NookCOLOR! & eLending Programs

As expected, Barnes & Noble on Tuesday officially unveiled the new addition to their eReader line: the NOOKcolor. As you can see, no buttons! The NOOKcolor features a 7" LCD touch screen and runs on Android OS, making it as much a tablet as a dedicated ebook reader (although apps have to go through an approval process much like Apple's, and apparently require some additional tweaking to integrate properly with the device).

The NOOKcolor boasts 8 gigs of built-in memory with 32 GB expandable, giving it ample room for some 6000 books. In addition, it features a USB port and built-in WiFi; although it is considerably heftier than the Kindle, weighing in at just under one pound and measuring half an inch thick (so almost exactly twice as fat and heavy as its arch rival). Continuous reading time is stated as eight hours on a three hour charge, which is quite reasonable for a backlit screen, but again, a far cry from the weeks I can run my Kindle between charges.

But then, we're really comparing apples and oranges here now. It would be almost as accurate to compare the NOOKcolor with the iPad than with the Kindle at this point. Like the iPad, the new Nook has touch-screen interactivity for enhanced web browsing and full multimedia capability, whereas the Kindle's button-only interface is archaic and clunky by comparison. And did I mention it's in COLOR? It should be called the NookCOLOR! As in, major feature. Granted, it's not eInk, and consequently has all the washout issues of backlit screens, but touchscreen color eInk will come in time (and maybe here is where Amazon might retake the technical lead it seems to have momentarily misplaced - a full color eInk Kindle 4 by Spring would be a major coup, or even a touchscreen black and white eInk screen, if not both).

And while we're speaking of Amazon, in what appears to be something of a preemptive strike, last Friday Amazon announced the pending introduction of a lending program for the Kindle - a program which bears exactly the same features as the one now available on the Nook. Specifically, ebooks can be lent out once (and only once per borrower) to another Kindle or Kindle app for a period of 14 days, during which time the lender cannot access the book themselves, just as if they had loaned out their favorite paperback, except that prompt return is guaranteed (no more chasing down your latest acquisition only to discover it now has coffee stains and crumbs throughout).

One other aspect of these eLending programs is that they are subject to publisher approval, so not all books will be lendable, though I've found no statistics as yet on how many this may or may not be. Amazon won't even be rolling out their version until "later this year," according to the press release, though I don't expect it to take too long. And I imagine most publishers will opt to allow for loaning, as word of mouth is by far the best advertising money can't buy, and the best word of mouth is achieved via hands-on distribution. And in yet another of those light-year leaps digital can make over physical, you don't even need to meet up with your friend to loan them your latest book: they could just as easily be in another state halfway across the country, or a net-pal you've never even met. And that's pretty good word of mouth for any author.

Color Nook & HP Slate 500 Coming Soon

CNET today reported an unsourced rumor as stating that Barnes & Noble plans to unveil a new touch-screen color model of its Nook eReader - cleverly called the Nook Color - next Tuesday. Few details were forthcoming, but among them was that it is to have a 7" screen and run on the Android OS platform, making it potentially much more versatile than the standard dedicated reader. The anonymous source also gave the projected retail price as being $249, and said it will be sold alongside the current model.

The big unanswered question is what kind of display will be used. The current model Nook uses black and white eInk, which is viewable in full daylight, but without touch-screen capability, whereas current color touch screens wash out in bright light. So either color eInk screens have progressed well beyond what is currently believed, or this is Barnes & Noble's entry into the 7" tablet race. My guess is the latter. If so, it will be slightly heavier and have much shorter battery life than its present incarnation. But then, this whole upgrade has been kept pretty tightly under wraps, so anything is possible.

In other tech news, HP has officially announced the long-awaited Windows 7 tablet, to be called the HP Slate 500 PC. Featuring a 9" screen, the tablet is said to be geared to business users rather than the general consumer, with the Professional edition of its OS installed. CNET has a hands-on review, with all the official specs and screen shots, so I won't regurgitate them here.

A number of factors, including its $800 price tag, make it an uninteresting entry into the tablet wars for me. For starters, the simple fact that it's a Windows system is truly a turn-off right from the start. I have enough crash and bug issues with my desktop systems that already I'm leaning toward a Mac for my next PC acquisition. I can only imagine how many patches and service packs this thing will require, not to mention stacks of drivers. According to the review, right out of the box it requires some form of 3rd party app just to make its touch screen interface work right. The main form of interface seems to be a stylus, or "digital pen" as they like to call it, which to me seems altogether clunky and old-school. But then, maybe this will appeal to the corporate boardroom type who like to point sharp objects at things. I'll reserve further judgment until I see some more detailed reviews.

No release dates have been given yet for either device, but one can presume they'll both be out in time for the holiday shopping frenzy.

Google Editions Versus Blio

It looks like things are finally moving on the Google Editions front. Today I received an email from the Google Books Support team outlining some of the steps author/publishers need to finalize before their books can be sold as a Google Edition. Among these are a few specifics concerning the layout of scanned versus reflowable text pages, print ISBN's versus Google-assigned electronic ISBN's, and some options for various features such as Text-To-Speech capability. In addition, you can now preview your ebook in a browser page which emulates how it will look after a customer purchases it in this new format.

Like the recently released Blio, Google Editions will feature both scanned book images as well as reflowable text, which the reader can switch back and forth between. I tried the Blio version a few weeks ago, and while I like it quite a lot as a format, the Blio distribution model leaves much to be desired. I'm still trying to get my book into their store, and apparently, from the paucity of titles, so is everyone else. There's a lot of waiting around for email replies involved, and no real simple way to get signed up. And since they use Baker & Taylor as their distribution partner, they have a distinct disadvantage right from the start, as B&T are essentially a school and library book distributor, and a definite minority to Ingram's near-monopoly when it comes to retail distribution for physical books. So frankly, I'm not convinced Blio will succeed, even if Google Editions fails to appear anytime soon.

But given today's email, which begins "As we get closer to the launch of Google Editions, our upcoming ebook product..." that unspecified date is looming ever nearer.

At any rate, authors can now upload both a PDF for the scanned book pages of their Google Edition titles, and an ePub for the reflowable portion. Interestingly, my book already had a reflowable version attached, even though I've never supplied one. As it turns out, Google will provide one based on your PDF, but you can provide your own, and you can also choose to provide just one or the other, and have the option of allow or refusing either page images or reflowable text. So, ultimately, you have total control over how you book will be viewed. This is an important feature for graphic novels and heavily illustrated books, where reflowable text can severely alter the layout, often removing some of the graphics altogether.

You can now also provide an electronic ISBN for your ebook, although it cannot be the same as a print edition - Google Editions require a unique identifier. But if you don't have one, not to worry, Google will provide one for you, free of charge. You can click the image below to reach the Partner Program sign up page, where you can set up an account to sell your books via Google Editions, if you haven't done so yet. But then, if you have, you probably got this email from Google today already.

Once you establish your account and import your first title, you will find that there are a number of additional options on your Partner Program homepage and individual title pages for setting your selling price, opting for Digital Rights Management (or not), and setting the percentage of book pages that can be previewed before purchase. In addition, you can choose to allow or prohibit copy and paste and/or printing of selected text; and, in fact, you can make you entire book free and completely copyable if you so choose, making Google Editions a great way to promote your work. In fact, the only real restriction on pricing is that you cannot set a price for the ebook that is higher than a print edition of that book, a move which I applaud in light of several recent fiascoes by major trade publishers in setting ebook prices. Indeed, there has been much talk of late concerning the so-called "agent model" supposedly to be employed by Google Editions (one which would likely drive ebook prices up), and possibly this will be an issue for trade published authors, but since - as a self-published author - I have no agent (nor intend to ever get one), the point is moot, and not really worth discussion here.

And, as a quick side note, many of you probably saw that Steve Jobs officially nixed plans for a 7" iPad, at least for this holiday season, contrary to popular report (i.e. rumor). His reasoning was that there are already too many 7" tablets coming to market, and that ultimately that size screen is just too small to be an effective workspace anyway. In other words, nice enough for a dedicated ebook reader, but not for a real computer. And I agree, but for different reasons. With a ten inch screen you can get a nice two-page view of a graphic novel, but seven is just too small to read the text in that layout, so you're restricted to just a single page view at a time. And that may be fine for text only books, but graphic novels are perceived differently, with a right-brained holistic view that sees the two-page spread as a single cohesive canvas, and that creates a mood and a flow to the work which would be interrupted otherwise. I'm in hopes that the demise of the 7" iPad will put more focus on getting Version 2.0 to market sooner.

On that note, you also might have seen that 7.5 million iPads have now been sold. Since April. Holy crap! That's more than a million a month. And we're in an economic downturn? Not Apple. I'd love to see what those figures would be if the economy was good. By the way, assuming even the lowest possible average selling price of $499 each, that comes to $3,742,500,000. That's billion, just in case you weren't sure.

"Print Books Dead in Five Years"

Any of you who caught the CNN "Reliable Sources" interview with Nicholas Negroponte - or heard NPR's reporting on it - will have heard him make this statement unequivocally, much to Howard Kurtz' astonishment (and probably many viewers as well).

Negroponte, the founder of One Laptop Per Child, says the forces of economics will dictate the demise of physical books. "It will be in five years," he stated flat out, explaining that "the physical medium cannot be distributed to enough people."

Through the One Laptop Per Child program, over two million inexpensive XO laptop computers have been donated to children in under-developed or poverty-stricken communities, giving them a wealth of learning tools that they would not have access to otherwise. "We put 100 books on a laptop," says Negroponte, "but we also send 100 laptops. That village now has 10,000 books." And that's something that's just not feasible with printed books. "When you go to Africa, half a million people want books ... you can't send the physical thing."

Just as with cell phones, ebooks will become the standard in developing nations for this very reason. "Cell phones were more popular in Cambodia and Uganda because they didn't have phones," he explains. "We had phones in this country, and we were very late to the table. They're going to adopt e-books much faster than we do."

This shift from print to digital will have a big impact on independent publishing, since it removes many of the restrictions and obstacles presented by traditional publishing. In a way it's a return to the true tradition of printing, when it was done on hand-set letter presses and hand-stitched. But more importantly, it will greatly effect the way self-published authors produce, distribute, and market their work, so that rather than being a minor side line, to which little effort or attention is given, it will be our major bread and butter. And the sooner we get involved the better. At any rate, I feel it's important to keep abreast of the current trends and insights, as you can never have too much knowledge.

Borders "Get Published" Program DOA

With Borders set to launch its "Get Published" service on October 25th, authors seriously interested in new self-publishing avenues will find it a non-starter. Apparently designed with the blogger and short story writer in mind, the new BookBrewer powered ebook publication service is both clunky and expensive.

Consisting of an online interface with rich text cut-and-paste as its primary upload method, creating anything but a very short book will prove tedious and time consuming at best, and frustrating in any event. Several attempts to add a sample chapter resulted in random variations in formatting, from altering single-spaced text to double-spacing, deleting paragraph indents, and either keeping or changing the original font. Any graphics were omitted using copy and paste, and consequently must be inserted manually at every point. In addition, a longer book must be built up chapter by chapter, with separate tabbed insertion boxes for each one. I gave up after fifteen minutes of trying to get just one chapter loaded right. Now I can't even get back into that page, which gives me an "Access Denied" notice and no way to log back in (not that I really want to at this point).

The only other option for uploading content is via RSS feed from a blog, which I didn't bother to try, since I have no interest in either buying or selling content that has already been distributed online for free. And my advice is that anyone who opts to do so should be ashamed and blacklisted from the blogosphere. Weblogs are called that for a reason. If you want to be a published author, then spend a year or two writing a real book, but don't try to charge your readers for something you've already given them for free.

All that aside, even those more patient than I will be put off by the cost: $89.99 for the basic package, and a whopping $199.99 for the "advance" package, which inexplicably removes the distribution offered in the cheaper one. The explanation given is that this will allow the author/publisher to "negotiate deals" with their distributors of choice. Are they kidding? There are only a handful of online retailers who even matter, each of which now has their own publication service. The only reason anyone would publish an ebook with Borders is to get their book into Borders' online store, which only the basic package provides without undergoing further hassles. And I highly doubt they're willing to agree to more than the now-standard 70% royalty arrangement the other three retailers offer, no matter how much you haggle.

Even at that, who would pay for what Amazon and Barnes & Noble now offer for free? The justification of the price structure provided by a Borders spokesperson was that "We are charging $89.99 because we provide the ISBN, and we esssentially do everything from giving the author the tools to load, format and package the books...to publishing it in major eBook stores for them." In other words, they did nothing but build a webpage where you do all the real work entailed. As far as providing an ISBN is concerned, no ebook needs one to be sold anywhere online. Both Amazon and B&N will attach an inventory control number to books without one, and in fact, Amazon put an ASIN on the Kindle edition of my novel which already had an ISBN. Barnes & Noble gives you the option of adding an ISBN if you have one, but it's not required. I can't say what Apple's policy is for iBooks, but then, who really can?

For their super advanced package, the spokesperson gave an additional justification of the cost by saying "By way of comparison, with the B&N service, they convert the info into an ePub file, but the author doesn't get it--it goes straight into their store. This is a key differentiator." This is, of course, patently untrue, as there is a "download ePub file" button right on the title edit page once your source file has been uploaded. I even downloaded the ePub file B&N produced and uploaded it to Amazon, since their conversion program formatted it much better.

When and if Borders can claim a significant percentage of the online book market they may be in a position to charge a fee for this service. As it stands I wouldn't publish with them using this laughable monstrosity of a system if it were free.

Kindle Versus iBooks, Continued

Over at TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) an evaluation of the iBookstore six months after its launch has been posted by David Winograd, with the ultimate conclusion being that it's "one big failure." Given that Apple at the time of the iPad's launch on April 3rd promised iBooks would give the Kindle store "a run for its money," Winograd's statement isn't as extreme as it might first sound, although it may be a little early yet to announce the iBookstore's demise. Still, given Apple's claim, such pronouncements as this are bound to be inevitable, and to some degree justified.

Sales statistics aside (as I've covered that quite amply in my last few posts), the real issue with iBooks is availability, and Winograd spends most of his post providing ample evidence of just how much the iBookstore is lacking. The best generous figures given for iBooks is 60,000 titles available (including free material from Gutenberg, which make up fully half its offerings, with 30,000 titles derived from public domain material). Meanwhile, every Kindle book page on Amazon states that that title and "over 700,000 others" are available for Kindle - which also includes the Gutenberg titles, but that's still a 670,000 title advantage over iBooks. Winograd, who did a comparison of last Sunday's NYT Bestseller list, found the iBookstore was missing six, while the Kindle store was minus only one, due to that title's not yet being available in digital. With several other authors, he found that Amazon always had every title currently available, while Apple rarely did.

There are a number of reasons for this discrepancy, one of which is that Amazon has a ten year head start on Apple in the bookselling business, and thus a serious advantage. Amazon had well established relationships (for good or ill) with all the major publishers, with all the contracts and agreements in place, long before they ever started selling digital editions, whereas Apple is starting from scratch. But Apple seems to be shooting itself in the foot just as often as not, most notoriously in its refusal to come to terms with Random House, one of the largest publishing conglomerates in the world, which has kept roughly a third of all published books out of their store at a single stroke. Additionally, by requiring a $250 "setup fee" for smaller independent publishers (from which the major publishers, who can easily afford it, are inexplicably exempt), they have kept the burgeoning self-pub industry at bay while every other major online retailer is courting independent authors with generous terms and easy access (Borders, for example, has just jumped into the fray, with their "Get Published" program, on which I'll post more later).

On that note, the other internal issue Apple is contending with is its own overly-stringent requirements to publish in the iBook format at all, a difficulty its app store has long been saddled with, to the great dismay of many programmers. This watchdog policy has caused extreme frustration for both buyers and sellers alike, leaving more potential products waiting in the queue (or reject pile) than in the store itself. But personally, I feel that Apple from the start has viewed the iBookstore as little more than a fancy add-on to what its real product is: the iPad itself. Their focus has never seemed to be on iBooks at all, and even when I first watched Steve Jobs' presentation, I felt he put far less emphasis on the iPad's function as an ebook reader than almost any other aspect of its many (admittedly impressive) features. Of course, that might have been my own bias, since it was the topic I was most interested in at the time, but the present status of the iBookstore would seem to bear this out.

Interestingly, I read an article last month over at Digital Trends comparing the Kindle and the iPad, in which the Kindle was the winner in every category but two: Graphics, not surprisingly, but also, quite unexpectedly, in what it called "Library" - the total number of titles available. That article was, however, an iPad to Kindle comparison, not an iBooks to Kindle match-up, and given that the iPad has the iBookstore, plus a Kindle app and a Nook app (and several others), as well as what is probably the best Internet interface yet devised, the overall reading capability of the iPad over the Kindle is clear (ignoring the eInk versus LED screen issue). But the question of why the iBookstore itself has proven such a disappointment is another matter altogether.

On that point, the second major issue iBookstore browsers mention most often is the discrepancy in pricing for what amounts the same product on the Kindle. According to Winograd's NYT comparison, "sometimes Apple came out more expensive, while Amazon never did." As evidence, he lists three bestselling titles which were all at least three bucks more on iBooks than Amazon, including Steven Hawking's new book The Grand Design, which was $3.25 more in the iBookstore than for the Kindle.

Browsing through the 116 reader comments posted on the TUAW article since Thursday, one can see that these are clearly issues of interest and concern for ebook readers, and hot topics of debate. Gleaning from those comments, it is clear that Apple would sell a lot more books if they kept the price competitive, or stocked them at all.

But back to Winograd's analysis, I actually had to disagree with one statement in the article, which to me seemed a throw-away the writer clearly didn't give much thought to before he wrote it. It was, in fact, the only seemingly positive thing he had to say about iBooks, which was that

"the only advantage that the iBookstore does have is that purchasing is easier than Amazon's system, since buying is tied to your iTunes account."

Firstly, the assumption that all readers of ebooks already have an iTunes account is plainly - and demonstrably - false. Certainly readers of digital books are more likely to listen to digital music, but there is no inherent relationship between books and music, and not all readers listen to music, or buy their music through iTunes (though Apple would certainly like them to, and perhaps this is their ploy to draw those readers in). Consequently, many iBooks customers will have to set up a payment account on iTunes first before they can buy their iBooks, even if they have no intention of ever buying music there.

In addition, Apple on their own site claim 10 million iTunes users currently, while Amazon's first quarter earnings statement for this year listed 114 million active customers. That means there are 104 million more potential ebook buyers who already have accounts set up for Kindle than for iBooks. Furthermore, Amazon has had one-click purchasing in place for years, and I can not only buy an ebook with a single click on my Kindle, but on my Android app or from their website, and have it sent to any or all of my devices. So how, I ask, is iBooks so much easier because it's "tied to iTunes?"

As a point in case, this morning while out on my daily book delivery route, one of the school librarians I was chatting with mentioned a Daniel Pink book he was reading that he thought I might like. So I pulled out my Droid, tapped the Kindle app and did a quick search for it. In a matter of a few simple clicks I had downloaded sample chapters of not just that one book, but three of that author's works, and sent them to my Kindle back at home, where they were waiting for me when I arrived, just in case I had forgotten in the meantime (which I had). I could just as easily have bought the full books at that moment, but I wanted to read a bit of each one first.

Let's see you do that with your iTunes account.

Finally, as an addendum to yesterday's post, the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday released figures which corroborate those provided by the AAP. While sales throughout the entire retail segment rose by 3.9% in August and by 6.1% year-to-date, bookstore sales were down by 6.5% in August, declining an overall 2% for the year. The slight discrepancy between the figures given by these two sources is due to the fact that these are based on brick-and-mortal stores, and include academic texts, whereas those given by the AAP are for all print edition sales, minus academic texts, which tend to account for a large percent of August book sales overall.

eBooks Make Up 9% of Market

Confirming my prior suspicions, The Association of American Publishers today reported sales figures for January through August showing digital books now claiming 9% of the total trade book market, with a 172.4% jump to $39 million for the month of August alone. That's up from the 3.31% ebooks made up of trade sales for all of 2009. For the year-to-date, e-book sales are up 192.9%, to $263 million (compared to $89.8 million for the same period last yet), with total trade book revenue from January to August coming in at $2.91 billion. As you can see from the chart below, digital sales have now tripled in volume for three years running, mirroring the release of Amazon's Kindle reader.

Meanwhile, the print trade segment shrank in August, with Adult Mass Market sales down 21.9% for the month and 14.3% for the year-to-date. Adult Hardcover sales decreased by 24.4 percent, Children's Hardcovers were down 8% and Children's Paperbacks fell 15.1%. In addition, while physical audio book sales dropped by 23.4%, downloaded audio titles increased by 4.6% for the month and a whopping 28.8% for the year-to-date, again showing the surging strength of digital over its physical counterpart.

Initially slow out of the gate, digital sales have nonetheless shown a steady increase over time, never once falling after ground has been gained. Consequently, one can predict with a reasonable degree of certainty that ebooks will continue to make up at least 10% of the market from this point forward, and will very likely continue to gain ground until well after they have achieved a majority of sales. My guess is that they'll level off somewhere around the 70-80% range in something like five to ten years' time, then slowly creep to a final domination once print shops no longer find it profitable to produce anything but limited collector's editions (of course, if the tripling trend continues this will only take two years, but continued exponential growth is plainly unrealistic).

Print-On-Demand will hold this conquest off for a little while yet, once automated kiosks like the Espresso Book Machine become more common, and may even cause a resurgence in the popularity of printed books, custom-made at the point-of-sale, perhaps with a personalized bookplate bound into each edition. Regardless, printed books are ultimately destined to go the way of the vinyl album and the VHS cassette, and regardless of what many readers may yet want, the truth is that in the end it won't be up to them. Now that the major book retailers have discovered just how profitable the digital medium can be, it's only a matter of time until they jump ship altogether and relegate physical editions to the art house and museum.

"The Saga of Beowulf" now in Kindle For the Web

Checking my Amazon pages this morning for the latest stats on The Saga of Beowulf, I noticed that the green sidebar box now includes the "Read the First Chapter FREE!" button. Following it brought up the "Kindle for the Web" browser based reader, containing the first two and a half chapters of my novel, which I've embedded below using the provided code. I had sent a query to Amazon asking how I could get the embed code for my book, so I suppose this is their reply, as I haven't received an email in response.

You'll notice there are some errors in it's formatting, which I've alerted Amazon to, as for some reason it's dropped apostrophe's and quotes and is unable to show extended characters like the copyright symbol. This is NOT what the book looks like on the Kindle, where the formatting is now clean and consistent after the new revision was uploaded last week. You can download a lengthy sample of it via your Kindle if you want to see what it really looks like, but hopefully they'll get the web-based reader issue fixed soon too.

ADDENDUM: THURSDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 14

You'll notice there are now two Kindle widgets in this post rather than just the one I had pasted here. For some reason, upon posting with today's embedded widget, last week's version was automatically pulled forward and inserted into this post! Even stranger is that the HTML code for the first widget is still found only in last week's post, not in this one. Consequently, I can do nothing about it, except to recommend you never post two widget codes on the same blog page. If you view this post alone, only one widget shows up (so this may sound out of place to those reading it that way), and possibly when the older post goes off into the archives the problem will fix itself. But for now it's a bit of a mess. I've sent yet another email to Amazon concerning this, but as you can see this is still very much in Beta test mode.

SECOND ADDENDUM: THURSDAY AFTERNOON, OCTOBER 14

Just received an email from the Kindle for the Web team saying that they were unable to reproduce the errors I had mentioned, and in looking again at the sample of my book posted above, it now looks fine, so I'm not sure what was going on. However, as you can see, there are still two widgets embedded here. Or at least, I can see them. If this is not the case for any of you, please let me know, so I can foward the information on.

THIRD ADDENDUM: SATURDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 16

The first posted widget has now fallen off to the archive pages, so no longer shows up here. A second email from Amazon has resulted in no solution to this problem, but they say they're looking into it. For now, the only fix is to embed only one widget on a page at a time.

News of the Week

So here are some really mind-boggling numbers for you...

The L.A. Times this week reported on some recent research into Amazon's ebook sales figures for the year, giving a year-end projected tally just shy of the $800 million mark, a 195% jump over last year (pretty much in line with the figures I quoted back in August). And that's with ebooks making up only 3% of all book sales at present, and Amazon claiming something like 76% of that (although my guess is that 3% is substantially lower than the actual figure). Project that out to at time (not all that far off) when ebooks make up 30% of the market, and you've got a whole lot of profits coming in. Like ten zeros worth. And 70% of that now goes to the authors (or at least the what's left of that after their publishers take a cut).

By the end of 2010 it's estimated some five million Kindles will have been sold, a 140% increase from last year. That's $695,000,000 at $139 each, for those of you who don't want to do the math. Curiously, although Apple only accounts for roughly 5% of ebook sales, "heavy ebook buyers" (those who purchase 25 books or more per year) are split almost evenly in their preference for reading on the Kindle or the iPad. I found this particularly interesting, as it seems to suggest that reading on backlit screens doesn't bother tablet users as much as those who read on laptops and PCs (or maybe it just doesn't bother the iGeneration as much), which offers hope for full-color graphic novels and illustrated books to find a niche in digital. Wasting no time in jumping on that trend, this weekend's New York Comic Con produced a slew of announcements from major comic publishers of forthcoming digital edition distribution models and agreements.

In related news, China is now reported to be the second largest ebook market worldwide, with about a 20% share so far this year. Sales of digital texts in China for 2009 totalled 3.82 million copies, the majority of those being in English and without much Asian marketing support.

And more locally, Barnes & Noble is set to close another brick and mortar store, this time in Fort Worth. Are those echoes of Blockbuster I hear ringing in the air? Yeah, no one thought they would go under either.

Amazon Rolls Out 70% DTP Royalties in UK

With the Kindle UK store now up and running, Amazon last week extended its 70% royalty option to Digital Text Platform distributed titles sold within the United Kingdom, expanding the ability of independent and self-published authors to competitively reach a wider English-speaking audience.

Authors who already have their works distributed on the Kindle in the U.S. can easily take advantage of this extended offer via their DTP dashboard (found at dtp.amazon.com), by choosing "UK" or "Worldwide" for the distribution rights option (assuming you have the necessary rights - and, of course, if you're self-pubbed, you do; see #3 below). If you've already opted in for the 70% deal for your U.S. distribution you need do nothing else, but if you haven't yet, then now's the time.

As with the prior U.S. distribution option, the new UK opportunity has some stipulations that must be met in order to receive the higher royalty, these being:

1. A minimum and maximum list price range in UK pounds of £1.49 to £6.99. Prices falling outside this will net the standard 35% rate.
2. If a print edition exists for the title, the ebook price must be at least 20% below the lowest physical edition list price given.
3. The title must be offered for sale in all geographic regions for which the author/publisher holds the rights - which of course you want as much as they do.
4. You must agree to allow Amazon to include any "value added" Kindle features they see fit to add, now or in the future, such as text-to-speech and search. Again, there's no real reason why you wouldn't want this too, since the idea is to entice the potential buyer to make the purchase.
5. Net royalties are minus any "delivery" fees (i.e. broadband charges), but for an average file size this amounts to almost nothing, and even with larger files will come to only pennies (.22 cents for the full 640 page edition of The Saga of Beowulf), far less than even the smallest print edition costs to ship. It's a non-issue.

This is really a sign of things to come, as online retailers are starting to see the benefits of selling a digital product - one that can be produced and shipped essentially for free, automatically, with virtually no labor involved at all, aside from website and system maintenance, plus some broadband fees. No returns, no storage, no packaging. Why wouldn't they want to sell ebooks instead? What's not to love? It's a win-win situation for everyone. I can guarantee you 30% is a whole lot more than Amazon is making off of printed books. Hence, the attractive offer extended to Kindle published books.

It's highly likely this offer will be rolled out even further fairly soon, what with Kindle editions now available via Whispernet throughout Europe and most of the Western world. There are probably a lot of international trade agreements and whatnot to work out first, but given the frenzy of activity and interest in digital content shown at this year's trade shows and conventions, and the impending onslaught of low-cost eReaders and tablets, it's to Amazon's advantage to make sure their format is the most attractive, to both authors and readers alike.

The Saga of Beowulf eBook Updates

A number of fairly significant changes in the e-publishing industry of late have prompted me to review, and consequently revise, my approach to digital distribution and pricing strategy - changes which will in turn likely effect my print-on-demand model. Foremost among those changes is the shift from a 35% royalty structure to the more author friendly 65-70% split now given by the big three eBook retailers (these being Amazon, iBooks and Barnes & Noble). With a larger profit margin, smaller independent publishers and authors have a lot more leeway in deciding how to price and market their product so as to remain as competitive and profitable as possible.

In addition, a number of factors have conspired to alter my viewpoint on the perceived value of digital products. Among these are the .99 cent iTunes MP3 model and the $2.99 iOS/Android app price barrier (does anyone really ever pay $9.99 for an app?). Initially I viewed an eBook as an extension of the print edition of a book; that is, a digital equivalent of relatively equal value, whose only monetary difference was the ink and paper no longer employed. Otherwise, the book was essentially the same, i.e. same number of words, same length of time to read and enjoy the story, same amount of time put into creating it by its author. Therefore, if the cost of producing a $16.95 print edition was, say, six or seven bucks, the difference - that is, the cost minus ink and paper, plus an additional buck or so for shipping that massive hunk of heavy pulp, also no longer needed - should be the price of the digital edition, in this case $9.95.

But as it turns out, that isn't the way readers perceive the value of eBooks at all. And increasingly, neither do authors. At least, that is, independently minded ones. There seems to be a growing rift between the old school traditional publishing industry, who are striving to push the price of eBooks up to match their printed counterparts (ostensibly because their egocentric production-distribution model won't allow them to lower the print edition price), and the happy-to-be-writing-and-selling independent authors who see the value of a different model, one that puts the focus back on the writers and their readers. This is the model employed with astounding success for some time now by game app makers and the music community in general: which is, low price equals high sales. It's an equation which is hard to argue with.

In these days of mass global marketing and distribution, there is no shortage of an audience for almost anything. What is in a short supply is money. That is, money in the pockets of the average consumer on the street just looking for some reasonably low-cost entertainment. While the cost of almost everything keeps rising, higher price points only serve to push a product further out of reach, or at least out of serious consideration when compared to the million other options facing any potential buyer every day. This is why the .99 cent MP3 was so brilliant. After all, what's a buck? It's like a penny used to be, useful but not worth a lot, so spending one is really no big loss. (What's a penny now, you might ask? - Ash tray filler). This began to dawn on me more and more as I browsed the digital shelves for reading material to fill my Kindle. Free books? Hell, yes. $1.99 books? Sure, why not? $9.99 books? Piss off. But if you want to buy the eBook of Ken Follett's latest work you'll need a stronger expletive than that. $19.99! Now you know why penguins wear suits.

The long and short of all this is that I've decided to repackage and reprice The Saga of Beowulf to meet the growing demand for a more reasonably priced product in a world market rapidly escalating out of all proportion to average income. I've long thought that twenty bucks for a books is all but highway robbery, recalling days not all that long ago when $4.95 was the standard price. The day a paperback hit ten bucks I was shocked and swore off buying new books altogether (okay, not altogether, but for the most part). And if I won't pay that much, why should I think anyone else would want to?

The truth is that I came to this conclusion quite some time ago. But the thing that's kept me from lowering my ebook price thus far is the relative difference between the print and digital editions. Because of the cost of printing a 640 page book I can't really lower the print edition much (and here I feel the agony of the major trades to some degree, minus the executive bonuses and agent fees), so to have a $16.95 price point for the softcover edition and a price much less than half that for the ebook just seemed too far apart. After all, who would pay seventeen bucks for something they could essentially get the same thing of for four or five bucks, minus just the paper it was printed on? I figured I would never sell another print edition if I did that; and as evidence my print books sales have gone down steadily while ebook sales are rising every month, and that without altering my price at all: it's just a shift in consumer perception, and of course, the advance of technological innovation.

With the advent of Barnes & Noble's PubIt! platform I've decided to adjust my approach. Uploading my ebook to the new PubIt storefront has provided me with the opportunity to test my theory over time. So for now I've split the digital edition of The Saga of Beowulf into two parts, each selling for $2.99, while lowering my price for the single text eBook on Amazon to $4.99. I'll watch this for a little while, but eventually I plan to reissue the print edition in two volumes as well at somewhere around eight bucks each, give or take, to more accurately reflect the ebook price. Dividing the book in two is the only way I can affordably lower the print book cost, and it will allow new readers to delve into my work with a lower initial investment to risk (there are some who said I should have done this from the start, and I'm now inclined to agree with them, belated though it be). Hopefully this will stimulate new sales, which continue to trickle in, even though I haven't done any marketing or advertising for well over a year. Once the new book is out I'll start pushing sales again, but for now I just want to see how things play out.

As a side note, for those of you who have purchased the Kindle edition of The Saga of Beowulf there is a new revised edition uploaded which fixes some of the crappy formatting of the earlier version, so be sure to re-download it if you plan to read it in the future. This version isn't perfect either, but Amazon's Kindle conversion process has some really weird kinks in it that just randomly alter paragraph formatting here and there for no logical reason - the PubIt! converter worked perfectly using the same files, so it's something on Amazon's end, so far as I can tell. But at any rate it's better than it was. Eventually I'll put the two-volume ebook up on Amazon, and probably in the iBookstore as well, as soon as I can justify the $250 setup fee.

B&N Launches PubIt!

After many months of waiting, Barnes & Noble have finally launched their much-anticipated "PubIt!" eBook publication service. Through it, independent authors and publishers can upload electronic texts for sale through B&N's online store, the Nook eReader, and Nook PC software and apps for iOS and Android mobile platforms. Having signed up for notification of the launch several months ago, I finally received an email yesterday informing me that the PubIt! store was "now open and ready for you to start selling your ebooks!" So, of course, I signed up right away.

The registration process is quick and relatively simple, requiring only the entry of some standard information, including bank routing and credit card information for payment purposes, as well as a social security or tax I.D. number for reporting taxes to the government as required by Federal law. The longest part of the process was reading all the fine print contained in the Terms of Agreement, which for the most part is standard boilerplate, outlining each party's rights and obligations, giving B&N the right to market and distribute as they see fit, while the author/publisher retains all rights to the material. Either party can cancel the agreement at any time, for any reason. But there are a few unique aspects to Barnes & Noble's approach.

Essentially, the agreement seems designed to treat eBooks as closely as possible to their printed counterparts, with customers allowed to read the full texts of all submitted eBooks from within brick-and-mortar BN stores via WiFi, just as they can do with print editions (only sample chapters are available elsewhere). This may result in some loss of sales, particularly for shorter works and non-fiction titles, though for longer works it should prove beneficial, since few readers are willing to read three hundred pages on someone else's couch, comfy as it may be. Either way, it's non-negotiable and will likely result in no more loss of sales than print editions currently do in their stores. In addition to this, B&N have introduced a lending arrangement, by which one copy of any purchased digital text can be loaned out by the owner for two weeks, just as you might do with a physical book you had bought. You can only lend it to one friend at a time (since a physical book can't be lent to more than one person at at time), and you will not have access to that title yourself while it's loaned out.

The remainder of the program is fairly standard, functioning much like Amazon's Kindle publishing program does. Barnes & Noble's royalty structure is 65% of list for eBooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99, and 40% for everything else, although prices cannot exceed $199.99 or fall below .99 cents, and as with Amazon, the list price cannot exceed any print edition. Also, as with Amazon - but unlike iBooks - there is no cost to sign up or upload your books, so the entry bar is as low as it can go. Supported formats include ePub, Word, HTML, and TXT - the latter three of which will be converted by B&N to the Nook's native ePub format. There is a lengthy FAQ and an ePub formatting guide to help you get up and running. So get to it!