eBook Buzz and Fright

If any book publishers still have their heads in the sand with regard to eBooks, it's really time for them pull them up!

I have two small anecdotes that underscore this:

1. Two nights ago, I ran into the proprietor of our local independent bookstore at (of all places) our local video store. I mentioned to him that I had a Kindle, and told him about my experiences thus far. He asked me to bring it in for him to see, but I could tell that he really doesn't want me to. He was visibly shaken when I mentioned how easy it was to download eBooks. His reaction was so strong it took my breath away. And, I could tell that he was trying to hide his reaction.

2. Today I had to come to NYC for meetings with clients. Whenever I come to the city, my local office is the nearest Starbucks, so that I can have wireless internet access. Today, I had the pleasure of residing in three different Starbucks for some period of time. IN ALL THREE, there was chatter going on around me about e-reading devices. Chatter to the positive and chatter to the negative - but none the less, there was a lot of chatter. Chatter that I've never heard before in any local office!

The book publishing industry is going through monumental change right now. e-Reading devices are becoming a mainstream conversation pieces. And, still only 90,000 books available for the Kindle when there are over 3,000,000 available in print?

What is that great sucking sound I hear? That is quite a vacuum being created. I think its the self publishers who will be filling the void if the big publishers don't get their acts together quickly.

When will Kindle Ship? Is it a Hoax?

Like any self-respecting blogger, every day I look at the analytics of my page to see how many people read what I have to say. There aren't many of you, and my relative anonymity lets me be pretty free with my words.

However, lately, or more precisely, since Christmas day(December 25, 2007), the change in these analytics has been astounding. Prior to Christmas, there was a pretty even distribution of people coming to this blog either directly, or they clicked through from another blog, or they found it through a search engine. Today, that distribution is completely skewed. Since Christmas, the vast majority of readers have come via a search engine with the key phrase, 'how many kindles sold'. What they are finding is a previous post of mine with that same title. (Joe Wikert recently reported this in Kindleville). The numbers reading this post outstrip any other posts by a factor of 4 - 1. Pretty impressive considering about 3 people read it when I first posted it.

I can only surmise, that these people are (like me) waiting for the Kindle that someone gave them as a Holiday gift. And, Amazon is completely mum on when these are going to be shipped. As Joe would say, very 'Un-Amazon-ish'.

It's got me thinking, is this whole Kindle thing a hoax? Is there a great guffaw echoing from the top of the Veterans Hospital in Seattle? Is this the great practical joke of 2007? Obviously, they don't have them, or they would have been shipped already. What gives? Maybe they just wanted to give all of us, 'pundits', something to distract us while they moved in another direction.

Or, alternatively, did Amazon bet the farm on the assumption that the Kindle would fall flat on it's face? Was Kindle only introduced as a mechanism to shake up the book publishing industry and show them all how foolish they have been to eschew digital distribution?

Well, in any case, my initial excitement about getting a Kindle is turning to anger. And, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm a pretty patient guy. I imagine that there are many angry people out there, which is another reason in the 'massive' uptick in finding my old blog post. People have plunked down money and there are no goods coming. It's as simple as that.

And, unfortunately, it is very 'Amazon-ish' to not have any 'person' to go to. It doesn't seem that there there is a real responsibility taker anywhere in the entire operation. It's all computer systems. And when the systems don't work correctly, no one has to take personal responsibility.

It would be ironic if this 'Kindle debacle' single-handedly destroyed Amazon's (well earned) reputation for under-promising and over-delivering. Maybe then, a 'person' might have to eat some humble pie, and someone might (God forbid) have to take some responsibility and lose a job.

2007: The year we embraced Technology

When book publishing historians look back at 2007, there will be much for them to remark on. But, in my view, the overwhelming theme of this year in the book industry is that 2007 is the year that technology (in general) went from being feared to being embraced.

And, as I think through this, it didn't just happen in one place. It happened at all levels of the 'value chain'. It happened at the publisher level, at the author level, at the retail level, and at the consumer level.

Let's consider some of the following:

1. At the beginning of 2007, how many of you knew what a social network was? (I didn't really)
2. At the beginning of 2007, how many of you either wrote or read (or even considered) blogs as a main source of information? (not me)
3. I'd love to know how many self publishing service companies there were at the beginning of 2007 compared to what seem like 'hundreds' now.
4. How many of you had your entire concept of personal technology design turned on it's ear by the iPhone, even though you knew it was coming?
5. How many publishers are actively converting titles, and changing their workflows for digital distribution now, as compared to last year?
6. How many would anticipate at the beginning of 2007, that an e-reading device would DOMINATE the industry dialogue? (I would have laughed if someone suggested this)
7. How many of us thought that the One Laptop Per Child or $100 Laptop (OLPC) was just wishful thinking, and couldn't possibly expect that hundreds of thousands of them would be shipped into EMERGING MARKETS?
8. How many thought that there would be realistic - as opposed to theoretical - conversations about new publishing business models?

I have to admit that I didn't see most of this coming, but now that it has, it's not too hard to see where it might lead us.

So, what caused all this? Well, I would argue that it was just a handful of vanguard companies that started down their individual roads with their ideas a couple of years ago. And this year, they came together to show (the rest of us) that this is no longer science fiction - it is real stuff.

Some of the credit needs to go to all those publishing conferences this year. In an earlier post, I complained about there being too many of them, but looking back, it was really what we all needed. Starting with the Google Unbound conference at the NY Public Library, and progressing on through the O'Reilly, 'Tools of Change' conference, and even to the ECPA's Publishing University in November, the dialogue dramatically changed from denial, to grudging acceptance, to foregone conclusion. Book Publishing is at a cross roads, and, our very survival as a relevant industry is hanging in the balance.

All in all, it was really a year that book publishing historians will look back on as one of the more important in the industry's evolution.

Can the e-Galley idea make a comeback?

Joe Wikert’s post the other day about Simon & Schuster's internal use of e-reading devices got me thinking about the possible resurgence of the idea of electronic galleys.

Two years ago, I personally phone surveyed about 30 book buyers from stores all over the United States. To a person, they all told stories about their love-hate relationship with galleys. They loved them because it gave them advanced understanding about the books that they were buying, so that they could decide whether or not to recommend them to their customers. They hated them because a. they couldn’t sell them, and b. because they were hard to store and eventually recycle. They seem like such a waste of paper.

One of the huge take-aways from that informal survey for me was that independent bookstores that survived the age of the internet, and survived big-box retailers, and chain superstores, did so by embracing the new realities, and directing their attention to things they could do that the competition couldn’t. It was interesting that many actually made their businesses far more successful than they had ever been before the large threats came along, simply by better engaging their communities.

Now booksellers (of all types) are facing another huge challenge, the possibility that e-book reading devices will gain real traction in the marketplace, and that sales of e-books may cut into sales of print books. As I have mentioned in another post, I believe strongly that the 'indies' need to have a role in the e-book world. The way it looks from my perch, it’s time again for booksellers to make a survival decision: be stalwarts against the new invader, or embrace the new reality and use it to their advantage.

My money is on those that will embrace the new technologies, and figure out how to leverage them into revenue. I’m not sure what those business models will look like yet, but I suspect my friends at Ingram Digital have some notions about that topic. But, one thing I do know from my years in ‘change management’, there are two necessary ingredients to developing a new business model: 1. completely understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of the new product or service, and 2. Use the product or service yourself before offering it out to others.

And so, one way for booksellers to embrace and understand the new technologies are to to use them themselves. Using them for reading electronic galleys would be a great start to this process. There would be many advantages, not the least of which is the ‘green’ angle. Think of all the paper that could be saved, and the recycling that wouldn’t have to be done. It seems like a such a logical win-win situation for the publisher and the retailer.

I also think this is an opportunity for the American Booksellers Association to take a real leadership stand. Perhaps they could start to work with Sony, iRex, and other purveyors of e-reading devices, and get a few samples to pass around to their constituents to ‘test’. It would be a great first step in having a centralized approach to having bookstores (who want to survive) start selling the e-reader devices in their stores.

Food for thought.

e-Books are a Whole New Canvas for Authors

It seems to me that in all the hand-wringing about the end of printed books, there is an important opportunity not being discussed at all.

The printed book is a closed system. It stands completely alone, and interacts with only one reader at a time. It is, as an old mentor of mine would say, "perfect".

By contrast e-books are open, and can possibly interact with many people at one time. So, I guess they are "imperfect".

But authors haven't had this much creative opportunity since the book of Kells. Perhaps that is what all the hand-wringing is about? Are the authors afraid of the challenge of dealing with such a vast canvas?

They shouldn't be. And, neither should editors, or agents, or publishers. No one has to use the entirety of the canvas yet. Just push out the borders a little... create some alternative endings... link to a few websites that have additional information about the topic you are writing about... set up some links to wikipedia.

As the borders get pushed a little here and a little there, I am sure that reading experience will become enhanced, and the reading public will reward the creativity by buying more works (notice I didn't say books).

In some ways it feels like book publishing is where television was when color TV sets were first introduced. At first they were just for the 'early adopters', and the programming wasn't any different, it just used color film. I still remember our first color TV. (We were not early adopters). As consumers of the media, we were amazed and enthralled with the new paradigm. That interest eventually fed into the creativity of the television studios, who invested more and more in the technology, and the 'creative pallet'.

I think the next 10 years will bode the same thing for 'books'. We'll always call them that... at least for a few more generations.

Will Kindle help Amazon Command the Self Publishing Marketplace?

Yesterday a friend asked me about the proprietary nature of the Kindle. "Why would Amazon want to only have content in its own format?" I didn't have a good answer. My first inclination was that the use of only proprietary formats of ebooks might be simply a functionality prioritization, and that in a later release, Kindle will be able to handle other forms of e-content.

This afternoon I was cleaning up my desk and ran across the business card of someone from BookSurge - and that got my gears grinding.

BookSurge is an Amazon company that helps people self-publish their books. They offer editorial, marketing, and print-on-demand services for people who (for whatever reason) won't get published by an established publishing house. This is a burgeoning market and one where BookSurge has many competitors.

In fact, according the the Under the Radar Study by BISG back in 2005, aggregated sales of books from publishers who (individually) have less that $1 Million in annual revenue, is estimated to be nearly $3 Billion per year. That's a pretty big market to service, especially if you have way of taking a significant chunk of that $3 Billion for yourself.

From BookSurge's website, they even say the following:

Not only can BookSurge help you create a high-quality, highly marketable book, we can also provide you with exclusive tools and resources to help you gain exposure, develop an audience, and build readership for your work.

Exclusive tools? Like maybe we can distribute your titles through Kindle, and we won't take any from other self-publishers? That's a pretty big exclusivity factor for an author thinking of self-publishing.

food for thought.

How many Kindles were actually sold?

Does anyone really know? I've been scouring the web everywhere, and can't come up with a number.

There are tons and tons of articles talking about how the first 'lot' sold out in 5.5 hours. Truly amazing, huh? I guess we're all assuming that the there were 'a lot' of units in the first 'lot'. But, how many is 'a lot'?

Is it just a marketing ploy? To some extent it must be, otherwise, Amazon would have shouted the numbers from every rooftop in Seattle. Creating artificial demand by manipulating the supply is a good way to justify the big price tag.

I am personally very excited by the Kindle, and the effect it will have on book publishers. I think this is the type of shot in the arm the book publishing industry really needs. I will even go on to say that I want one, and I think Amazon did a masterful job of PR. I'm just a bit bothered by the lack of, even ball park, figures.

When I look and see stories like yesterday's about the XO, and the news that Peru has signed up for 260,000 units( and another 50,000 to Mexico!!!), it seems a stark contrast to the lack of any numbers from Amazon.

A Discussion of Book Publishings Future

There is an interesting blog post this week, that I had a chance to participate in. Both the content and context of this post are interesting to me.

The post written by Ajay Jain, in a blog called Techgazing, asks the Question, "Will Kindle send book publishing the music industry way?" Please take the time to read it.

What I find interesting here (besides the obvious that he included my opinion in the post) were several things:

1. The post was 'built' by using a feature of the LinkedIn social network, called Q&A. I'm not even sure I understand all the magic here. One day, I logged into LinkedIn, and there was a 'question' about the book industry that was just too tantalizing to pass up. So I answered it. It was clear that mine was one of maybe 50 answers. I thought to myself at the time, that this was an interesting method to write a piece, and after I answered, I didn't think anything more of it. All of the people who answered were in the LinkedIn network.

2. The post was more of a survey aggregation than something written by the author. If you notice, aside from the opening 3 paragraphs, the author lets other people do all the talking. This is both interesting, and powerful. We don't need to 'trust' exclusively in the opinion of the author, and the fact that there are so many voices in the piece, I think, helped turn this piece more into a discussion forum than an editorial like piece.

3. The post generated (as you can see), many many comments - and obviously touched a nerve. The content, obviously found a place where people have strong emotions, as have all the pieces in the past few weeks about ebooks. I find this very encouraging for our society. If we can take this type of discussion into the world political arena, perhaps we could all become a little more tolerant of each other.

4. While definitely a 'geek' perspective on the world of books and publishing, it is a 'world geek' view, not just an American view. It seems that one very interesting thing is that social networks eliminate territorial borders. The author was from India, but many of his participants were from places all around the world. Again, sociologically speaking, I find this to be very encouraging.

My kudos to Ajay for pulling this piece together, not only on the topic, but for how he did it. This type of 'facilitation' is very interesting.

OLPC News!!!

In his blog today, Larry Dignan extrapolates that perhaps 490,000 XO laptops will be ordered by the end of the year. His post also goes on to ask the question, "can this be considered a success?"

Well, I believe it is! I am thrilled with that number, and as Larry points out, all the 'ripple effects' that go with it.


Since my post, and David Berlind's post that challenged other employers to put matching policies in place regarding the One laptop per child project (OLPC), I've sort of felt like John Belushi's character in Animal House. You know the one, where he is dressed in a toga and he tries to lead the fraternity on a charge after they have been given double-secret probation.... Well, if you don't, no one follows him....



Oh, and by the way, this should be a big boost for book publishers and e-books, too! Imagine the e-books that could be downloaded to 490,000 reading units?

Why Kindle is a Watershed event for e-Books

I don't know where the term 'watershed' came from, but to me a 'watershed event' is one that we can look back on historically and identify a real turning point in the evolution of a certain cause.

I think that the launch of Amazon's Kindle reader is a watershed event in the cause of e-book adoption.

What I think is very interesting about e-books is that they are probably more reviled by real bibliophiles than they are by those of us for whom books are just another part of our lives. It's not that we don't love them - far from it - it's just that we are more interested in the content than the form. Thus, it seems the battle for e-book adoption seems to be us against ourselves - a civil war of sorts.

So, when I think about e-book adoption, a military metaphor comes to mind. It seems that for generations those that have revered the hard bound, printed tome have held the high ground. Over the centuries they have repelled many intruders. Paperbacks, both 'trade' and 'mass market', have tried to win the top of the mountain, but have had to settle for 2nd tier status. While those formats didn't win, they did inflict casualties and win some converts, reducing the numbers in the high ground, but not reducing their power or position.

Then along came audio books. Although strong for a brief period, they never were able to pose any serious threat to anyone above them, nor form alliances with other forms that could pose any threat to the high ground. Eventually, audio books found their own small place on the mountain side away from everyone else.

For the past 10 years, e-books have been trying to work their way up the mountain. Because there numbers were small, and relatively weak, they were easily repelled by both tiers of books at the higher ground. In fact, it seemed that all books were in union to repel this latest invader.

The e-book generals continued to throw weapons and soldiers against the ramparts, but have failed to make any real break through. There were times when the e-book army thought that they had the weapon to break past the fortifications of the higher ground (like the Sony reader), but alone, it was simply not enough.

But, the tide seems to be turning for the upstart e-books. e-Book forces have been consolidating (aligning on standards). And, a new 'armies' have come to join the battle - handheld devices, like iPhones and other PDA's can now display e-books. Search programs, like Google Print and Microsoft Live Book are developing new online reading followers. And with it's introduction, probably the most powerful new army is joining the fray - the Kindle army.

Kindle has the power to convert a whole new population of book readers into foot soldiers. The marketing power of Amazon almost guarantees that many, many of these devices will sell.

What appears to me to be happening is that many of the second tier landholders are re-evaluating their loyalties to the high grounders and starting to side with the e-book armies and Kindle. The high grounders are starting to feel the threat as is evidenced by their vociferous pronouncements about why the e-book revolution will fail, and the hardcover will never go away. This is a major shift in the battle, and why I think the Kindle launch is a watershed event.

While it will be a while before the results of this latest onslaught are in, one thing is for certain, defenders of the print book world are taking casualties, and the e-bookers are gaining ground. Additionally, the paperback book forces are seeing a weakness at the top, and attacking the hardcover as well.

However this battle ends up, there is good news all around: the number of readers will grow, and the opportunities to have a work published will grow as well. Instead of fighting among ourselves, we should welcome each other and try to figure out the best ways to work together to take advantage of these new market opportunities.

Is Kindle the Bowmar Brain of this generation?

Well, it is certainly not the only wish I had for Christmas that won't get delivered....



It's official. Kindle is here. Here is a link to the Amazon Press Release.



Now that it is here, I do hope it turns into a watershed event for our beloved publishers. Other devices have not done so well because they haven't had the marketing power and enthusiasm that Amazon can bring.



I expect it to sell moderately well for Christmas - there are lots of early adopter people out there. Then I think it will go into a bit of a lull while the first users really bang on it. By this time next year, I expect Kindle 2.0 to come out, and then it will be on a lot of Christmas lists for 2008.



Parallel to the 'device' development, publishers (of all media - not just books) will respond. Amazingly, backlist books - the same ones it was too hard to convert - will get converted to Mobi format. More and more newspapers, magazines, and journals will find ways of being presented on the device.



Let's fast forward a couple of years, and let's look at the next generation of readers. If Kindle can really take off, it will be like the calculator was to me in High School. I remember when my parents spent an incredible amount of money on my first calculator from Rockwell International. Other kids that year got Bowmar Brains. The concept was so new, that we weren't allowed to use them in school. (In fact, I still couldn't use them in some college engineering classes.) Calculators now, are given away ... and are so ubiquitous as to be required in school, by little kids.



I imagine the same will hold true for Reading devices. At first, just a few 'wealthy' kids will have them. Then some college somewhere will require them of all incoming freshmen. Then someone will donate a bunch to a high school somewhere.... and so on.



They will get better and better, cheaper and cheaper - as seen with the OLPC (sorry, I had to slip that in). They will become so ubiquitous as to be required in school, by little kids.



I was thinking this morning about when my daughter has her own kids and what will be in their backpacks - if that innovation still exists. Instead of telling stories of how many miles we had to walk to school, she will be telling her kids about how heavy her backpack was because of all the books she had to carry. The kids just won't get it.

Kindle Rumors Abound

It seemed like yesterday, everywhere I turned, I was hearing another rumor about Kindle.

Kindle, Amazon's promised ebook reader, has gone through the rumor mill many times before, but never with the ferocity of the past couple of days.

Larry Dignan at ZDNet wrote a piece furthering the rumor yesterday afternoon. A press conference has been scheduled for 9:30 am on Monday from Amazon, to be given by Jeff Bezos, but the contents of the announcement remain mysterious.

From independent sources, I know that several heads of book publishing houses have been invited to attend. That fact alone, points to something related to books.

Having the press conference the Monday before Thanksgiving is a sure fire indication that whatever is being announced is timed to attempt to maximize sales for Christmas.

So, my money is on a Kindle announcement.

What I'm more skeptical about is how it will sell.

Amazon almost single handedly squashed ebook sales when they bought Mobipocket and decided that other formats would no longer be welcome on their retail site. So, not only do they have to sell a device, they need to draw back the ebook reader market. My guess is that we will hear about that plan on Monday also.

Amazon certainly has the content, and a selection of ebooks to sell and/or package with their new device. I know several publishers that have given Amazon the go ahead to create Mobipocket ebooks from the .PDF files used for the 'Search inside the book program'.

The question remains, can they ramp this up quickly enough to have an impact for Christmas. If they can, then it will be the galvanizing event that will force publishers to start getting their digital strategies together. If Amazon can't make a good Christmas out of Kindle and ebooks, then I fear that most -not the enlightened ones - will simply defer their digital plans until next year.

ebook readers

I don't understand hardware. I admit it - I'm a software guy.

Can someone answer for me this simple question: If the one-laptop-per-child laptop computer can be sold for $200 each, then why do ebook reader devices have to cost more than $300?