It’s gone from being a skeletal ad-supported video streaming service to one with content YouTube can’t match and a premium tier that has over 1.5 million subscribers and prospects of future growth. How’s that for fighting back?

The formation of Hulu should have been a wake-up call to the Big Six of publishing. They too should have banded together to form a Hulu for Books.

Instead, they decided to risk their future by betting on a price-fixing trust strategy instigated by Apple, today known as Agency Pricing. This has not saved them from the threat of being put out of business by Amazon and by all of the writers who have discovered they no longer need a publisher to reach readers.

It hasn’t saved them from the inevitable day when Barnes & Noble collapses under the weight of its stores, leaving the Big Six with basically only outlets run by tech companies to sell their eBooks: Amazon, Apple, Google, and Kobo. (Sony, given the way its been bleeding money, will not last.)

Is there still time for the creation of a Hulu for Books?

Is the Amazon threat ever going to go away? No.

Is the Apple threat ever going to go away? No.

Is the Google threat ever going to go away? No.

So there’s still time for a Hulu for Books.

And since no one in the Big Six seems to understand how this can be done, I will lay it all out for them.

Not because I love them and want any of them to survive — but because my proposal is first of all also good for my fellow writers.

1) The Big Six should pledge equal financial resources to form a separate arm’s-length company. For now, let’s just call it Hulu for Books or HFB.

2) HFB is to be a profit-making venture, not a beard to continue the failed policies of its retrograde publishing partners. Let me make this clear: The Big Six can have representatives on an Advisory Board. None of them should ever sit on the Board of Directors.

3) The task of this company — HFB — is to create an industry-standard eBookstore better than anything Amazon, Apple, Google, and Kobo have or can ever offer. It has to be so because this is the entirety of all book publishing that’s at stake.

4) It has to take in the reality of how the Internet works right now, how eBook marketing and selling works right now, and have a vision for how HFB can actually shape the marketplace. It must lead, not be a me-too venture.

5) The overarching structure of the HFB eBookstore is as one bookstore. No favoritism is given to any Big Six partner. HFB has as its goal pleasing customers first, selling eBooks second, and pleasing its partners last.

6) HFB would be open to all publishers, not just the Big Six. Why? Because the entirety of all book publishing is at stake. The emphasis of this company is to preserve the market for books first, not the Big Six. This reflects what Hulu itself does — preserve the market for conventionally-produced TV and movies, not just preserve its financial backers, and to compete against what YouTube offers in shorter form by “self-publishing” uploaders.

7) Unlike all other bookstores, each publisher (which, again, is not limited to the Big Six) can have its own store within it. It will have the same UI and purchasing system as the rest of the store, but this store-within-a-store is a place where each publisher can do its own style of marketing and speak in its own voice to its readers. Rather than seeing its big book of the month ignored by the general store, in this area of its own sub-store it can tout it to its heart’s content. Publisher brands and their brand imprints are thus preserved.

HFB would offer an open API that affiliated stores can tie into. If a small publisher has its own eBookstore on its own hardware and has been content to do it that way, it can continue to do so. But it can now tie into a larger entity. A small transaction and maintenance fee would be the price for using the API. This API is crucial to derail the anti-trust and restraint of trade charges that all tech companies — with their closed systems — are inevitably going to face at some point.

9) This open API would also be marketed to hardware makers. Kobo and other device makers could use it in their eBook readers. All Android tablet makers could use it in their hardware. There would be a small licensing fee for this. Do you think Kobo wouldn’t use it? Kobo ties into public libraries, so Kobo would. And Android tablet makers would jump at the chance to have a books outlet that didn’t require customized software and licensing from different companies just to offer books.

10) HFB would also offer affiliate links for all blogs that would have them, with priority going to sites and blogs that focus on books. Spam sites would be blackballed.

11) HFB, being the tech tail wagging the industry dog, would educate the Big Six and its other publishing partners on where it sees eBooks going and what is needed from all partners to help them stay current in the market. This is distinct from the statistical aspects of the site. This is Vision. HFB should be for eBooks what Apple has been to gadgets.

12) HFB would enable publishers to see how their books are selling directly, without the kind of reporting delays that other eBookstores have. Real-time statistics would be available and marketing departments of publishers could see for themselves the success and failure of their campaigns and strategies. Did you just tweet a special offer? Check in an hour later to see if there’s been any change in sales.

13) HFB would allow self-publishing, bringing back into the fold of the book world all of those who have been lost to the tech companies. There are writers out there who today have banded together to sell as co-ops. HFB would offer them the chance to relieve them of all of the housekeeping burdens such efforts require. They could set up their own store-within-a-store in HFB.

14) Note that I have not discussed concrete fees for anything. It will take imagination, determination, and far more number ability than I have to hazard a guess about what API licenses and transaction fees — for publishers and self-publishers — should be. But I do know there should be an aggressiveness to all this because the entirety of all book publishing is at stake. And that is not hyperbole.

15) HFB is meant to be the leader in eBooks, taking away that perception — if not current reality — from Amazon and to blunt the looming threat that hundreds of millions of iOS devices and Apple’s iBookstore present. As such, it would help develop tools and set standards for eBooks in a way that the slow IDPF cannot and never could accomplish. For example, it would see the wisdom of creating ePub Author and other tools like it. It would create the standards for eBooks, not have them dictated by the whims of tech companies.

16) The entire point of HFB is to:

1) Have books take a stand of their own
2) Preserve the idea of books
3) Shape the future of books
4) Promote books

Until a Hulu for Books is realized, the Big Six will find their futures becoming increasingly precarious. It’s not just Amazon, Apple, Google, and the rest who are threats. It’s every writer would can make a living selling one or two thousand $2.99 ebooks a month — a sum the Big Six consider insignificant until that writer catches fire and sells a hell of a lot more.

A Hulu for Books is a long play. It’s not something that should be seen as immediately generating profits. It’s an investment. But the history of such investments have shown that eventually the graph forms like a hockey stick, eventually shooting up with crazy growth. The market is big enough for everyone and everyone can profit — and stay in business.

Rather than continue the hostility that has developed — and which I have often also instigated — between the Big Six, writers, and readers, it’s past time to band together as lovers of books, as lovers of the written word and its distinct place in human culture, and ensure that the destiny of all book publishing remains in the hands of those who actually care for it and deeply love it. Those are emotions alien to every tech company currently competing with publishers and that continue to fool writers into thinking they’re a friend.

The Hulu For Books That Never Was

That last generated  lot of fury because instead of generating a spec compliant Epub, iBA creates  custom flavor of Epub with any number of non-standard components. This upset  lot of people who work with Epubs, including me, but lately I’ve changed my mind.

I was reading an article in The Register earlier this evening that made me realize that it’s a little too late to complain about proprietary Epub formats; iBooks makes the 6th or 7th custom Epub format on the market now.

The article in The Register was arguing the point that Epub would win out over the Kindle format because of Apple and iBooks Author were going to pull in a user base from a young age. Those users would go on to use Epub, and so on and so forth.

I wouldn’t bother reading the article; it has many factual errors. But I did read it and I was making notes about how I would refute it. Eventually I stopped because I hit on the one point that rendered the article moot.

Epub might defeat the Kindle format, but which Epub format will do that, exactly? There are bunches.

• There’s the base Epub format.
• Kobo has a couple of their own Epub formats (KEpub, FLEpub).
• Apple has supported custom tags in iBooks since the app launched, and later launched a fixed layout format as well as audio and video tags. They also have their own DRM, and that makes even the specs compliant Epub as a new format.
• Adobe has supported their own subset of custom tags ever since their first Epub reading app. (Not many use them, but the tags are still there.)
• And B&N has their own DRM, but let’s set that aside and just consider their fixed layout format.

Depending on how you count, I have just listed between 7 and 9 Epub formats. And those are just the ones I know of; I’m deeply afraid that there may be others hiding somewhere.

What’s more, some of these formats have been round for a very long time. One of Kobo’s formats has been there since the company launched over 2 years ago (it was only used internally). B&N launched their DRM with the original Nook (2009), and they launched their fixed layout format with the NookColor (late 2010). And of course iBooks originally launched in early 2010 with custom tags and its own DRM.

But some of those still meet the Epub spec, you say. Yes, but they don’t work right on other platforms, even when the DRM is theoretically compatible. That renders the compliance issue irrelevant.

And as for iBooks Author making just  the one format, and how that’s an unbearable sin in the eyes of any Epub lover – Yes, but all the other companies I listed above will provide you with tech specs to make their custom formats, while Apple is happy to give you  tool to make their custom format. If one is worse, it is only by a matter of degree.

And I’ll bet dollars to donuts that B&N and Kobo are upset right now not because iBA makes a custom format but because they didn’t think to do it first. iBA gives Apple a decisive advantage over Kobo and B&N in ebook creation, so I think the others will follow suit as soon as they can.

At this point, really, there is only one key difference that sets the new iBooks format apart from all the other custom Epub formats. Apple changed the file suffix. That’s it.

So if you’re upset that Apple split up the Epub market, I’m sorry but that ship has sailed.

It’s a Little Too Late to Complain About Apple’s Proprietary Ebook Format

That's not an index finger that Amazon is showing you.

Shortly after the time that the Kindle Fire launched, I discovered that Amazon had quietly blocked all their competitor’s reading apps from being seen in the Appstore on the Kindle Fire. That prohibition continues to this day (with one exception – Wattpad).

Well, today I got a hint that whatever Amazon may have hoped to achieve with the block, what they’re really doing is adding to the frustration of KF owners.

An email went around today from a PR firm working with Bluefire, the reading app developer. The email pointed us to  recent post on the Bluefire blog, and that post provided instructions on how to get around Amazon’s block in a few simple steps.

Now, that email went around because Bluefire was hoping we would write about it. (By “we” I am referring to probably everyone who writes about ebooks; at a minimum TeleRead, eBookNewser, and I got it.) But don’t you wonder why the email was sent out? I do, because that’s the more interesting story.

I think Bluefire posted the instructions (just basic steps on how to install apps) because they are probably seeing an ongoing stream of frustrated readers. This tells me that Amazon’s block isn’t working quite the way that Amazon expected it to.

The people who make it as far as Bluefire’s website are probably people that you don’t want to piss off. They’re tech-savvy enough that they figured out that an app is missing. And they cared enough about this app to take the time to find Bluefire and ask what happened. When the readers get to Bluefire they’re told that Amazon is blocking the app, and that there is nothing Bluefire can do about it (there isn’t).

The readers are already puzzled, but when they discover the cause of their frustration, the common responses will range from annoyed to pissed. That is going to come back and bite Amazon in the arse one of these days. Even if there’s no immediate complaining about Amazon’s prohibition, it’s still creating a subtext in the minds of Kindle Fire owners.

Amazon, a company who supposedly likes customers, will secretly screw with you if it suits their purposes.

Just wait until the next time that Amazon gets some bad PR. This thought, even if it has been forgotten, will be influencing many of the people who were frustrated by the prohibition. They might never talk about it explicitly, but this issue is still going to affect how they talk about Amazon.

Next time you see  bunch of complaining about something Amazon did, this prohibition will have exacerbated the situation.

Amazon Still Blocks Reading Apps on the Kindle Fire & Continues to Frustrate Customers

Ben Bova is an SF author that all should recognize. He’s had a career spanning decades, and in that time he’s made any number startling predictions, some of which have since come true. This prediction came from Cyberbooks, a novel that was originally published in 1989.

The book focused on the invention of the first ereader, the Cyberbook. It was more of a satirical take on the publishing industry than a prediction of the near future, but that just renders the accuracy all that much more amazing. Here’s the money quote:

“Cyberbooks will bring down the cost of publishing to the point where thousands of writers who can’t get their works published now will have a viable marketplace for their books”.

Doesn’t that sound like the current state of self-publishing?

While it’s not clear that Mr. Bova predicted that so many would bypass the traditional gatekeepers, there is still a ring of truth to this. Would you believe it was just tossed off in a brief phone conversation near the end of the book? And there’s even more predictions in the book which have come true, including online sales and the amount of effort publishers put into resisting change.

Laugh Lines

Just to put this into perspective, Cyberbooks was published the year before the first Sony Data Discman hit the market.  That was the first device to even come close to the ereader described in the novel, but it still fell short.

If anything, Mr. Bova was probably inspired by the DynaBook, a theoretical tablet/ereader developed by Alan Kay in the late 1960s. The Dynabook, which bears  striking resemblance to the Kindle DX, was supposed to have very long battery life and was conceived as  way for children to gain access to digital media. (Of course, that last detail is amazing all on its own; digital media itself didn’t exist at the time.)

You can look at the Dynabook and see that it was the godfather of all ereaders, but the one device that comes closest to the original ideal would probably be the XO laptop from One Laptop per Child. It’s bigger and heavier than the concept, but it is does follow the spirit of the idea.

Ben Bova Foresaw the Self-Pub Movement

That gave me pause and made me think some more about B&N and its relationship with its customers.

My relationship with B&N goes back a great many years. Even when I worked for Borders, I shopped at B&N. I have been a member of the B&N club for many years and I even have a B&N Mastercard. Until this past year, my wife and I generally visited the local B&N store at least twice a month and I spent thousands of dollars a year at the local B&N as well as at B&N online.

Yet as I sit at my desk and think about my long-term relationship with B&N, I realize that the flame has gone out. The more I think about it, the more I realize that B&N began spritzing the flame when it released the Nook; changed the spritzing to a more forceful watering when it firmly adopted its own DRM and refused to give members any member advantage over nonmembers when it came to either the Nook or ebooks; and has finally doused the flame with its newest changes to its membership plan. Try as I might, and although I will continue to buy from B&N rather than Amazon so as to do my part to keep competition alive, the reality is that B&N has consistently spurned me, and the changes in my book buying (and the amount I spend at B&N) reflect that spurning.

As you may recall, I was unhappy when B&N came out with the Nook (the original one I thought was poorly designed; the new Touch is very nice but not nice enough to make me replace either my working 1-year-old Sony 950 or my working 4-year-old Sony 505 with it) and wouldn’t give me my 10% member’s discount — even though I was prepared at the time to buy two Nooks at $249 each! B&N’s rationale was that at $249 it was already losing money on the device; my rationale was that as a relatively big book buyer ((I spent thousands of dollars a year at B&N on books, very few of which were the heavily discounted “bestsellers”), B&N should be willing to give me a small incentive to remain a B&N book buyer — especially when its primary competition was selling for less. It wasn’t the money so much — afterall, I spent more on my Sonys than I would have on the Nooks — as much as I wanted to feel that this was a partnership.

If B&N was losing money at $249 it must be shooting itself in the head with a machine gun every time it sells a Nook for $99. More importantly, because it chose to save $25 — a shortsightedness that Jeff Bezos would not tolerate at Amazon — it lost me as an ebook customer. True, if you look at my Nook library you’ll find I have purchased more than 125 ebooks from B&N, but if you look at the prices paid, with the exception of a very few, the purchase prices were “free.” And to add a nail to the coffin, nearly all those that I did pay for, I paid for with B&N’s own money — the gift cards I earned from using the B&N Mastercard.

More importantly for B&N is that in the last year my purchases at the local B&N have been few. We went from visiting the store (and buying at each visit) at least twice a month to visiting once every three or four months and sometimes not buying at all. (For the first time in six months I bought a book at the local B&N last week.) For the most part, my wife and I have become ebookers and most of the ebooks we read are purchased from Smashwords or Sony, not B&N.

I recently discussed with my wife making more visits to the local B&N. It would be easy to do as the B&N is in the same mall as our grocery store. But then came the news that the terms of the membership were changing. The discount remains unusable for ebooks but instead of a 20% discount in the store on all adult hardcovers and 40% on bestsellers, the discount is changing to 10% and 40%. As we rarely buy the “bestsellers,” B&N is simply cutting our discount. Not much of an incentive to buy at the local B&N. (Interestingly, as a general rule the books available at B&N online are much more steeply discounted than at the local store even with the membership card — and it has been quite a while since the membership did anything but give you free shipping online.)

The point of all this is to say that maybe B&N is on a suicide path and without hope for long-term survival. It is losing sight of the fact that 75%+ of the book market remains pbooks. eBooks are important, and the area of greatest growth, but ebooks are still in the childhood stage. Although they cannot be neglected, they cannot be focused on to the exclusion of the dominant portion of the market. To remain viable, B&N has to dually focus on both ebooks and pbooks. Sadly, it is becoming dangerously myopic when it comes to pbooks.

It has taken no steps to encourage those core readers, the ones who read several books a month and who are B&N members, to be active buyers of its ebooks or pbooks. Whatever it has done, it has done with the broad market in mind. Many months ago I argued that this was a mistake, that B&N really needed to cultivate that core group of book buyers who could be the proselytizers for its future. I said months ago when the Nook was introduced that B&N needed to reward its members for being members and not treat members like everyone else or B&N would ultimately be sorry.

I’m sorry to say, but perhaps there is no real hope for B&N. Whoever does their strategic thinking is spending too little time thinking and too much time doing harmful things to B&N’s future. I looked at a Nook Touch last week. The free-Touch-with-a-New-York-Times-subscription offer tempted me. But I can get the New York Times for the same price on my Sony 950 so that wasn’t much of an incentive. In the end, I was peeved over the change in membership terms and simply decided to pass on the offer. B&N really doesn’t want me; B&N has successfully extinguished the last of the embers.

The sad thing is that putting out my fire, and the fire of other B&N members, B&N may be also be putting closed on its door.

Is There Hope for Barnes & Noble Redux

This past week I came across a couple articles on this topic, both for and against.  Rather than take a position, I’m going to quote key excerpts from the articles so they can inspire your thoughts bout the issue.

The first is from ComputerWorld.  In this article Mark Gibbs argues that the ebook market won’t take off until ebooks can offer more than  paper book. The problem with this is that we already have enhanced ebooks. The market has spoken and people prefer books that are like the ones they are already reading.

The big problem was that the content takes absolutely no advantage of the digital format. For example, there are quite a few tables that use text that is too small to read and that can’t be enlarged even by the usual iPad “zoom in” gesture. In other words, the platform is more or less ignored so what you have is a rough analog that is actually less useful than the physical book would be.

This is typical of many so-called e-books because, in common with the baby’s magazine experience, these publications, despite being called “e-books” and being displayed on devices such as iPads, simply don’t work well. As and when publishers understand this and start to produce something that does deliver value, I’ll bet e-book sales will really take off. Of course they won’t actually be e-books any more, they’ll really be apps.

The other article comes from Salon. Laura Miller examines a number of enhanced ebooks and looks at what works and doesn’t work. Here’s where she ended up:

Attempts to invigorate books with video and other digital bells and whistles keep bumping up against this fundamental problem: You can’t really pay much attention to anything else while you’re reading, so in order to play with any of these new features, you have to stop reading. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, then the attentional tug of all these peripheral doodads is vaguely annoying, and if you’re not engaged by the story, they aren’t enough on their own to win you over.

So what do you think?

image by matthewvenn

CageFight: Apps vs Ebooks

This news comes amid reports that the ALA is meeting with other publishers over ebook lending. There’s no word yet on how those talks went, but if we use today’s news as a yardstick, my guess is not well.

While some are spinning this as good news, I see it as another attack on libraries. I’m sorry, but today’s news cannot be described as anything else. This was not the act of someone who likes libraries or likes doing business with them.

No, I think RH made this move because they’d much rather cut off library ebooks entirely, but they don’t want to have to deal with the negative publicity. Like the other Big 6 publishers, I think RH doesn’t like the fact that all these people are reading all these books without paying. The thought of all those lost sales just eats away at them.

The major publishers claim to love libraries, but if you examine their actual behavior it will look a lot like that of a drunk who beats his wife. Sure, he says he loves her, but the neighbors still call the police twice a week.

Random House to Increase Library Ebook Prices (aka They Hate Libraries)

The ALA’s list of demands starts off with a demand for publishers to listen to their demands and (I love this part) “deal with libraries and […] do this as soon as possible”. I’m unsure as to the origin of this Jack Bauer sense of urgency; libraries have already missed the eBook train. (And by missed, I mean “kept off of it”.) While some might see this as a time for catching up, I’d be more interested in what it would take to catch up as well as the terms associated. More than likely, if current eBook licensing arrangements are any indication, it could have the makings of a pill that is too bitter to swallow.

Publishers, for their part, aren’t in much of a better talking position. If they are counting on brick-and-mortar stores like Barnes and Noble to be their saviors, then libraries are a natural second choice for physical locations that supply books to a population. But, since we lend materials (and lending is a codeword  for “lost sale”, no matter if a person patiently waits three months to read a book), this presents a unusual hesitance for allowing the lending eBooks to libraries. Coupled with the fact that they have “new concerns about the security of our digital editions”, this might be a starting stalemate for any meetings.

Personally, I would *love* to hear any and all explanations given to this latter point. So, a person who downloads an eBook directly from Amazon or Barnes & Nobles is not a threat, but someone who is required to installs Adobe Digital Editions, make an account with Adobe, then use their library card through the library’s website is a threat? How different is the file in these cases that makes one a problem and the other not?

Simply put, this won’t be a “Come to Jesus” moment for publishers nor will it be a breakthrough for less restrictive library eBook lending. I’d like to imagine that these meetings would be productive, but I think that the only thing they will produce are press releases about their productivity.

reposted under  CC license from Agnostic Maybe

Much Ado About Publishing

LISNews had this interesting article on the death of the First Sale Doctrine in the digital age. In rebuking ownership and proclaiming that the software, music, movies, books, and so forth are licensed, leased, or rented, people are denied the right to transfer (and for the specific purposes of this post, lend or give) a copyrighted work from themselves to another. While I will concede that my support for the establishment of First Sale Doctrine rights for digital property has major problems when it comes to how to transfer ownership, I can’t help but wonder if the elimination of ownership (or even the ability to lend or give) is a good thing or a bad thing.

My first reaction to the article was the immediate difference between purchasing and (in effect) renting. In disallowing ownership and some of the stakeholdership associated with it, does it transform our notions of pop culture into a transitory or disposable one? (Considering how quickly music groups and movies fly through our lives, perhaps this is a late discovery.) As much as companies might feel that lending is a lost sale, is this better than having people with no actual investment in a media or medium and treating it as such? Without ownership ties, does this effect how easily or readily people might give up on a band, book, or movie? I can’t help but feel like it does.

Following this, all I could imagine is what the management of digital rights must cost the industries involved and what it would be in perpetuity. As the number of works increases, it will involve managing those copyrights and their associated trademarks and brands. Considering the length of copyright protecting, this means that someone will have to be placed into the role of the ever vigilant observer to ensure these rights are protected till they expire. (Perhaps there can be some sort of pseudo-religious order founded on the basis of protecting copyrights since it’s going to take several generations of keepers to safeguards. Like the Knights Templar of Copyright or something.) How much of an actual cost will become? Is this a better allocation of resources compared to establishing some digital rights?

Given that companies have gone after file sharers and come up with a fistful of bad press and a negative cost: benefit ratio, there has to be a sensible middle ground.

What are your thoughts? Can First Sale exist in the digital age?

reposted with permission from Agnostic Maybe

Digital and First Sale Doctrine Thoughts

But have you considered that Waterstones might not be the best choice for a first partner? I know it sounds crazy, but I think Indigo, the largest bookstore chain in Canada, might be a good alternative.

I’m sure you’re thinking that Indigo is involved with Kobo, so there’s no reason for them to go in a different direction. But Indigo also sold off their interest in Kobo a while ago, so now Kobo is only a partner like WH Smith, Whitcoulls, or Pearson Australia. (Indigo is probably also tied to Kobo by  contract, so this post is likely irrelevant. But that won’t stop me.)

Now, Kobo is said to be the dominant ebookstore in Canada, so one might assume that Indigo would want to stick with it. But have you considered how Kobo got that position? It’s not through looks or personality, but because Indigo was the largest Canadian bookstore chain. In store support adds a lot of value; just ask B&N. But it would add value to any device supported by Indigo, not just Kobo.

So if Indigo formed a partnership with B&N, there would be value in it for B&N, right? That seems like a good reason for B&N to try to recruit Indigo, if you ask me. At the very least, it puts Indigo in  position to negotiate a better deal with Rakuten – assuming B&N is interested, of course.

What’s more, B&N is already selling ebooks in Canada, so expanding to have a real presence up north would make sense.

On the other hand, I could see B&N expanding into Canada without Indigo as a partner. I’m sure that it would be nice to have a bookstore, yes, but B&N is already absent from a good chunk of the US anyways. And several of B&N’s current US retail partners also own chains in Canada, so negotiating new agreements wouldn’t be that difficult. Tech support also wouldn’t be that much of  problem; it would have to be online and phone but B&N already does that. The only major change would be the legally mandated support for French, but that is a minor issue.

In any case, I foresee Canada being B&N’s next market. They might even announce it at the same time as the Waterstone’s deal.

image by brewbooks

Indigo Would Make A Great First Partner for Barnes & Noble