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Could Sony boost its e-book revenue via ads playing up the standards angle? Time for .epub to make the Sony gift guides?
January 5, 2008 | 6:44 pm
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By David Rothman
A colorful gift-guide reached Mrs. TeleBlog and me from Sony, and guess what was a featured item among the stereos, digital cameras and hi-def TVs? The Sony Reader—right next to a stack of bestsellers from Neal Stephenson, Nora Roberts and others. Sony mentioned the 22,000 books available through its e-store. Fine. But Amazon still wallops it in the numbers department—90,000+ titles, currently—and might even after the Sony-Borders alliance revs up all the way.
So here’s a friendly suggestion for Sony now that the holidays gift season is over. If the facts justify it, why not run an ad playing up Sony’s plans to honor the IPDF‘s .epub standards and work toward DRM interoperability. Those are not techie-only issues. They’ll determine how many books books will eventually available to Sony buyers (reminder: the best DRM is none). Sony needs to convince Reader buyers that they can enjoy much more than a one-or two-store act and can safely regard the $300 device as a good investment for the future.
Dissed the Sony Reader in favor of Kindle
Having forsaken the Sony for the Amazon Kindle, a gizmo shopper noted in MobileRead that books are more important to Amazon than to Sony. Yes, as I’ve noted here, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said in the past that someday Amazon might not even do books. But for now the public sees Amazon as the leader in that area. Sony needs to respond in a way that would help it cozy up to customers. Given past corporate history, Sony’s positioning itself as a standards-friendly company would make waves. It could even push for the IDPF to do that “Epub Inside” sticker in time.
Of course, all of the above relies on Sony and Adobe living up to past talk of including .epub-capable Digital Editions software in an update for the PRS-505 and in future Readers. But we’ll think good thoughts.
Meanwhile this is a good moment for Sony to demonstrate seriousness about e-book standards and e-books in general.
Just today a grandmother in Florida Googled up the TeleRead site and called to see about the Sony’s fitness for for reading spiritual guides. E-books for grandma? Maybe this-here E thing is finally catching on as a result of all the Kindle’s having made the cover of Newsweek. Now’s the time for Sony to show—in ways beyond the Reader’s more enticing styling, native PDF capabilities, the higher number of gray-scales and so on—that it can be competitive. Hey, if nothing else Sony for now has Mike Cane on its side in this battle.
Related: Charles Stross‘s five-point anti-Kindle rant from last month—Mike heartily approves of the Caning. As usual, however, the TeleBlog will continue to report both the pros and cons of the Kindle. While I dislike Amazon’s eBabel, I heartily approve of the such wrinkles as new wireless feature to ease the downloading of e-books.
And a reminder: I beat up on Sony when many regarded it as the main threat to e-book standards. May Amazon’s Kindle side soon discover the joys of standards—perhaps with friendly little nudges from Europe, when Jeff B. decides to chase after prospective Kindle shoppers there!
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Comments:
>>>Yes, as I’ve noted here, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said in the past that someday Amazon might not even do books.
Thinking about what he meant, I can see his point.
1) If the decline in reading continues, will there be books?
2) If self-publishing online (the payment system for this still needs to be created — not ironically, The Pirate Bay is working on such a system) by writers continues apace, people will buy ebooks direct without the need for amazon. Disintermediation. (Sorry, Fictionwise, et al.)
Why not run an ad playing up Sony’s plans to honor the .epub standard and work toward DRM interoperability? Because the average consumer couldn’t care less.
My wife, a voracious reader, plans to order a Kindle when we return home from our holiday trip. She shares my distaste for DRMed music and won’t buy it, but even after I explained the ideological, technical, and practical advantages of other readers, she’s still determined to buy a Kindle.
Why? Ease of use — the instant gratification of buying a title right now, wherever she is (well, almost anywhere), without having to make a wired or wireless connection to a computer or network. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say that features like this are far more important to the average, non-technical consumer than the politics of DRM or standards.
Now ask me if she gives a hoot about .epub, or whether a Sony ad trumpeting its planned support for the format would sway her….
The average consumer will not give a hoot about .epub. Heck, I’ve been reading this site for a while, consider myself moderately savy and I can’t bring myself to give a hoot about .epub.
I’m a voracious reader myself and don’t care about .epub as .epub. What I would like to see is the ability to download and read a book from any bookseller. What would do Sony better is to promote the ability (which means providing the capability) to buy a book from more booksellers than just Amazon (the Kindle problem).