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

A Trip Through Kindle: The Author's Perspective

If you have been reading TNW US over the last several weeks, you will have noticed that we have been covering the e-reader market nearly every day. Much is happening in that part of the technological kingdom, and it has important future implications.

Questions such as: will publishers maintain their current clout in the market, will authors increasingly publish their own work, will the average e-book price itself at $9.99, or $2.99 or $12.99, are all bouncing around without any clear answers. A quickly growing fan of the e-book idea and a recent Kindle convert on my iPad, I decided to test publishing on Kindle myself. Until you try, you do not know.


For the indie author, does self publishing on Kindle live up to the hype that it liberates you from every needing to find a publisher, or is it more a small scratch on a bigger itch that you can’t fix? The answer, not surprisingly, from my now personal experience, is somewhere in between. If you have the resources and the drive, I see no reason why you could not become a successful, selling author on the Kindle (et al e-readers) platform. I can also see how you could spend months writing a tract, and sell two copies. Let’s break it down.


Effort In, Success Out


I wrote a short essay, mostly gave it away for free (on Scribd, put a short version on HuffPo, published it on my blog, etc.), but also sold it on Kindle. This was however, no small side project. I had three separate people assist with editing over three drafts. I paid a graphic designer to draw a cover for the work. I promoted it where I could, and it performed well on Amazon, shooting (temporarily) to the #1 book on Kindle in the Atheist genre, and the #3 book on Atheism overall for about half a day.
Did it sell huge quantities? No. In fact, I doubt that it will recoup the money I paid to have it prepared. Worth it? To me yes, the project wasn’t about money.


However, there seems to be a feeling among many indie/smaller authors that Kindle is some sort of panacea, and that merely being ‘out there’ on Amazon (and iPad, etc) will ensure that people pay for their work. Here is a little secret that every blogger knows, but that many old-school printy people just don’t seem to get: the horse may drink the water, but you have to drag it to the damn pond. This is even more true when you expect people to actually pay for your writing, unlike in blogging where you give it away for free.


Being on Kindle means that you have made the first step to selling your work, but not that you will actually move a single copy. You have merely opened the door. Once you are on Kindle, the real fun begins. Promotion is the last thing that authors and writers like to do, even us online types, but it is part of the game, period. The more effort you put in, the more success you will receive.


I’m In A Niche!


If you follow e-books, you have heard the following statement: “E-readers are great! I can write on my narrow, narrow niche, and still reach people with my great content!” Small tip: niche genres are more publishable on Kindle than in print, but they are still niche. You will be effectively limiting your sales potential out of the gate if you write about a small one.


People protest this. “But there are millions of Kindles out there, so there must be thousands who also like to cross-stitch using organic hemp cat gut! They need my $24.99 guide!” Maybe, but see our previous point. It is doubly true in a narrow genre. If your work is mass market, you promotion efforts will have greater effect. If you reach 1000 people in your campaign, and your work is 50% mainstream, then 500 people might be interested in it. If your topic is 5% mainstream, then only 50 of those people are potential readers. The math makes niche, well, niche.


Be careful that you don’t paint yourself into a corner and end up with 50,000 words that no one will ever read. Not sure if you are too niche? Find the last book in your genre that was a bestseller. Not one in the last five years? Move on.


Is Kindle Easy?


If you want to do it poorly, yes. It sounds trite, but you can publish into Kindle and the other platforms simply, or you can do it well. My essay was only 3,000 words so I went with simply (poorly), but if you need chapters, an index, and the like, you are going to need to get nitty gritty into the world of HTML. Don’t want to play? Then don’t show up to the game.


Like it or not, Kindle is not kid’s stuff. It’s a professional platform that you can use to reach millions of readers. If you show up like an amateur, you will be ignored like a chump. If you actually expect people to give you their hard earned money, get ready to provide legitimate value. If you need help, go talk to the guru of Kindle, J. A. Konrath.


Amazon Versus The World


What does all of this say in the ongoing e-book wars? Initially do note that, despite all of my warnings, Kindle is still the simplest and best place for anyone who likes to write to self publish something that they have written. The Nook and iBooks platforms will catch up shortly, but for now, Kindle is the winner.


Of course, most of the books (I presume) that are sold on the big three e-reader platforms are not works by indie authors, but by big names on the bestseller lists. So, this Kindle edge I just stated is (probably) not that big a structural advantage, but it can’t hurt. Do remember that Kindle still has the most titles and usually the cheapest price of all the e-platforms. It’s competitors are experimenting with good products like NOOKstudy, but for now, Kindle reigns.


During my first run through Kindle, everything was smooth as a button. I have not a single complaint. I really can’t recall the last time that I tried a new platform (for me) and could say that. Have you tried Kindle? What do you think?

By Alex Wilhelm, who is a Chicago based technology blogger and entrepreneur. The piece can be found here: http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/07/17/a-trip-through-kindle-the-authors-perspective/

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