so in the era of digital book stores), but I believe the most important role that publishers perform is the one they are strangely reluctant to celebrate: the editor and the process of editing an author’s manuscript into a readable book.

The editor doesn’t just champion a manuscript from printed page to finished book (or digital file) but shapes the core creative asset by working with the author to get the very best version of the book down on the page.

In the film world, this would be the equivalent of the producer and the film editor combined, and in that world, both roles are credited on the poster!

And yet the book editor’s role remains anonymous, obscured in the wings whilst the author takes centre stage.  But the role of the editor deserves its own spotlight, otherwise the incorrect sentiment that books are created by only one person continue to dominate our cultural lore, reducing the publisher’s perceived functions to fronting advances and shipping physical books to physical shops. …

We’ve long thought Apple would add EPUB reading capabilities to Preview or Safari in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, but it hasn’t yet happened. While we have no plans to switch away from PDF as the primary format for our Take Control ebooks, it’s clear that EPUB is the future. Unfortunately, we haven’t been happy with the best-known EPUB readers for the Mac, such as Calibre, which is cross-platform ugly beyond belief; Stanza, the Mac version of which strips all formatting and graphics and is now obsolete; and EPUBReader, which requires Firefox and isn’t Mac-like.

So rather than write an editorial about how Apple was slighting Mac users, I drafted a spec for a straightforward EPUB reader for the Mac. That, of course, was the easy part. Luckily, I was able to recruit Peter Lewis of Stairways Software to do the real work of programming an EPUB reader. Peter’s primary program these days is the wonderful macro utility Keyboard Maestro, but he’s best known for creating the file transfer program Interarchy (previously Anarchie) back in the early days of the Internet.

Enter Bookle — a straightforward, elegant EPUB reader for Mac OS X that maintains your library of EPUBs, available now from the Mac App Store for $9.99. Bookle 1.0 is intentionally simple, since Peter and I wanted to get something out quickly and then react to requests from users, but it has all the core features needed to read DRM-free EPUBs. (This unfortunately excludes titles purchased from protectionist publishers and resellers, including DRM-shackled titles from Apple’s iBookstore. We don’t apply DRM to our Take Control titles on the iBookstore, but not all publishers respect their readers.)

And so about three years ago Gillis and Wickett drew up a list of authors whose work they admired and began contacting them to see if they would be interested in having Dzanc publish their older work in digital format:

Dzanc co-founder Steven Gillis (Photo: Ann Arbor Chronicle)

“We contacted scores and scores of people, everyone we had respect for. [NBA nominee] Noy Holland and [NEA Fellowship winner] Stephen Graham Jones came quickly. Some authors had to check their contracts. The easiest were those authors who owned the rights and said ‘here you go’ or told their agents, ‘I want to do this.’ The worst is when the agents can’t decide…”

Dzanc was offering an attractive 50/50 deal on royalties from sales of e-books. The response from the authors they contacted was almost universally enthusiastic. Titles published before 2000 were usually easy to acquire as there were no contractual issues tying up e-book rights, since digital publishing in those days was not yet a serious proposition.

Quality and Effectiveness
Bookshare materials are available in several formats, including HTML, Text, Braille and DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System).  Recently Bookshare released Read2Go, an iPad app combining the features of a DAISY reader with the accessibility tools and functionality available in the Apple iOS. The advantage of using the dedicated Read2Go rather than just Apple’s iBooks with VoiceOver is that qualifying students with Bookshare memberships can connect directly to Bookshare’s online repository to search, download, and read Bookshare books, periodicals and other materials. They can also use Read2Go tools to manage their books in the app’s Bookshelf, Bookmark important passages, adjust audio presentation and display text, and navigate to particular text sections or pages. Another important feature of Read2Go is that the synthetic voices it uses for navigation and reading aloud are of higher quality than the voices available through Apple’s VoiceOver.

Ease of Use
Even first-time users will find Read2Go easy to navigate. The app greets new users with a positive sounding voice that proclaims: “Welcome to Read2Go. Do you want to set the application features now?” Tapping Yes takes you to the first of 4 Audio settings screens where you can change the program voice, adjust the speed of read alouds, and choose different playback options, including AutoPlay, which if turned “on” directs Read2Go to begin reading automatically from where you last left off (see below).

I check comments several times a day, but it may take up to half a day for your comment to be approved.  Don’t worry if it doesn’t go up right away – I’ll get to it as soon as I can.  No reason to post a duplicate – time cures all ills.

If you are a regular commenter, it is still possible that your comment will be caught by our spam filter, especially if it contains a url or numbers, unusual paragraphing or characters other than letters.  I’ll see it, and approve it, as part of my regular approval process.  So far, in the month of January, our spam filter has caught 38,788 spam posts.  For 2011, the filter caught 385,975 spam posts – using a spam filter is a necessary evil.

Kobo has a free ebook page here at Top Free eBooks.

This page contains in-copyright free ebooks, as opposed to public domain classics.  The “free ebook” link at the top of the Kobo page just points you to public domain stuff.  You need to go to their Top 50 Ebooks page and then to the Top Free eBooks page to get current stuff.  Not very intuitive.

Today’s top free ebook is The Penguin Holiday eSampler.

The Kobo site doesn’t seem to have a deal of the day, or at least I can’t find it.  When I go to their Great Reads under $4.99 page I get the encouraging text: The list “Great Reads Under $4.99″ is empty or you may be geographically restricted from viewing its contents – try selecting a new list.

Nothing to do with ebooks, but too fascinating not to mention!  More in the article.

For the last six months, three orangutans at the Milwaukee County Zoo have had the pleasure of playing with a donated iPad a couple times a week, and guess what: They love it.

“We show them the iPad, and read them stories or let them have different apps,” said Jan Rafert, curator of primates and small mammals at the zoo. “We don’t let them hold them, but they can do some of the paint apps by sticking their fingers through the mesh.”

The orangutan iPad program, known as Apps for Apes, was started after the gorilla keeper at the zoo mentioned on her Facebook page that she’d like to get some iPads for her gorillas to play with, Rafert explained. It was kind of a joke, but a zoo volunteer took it seriously and donated a used iPad to the zoo. It turned out that the gorillas didn’t really enjoy the iPad — “they are more stoic,” said Rafert — but the orangutans went wild.”

(Via L.A. Times Tech Blog.)

It makes a fantastic PDF reader and I’ve put all my PDF manuals on it for easy reference.  It’s a pity it is going to go away.

Highly recommended.

Worldwide digital books market will grow at an average rate of 30 percent per year between 2010 and 2015 to reach EUR 5.4 billion in 2015, or 12 percent of the total book market, according to a report by Idate. E-Book readers will also develop from 3.3 million units sold in 2010 to 29.8 million units sold in 2015, representing a 24 percent growth rate per year. North America will see an average annual growth rate of 13 percent between 2012 and 2015. At that time, sales of e-books are expected to generate a turnover of around EUR 2.2 billion. The five major European countries will experience higher growth on the same period, to reach in 2015 an overall turnover of about EUR 1.4 billion for an average annual growth rate of 30 percent over the period.

The report further shows that the most advanced countries in terms of market share are the US, Canada and the UK. In terms of value, these markets should range from 13 percent for the UK to 18 percent for the US. In terms of volume, the 2015 market share is forecasts to reach 35 percent in the US, against 21 percent in the UK

Read the Complete Summary

See Also: “E-Book : An impressive yearly growth rate of 30% to reach the 5.4 billion EUR in 2015 (via Idate Blog)
Includes chart: Digital book market in million EUR vs E-reader sales in thousand units worldwide, 2008-2015

[Via INFOdocket]

One of the many germane comments about the article is this, from Linton Robinson:

BTW, anecdotally, of the writers I know who are making decent livings from published books, about half are either letting contracts lapse or heavily considering it, while putting out books on their own.

This is what will kill Hachette and the rest. They cannot compete with the independent author on price. It is as simple as that. The indie has no back office to support. He makes more from an ebook at $3 than he would through Hachette were it priced at $10. He could even sell it from his own site and keep the whole $3!

The big publishing houses are nearly all owned by giant media corporations for whom book-publishing is small potatoes and whose only interest is the bottom line. The future is not hard to predict.

Some good people will have to find other jobs, which is tough. As for the rest …

(Via Richard Herley.)

This is an important matter that has created quite a bit of controversy in the industry.  From the press release:

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) announced today the publication of a new Policy Statement detailing best practices for assigning ISBNs to digital products. Developed over the past 18 months within BISG’s Identification Committee, BISG Policy Statement POL-1101 addresses the critical need to reduce product identification confusion in the market place in order to provide the best possible consumer-level purchasing experience. 

BISG encourages all member companies and other industry stakeholders to download the Policy Statement online at http://www.bisg.org/what-we-do-cat-4-policy-statements.php and work toward adopting the suggested guidelines as soon as practical, with a target for new product introductions of no later than March 2012. The best practices are applicable to content intended for distribution to the general public in North America, but could be applied elsewhere as well.

The Policy Statement has been endorsed by BookNet Canada, a not-for-profit agency dedicated to innovation in the Canadian book supply chain, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), where content publishers, libraries, and software developers turn for information industry standards that allow them to work together, and IBPA, the Independent Book Publishers Association.

…

The following excerpt starts on page 6 of the 12-page Policy Statement: 

“Separate ISBNs should be assigned to all unique Digital Books for ordering, listing, delivery and sales tracking purposes. In general, there are three major factors that determine the need to assign unique ISBNs to Digital Books. 

– Content
If two digital books are created, one an exact textual reproduction of a Physical Book and the other an enhanced version that includes video, audio, etc., then the two Digital Books are unique and different products, and each requires a unique ISBN.

– Format
If an EPUB format, a PDF format and a Mobi format (among others) are created, each format should be assigned a unique ISBN. This is similar to creating a hardcover and paperback edition of a Physical Book and should follow the same rules regarding ISBN assignment.

(Note: When the application of DRM software is part of the transaction with the Consumer (as frequently happens in the US) it does not constitute the creation of a new format as the term is being used in this Policy Statement. In this case, DRM is not a format: it is a wrapper around a product. An EPUB file with DRM software applied is still an EPUB file, a PDF file with DRM applied is still a PDF file. In this case, DRM is not part of the product, it is part of the transaction. An ISBN is a product identifier, not a transaction identifier.) 

– Usage Rights
If a Digital Book is made available with different usage rights in different markets (e.g. adjusting the usage settings so that printing is allowed in the version going to the education market, but not in the version going to the retail market), each version should be assigned a unique ISBN.

(Note: As described in the note under ‘Format’ above, usage rights specifically applied to a publisher’s Digital Book using DRM software, such as Adobe Digital Editions or Apple FairPlay, as part of the transaction between the vendor and the Consumer does not fall into the above category and does not require the assignment of a unique ISBN.)”

From Paid Content:

The first title in the program is Fall of the Birds, a novella by Bradford Morrow about “a man who tracks an inexplicable plague of bird deaths, and the mystery’s effect on his family.”  The book is available today as a Kindle single, and also through other e-bookstores, for $1.99. “We look forward to working with all etailers on this new format,” said Jane Friedman, co-founder and CEO of Open Road. The company will produce marketing videos around each of the “Short Shots.”

That’s according to GoodEReader.  Here’s part of the story:

The Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is offering a great incentive to travel, free ebooks! They are partnering with the Broward Country Library to provide patrons books with no catch.

No library card will be required to borrow the books and you just need a QR Code in order to install the app on your tablet or smartphone. These codes are available at twelve different book stations setup around the baggage claim area.

One of the benefits of this program is all of the books do not expire! They are yours to keep, which leaves me to belive they are part of the Overdrive Classic Pack that many libraries are getting hooked up with.

From Moconews:

Macmillan will release 120 titles in November, and 400 more in 2012—all by Curtis Brown authors. The books will be available in digital and print-on-demand formats. Some of the authors whose books are being re-released: Gerald Durrell, a zookeeper and conservationist; playwright and crime novelist Francis Durbridge; Vita Sackville-West, who wrote novels and biographies; and Gillian Tindall.