Kindle News, 8/25/11 - Kindles in Libraries, Steve Jobs Steps Down - reactions

More and more libraries are loaning out e-readers, and in the case of a local library in Idaho, The Snake River School Community Library, they've ordered 15 Amazon Kindles (UK: K3) for use by the general public or students.  There's a newsclip on this at the article.

The library's director, Sherrilynn Bair, explains that students will be using electronic devices in their classrooms and this will give them a jump start on that.

As with other libraries that have been loaning Kindles, most students are on waiting lists, as they're a big hit, Bair says.

  Moreover, "The Idaho Falls Library is in contract discussions with digital book distributor Overdrive to provide free online checkouts, compatible with any and all devices."  The library hopes to have something in place by Oct-Nov.

  We've been waiting for the Kindle to be involved with public library lending.  Amazon and Overdrive have been working together to make it possible for Kindle books to be loaned, soon, from public libraries, with Amazon delivering the e-books after check-out and making it possible for borrowers to make highlights and notes which will be backed-up (as is done for Kindle owners who don't opt out of the feature) to their private, password-protected annotation webpages on the Amazon servers (not visible to other borrowers, of course).  Here's an example.

  While public-library Kindle-book lending was promised by the "end of the year," there have been hints that the Overdrive/Amazon Kindle-book public library loan program may be ready to go by September-October but there's no hard info to go on.  What has been definite is that the deliveries will be what Kindle users are accustomed to -- wireless downloads with no need for a computer.


Steve Jobs steps down as CEO of Apple
This was, of course, big in the news last night, despite the fact he's officially been on medical leave the last half-year but showing up for work and presentation as the need arises.  Tim Cook has been the Chief Operating Officer and running things while the company continued to do very well, but Jobs's definite presence would have a lot to do with that and it'll continue to, as he will remain on, elected to the position of Chairman of the Board, although, as the NY Times notes, that position didn't exist before.

While I'm not admiring of some of Apple's recent actions, I do admire what Jobs has done with that company, and it has a lot to do with his intense focus on quality, high standards, and understanding what consumers want and are comfortable with.  His fighting spirit against an aggressive, consuming cancer has been inspiring, and I hope that his stepping back will somehow help him beat it, despite indications it is important for him to be in control and active.  It did make me sad that he felt bad enough to say, in his resignation letter, that he is no longer able to meet his "duties and expectations as Apple's CEO."

I've seen relatives and friends try to fight pancreatic cancer and also the spread of it to the liver, but Jobs has held it at bay 10 times longer than most are able to, and here's wishing the best to him on this personal battle.

As Biographer Glenn Fleishman said last night:

' There's something that pulls at you inside.  I feel sad for him as a person.  This guy, an adopted child who had difficulty learning, no college degree, rose to create the largest company in the world, and now at the peak, steps down.  Perfect time to step down, it's part of that epic story arc and there's something mythic and beautiful and sad about it. '

How will Apple fare after Jobs? Two brief assessments:

' Cult of Mac writer Leander Kahney reckons Steve's personality traits have basically become Apple's business model, and are ingrained in the company itself. With Jobs out of the equation, the company may continue to function as if he were still there, barking orders.

"Jobs' perfectionism, for example, has created a system at Apple for exhaustively prototyping everything the company does," Kahney wrote.

Not everyone is so optimistic.  New York Times tech columnist David Pogue tweeted: "I agree with you all that Apple is teeming with geniuses.  But Jobs added a single, pure vision that will be tough to maintain by committee." '

Here is The NY Times article.

It has to be odd for him, the new Chairman of the Board of Apple, to get online and read so many eulogy-style articles.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($139)   DX Graphite

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Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Kindle News Roundup: NYReview of Books Kindle Ed., More on rumored Samsung/Amazon tablet; Kindle for Android Update; Amazon Germany's Kindlestore opens; publishing in Amazon.de Kindle Store

KINDLE NEWS THIS WEEK

New York Review of Books
This excellent resource is finally available in a Kindle edition.  The New York Review of Books reviews "...the most engrossing new books and the ideas that illuminate them."  There's a 14-day free trial and you can unsubscribe during that time.

Kindle for Android
The Kindle for Android app has been updated to tailor it for tablet-computers, with enhancements that take advantage of the larger screen. New features include
  . the Ability to pause, resume download at any time
  . enhanced word look-up capability (for Android-based phones and tablets)
    with built-in dictionary with over 250,000 entries and definitions.

Amazon.de Launches German Kindle Store
Amazon's press release says that the Amazon.de Kindle Shop will have the Largest Selection of Any E-Bookstore in Germany.
  It launches with "650,000 titles, 71 of 100 Spiegel bestsellers, and over 25,000 German-language titles with thousands of German classics downloadable for free only on Kindle.  Top German and international newspapers and magazines are also available for single purchase or subscription including Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Handelsblatt and Die Zeit."

 Also, Amazon announced yesterday that authors and publishers worldwide are now able to make their books available in the Amazon.de Kindle Books store in Germany, using the (kdp.amazon.de) Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) service.

  "German-language authors and publishers can utilize the new German KDP website to make their books available in Germany, Austria, the U.K., U.S. and over 100 countries worldwide. The popular KDP 70% royalty option, which allows authors and publishers worldwide to make more money on books sold to Kindle customers in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, is now also available for books sold in Germany and Austria. Additionally, publishers can now receive their payment in either Euros, British pounds or U.S. dollars. For more information and program terms, please visit kdp.amazon.de."

MORE on that Rumored Kindle Tablet via Samsung
Peter Rojas, who wrote the article this week about the probability of a Samsung-built Amazon tablet, was the co-founder and former Editor of Engadget and is now co-founder of gdgt.com.  He has very good connections in the industry and, while there's always the small chance he can receive bad information, his sources are probably more solid than the usual.

Also, on November 5, 2010, I wrote a blog article about the rumor of an Amazon Android tablet being quite strong because Computerworld's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka cybercinic, had quietly included in a column the following:

' Sources at Amazon tell me that the company will indeed produce a mass-market Android tablet.  I can't tell you its size, pricing, when it's expected to ship, or anything else of substance.  The one thing I do know is that, like the Kindle, it will run Linux with a Java-based interface.  In short, this new tablet Kindle, let's call it "KinTablet," will run Android. '

 Some have said that Amazon would not want to upset its OEM partners by releasing a 'competing tablet' but Kendrick feels it would not be so much a tablet built to compete but "would be intended to extend the company’s retail operation into the next logical space."

  To speculation or hopes that this would be a particularly mighty tablet, ZDNet's James Kendrick writes, "Amazon’s intent would not be to produce a state-of-the-art mobile device" but would instead "be designed to have the Amazon retail system completely ingrained into a decent, economical tablet.  Amazon's own Android Apps store would probably be 'curated' (as Apple's is and B&N plans to be, for Non-rooted NookColors), but in effect, competing with Google's Android market, which is 'open' but also leaves non-computer-intense customers to their own security measures and is disorganized and confusing to many.

  In another article, about the Kindle with special offers and straight-out, large ads on its screensleepers and on the bottom area of the Home screen of book titles, Kendrick writes:

' If only 1 percent of ... Android activations resulted in a Kindle customer, that is over a million new customers every year for Amazon content.  That’s a conservative number, but the size of the Android market is huge.  Most Kindle app users probably buy multiple ebooks from Amazon...it’s no surprise that Amazon is selling so many ebooks..."

"So this ad-supported Kindle reader will probably get more devices in the hands of new customers, but that’s not the real story.  I wonder if this is Amazon’s first baby steps into developing its own ad network for its future mobile devices that it is probably working on.  I firmly believe Amazon is about to disrupt the mobile space by entering into the mobile space with a tablet device, and take Apple on directly.  An ad network would be another piece of the ecosystem to go head-to-head with Cupertino. '

I wondered the other day if Apple's sudden lawsuit against Samsung (a supplier for Apple), for look & feel concerns, might be explained by this rumored tablet partnership with Amazon.  I wasn't the only one wondering out loud.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   K3 Special, $114   DX Graphite

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Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Texas Atty General Questions E-book Publishers

Wall St. Journal reports that the Texas attorney general has approached two of the Big5 publishers -- Hachette Book Group and News Corp's HarperCollins.  The latter said they've received a request for documents, and they've declined further comment.  News Corp owns the Wall Street Journal.

  WSJ's Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Yukari Iwatani Kane point out that electronic book market pricing has been "shaken up by Apple Inc. and the way e-books are sold for the iPad."

  They add that the probe was reported earlier by the book-industry publication Publishers Marketplace, which said Apple was a target of the preliminary inquiry.  Both Apple and the Texas Attorney General's office declined to comment.

' ... One possible focus is Apple's e-book pricing and its impact on consumers.  Apple, in seeking to attract content for the iPad, opted for an agency pricing model in which publishers set their own retail prices and receive 70% of the price while sellers receive the remaining 30%.

The move boosted prices on some popular e-book titles.   Although some best-sellers are still sold at $9.99 -- the original norm on Amazon's Kindle reader -- many of the e-books written by leading authors are now priced at $12.99 or $14.99 as a result of Apple's move.

Five of the six major publishing houses have embraced the agency model, which reversed traditional practices in which retailers set the prices.
...
But antitrust agencies have been taking a closer interest in Silicon Valley companies in general, and Apple in particular. The Justice Department is making preliminary inquiries about Apple's practices in the music business, people familiar with the situation said last week. '

For more, see The Wall St. Journal story.

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 See the ongoing Guide to finding Free or Low-Cost Kindle books and Sources
   Check often:  Latest temporarily free non-classics or late-listed temporarily free nonclassics
   Top 100 free Kindle bestsellers

Consumer Reports on Kindle vs iPad for E-book Reading

Consumer Reports Editor Paul Reynolds looks at how the Apple iPad compares "for e-book reading to the best dedicated e-book readers—notably, the top-selling Amazon Kindle"

Click at the left to watch the youtube video, of course.  Reynolds is joined by Web Editor Paul Eng as they 'take sides' to illustrate the pros and cons of each device.

  Their take, given near the top of the text article itself, is that "the standalone e-book reader isn't dead. The iPad is fine as an e-book device, but advantages in price, portability, and some performance attributes make the Kindle the better e-books choice for most people."

PROS AND CONS OF EACH
AdvantagePad - They cite:
  . Cooler navigation" of the iPad, and they like the book cover images of course.  They were "wow'd" by the iPad's virtual page turn feature (as is almost everyone) that emulates the look of paper-book page turns and lets you control the speed of the turn. Other pluses:

  . A bright color screen with beautiful rendering of color illustrations, and the backlit LCD screen allows you to read the device in the dark.

  . Easy access to multiple bookstores, including those of its main competitors.
  They add that "One possible reason Apple allowed the competition on: Because iBooks has far fewer titles than Kindle and B&N, at least for now, and they didn't want a limited library to irritate iPad owners."

  And it's been often pointed out that any iBook purchased can be read, at this point, only on the iPad, although the June upgrade to the iPhone will add the iBook app and store.  Kindle books are now readable on and can be synchronized between a number of devices these days, both mobile and desktop.

(An incorrect statement in the text article)
There is one incorrect statement in the text of the article, in that they had thought that "With a Kindle, getting an e-book from anywhere but the Kindle Store into your library involves connecting the device to a computer via USB cord and converting the title to the Kindle format."

  That's not true, as you can get books direct to the Kindle from other stores (at no added wireless cost) and you don't have to convert those to Kindle format, as they are already in the basic format used for the Kindle ('.mobi' or '.prc' formats).

  Details on how that is done can be read at the free-books article section covering direct downloads from other stores.  Direct downloads are available from sites such as Project Gutenberg with its 30,000 free classics,  Feedbooks,  Manybooks,  Fictionwise,  Baen, and other online bookstores.

 (I wrote about this to the Consumer Reports comments area but I don't know if the information will be approved for posting as it may be too detailed because I felt I should name the sites that allow direct downloads to Kindles.)

Advantage Kindle - They cite:
  . The most readable type, describing it as crisper than the iPad's.  Also, they describe the iPad background as having "a blue hue that's a bit harsher on the eyes than the brown-green tinge of the Kindle's."

  . Smaller size and weight.  The screen is described as equal to or approaching the size of pages on many paperbacks and is easily carried in a handbag while the iPad requires a briefcase or a sizeable bag.  that interested me, as it's women who generally carry handbags.

  . A lower price. The Kindle costs $259, "including unlimited 3G access to buy books wherever and whenever you want.  The iPad starts at $499, and a model with 3G access will cost you at least $629, plus monthly (though optional) 3G charges of $15 or $30 to take advantage of that capability."

The bottom line
In fairness to Consumer Reports, see this at their site.  (Let me know if you can't access it unless you're a member, but I think they do have this as a page open to non-members.
  This is a good online magazine subscription to have, as it's easily searchable  (I like it a lot better than trying to find articles in the physical magazine.)

Steve Jobs pulls his puppet strings but says too much

" The prices will be the same"

.See my earlier story yesterday for details, as this is an update to that.

The picture above is from the moment in the video'd interview when Steve Jobs needed to let Journal's Walt Mossberg know that Jobs already was completely sure that, although his own pricing for best sellers might be $14.99 vs Amazon's $9.99, that "Well, that won't be the case" (soon) and when pressed said that "the prices will be the same."

  He didn't mean that Apple would reduce its prices to match Amazon's.
But many of course felt that this must have been what he meant.  Here again is a transcript of this part of the video.

' In the video below, listen carefully to the Jan 27 conversation between The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg and Steve Jobs.  At one point Mossberg asks Steve Jobs about the price advantage ($9.99 @ Amazon vs $14.99 @ Apple’s iBooks) Kindle owners enjoy for certain Amazon.com ebook offerings.  Jobs tactfully corrects Mossberg.

Mossberg: “[first part is inaudible] why should she buy a book for $14.99 on your device [iPad] when she can buy one for $9.99 at Amazon [inaudible]?”
Steve Jobs: “Well, that won’t be the case.”
Mossberg: “You mean you [iBooks] won’t be $14.99 or they [Amazon] won’t be $9.99?”
Steve Jobs: “The prices will be the same.” '

A glimmer of discomfort was seen in Job's mouth as he turned his face away from Mossberg while somehow driven to disclose with a smile that he knew Amazon would have to meet the higher price.  It was a brag.  More to the point, it was a clear indication of what some would perceive as collusion to set higher, fixed pricing.

 Jobs went on to say that

'"Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon, because they're not happy with it."

 Offering the publishers a better percentage, Jobs cleverly asked them to set higher e-book prices (reported Jan. 26), which would then raise Apple's portion and, if the entire scheme is successful, bring in the publishers under his own tent.   [At link given here, click on top WSJ search result at Google]

  What is lost here is the great number of e-books which then would NOT be sold by anyone.  The very customers who made the Kindle and other e-readers such an unexpected success so far have been very clear in forums everywhere, including those focusing on other topics, that they will not pay this price.

  Amazon has researched the best selling points and of course would rather sell e-books than not, and a strong step is to get the crowd eager to buy them.   The results are seen in Amazon's company reports in a weak economy.  They have made e-reading attractive when prophets like Steve Jobs said e-readers were not a target area for lack of consumer interest in reading.

  Authors might be happy that the active reading audience is demonstrably larger these days.

 Macmillan is on record as in fear of the effect of e-books on its hard-cover book margins in a business where the margin with hard covers is large.

  According to discussions I saw today, Macmillan has long been opposed to the effect of e-book sales and has proposed that e-books be delayed SEVEN months after the release of the hard cover.  As mentioned, John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan "explained" to his crew today in the full-page ad why he is insisting on the new "agency" model focused on a $15 e-book for best sellers.

  Book sellers would be required to sell at the publisher's price, acting only as 'agent' for the publisher.

That is certainly one way to make sure e-books have no effect, a result somewhat attractive to Sargent when the margins on $9.99 e-books are so much smaller for the publisher than for its hardcover editions.  Amazon is said to pay publishers about 50% of the list price no matter what selling price Amazon chooses for the books.

  But under Sargent's plan to delay e-books for 7 months from book-release, people will no longer be interested when there are lackluster reviews during that time or just due to the passage of time and the avalanche of other new, interesting books being discussed.

  Macmillan can then cite the low percentage of e-books sold.  Steve Job's dream that people don't read books anymore would be fulfilled based on few sales at the higher prices that he asked publishers to set.

The first reaction I see today from a larger online business site is a column by Henry Blodget at Business Insider's Silicon Alley Insider, titled "Hey, John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Books, Screw You!"   The more memorable quotes in an intense, highly logical article are:

'... First, to clarify what is happening here, you are already getting your money: You are selling ebooks to Amazon at whatever price you set ($10-$15), and Amazon is turning around and selling them at a loss, sometimes for $9.99. We're not against your charging what you want to for your books. We're against your telling Amazon what it has to charge for them.
. . .
First, if Macmillan collapses, so be it. Someone else (Amazon?) will happily publish whatever good books Macmillan would have published. Macmillan's editors will find other employers, perhaps at Amazon.

Second, the world is doing just fine, thanks. Good books will always be published. Perhaps not in precisely the same form, but they'll be published. And, thanks to Amazon's new low-cost distribution model, more of them will eventually be published than ever. We don't need someone like Macmillain sitting between us and good books.
. . . [Do read the entire column at the link given.]

Did Steve Jobs seduce you with that temporary "charge-whatever-you-want" speech? Well, Steve has been known to seduce people from time to time. Just imagine what will happen once Steve has put the Kindle out of business and Steve owns the ebook platform instead of Jeff Bezos. That's right: You'll get held up even worse than Jeff's holding you up today. Just ask the music industry. Careful what you wish for.

So, bottom line, John, take your $15 ebooks and shove them. We're with Amazon on this one. '

CLOSING THOUGHT
If Amazon just gave in to this kind of pricing manipulation, every other publisher would see that they could do what Macmillan did.

That would be the immediate death of the $10 e-book. And Steve Jobs would continue smiling.

For him, it’s all a game.  His specialty is cornering the market when he’s interested.  He doesn’t care about customers who read.  watch his disdain for the meaningfulness of e-ink's 1-2 weeks of battery power vs the iPad’s 10 hours.  He impatiently explains that readers can just plug it in and charge it then.

  I see.   Sure, I'd rather carry my charger around than not.

What does Amazon gain with Stanza?

Update to Amazon Buys Stanza.

What Amazon gains - by Chad Berndtson:
1. Exploding base of e-reader consumers - 1.3 million users worldwide
2. More than 40,000 books downloaded a day from Lexcycle
3. Successful team with expertise, supporting widely different formats
4. Possible willingness to use Stanza for the kind of 'free'-use items phase that brought Apple its success with the iPod.
5. Further consolidation of a market it already dominates
6. Pre-emptive move before Apple, eager to dominate the digital-everything market, could buy it.