August 30, 2010
Interesting patterns are emerging about who’s reading eBooks and how much.
Contrary to print books, men read more eBooks than women by a 52%/48% margin (Book Industry Study Group Inc.). People who own eBook readers like them. 51% read something daily on a daily basis and 40 % say they read more eBooks than they did print books (Marketing and Research Resources Inc). This is against a background of e books sales increasing by 176% in 2009 while print books sales fell 1.8% (Association of American Publishers).
Sarah and I are part of this trend, though we suspect on the upper end of the demographic primarily buying and reading eBooks. We use either our iPad or Kindle every day and have cut back our acquiring of print books. Sarah still prefers non-fiction in print, but I like non-fiction eBooks because of the ease of searching them.
August 23, 2010
The price of eReaders and tablets continues to head downward. New developments include reports that:
Pandigital has released a seven-inch tablet priced at $200 and Apple is plannings its own seven-inch iPad, presumably priced less than the iPad at $499.
CVS Pharmacy will be selling a $180 eReader made by Sylvania and Kobo, which is partially owned by Borders, is expected to drop the price of its eReader to $99 before Christmas, according to the New Yorker.
eReaders may not become as ubiquitous as cell phones, but there’s every indication they won’t be far ahead.
August 17, 2010
This is a catch-up installment of What’s New and Developing because four weeks ago, I broke my right arm – the humerus at the shoulder. It’s better now but for most of this time I was either typing one-handed or dictating using Dragon Naturally Speaking 10. I still use Dragon when Sandman, our Toy Manchester Terrier, as seven year old rescue, is sitting in my lap. The bone is healing, but there’s a 20% offset, which the orthopod says is says is as good as it can be. So no more of some of my Tai Chi stretching exercises and certainly no gymnasticsJ
To help with healing I took or am taking:
- Arnica Montana 4 x day ( for five days)
- Bromelain 2x day
- L-Arginine protein amino acid 1x day
And mental imagery to keep my muscles in tone.
eBook prices continue to come down with one so low, it’s almost inconceivable – $20 from a company called Humane Informatics. To keep the cost down, it uses an external monitor to display books. Some companies like Plastic Logic cancelling higher end eBook readers.
Meanwhile Amazon sold out its new Kindles, priced at $139, while nearly 30,000 earlier model Kindles are available on eBay.
Ambitious projects like Project Gutenberg, which has announced it is on a mission to digitize one billion free eBooks, and of course’s Google’s make enormous amounts of content available.
eBook pricing is unsettled with self-published authors finding they can make money at $1.99, $2.99, and $4.99. The agency model adopted by the publishing industry is under investigation by Connecticut Attorney General.
Meanwhile continue to grow according to data collected by the Association of American Publishers, up 11.8 percent for the year through April and Amazon reports its eBooks outsell its hard cover books. For every 100 hardcover books, it sells 143 Kindle books.
July 2o10
The $100 price barrier for eReaders has been broken. A few days ago Books-A-Million offered the Sony to its members for $89. They sold out immediately.
The sales of eBooks themselves was up $162 million in May, according to the Association of American Publishers. A year ago eBooks accounted for fewer than 3 in 100 trade books sold. eBooks now represent almost 1 in 10 trade books.
Now you can get a tablet reader for under $200. The product is Pandigital Novel and it uses Google’s Android system. I found them for sale on eBay for $194 – still about double what a refurbished Kindle is going for at $109. Who would have believed prices would plunge this rapidly? A report from Digitimes indicates Barnes and Noble’s Nooks are outselling Kindles two to one.
With demand increasing, prices can be expected to come down further, and in turn, increase demand. An example of this demand is that half of college students want to buy an eReader, though only 2% own one today, according to a study by Alloy Media+Marketing.
If having an eBook Best Seller list means eBooks have arrived, then the time has come. The New York Times has announced it will be having one.
Amazon is demonstrating it’s not going to easily cede its lead in eBook sales. It has announced its 70% royalty rate for authors of books published through Kindle and received a patent for a dual screen eReader. Interactive books will lend themselves to dual screens.
June 2010
Who’s selling more eBooks? If it were a contest between Amazon selling Kindles and Barnes and Noble selling Nooks, Barnes and Noble’s shipments in April in May were more than double Amazon’s (37% versus 16%). But then Apple announced the sale of 3 million iPads – in just 80 days – and without dropping its price, which the price war between Borders who’s selling a the Kobo with Google’s Droid operating system), Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
Ray Kurzweil, the pioneer in developing scanning systems and voice recognition technology, has announced Blio as free software that presents electronic books and magazines in full-color pages while preserving a book’s original layout, fonts, and graphics. It will usable on everything from handheld devices to desktop computers. And it will be free. What the implications are for eBook readers remains to be seen, but Blio can only increase the appeal of eBooks and ability of more people to read them.
eBook readers are becoming more popular, particularly among avid readers. Just consider this study by http://www.retrevo.com that indicates 28% of people plan to buy an eReader or iPad this year. If this survey proves out, better than three times as many people will own eReaders in the next year than currently own them.
These survey numbers may prove low as a price war has developed among major vendors. First, Borders began offering the Kobo for $149. This has been matched by Barnes and Noble offering a $149 version of the Nook and Amazon making the lowest price Kindle $189. And if you don’t want to spend much more than $100, chances are you can find an eReader at this price. The price wars continue with Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders all offering free bonuses for the purchase of their eBooks.
The Association of American Publishers today reported that eBook sales jumped by 127.4 percent in April. eBook sales are up by 217.3 percent for the year-to-date.
Audiobook sales were also up 18.6% in April. However, the number of dollars produced by eBooks declined from March to April, from $28.5 million in March to $27.4 million in April. During this same period of time, Apple has been selling iPads at a furious clip – the two million iPads sold in two months is said to equal the number of iPons sold in its first two years. iPad buyers are downloading books. So presumably the number of eBooks being downloaded is up. At the same time, the price of newly released eBooks is going up under the agency model in which publishers control the price of eBooks. One explanation for this is people are downloading less expensive and free eBooks, resisting the above-$9.99 pricing.
The eReader market has begun the process of thinning. The Dutch company iRex, which invented eInk technology and produces readers popular in Europe, has filed for bankruptcy reorganization from which it may or may not emerge.
Self-publishing is the subject of a major story by The Wall Street Journal, pointing out that a generation ago, self-publishing and vanity publishing were more or less synonymous. Not so today with self-publishing being facilitated by Amazon and a number of other companies. A poll of readers asks if self-publishing is a threat to the traditional publishing industry. Half of the people who responded say it’s a major threat.
We have some eBooks that didn’t pan out once we started reading them and until now, it appeared that there was no way to recapture our investment. But a company called Lexink, which has been providing a secondary market for MP3 files, says its UNLODER site will provide a way to sell old or discarded eBooks. I checked the site (http://unloder.com/) but it’s not operational yet. Something particularly promising is that authors and publishers will get paid on a resale – unlike with used printed books.
The Apple iPad continues to make news. Over two million have been sold less than two months since its introduction. Authors and small publishers can now can now directly upload their books to the iBookstore. You need an iTune account and the uploading must be done on a Macintosh with an Intel processor.
May 2010
An arresting statistic coming out at Book Expo America is that 7% of published books account for seven out of every eight books sold (87%). Nine out of ten books published (93%) sell fewer than 1000 copies each. However, self-published books are not covered by BEA statistics.
A new study of 140 Kindle owners by Simba Information concludes publishers do not need to heed the $9.99 Amazon price point established for eBooks. The research company recommends publishers try multiple price points because consumers will “swallow it.” As reported here earlier, there have been contradictory findings. More important, books are discretionary purchases in an uncertain economy.
Once again the price of eBook readers has taken a nosedive. Today Pandigital released an eBook called the Novel. It has a seven-inch color screen. Books can be directly acquired from Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore.
eBook sales are soaring! The Association of American Publishers (AAP) reported March sales of eBooks grew by 184.8 per cent for the month. For the year, eBook sales are up over 250%.
eReaders at all price points? Today (May 19) Woot is offering a refurbished Sony Digital Reader Pocket Edition for $109.99.
Through June 30, by joining the Author’s Guild, you can get a free website built for you. Then it’s $6.00/month. You can learn more about the legal services to authors provided by Author’s Guild at www.authorguild.net.
Over 1 in 4 people plan to buy an e-reader or tablet in the next year. This survey done in March by BCG of over 12,000 people in 14 countries also found that within three half of respondents plan to purchase a device that they prefer will do multiple tasks, such as viewing videos and email.
In June or July, Google will be operating its own bookstore in competition with Apple and Amazon, among others.
Authors Scott Sigler and Seth Harwood, by combining social networking and giving away free podcasts of initial novels, have developed followings sufficient to launch subsequent books.
According to O’Reilly Research, nearly a third of Apple iBooks are works of fiction. Penguin is the largest provider of iBooks at this point. There are now over a hundred iBook categories, but reportedly these will be increased. Meanwhile Google is planning to begin selling eBooks in June with an innovative approach called Google Editions. Google Editions will be published using industry-standard ISBN’s. So the big names in eBook retailing appear to be Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Google, which feels like a reassortment of the chairs from several decks.
It’s confirmed. Today (May 4) Steve Jobs announced Apple has sold one million iPads. Reportedly from other sources, the 3G version, sold over 300,000 copies this weekend.
Check out this two and a half minute video made by British publisher Dorling Kindersley. It’s entitled “The End of Publishing” but don’t be put off by the title:
http://newsociety.com/blogs/index.php/2010/03/17/the-end-of-publishing
April 2010
Reminding me of the time when new brands of personal computers were being introduced every week, eBook readers are entering the market. Here’s a list of current makes: Amazon Kindle, Apple IPad, Barnes & Noble NOOK Reader, Bookeen Cybook Opus,Ectaco Jetbook, Endless Ideas BeBook, EnTourage eDGe, eRead, Franklin, Hanvon, IRex IRiver Story, Kobo, QUE, Samsung , Skiff Reader , Sony, Spring Design ALEX,TextrViewsonic. One of this week’s introduction is the Alex by Spring Design. It has a dual screen andis priced between Kindles and Nooks and Apple’s iPad. However, Gizmodo, the same newsletter that wrote about the new iPhone left in a bar, reports that Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have killed their tablet projects at least for the time being. Who will be the winners and the losers in this rush into digital everything.
According to Chitika.com, iPads are selling very well – over a million so far. The site keeps a current update.The sales of the iPad are the hope for the newspaper industry. A recent report from Editor and Publisher indicates Sunday sales are down in the major markets. Editor and Publisher is available only by subscription.
Coming next month from Canada – a $149 eBook reader that can read both PDF and ePub files that are available from many online bookstores. It’s from eBook retailer Kobo. This means real price competition. Availability of eReaders is growing. The Kindle goes on sale in selected Target stores this Sunday and Best Buy is selling the Nook.
John Dvorak of PC Magazine does not believe tablets will replace laptop computers and I agree. What tablets will be increasingly doing is expanding the number of people reading eBooks. Their sales are coming in part come at the expense of dedicated e-Reader sales, according to an analysis in Business Week. What will come from this competition are more people reading digital publications.
Did you see ABC News tonight (April 16) that the prime minister of Norway is running his country using his iPad while airlines are closed due to the volcanic ash plaguing Europe? I’ll bet sales of iPads jumped again and that inventors are figuring out how airplanes can fly through ash if it lasts.
Traditional books we’ve grown up with are produced with offset printing. Bowker, the company that maintain the Books-In-Print database and ISBN registry has released the preliminary numbers of books produced in 2009. The release indicates the number of traditional books published is about the same as 2008, approximately 280,000. The full report can be found at http://www.bowkerinfo.com/bowker/IndustryStats2010.pdf
If you’re thinking of getting an eReader, but not sure which one, John Wiley, the publisher of the Dummies series, offers a site(http://ereaderresource.com) that enables you to see eReaders side- by-side and compare characteristics like screen size, weight, battery life, price, memory etc. And use of the site is free.
Yet another eReader was introducted today – the Alex from SpringDesign – one more on the march to over 50 this year! iPads are selling so well in the U.S. that Apple has delayed launching the iPad outside the U.S.
I just bought and opened my first ebook from Apple’s iStore. The book looks more like a book on the iPad. While the Kindle is easier to hold, my sense is more people wanting eReaders may choose iPads. My sense is everything before now will seem like prelude retrospectly and that includes what appear to have been impressive Kindle sales.
Sarah and I have used a Kindle I daily for several years now, but nowour Kindle use will be competing with an iPad. I just finished the installation process and I’m blown away by the screen resolution and the ease of the finger movements. I’ll be reporting more of what I experience. Meanwhile the choices in tablets is growing. The New York Times’ BITS column today reports Google has confirmed it’s working on a tablet that will run its Android operating system. Others entering the tablet competition include Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Acer, and Lenovo.
Many of the people who download the e-books for free later want to have a hardcopy to refer to. For example, Author Roy Osherove provided a RapidShare link to his book, The Art of Unit Testing, and then ran a poll asking readers if they would buy his book after downloading it if they liked it. Nearly two out of five readers said they buy the book in either print or as an eBook. One in five said they wouldn’t buy the book. So by a 2-1 margin, this poll indicates file sharing may help sell books. This reminds me of people who read a book from a library, like it so much that they buy copies either for themselves or gifts. However, file sharing is not without its hazards. Check out David LaFontaine recent blog.
Audiobooks, the earliest versions of which were books- on- tape, are being eclipsed to eBooks. According to the Association of American Publisher s, audiobook sales declined by 13% while eBooks sales grew by 170% last year
Flaws are appearing in the iPad. Today PC magazine reported that many people are complaining on Apple’s support forum that Pad is unable to maintain a steady Wi-Fi connection. Also when iPod apps are enlarged on the larger iPad screen, resolution suffers. Neither of these issues prevented Author Jim Hanas from reading from his book on a iPad at a New York bookstore – probably a first.
The options for getting your eBook into the iBookstore are limited. Apple has extended is providing “application codes” apparently to only the major publishers and seven approved
“aggregators.” The aggregators charge a percentage and some an upfront fee for providing access. However, because Amazon has an app for the iPad, if your book is a Kindle book, your book should be available for the iPad.
What a stir the iPad is generating! Apple said it sold 300,000 this weekend And the apps created for it are running ten to twelve dollars – a new price level form the iPhone apps, which get fuzzy when enlarged on the iPad. I attended an O’Reilly webinar and when the question about how the iPad would affect the publishing industry, among the responses was that the new enhanced books or apps will become team programming efforts.
Jason Boog of GalleyCat interviewed people on the street picking up their iPads on April 3 delivery day outside of a Manhattan store, asking how much they would pay for an eBook. Their answers:
“One dollar”
”99 cents”
”$5.00″ and then when asked to elaborate, “at most 50 to 100, depending on the book.”
Apple iPads are getting reviews from newspapers receiving early review units. As a device for reading books, at a pound and a half, it will be too heavy for many people to read books in bed. Couple this with the PC Mag poll that indicates most people wanting an iPad want it as a productivity tool, making it more likely that iPads will do more to lessen netbook, laptop, and desktop computer usage than to Kindle sales.
March 2010
Is the IPad going to compete with eReader or with computers? According to a PC Mag poll, only one in ten people say they plan to use the IPad primarily to read books. Instead they regard it as a “productivity device.” This finding is consistent with the lead story today on the adoption of “apps” in USA Today.
The company producing the WePad, one of the tablet eReaders that will be competing with the iPad, is owned by Bertelsman, the same company that owns Random House. Random House has not yet agreed to delivery eBooks to the iBookstore.
The agency model pricing, resisted by Amazon but embraced by Apple, for eBooks goes into effect within the next few days. Initially, at least, it will result in higher prices for new releases.
The iPad will be another Apple hit. Reports are that Apple is no longer taking orders for this coming Saturday’s release. Blogger Mike Cane reports seeing the iBookstore and pricing of eBooks begins at $9.99 with most priced at $12.99 and higher. Do higher eBook prices foretell a rise in use of file sharing sites?
Right now Amazon sells 9 out of 10 eBooks, but this is expected to drop to about 7 in 10 books by the end of the year with the entry of Apple’s iPad and Google’s forthcoming tablet into the market.
Do you need to have your eBooks on Amazon and Apples’ new iBookstore? Perhaps not. Random House has yet to make a deal with Apple and some publishers, like OR Books,don’t put their books up on Amazon.
Something interesting from the Book Industry Study Group, which surveyed 44,000 book reader is the finding that just over half of eBooks are read on eReader devices. In order of preference are computer (47%), Kindles (32%), and Apple iPod and iTouch (22%). Other devices, liked the Blackberry, scored less than 10%. These number are likely approximations because the percentages add up to more than 100%, but they do suggest two things: (1) Even before the release of the iPad on April, Apple already is attracting a healthy share of eBook readers, and (2) computer and netbooks are apt to remain places eBooks are read for some time.
eBook sales are galloping forward. The International Digital Publishing Forum reported to its members that eBooks sales increased by 261% from January 2009 to January 2010.
There’s more indication $1.99 will be the new price point. The Kindle Edition of best-seller The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander Mccall Smith is being offered at $1.99.
Amazon has announced its iPad-compatible app that includes the page turning with your finger feature that is gaining popularity. For more about this, check the New York Times story. The Kindle app will also work on Blackberries and other devices that can be used as readers.
The iPad may soon have some competition from the WePad. Check out this report. And it’s reported to cost less.
A new analysis by Aptara finds that most eBook publishers are not taking advantage of major distribution channels that provide access to the largest available audiences of digitally savvy consumers instead opting to primarily rely on their own eCommerce sites for sales and most eBook publishers are not converting their books into formats that can be read on most eBook readers.
A New York Times article describe the price and contractual jockeying underway between Apple, Amazon, and the major publishers. Of interest to small publishers is the last paragraph of the article describing a job posting for for a person to manage “relationships with small- and medium-size publishers, self published authors and other content providers for the iBookstore.”
The two P’s of the digital world are pricing and piracy, which we at 9Lives see as related.
How much does eBook piracy cost U.S. publishers? $3 billion says a new study. This link lists the sites on which most downloads are spotted.
http://venturebeat.com/2010/03/02/book-piracy-costs-u-s-publishers-3b-says-study/
Want to see want the iREx Reader looks like? It’s one of 50 eBook readers on the market.
http://www.zimbio.com/Kindle+Ebook+Reader/articles/lXTo3voHIrd/irex+Digital+Reader+Demo+1
It’s well known that women, particulary boomer women, buy more print books than men. So if you want to project the growth of eBooks, put these two statistics together. A recent survey of eBook buyers found males outnumbered females 51% to 49%. This will change as another survey (cited below) discovered two our of three baby boomer women would like to own a Kindle or other eBook readers.
The process to ePublishing goes on. Today the iReader Review reported that 108 newspapers are now available in the Kindle Store; Sony Reader owners have access to 18 newspapers.
Author readings and signings may get a shot in the arm from a crowdsourced app for the iPhone called Local Books. The database contains information from
51,000 bookstores and libraries.
eBook prices are projected to head lower, according to the Terfis firm. It foresees book prices on the iPad around $8.00 by the end of the year.
Microsoft is entering the eBook fray with what is being called a “digital journal.” It’s in combination with a tablet. You can see it demonstrated at http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/05/microsofts-courier-digital-journal-exclusive-pictures-and-de.
Speakers at the recent DisplaySearch U.S. Flat Panel Display Conference asked participants to envision touch screens on phones and even tables with built-in touch panels. Touch screens are expected to succeed the mouse, trackpad, pointing stick and other input devices.
Did you know there are 50 ebook readers being sold in the world today? And ten of them are on the market in China.
Today, March 5, I read that Novelist JA Konrath is selling some of his own books for $1.99 each on Kindle — at the rate of 170 a day. Could this be a new pricing point?
Michael Miller of PCMag writes that color e-readers will be on the market within the year. The vice president of marketing for E Ink, the company producing the product that made the screens on e-reader comfortable acceptable, estimates that 5 million e-book readers were sold in 2009 and expects the number to grow to 98 million by 2018. Surprising then is the finding in the just released survey by Aptara that “52% of publishers see eBooks as having only low or moderate importance to their growth.”
John Makinson, the CEO of Penguin, spoke and provided a demo of the new form of ”books” the publisher will be providing. His comments are interesting, too, because they indicate that publishers are keen to get the kind of marketing data they have lacked in the past. Here are the links:
It’s not only the music and book industries that are hurt by file sharing. Today’s USA Today reports that adult entertainment industry sales are in a tailspin from because free snippets are being uploads to sites.
Books now outnumber games in Apples App Store, according to a report in the developer blog MobClix. How many new apps will be book-game combinations?
February 2010
An article appeared today (Feb 28) in the New York Times entitled, The Case Against Dirt-Cheap E-Books. Do you think eBook prices are too high, too low?
Thinking about putting your print books into eBooks? Did you know Kindle more than 90000 books available? And think about what the Apple iPad will do the sales of your eBook?
Random House has reorganized its management structure to emphasize digital publishing. Digital is now one of three divisions of the company.
Did you know that authors had no legal interest to their work until the 18th Century? They came about as an act of the British Parliament called the Statute of Anne. Will file sharing technology turn back the clock 300 years?
Over half (57%) of people are willing to pay for music and movies they download. But fewer than one in four people are willing to pay for consumer-generated video (24%) or blogs (20%). Too bad Neilsen didn’t report on eBooks. Is the public attidude toward paying going to be more like music and movies or blogs?
Two our of three baby boomer women would like to own a Kindle or other eBook readers. 1 in 6 already do! Source: Vibrant Nation
eBook prices are slated to go up – beyond $9.99 and readers are expected to rebel. . Price your eBooks accordingly. Here’s a link to a widely discussed New York Times article.
Do you want to format your eBook from Scratch: If you want to format your own eBook, a series of free articles by Craig Morgan Teicher entitled The Making of an eBook is available.
If you’ve been reading about Amazon removing the buy book button from titles or publishers with which it has a problem, here’s a link to a page that shows what happens to the buy button.
http://whomovedmybuybutton.com/buttonology.php
Rumbles are circulating that Google will be releasing its own eReader in the form of a tablet. This is not surprising in view of Google investing hundreds of millions of dollars in digitizing books. Too bad it wasn’t with prior permission, but Google’s audaciousness seems benign compared to that being done by file sharing sites.
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