Amazon Releases Kindle App for Mac

It has been a long wait, but today Amazon released the Kindle app for the Mac platform. I now have a complete (but closed) ecosystem where I can buy books and read them on my phone, my Kindle, and my computer. We'll see how things change when the iPad releases early next month, but for now this is great. I have read dozens of digital books now from Amazon, and this ecosystem is a big reason why.

Paying a Premium for Sony Reader Titles

I went shopping for an ebook the other day. It was the new James Bond book, Devil May Care, authored by Sebastian Faulks. I have been a fan of the Bond books for some time, but I really appreciate the original Ian Fleming titles, so this new book held particular interest for me.

I knew that it was a new release and a heavily marketed title, so I jumped at the chance that there may actually be a Kindle or Sony version available. I have both the Sony PRS-505 and Kindle, so I checked both Amazon and Sony's eBook Store. Just as a note of reference, I did not use the Kindle's Whispernet connection to check for availability, I just used standard web browsing.

I found the title easily in the Kindle bookstore and could not find it on Sony. I had hoped to find it on the Sony as I prefer the form factor and reading experience over the Kindle, so I decided to keep hunting. After a few more searches, however, I was able to find the title available on the Sony (the publisher was listed as Random House, not Doubleday, and a keyword search for "James Bond" did not return this book, so I went back to Amazon and grabbed the title and found it only by a title search). The list price on Kindle was $9.99 and the price for the Sony was $12.56.

After a few minutes, I had purchased the title through Sony and was downloading it to my PRS-505. The lesson here is that I spent an additional 15 minutes tracking down the title after I had already found it on Amazon and paid a 25% premium to have the same reflowable text on my Sony device rather than Kindle.

Mobile LibraryThing

I have been a user of LibraryThing for some time, entering my catalogue of books and then slowly starting to take advantage of the social functionalities of the concept. It has been very useful in sharing my books with family and friends as well as learning about other books and authors I should check out.

In addition to the variety of interesting things that the site offers, I have found the mobile access to your personal book collection to be very useful. I can browse to LibraryThing from my mobile phone and I have immediate access to an organized, web-based catalogue of my personal library. From anywhere in the world, I can refer to what books I own, and access metadata, reviews, and ratings. I have done this from the book store, from the library, and even from work.

Call me a book geek, but I think that is very cool.

Not on the Same Page as Print is Dead

I read this article talking about the hidden features of the Kindle at the Print is Dead blog (from Jeff Gomez, the author of Print is Dead) this morning. Jeff seems to think that additional features of ereading devices are not only great, but necessary. I have a slightly different opinion.

The iPod did not improve the portable listening experience for music, it simply made it possible to carry a complete collection of music around on a very small device. Sony's Walkman pioneered the category, but the iPod connected the gap between the media and the mechanism.

This is what ereaders can add immediate value on -- not creating a better reading experience than a book, but making it possible to carry hundreds of books around in a compact unit. E-ink and the like are technologies that were built because of a recognized shortfall that needed to be rectified to have any success.

There are inherent advantages to digital books that should be exploited, such as linking, full-text search, and tagging. Personally, these are the types of things that I am looking for in an ereader -- I certainly don't need another wireless web browser to go with my laptop and smart phone. I think device companies need to look at form factor, ergonomics, and UI (not to mention critical mass of content!) before adding games, GPS capability, and web browsing.

EpubCheck Validation Tool Results

I downloaded and tested the EpubCheck application today, as announced in the Adobe Digital Editions blog. I am pleased to say that I ran it on a variety of EPUB files and was able to test for certain planned errors, understand the error terminology, and make corrections based on the error log.

It is an important fact that the people who created this tool are intimately involved at the IDPF and Adobe in creating the EPUB as well as OPS standard.

I think with a little bit of enhancement and UI integration, this tool is a great start to an effective validation tool for EPUB containers. I am hoping that since it is open source, we can soon see a version that prints errors to a txt or xml file with ease as well as incorporating a simple web UI (and maybe even batch functionality).

I noted that by mid-afternoon, there were 21 downloads of the application (one of which was mine). I hope that grows quickly and publishers that are working on implementing EPUB integrate this into their workflow.

More Kindle than Kindle ... Kindleville

For those that just can't get enough information about Amazon's Kindle, here is a new blog called Kindleville from Joe Wikert that is dedicated to posts about the Kindle. I have been a reader of Joe Wikert's main blog, Publishing 2020, for some time and there are frequently some very interesting perspectives on digital books from a publishing insider. Hopefully this will carry over to Kindleville as well.

Check it out!

Amazon's Digital Text Platform

It seems as though Amazon's Digital Text Platform flew beneath the radar with the release of the Kindle. I have been checking this out for the last few days and it looks like very interesting.

The basic premise is that any author can submit their content (as long as they hold the digital rights) to the Digital Text Platform, and Amazon will convert it to Kindle's format and make it available for sale through the Kindle Store, with a royalty of 35% of suggested retail price.

This effectively serves as a digital self-publishing platform. From the looks of the user forums, it seems like there are a good amount of people asking questions.

The Dichotomy of DRM

I have heard quite a bit of buzz in the "ebook" industry (particularly since the release of the Kindle) specific to the negative restriction of DRM in the current consumption of digital books. I think this mainly refers to the fact that the Big 2 devices (Sony and Kindle) as well as a variety of ebook applications have DRM rules that make it difficult or impossible to transfer the content from device to device or render the content on any device you choose.

I also hear, in a variety of business development conversations, that publishers are becoming more and more concerned about the lack of ultra-strict DRM in some ebook distribution channels. This includes the ability (when consuming digital content in a computing environment) to copy/paste, save, print, etc. Publishers are asking these channels to build more limitations so that they feel comfortable that their content is not being compromised.

It is obvious that there is a level of DRM that a publisher would need and expect so that there is limited fear of piracy. On the other side, it is apparent that DRM can not only serve as a deterrent to copyright violation, but it can also serve as a deterrent to the adoption of digital content at a mainstream level.

I hope that we can, as an industry, come up with solutions to DRM that will properly address real concerns of piracy, as well as ease the burdon of use for end users.

The Real Issue with Kindle?

Much has been said about the recent release of Amazon's Kindle, from reviews and rants throughout the blogosphere to the cover article in Newsweek magazine. I have sifted through a bunch of this information, and while I am happy to see such buzz about ebooks, I wonder if some of the issues that are being raised are a little, how do I put this ... lame?

I mean, to gripe that the first generation of the Kindle does not support social networking or have a touch screen? Can E Ink even support a touch screen interface (I don't know the answer, but I would not simply assume so)? Is it really an issue that you can't use the Kindle to purchase print books (or a 50" HD LCD TV, for that matter) direct from Amazon? Isn't it just pretty darn cool that you can wirelessly connect to their ebook store and purchase download titles without being tethered to a computer?

I have now had the opportunity to consume digital content on both the latest generation Sony Reader as well as the Kindle, and I think the main issue with either device has nothing to do with features and functionality. It has to do with the availablity of CONTENT. That's right, until there is a critical mass of digital books available for either platform, I just don't see adoption. In fact, when I recently received my Kindle, none of the top 3 titles I was looking for were available for purchase, so I had to settle for my fourth choice. The same thing went for the Sony Reader. I am much more concerned with having the content I want to read available than if my device can jump through hoops.

So now we have several devices on the market that support E Ink, two of them from large, significant companies. Now, how do we get publishers ABLE to get their books to these channels? Is it a question of business rules and royalties with Sony, Amazon, etc? Or is it still a production question, that the cost of preparing the IDPF's EPUB format or a variety of other proprietary formats is still too high? How can we get over this hump?

Until we do, I think we have some pretty cool early generation digital reading devices with not enough content.