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1M iPhones sold—first weekend: Hint, hint to clueless book biz
July 14, 2008 | 3:40 pm
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By David Rothman
Some otherwise-smart people at a Tools of Change conference didn’t quite buy my contention that the Kindle would be merely one platform for e-reading.
The real action, as I see it, will be on cellphones—especially when pop-out screens hit the market.
Consider how phones squashed PDAs. People want to carry around only so many gadgets.
Toward vindication
Now look. Apple moved one million iPhones in three days and BookSquare‘s Kassia Krozser has just the right take on the cluelessness of the book business.
Why aren’t publishers piggybacking on all this commerce with cross promo? And I don’t just mean the iPhone-related variety. How about iPod Touch (right photo), which is much cheaper in the long run if you don’t want a fancy phone?
No bestsellers readable on iPhone except via eReader
A Mobipocket edition for the iPhone and Touch is on the way but still isn’t ready as I wrote this. eReader wisely did put out something in time, but that’s about it for people who want to read DRM-infested bestsellers. The iPhone and Touch should come with e-reading software loaded, built-in instructions on finding alternatives, and sample books!
This is just another indication of the need for the rise of e-book standards and the decline of DRM. When hot new hardware hits the stores, it should be easier for eager shoppers to buy and enjoy e-books.
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Comments:
“”"Why aren’t publishers piggybacking on all this commerce with cross promo? “”"
…because there aren’t iPhone/iPodTouch ePub readers that support the standard.
That’s correct Keith, there’s no reading system that fully supports the standard yet. Stanza support it a bit better than FBReader currently (page breaks between flows and support for NCX files) but there’s no CSS support for example. Adobe wanted to create an iPhone version of DE but there’s several reasons why they’re annoyed by the current development conditions on the iPhone: no access to the filesystem, no MIME handler, no support for Flash etc…
But, Keith, the Stanza e-reader does support ePub. Feedbooks has gotten thousands of ePub download requests in two days or so. Stanza may well have been the reason. As for DRM, there is no “protection” standard for ePub. But who says DRM is the best way to go anyway, and at least the publishers could have encouraged Mobi to come out faster with its proprietary DRM-”capable” reader to make the launch date. Lost sales! eReader was apparently the only one of the big-time readers with DRM capabilities to be ready by then. Thanks. David
@David: Stanza clearly has a role to play & has won the race to provide a simple-text reader on the iPhone. However, no CSS, headings, images, & tables means that Stanza is not currently a conformant ePub reader. That lack of conformance means that it does not “support” ePub today:
http://idpf.org/2007/ops/OPS_2.0_final_spec.html#TOC1.4.2
“”"1.4.2: Reading System Conformance
This specification defines only one level of conformance for a Reading System. A Reading System is conformant if and only if it processes documents as follows:
When presented with an OPS Content Document the Reading System must:
1. correctly process the XML as required in the XML 1.1 specification, including that specification’s requirements for the handling of well-formedness errors; and
2. recognize all markup described as permitted in this specification and processes it consistently with the corresponding explanations in this specification and in those of XHTML 1.1, CSS 2, and DTBook”"”
While I’m delighted that they’ve made the first steps in supporting ePub on the iPhone, I don’t like the implication that the “ePub on the iPhone” work is done (or even close).
Why do I care about the lack of CSS, headings, images, & tables? Because I’m interested in giving readers access to more than just Fiction content. There is a huge segment of the output of the publishing industry that can’t be understood by readers without some amount of structural markup.
@Hardien: I’m saddended by the lack of progress by Adobe (while understanding their complaints) on an iPhone version of the Digital Editions reader. That said, I’m surprised that the work being done doesn’t seem to be leveraging the rendering power of the iPhone browser to do the heavy work of XHTML & CSS support. Sadly, without Leopard I can’t even run the SDK to do a proof of concept. Oh well, the reading software is better _not_ designed by publishers, I think.
@Keith: I agree, using Webkit seems like a natural solution but keep in mind that those engines are not designed for paginated media. There’s also a few specific CSS elements in oeb-* that wouldn’t be natively supported by Webkit.
From a developer perspective, a more open environment, one where you can at least access the file system, would be much better. Maybe we’ll see more and better applications on Android ?
[...] client and a perfectly readable screen, many are either (1) declaring the death of kindle or (2) bemoaning the lack of publisher interest in what appears to be the hottest portable computer device around. Not that we’re there yet. [...]