I am likely to make a couple predictions based on what I’ve witnessed happening this week in the Ebook market. As with any variety of prognostication, I likely have a 50-50 opportunity of becoming completely wrong. But guessing about the foreseeable future, particularly in the rapid-paced realm of know-how, is my type of enjoyment.
Initial off, how do you spell ebook? Or is it e-e book? Newspapers like the NY Occasions use the hyphen, and stylish rulebreakers will not. I’m betting with the fashionable rulebreakers simply because, hey, they’re the rulemakers of tomorrow (which is next 7 days).
The celebration that additional than anything acquired me heated up about the pre-Xmas hype for e-visitors (hyphen here for readability?) was an ad I observed on on TV just two nights back for the Sony Reader. Now, this gadget has been on the marketplace for a few of years. It was a single of the initial of its kind, predating the Amazon Kindle. But Sony’s approach was evidently to encourage it 1st mainly to scholars and librarians, having print ads in some of the snobbier journals. I complained in my web site, even back again then, that Sony was preaching to the choir and squandering its guide time by not addressing shoppers specifically. I desired to see a billboard campaign with some glitzy, techno counterpart to silhouettes of dancers leaping close to wearing white earbuds.
And I was mystified that Apple seemed to be ignoring that market place deliberately. In actuality, I was appalled when Steve Work opportunities reportedly remarked that kids will not read anymore, so no stage in launching a reader. I hoped that was intelligent disinformation, a great deal as I dislike the use of disinformation in any form, for any motive. (You can examine ebooks on an Iphone applying numerous 3rd-celebration applications. I never assume that’s a core strategy for Apple, though.)
So I did a little bit of info drilling on the Sony advert and found that persons reported viewing it as early as past thirty day period (August 2009) in some regional marketplaces. I dwell in the Los Angeles space, and I’d in no way viewed it. But this confined publicity past month seems to me like take a look at internet marketing. I would wager that now, write-up-Labor-Day and pre-getaway, you’ll see that ad a ton, on all key networks, broadcast and cable, and nationwide.
Individually, I think the advert sucks, depicting a panel of authorities (some/all actors), who are touting the detail. One particular statements to be the earth-winner speed-reader, and I guess he basically is. But gyrating pop-icon silhouettes, they’re not. Once yet again, Sony is pitching the geeks. (I rely myself as a geek so do not consider I am disparaging my peers. It is just that we are not the vast majority of the population or everyone in the U.S. would have experienced Medicare years ago.)
Add to this portentous improvement the associated proof that Philips iRex is now currently being introduced in a venture with Very best Purchase and Verizon, as reported in yesterday’s NY Instances. The iRex reads the open-resource EPUB format. Sony not long ago announced that the Reader would before long guidance that format, as well, along with its proprietary LRF format and Adobe PDF. 1 massive variance is that EPUB books normally the deficiency electronic legal rights administration (DRM) electronic copying restrictions imposed by LRF, Amazon Kindle, and some Adobe PDF versions.
For my portion, I made a decision to sign up for the club and beefed up my membership and existence on E book distribution support Smashwords.com, which supports EPUB and LRF, as very well as a lot of the other formats. I am contemplating a significant consideration for Ebook customers need to be the long-expression expense of purchasing information. Selling prices of ebooks range extensively, but quite a few Amazon Kindle versions are advertised at just below ten bucks. Lots of Smashwords EPUB versions range from no cost to a buck or two, despite the fact that bestsellers commonly expense extra. Then also, you can find the general public area library provided by Undertaking Gutenberg, where everything is both of those free and about a hundred years outdated. But if you are on the lookout for Charles Dickens fairly than Dan Brown, you can come across him and thousands of other well-known authors there in EPUB, HTML, and “plain-textual content” formats.
It appears to be like as though the Sony Reader Pocket Version is priced most affordable amid its competition, but it lacks wireless connectivity. Perhaps that is no massive deal and the price tag position is the very important variable. Other Sony Reader types, as well as the Kindle and the iRex, have constructed-in wireless (with bundled company), which I’m guessing is the primary reason for the price tag differential.
All this will change, probably by the time I simply click the Submit button to post this report.
And what about Apple? Can we expect an announcement any working day? I am betting on a plug-in tablet-sized display as an accessory to the existing iPods. Years in the past, I saw a “leaked” YouTube slide presentation on this kind of a system, as while it had been ready for an Apple improvement staff briefing. No matter if the online video clip was bogus or not, the principle makes perfect feeling, the two technically and commercially. The Apple iphone is a helpful reader, but I would not browse a novel on it.
And I also considered Amazon’s technique to introduce the more substantial-structure Kindle 3 into the university textbook model was a amazing move–into a market area of interest you’d imagine Sony would have owned by then.
I don’t know whether it implies just about anything, but I can not locate that leaked Apple video clip on YouTube any longer…
