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.

Amazon announced plans to make its Kindle titles available for a variety of mobile phones. Earlier this year they announced that they would no longer support PDF or Microsoft Reader formats for their ebooks, effectively locking buyers into its Mobipocket or Kindle formats.

Since the Kindle format is only an offshoot of the Mobipocket format, I wonder if these mobile device efforts will revolve around an updated Mobipocket Reader. The Mobipocket Reader software is already available for a variety of mobile phones including Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. If Amazon plans to revamp this application to make it available for other handhelds including iPhone – and they can duplicate the easy buying experience Kindle owners already enjoy – this could really change the landscape for ebooks.

In an article entitled The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age, published earlier this week, Ars Technica’s John Siracusa lamented that dedicated ebook readers are not the entire answer, and asked why Amazon didn’t realize that devices like the iPhone were where reading was headed.

I do still believe that dedicated readers are more appropriate for a mature e-book market, when consumers can more easily justify the cost of such a specialized device. But that doesn’t mean a dedicated reader can’t succeed. The Kindle is the best example, hitching itself to the star of Amazon’s existing retail store. Maybe Amazon will haul the ungainly Kindle right across the critical mass threshold and it will become “the iPod of e-books.” Then again, maybe Apple will finally figure out that the iPod (and, yes, the iPhone) is “the iPod of e-books.” Amazon’s efforts are handicapped by the hurdle of that separate hardware purchase, so the door is still open for a strong competitor targeting an existing reader-capable hardware platform, whether it be Apple or someone else.

John also suggested that Apple was best positioned to lead us to the ebook promised land.

Will Apple wake from its apparent slumber and pull the sword from the stone—the sword that’s currently taped to its hand and sheathed in a teflon-lined crevice? That’d certainly be the shortest path between the present and the inevitable e-book future.

I say if Amazon plays this right and creates applications that open their ebook store to a variety of devices – including iPhone- they may actually hold Uther’s sword. But controlling formats and owning the largest selection of current and best selling books won’t in itself make this a winning solution. Amazon needs to deliver the right experience, making both the buying and reading of ebooks easy and enjoyable.

What do you think – major shift, or just another ripple?

(Image credit DaveQ)

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)

I’m not going to spend time going through loads of statistics confirming that nearly every man, woman, and child at every age in every country and continent is online, buying stuff, finding jobs, partners, and hopefully our books.   What I would like to put in front of you briefly is the idea of our customer’s EVOLVING EXPERIENCE EXPECTATION.

Some would argue that, and I include myself in this camp, that the Experience is the product.  When someone buys a book or a new perfume or cologne, they will judge that product on the experience that it create. Did the book empower me, did the perfume or cologne get me a date?  Did it make me feel better about myself?

The experience of music and the evolution of the music business is always held up as the harbinger for the book business.  And I think this analogy has reached a fevered pitch with the release of Amazon’s Kindle seven months ago.

Some of you probably saw this picture of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, in the Economist a few weeks ago with the heading “YOU’RE ALL DOOMED”.  Many have recognized that Amazon seems to be following a similar “digitize, divide and conquer” strategy masterminded by the maestro himself, Steve Jobs.

I don’t think many of us would question that Jobs and the iPod have revolutionized the music business,   BUT is it right then to assume that Bezos and his new toy will have the similar impact on the book business?  Last week , analysts in the US predicted that by 2012 global ebook sales at amazon will reach $2.5 billion. An astounding number considering amazon’s overall revenue in 2007 was $10.7 billion. How did they get there, with the music comparison of course.

If we look at some key points in history for both the music and book business in the context of the customer’s EVOLVING EXPERIENCE EXPECTATION, which I mentioned before. I think it starts to become clear that this comparison doesn’t really hold water.

A long time ago, when you wanted to experience music, you had limited options. You had to be in the presence of those creating the music, so your mobility was limited.  Unless you were royalty, or whoever was paying the orchestra, your choice of music was limited.  So, improving the mobility of music and the choices that were made available were huge factors in music’s widespread adoption.

Along came the phonograph and suddenly music could be mass produced and distributed, widening its market.
Now, personally, I think the real breakthrough moment in music, that paved the way for Apple, was the dawn of the boom box.

Clearly, this is when music became an accessory for fashion (have you ever seen a better matched bandana and boombox?) The point is, when music went mobile, it fit more readily into people’s experiences.

Then the race was on to make it more portable, stylish, all changing experience expectation. Now, when we think of a comparable breakthrough moment for the reading experience, many wonder if it happened 7 months ago with the release of the Kindle,  but I would argue it really happened just under 700 years ago with our friend, Mr. Movable Type, Gutenberg, himself.

Think about it. Since then, the experience of reading has changed very little. They come in all shapes and sizes. Mobility isn’t much of a problem. And as those traditionalists always say, I like books because you can curl up with them in bed, or read them in the bath.

So, I guess the point I’m trying to make is, unlike the music business the relationship customers have with the printed book is still quite strong and have been meeting the experience expectation for hundreds of years. And I don’t say this because I’m overly sentimental traditionalist.  But I do think it’s an important time to remind ourselves that the printed book still provides an excellent user experience.  And this is a real strength that only enhances our position in a digital age.

So, having read Christine thoughts, what do you think?  Are books still the ultimate experience when it comes to reading, or can what we think of as a book be so much more?  How will the book customer’s experience expectation evolve in the coming years?  Are we indeed doomed?

With the slumping economy many are shopping for the best bargains, including my family. Recently we visited a local retailer that offers “low prices, everyday” and picked up a few items at prices that were certainly lower than I had seen elsewhere.

But when I had to return one of the items the next day, I realized where I was really going to pay the price – customer service. Before I could enter the store with the item, I had to “check in” with the employee at the door. There were 4 people in a line ahead of me who also needed to check in returned merchandise. Each item had to be scanned, and then verified by the store employee. However, the employee had no idea how to run the scanner and spent most of the time staring blankly at the handheld screen. I waited in this line for 20 minutes.

Next was the line at the “Customer Service” desk with my newly verified merchandise (despite the fact that I had a receipt.) One employee, six customers in line, and not a smile to be found. I waited in this line for an additional 20 minutes.

Now to purchase the replacement item, and back into the line for checkout. Of course the employee in my line closed her register with 2 people still in front of me because it was time for her break.

So what does this have to do with publishing?

It seems that with all the discussion about the future of publishing, one item that seems to recur is the fact that books are too expensive. Simply switching to e-books eliminates that problem, or so many would have you believe.

Consider for a moment customer service. Not only does the publisher need to provide customer service to it’s customers – book stores, distributors, retailers – but we also need to support the ultimate consumer: readers.

Inside the front cover of Wiley trade publications you will find an 800 number. On the other end of that number you will find a dedicated customer service staff ready to answer a variety of questions and provide solutions to reader problems. You can also access customer service via support.wiley.com

Often these questions are solve on the spot, but sometimes they are routed to editorial staff, and we sometimes send them on up to the authors.

For our Wrox programming titles we also provide a support forum at p2p.wrox.com where readers can interact with a variety of technical experts and authors.

It’s not just paper and ink

Customer service is but one area where book publishers have an opportunity to differentiate themselves from other content providers. It is certainly not enough – we still need to be innovating (faster) – but it is certainly part of the cost equation.

…this all just goes to show what publishers are up against. I mean, do people really think — in the face of enormously changing consumer habits and online trends — that it’s that simple? The fact is, many people do indeed think it’s as easy as just slashing prices.

Click through for Jeff’s entire post which likens Blodget’s argument to a past Seinfeld episode.

DailyLit began with mostly public domain works, syndicating them to readers in snack-sized chucks via email and RSS. Recently, the site began offering books from a variety of publishers at prices that range from free to just under $10.

I must admit that I didn’t pay much attention to DailyLit initially (shame on me.) But with this recent announcement, they are certainly on my radar. I’m trying out the service, and reading Cory Doctorow’s Scroogled via RSS on my Blackberry.

For the majority of publishing my group does (computer programming titles) this model of distribution might not make a lot of sense, but for other types of books it might work very well. Only caveat I can see is in the scheduled delivery. You can control the time and frequency of the updates, but it seems to be limited to only 1 installment a day. If I want to read a book on a long flight, I am sure to want more than just the day’s installment, and I am not likely to “store up” installments in anticipation of a long reading session.

What about you? Would you read books in this fashion?

David Rothman agrees with Adobe’s Bill McCoy on the use of Social DRM, but also understands the challenges of implementing such a system.

How expensive would it be to run a social DRM system on a mass scale? More or less costly than the current crop of traditional encryption-based systems? Could expenses be reduced by avoiding the use of encrypted credit card numbers and relying on verified names and physical addresses instead—perhaps in cooperation with services like PayPal and credit card companies?

Rob Preece says copyright is not dead, despite what Gerry Faulhaber thinks, and social DRM will only work if all users respect copyright.

If we can’t have social DRM, that is, if users insist on freely copying without regard to authors’ rights, then we certainly will have DRM, no matter what the inconvenience. Because one way or another, the economy depends on our ability to protect the rights of copyright and patent holders.

Finally, according to Todd Jonz the effects of piracy on content producers is a lie.

Yes, piracy exists; it always has, and it always will. But study after study has shown that the vast majority of consumers, certainly enough to sustain a healthy market, will pay a fair price for digital content if it is made available to them in the unencumbered formats they desire.

I know where I land on each of these issues, but I want to know what you think. Should publishers abandon DRM, write off piracy as the cost of doing business, and just concentrate on creating great content for which consumers are willing to pay? How would you feel about the Social DRM model, where we would imprint your name – and possibly other information on your e-content?

(Photo credit: Dori)

So, what are Wrox Blox?

• DRM-free
• PDF format
• Bite-sized (generally 20-40 pages)
• Faster to market than traditional books
• Introductory priced at only $3.99 US

The initial roll out consists of 4 titles, with many more in the works to be available shortly. Beginning today you can purchase and instantly download:

• iPhone and iPod touch Programming : Handling Touch Interactions and Events for Mobile Safari
• Silverlight 1.0 Animation
• Leveraging LINQ in ASP.NET 3.5 Projects
• Building a Photo Gallery with Adobe AIR

Hopefully we have responded to customer needs with a great new product. What do you think? Is this type of publishing the right direction? How can we improve Wrox Blox?

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?