Why Nobody Will Buy a Color E-Ink E-book Reader

E-ink is one of the more unusual technologies to spring up in recent years. It's both more expensive and less versatile than LCD, a long-established product seen in everything from iPods to TVs. It's incredibly specific, but also incredibly good at its one job: reading text. 

E-ink e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook offer, in the opinion of myself and many others, the best digital book-reading experience available. The battery life is astounding (the new Kindle gets up to a month of battery life. An entire month!), they can be used outside without glare, and they quite simply look more like printed, physical ink and paper than any other display ever created. You can lose yourself in e-ink, which is about the best compliment I can give to a digital reader.

On the other hand, LCD devices in a similar package, including tablets like Apple's iPad, offer a passable reading experience on top of a whole host of features e-ink will never, ever be able to handle. E-book readers are better for books; tablets are better for everything else. So tablets and e-book readers exist in an odd sort of stalemate right now: neither can quite replace the other.

But I do believe that LCD and other, more modern displays (including Pixel Qi, LED, AMOLED, and countless other acronymic display types) will advance to the point where they offer a reading experience at least comparable to e-ink. Some have already been made--the iPad's IPS LCD display is better than expected in outdoor use, for example--and that's the wave of the future. And at that point, e-ink will die.

E-ink will die mostly because it fundamentally can't compete with tablets. That's why announcements like today's, in which E-Ink (it's a company as well as that company's main--or only?--product) claimed it will release both a color and a touchscreen version by early 2011, is so confusing. But color and interface are hardly the only obstacles e-ink has to overcome to compete with tablets: Its refresh rates make video largely impossible, it can't cram in enough pixels to make still photos look any more crisp than a day-old McDonald's french fry, and, most damnably, it's still extremely expensive.

I've used both color and touchscreen e-ink displays before. Before its untimely demise, I saw a prototype version of the Skiff newspaper reader with color, and I've used Sony's Reader Touch Edition as well. The Skiff's color was faded, like a photocopy of a photocopy, an extremely unimpressive display closer to old four-color comics than crisp digital imagery. Sony's Touch Edition suffers from enjoyment-killing glare and a slow response rate. While I'm sure the technology for both color and touch can be advanced, I'm not the least bit convinced that it'll ever get to the point where those features are competitive. By the time e-ink catches up to modern-day LCD (and that's assuming it ever does, which is a hefty assumption), LCD will have advanced as well.

Amazon showed that the way to make e-book readers sell like blazes is to lower the price to near-impulse-item territory. Its new $140 Kindle sold out of pre-orders almost immediately, and there's been more buzz around the next version than can be explained through hardware upgrades alone. It's a great reader, don't get me wrong, but its incredible sales numbers are due in large part to the price cut.

Color and touchscreen e-book readers would require a substantial increase in price, to accommodate the new technology. But that's exactly the wrong way to advance e-ink--the price needs to remain as low as possible. 

Why is E-Ink pretending that features like color and touch interfaces are important, necessary, or even desirable for its product? E-ink readers like the Kindle offer the best digital reading experience on the market--why muck it up with expensive and useless features?

E-ink may not have a long future, but until LCD can learn some very difficult new tricks, it'll survive. Diluting that purpose for half-baked progress to compete with tablets is the wrong direction for e-ink.

Original post by Dan Nosowitz and can be found here: http://bit.ly/cs8u3v

Holy Cow! Google and Verizon to Launch Chrome OS Tablet

Things are going to look very interesting in the last quarter this year and the first quarter of 2011 when the Google Chrome OS Tablet is released. The mind boggles as to what will happen in the computing war to follow.

It comes as no surprise to most that Google is building a tablet PC. Sources confirm that the tablet is being built by HTC – no surprise there – which also built the Nexus One for Google. And before you ask, Google and HTC plan to offer their tablet on Verizon; recent events on the issue of Net neutrality spring to mind.

The launch date is Black Friday 2010, i.e. November 26th to all you non-US residents. It is also the busiest shopping day of the year. Quite interesting considering that only God knows what type of deals will be on offer to all interested in the products.

Some analysts are speculating that Google might give the tablet away for free with the condition that the customer signs some form of deal with Verizon data contract. This I might add is pure speculation. One thing is for sure though; there will be increasing doubts as to whether Apple will open up the iPad and iPhone to Verizon customers.

You might be wondering what type of hardware the Google tablet will be packing. Initial guess is that it will come based on the Nvidia Tegra 2 platform coming with a 1280x720 multi-touch display, 2GB Ram, 32GB SSD, WiFi/Bluetooth/3G connectivity, GPS, WebCam, and an expandable storage via a card reader.

I for one think it will be nothing short of fantastic, and knowing Google, they will not want to disappoint their legion of fans. You can bet on one thing, the war between Google and Apple has only just begun.

Image from DownloadSquad and can be found here: http://bit.ly/9mLgnq

$99 Color E-Reader and Social Platform to Challenge Amazon, B&N This Fall

Following recent price cuts on Amazon’s Kindle 2 and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, a new manufacturer is set to stir up even more competition in the e-reader pricing wars with the debut of a $99 color device this fall.

The device, which weighs in at .42 lbs and features a 5-inch, 800×480-pixel, color LCD display, 2GB of storage, 64MB of RAM, 2G of Flash Memory and up to four hours of battery life, is just one in a line of devices Copia, a subsidiary of DMC Worldwide, plans to introduce.

Other devices include a 7-inch color e-reader for $129.99, two 6-inch black-and-white e-readers that closely resemble the Kindle 2 for $149.99 without Wi-Fi and $159.99 with Wi-Fi, and a $299.99 10.1-inch Wi-Fi-enabled color tablet.

“We want to make e-reading more accessible to a mass audience,” said Tony Antolino, senior VP of DMC Worldwide and Copia. “Not everyone can afford all of the higher end devices.”

 CAN COPIA REALLY TAKE ON AMAZON?

The question is whether Copia can compete with the established players in the space, several of whom have already captured large shares of the e-book market, established partnerships with major authors and literary agencies, and launched devices that have become household names.

If anyone can do it, I believe Copia can. It’s not just another big brand arriving late to the market; rather, it’s creating a new reading, discussion and shopping experience that’s radically different than what’s being offered by current e-book retailers.

While I don’t think its line of e-ink readers stand a chance against the cheaper, better Kindle 3, the social platform could be a major success. Readers who like to share and discuss what they are reading will discover an integrated experience that will lead them to purchase books from Copia’s store over one of its competitors — if Copia can offer enough incentives to get them to explore the platform in the first place.

What do you think of Copia’s forthcoming line of devices and social reading platform? Can a small manufacturer compete against the likes of Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble?

Original story by Lauren Indvik. The full story can be read here: http://mashable.com/2010/08/03/copia/

Soaring e-book sales speak volumes

HONG KONG — After years of lurking in the literary wilderness, the e-book market has exploded with online retailer Amazon.com's digital volumes recently overtaking sales of their hardcover counterparts.

The increase in sales has come as Amazon slashes the price on its Kindle device amid heavy competition from Apple's multi-purpose iPad and e-readers from Sony and bookstore giant Barnes & Noble.

Underscoring the growth, Hong Kong's massive book fair, an annual event attended by almost one million people, wrapped up last week with visitors exposed to a brand-new section: digital reading.

Beijing-based Hanvon Technology unveiled a black-and-white tablet reader that comes with 5,000 Chinese and English book titles pre-installed for about 3,400 Hong Kong dollars (440 US).

Readers can download thousands more titles for as little as 20 Hong Kong dollars each on the device, which also lets users enlarge the typeface, take notes and look up words in the dictionary.

"One (print) book might cost you 100 Hong Kong dollars or more, and then you have to find a place to store it," Hanvon employee Bo Bo Wong told AFP. "With this, you can have thousands and thousands of books in one place," she said.

Mainland companies such as Hanvon, Acuce and Tianjin are taking on the likes of Apple and Amazon by pushing content tailor-made for the vast and rapidly growing Chinese digital market.

The total value of digital publications across all platforms overtook that of traditional print publications in mainland China for the first time last year, the General Administration of Press and Publication said last week.

According to the South China Morning Post, a recent survey by the Chinese Institute of Publishing Science found that nearly a quarter of the 20,000-plus people it surveyed now do most of their reading digitally.

The newspaper quoted Chen Fuming, a manager of a major bookstore chain in Guangzhou across the border from Hong Kong, as saying Chinese book shops were in crisis.

"Even I myself now prefer to read fiction with my mobile phone," Chen said. "It's cheap and convenient."

New Zealand's Kiwa International, another company showing off its wares at the Hong Kong book fair, is using Apple's iPad as a platform for its child-targeted software.

The Auckland firm's technology lets children interact with books downloaded onto the iPad by colouring in story characters and swiping words that are then repeated aloud -- in nine languages.

"They can totally personalise the book," Kiwa's creative director Derek Judge told AFP. "And we provide a service to (traditional) publishers who want to enter into the digital arena."

Amazon temporarily sold out of its 189-dollar Kindle e-reader last week and on Thursday unveiled a new 139-dollar model that connects online by WiFi instead of via 3G networks.

"Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books -- astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months," Amazon boss Jeff Bezos said last month.

US bookstore chain Borders has also launched an electronic book store to tap into the market, which has seen late Swedish crime writer Stieg Larsson become the first novelist to sell more than one million e-books on Amazon.com.

But while British author and actor Stephen Fry is an avowed technophile, he doesn't think printed books should be written off quite yet.

"Printed books certainly will continue to exist," he said at the Hong Kong fair.

"I love them and will continue to collect them... (with) some books I just want to turn the pages myself."

Originally from Google News - http://tinyurl.com/32ta2tv

In Price War, New Kindle Sells for $139

SEATTLE — Amazon.com will introduce two new versions of the Kindle e-reader on Thursday, one for $139, the lowest price yet for the device. 

Amazon is hoping to convince even casual readers that they need a digital reading device. By firing another shot in an e-reader price war leading up to the year-end holiday shopping season, the e-commerce giant turned consumer electronics manufacturer is also signaling it intends to do battle with Apple and its iPad as well as the other makers of e-readers like Sony and Barnes & Noble.  

Unlike previous Kindles, the $139 “Kindle Wi-Fi” will connect to the Internet using only Wi-Fi instead of a cellphone network as other Kindles do. Amazon is also introducing a model to replace the Kindle 2, which it will sell for the same price as that model, $189. Both new Kindles are smaller and lighter, with higher contrast screens and crisper text. 

“The hardware business for us has been so successful that we’re going to continue,” Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, said in an interview at the company’s headquarters. “I predict there will be a 10th-generation and a 20th-generation Kindle. We’re well-situated to be experts in purpose-built reading devices.” 

When Amazon introduced the Kindle in 2007, Mr. Bezos described it as a must-have for frequent travelers and people who read “two, three, four books at the same time.” Now, Amazon hopes that at $10 less than the least expensive reading devices from Barnes & Noble and Sony, the new Kindle has broken the psychological price barrier for even occasional readers or a family wanting multiple Kindles. 

“At $139, if you’re going to read by the pool, some people might spend more than that on a swimsuit and sunglasses,” Mr. Bezos said. 

Some analysts are predicting that e-readers could become this year’s hot holiday gift. James L. McQuivey, a principal analyst specializing in consumer electronics at Forrester Research, said a price war could for the first time reduce at least the price of one e-reader to under $100, often the tipping point for impulse gadget purchases. 

Amazon has slashed the price of the Kindle at a speed that is unusual, even for electronic gadgets. By last year, the price of the device was to $259, down from its starting price of $399 in late 2007. In June, hours after Barnes & Noble dropped the price of its Nook e-reader to $199, Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle to $189. The Kindle DX, which has a larger, 9.7-inch screen, is $379.

With Amazon’s latest announcement, it is again waging a price war. Barnes & Noble offers a Wi-Fi version of the Nook for $149 and Sony offers the Reader Pocket Edition, which does not have Wi-Fi, for $150. 

Of course, price is just one factor people consider before making a purchase. The quality of the product, adequate inventory and appealing marketing are just as important, said Eric T. Anderson, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

But as the e-reader marketplace has grown crowded “there are lots of substitutes out there so the only way they can create demand is by lowering the price,” he said. 

Still, the iPad’s $499-and-up price tag has not stifled demand for that device. Though the iPad does much more than display books, customers often choose between the two, and are willing to pay much more for the iPad because it is an Apple product, said Dale D. Achabal, executive director of the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University. “The price point Apple can go to is quite a bit higher than the price point other firms have to go to that don’t have the same ease of use, design and functionality,” he said. 

Apple says it has sold 3.3 million iPads since introducing it in April. Amazon does not release Kindle sales figures, but says that sales tripled in the month after its last price cut. 

Two of the most compelling aspects of the iPad — a color display and touch screen — are elements that some customers have been yearning for on the Kindle. Keep waiting, Mr. Bezos said. 

“There will never be a Kindle with a touch screen that inhibits reading. It has to be done in a different way. It can’t be a me-too touch screen,” he said. Earlier this year, Amazon bought Touchco, a start-up specializing in touch-screen technology, but current touch-screen technology adds reflections and glare and makes it hard to shift one’s hands while reading for long periods of time, he said. Color is also “not ready for prime time,” Mr. Bezos said. 

The new Kindles, which will ship Aug. 27, have the same six-inch reading area as earlier Kindles but weigh about 15 percent less and are 21 percent smaller. The Kindles have twice the storage, up to 3,500 books. 

Original post by CLAIRE CAIN MILLER and can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/2efqb3b

The Fast Company Guide to E-Readers

Although it seems that all we ever talk about these days is the tablet--how gorgeous the iPad is, how the tablet will kill off the netbook, a little bit more about the iPad--the more dynamic market of the moment is e-readers. Not a day goes by without the launch of a new model--latest being Asus's Lumibook, and with Marvell muscling in on the Chinese market--and, to be honest, it's all a bit confusing.

Apple has so blurred the boundaries between e-reader and tablet because of its iBook Store, that one could almost argue that the traditional, monochrome version (think Kindle) is almost obsolete. Almost--but that's down to the wondrousness of electrophorectic technology, the fancy (and un-trademarked) name for e-ink, that uses minimal power and is ace for reading in natural daylight. You can see the effects that the iPad has had on the market, however: Engadget uncovered a half-sized iPad simulacrum from Asus (it runs Android, so hints of the B&N Nook there) and, although Jeff Bezos recently claimed there's a color version of the Kindle lurking somewhere in Amazon's labs, it's E.T.A. is "some ways out."

So, when it comes to choosing the right e-reader for you, whatchoo gonna do, Willis? FastCompany.com has separated the wheat from the chaff, and please find, for your delectation, a selection of what we consider to be the most interesting upcoming (and already available) e-readers around. And not an iPad in sight. Well, almost.

Best browser: Bookworms among you may not even be aware that some of the models have Web-browsing capabilities, including the Kindle and the Nook. However, I'm going to blow the black-and-white thang out of the water and say, how about the Pandigital Novel? It's color, it's got Barnes & Noble's half-a-million-volume library, it browses, it's not out yet, but oh ho ho, expect this one to do well. At $200, it's less than the price of a--no, my lips are sealed.

Best book store: They're all pretty damn good, really--although you've got to wonder just how Google will sew up the market if they ever dare to dip their toes back into the hardware market, following their contretemps with the Nexus One. Sony has just announced it is to launch a content-distribution service in Japan, China, Australia, Spain, and Italy. I'll let both Nook and Kindle carry this one off jointly, as they've both got Gut--that's Gutenberg's 1.8 million free books on top of their 500,000 titles--and as I'm a nice girl.

Best for light travelers: As recommended by fellow FC-er, Dan Nosowitz (a more seasoned voyageur you will not meet) the $155 Sony Pocket Reader is, with a mere 5-inch screen and no bulky keyboard, significantly smaller than the competition (even pocket-sized, if you're not wearing skinny jeans). Its memory is beefy enough to allow you around 350 books on it, and it supports books lent from public libraries (any major city library should have an ebook lending system). It's a bit barebones--no search, no annotations, no wireless connection--but it's beautifully designed, absolutely teeny, and it can sometimes be found for $110, nearly impulse-buy territory. If you're not already in hock to the Kindle or Barnes & Noble stores, it's a great option.

Best for someone with a bag-carrier: Oh, without a doubt Plastic Logic's Que. They call it a ProReader, it looks just dreamy, and if ever you want to best someone with an iPad, then this is the e-reader to do it with. It's the business--I'm in no doubt that this is the kind of thing that Tom Ford's minions would be carrying for the great man himself. Price is a little sticky, however--$649 for the 4GB Wi-Fi version, rising to $799 for 8GB Wi-Fi and 3G. I asked, but it doesn't come in a cut-price 1GB version that you pedal yourself. Sigh.

Best apps: If apps is really the only reason you want to buy an e-reader, then why don't you just go to the Apple store and buy the--no, no, I won't say it. If, however, $500 is not the kind of wonga you're planning on shelling out, might I suggest the Nook? Although Android is not quite as hot on the app front as Apple, Barnes & Noble recently churned out a firmware update that lets you upload all kinds of fun and games on its second, color screen. Cost is, like the Kindle, $259.

Best value: If it's all about the money, then plump for the Libre Pro, Borders' riposte to Barnes & Noble's Nook. Costing $120, it comes with 100 free books and a Borders' desktop app. It reads the pretty universal e-book standard file, ePub, as well as .pdf files, has room (via an SD card slot) for 40,000 titles, syncs to your computer, and you can listen to pre-downloaded MP3s on it.

Best for bookworms: It's got to be the Lumiread, Acer's Kindle-esque e-reader, which should be out next month. Acer is staying schtumm about the price so far, but they're known for not beating too much money out of the consumer. Plus, it's got a dinky little scanner that you can use when you're in your local bookstore on a book's ISBN number and which links you to online sites where you can download the e-version of whatever tome it is caught your eye in the Macabre Horror section.

Best if you're not that into books: All right, I'm going to say it--the iPad.

Original piece by Addy Dugdale and can be read here: http://tinyurl.com/32av5rk

Will the iPad Undercut Digital Readers?

The electronic book market is looking increasingly hot, flat and crowded. A vicious price war has broken out among producers of digital readers because of Apple’s success with the iPad. Companies like Amazon hope that selling tomes across multiple devices will fill the profit gap. But competition in e-book distribution is heating up and could pressure margins there, too.

Apple has sold more than three million iPads in about two and a half months. While Amazon doesn’t give figures, analysts think it has sold a similar number of its Kindle e-readers over two and a half years. 

Investors haven’t missed the implications. Amazon’s stock has fallen 8 percent since the iPad arrived. That’s about the same as the market as a whole. The stock of Barnes & Noble, another e-reader seller, has fallen more sharply, losing a quarter of its value. Yet both are still richly priced compared with the market. Amazon trades at 40 times estimated earnings this financial year, and Barnes & Noble at 20 times. 

Meanwhile, Apple’s shares have risen 13 percent since the beginning of April, adding more than $30 billion to the company’s market capitalization. Of course, booming iPhone sales account for a large part of this rise. There’s a three-week waiting list for the latest version when you buy it online, despite some kinks with its antenna. But the iPad figures as well. Analysts’ expectations seem to be rising weekly. Several now predict Apple could sell more than 10 million this year. 

Devices like the Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Sony’s Daily Edition e-reader are made specifically for reading, so they have gray screens that are easy on the eyes and batteries that last for days. The iPad, by contrast, has a bright color screen and a battery that drains more quickly. Its success suggests the perceived advantages of e-readers may turn out not to matter too much to consumers. 

After all, iPad users have already downloaded more than five million e-books. It may be that many people prefer a more versatile device that allows them to browse the Web, watch videos, read e-mail and download games and other applications — and act as an e-reader as well. That’s a potential nightmare for Amazon and other purveyors of e-readers. Think how jack-of-all-trades mobile phones have pushed out initially successful dedicated personal digital organizers.

Pricing trends seem to support the thesis. E-reader sellers slashed their prices this week, some by a quarter. But even corporate clients with giant orders for iPads can’t expect to score any discount. Basic e-readers now go for well under $200 and will almost certainly be offered for less than $100 by Christmas, according to Gartner. 

There’s a battle brewing over e-books, too. Before Apple’s iPad appeared, Amazon sold most Kindle books for $9.99 and lost about $3 a book, analysts reckon. That increased Kindle sales and helped establish both the e-book market and Amazon’s place within it.

The iPad has given publishers ammunition to demand higher prices for digitized books. The net result could be a wash, at least for Amazon. Citigroup estimates the Kindle and e-books combined will continue to account for about 5 percent of the company’s total sales and profit, in line with current levels. 

Apple’s bookselling rivals increasingly hope customers will buy e-books via applications that can be used on multiple devices, including iPads, the BlackBerry and computers. Moreover, e-readers’ ability to provide instant gratification via wireless downloads may mean the market for digital books will continue to grow. 

Since Amazon has a large stock of e-books, the Internet retailer’s reader app should have an advantage over some rivals, including Apple. It was the size of Amazon’s book collection that first established the company as a force to be reckoned with a decade ago.

But Barnes & Noble has an e-book app not so dissimilar to Amazon’s, and plenty of content. Google is preparing to open its digital bookstore this summer. And the talk is that technology companies like Dell and Nokia might see the opportunity, too. 

If most consumers aren’t locked into a specific device, they will presumably shop around for the best bargain. After all, it’s easy to download multiple apps. Electronic books may be gripping for those who buy them. But once competition sets in, the bottom lines of the companies hawking them may not make such a good read.

Originally posted by Robert Cyran of Reuters Breaking News, and can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/technology/28views.html?src=busln

eBook Piracy "Surges" after iPad Launch

This blog was written by Ernesto on TorrenFreak. Here is the original address: http://torrentfreak.com/ebook-piracy-surges-after-ipad-launch-100409/ 

Here is the blog: 

With 500.000 iPads sold in the first week, Apple’s new multi-gadget is already a force to be reckoned with. As book publishers see the iPad as a potential threat to their revenues, we take a look to find out what happened to eBook piracy in the last week. The results are surprising.

The introduction of Apple’s iPod marked a significant change in the music industry’s business. When it was first released in 2001 there were no digital music stores online. By the end of that decade the number of digital music sales had outgrown physical sales by far. 

This year the book industry may see the definite breakthrough for eBooks, and again an Apple device is expected to play a facilitating role. Having watched the changes in the music industry where piracy is often portrayed as a huge threat, some book publishers already fear the worst.

The million dollar question is whether or not these fears are justified. How big of a threat is eBook piracy for the book industry? Is there a noticeable iPad effect? We have some interesting numbers to share.

To determine if Apple’s iPad has had en affect on eBook piracy we looked at the number of downloaded titles before and after its introduction. We decided to focus our research on the 10 best selling eBooks on Amazon which seemed to be a good starting point. The problem, however, is that none of these books are available on public BitTorrent, nor could we find them on file-hosting services or Usenet.

This in itself is quite an interesting observation, and clearly a signal that eBook piracy is not (yet) as widespread as that of music and movies. In order to come up with some comparison material we decided to change our sample to the 10 best selling paperback books in the business category, which should also fit well with the demographics of iPad buyers.

From this list 6 of the 10 books were available on BitTorrent. Although we have to note that BitTorrent may not be the only source of eBook piracy, it should give us a good indication of the iPad effect, if there is any. To do so, we tracked the download numbers from Saturday till Thursday, a week before the iPad launch and the days after. 

By comparing the data from these two samples we found that the number of unauthorized eBook downloads on BitTorrent grew by 78% on average, a significant increase. It is worth noting that all of the six eBooks had more downloads after the iPad launch than before.

David Allen’s productivity guide ‘Getting Things Done’ was by far the most downloaded eBook with an average of 435 downloads a day, up from 277 before the introduction of the iPad. However, this 57% increase is relatively small compared to some of the other titles we tracked.

‘Freakonomics’, another classic in the business section, saw a 104% increase in downloads, going from 187 to 381. ‘How We Decide’ saw an even bigger surge in downloads – 140% – as downloads went from 56 to 134. 

The three remaining books from the list that we tracked on BitTorrent are ‘The Tipping Point’, ‘How Women Decide’ and ‘The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People’. These three titles all saw an increase in downloads, 21%, 47% and 71% respectively, with absolute download numbers after the iPad launch of 192, 52 and 82. 

Interesting data, but what can we conclude from the statistics?

First of all, there seems to be a significant iPad effect if we assume that the increase in downloads is in part related to the iPad introduction. On the other hand it is clear that the absolute download numbers are relatively small compared to those of music and films, where popular releases can have more than a million downloads in one week. 

This low piracy figure can in part be explained by the fact that the number of people with an iPad or other eBook reader is still relatively low. Another key factor is that most books are simply not available in a pirated version, so buying a book through an online store is far more convenient and faster than trying to find an unauthorized copy.

The convenience factor and the overall user experience are going to be the key advantages for the book industry. When the iPod was launched there were no digital download stores, making file-sharing networks the only option to get music easily.

As a final note we have to stress that piracy does not equal lost sales. In the academic publications that looked into the link between piracy and (music) sales, there is still no consensus on this topic. For now, the book industry is best off putting all their efforts into making a great product for consumers and we’re sure that the iPad can be of assistance there. 

In the months to come we will keep en eye on how eBook piracy evolves.

Amazon Vs Apple Be Damned: Publishers Pine for Universal eBook Format

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Giants and upstarts of publishing gathered at the annual BookExpo America here last week agreed e-books will transform the business but believe the big change will come when there is a standard format across which all e-books can be published and shared.

The industry has been going through a tumultuous period as Apple and Amazon duke it out for dominance in the nascent market for electronic books.Both want their devices — the iPad and the Kindle — to be the one consumers use to read e-books, and each wants to be the biggest virtual store were such content is sold.

For Michael Serbinis, chief executive of Kobo, a company that allows users to buy e-books and read them on most devices, that battle is a distraction to the real changes coming.

“Today you can buy a book at Barnes and Noble and you can buy a book at Walmart and you don’t have to keep them in separate rooms in your house,” he said. “You buy a book from Apple and Amazon and you have got to keep it tied up with your Apple universe or your Kindle universe.”

Ultimately, consumers want freedom, said David Shanks, chief executive of leading publisher Penguin Group USA.

“Our fondest wish is that all the devices become agnostic so that there isn’t proprietary formats and you can read wherever you want to read,” Shanks told Reuters. “First we have to get a standard that everybody embraces.” The issue, he said, is the fear of piracy and how to set a common digital rights management system to thwart it.

The battle over technology formats is a familiar one. A century ago, Edison and Victor made records that could not be played on each other’s players. There was the Betamax/VHS videotape struggle and more recently Blu-ray beat out HD DVD.

BookExpo showed traditional books are alive and well. There was buzz for the upcoming book from news parody king Jon Stewart and raucous Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richard’s memoirs as well as a book on home design by Barbra Streisand. And there was evidence of change coming in the age of e-books, although the new format was displayed only in one small corner of the sprawling Javits Center convention halls.

Among the digital companies here were Sideways, which helps authors and publishers transform text into multimedia content, adding video, pictures and features such as Twitter feeds.
Another company, Ripple, allows adults to buy children’s e-books and record their voices reading them. And there were gadgets such as the enTourage eDGe — a twin-screened device which opens like a book to reveal an eReader on one side and a NetBook on the other.

Eileen Gittins of Blurb, which helps authors and companies self-publish, predicts e-books will make up half of all sales in five years. In 2009, the global publishing business, including print and digital, was worth $71 billion, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
“We’re seeing now in book publishing what had happened previously in the music publishing industry. And that is, a massive disruption of the business model,” she told Reuters.
The problem is that the cost of printing is a minor cost of publishing whereas developing work with an author and marketing it consume the lion’s share of costs.
That means, she said, that the book industry will become more like the movie business. “The book publishing industry is becoming more blockbuster focused,” she said.

Susan Petersen Kennedy, president of Penguin Group USA, said publishers will not make the same mistakes as the music industry, which had an epic struggle over electronic distribution and piracy and lost huge market share. “It’s always treated as if the publishers are the Luddites,” she told Reuters in an interview. “The devices have not caught up with the content. Contrary to popular opinion, the book is actually so far more flexible.”

Serbinis says the industry will see dramatic change. He predicted consolidation among publishers and said tablet computers will be common. He expects readers to eventually be able to lend e-books to each other.

And books won’t just be for bookstores any more as new distribution channels from mobile phone companies to gaming companies join the party, he said. “It won’t only be the bookstores that have gone digital,” he said.

You can read the original article here: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/universal-e-books-format/all/1

Photo: Men dress as the iPad and Kindle in effort to promote their company that recycles old electronics during the April 3, 2010, release of the iPad at the Apple store on Fifth Avenue.
Bryan Derballa/Wired.com