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August 2008
News Roundup: Amazon Acquires Shelfari, Hyper-Local Author Events, The Myth of the Level Digital Playing Field
Mac Slocum
August 29, 2008
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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."
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How To Read O'Reilly EPUB eBooks on your iPhone with Stanza
Andrew Savikas
August 29, 2008
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Update 12/1/08: O'Reilly ebooks can now be downloaded directly to an iPhone or iPod Touch through Stanza. Learn more here.
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).
- Install the Stanza iPhone App and the Stanza Desktop Reader.
- From the Desktop Reader, open one of your EPUB books
- From the Desktop Reader, choose Tools→Enable Sharing
- Again, make sure both your iPhone and Mac are on the same wireless network
- Fire up the Stanza iPhone App, which should bring up the main Library screen:
- Choose "Shared Books," which should display the EPUB book you have open on your Mac:
- 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).
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TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
August 28, 2008
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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)
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Tim O'Reilly: Social Networks as Infrastructure, Not Apps
Mac Slocum
August 27, 2008
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Using Amazon's acquisition of Shelfari as a jumping-off point, Tim O'Reilly stresses the need for social network interoperability. From Radar:
Some of my friends prefer LibraryThing. Others may prefer Shelfari. But I only network with those on Goodreads because that's the service I ended up using first. What a shame that I can't see what my friends on LibraryThing and Shelfari might be reading! I'd love to see a firm commitment to cross-application connectivity, with the social network as infrastructure rather than application.
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Open Question: Do You Read Books on a Cell Phone?
Mac Slocum
August 27, 2008
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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.
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The Myth of the Level Digital Playing Field
Mac Slocum
August 26, 2008
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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."
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Shopping Electronic Publishing Rights
Peter Brantley
August 26, 2008
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Kassia Krozser discusses why and how authors are getting savvy to retaining electronic publishing rights. From Booksquare:
As publishers like Random House try to redefine concepts such as "out-of-print", savvy authors and agents will be more diligent about defining tight deadlines for contracts (in fact, I'm a bit surprised this isn't happening more frequently). Firm deadlines allow authors to renegotiate terms, especially as the digital market grows and evolves. While publishers love the idea of locking someone into 2008 rules, it's a safe bet to say that this landscape will be vastly different in ten years.
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BookTour and IndieBound Make Author Events Hyper-Local
Peter Brantley
August 26, 2008
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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.
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[TOC Directory] Recent Additions
Mac Slocum
August 26, 2008
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20 new listings have been added to the TOC Directory in the last week, including:
Visit the TOC Directory to add your own listings and events.
Amazon Acquires Shelfari
Mac Slocum
August 26, 2008
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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.
Amazon earlier this month acquired AbeBooks, which is a minority investor in Shelfari's chief competitor, LibraryThing. As the Seattle P-I notes, LibraryThing had a few choice words about Shelfari's business practices in 2007.
Update 8/26/08, 11:25 a.m. Tim Spalding from LibraryThing weighs in on the Shelfari deal. (Via the Reading 2.0 list)
(Via Jose Afonso Furtado's Twitter stream.)
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How to Read any Type of Document on the Kindle (Almost)
Liza Daly
August 26, 2008
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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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- Press Alt-Z from the home screen. Your book title should appear in the list.
- 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.)
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Analyst: Amazon Downplays Rumored Kindle Sales
Mac Slocum
August 25, 2008
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Recently reported Kindle sales estimates are off the mark, according to McAdams Wright Ragen analyst Tim Bueneman. From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Amazon officials gave McAdams Wright Ragen analysts the impression that high-end estimates on Kindle sales reported by TechCrunch and a Citigroup analyst are not reasonable.
Amazon managers "told us that the Kindle is definitely selling very well, but they also said the analysts and reporters giving out these extremely high estimates 'did not run them by company,'" Bueneman wrote. [Links added]
TechCrunch is standing by the shipping estimates in its original story:
We're sticking by our sources on the estimates of units shipped from the factories in China. Amazon is correct that we didn't "run them by company" prior to publishing, but since they don't comment on non-public sales figures, it wouldn't have been a useful exercise anyway.
Harping on an old point -- if Amazon and Sony refuse to share e-reader sales, publishers are best served developing an overall digital gameplan rather than hedging bets on a particular device.
Also from the Seattle P-I: Bueneman says new Kindles are in development (release dates not revealed) and, as anticipated, Amazon sees opportunity for Kindle adoption among college students.
(Thanks to Tom Marhoefer for links.)
Related Stories:
- TechCrunch: "We Know How Many Kindles Amazon Has Sold: 240,000"
- MarketWatch: "Amazon's Kindle could be next iPod, analyst says"
- The Pitfalls of Publishing's E-Reader Guessing Game
- Open Question: Have You Seen a Kindle in Public?
- Which Game is the Kindle Changing?
- Publishers Beware: Amazon has you in their sights
- Amazon Ups the Ante on Platform Lock-In
Piracy and Advertising: An Unlikely Union that Just Might Work
Mac Slocum
August 25, 2008
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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.
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Validators: Asking for Donations to Pay for the News
Andy Oram
August 24, 2008
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How many ways can content (news, books, movies, etc.) be funded? There are really only a few ways throughout history. Unit sales (treating a movie or a book like a candy bar or a pair of shoes) are increasingly obsolete when information can travel the Internet. There are also subscriptions, advertising, and various kinds of subsidies (a category that also covers academic positions for people who do research).
The New York times has a short article on community-funded journalism, in which the public pays a journalist in advance to cover a topic. I'm blogging this because, in the first place, it suggests a way technical information could be developed, and in the second place I anticipated the idea a year ago in my short story Validators.
Audible CEO: Publishing Has History of Tech Ambivalence
Peter Brantley
August 22, 2008
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In an interview with Fast Company, Audible CEO Donald Katz discusses the publishing industry's history of slow technological acceptance:
Publishing is an industry pursuing a noble cultural calling. But publishing has always had an ambivalent relationship to technology-driven change. In fact, the music publishing business spent a whole lot of time trying to kill off the phonograph. The publishing industry fought off the paperback and was skeptical of the book club -- which was effectively a technology-driven invention that used the new science of direct marketing and the mail to change the business. Now there are innovations like Amazon and Audible [Note: Amazon acquired Audible in January '08]
Effectively, from my perspective, these disruptions -- along with Superstores -- changed a relatively aristocratic product into a mass market product. A lot of these disruptions have allowed increasingly middle class and lower middle class people to have access to books, which were traditionally for rich people.
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Ruling: Consider Fair Use Before Issuing Takedowns
Peter Brantley
August 22, 2008
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A fairly significant ruling came down Wednesday in Lenz v. Universal, a rather infamous case where Universal Music Publishing Group issued a takedown against a YouTube video of a young child dancing to a song in the background -- a song in which Universal maintained some rights. Universal later acknowledged that this was a fair use of the music, an incidental use, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) pursued the aggressive use of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedowns. The court ruled in the EFF's favor, and it should have significant outcomes. The EFF writes:
Universal moved to dismiss the case, claiming, among other things, that it had no obligation to consider whether [Stephanie] Lenz's use was fair before sending its notice. The judge firmly rejected Universal's theory:
" [A] fair use is a lawful use of a copyright. Accordingly, in order for a copyright owner to proceed under the DMCA with "a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law," the owner must evaluate whether the material makes fair use of the copyright."
Universal had insisted that copyright owners could not efficiently police copyright infringement if they had to consider whether a give use was fair. Not so, said the judge:
"[I]n the majority of cases, a consideration of fair use prior to issuing a takedown notice will not be so complicated as to jeopardize a copyright owner's ability to respond rapidly to potential infringements. The DMCA already requires copyright owners to make an initial review of the potentially infringing material prior to sending a takedown notice; indeed, it would be impossible to meet any of the requirements of Section 512(c) without doing so. A consideration of the applicability of the fair use doctrine simply is part of that initial review."
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News Roundup: The Crowdsourced Cat Book, Infinite Permutations of the Digital Book, EBay vs. Amazon (Round 2)
Mac Slocum
August 22, 2008
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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 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.
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Going Digital Gives Publishers Safety Net
Mac Slocum
August 21, 2008
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Sarah Lacy provides an articulate and approachable list of digital lessons for book publishers. Her passage on going "electronic from the get-go" is an important reminder about the vital efficiences of digital content:
You might be stunned to learn that in book publishing, once you get to the final manuscript stages, there is no electronic version. The manuscript is FedEx'ed back and forth with Post-it Notes. If FedEx were to lose it, publishers lose months' worth of copy edits, legal edits, and other elements of the painstaking publishing process. There's not even a photocopy. No joke.
That makes publishing the book in other digital formats a challenge at the outset. Publishers would do well to keep the book electronic-- even if it's PDFs of typeset pages. That would help them blast teaser chapters around the world (engaging bloggers and the long tail of the press). Presumably it would help get the book on Kindle and other e-books from day one.
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TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
August 21, 2008
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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.
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Q&A; with Developer Who Turns Ebooks into iPhone Applications
Mac Slocum
August 21, 2008
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Ebook files and e-reader software usually exist as separate entities, but Tom Peck of AppEngines merged the two to create individual ebook applications for the iPhone App Store. In the following Q&A;, Peck discusses his ebook software development process, consumer response to his apps, and future ebook projects.
Why did you opt to bundle individual ebooks as software applications rather than create a single e-reader program?
I have been reading ebooks (mostly from eReader.com) for many years. I wanted to make a book reader program for the iPhone that was as simple to use as possible. I feel that the way existing ebook solutions work is too complex for many users: they have to download the ebook software, then go to a separate Web site and create an account, enter credit card data, and then find and purchase content.
The iPhone App Store sales and distribution process makes it simpler and more convenient to have an ebook reader as part of an ebook itself. Developers can only distribute applications through the App Store; there is no way to distribute data files like ebooks. Therefore, it made sense to me that each book had to be a complete application.
Although this is more convenient for App Store customers to get a book, the process of making each book into an app takes more time for development. Each book becomes its own Xcode project, requires testing, and requires time to load all of the data (descriptions, screen shots, application file) to the App Store. I have developed tools and techniques that automate as much as possible, but each book takes several hours to complete, not counting the many hours spent writing the ebook reader itself.
Have you used any of the e-reader applications available through the App Store (e.g. Stanza, eReader, etc.)? If so, how do these compare to your own apps?
I have used the eReader software. I am a long-time eReader customer, having purchased dozens of their books and read them on my Treo. I have not used Stanza.
The biggest difference is that those products let the user download content from the Internet. Some let users create their own content and download it to the iPhone, which is nice. My reader is purely a book reader.
The eReader app supports a bookshelf list, showing all the ebooks. With my apps, each ebook appears as its own icon on the home screen.
My current reader program compares nicely to eReader. At the moment, I do not support landscape mode, which eReader does. Both offer text search and table of contents. I admit that the search function in my first batch of books was not very usable; newer books have a much better implementation, even better than eReader's. Both programs support different font sizes, images embedded within the text, layout options such as indenting and centering, and font styles.
One feature my reader has is instant repagination when the user changes font size. Using my reader, the user can increase or decrease font size using the "pinch" gesture, similar to zooming in and out of photos, and the results are immediate. I spent a lot of time to make this very, very fast. Changing the font size in eReader requires the program to repaginate in the background, a process that can take over 30 seconds for the entire book.
How many ebooks have you made available through the App Store?
Currently, about 140. More are in the pipeline; all newer, copyrighted works from other publishers and authors.
What has the response been like?
Response has been very good. My current download numbers for all books (not counting several free books) is almost 1,000 books a day. The numbers per book vary day by day, with some books having as many as 50 downloads a day. Most of the public domain titles have counts around five per day.
Most encouraging are that the newer works are selling just as well as the classic stuff. iPulp, a publisher of science-fiction and adventure short stories for young adults, has four works in the store right now with six more in review. These are priced at $0.99 and $1.99 and have sales of about 10 per day. The two Max Quick novels sell for $5.99 each. Currently they are selling about 13 copies per day and the numbers are increasing (they've been in the store for less than two weeks).
Are you selling ebooks or ebook applications through other platforms?
Right now, I am only working with the App Store. I am watching to see what other cell phone vendors and carriers do. As some of your blog postings have noted, the success of the App Store is making other carriers look at copying Apple.
I have spent time with Google's Android platform and have a version of the ebook software that runs on Android.
How much of your ebook content comes from Project Gutenberg?
My initial group of books, about 110, were all from Project Gutenberg. I constantly get requests from customers to add new books, so I have added more Project Gutenberg stuff. Now that I am working with publishers and authors to produce their works as ebooks, I will focus primarily on new works.
Can you list some of these publishers/authors? How did your relationships with these publishers and authors come together?
In the store now are a book on computer security by Neal Puff and a memoir by Teresa Wright. All relationships came about because of my presence in the App Store with the initial set of ebooks. I've been contacted by small publishers and individual authors to turn their works into ebooks for the iPhone. I work with them to get the content in an appropriate format, get the various graphic elements (cover art, icons, etc.), produce the ebook app, have them review the app, and put the app into the App Store.
Do publishers pay you a flat fee to prep App Store titles or is it a revenue share?
Revenue share.
Did you anticipate this type of publisher response?
I was a bit surprised at how quickly publishers contacted me. I thought I would have to market to them.
Are there other content sources or types you'd like to incorporate?
One publisher I am working with offers textbooks. That would be an interesting type of content. A textbook could take advantage of the ebook being a standalone app, offering more interactive content for quizzes that would appear within the book.
Some App Store reviewers complain that you're making money off of public domain content. How do you address these complaints?
The Project Gutenberg license clearly allows people to sell works based on the Gutenberg files. I am following the license, and I do send 20 percent of the revenue earned to the Project Gutenberg Foundation. Mobipocket, eReader and Amazon Kindle all sell public domain works for much more than $0.99.
Each book requires a lot of manual work. The Project Gutenberg text files are a good starting point, but I have to edit each one to add information about chapter starts, poems, songs, emphasized text, etc. Many files have extra data like page numbers that have to be cleaned up. I tried to automate this part, but there is so much variety in the files that only hand editing can get the correct results.
Since your ebooks are applications, and iPhone apps are stored on the device's docking screens, is there a concern about clutter? Do you have any organization tips for people who buy multiple ebook apps?
I would say that this is a general problem with the iPhone Home Screen user interface. iPhone blog sites describe users with 100 apps or more on their devices, and finding a specific app can become a problem.
iTunes does allow users to selectively install apps on individual devices. This is probably the best way to deal with lots of apps: for users to only install the apps they need, and keep the rest on their desktop machine. Personally, I tend to read about two books at a time, then I remove them from the device when finished.
What near-term features or products are you planning?
I am working on a new version of the reader software that adds many new features: bookmarks, notes, landscape mode, etc. Once completed, I will re-release all existing books with the new features. Customers will get the updates for free.
I also am working on several non-ebook iPhone apps.
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