Open Question: Do You Re-Read Books?

Mac Slocum
September 8, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4) | Listen

Proponents on both sides of the ebook debate point to the archival/re-read nature of their chosen format, but I'm curious to see if re-reading is a common activity or one of those things we'd all like to do but can't find the time. Here's a few questions toward that end:

• Do you re-read books?
• If yes, how often? (i.e. You re-read 1-2 titles per year.)
• Which titles or genres do you re-read?
• Does a book's format -- print or digital -- make you more or less inclined to re-read a title?

Please share your thoughts in the comments area.

News Roundup: Digging Around Amazon's Topaz Format, Twitter Novels, June Ebook Sales Up 87% Over '07

Mac Slocum
September 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Digging Around Amazon's Topaz File Format

Late Night Code is popping the hood on Topaz, that mysterious "other" file format used on the Kindle:

Mobipocket files purchased from Amazon have an AZW extension (which presumably stands for Amazon Whispernet - the name of the Kindle wireless download service). Mobipocket files from other sources will have a MOBI or PRC extension. Topaz files will have an AZW1 extension if downloaded directly to the Kindle, and a TPZ extension if downloaded from Your Media Library on Amazon.com.

Writing Novels with Twitter

ReadWriteWeb has a brief survey of mini serialized novels in the U.S.:

In Japan, mobile phone novels called "keitai shousetsu" have become so successful that they accounted for half of the ten best-selling novels in 2007. Here in the Western world several would-be novelists are attempting to use Twitter to create the same phenomenon. Some of the novels tweeted so far have been interesting and engaging, but others, sadly, appear to be abandoned. Will micro-format fiction ever take off here as it did in Japan?

June '08 Ebook Sales Up 87% Over June '07

Wholesale trade ebook sales accounted for $4.9 million in June '08, according to industry stats from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). This is an 87 percent increase over June '07. Year-to-date ebook sales are up 43 percent over last year.

Note: The AAP/IDPF stats aggregate information from 12-15 trade publishers and reflect wholesale sales figures in the U.S.

Related:

• See more publishing news and insight in the TOC News section

TOC Recommended Reading

Mac Slocum
September 4, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Create Digital First (Martyn Daniels, Brave New World)

Today we are the start of a digital consumer offer but it is in the main based on yesterday's physical cost model, processes and perceptions. Merely taking the finished book and generating a digital rendition that mirrors the physical one is what music did with CDs. Is it logical to merely replicate the book and create just another rendition? We don't envisage the same demand change as music experienced in selling just fragments (tracks), but it is possible to see the selling of installments or part works, where all the complete 'book' may not be bought.
(Via the Reading 2.0 list)

The Elements of a Perfect eReading Device (Dear Author)

I think that there is a technological gap between what readers would like in the perfect ereader and what can actually be done. If you don't like LCD screens, then you are limited by refresh rates and the inability of eink technology to actually perform some multi function device programs. If you don't like to be limited by refresh rates, want a backlight, and ability to play video, browse the web, and even do a lot of typing (or editing of manuscripts), then eInk devices aren't for you.
(Via Electric Alphabet)

Google Chrome is Bad for Writers & Bloggers (Edward Champion, Edward Champion's Reluctant Habits)

Anyone who uses Chrome will technically own the copyright, but who needs copyright when the Chrome user effectively gives up her right to distribute this content in all perpetuity and without royalties? So if Joyce Carol Oates is using Chrome and types an email to someone, she "owns" the copyright. But Google has the right to use anything that Ms. Oates types into Chrome for any purpose. Google responds. (Via Jose Alonso Furtado's Twitter stream)

Related:

• TOC News
• TOC Analysis and Opinion

Levels of Quality and Revenue Streams

Mac Slocum
September 3, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

In a New York Times piece looking at a new batch of Web shows, Mike Hale writes:

Oddly enough, waiting through the commercials at the beginning of each snippet didn't bother me. I could have avoided them by going to YouTube, but the lower video quality and ugly viewing environment there -- still insulting after all these years -- made the ads at the CBS site seem palatable.

Last month, experts at the RBC Capital conference said advertisers were still wary of associating their brands with user-generated videos, but there's a demand for professional content. From News.com:

Video ad executives said that while YouTube has a lot of inventory that's hard to monetize, sites with professional content such as Hulu.com don't have enough inventory to serve demand from brand advertisers.

Consumers are also interested in professionally produced material. A 2007 report (pdf) from the Pew Internet and American Life Project found:

Overall, 62% of online video viewers say that their favorite videos are those that are "professionally produced," while 19% of online video viewers express a preference for content "produced by amateurs." Another 11% say they enjoy both professionally-produced video and amateur online video equally.

Connecting the dots, it seems there's an opportunity for publishers to link ad-based revenue streams, levels of download quality, and audience experience. For example:

• A studio could post low-fi versions of its Web shows to YouTube, social networks and other Web destinations. The free videos would include branding and links to higher-quality versions of the same material on different sites. These low-quality videos would act as a brand campaign for the show, reaching out across a broad base of users to increase awareness and (hopefully) motivate a percentage of the viewing audience to access the high-quality videos. This is the same technique TV networks use when they advertise upcoming shows during popular broadcasts (e.g. anyone watching Fox lately knows the network is hedging its bets on "Fringe.").
• High-quality downloads would be available through a studio's own site or through upper-tier services like Hulu. These videos would include pre- and post-roll advertising from sponsors. If the show proves successful, studios could take a note from Joss Whedon's recent Web effort, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and sell related downloads, soundtracks and merchandise.

This process extends to other media areas. On the print side, publishers could push basic material out to a wide audience through Scribd and other text-centric services, while also driving a percentage of the audience toward high-quality digital and print editions available through established retail channels (Web-based and otherwise). Earlier this year, Trent Reznor employed a similar tiered strategy with the Nine Inch Nails album "Ghosts I-IV" and the results were positive.

I realize this is back-of-the-envelope analysis, but this emerging mix of low-fi brand building and consumer/advertiser demand for professional-level content bodes well for publishers experimenting with digital delivery.

Related Stories:

• TechCrunch: "Hulu Launches Fall Lineup, Premieres Before TV Broadcast"
• Report: Pre-Roll Video Ads Not all that Bad
• Free Ebooks with Embedded Ads Via Scribd-Lulu Partnership
• Piracy and Advertising: An Unlikely Union that Just Might Work
• Treating Ebooks Like Software

[TOC Directory] Recent Additions

Mac Slocum
September 2, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

20 new listings have been added to the TOC Directory in the last week, including:

• Diacritech
• Inera
• Combined Book
• Ecological Fibers
• Fibermark

Visit the TOC Directory to add your own listings and events.

Web Analytics Primer for Publishers

Mac Slocum
September 2, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3) | Listen

Web content allows for a level of tracking and analysis unseen in other forms of media, but I get the sense some publishers are a little hazy when it comes to the established analytic measurements. This primer touches on the main measures I've used in my own efforts, but it is not exhaustive. I encourage other analytics folks to chime in with their thoughts and techniques in the comments area.

A few notes before we get into it:

• Note #1: If you check stats religiously and you're a whiz with your analytics tools, this post will be elementary and quite dull. You're better off perusing the excellent conversations at Webmaster World.
• Note #2: The term "hits" was outdated in 1999. I won't be using it here and I implore you to avoid this word -- and anyone using it within a Web traffic context -- at all costs.

With that out of the way, let's dive in ...

Visits -- When you access a specific Web site, that counts as one visit. If you leave and return, that usually counts as a second visit. I say "usually" because most analytics tools use a timer. For example: If you leave and return to a site running Google Analytics within 30 minutes, one visit is logged. But if you return after 30 minutes, a second visit is added to the tally.

• Caveat -- "Visits" should not be equated with "people." Even with a timer in place, it's possible for a single person to rack up multiple visits to your site.
• Recommendation -- Track visits over a period of months, not weeks. Long stretches will reveal the overall growth of your site and your audience.

Unique Visitors -- Unique visitors represent individual visitors to your site (in theory). This is an important metric because it gives you a sense of your audience size.

• Caveat -- Analytics tools rely on cookies to track unique visits, but cookies can be deleted or rejected by the user. There's also no way to differentiate between people using the same Web browser. Public terminals, lab computers and family PCs will all register as single users.
• Recommendation -- Limits on privacy (a good thing) and technology (not so good) prevent analytics tools from achieving the 1:1 visitor tracking utopia. For the foreseeable future, the unique visitors metric offers the best approximation of audience size. Just make sure bosses and advertisers understand the limits.

Page Views -- A page view represents a single view of a single page under a certain Web domain. If you click to another site and then click back to the original site, you'll log another page view. If you refresh the page you're viewing, another page view will be counted.

• Caveat -- A single visitor can log dozens of page views, especially if they've got an itchy refresh finger.
• Recommendation -- Page view figures should be used for general analysis. Their real value comes from the manual parsing of page view data. Close examination will reveal popular pages and topics, which can help guide future editorial efforts.

Pages Per Visit -- The Web's built-in context makes it possible to attract visitors with one piece of content, then present them with additional material on the same site through related links, embedded links, recommendations, etc. A high pages per visit average (3+ pages is quite good) means visitors are interacting with your content. A low average means visitors are viewing one page and quickly moving on to other sites.

• Caveat -- Want to see how the pages per visit average can be manipulated? Visit any major media site and look for the photo galleries. Placing a single photo on a single page and then encouraging users to click the "Next" button is an easy way to boost the pages per visit number. Pages per visit is also influenced by traffic spikes. If you receive an inbound link from a popular recommendation site (Slashdot, Digg), you'll likely see a huge increase in page views but a dramatic drop in pages per visit. Most visitors from these sites look at one piece of content and then move on to the next popular destination.
• Recommendation -- Like most analytics measurements, the pages per visit average should be examined over multi-month stretches. Traffic spikes should be disregarded -- not ignored outright, just disregarded in this case. If you see the average go up by a full page over the course of 3-6 months, you're doing something right.

Average Time on Site -- The more time users spend on your site, the more you can assume they're engaged with your content and your brand ... and your sponsors' brands. Given the hyperactive nature of Web browsing, holding visitor attention for a full minute or more is considered a success.

• Caveat -- As the Google Analytics FAQ notes, some visitors leave unattended browser windows open. Analytics tools make no distinction between an engaged viewer and a distracted viewer with messy browsing habits.
• Recommendation -- Analysis over a multi-month period is the best use for this measurement (sound familiar?). Consistent growth = good. Consistent decrease = bad.

Again, this primer is the tip of the analytics iceberg. There are many related topics worth further discussion and inquiry, including search engine optimization and Web advertising models.

There's an interesting shift that's also worth monitoring. Some publishers are looking beyond site-based statistics to gauge their overall reach across social networks, recommendation engines, RSS, mobile applications and other distributed platforms. Douglas McLennan, the founder and editor of ArtsJournal, touched on this topic in a recent interview:

I've come to the realization that ArtsJournal is not just a Web site anymore. Only 25 percent of our users ever come to the Web site, the rest get it through newsletters. We have 35,000 newsletter subscribers. Others get ArtsJournal through "newsbeats" that we provide on other Web sites. Some people get ArtsJournal through RSS feeds. In the course of an average day, there are 45,000 to 50,000 visitors -- people who use Artsjournal every day. The unique visitors per month is probably 250,000. We probably get 500,000 to 600,000 visits a month and a few million page views. So ArtsJournal is not huge by the scale of large Web sites, but it's substantial.

We may eventually see Q scores -- or a variation on that concept -- integrated into future analytics toolsets.

Related Stories:

• Google Analytics FAQ
• About.com: "Web Analytics Basics: Learn to Measure Your Web Site"
• Avinash Kaushik: "Data Quality Sucks, Let's Just Get Over It"
• Matt Belkin: "Unique Visitors or Visits - which metric should you use?"
• Joe Wikert: "The Booksquare on ePublishing"
• TOC DVD: "Search Engine Optimization for Book Publishers"
• Digital Experiments and Useful Analytics Must Go Hand-in-Hand

News Roundup: Amazon Acquires Shelfari, Hyper-Local Author Events, The Myth of the Level Digital Playing Field

Mac Slocum
August 29, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Amazon Acquires Shelfari

Amazon is turning its investment in Shelfari, a book-centric social network, into a full acquisition, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Financial details haven't been released, but Shelfari CEO Josh Hug confirmed the acquisition on Shelfari's blog:

We've got some big plans ahead. With more resources and Amazon's expertise in building a platform where people come to share ideas, there are a lot of new opportunities in the future that will benefit each of you. In the meantime, you'll continue to have access to the great community and tools that you've always known and used on the site. (Continue reading)

BookTour and IndieBound Make Author Events Hyper-Local

BookTour, which provides author-generated pages and a listing of author tour events, has integrated their database with IndieBound. This is an interesting model, which obviously could expand in its breadth. From the BookTour blog:

... the trouble is neighborhood bookstores are all different (that's what makes them great). That made it hard to dump all their data into our hoppers in one go ...

Now, throughout BookTour, events taking place at IndieBound-represented bookstores will be added automatically to our database. Equally important, on both author and venue pages, when an event is taking place at an IndieBound-repped store, you'll have the option to purchase the book directly from that store.

The Myth of the Level Digital Playing Field

In response to Kassia Krozser's post about authors and electronic publishing rights, Joe Wikert notes that the sources of digital content influence discoverability:

One of the myths of the e-publishing world is that all books are on a level playing field, so you'll sell just as many with publisher X as you will with publisher Y. This simply isn't true, at least not in most cases. This is very similar to the complicated world of Google search results. Just because you love chocolate and you launched a website all about chocolate doesn't mean you'll immediately climb to the top of the Google results for a search on "chocolate."

Related Stories:

• See more publishing news and insight in the TOC News section

How To Read O'Reilly EPUB eBooks on your iPhone with Stanza

Andrew Savikas
August 29, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Since we released 30 of our books as ebook bundles (including EPUB, PDF, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket format) as a pilot program, a steady stream of customers has been asking how to view them on their iPhone.

The quickest and easiest way is to use the BookWorm EPUB reader, which has a slick iPhone interface; however, that still requires you be online to read your books. We are actively exploring several options for deploying standalone iPhone Apps (Houghton recently did the same with several reference titles, like the American Heritage Dictionary), but in the meantime some recent updates to the Stanza iPhone App mean it's now possible to transfer your O'Reilly EPUB ebooks to your iPhone for offline reading.

This post will show you how I did it on a MacBook Pro with an iPhone 3G. My attempts to do the same with Windows were unsuccessful, and I haven't tried it with an iPod Touch. As always, your mileage may vary. These instructions assume you've purchased at least one O'Reilly EPUB ebook, and saved it to your Mac, and that your Mac and iPhone are on the same wireless network (alternatives described on the Stanza site).

1. Install the Stanza iPhone App and the Stanza Desktop Reader.
2. From the Desktop Reader, open one of your EPUB books
3. From the Desktop Reader, choose Tools→Enable Sharing
4. Again, make sure both your iPhone and Mac are on the same wireless network
5. Fire up the Stanza iPhone App, which should bring up the main Library screen:
   
6. Choose "Shared Books," which should display the EPUB book you have open on your Mac:
   
7. Next, select the book you want to download to your iPhone. Once it's finished downloading, the icon will change from the green down-arrow to the blue right-arrow as shown above. You can now read your book on your iPhone, offline or on. Here's a screenshot from the iPhone Missing Manual:
   
   
   
   

There's more info on the Stanza website, but a few things to note about reading these on the iPhone:

• A lot of the formatting isn't (yet) supported by Stanza, including lists and tables. The text appears, but without bullets or clear indentation.
• Images, on the other hand, look great
• Searching only operates on the current section
• Internal and external hyperlinks are not active

There will continue to be improvements among iPhone-based ebook readers, and I expect to see even more experimentation and innovation around turning book content into actual applications. (And if you do manage to get this working on Windows, let me know in the comments.)

On a related note, the response to our ebook pilot has been quite positive, and we're working hard to get many, many more O'Reilly books available very soon as full ebook bundles (in the meantime, remember that if you buy the PDF version or print-plus-PDF bundle, you'll get all of the ebook versions as a free update as soon as they're available).

Related Stories:

• Q&A; with Developer Who Turns Ebooks into iPhone Applications
• iPhone Apps Developer "Shell Shocked" by Outsized Payday
• Treating Ebooks Like Software
• Ebook Adoption Could Come from Mobile Apps, Not Hardware
• Ebooks Abound in New iPhone Apps Store

TOC Recommended Reading

Mac Slocum
August 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Transforming American Newspapers (Part 1) (Vin Crosby, Digital Deliverance)

Contrary to myopia of many newspaper executives, advertisers aren't newspapers' primary customers. Although advertising revenues may be sunshine for newspaper executives, the roots of their business are readers. A newspaper with readers will attract advertisers but a newspaper without readers will not. Readers ultimately support and sustain the newspaper business.
(Via E-Media Tidbits)

The Customer is Always Wrong (Richard Nash, Ecstatic Days)

... there is a real tendency in our business to treat the customer as this perverse, mysterious, gullible, arrogant, narrow-minded, slightly thick, imperceptive lug. We largely talk down to him, dumb down for her, expect the least, fear the worst, and generally leave it up to the retailer to figure out how to reach him or her -- we'll get the book onto their shelves, we'll pay them some payola, and then it's their problem. Of course it's not, and not just because we're in the only business where 100% of the product can be returned for full credit. It's because fundamentally a publisher's job is to connect the writer to the reader. Not the book to the retailer, but the writer to the reader. (Via Jose Alonso Furtado's Twitter stream)

On Writing For "Free" (John Scalzi, Whatever)

... the point to make, again, is that "free to the reader" is not the same as "unpaid to the writer." I have gotten paid for the fiction I've put online. I do get paid for it. And, barring a sudden windfall of cash that obviates the need of me having to worry about money ever again, I will continue to make sure I get paid for it. And naturally I encourage other writers to make sure their own economic interests are served when they have stuff put online that is free for readers to view.
(Via TechDirt)

Related:

• TOC News
• TOC Analysis and Opinion

Open Question: Do You Read Books on a Cell Phone?

Mac Slocum
August 27, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (13) | Listen

Mobile book reading is already popular in Japan and anecdotal evidence suggests it could be catching on elsewhere. I'm curious to see how prevalent phone-based book reading is within the TOC community.

• Have you ever read an ebook on a cell phone? (This doesn't include Kindles, Sony Readers and other standalone e-reader devices).
• Have you read more than one ebook on a cell phone? If yes, how many do you typically read in a year?
• What inspired you to first read books on your phone?
• In your opinion, what are the pros and cons of reading books on phones?

Please share your thoughts in the comments area.

Related Stories:

• Q&A; with Developer Who Turns Ebooks into iPhone Applications
• Ebook Adoption Could Come from Mobile Apps, Not Hardware
• Ergonomics and Ebook Success
• Q&A; with Susan Danziger, CEO of DailyLit
• What Would Your Ideal E-Reader Look Like?

[TOC Directory] Recent Additions

Mac Slocum
August 26, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

20 new listings have been added to the TOC Directory in the last week, including:

• BookSummit
• JustSystems
• Dog Ear Publishing
• ReadHowYouWant
• Publisher Alley

Visit the TOC Directory to add your own listings and events.

How to Read any Type of Document on the Kindle (Almost)

Liza Daly
August 26, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (5) | Listen

There are a few options for readers who want to convert PDFs or other non-supported files to the Kindle's AZW format. Amazon's recommended method is to email the file to your personal Kindle email address. It's also possible for users to convert PDFs and other document types themselves using Mobipocket Creator or Stanza.

All of the above methods have the same flaw: AZW does not support the kind of advanced layout available in formats like PDF, and non-Latin fonts aren't easy to convert. What if you need to review a complex legal form, or read a graphic novel, or one in Chinese? A hidden feature can help.

The Kindle has an undocumented picture-viewing mode that was first uncovered by Igor Skochinsky. Although the black and white E Ink screen is not especially good at displaying actual photographs, it is quite good at rendering line art and text.

Here's how to do it, using PDF as an example. Note that unofficial features may be buggy and could damage your Kindle; proceed at your own risk.

1. Convert the PDF to a series of images. Commercial versions of Acrobat should be able to do this in batch, but users of free readers may have to convert a page at a time. The Kindle can read JPEG, PNG and GIF; the latter two will work best. Because the picture-viewing application doesn't support a table of contents, you'll need to name the image files in ascending alphabetical or numeric order (e.g. "0001.jpg," "0002.jpg," etc.) For best results, resize the image to 600 x 800, the resolution of the Kindle screen.
2. Connect the Kindle to your computer using the USB cable. Once connected, browse to the Kindle's drive. If you have an SD card installed that will appear on your computer as well. The following procedure works on either the Kindle or the SD card. I prefer to do everything on the SD card -- it feels safer.
3. Create a folder called "pictures," and a folder inside of that with the name of your "document." Put the images in the document folder. Disconnect the Kindle from the PC. When you go to the Kindle's home screen, nothing will have changed. This is where the secret feature comes in:
4. Press Alt-Z from the home screen. Your book title should appear in the list.
5. Click on the book title. It will open the first image. Use the normal Kindle next/previous buttons to page through the "book." The picture viewer has menu options of its own to control the size of the image and how it's rendered.

Credit: octopus pie

Of course because the "PDF" is really an image it's not possible to search the document or rescale the fonts. Text-heavy PDFs should be converted in one of the recommended ways.

This same technique can be used to load image-based documents directly, such as comics. (Peeking inside the "pictures" folder after it's been read by the Kindle reveals a file with the extension manga, suggesting that the picture viewer was intended to be used for this purpose).

It's also possible to convert documents in Russian, Chinese or other non-Latin scripts this way. The Kindle does have support for embedded non-Latin fonts as part of its "Topaz" file format, but there are no tools for end-users that output Topaz.

(Screenshots courtesy the undocumented Alt-Shift-G feature, which saves to the root of the SD card.)

Related Stories:

• Optimizing Web Content for the Kindle Browser
• Hacking the Kindle
• Exploring DIY E-Reader Platforms
• What Would Your Ideal E-Reader Look Like?

Piracy and Advertising: An Unlikely Union that Just Might Work

Mac Slocum
August 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

In a surprisingly progressive move, a number of major publishers are using YouTube's Video ID tool to monetize pirated content. The tool flags questionable material and presents copyright owners with a choice:

Copyright holders can choose what they want done with their videos: whether to block, promote, or even--if a copyright holder chooses to partner with us--create revenue from them, with minimal friction. [Emphasis added.] -- (From YouTube's Video ID about page.)

YouTube's phrasing seems overly optimistic, but the New York Times says some publishers are choosing the partnership option:

David King, a product manager at YouTube, said in an interview that 90 percent of the copyright claims made using the identification tool remain on the site and are converted to advertising inventory. The other 10 percent are either removed from the site or tracked by the content owner.

The Times article notes that at this point advertising revenue from Web video is miniscule and publishers using the tool are still skeptical. Nonetheless, it's encouraging to see a piracy approach that doesn't default to heavy-handed tactics.

Related Stories:

• Official Google Blog: "Making money on YouTube with Content ID"
• Web Video Advertising Stuck on Pause
• Mark Cuban: Copyright Law Gives Hulu Advantage Over YouTube
• Putting Ebook Piracy into Perspective
• Mistake Shows Need for Clear Communication in Piracy Discussions
• Piracy is Progressive Taxation ...

News Roundup: The Crowdsourced Cat Book, Infinite Permutations of the Digital Book, EBay vs. Amazon (Round 2)

Mac Slocum
August 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

The Crowdsourced Cat Book

Amazing but True Cat Stories is a 38-page coffee table book born from the combined efforts of Mechanical Turk contributors. The creator/editor of the book, Björn Hartmann, describes the genesis of the project on his blog:

The idea for this book was born in Terminal A at Washington Dulles, where I was stranded for some hours in late July 2008. To spend my time, I posted the following two tasks on MTurk:

1. What's the craziest thing your cat has ever done? Write at least one paragraph about a funny, unbelievable or otherwise memorable incident involving your cat. This should be a real story that happened to you or your family.

2. Sketch a cat. With or without an environment and toys. The cat can be drawn in software or on paper. Do not upload photographs of cats. Have fun! (Continue reading)

Infinite Permutations of the Digital Book

James Bridle discusses the near infinite malleability of digital books. From booktwo.org:

Imagine a book that told a different story every time it was opened. The story might change depending on the gender of the reader, or the sex. It might depend on the location of the reader, or the position of the book in time; the time of day, or time in years. Centuries might pass before the book tells the same story again. (Continue reading)

EBay Wants You to Buy It Now

EBay is moving into Amazon's territory. Citing reduced consumer interest in online auctions, eBay is refocusing on fixed-price "Buy It Now" products. From the New York Times:

Among the changes being announced Wednesday [8/20/08] is a new pricing plan for sellers who offer fixed-price items in eBay's "Buy It Now" format. Starting in mid-September, sellers will pay only 35 cents to list an item for 30 days, a reduction of about 70 percent in upfront fees. EBay also announced that it would no longer allow most customers to pay by check or cash, a change aimed at curbing fraud. Users will need to pay with a credit card or through eBay's PayPal online payment service.

Direct competition between eBay and Amazon is nothing new. Amazon tried to capitalize on eBay's success by launching its own auction business in 1999, but by 2001 it had scaled back its auction efforts.

Related Stories:

• See more publishing news and insight in the TOC News section

TOC Recommended Reading

Mac Slocum
August 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

On Being Positive in August (Adam Hodgkin, Exact Editions)

Publishers need to consider the possibility that anything that can be published, will certainly be published digitally, and will, in principle, be available anywhere from many devices. That does not mean that it all will be free (why should it mean that?). But it does mean that it will either be available for free (sponsored by advertising) or because someone wants to buy, give, or rent it.

A New Model for News (pdf) (Associated Press Report)

A key question for news planning today is "How can this story be told?" Increasingly, the answer can be found outside traditional storytelling formats. In one popular example in the 2006 U.S. elections, an AP multimedia producer "mashed up" excerpts from political attack ads with a musical mix. The result garnered more than half a million hits after going viral and getting passed along from the customer sites that displayed the piece. (p.61)

Mygazines.com: The Magazine Industry's "Napster Moment"? (Joe Wikert, Publishing 2020)

This is a golden opportunity for the magazine industry to see how a Napster-like platform for periodicals could and should work effectively. Mygazines is essentially doing e-content R&D; for the entire magazine industry; I just hope the industry takes the time to study and understand the results before they look to kill the service.

Related:

• TOC News
• TOC Analysis and Opinion