• Dead-Tree Luddites – Genevieve LaGreca (Mises Daily)
• Ebook Crowdfunding Platform Unglue.it Launched (The Digital Shift)
• In search of Project Z (FutureBook)
• iPad Retina display: Thanks to my new tablet, I don’t read anything on paper. (Slate Magazine)
•  A Nail in Public Libraries’ Coffins (Copyright and Technology)
• What is this price fixing lawsuit about anyway? A Q&A (Dear Author)
•  When You Wish Upon a Star, You Get the Pointy End: Why Authors Should ALWAYS Respond To Negative Reviews (Digital Book World)

And watch this:

<iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/42372767″ width=”400″ height=”300″ frameborder=”0″ webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>

The Morning Coffee – 21 May 2012 is post from The Digital Reader

One common complaint about self-pubbed ebooks is the frequency of errors. This is something that has annoyed Rich Adin, and he’s posted about it several times (here, here). It hasn’t bothered me much because  first I’m more tolerant, but TBH I hadn’t noticed the issues because I wasn’t reading much beyond my comfort zone. I had a number of authors I liked and since they wrote more than I could read I never tried to find new stuff.

This past weekend I decided to expand my horizons a little, so I bought the monthly ebook bundles from Baen Books. For $18 I got a set of 5 to 7 titles each month, all DRM-free. This is a pretty good deal and I think it’s the best way to find new authors.

Those bundles are where Baen got its start in ebooks over 10 years ago and they are the one marketing idea which I wish more publishers would adopt. Unfortunately, those bundles are also a way to really quickly find crappy ebooks.

I started reading Friday afternoon. I’m now into my 3rd ebook and I cannot take it anymore.

All three ebooks had numerous transcription, formatting, and spelling errors. While I have a moderate tolerance for the mistakes I find in ebooks, these ebooks far exceeded that. They all had so many errors that I remember the errors more than the plots.

For example, in the book The General’s President, there’s a reference to Mount Tamboro, a volcano in Indonesia. A simple Google search will reveal that the correct name is Tambora. How I wish Baen had taken the time to Google the name.

Update: A reader is disputing the validity of my complaint about the volcano’s name, so I wish to replace that with a list of obvious spelling and transcription errors.

• SubliminaJly
• felse
• diagraming
• manuevers
• reconnaisance
• cireumstances
• videocamera
• fecial

The above list took me about 5 minutes with a basic spellchecker in Libre Office. These 8 mistakes come from about 40 pages of the 387 page RTF file. Yes, folks, Baen didn’t even bother to run spellcheck before they sold this ebook.

That title is from 1988, which suggests that Baen had to have a paper copy scanned in order to create the ebook. This would explain the numerous other errors in the ebook where the scanning software misread a letter.

When you’re scanning an old book, you tend to get that kind of error a lot. OCR software does a good job but it isn’t perfect. You really have to proofread the output just to catch the mistakes, and Baen clearly did not do that with The General’s President.

And I’m seeing similar errors in the other 2 ebooks I’ve read. Right now I’m trying to read a Keith Laumer anthology called Earth Blood and Other Stories, but I’m not sure I can stomach any more mistakes. One error in particular was so egregious that I was forced to stop and post this rant. It was the 5th error I found in that book, not the first, and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Please, Baen, tell me how someone can “burst into bears”? I would like to know.

I’d also like to find out how long we’ve been putting up with this crap. It’s been some time since I bought new stuff from Baen (my TBR pile was enormous) so I don’t know when they started slacking off. Did anyone notice a turning point?

I would also bet that I am not alone in this. What errors have you found in ebooks from Baen?

When Did the Quality of Baen’s eBooks Start Sucking So Bad? is post from The Digital Reader

The San Diego Unified School District has just announced plans to buy 27 thousand iPads for students to use this fall. The iPads will be assigned to 5th and 7th grade classrooms for students to use while in school. This is a cart based plan, with 34 iPads per cart.

The school district went with the iPad 2 8GB, which saves them a around $100 in exchange for a drop in performance. That was a fairly good idea, so long as they plan to use the iPads as classroom tools instead of digital textbook platforms. One thing that some might have overlooked is that the new iBooks digital textbooks are rather sizable files; it’s not uncommon for them to hit 1GB. Since the new iPad 2 only has 6GB of storage it’s going to run out of space fairly quickly.

The district is spending $370 per iPad – slightly less than the netbook which it is replacing ($389). That price includes includes a three-year warranty and other extras.

The project is part of the school district’s i21 initiative, and it’s funded by a bond measure which voters had approved in 2008. San Diego is in year 3 of a 5 year plan to update and equip all 7 thousand classrooms with new technology tools with the goal of enhancing the learning experience of all students.

In the first 2 years of the plan, the school district distributed 75 thousand netbooks to classrooms in the third through fifth grades as well as issuing them to some students in grades 6 and up. The netbooks have been set aside in favor of iPads, though it’s not clear whether the iPads will be issued to students like the netbooks were supposed to be.

The school district boasts around 120,000 students, which suggests that all of the classrooms and students which were intended to be covered by i21 will soon have either an iPad or currently have a netbook. On a side note, the i21 initiative includes more than just issuing netbooks and iPads to students. There’s also funding to equip teachers with new tablet PCs and provide laser printers, interactive whiteboards, and other useful technology in each classroom.

It also includes training for the teachers, who will undergo a 1 day session on how to use and manage the new iPads. They will also be given information and tips about how to select educational apps.

P.S. You might be interested to know that there are other smaller iPad programs in the San Diego area. For example, a private school by the name of Cathedral Catholic High School is going to issue iPads to 1,700 students and then bill the parents. A school district outside of San Diego, Clearwater, is about to issue iPads to 7th graders.

–

While Apple might have talked about how iBooks Author will revolutionize education, I think the program above was what they really wanted. They’ll likely sell a number of digital textbooks to this school district but that will be chump change when compared to the 10 million plus dollars the San Diego school district has already spent on hardware.

Apple has never been all that serious about selling content, and this goes back to the launch of iTunes. No, the content has always been a tool to drive hardware sales. That’s why, in Q1 2012, Apple sold over $10 billion in iPads and iPods and yet only 1.7 billion in content via iTunes.

I wonder how long it’s going to take all the publishers who backed iBooks Author at the launch event to realize they’ve been had? It seems to me that Apple’s only revolutionary act here was to revolve more money into their coffers.

via

image by flickingerbrad

San Diego to Distribute 27 Thousand iPads to Middle Schools is post from The Digital Reader

The French ebookstore cooperative 1001Libraries was launched just over a year ago as a way for independent booksellers to get on the web. Alas, after a year of discussion and development, the project has been deemed too expensive and it’s going to be shut down.

Actualitte and BuchReport are reporting that Mathieur Montchalin, president of SLF, the Union of the French Bookstores, decided this pat week that due to technical issues and rising cost, this project wasn’t worth the expense anymore.

But it was a good idea while it lasted.  The plan was to offer a white label retail website which French booksellers could customize to fit their existing online presence. It lets customers find and check the stock of their local bookstore. They can also browse from a catalog of nearly a million printed books and 80,000 ebooks.

The site also features recommendations made by real booksellers and not by algorithms, as well as some elements of building a community around each bookstore.  Booksellers can also be able to publish their own book reviews and hold discussions with readers.

But as much as some may have liked it, cost trumps everything. The planned customized websites ended up being simply too expensive,  and in any case there weren’t enough booksellers participating, so the general operating costs weren’t being covered and wouldn’t be without charging the bookstores higher fees.

BTW, while the site was called 1001Libraries, a proper translation would be 1001Bookstores. Note that there are only 296 participating booksellers now, which should give you an idea of the original high hopes and just how far they were from being achieved.

1001Libraires To Close Up Shop is post from The Digital Reader

The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) has just published a request for feedback. They want to hear the opinion of technical and user experience experts on a new draft revision to the Epub specification.

Update: I just finished reading my way through the use cases. They don’t actually fit the goals mentioned in the first 2 thirds. They don’t specify a light weight DRM but instead discuss restrictions that would require DRM as heavy as used by Adobe. Silly me, I thought the different sections would agree. (The rest of this post assumed that the proposed DRM actually would be lightweight.)

While past revisions have covered various technical details for the Epub spec, this one covers DRM, and more importantly it’s a first look at ways to add DRM to an Epub that:

• one, doesn’t bother the user,
• two, isn’t quite so expensive to use (here’s why, and here’s why),
• three, has less onerous hardware requirements, and
• four, still acts to minimize or discourage piracy.

If you’re thinking that the first and fourth points sound familiar, they should. Pottermore, home of the Harry Potter ebooks, launched their ebookstore with a type of DRM that comes fairly close to meeting the goals of the proposed draft, while it doesn’t meet the use cases mentioned in the draft, it does offer some useful features that I wish would be adopted. They use something called digital watermarks to add identifying info to the Epubs they sell.

These watermarks effectively are little bits of data buried inside the ebook.  Unlike other forms of DRM, a unique digital watermark is created when each copy of an ebook is generated. This lets the ebookstore add something to the ebook which can still be to track down who originally bought (and then pirated) a particular copy of an ebook.

Pottermore’s DRM was provided by a Dutch company called Booxtream, and it’s the first well known example of digital watermarks (in ebook files).

Consider for a moment what the watermarks allow Pottermore to do.  They are selling DRMed ebooks which can be read on any ereader or app that supports Epub, and with a little effort can be read on the Kindle as well. This gives Pottermore a potential customer base that extends far beyond the reach of any of the major ebookstores and in fact encompasses all the major platforms (Amazon, B&N, Adobe, Apple).

If a major ebookstore were able to follow suit, they would be able to sell ebooks which could be read anywhere (with no work to strip the DRM). This would enable that ebookstore to start poaching customers from everyone else – especially the ebookstores who have not yet adopted the lightweight DRM.

Let’s get back to the topic. So what’s the value of this draft?

This idea obviously can be implemented without the draft, so about all this draft will accomplish is to generate attention for the idea of a lightweight DRM. Okay, anyone who cared to know about DRM already did, but the fact remains that having a formal spec would be a lot more impressive than simply arguing for the idea.

Consider for example the media conglomerates who own the Big 6 publishers. These major publishers have been stalwart users of DRM, but in some cases the DRM was foisted on the publisher from above. That’s certainly the case with Tor-Forge books, who had reportedly wanted to go DRM free a decade ago.

If and when this spec is completed, it will open up an opportunity for publishers to go wave it under the nose of their myopic bosses. And that is what I’m really looking forward to.

But it’s also going to give developers a set of requirements to work towards. Right now Booxtream is the only company I am aware of that offers this kind of DRM, so I would really like to see them get some competition. This will drive down the cost of using it, so we’d all benefit.

And, with luck, someone in the open source community might decide to release their own set of code which meets the new standard.  That code would cost almost nothing to integrate into an ebookstore, thus reducing the cost of building and running it.

This is a win-win-win-win scenario here.

Request

Draft Ideas

image by wilhelmja

IDPF Now Looking into Lightweight DRM Options (Only They’re Not) is post from The Digital Reader

Amazon is pitching ads on the device’s welcome screen, according to an executive at an agency that Amazon has pitched. The company has been telling ad agency execs that they must spend about $600,000 for any package that includes such an ad.

Here’s my question: If Amazon really wanted to offer ads on the KF then why didn’t they launch the ad supported KF back in November? 

That’s a rather obvious sticking point, isn’t it? Amazon launched 3 different ad supported Kindles that day. Surely if they’d wanted to they could have offered the KF with ads. In fact, they likely could have priced the ad supported KF at $199 and offered the ad free model for $249. This would have achieved Amazon’s secondary goal of putting the squeeze on B&N while still netting Amazon a nice chunk of change.

But I think this rumor is at least partially true, only I don’t know which part. Ad Age reportedly has a second source, and that does suggest some real basis for the rumor – unless that second source was an invention, something reporters have done before. Note that this story also has the July launch rumor wrong, which raises questions about  the reporters attention to detail.

I don’t know. This rumor is one of those stories with no real way to get a handle on it and no way to analyze it. There’s always a chance that it is true but so far as we know there’s an equal chance that it’s not. And for all we know this might be true but simply not work out because well no one wants to buy.

Unlikely Rumor: Amazon to Offer Ads on Kindle Fire is post from The Digital Reader

US publishers reported exporting $336 million (up 2.3% over 2010) in paper books and $21.5 million (up 333% over 2010) in ebooks last year. Note that these are true exports, not rights sales, so we’re counting books that were physically moved out of the country as well as ebooks sold in foreign ebookstores. The report shows that publishers are making a stronger effort to market overseas; they now offer over 90% of their titles to international customers.

But as interesting as the numbers above might be, have you considered what isn’t covered? I’d never considered the export situation before, but as I read the email I started wondering what data might be missed. I’m not criticizing anyone for accuracy; my curiosity was piqued by the possibility that could not report complete data because they didn’t have it.

Publishers can sell their paper books to overseas customers, distributors, and retailers, but so can US retailers. For example, Amazon sells books overseas, but I’m still not sure if that data gets back to publishers. (Does anyone know?) So those sales might not be included.

But the more important story (more interesting at least) is how publishers track ebook sales. While the reported figures include over 1500 retailers (print and digital)  the ebook export stat doesn’t include all the ebookstores. For example. while Apple and Google will break the data down by country, Kobo doesn’t. I was told by David Moynihan of Olympia Press that Kobo sends publishers a spreadsheet that doesn’t show sales by country.

What’s more, Amazon rather complicates the situation. According to David, they send reports for each of their local ebookstores, but the rest of the world buys from the Kindle Store at Amazon.com. Data from that Kindle Store isn’t broken down by country, so we don’t really know how many ebooks they sell overseas.

Interesting, no? Now that I know what isn’t covered, it’s clear that the ebook exports are probably significantly higher than the stats above would have you believe.  That 300% plus increase would very likely be even more impressive if we could get all the data.

P.S. In case it’s not clear by now I am a stats junkie. Finding out where the data ends is always fun.

–

In a new report produced by the Association of American Publishers and released today, US publishers in the Trade sector (fiction and non-fiction for adults and children) have seen significant sales increases worldwide in both print and e-format English-language books in the past year.

According to publishers who contributed 2010 and 2011 data to the report, factors for the recent growth include internet access to the full range of English-language titles, particularly those previously unavailable in many markets; the rise of eBooks globally and new readers; interest in US editions; and publishers’ strategic expansion in international sales, marketing and distribution.

The full report is available for purchase.  Contact info@publishers.org for more information.

US publishers currently export, on average, 90% of their titles in print and/or e-formats and work with nearly 15,000 international retailers in 200 countries.  More than 750 million people outside the US can read English.

Highlights of the report, analysis and a chart with all referenced data follow (note:  if chart grid is not showing up for you below, let me know):

Total export sales

In 2011, US Trade publishers’ net sales revenue was $357.4 million* representing 71.9 million total units.  This was a 7.2% increase over 2010’s $333.3 million and 0.9% over 71.3 total units.

Print and e-formats

Total eBook net sales revenue for 2011 was $21.5 million, a gain of 332.6% over 2010; this represents 3.4 million eBook units sold in 2011, up 303.3 %.  As comparison, print formats (Hardcover, Paperback and Mass Market Paperback) increased 2.3% to $335.9 million in 2011.

Growth regions

The most rapidly-growing regions for US publishers include:

Continental Europe – 14.7% overall increase in revenue; 218.8% in eBooks, 9.5% in print

UK – 22.9% overall year-to-year increase in revenue; 1316.8% increase in eBooks, 10.4% in print

Latin America – 15.4% increase in revenue overall; 201.6% in eBooks and 9.7% in print

Africa – 21.9% total increase in revenue; that translated to 636.8% gain in eBooks and 17.1% in print

According to publishers, growth in print and e-format export sales has been complementary for several years and will continue to follow this pattern for the foreseeable future, with a considerable percentage of print format revenue coming from the international marketplace.  Historically, foreign distributors – particularly those in non-English language countries – offered only 5-10% of US publishers’ English-language titles, mainly bestsellers and in print formats.  Internet access, however, has brought the full slate of titles to consumers in these countries; this was followed by the international emergence of eBooks in 2009 and the most dramatic growth in that sector over the last 12 months.

Another reason for the growth comes from US Trade publishers actively expanding their global strategies.  Over the past few years, publishers have reached deeper into the international consumer base through marketing and publicity, especially digitally and with social media; sales; and distribution.  US publishers have established a strong presence across the world.

Finally, various factors were cited by publishers regarding the popularity of US titles.  Often, the draw is the original US edition itself.  Certain genres such as entertainment, US pop culture and American business topics have special appeal as well as children’s/young adult books in countries where English as a second language is important.

For media:  For more information or to arrange interviews with industry experts, please contact Andi Sporkin, asporkin@publishers.org

Data for this report was extrapolated from BookStats 2011 figures and supplemental data was provided by publishers and their distribution clients, a total of 161 publishers.  Participating publishers included Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, MIT, Penguin, Perseus, Random House, Simon & Schuster and W.W. Norton.

*Canada is excluded from all figures cited in this highlights summary release since its sales reporting status (whether it is included in domestic or foreign revenue) differs based on publisher.  The full report, which has more comprehensive analysis and detailed data, includes Canada.

US Publishers Exported $21.5M eBooks in 2011 (The Real Figure is Higher) is post from The Digital Reader

Chip.de didn’t indicate their source for this story, so I would take it with a large grain of salt. But even though it is a rumor, it’s still quite plausible.

We know that B&N has already registered a local subsidiary in Germany. This was back in March, and I’ve been told that the German sub indicated plans for the German market, but that was more due to the fact that the B&N’s other subsidiary, the one in the Netherlands, was positioned in a more business friendly environment.

While we don’t know if Thalia is B&N’s intended partner, they are one of the more likely candidates. They have over 200 stores in Germany, and they’ve also been putting a lot of effort into developing their own ebookstore and ereader.  They’ve even released a couple models (Oyo, Oyo II), though I don’t know how much success they’ve had on the market. Thalia also bought an app developer by the name of Textunes last year. This developer specializes in reading and ebook apps, and that should give you an idea how seriously they are taking the ebook market.

On the other hand, there is at least one other possible partner in Germany; Weltbild. This publisher and media retailer has released a number of ereaders under its own brand in the past year. All were rebranded devices originally developed by other companies, and that would likely give Weltbild a step up in rebranding the Nook. Weltbild is also currently up for sale by its owner, the Catholic Church, so there’s even a chance that B&N might buy it. Assuming they had the funds, it might even be a good idea.

In any case, I agree with Chip.de that B&N is working with someone in Germany; I’m just not convinced that it’s Thalia.

Rumor: German Bookseller Thalia to Sell the B&N Nook is post from The Digital Reader

• Adele (The Passive Voice)
• Amazon to Sell Ads on Kindle Fire Welcome Screen (Advertising Age)
• Final Score in the Georgia State Game: Library 94, Publishers 5 (The Scholarly Kitchen)
• In the Digital Era, Publication Isn’t Preservation (Digital Book World)
• International Ebook Antitrust Lawsuits [INFOGRAPHIC] (popular soda)
• Introducing The Novel
• Simon & Schuster settles antitrust-ebook suit with state AGs (CNET)
• What is needed (John D. Berry dot com)

Adele | The Passive Voice http://ebookne.ws/JUCJat

The Morning Coffee – 18 May 2012 is post from The Digital Reader

We all ssumed when the Nooklit launched a few weeks ago that it likely had a different set of guts from the earlier model, but it wasn’t until today that we knew how different.

Tech Republic cracked open their Nooklit and it turns out that it’s not nearly as different as I thought. While the Nooklit weighs half an ounce less than the Nook Touch, it turns out than the savings didn’t come from a weaker battery or redesigned circuit board. The battery is the exact same model as the one found in the Nook Touch, and the shell is also identical. Even the circuit board is almost identical (here’s the teardown of the original Nook Touch for comparison).

The one key difference between the 2 devices is the frame. The Nooklit weighs less because it has a lighter metal frame than the one supporting the Nook Touch. According to Tech Republic, the Nooklit has a magnesium frame while the Nook Touch appears to have an aluminum frame. It’s surprising how much that can change the weight, isn’t it?

And it’s not likely to affect the durability, either. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in my years as a blogger it’s that most broken screens happen when you least expect it and often when you cannot explain how it happened. What’s more, there are magnesium  alloys out now which are stronger than aluminum, so the Nooklit might even be more durable than the Nook Touch.

Inside the New Nook Touch (Nooklit) is post from The Digital Reader