Category Archives: ebooks

the iPad and Marketing

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the iPad: child's playI picked up my iPhone this morning and thought “it’s just about perfect, except it could be bigger…”

I guess I’m not alone – it seems the good folks over at Cupertino have been on the same thought. And, as regulars on this blog will know, I’ve been a consumer of ebooks on my iphone for a long time.

There’s been a lot of discussion in the media about how the iPad may help publishers embrace the digital era – especially this excellent post over at Gizmodo, which identifies that Apple are trying to do what they did with the iPod: not haggle about the early adopter audience who’ve already bought a Creative JukeBox (or Kindle in this case) but rather reach the rest of the world. Those regular consumers who just like great kit that works.

The impact on marketing is huge. The transition of apps from the iPhone to the iPad will be an enormous opportunity for marketers who’ve succeeded in engaging their customers to the extent of committing to a download. This might be content driven – or commerce driven – or other ‘marketing as a service’ approaches. And yes, I’m look at you, fashion retailers, banks and other service providers.

My colleagues at my new employer, Lyris, are working on an app for a fashion retailer that already looks great on the iPhone. If the high net worth customers of this brand do, as I suspect they will, end up with iPads to do their surfing, they are almost certain to use it to do their online fashion shopping.

Are you ready for that?

It’s the end of the world as we know it…

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today's front page

yesterday's front page

… or so today’s lead piece in the Guardian’s G2 section would have it. Reminds me of the hand-wringing that surrounds the music industry in the wake of rapidly declining record sales.

The story is that Waterstone’s, having once been the darling of the book trade and the book-buying aficionado, has been forced by competition from supermarkets / competition from the internet / ebooks / ownership by HMV to become just like any other high volume retailer. They make offers on high volume sales items and narrow down their list of supported titles to a mere 20,000 items in a typical store.

I have enormous sympathy for the idea of selective punters missing out on the titles they’d love to lay their hands on… and I agree that the current pricing policies mean that you end up subsidising the Dan Brown’s of this world when you buy anything off the top 100 list.

But hold on a second: one of the interesting by-products of internet sales, ebooks and print-on-demand should be the ability to open up new markets and distribution channels for authors who do not appear on the ‘long tail’.

Incremental cost of production reduces close to zero… and then that just leaves the small question of trying to let people know the title is out there. That will then begin to call into question the role of publishers in the same way that record labels have been challenged in the music industry.

Of course, there are differences: despite the calamatous drop-off in sales of CDs, the music industry has grown in recent years. But the growth has come from other revenue streams, such as licensing, tours and merchandise.

That will be a tougher act to pull off in the book trade. Adoring crowds in the tens of thousands shelling out £50 to see Dan Brown read excerpts of The Lost Symbol? Maybe not.

I do, though, wonder whether in years to come, we’ll start to see stores on the high street where you can wander in, choose a title that fits that ‘long tail’ description, then browse more or sip a coffee in the cafe attached while waiting for it to be produced ‘on demand’ for you to walk out with after a brief delay. That, of course, complementing a thriving online industry of shipping virtual books to ereaders. And of course those big, fat discounted blockbusters and celeb biographies.

There are a lot of things that will need to happen for that day to arrive, but it suggests that, publishers aside, the future need not be so apocalyptic.

Can you compete with the Google giant?

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Over on Razorshine, my old pal Kanani has been shopping – in the real world – and hoping that Google would help him. As the organisation dedicated to ‘…organi(sing) the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” this is perhaps not an unreasonable expectation. Especially when, as Riaz says, the new Westfield Shopping Centre has linked to Google Maps to show us how to find them. Ah well.

It raises a question that someone asked me a couple of weeks ago over a pint – and which has come up several times recently: is it possible to go up against Google and win?

Privately, many inside Microsoft would say that perhaps it isn’t – at least for Microsoft.

So if you’re going into business doing anything around the ‘organisation’ and provision of information, does that mean you should pack up and go home?

No.

Google does an outstanding job most of the time – but they are not perfect, or infallible. And, for all their 16,000+ employees, they still cannot do everything. At least, not all right now. Pick the right one of those areas and you’re in business… perhaps.

Then there’s the new semantic search technologies that are touted as the foundation of a ‘web 3.0′ world. Google, of course, will play in this sandpit, but it’s a different approach to presenting information than that which is hard coded into Google’s corporate psyche, so the jury is not quite in yet as to whether they’ll rise to the challenge.

Of course, there is also the entire ecosystem that has sprung up around the way Google makes money. One friend of mine calls this ‘feeding the monster’. Shopping comparison and much affiliate marketing could be described as falling into this bucket. And it’s a healthy one, even in a downturn.

But one of the more interesting perspectives is coming from a book I’m reading at the moment – Randall Stoss has published a near-insider’s view of Google in ‘Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know” ( I link to the ebook, but you can get it on Amazon too). And it’s a compelling view. Doubtless I will mention it again over the coming days.

It’s curious in how it compares Google’s ‘open’ view of the world with the essentially closed environment that social networking (well, mainly Facebook) is once again introducing to the web.

Just as Google wins the legal battle to index the content of pretty much any published book it likes – and extend beyond the virtual world – it’s curious that its biggest threat may well come from the web itself. Food for thought.

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iPhone already market leader for eBooks?

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Over at Forbes.com, speculation has been raised that the iPhone already has a larger number of ebook readers (people that is, not apps) than Amazon has sold Kindles… this is based on 390,000 downloads of an app called Stanza.

cover flow on your bookshelf?

cover flow on your bookshelf?

Interestingly, this far outpaces the eReader software I’ve been using. I can’t see figures for it, but I believe the number to be around 1/3 of that CORRECTION: about the same (see comment below). I suspect this difference in take-up relates to the choice of ‘free’ books available on Stanza rather than offering access to a paid-for store with a broader range of titles. I will watch with interest to find out if the 390,000 who have tried Stanza stick around with it.

What it certainly reinforces for me is that, as discussed earlier on Sandlines, the future of ebooks is with devices you already carry, not new stand alone devices.

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Book 2.0

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This has been brewing in my mind for a while, so it’s about time I talked ebooks – and the devices on which they’re read. And AFullerView’s comments on the subject have nudged me to action.

Book 1.0

Following Sony’s belated entry to the UK market, the likely arrival here of Amazon’s Kindle, and the already available Iliad, there’s been a lot of talk about the future of the humble-yet-mighty book.

Jeanette Winterson wrote an impassioned, if Luddite, piece about why she’s not a fan, though somewhat muddled up with a defence of the importance of spelling correctly… a somewhat linked, but discrete topic. Her main criticism is that ebooks don’t make it any easier to get books into people’s hands.

Well, I do and I don’t agree. Not sitting on the fence: I want to make an important distinction.

I don’t believe the ‘dedicated device’ route is a good way forward for reading ebooks. Particularly via the Sony eReader approach, which (in true Sony style, limits you to buying a proprietary DRM format of books that is at odds with the best range of ebooks available online, over at the excellent Fictionwise.

And there’s good news. If you own a decent smartphone, you can read books in a variety of formats right there – on your iPhone/iPod Touch (by far my favourite ebook reading device to date), on Windows Mobile devices (I’ve had a couple of those) and on old fashioned PDAs. I started reading ebooks back in 2002 on my Palm T3, and I’ve never looked back.

The screens have become gradually more eye-friendly. The range of books is slowly but steadily increasing. The price is appropriate – a little less than a printed book. Reader: this is the way forward. And as the digital ink that makes the Sony device look so good gains currency, the experience can only improve.

And if you go down this path, the green credentials of ebook reading are pretty decent too: you’re simply expanding the value from a device you already have, so no overhead there. And no trees.

Book 2.0 in action

Book 2.0 in action

Crucially, it means that hefty tomes, such as Neal Stephenson’s new 800 page wopper, Anathem, is reduced to something that puts no additional strain on my briefcase for my commute.

So, better screens on existing ‘smart devices’ = less eyestrain, less backstrain, less bagstrain. And removes the ‘barrier to entry’ issue from Ms Winterson et al… it’s not just putting books in the hands of people who haven’t tended to read them, it’s putting the opportunity for entire libraries there.

= result.

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