Amazon Acquires Lexcycle

Mac Slocum
April 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (5) | Listen

Lexcycle, the company behind Stanza, has just announced it's been acquired by Amazon:

We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition. Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners. We look forward to offering future products and services that we hope will resonate with our passionate readers.

The New York Times says terms of the deal have not been released. It's not yet known how Stanza will fit amidst Amazon's Kindle and recently-released Kindle iPhone app.

Karen Templer from the Readerville Weblog poses a number of key questions:

Will the Stanza/Fictionwise store be replaced with a Stanza/Amazon store? (Presumably.) And/or will Stanza be merged with the Kindle app? Will it continue to read ePub and other formats or will it conform strictly to Kindle? (Conversely, will Kindle begin reading ePub?) And, most of all, where does this leave IndieBound and their ebook plans?

(Via the Reading 2.0 list)

Over 160 O'Reilly Books Now in Kindle Store (without DRM), More on the Way

Andrew Savikas
April 17, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (24) | Listen

I'm happy to announce that more than 160 O'Reilly books are now available on Kindle (both Kindle 1 and Kindle 2), and are being sold without any DRM (Digital Rights Management). Though we do offer more than 400 ebooks direct from our website, the number for sale on Kindle will be limited until Amazon updates Kindle 1 to support table rendering ("maybe this summer" is the most specific they would get). The text-to-speech feature of Kindle 2 does work with these books. A list of currently available titles is below.

There's a lot of overlap between the kind of early-adopter crowd likely to buy a Kindle and the audience for our books. So it's no surprise that we received a lot of requests to add O'Reilly books to the Kindle store, and it's great to finally be able to get those readers the books they want. We expect to add another 100 or so titles in the coming weeks; those have needed a more detailed analysis of the table content to identify good candidates.

There were two main reasons we held our books back from sale on Kindle:

1. Poor rendering of complex content. Kindle 1 was optimized for the simple text of mainstream trade books (think airport-bookstore fiction and non-fiction), and lacked support for properly displaying tables or computer code, two very common elements in O'Reilly books. We knew customers would be disappointed to find much of the content of our books unusable (and likely to complain to us about it, rather than to Amazon). In this case, Amazon actually agreed with us, and after they saw how those tables looked on a Kindle 1, told us they weren't comfortable selling many of our books until they've updated Kindle 1. (More details below the fold).
2. Compulsory DRM. We strongly believe DRM (Digital Rights Management) encryption adds unwelcome cost and complexity to any digital system, frustrates legitimate customers who respect copyright and want to pay for their content, and is demonstrably ineffective at preventing unauthorized copying -- much of it done by people who either (a.) wouldn't otherwise pay, or (b.) resort to piracy when there's no legitimate sales channel. Other publishers are free to make their own decisions on DRM, but Kindle's compulsory DRM was inconsistent with our views on digital distribution.

Although we've been working for some time with Amazon to resolve these issues, as a stop-gap we'd been directing Kindle owners to oreilly.com, where all of our "ebook bundles" include a Kindle-compatible .mobi version that can be uploaded or emailed to your Kindle. While the table and code issues remained, readers at least had the other, richer formats (EPUB and PDF) for reference. We've now updated all of the .mobi files for sale at oreilly.com to display properly on Kindle 2 (basically undoing many of the hacks we'd done to get something passable the first time around). If you own a Kindle and have purchased ebooks from oreilly.com, visit oreilly.com/e from the Kindle browser to download the updated .mobi files directly to your Kindle. While we will also update our ebooks with Amazon as changes are made and errors fixed, they currently have no way of updating that content for customers who already purchased it.

While the rendering in Kindle 2 still leaves a bit to be desired, we felt it was an acceptable baseline, and look forward to continuing to work with them to improve the display of technical content on Kindle. (Ironically, the Kindle 2 web browser displays complex content like tables and code quite well -- check out the Bookworm mobile version if you have a Kindle.)

Our thanks do go to Amazon for working with us on this. They're a favorite target of criticism (often right here, and often for good reason), but this is a good step and they do deserve some kudos. While we'd prefer that Amazon directly supported the open EPUB standard, this is real progress in giving readers easy access to digital books without locking them in to a single vendor.

If you want to tell Amazon to hurry up and update your Kindle 1, or to improve their rendering of technical content to match Sony Reader, Stanza, Bookworm, Calibre, and others, you can drop them a line at kindle-feedback@amazon.com.

Current Available Titles

(As of April 16, 2009)

• 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know
• Access Data Analysis Cookbook
• ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns
• Adding Ajax
• Ajax Design Patterns
• Ajax on Java
• Ambient Findability
• Analyzing Business Data with Excel
• AppleScript: The Missing Manual
• ASP.NET 2.0: A Developer's Notebook
• Asterisk: The Future of Telephony
• Beautiful Code
• Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics
• Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5
• Building Scalable Web Sites
• Commercial Photoshop Retouching: In the Studio
• CSS: The Missing Manual
• Database Nation
• Designing Gestural Interfaces
• Designing Interfaces
• Designing Web Interfaces
• Devices of the Soul
• Digital Identity
• Digital Photography Pocket Guide
• DNS and BIND
• Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual
• Dreamweaver CS3: The Missing Manual
• Dreamweaver CS4: The Missing Manual
• Dreamweaver MX 2004: The Missing Manual
• eBay: The Missing Manual
• Eclipse
• Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0
• Enterprise Rails
• Enterprise SOA
• Essential PHP Security
• Excel 2003 for Starters: The Missing Manual
• Excel Scientific and Engineering Cookbook
• Facebook: The Missing Manual
• Ferret
• FileMaker Pro 10: The Missing Manual
• FileMaker Pro 8: The Missing Manual
• FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual
• Flash 8: The Missing Manual
• Flash CS3: The Missing Manual
• Flex 3 Cookbook
• FrontPage 2003: The Missing Manual
• Google Apps: The Missing Manual
• grep Pocket Reference
• Hackers & Painters
• Hardcore Java
• Hardening Cisco Routers
• High Performance Linux Clusters with OSCAR, Rocks, OpenMosix, and MPI
• High Performance MySQL
• Home Networking Annoyances
• Home Networking: The Missing Manual
• Integrating Excel and Access
• Intermediate Perl
• iPhone Forensics
• iPod: The Missing Manual, 6th Edition
• iPod: The Missing Manual, 7th Edition
• iWork '05: The Missing Manual
• Java Generics and Collections
• Java Message Service
• Java Servlet & JSP Cookbook
• Java Web Services: Up and Running
• JavaScript Pocket Reference
• JavaScript: The Good Parts
• JavaScript: The Missing Manual
• JBoss: A Developer's Notebook
• JRuby Cookbook
• Just a Geek
• Learning Flex 3
• Learning JavaScript
• Learning Perl
• Learning Perl
• Learning Rails
• Linux Device Drivers
• Linux Kernel in a Nutshell
• Linux System Programming
• Mac OS X Leopard Pocket Guide
• Macintosh Troubleshooting Pocket Guide for Mac OS
• Making Things Happen
• Managing Projects with GNU Make
• Mastering Oracle SQL
• Mastering Perl
• Maven: A Developer's Notebook
• Microsoft Project 2007: The Missing Manual
• MySQL Pocket Reference
• Network Troubleshooting Tools
• Network Warrior
• NUnit Pocket Reference
• Objective-C Pocket Reference
• Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual
• Open Sources 2.0
• Oracle Essentials
• Oracle Essentials
• Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices
• Oracle Regular Expressions Pocket Reference
• Oracle RMAN Pocket Reference
• Oracle SQL Tuning Pocket Reference
• Painting the Web
• Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual
• Photoshop Elements 3: The Missing Manual
• Photoshop Elements 4: The Missing Manual
• Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual
• Photoshop Elements 6: The Missing Manual
• Photoshop Elements 7: The Missing Manual
• PHP Pocket Reference
• PowerPoint 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual
• Practical mod_perl
• Practical RDF
• Process Improvement Essentials
• Producing Open Source Software
• Programming .NET 3.5
• Programming .NET Components
• Programming Flex 2
• Programming Python
• Programming Web Services with SOAP
• Python Cookbook
• QuickBase: The Missing Manual
• QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual
• QuickBooks 2009: The Missing Manual
• Quicken 2006 for Starters: The Missing Manual
• Quicken 2009: The Missing Manual
• Rails Cookbook
• Rails: Up and Running
• Real World Haskell
• Real World Web Services
• Ruby on Rails: Up and Running
• sendmail Cookbook
• SharePoint Office Pocket Guide
• SharePoint User's Guide
• SOA in Practice
• Spam Kings
• Spring: A Developer's Notebook
• SQL and Relational Theory
• SQL Cookbook
• SQL Tuning
• Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World
• The Art of Application Performance Testing
• The Art of Capacity Planning
• The Art of Lean Software Development
• The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS/1000D Companion
• The Cathedral & the Bazaar
• The Internet: The Missing Manual
• The Myths of Innovation
• The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers
• The Ruby Programming Language
• Time Management for System Administrators
• UML 2.0 in a Nutshell
• Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing
• Unit Test Frameworks
• Unix for Oracle DBAs Pocket Reference
• Using Moodle
• Using SANs and NAS
• Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart
• Visual Basic 2005: A Developer's Notebook
• Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook
• We the Media
• Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide
• Web Security Testing Cookbook
• Wikipedia Reader's Guide: The Missing Manual
• Wikipedia: The Missing Manual
• Windows 2000 Pro: The Missing Manual

The Tables problem

Here's some screenshots showing the table problem:

How Kindle 1 (mis)handles tables:

The same table on Kindle 2:

Google's Distribution Advantage Has Its Limits

Andrew Savikas
April 13, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Scott Karp has an insightful (and provocatively titled) piece over on the Publishing 2.0 blog about just how deeply Google has inserted itself in Web distribution of content. While much of the piece is about linking, one paragraph in particular is worth calling out for traditional publishers (emphasis added):

If media companies want to compete with Google, they need to look at the source of its power — judging good content, which enables Google to be the most efficient and effective distributor of content. They also need to look at Google’s fundamental limitation — its judgment is dependent on OTHER people expressing their judgment of content in the form of links. Above all, they need to look at sources of content judgment that Google currently can’t access, because they are not yet expressed as links on the web.

"Content judgment" is a neat way to put it, reinforcing that when there's already more than 1 trillion web pages in Google's index value is shifting away from more content toward better filtering and curating of what's already there. (Or as Clay Shirky says, it's not information overload, it's filter failure.) While many publishers fret about customers no longer paying for content, they may miss the boat by not realizing that customers will pay for packaging and convenience (which often means judgment and filtering). For example, at the same time the market for our printed reference books has declined, our Safari online subscription service has steadily grown at a double-digit pace, in part because those subscribers value the implicit filtering of the library.

Open Publishing Distribution System -- an Open-Standards Catalog Format

Andrew Savikas
April 8, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Listen

It's no secret we're big fans of the iPhone/iPod reading app Stanza. While the Kindle App has overtaken Stanza for the top-spot among free book apps in iTunes, Stanza offers a much better reading experience than the Kindle App (for example, by supporting standard formatting like tables and whitespace-preservation) (Update: You can use the latest version of mobigen.exe to get better whitespace-preservation (from <pre> and friends) on the Kindle.) And I'm not the only one who feels that way: "Stanza is hands-down the best e-book reader for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and its free. Go. Get it now." (Wired.com).

But more than the quality of the software, the major reason I'm so bullish on Stanza is their willingness to experiment. When our own Keith Fahlgren suggested they use the standard Atom format for their catalog system, they responded:

We wound up taking your advice and implemented support for Atom for Stanza's catalog format. Thanks for the suggestion! Using the Atom standard is much better than using our own custom format (although we may need to eventually extend the custom format with our own tags).

And when we proposed using Stanza to create a standalone book app (for iPhone: The Missing Manual), they were eager to dive in head first, and we both learned a lot in the process.

That Atom-based Online Catalog feature turned out to be an interesting prototype for a distributed digital discovery and ecommerce system, and it's awesome to see them willing to embrace the potential for such a system well beyond the boundaries their own product, and to join with Peter Brantley and the Internet Archive in laying the groundwork for what's being called the Open Publication Distribution System:

Users of compatible Reading Systems, in addition to being able to access content they have previously acquired or acquire via other means, are also able to access a catalog (list of online sources of content). Typically, the catalog offers a number of free titles, which may be hosted by the Reading System vendor and/or other sites, as well as the opportunity to purchase or borrow paid content from stores and libraries. Additional stores and libraries may be added by the user to their personal catalog. The mechanism through which compatible Reading Systems access the distributed catalog has three components: eBook content, XML catalog metadata, and an HTTP transport for the catalog. The remainder of this document will discuss each of those components in turn.

One of the reasons we've thrown our support behind the Bookworm online ebook reading system as part of O'Reilly Labs is to help support the development and testing of new standards like this one, and we're excited to contribute to this new initiative. It's also great to see Adobe support this as well, and is a nice follow on to our work with them on EPUB output for the open-source DocBook XSL stylesheets.  

Readers Boycotting Kindle Titles Priced Above $9.99

Andrew Savikas
April 3, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (8) | Listen

Pricing is a red-hot topic among publishers when it comes to ebooks. As I said in a Q&A for Forbes.com last week, cost-driven pricing (especially when the costs in question are calculated based on printed output) is a poor approach for ebook publishers. Readers simply don't care how much it costs a publisher to produce an ebook -- they only care how much it's worth to them. (This is especially true for the iPhone, where books must compete alongside games, music, movies, and other "apps" primarily priced well below $10.)

Now a group of readers is rebelling against books priced above $9.99 in the Kindle store (using Amazon's own tagging system, ironically) and there's a very interesting explanation of the rationale over at Electronic Cottage (all emphasis from the original):

The price also acknowledged the obvious: a Kindle edition is less valuable than a hardcover; although you cannot pass along your Kindle edition to friends, you are at least paying a significant amount less than the hardcover price. Unfortunately, short-sighted publishers feel they are losing dollars instead of realizing that a $9.99 Kindle sale doesn't usurp a hardcover sale. It is a brand new entity. A plus. Pure gravy.

...

I joined the boycott yesterday when I went to buy the new Harlen Coben book, only to be stopped by the high price. Since then, I've added the boycott tags to books over $9.99. I'm not happy about it. I'd rather buy the latest installment of Myron Bolitar's adventures and Chris Knopf's 2008 release, "Head Wounds." In fact, I was one of those who clicked Amazon's "Tell the Publisher" button to indicate that I wanted a Kindle edition of "Head Wounds." But not at $15.40. I'll wait for the paperback. Or get back into the library habit that I abandoned for my Kindle habit. I was irresistibly tempted by the lower prices of Kindle editions, I admit it. I just counted my Kindle orders since I got the reader in December 2008.144 Kindle books. Yikes. 144 books. I had no idea. Publishers, are you paying attention?

That's a very good question.

"Bite-Size Edits" from BookOven

Andrew Savikas
April 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (12) | Listen

Hugh McGuire's startup BookOven has opened up an alpha version of a project they're calling the Gutenberg Rally, an attempt to harness collective intelligence Mechanical-Turk style to proofread Project Gutenberg texts for typos and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) errors. In "divide and conquer" style, the system presents just one small snippet of text at a time (with some surrounding context), effectively breaking down a mountain of a task into easily managed molehills:

I had a nice chat with Hugh on Wednesday morning, and what he told me about what's to come from BookOven was quite exciting (though apparently still very much in development).

This isn't the first attempt to harness eyeballs for finding and fixing OCR errors (see ReCaptcha), but reviewing the text in context is a much more satisfying experience, and left me wanting to read more of several of the books I was seeing only in snippet form.