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By David Rothman

image Can colorful, well-laid-out images make a difference in an e-book of a tech manual? Definitely.

You might check out David Pogue’s iPhone, the Missing Manual, selling for an intro price of just $4.95 for the iPhone/Touch. That’s quite a break from the normal $9.99 or or the $24.99 for print.

The same material just wouldn’t have the same appeal on a Kindle or other monochrome device, and if nothing else, color is no small detail for K-12 use.

What’s more, this O’Reilly book demonstrates the possibilities of ePub for image display on small screens.

Chapter-limited word searches

Still, all is not perfect. As far as I know, you can’t do word searches beyond the current chapter.

The book is actually an iPhone app based on the Stanza e-reader from Lexcycle, which, to my knowledge, has this same limitation because of the shortcomings of the iPhone OS.

Still, in other ways, I’m impressed overall. O’Reilly, moreover, has nicely used bookmarks as a navigation aid with listings not just for chapters but sections within them. Possibilities for some fiction, too? A way to follow plots more easily?

The app issue

Normally I don’t like the idea of books as apps, and I still don’t, but in an e-mail Q&A Lexcycle offered a bunch of interesting reasons why it went this route, and I’ll reproduce them ahead, since there are some generic issues here.

DR:. Why is this an app rather than just a the usual e-book file? Was it because you and/or O’Reilly feared that many prospective customers would be scared of installing Stanza separately and needed the content to motivate them?

Neelan Choksi, Lexycle: I don’t think the issue was that customers would be scared of installing Stanza separately.  I think there were a number of factors:

1) I can see commonly used reference manuals (whether an iPhone manual or a photographers guide for a photographer or a written English guide for a writer or an encyclopedia for a student as well as things like a bible) be something that would be very handy to have as a separate icon / app where there are no extra steps to getting to the material so I do think there is a use case for this for some segment of the population.  I personally think an iPhone manual for the iPhone is a perfect use case for a standalone app.

2) Customers have the option of choosing what they prefer. The iPhone Missing Manual has been available for at least 1-2 months as a DRM-free ePub which could be downloaded into Stanza.  O’Reilly’s Andrew Savikas blogged about the route of getting their ePubs into Stanza a couple weeks ago.  I understand the pricing will push people to the standalone app.

3) Will it be easier for a user to find a standalone app on the App Store than find a book on Stanza for this particular title? Obviously there is a bet being placed here that the X (I’ve heard X=13) million iPhone users may be more apt to purchase an iPhone Missing Manual.

4) Discovery – There are a ton of unknowns out there right now about what will work and different publishers are trying different things and learning from them.  Pan Macmillan went the route of doing excerpts with Stanza. Random House went the route of making whole backlist titles available for free with excerpts of upcoming books from the same author to drive pre-orders and familiarity with the author.  Harlequin has gone the route of making whole short novels available for free. O’Reilly has gone the route of having its own iPhone app in addition to the other formats they have. I wouldn’t underestimate the value of trying things out and learning from the experience as a motivator.

5) Finally, I think this is a great way to get people reading on the iPhone in something that makes sense. If people discover that they had a great experience with something that I personally think is a no-brainer for users (I wasn’t marketing when I said I have looked things up in the iPhone: The Missing Manual over the last 2 months), then they will be more apt to think “Huh, maybe I could read a novel on my iPhone.”

6) Finally, for us, it is another way of showing off the capabilities of Stanza.

The bottom line, though, is that as crazy as it sounds to us, there may be a segment of the population that may never read a book or periodical on Stanza but may still want an iPhone Manual on their phone.

DR: What about people’s existing copy of Stanza? Which app will have priority? What about people’s existing Stanza libraries?

Neelan: I don’t think this changes anything.  On my phone I have Stanza which is where I am currently reading Feinstein’s Open: Inside the Ropes at Bethpage Black as well as a bunch of magazine/newspaper articles and summaries. I also have the iPhone: The Missing Manual app where I often go when I am trying to figure something out on my iPhone (most recently how to capture screen shots).

DR: What about updates? Can people update it through the usual Stanza button from within the App store?

Neelan: No, this is a completely separate app.  So if we release an update to the iPhone MM, the App store will reflect that this app has updated and you will update it just like you would any other app on the app store. Stanza updates will happen in the familiar way that you are used to.

I think 2 and 4 will become more clear when you can try it out.

 
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