Word is that Barnes and Noble is now offering free WiFi. This is cool simply for the fact that the more business that offer free WiFi, the more pressure will be other businesses to do the same.
Speculation is that the free WiFi in Barnes and Noble has happened in part to allow users of their new, forthcoming eBook reader to download books while in the store. I wonder if this could threaten the underlying brick-and-mortar sales? Probably not, at least until a much greater number of people are using an eBook reader. Right now, I still consider the spotting of a Kindle in the wild as a special occurrence.
I’m surprised the struggling Starbucks hasn’t extended their free WiFi beyond iPhone users and Starbucks cardholders. This would help to keep them distinguished from competitors like Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonalds. Actually, I have seen free WiFi offered in a number of McDonalds so the competitive edge might be lost already.
The larger question is whether or not we will ever see the dream of free WiFi anywhere we roam. For a while, there was free WiFi in a number of NYC’s parks and all of Philadelphia was nearly given free WiFi before plans fell apart. One has to suspect the biggest obstacle to providing free WiFi is the existing internet service providers who do not want to see their core business eroded.
Still, it seems like a strong tide is rolling in and it will not be long before we are all logging on for free, at least for slow-speed connections.
While the major publishers, studios and labels bitch and moan about how piracy is destroying their business they continue to make decisions that only reinforce the reason people resort to piracy in the first place – and no, it’s not all about price.
Take this for example:
This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.
But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price. LINK
Now, Amazon has backtracked slightly, claiming these titles had been released without proper authorization but that doesn’t change the underlying issue. In the good ol’ Industrial Age, if you went to a store and bought a book and took that book home than that book was yours forever. No matter what some publisher decides later, nobody could come into your home and take back that book without being charged for theft, even if they left a few bucks on the shelf.
In a similar manner, when I acquire a song or film or ebook via a file-sharing service and I download that file to my iPhone or laptop, that file is mine and, without a fair amount of hacking, nobody can take that file away from me. I can move it around, copy it and even share it with other friends because it is mine.
With a Kindle, the fact is your never OWN anything. All you really are buying is an extremely limited license to read the book on your Kindle unless Amazon decides otherwise. This is not the same thing as buying a book.
Unless the major content distributors of the world figure out the difference they will continue to lose to the gray market that allows people to truly own their content.
The ongoing saga of Apple’s idiotic idea to police iPhone apps continues to do nothing but confuse and annoy both users and developers.
While developers hoping to add real usefulness to the iPhone with new eBook readers find themselves being rejected because it might let someone download the public domain version of the Kama Sutra, makers of what amounts to soft-core porn seem to have no problems getting approval.
For instance, the Sucide Girls Flip Strip application. Here is what it does. It presents a still photo of a young woman in clothes. When you flip the phone over it reveals the same girl in just her underwear.
While there is not explicit nudity there is nothing beyond prurient value here.
Now, I’m not saying Apple should ban apps like this. Instead, I think Apple should stop trying to play morals cop and let the grown up owners of the iPhone decide whether or not they want to buy any app that can be developed.
Tags: apple, apps, AppStore, E-book, Eucalyptus, flip strip, iphone, Kama Sutra, Public domain, Smartphones, suicide girls, suicidegirls
Uncategorized | admin | 
June 3, 2009 12:45 pm | 
Comments (4)
Amazon has released their oversized and overpriced new eBook reader, the Kindle DX and is claiming that the two greatest things about this device are how it will expand the reach and availability of newspapers and provide and fantastic alternative to dead-tree textbooks.
Sounds great but here are some potential issues.
1) The Kindle DX is currently almost $500. Even if the price is subsidized and cut in half it is not a cheap device. The idea of bundling a cheaper version of the device with newspaper subscriptions is only a benefit if the buyer isn’t just paying for a all the subscriptions to newspapers on top of the supposedly lowered price. In other words, if the Kindle DX is your for $200 if you also sign up for a $100/yr sub to the NYT that’s not a great savings.
2) For all the Kindle DX can do, it is nowhere close to as powerful or useful as, say. a $500 netbook computer. If you want to replace hardcopy textbooks with digital versions, that’s a great idea but locking those digital copies into a closed system like the Kindle defeats the entire purpose. Not only is the Kindle stuck in greyscale – a factor that would seriously effect the value of many textbooks – but it is impossible to easily integrate the textbook into a student’s workflow when the data is stuck on another device. For instance, a digital version of a textbook that a student can read on his computer is great. He can quickly highlight and search sections online, cut and copy bits for notes or ideas or questions, etc. and have all that stuff in one place when it comes time for test prep and paper writing. No way the student can do that with a Kindle.
3) It’s yet another device to carry around. One that is somewhat fragile and now annoyingly large. It can be folded up or tossed into a pocket.
In the simple days before the internet and digital technology the concept of buying a book was pretty simple. You went to a bookstore and you gave the bookseller money and he or she gave you a stack of bound paper with words (and sometimes pictures) printed on the pages – a book, if you will. Once the transaction was complete that book was yours forever. You could resell it any price the market supported. You could trade it or loan it or use it as toilet paper. It didn’t matter. The book was yours.
Unfortunately, as ArsTech points points out, in the current time of eBooks, the idea of buying a book is not quite so simple:
Amid the general love-fest over the Amazon Kindle, its DRM is beginning to bite some users in the butt as they are getting locked out of their accounts and, subsequently, their e-book purchases. The incidents highlight once again that the customer doesn’t really own the content when it comes to DRM; even when it’s so loose that it’s not apparent day to day, it can still hurt you in the long run.
Whether due to a change in “terms of service” or due to violating exisiting agreements, Kindle-owners have found themselves actually locked out of accessing books they had already purchased. I like ArsTech’s metaphore:
A bookstore that locks you out because you treated it like a library doesn’t take away the collection already sitting on your bookshelf, after all.
There is a reason that even iTunes has given up on most DRM for music and it won’t be all that long before book publishers will have to follow suit or find themselves fighting a similar losing battle against “pirates” who think it is unfair for a company to control access to content once the customer has completed their purchase of said content.
LINK
Some Kindle users are upset over the $10+ cost of eBooks for the device and have begun to tag such books in an effort to convince others to boycott them and somehow drive down the price.
I’m not so sure this particular effort will have the desired effect. However, the guys at Freakonomics are on the right track:
One of the boycotters’ main complaints: you can’t lend out your e-books to friends. When digital music fans were confronted with this problem, they just made illegal copies.
As we have seen ad nauseum in the music world, once a product is no longer controlled by a physical scarcity (i.e. paper books) but can instead be transimited in a purely digital and thus unlimited manner, it becomes very difficult to convince consumers to pay the same amount they once paid for the hard good.
If the publishing industry isn’t quick to respond it is hard to imagine why there wouldn’t quickly be a pirate market that succeeded in meeting consumer needs instead.
LINK
So, the free Kindle app for the iPhone has come out and it raises some interesting questions.
For starters, what do I need a Kindle for now? At almost $400, the Kindle is way more than an impulse buy. Sure that eInk screen is pretty and the battery life is great but it can’t call my girlfriend or surf the web.
Another question, explored in detail over on CNet, is whether or not iPhone/iTouch users will be willing to pay the $9.99 price-point for the books. There are not a lot of ten dollar apps right now and most iPhones I see are loaded with free and cheap apps. So the idea of paying ten bucks for an eBook on the iPhone might be too much to ask.
Of course, Amazon is a little stuck, here since they can’t offer a book for one price on the iPhone and twice as much for the same book on the Kindle, especially with the sync feature. I have argued before that eBooks are overpriced but it is going to take a while longer before we see significant drops in the price of popular titles.
It will be interesting to see how book sales go on for Amazon on the iPhone. The combination of a tight economy and a high pricepoint might be too much for potential readers.
Sure, the Kindle 2 eBook reader from Amazon is over-priced and the eBooks themselves are over-priced but its a device who’s time has come and one that will be with us in some form or another well into the future – or at least until our eyeballs become part of a hard-wired internal computing service…
Much like you can do on your own Mac or PC pretty simply, the Kindle 2 offered the option of having a rather digitized and un-emotive voice “read” to you. This caused a flare-up from some authors who felt this was stepping on their ancillary audiobook rights. It sounded so absurd that I never imagined Amazon would actually back down. I was wrong:
The only significant change to the experimental section in the Kindle 2 was the addition of a text-to-speech capability that allowed the Kindle to read content to its users in one of two synthesized voices. Following an extended outcry from some in the publishing business, however, Amazon has backed down and will allow publishers to retain control over whether to expose their texts to this capability.
While there is nothing especially wrong with letting publishers opt out of this feature, none of their logic makes much sense. First, these synthisized voices are far from what one gets with a true audiobook read by a trained professional. it’s the difference between hearing a symphony recording of Ode to Joy or listening to a synthisized ringtone version.
They would argue that the voices might not be “real” yet but they could be someday. They’re right but it still doesn’t justify their complaints. The truth is that the authors will never stop this process and they are better off understanding that the abilty to listen to a book I bought presumably to read is an added value that can increase sales overall.
I wish Amazon had stood up to the author’s guild but it’s just a matter of time before technology settles the matter for all parties.
While I realize that the publishing industry is struggling in this digital age I just don’t see how HarperCollins is hoping to make things better with what they are calling “VBooks” or Video Books.
Basically, this entails an author sitting in front of a white wall giving one samples and highlights from their actual book.
A few problems I foresee:
1) This is not a promotional device. Their first offering, a Vbook by Jeff Jarvis, costs ten bucks and it isn’t even the whole book being read.
2) This format does not add anything of value to the actual book. Not only is there less information provided but it is impossible to notate, link, copy & paste or do any of the other things with like to do with books and E-books.
3) Few authors are truly compelling enough in this sort of setting to be much more than a cure for insomnia.
4) Maybe it’s just the combo of Jeff Jarvis and the white background but I keep thinking, while watching the sample, that this is just a big ad for E-Harmony.
All-in-all, I rate this as a big old waste of time and resources.
Here’s what confuses me: How can a publisher charge the same price for a digital copy of a book that requires no printing, binding or significant distribution costs as they do for an actual hardcopy of the book? The same thing goes for the music industy. The cost of pop music has not dropped at all with digital downloads even though a massive cost element is no longer present.
While I understand the desire to keep up your profit margin imagine how many more copies of a book might be sold digitially if it was priced like at impulse-buy levels. People buy iPhone apps all the time at 99-cents just to try them out. Imagine how many new “copies” of backtitles no longer even available in most bookstores could suddenly become profit-drivers for publishers.
Potential digital-book readers aren’t going to shell out $10-$20 for most eBooks but I think thousands would a buck-a-book to, say, get handful of old Stephen King title’s on their iPhone.
I believe one way to profit in the digital age is to take advantage of the massive numbers of potential customers. With no hard cost associated with e-publishing a book, it is just a matter of sell A LOT of copies at a low price.
Just think aloud…
Good related post on this at Futurismic
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