Pirates Beware: eBooks Are Not Songs
By Rebecca Henely
For the customers of Lori James, chief operating officer for AllRomanceEbooks.com, the suave, swashbuckling pirate is a favorite literary trope. However, James makes sure to teach her customers that “Not all Pirates are Sexy.”
On the AllRomanceEbooks.com’s website, readers and visitors are invited to sign a petition to fight eBook piracy. The petition has 218 signatures as of this writing. Yet while James is committing herself to fighting the problem, she — and others — are unsure of the scope of eBook piracy.
“I’ve yet to see numbers presented [that] I felt were a true reflection of the scope of the problem in terms of the initial theft or lost sales,” James says. “I know some publishers and authors look at the number of downloads and count those as lost sales, but there are people who will download a book for free just because it’s free and never read it. That doesn’t really represent a lost sale because the person never would have purchased the book.”
Nevertheless, some technical measures have been put into protecting books from being pirated. James states many of the books sold on AllRomanceEbooks.com have some sort of digital rights management encoded in them.
Stephen Cole, managing director for Ebooks Corporation Limited, says that eBooks.com utilizes Adobe’s Content Server system to protect against piracy. “Because of the protection provided by Adobe Content Server, very few books are pirated as a result of people buying an ebook and somehow hacking it,” he says. “There are pirated books out there, but as far as we can see they arise from people scanning or re-keying.”
Cole says Ebooks.com has been working to prevent piracy by offering incentives with eBooks that can’t be pirated. Most pirated books come in a pdf format. While these can be uploaded to popular e-readers like Amazon.com’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook (just as Kindle or Nook eBooks can be backed up on a computer as .pdf files), Cole says Ebooks.com’s new reader for the computer The Amigo Reader, will give readers an interactive experience they can’t get from a pirated book, like the ability to share notes with others and a live chat about the book.
“In an age of rampant piracy, it’s important for book publishers to keep adding value to books, which cannot be included in a pirated book. Amigo Reader goes some way toward that goal,” Cole says.
Take-down notices have also been a tool for the distributor. James says this has helped her company, AllRomanceEbooks.com, and has been very successful for book publisher Macmillan, which has been diligent about takedown notices. “A service like this could be especially valuable to small or mid-sized presses who don’t have staff dedicated to this function, so we are considering it,” she says.
Cole states that piracy will continue to be a problem for eBooks, although most likely not on the level of music piracy, as most eBooks are copy-protected. “Books are not songs,” he says. “When the Internet happened, there were 2 billion people out there in possession of CDs that had unencrypted, easily copied music on them. In effect, everyone who owns a CD and a PC, even an untutored technophobe, is a couple of clicks away from forwarding a song to their 500 best friends. This is not the case with eBooks.”
Yet James states when it comes to pirates, there are two types: “those [who] can perhaps be persuaded not to [pirate] and those who can’t.” She says the best way to prevent piracy is offering eBooks at legitimate sources and combating illegitimate ones. ”I firmly believe that the vast majority of our customers and readers are honest people,” James says. “They understand piracy is stealing and they understand that re-distribution of content contributes to the erosion of an industry that brings them countless hours of joy and entertainment.”
Is Kindle Lighting a Fire Under iPad?
By Sarah Jaferi
For the past two years, Amazon has welcomed authors and publishers to directly upload and sell content in the Kindle Store through the self-service Kindle publishing platform. Recently, Amazon announced that it is inviting software developers to build and upload active content that will be available in the Kindle Store later this year. The new Kindle Development Kit gives developers access to programming interfaces, tools and documentation to build active content for Kindle. Developers can learn more about the Kindle Development Kit and sign up to be notified when the limited beta starts in March.
In an interview with DMB, Apple spokesperson Colin Smith refused to comment when asked if Apple is worried that the Kindle Development Kit and other technologies will be competition for the iPad.
“We’ve heard from lots of developers over the past two years who are excited to build on top of Kindle,” says Ian Freed, vice President, Amazon Kindle. “The Kindle Development Kit opens many possibilities - we look forward to being surprised by what developers invent.”
The Kindle Development Kit enables developers to build active content that leverages Kindle’s unique combination of seamless and invisible 3G wireless delivery over Amazon Whispernet, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper, and long battery life of seven days with wireless activated. For example, Handmark is building an active Zagat guide featuring its trusted ratings, reviews and more for restaurants in cities around the world, and Sonic Boom is building word games and puzzles.
“As the leading worldwide publisher of mobile games, EA Mobile has had the privilege of collaborating with many dynamic and innovative companies in bringing exciting gaming experiences to new platforms,” says Adam Sussman, vice president of Worldwide Publishing, EA Mobile. “Working with Amazon, we look forward to bringing some of the world’s most popular and fun games to Kindle and their users.”
Starting next month, participants in the limited beta will be able to download the Kindle Development Kit, access developer support, test content on Kindle, and submit finished content. Those wait listed will be invited to participate as space becomes available. The Kindle Development Kit includes sample code, documentation and the Kindle Simulator, which helps developers build and test their content by simulating the 6-inch Kindle and 9.7-inch Kindle DX on Mac, PC and Linux desktops.
An Emerging Industry: eBook Brokers
By Ron Callari
Digital content distribution as an industry emerged as a result of books moving from the traditional world of publishing to online platforms such as PDFs, eBooks and other ePub formats. Some licensing brokers for eBooks like Ingram Digital grew out of their traditional publishing units that have been in the industry for more than 40 years. Others like Robot Comics emerged within the last few years to solely focus on digital formats for specific genres like graphic novels.
Some of the advantages of digital vs. traditional publishing “is the compressed time from the distributor’s inventory to the online retailer or library’s shelf, [due to] the elimination of shipping, unpacking and shelving for the channel,” according to David Burleigh, director of marketing for OverDrive, a leading global distributor of eBooks and audiobooks.
In the traditional world, “books progressed through a well-defined supply chain from publisher to printer to shipper to wholesaler/distributor to bookstore,” notes Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, which is both an eBook publisher and distribution platform. Because the eBook supply chain is nascent and still evolving, Coker sees the industry in a state of still fleshing out its distribution channels. “Some publishers go direct to their customers, others go direct to the retail and others use distribution and aggregation intermediaries such as Smashwords or Ingram Digital,” he says.
With hundreds of mainstream and niche eBook distributors entering the field, the aforementioned firms aggressively distinguish themselves from the competition. OverDrive sees its distinction as providing the best customer support as well as the largest collection of digital content (including eBooks, audiobooks, music and video) for libraries on a single platform. Smashwords focuses exclusively on the independently published eBooks from self-published authors and small independent presses.
Other publishers acting as their own distributors focus on specific genres. While Robot Comics publishes graphic novels and currently works with Apple, Google and Amazon, its deputy director, Dave Baxter, refers to these companies as “marketplaces” or “storefronts” vs. distributors. According to Baxter, “in the digital world, there’s very little distinction between the store and the distributor, often none at all.”
Graphic novels have the inherent challenge of adapting color images to Kindle’s black-and-white-and-shades-of-grey format. Baxter indicates that “few are flexible enough to handle the needs of a graphic novel library and allow them to shine.”
Overdrive’s Burleigh notes that “early on, romance was the clear leader in libraries, probably proportionately more than in print, but other than that, we now see growth across the spectrum of all genres.”
According to Baxter, “due to the percentage of profits taken by the distributors, the limitations imposed by the software they work with, and the lack of direct control over the material display and the ability to market on certain levels, a distributor truly has to prove their worth in order to be literally, worthwhile.” So Baxter and his company continue to search for distributors whose business models are closer to the iPhone app model, but “so far the jury is out,” he says.
Since Amazon presently represents and sells its own library of eBooks exclusively on its Kindle devices, in some respects it can be reviewed as a competitor of eBook distributors. However, according to Overdrive’s Burleigh, he believes, “Amazon has a different business model, so we can’t really compare us to them.”
On the other hand, Smashwords just signed a distribution agreement with Amazon that will one day allow its books to be available in the Amazon Kindle store. As Coker puts it, this makes Amazon, “a competitor and a partner.”
Regarding end users, a recent DMB article highlighted the innovative distribution deals between companies and schools. The Blyth Academy in Toronto was touted as the first high school to purchase the Sony Readers for its student body. Similarly, OverDrive supplies eBooks and audiobooks to several colleges, including McGill University in Montreal, the Virginia Community Colleges in addition to K-12 schools. It also has a similar program for public and corporate libraries.
As far as Sony being a competitor, Coker makes the distinction: “Sony is definitely not a competitor. They’re a distribution partner [they sell our books] and we also help power their Sony Publisher Portal, which makes it easy for authors and publishers to publish their content into the Sony Store.”
With established libraries of their own, one would think that Sony and Barnes & Noble might not need a distributor for their online downloads. However, Burleigh states, that “one of the benefits of working with OverDrive is that it simplifies the process for libraries and retailers to work with a single distributor rather than hundreds of publishers.”
Coker agrees with Burleigh, and adds, “It’s time consuming and expensive for a retailer to enter into and maintain contractual business and technology relationships with hundreds or thousands of small publishers.” This is why he believes that “Sony, B&N and others value working with distributors and aggregators such as Smashwords. With us, they only have to manage one relationship, one technical integration and cut one check.”
Amazon Now Offers 70% Royalty on Kindle Content
By: websitemagazine.com
Amazon announced this week the details of a new program that will enable authors and publishers using the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to earn a 70% royalty option, less delivery costs. The program will become available on June 30, 2010.
Amazon’s Cloud Burst: Streaming Media, Privacy and Price Bidding
By: cmswire.com
Amazon Web Services is bursting at the seams with a raft of new features and services that will make it easier and more affordable to work in the cloud.
Textbook Technology: Schools Embrace eReaders
By Ron Callari
The 21st Century learning environment is changing to meet the needs of the times. It wasn’t too long ago when computers were first introduced to school systems and hand-written assignments were replaced by high-speed word processing, spellcheck and online research.
Hand-held portable devices, however, while widely popular for commuting have been prohibited from use in the classroom. That is, up till now.
Embracing the learning experience that could be obtained from electronic reading, the school administrators at Blyth Academy, one of the Canada’s largest providers of private education decided to transition from the traditional printed textbook to the digital content that can be read on the Sony® Reader and found in Sony and Google e-libraries.
Aside from the obvious environmental reasons for transitioning to digital reading, Sam Blyth, CEO at Blyth Academy indicates that “kids loved the proposition of free access to millions of books, ease of transport to international venues, and the ability to mark up and highlight the text and download notes to a student’s computer.”
According to Blyth, his school system is the first in the world to make the switch to eReader textbooks and equip all the students and teachers with the personal devices. The students receive the Sony® Readers and the e-textbooks free of charge but have to return them at the end of the school term or make the choice to purchase them. Sony Canada’s spokesperson Candice Hayman says the company has received “a lot of interest from schools all across Canada wanting to know how they can launch similar programs, [but] we’re allowing the Blyth pilot program to mature, so we can get feedback from the students about their experiences.” The school has acquired 110 Readers from Sony for the first round of testing.
“My Sony Reader helps me get organized,” says Michael Tyrrell, student at Blyth Academy. “I have all my textbooks and class material on it — it’s really cool. I feel like somebody just personalized school to fit me.”
As far as impediments to receiving a full curriculum’s worth of content, Hayman indicates “the next step really lies with the content providers — meaning the textbook publishers need to create a process and business plan for making their content available in the proper electronic formats for schools.” The textbook rights are purchased direct from the publishers and presently the free downloads are generally everyday reading and anything that is out of copyright. Paid content will be considered by Blyth through direct content with textbook publishers.
Helping lead the way in delivering digital content for education are publishers like Pearson Canada. “Pearson Canada is taking students beyond the four corners of the printed textbook,” says Anne-Marie Scullion, vice president of Field Services, Pearson Canada. “Our focus is on developing flexible and adaptive content to engage students in a 21st century learning environment.”
In questioning Sony whether ‘brick and mortar’ libraries might consider purchasing and renting Sony® Readers, she mentioned interest from Canadian libraries considering this route. “At the moment, you can ‘check out’ eBooks from libraries across Canada [and the U.S.] for free with a library card.” She adds, “libraries now offer eBooks optimized for the Sony® Reader, meaning you can directly load them onto the Reader from your PC because the file formats are compatible.” The Sony® Reader accepts numerous file formats including ePub, the publishing industry standard. Students or the general public can easily check for libraries equipped with the device by using Sony’s Library Finder services by OverDrive.
As far as other types of organization considering a similar initiative of acquiring a volume purchase of the devices for a large group of people, Hayman indicates that in 2008, “Random House Canada supplied their employees each with a Sony® Reader to make reading long manuscripts more convenient.”
Other devices that have ventured into the school markets in a less limited way are Kindle and Nook. Amazon has reported that it is giving select students at a variety of universities its Kindle devices with pre-installed textbooks for chemistry and computer science. The range of universities is a cross-section of schools that includes Pace, Case Western, Princeton, Reed, Arizona State and University of Virginia’s Darden.
The game changing aspect of Nook isn’t its Android foundation, its touch screen interface or its backing from a major book retailer. It’s the technology called LendMe, which lets users share books between Nooks, iPhones, iPod Touches, BlackBerrys and Windows/Mac PCs with Barnes & Noble’s free eReader software. Books can be lent to other devices for 14 days at a time. This would allow high school or college student to share text books and pertinent documents with fellow classmates.
For high schools and universities that are embracing the eReader and eTextbook technology, we can easily see a universal transition to the digital reading. As the Blyth experiment proves successful, it would also appear that textbook publishers and online stores will address the market need as mass appeal gains traction in the next decade.
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