Calvin Reid, a writer for Publishers Weekly, is a Kindle-lovin’ kind of guy.
I’m still baffled how he could do a Kindle review and neglect the standards angle—despite my pleas as a PW blogger for the magazine to care about ePub and the long term.
135,000 eReader iPhone/Touch downloads
But maybe Calvin has a new respect for mobile phones now as an e-book platform.
Calvin’s just reported that "in the month since Apple released the new 3G iPhone on July 11, Fictionwise’s eReader software for the iPhone and iPod Touch has been installed on 130,000 devices…" That probably makes eReader the most popular e-reader for those devices in spite of other strong contenders such as Stanza, with 85,000 or so users.
35,000 iPhone/Touch owners have bought e-books
Even better, 35,000 iPhone/Touch users have bought books, according to Steve Pendergrast, co-owner of eReader.com and Fictionwise.
Whether the reader is Stanza or eReader or rivals, the iPhone and iPod Touch will be catnip for many fans of e-books. And remember, this is before Mobipocket shows up on the iP/iPT scene.
Granted, Mobi is an Amazon company. But I doubt that those people want to wait forever—lest eReader and the rest pre-empt Jeff Bezos & friends. Maybe Mobi for the iPhone/Touch in another month or two? What do you think? The rumored intro of a new iPod Touch device is all the more reason for Mobi to snap to it.
One more reason to dislike DRM
Obviously the more devices and readers are out there, the more need for e-book standards and less need for barriers to them, such as DRM.
"Protection" doesn’t work anyway in preventing scans of paper books. Fictionwise has been a leader in trying to provide people with alternatives to DRMed books.
Meanwhile congratulations to Steve and colleagues. We know the 35,000 is just a start.
Not a Kindle killer
The iPhone isn’t going to kill the Kindle, of course, even though it may siphon off some sales.
And as some here have rightly pointed out, many people will happily use both machines (maybe the K machine for home use, the iPhone for on the road).
Still, iPhone-related e-book sales might eventually dwarf the Kindle variety—well, unless Amazon gets smart and does its own phone with e-reader capabilities, a very real possibility in my opinion.
Related: Earlier TeleRead mentions of the eReader 1.1 upgrade, the main topic of Calvin’s piece. Also see eReader page with tips on features.
Likewise check out info on using eReader-format books from independent sites or your own Mac or, in some cases, your own PC. The latter machines require a Web server,
Correction: Earlier I mentioned 35,000 books bought. Make that 35,000 people buying books from Fictionwise. Even better for my arguments that mobile e-books will be big! Thanks, Steve P, for the catch.
The is a alpha vesion of mobipocket for java enabled cell phones it actually work quite well on my SonyEricson phone.
I tried it on my Razr 2 and it wouldn’t work yet. Maybe a future version.
As for eReader, who needs some namby-pamby “personal content server”? I’ve created eReader books using a text editor, search and replace with their standard markup, and the Linux command-line book maker. 😛
One slight correction, we’ve got 35,000 *people* who have bought ebooks for iphone/itouch, not 35,000 ebooks bought. We have far more than 35,000 books bought so far because most people buy multiple books.
So we have 180,000 downloads of the reader app. Some of those people only download free books, or use our new personal content feature to get content from other sites. But from our own site, 35,000 of those people have actually plunked down money and bought non-free books from us and actually downloaded them onto their apple devices.
Calvin actually words it correctly in his article, the misinterpretation is here in the teleread blog posting.
[…] Fictionwise’s eReader was downloaded on 130,000 iPhones in a month and Stanza is apparently only a little behind that as the ereading software alternatives to downloading ebooks-as-applications on your iPhone. I am a-quiver. […]
Fixed, Steve. Thanks for the catch. As I’ve noted, the change actually reinforces my major point—that cellphones will count big! David
Addendum: Just caught up with the headline as well.