The future of publishing may be digital, but costly Kindles and eBooks on iPhones aren’t enough to trigger a digital book revolution. It’ll take more than the promise of a portable library to convince readers they’re better off without paper.

The iPod heralded a seismic shift in content distribution. Music downloads now seem as obvious as they were inevitable, so it’s reasonable to expect written content to follow music, movies, and TV down the path towards digital distribution. But to get consumers onboard, eBooks will need to supply a superior reading experience and better value for money than they currently offer.

Increased availability satisfies a demand that doesn’t yet exist

Last week Google released Book Search for mobiles and made over 1.5 million public domain books available on iPhones and Android mobiles. As well as introducing a revamped Kindle 2.0, Amazon has announced that its more contemporary range of Kindle titles will be made available for download to devices other than the Kindle.

Both companies are addressing the issue of title availability, but that’s not the eBook bottleneck. Having more titles is an important step, but it’s not enough to trigger a fundamental shift in people’s reading habits.

It’s easy to blame the slow uptake of digital books on nostalgia for printed paper

There’s a some good reasons digital books haven’t taken off, and the least of them is the ‘I just like paper books’ problem. Don’t get me wrong, like many people, I don’t think that the look, feel, and smell of books will ever be fully replaced. But it’s possible to imagine a future where convenience, cost, and environmental concerns make digital books a mass market alternative to the paperback, in the same way that paperbacks have become a cheaper, more convenient alternative to hard covers.
The true causes of consumer reluctance are more compelling, and more easily addressed, than an enduring love of paper:

• Readability and the user experience
• Value and the total cost of ownership
• Flexibility: to sell, trade, and loan books

eReaders need the readability of a paperback printed on recycled paper, to last 12hrs, and be durable enough to throw in a backpack

Many books will soon be available on mobile phones, letting you read eBooks on hardware you already own, though at a cost to your battery-life and with poor readability. With better batteries, phones may yet become a reasonable platform for reading, but it’s hard to see such a small, eye-straining LCD screen leading to the mass desertion of paper.

Both the Kindle and Sony’s eReader use breakthrough technologies to offer improved readability and extended battery life, as such they seem the more likely catalyst for mass eBook adoption. They’re not cheap though, they cost over $350 and lack the readability, durability, and portability of a paperback. The hefty price tag doesn’t include a contrast ratio that approaches black text on white paper and the low resolution is a problem for the line drawings in text books.

Paper books combine content with the hardware needed to read it in one convenient package

Like CDs, books are a way to distribute content, but unlike music, electronic books introduce a new hardware cost for consuming written content. CDs don’t come with headphone jacks, so the removal of the physical media makes sense for content that’s always needed a separate ‘player’. Fully self-contained, books have never needed extra hardware to be read: no turntable, no CD player, no iPod. Electronic book readers need to be much better value and find ways to justify their upfront costs.

As a reader, what do I gain from electronic distribution?

People like the option of listening to a lot of different music, so an iPod that makes your entire music collection portable is a big win.

Digital books ask readers to sacrifice the advantages of paper for the same reward as iPods, but if you’re not at school or working in publishing how often do you want to carry around more than a couple of books? I’m a big reader, but I don’t often have more than two books on the go.

Until digital books can be traded as easily as their paper cousins, publishers must consider the implicit costs of digital delivery

DRM is a regular source of contention in the tech industry, and there’s plenty of debate over the use and effectiveness of rights management for books. Leaving aside the important arguments over fair use and piracy, it’s worth remembering that the exchange of books has been a powerful force in their marketing. I’ve borrowed, loaned, and traded a lot more books than I’ve bought new, but it’s the books I’ve borrowed that have fuelled my appetite for buying new fiction and trying new authors. It’s important to consider the implied costs of DRM if it means eBook readers won’t share books with friends and family.

Aside from that, by selling or exchanging their used books, readers have been able to subsidize the cost of further purchases. Digital editions, at a discount of only one or two dollars, don’t offer a payoff comparable to exchanging or selling used books.

Without the opportunity to experiment with digital music, it’s unlikely that its adoption would have been so fast or comprehensive

When music started shifting to digital, early adopters could rip CDs they already owned to MP3s. If publishers offered free digital copies along with every paper edition sold, wary consumers could experiment without paying twice. Eventually ‘digital only’ editions could be sold cheaper to encourage people to make the switch.

Until students, editors, and literary agents are reading textbooks and manuscripts on eReaders, there’s little chance that the general public will welcome them

Rather than focusing on paperbacks, publishers and book sellers should look to replace the backpack full of textbooks. Students, and people in publishing, are an obvious target for replacing a bag, or briefcase, full of heavy books with a lightweight, convenient device. At $350 it’s clear why this hasn’t already happened.

By targeting students, you can develop a market for digital fiction through an audience that’s already comfortable with electronic books and the associated hardware.

Free, durable hardware and cheaper digital content will make eBooks as inevitable as on-demand movie downloads

Where iPods offer a familiar user experience at a familiar price, with the convenience of having all your music on hand, eBooks on mobiles and $350+ readers offer poor readability at a premium price. Consumers being asked to consider taking their libraries digital aren’t being given enough reasons to take the plunge.

The future of print may be digital, but for a real industry shakeup we’ll need to see cheap, easy to read, durable hardware coupled with cheaper digital editions. If Amazon started giving away Kindles while including a free Kindle edition with every paper book sold, they could quickly become the iTunes of the written word.

Reto Meier is a mobile software engineer and author of Professional Android Application Development. He’s based in London and blogs about Android, technology, and programming.

Mr. Kiley wraps his post by asking the question “could it be that with such change afoot amidst a national financial crisis, readership of the dead-trees product will swing up again?”  Perhaps, but I don’t think that is the reason there were no newspapers left at 8:30 am this morning in Ann Arbor, MI. Instead I’ll suggest that when people want to hold a piece of something, especially when that something is connected to an event like the historical moment we all witnessed last night, they want something tangible.  Something real.

Why not just archive a digital copy of the New York Times, or take a screen capture of your web browser open to you local paper’s website?  Because those are not the same are they?  Do people keep the paper because 50 years from now, they want to pull it out of a box in the attic and share it with their grandchildren or even great grandchildren?  Seems a more authentic experience than booting a PC, or an e book reader doesn’t it? Gone is the feeling of the paper in your hand.  The smell.  The texture. The sound it makes as it moves in your hands.  Electronic formats are a long way from being able to replicate that.

Paper is still future-proof in many respects. Today we still have physical access to books that date back centuries. Imagine the scenario above and in 50 years hoping that digital copy of the New York Times on your Kindle is still accessible.  Assuming of course, your Kindle still works.

At this point you might be thinking that my examples serve to further the point that paper is not dead – and you would be right.  In fact, I believe there is a very good chance that we will always want some permanently imprinted or inscribed format for our words wither it be paper or not.  And that is really my point – publishers need to start thinking not only about the convenience of formats like e books and start considering how we can make those formats as future-proof as paper.

E books and related media suffer from too many formats, too many devices, and too much DRM and very little is being done to make sure that readers will always be able to access that content in the future.

Centuries ago publishers defined a format for the book – ink on paper, bound together.  As we define the formats for the future book, we must not forget about the generations to follow and their access to the words within.

What do you think?

(Photo credit: Wilsonious)

But, does that really put enough teeth into it? I mean if you are not verifying email addresses, John Doe could easily put in something bogus and untrackable. What if you put something really identifiable into the watermark – like the credit card number used to purchase the book?

If you are not sharing it then no harm no foul, right? But does that cross a line in terms of trust?

What do you think? How much information is too much for a social DRM watermark?

(Photo Credit Leo Reynolds)

We have experimented on both fronts. For example, our electronic Wrox Blox are DRM-free, and we give away some portion of almost every book we publish. We have made entire books available online for free, and Robert Scoble’s and Shel Israel’s Naked Conversations was written online.

Like their distributor, O’Reilly, did back in March 2006, publisher No Starch Press is experimenting with free e-books. Leander Kahney’s Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod have been seeded via BitTorrent and are now sitting atop the Pirate Bay’s Top e-book list.

We’ll be watching to see if making the electronic versions of these books available for free has any effect whatsoever on book sales. And if there is some noticeable effect whether it’s a positive one.

I’ll be interested to see if there is a sales boost for these titles. The O’Reilly experiment did not show a boost in print copies when the free e-book was announced. In fact, there was little effect on sales at all, although they started the experiment at the end of the book’s life as sales were already declining. However, there was a slight increase in book sales which dropped immediately after the announcement of the free e-book.

I’ve been in publishing for just over 20 years and my training has not been to give books away. But I think there’s something to this and logic tells me that if we increase the visibility of our titles, we’ll sell more books.

I’m not sure the availability of the e-book on BitTorrent is increased visibility. In fact, I would be very surprised if the book was not already available via a torrent before its “official” release into the wild. It is my experience that most books eventually end up on filesharing sites at some point.

What do you think? Have you ever purchased a book after getting the entire thing for free online?

How did Another Sky get started?

Friends who had read Click and were familiar with my ideas for Another Sky Press helped me make the press a reality. It had existed as a theory of mine for years (I’m a bit of a media theory geek) – the only thing I was missing was something to release. Fortunately, I’m an author. It seemed appropriate, even necessary, for the first release to be my book given the radical nature of the paradigm – ‘walk the walk’ and all that. Theories are great but they don’t compare to the real thing.

Another Sky Press was and is the result of unfettered idealism. I wanted to create a publishing paradigm that was as ‘pure’ as possible. For example, I believe art should be accessible to all, regardless of income. That is one of the reasons that Another Sky Press makes all  of its books available for free online. A more complete explanation can be ound here: http://www.anothersky.org/main/our-beliefs/

Anyway, a web developer friend of mine, Michael Fields (mfields.org), helped me put together the site. I taught myself InDesign and put together the layout for Click, and asked my friend Jesse Reno (jessereno.com) if he’d do the cover. Jesse is an internationally known outsider artist – a perfect fit for both Click and the project as a whole. Others helped out when and where they could, such as with the more business/financial side of things that made my head spin.

We’ve released four other books since then – a coloring book, an anthology, and two art books. We’ve got a busy lineup next year – if all goes as planned there will be a few more novels, two more anthologies, several children’s books, and a couple more art books.

What percentage of readers buy the book after reading it online?

We intentionally don’t track this, although we know it happens on a regular basis due to reader/fan email. Even if they don’t buy a copy it’s no different than someone reading a friend’s copy or reading a copy at a store or library. We don’t consider someone who does this a ‘lost sale’ but rather as a ‘new fan’, knowing there is a good chance they will tell their friends. The same goes for the occasional person who buys a hard copy at cost with no contribution. Of course, it’s always great when someone does contribute – authors and artists need to eat, too.

What is the average contribution?

It depends somewhat on the release, but the overall average is just under $5.

How do you track readership online?

We don’t, nor do we plan to.

Are you using a POD model to created the printed books?

For the majority of our books, yes. Print On Demand is one of the best thing to happen to publishing since the printing press. Nowadays, the print quality is top-notch. It’s opened up publishing and literature in the same way that blank tapes and cd opened up the music industry to independent labels and bands.

Offset printing is a massive barrier of entry – only a well funded press can afford to release multiple books knowing not everything will sell. This can stifle even major publishers – a wonderful book that doesn’t have an easily defined market may never see the light of day if offset printing is the only option. While the per-copy cost for POD is slightly more than offset printing there is no large outlay of cash, and more importantly, no risk. This is a good thing. I realize there is still a stigma about Print On Demand, but that will go away.

Traditional publishers are already beginning to turn to POD for their backstock, and it’s only a matter of time before they experiment with it for newer releases as well. Technology – be it MP3s or Print On Demand, allows for new business paradigms to take root and evolve. It’s much easier (and even beneficial) to flow with technology than fight it.

How are you generating revenue for both the author and publisher?

We sell our books direct from our website at exact cost (printing + shipping, zero profit built in), through online stores (e.g. Amazon.com), and have distribution at select bookstores around the country. With any book sold direct, the only profit is a reader’s contribution. Bookstores sell our books at a traditional fixed retail price with some built in revenue.

100% of these profits are distributed as royalties to the individuals that made the book happen – i.e., author, layout, artist, etc. based on mutually agreed upon terms. Another Sky Press doesn’t take a cut upfront, but the individuals involved in a project can (and often do) ‘tip back’ some of their royalties to Another Sky Press to help cover our operating expenses and fund new projects.

What do you hope traditional publishers will learn from your work?

Readers are more important than sales! Not everyone that might want to read a given book has the disposable income to buy it. However, it’s in a publisher’s best interest for that person to read the book regardless, since those people tend to be vocal fans. Sales then come as a result of quality books rather than hype. Put out books that you love!

(Thanks to Kristopher Young for taking the time to answer my questions, and to Andrew Barnett for the suggestion.)

Yesterday I started writing a post outlining my reasoning for proclaiming the iPod touch as the ideal e-book platform, and as I prepared to finish the piece last night I see the very smart Kassia Krozser at the Booksquare blog has beaten me to the punch with a post entitled Apple Saves the Publishing Industry.

So, go ahead and read her thoughts on the matter.  Go ahead, I won’t be offended – she’s right after all.

When will we stop trying to create a dedicated e-book reader and simply adopt our content to devices consumers already want and use?  This may be a real opportunity for content creators to build products for a “for real” device.  Granted, the storage is on the small side, but its a first generation product and that is sure to improve.

What do you think?  Can adoption of a product like the new iPod touch create a new content channel?

From Andrea Laue:

He asked the audience if, upon encountering an obscure reference or foreign word on the page of a book, we would appreciate the option of touching the word on the page and being taken (on our PC) to an online resource that would identify or define the unfamiliar word. Then he made it happen. Standing O.

Yes, he had a printed and bound book which communicated with his laptop. He simply touched the page, and the laptop reacted. It brought up pictures of the Mona Lisa. It translated Chinese. It played a piece of music. Kelaidis suggested that a library of such books might cross-refer, i.e. touching a section in one book might change the colors of the spines of related books on your shelves. Imagine.

and from Andrew Savikas:

These debates (print is doomed! from my cold dead hand!) are so often reduced to a binary decision, when in reality they’re a fluid, flexible conversation that can sustain many perspectives — and we risk stifling the voices of innovators like Manolis if we forget to make allowances for our own ignorance of the future.

The e-content vs. books argument does not necessarily require an all or nothing solution.

One of the compelling lessons of the digital music revolution was that people wanted to acquire and share songs, not albums. The analogies to books are imperfect, because books tend to be more of an essential organic whole than albums, but even with books, especially reference or tutorial books, it’s certainly possible that someone wants only part of a book. Based on this idea, we’ve had a goal for quite some time to enable “by the chapter” purchase and download.

It also appears the content is to be delivered as DRM-free PDFs.

One of my primary competitors, O’Reilly has once again demonstrated how nimble they can be and even though many publishers have been working toward this goal, they will all be seen as following Tim’s lead on this one.

Time will tell if this model works for O’Reilly and in their usual transparent fashion I am sure we will get an update on sales in the near future.

Aside from the fact that its always insightful to get valuable feedback from programmers on tech books, there were a couple of comments that touched on some e-content issues that I was especially interested in.

I don’t really understand why anyone would even want to buy a programming book. No way to run the example code (without finding it online or on some attached CD/DVD), no way to copy and paste, no way to click a link to a different topic, the trusty web browser with Google bookmarked to look up terms or expressions you don’t know is far away. It’s like living in the dark ages again.

to which Jeff Atwood responded,

I totally agree– the idea that books are competing with other books is an illusion. Books are competing with the web. And the Adam Nathan book does a surprisingly good job of it.

Don’t we know it Jeff…

But the first point it begs the question, “What if books  could do those things?”  Ignore for the moment the state of e-book readers and maybe just think about using a programming book on a PC or Mac, alongside the programming tool of your choice.  What features would you want?  Seriously, the sky’s the limit.  Let’s design the ultimate e-content product for programmers – go ahead, pitch in.

Better yet, lets talk not just about programming books (because I am obviously interested in that) but lets talk about other books as well.  Whats the killer ebook app?

(photo courtesy jopemoro)

I don’t like reading off a computer screen” — it’s a cliché of the e-book world. It means “I don’t read novels off of computer screens” (or phones, or PDAs, or dedicated e-book readers), and often as not the person who says it is someone who, in fact, spends every hour that Cthulhu sends reading off a computer screen. It’s like watching someone shovel Mars Bars into his gob while telling you how much he hates chocolate.

Publishers (admittedly, myself included) keep waiting for the “killer e-book device” to magically launch the e-book publishing revolution, but perhaps the problem is not in the technology but in the books!

The problem, then, isn’t that screens aren’t sharp enough to read novels off of. The problem is that novels aren’t screeny enough to warrant protracted, regular reading on screens.

Bingo! Cory is speaking specifically about novels, but I think this applies to most books, including the technical publishing that I do. Maybe we need to stop thinking about e-books as just the electronic copy of the book, and start thinking of them as a different product. This seems to mesh with the “bite-sized” content I posted about previously.

What do you think?