The new WiFi model will hopefully remove any final impediments to Amazon shipping its device to New Zealand customers. We’re still mysteriously Kindle-free almost a year after the international release. If, as most of us suspect, this is due to the lack of a deal with a local telco,  Amazon should at least be able to ship the WiFi model to these shores.

The new Kindle is 21 percent smaller and 15 percent lighter than the previous model. It has a 20 percent faster refresh rate on its E Ink screen, longer battery life (1 month without wireless, 10 days with wireless on), and a larger 4GB storage. It comes in white and a slate grey. Endgadget briefly got their hands on the gadget and report that:

… the Kindle is still very much the reading device you know and love (or hate, depending on your preferences). The build quality and materials used did seem slightly more polished than the previous version, and we really liked the new, more subtle rocker. We can also attest to screen refreshes and overall navigation feeling noticeably more responsive and snappy compared with the previous generation.

The US$139 price point of the WiFi model might be the final push the market needs to get below the US$100 mark for basic models such as the Kobo or BeBook One. The latter is still a ridiculously expensive A$449 for a non-WiFi e-Ink reader. It’s a perfectly good eReader but it’s hard to see how the smaller independent makers like BeBook can survive when they remain so far out of line with market trends.

Amazon's third generation Kindle

When Apple banned Adobe’s Flash from its iPhone and iPad, it knocked the wind out of Adobe’s strategy to bring its widely-used design tools to the emerging smartphone and tablet platforms. This has left most publishers in limbo without a clear strategy to get onto these platfoms.

Of course, no-one expects it to be quite as easy as this video shows, and there are some well-founded concerns that Adobe’s first-generation solution might turn out to be a fair bit of smoke and mirrors.

But put all this aside for a moment and just dream a little about how things might be soon.

One of the big issues looming on the digital horizon is the role libraries will play with ebooks. A pre-emptive move earlier this year by the UK government has upset booksellers and shows that the industry here, too, needs to get involved in this debate.

So far, libraries’ digital activity has mostly been confined to research uses. The prevalence of the cumbersome PC as the main reading platform means the bread and butter of the book trade, fiction and general non-fiction, has barely been touched. But mobile reading devices and a surge in availability of popular ebooks are pushing libraries into the digital mainstream.

The few libraries experimenting today with ebook downloads typically have very thin collections. This is partly due to tight budgets but also stems from concerns by publishers and authors about how—indeed whether—libraries should lend digital editions of their books.

It’s the latter that has prompted the UK government to legislate so that patrons in libraries can download digital editions to their ebook readers without libraries infringing copyright. At the same time, it will issue an order under legislation “preventing libraries from charging for ebooks lending of any sort, including remotely.”

On the face of it, this looks like a big win for the reading public. Most people I speak to about ebooks get excited by the idea that they’ll be able to borrow them free from their libraries. And most people have a visceral sense that borrowing from a public library should be free to all. But this excitement is not shared as acutely by publishers, authors and booksellers.

Macmillan US CEO John Sargent put the industry problem succinctly when he said recently, “In the past, getting a book from libraries has had a tremendous amount of friction. You have to go to the library, maybe the book has been checked out and you have to come back another time … With ebooks, you sit on your couch in your living room and go to the library website, see if the library has it … You get the book, read it, return it and get another, all without paying a thing … How is that a good model for us?”

For much of the public, politicians, and librarians, this seems like a perfectly good model which accords with the common view that the digital world should operate the same way as print. But it is likely to be bad news for publishers, authors and booksellers. The former might lose sales because libraries can lend ebooks more efficiently (they need fewer websites than physical libraries) and they don’t wear out or get lost. And publishers, authors and booksellers all potentially suffer if the free option is as “frictionless” to get as their more expensive paid editions. And there might be less desire to “own” an electronic file than a real book.

Perversely, libraries are likely to suffer too from the UK government mandate to lend all ebooks free of charge. Most will not be able to afford a serious ebook lending programme without painful cuts to other services. If no other measures are taken, the result will be a crippled ebook service with a very limited selection. Ironically, booksellers concerned about competing with free loans should probably cheer the unintended consequence of this heavy-handed move.

But let’s not cheer too soon. Faced with this outcome, the government might tip the balance in libraries’ favour by forcing rightsholders to make big concessions, effectively subsidising libraries and setting up an even stronger competitor for booksellers. Its planned copyright changes to let libraries lend ebooks with or without publisher permission shows it’s not averse to forcing rightsholders’ hands.

So what is a reasonable role for libraries and how do we achieve this balance of interests? To avoid the heavy-handed legislative approach we’re seeing unfold in the UK, we need to talk directly to the library sector and other stakeholders in our own part of the world.

And we need to consider how the ebooks ecosystem will evolve.

If we look at the film industry as a comparison, there’s an initial cinematic release followed by release to rental and sell-through channels, then pay TV, then free-to-air TV. Through this measured roll-out, the industry manages to extract value at every price point, including free, and sells through many channels to reach as much of the market as possible. About 80% of the film industry’s income is earned after cinematic release.

Ebooks need a range of channels and price points too, to properly service the market and maximise the value of our creative assets. And with books it’s not just an economic equation: we have to consider social impacts.

So which channels will open up for ebooks? We’re in the early stages of developing a “full price” channel and still have a lot of work to do selling the value of digital books to consumers. And we can expect that libraries will offer some sort of free channel, whether selectively or open to all. Other (legal) free-to-consumer channels might emerge, perhaps through ISPs—and might have to develop to stem piracy.

I personally would like to see a vibrant rental channel for ebooks. And I’d like to see both libraries and booksellers participating, perhaps with release dates delayed just as DVDs today follow cinematic release. This would be an interesting “back to the future” scenario for booksellers. Before the public library movement, they had a thriving book rental market and in their heyday, there were more than 1000 “circulating libraries” in mid-nineteenth century Britain.

A paid rental option could bring much-needed money into libraries’ strained coffers, resulting in a better service to patrons who can pay and, with this improved funding, a better free service for those who can’t. For publishers and authors, it offers the prospect of fair compensation for readership through libraries.

While booksellers might be concerned that libraries are straying into commercial territory, it will be worse all around if they are backed into a corner by politicians and a public with high expectations, while not given the resources to deliver on these aspirations.

We’d then confront two equally grim scenarios: a high quality free service competing aggressively with booksellers and largely paid for by onerous terms thrust on publishers and authors by legislation. Or a crippled public library service struggling with dwindling patronage and increasing irrelevance.

These are tough issues with far-reaching impacts. Time to start talking and find a way through this.

A new usability study by leading usability researcher Jakob Nielsen lined up the printed book against digital editions on the Kindle, iPad and PC. It came up with results that might surprise advocates of the printed book.

After using each device, we asked users to rate their satisfaction on a 1–7 scale, with 7 being the best score.  iPad, Kindle, and the printed book all scored fairly high at 5.8, 5.7, and 5.6, respectively. The PC, however, scored an abysmal 3.6.

The poor showing of the PC was predictable but it’s interesting to see just how well these first-generation e-readers stack up against the printed book. Admittedly, my headline is a slight beat-up: the lead that Kindle and iPad had over print was not statistcally significant. But it’s a strong showing, especially since the reading material being tested was narrative fiction so e-readers would have gained no advantage from digital-specific functions such as search or portability.

In case you think these results might have been biased by a bunch of geeks in the survey sample, it seems the main criteria for selecting participants was that they like reading and frequently read books.

Nielsen’s study did find that electronic readers still can’t match the printed book for reading speed: the iPad was 6.2% slower than the printed boook and the Kindle was 10.7% slower.

Nielsen says the difference between iPad and Kindle reading speeds was not statistically significant but the difference between electronic and print was. However, the e-readers are already close to printed books and will rapidly improve.

And as this blog post from The Digital Reader points out, the results might have been even better if the participants had been experienced e-readers rather than (probably) newbies.

Amazon dropped the price of its Kindle almost 30% to US$189 from US$259. This is less than half the original US$399 price tag when it was launched two and a half years ago. Amazon’s move trumped Barnes and Noble which just a few hours earlier cut its Nook eReader’s price from US$259 to US$199.

These big price cuts from the top sellers mean the gap has narrowed considerably between them and the low cost Kobo Reader. In the US, the Kobo is sold by Borders at US$149. While its no-frills package of essential features looked attractive when the gap was large, it will put pressure on that strategy now. Rather than cutting the Kobo’s price, Borders in the US has offered a US$20 gift card to effectively cut its price to US$129.

No sign at this stage that Australian and New Zealand prices for the Kobo reader will change. In Australia, where both the Kobo and Kindle are available, the Kobo is still A$199. A Kindle including freight will cost A$235 at the current exchange rate, plus GST if any is levied. In New Zealand, the Kindle — frustratingly — remains unavailable so the price drops in the US are mostly academic at this stage. But, if it were available in New Zealand, a Kindle would be about NZ$290 landed. The Kobo is currently NZ$295 incl GST.

While it might be tough on margins, the momentum of the iPad and the push for further price drops for the e-Ink devices is going to be great news for ebook sales.

• Apple’s iBooks
• Amazon Kindle for iPad
• Barnes and Noble eReader
• Kobo Reader (which is also the Borders eReader and will soon be the Whitcoulls eReader for the iPad)
• Ibis Reader (this is interesting because it’s actually an HTML5 web app rather than a native iPad/iPhone app)
• Stanza
• vBookz (actually a text-to-speech reader app rather than a traditional e-reading app)

Among Perlow’s findings:

• Apple’s iBooks is the flashiest but “of all the reader applications we’ve looked at, it is actually the least functional. Apple designed iBooks to behave and act like a real book, and focused more on the aesthetics and UI than actual App functionality with the initial release.”
• Amazon’s Kindle wins in terms of the size of its 600,000-title ebook store but “from a feature perspective, the Kindle software is pretty weak when compared to its hardware counterpart.”
• Interestingly, it’s the Barnes and Noble eReader that wins the highest plaudits from Perlow. “Of all the paid content readers, by far the best one in existence is probably the Barnes & Noble eReader application.” But it’s probably not so useful outside of the US because of its ties to the very US-focused B&N store.
• Of particular interest in this part of the world is the Kobo which will shortly be released in this part of the world as the Whitcoulls reader app. For Perlow, it stacks up pretty well. “It’s extremely polished and very well-designed,” he says.
• The Ibis Reader is different from the others in being written in HTML5. It reads non-DRM ePub files. “Compared to the other reader apps on this list, the reading features within Ibis Reader are pretty spartan. … However, the interface is very clean and simple to use, and the reading experience is actually pretty good when compared to the native apps.”
• Stanza was the original e-reading app that popularised e-reading on the iPhone. It’s the latest to the iPad party but the result is good according to Perlow. “Stanza is by far the most sophisticated e-Reader application for iPad, as it supports not only the open EPUB format but also the legacy Mobipocket, PalmDoc (DOC), Microsoft LIT formats as well as HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word and Rich Text Format (RTF)…. If you have lots of content that you’ve collected over the years, Stanza is definitely a must-have app. There’s absolutely no downside, it’s free to use and does more than any e-book reader app on this list.”
• vBookz is a US$2.99 text-to-speech reader which works only with public domain ebooks  at this stage. Perlow concludes, “vBookz is an extremely interesting and exploitative iPad application, and one which may be good for getting children interested in classic literature and also a useful app for the visually impaired.”

Read the full ZDNet e-reader app review here.

UPDATE: ZDNet has also posted a comparison of ebook reader apps for the Google Android platform. Check it out.

That looks set to change as an influential magazine standards group, the IDEAlliance, has thrown its weight behind the development of the next generation ePub, the standard adopted by book publishers for ebooks.

Speaking at the Magazine Publishers of America’s Dimensional to Digital conference last week, Dianne Kennedy, vice president of Media Technologies at IDEAlliance said her organisation was working with the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) to bring rich media and magazine content to the ePub standard.

IDEAlliance is the group behind PRISM, the XML standard for magazine and journal metadata.

The book industry’s ePub standard is widely supported by device manufacturers, publishers and distributors.  Convergence with the magazine and newspaper industries would make a lot of sense for publishers, consumers and device manufacturers.

While ePub currently lacks some features that are important to magazines, its general approach based on XML and web technologies including HTML and CSS is very sound. Combined with its widespread support among device manufacturers and industry heavyweights Apple and Google, it offers a good foundation for digital magazines.

The standard will also be developed “with an eye to advertising”, says Kennedy, another key feature for magazines.

The working group hopes to have the first draft of a standard published by September 2010.

Among the 14 goals that the IDPF’s working group has identified for the next ePub specification, currently designated ePub 2.1, several are particularly important to magazines:

Need for rich media and interactivity support.

Need for enhanced article support. The fundamental atomic unit of magazines and newspapers is the article … it is desirable to support a work flow where PRISM content can be delivered as EPUB.

Need for a means to convey page-level layouts and target multiple display surface sizes in a single publication.  … This is a barrier to supporting books with more complex information designs, as well as digital magazines …

Currently there is no mechanism to identify and include advertising in publications, which is required in several markets.

For more, see this article from eMedia Vitals.

iOS4 is a free upgrade for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPads. It’s rumoured that another platform will be eventually added to the iOS family when Apple uses it to revamp its unsuccessful Apple TV set-top box.

Of note for publishers:

• Apple is talking up its iBookstore as the third store platform, following the original iTunes and the App Store. It claims that, among the large publishers who’ve supported the iBookstore since launch on 3 April, sales through the iBookstore now represent 22% of their ebook sales.
• The iBooks e-reading app has now been ported to the iPhone and iPod Touch.
• The iBookstore now operates wirelessly, no PC required, and will syncronise your ebooks across multiple Apple devices. This includes your ebook library, the place you’re at in the ebook you’re reading and — a new feature — your bookmarks and annotations.
• iBooks now reads PDFs as well as ePub formatted ebooks. This will make it useful as a reader for business documents as well as adding what is still a popular ebook format and might serve as a useful interim “quick and dirty” format for illustrated books and textbooks.
• On the hardware front, a new iPhone model was announced which will improve the reading experience with a higher resolution, 960 x 640,  327 pixel per inch display and an extended battery life.
• iOS4 will also see the launch on 1 July of Apple’s mobile advertising platform, iAds. iAds will open up a new source of income for app developers, potentially opening advertising to any of the quarter of a million apps. Apple will take 40% and return 60% to developers. In a show of strength, it signed up US$60 million of A-list advertisers to support the launch, a figure Apple claims is half of the entire projected mobile ad spend for the second half of 2010. One neat feature will be the ability to launch web ads from an in-app browser so that the user remains inside the application when viewing the advertiser’s website rather than being taken out of the app to launch the Safari web browser.

Finally, in what is becoming an unfortunate pattern in Apple’s announcements, a revised developer agreement takes aim at potential Apple rivals, locking them out of the App store. This time, Google appears to be the target with its competing mobile ad platform, AdMob. Google beat Apple this week by releasing the SDK (software development kit) for its in-app mobile advertising for the iPhone and iPad. The trouble is, in a move reminiscent of its ban on Adobe’s Flash platform on the eve of the iPad launch, Apple just changed the terms of its developer agreement, making it unlikely that any app developers will be able to incorporate AdMob ads without risking being banned from the App store.

More on the launch: See the Techcrunch summary of key points from the iPhone and iOS4 launch.

To me, the most interesting thing is it shows is that the classics — the traditional fare of free reading — have some serious competition from new works which, for various reasons, authors or publishers have chosen to distribute free.  (Not quite free: they’re subject to Amazon’s US$2.00 WhisperNet charge for international downloading). You have to look towards the end of the list to find a high concentration of the traditional classics.

A lot of these free titles, of course, are self-published and there are quite a few from established authors that have been offered as promotions. It’s a great way to get recognition and cut-through: launch as a free ebook for a limited time then switch to paid, or sell more hardbacks and paperbacks.

If you want more, you can also read my recently posted review.

And while you’re at it, head over to this page and sign up to follow bookTV.nz. Or you can go straight to the bookTV.nz YouTube channel. Plenty more good video book reviews and author interviews there and more coming.