The third generation Kindle has just been announced, due for US and UK delivery 27 August. What’s interesting is there will be two variations of the new Kindle – a US$189 3G version like the present model, and a US$139 WiFi-only model.
The new WiFi model will hopefully remove any final impediments to Amazon shipping its device to New Zealand customers. We’re still mysteriously Kindle-free almost a year after the international release. If, as most of us suspect, this is due to the lack of a deal with a local telco, Amazon should at least be able to ship the WiFi model to these shores.
The new Kindle is 21 percent smaller and 15 percent lighter than the previous model. It has a 20 percent faster refresh rate on its E Ink screen, longer battery life (1 month without wireless, 10 days with wireless on), and a larger 4GB storage. It comes in white and a slate grey. Endgadget briefly got their hands on the gadget and report that:
… the Kindle is still very much the reading device you know and love (or hate, depending on your preferences). The build quality and materials used did seem slightly more polished than the previous version, and we really liked the new, more subtle rocker. We can also attest to screen refreshes and overall navigation feeling noticeably more responsive and snappy compared with the previous generation.
The US$139 price point of the WiFi model might be the final push the market needs to get below the US$100 mark for basic models such as the Kobo or BeBook One. The latter is still a ridiculously expensive A$449 for a non-WiFi e-Ink reader. It’s a perfectly good eReader but it’s hard to see how the smaller independent makers like BeBook can survive when they remain so far out of line with market trends.
Adobe has produced this video to whet our appetites for what’s coming later this year via its Digital Magazine Solution. It makes production of slick, interactive digital magazines like Wired for the iPad look like something mere design mortals will be able to do.
When Apple banned Adobe’s Flash from its iPhone and iPad, it knocked the wind out of Adobe’s strategy to bring its widely-used design tools to the emerging smartphone and tablet platforms. This has left most publishers in limbo without a clear strategy to get onto these platfoms.
Of course, no-one expects it to be quite as easy as this video shows, and there are some well-founded concerns that Adobe’s first-generation solution might turn out to be a fair bit of smoke and mirrors.
But put all this aside for a moment and just dream a little about how things might be soon.
The following article was published in the latest Australian Booksellers Association magazine. I wrote it a couple of months ago and some of the UK moves have been affected by the change of government. (The Digital Economy Act 2010 passed by the previous government did include Section 43 which amends copyright for some public library lending. ) But the issues raised remain important ones which receive too little thought and open debate, a point also made in this posting on the Brave New World blog.
One of the big issues looming on the digital horizon is the role libraries will play with ebooks. A pre-emptive move earlier this year by the UK government has upset booksellers and shows that the industry here, too, needs to get involved in this debate.
So far, libraries’ digital activity has mostly been confined to research uses. The prevalence of the cumbersome PC as the main reading platform means the bread and butter of the book trade, fiction and general non-fiction, has barely been touched. But mobile reading devices and a surge in availability of popular ebooks are pushing libraries into the digital mainstream.
The few libraries experimenting today with ebook downloads typically have very thin collections. This is partly due to tight budgets but also stems from concerns by publishers and authors about how—indeed whether—libraries should lend digital editions of their books.
It’s the latter that has prompted the UK government to legislate so that patrons in libraries can download digital editions to their ebook readers without libraries infringing copyright. At the same time, it will issue an order under legislation “preventing libraries from charging for ebooks lending of any sort, including remotely.”
On the face of it, this looks like a big win for the reading public. Most people I speak to about ebooks get excited by the idea that they’ll be able to borrow them free from their libraries. And most people have a visceral sense that borrowing from a public library should be free to all. But this excitement is not shared as acutely by publishers, authors and booksellers.
Macmillan US CEO John Sargent put the industry problem succinctly when he said recently, “In the past, getting a book from libraries has had a tremendous amount of friction. You have to go to the library, maybe the book has been checked out and you have to come back another time … With ebooks, you sit on your couch in your living room and go to the library website, see if the library has it … You get the book, read it, return it and get another, all without paying a thing … How is that a good model for us?”
For much of the public, politicians, and librarians, this seems like a perfectly good model which accords with the common view that the digital world should operate the same way as print. But it is likely to be bad news for publishers, authors and booksellers. The former might lose sales because libraries can lend ebooks more efficiently (they need fewer websites than physical libraries) and they don’t wear out or get lost. And publishers, authors and booksellers all potentially suffer if the free option is as “frictionless” to get as their more expensive paid editions. And there might be less desire to “own” an electronic file than a real book.
Perversely, libraries are likely to suffer too from the UK government mandate to lend all ebooks free of charge. Most will not be able to afford a serious ebook lending programme without painful cuts to other services. If no other measures are taken, the result will be a crippled ebook service with a very limited selection. Ironically, booksellers concerned about competing with free loans should probably cheer the unintended consequence of this heavy-handed move.
But let’s not cheer too soon. Faced with this outcome, the government might tip the balance in libraries’ favour by forcing rightsholders to make big concessions, effectively subsidising libraries and setting up an even stronger competitor for booksellers. Its planned copyright changes to let libraries lend ebooks with or without publisher permission shows it’s not averse to forcing rightsholders’ hands.
So what is a reasonable role for libraries and how do we achieve this balance of interests? To avoid the heavy-handed legislative approach we’re seeing unfold in the UK, we need to talk directly to the library sector and other stakeholders in our own part of the world.
And we need to consider how the ebooks ecosystem will evolve.
If we look at the film industry as a comparison, there’s an initial cinematic release followed by release to rental and sell-through channels, then pay TV, then free-to-air TV. Through this measured roll-out, the industry manages to extract value at every price point, including free, and sells through many channels to reach as much of the market as possible. About 80% of the film industry’s income is earned after cinematic release.
Ebooks need a range of channels and price points too, to properly service the market and maximise the value of our creative assets. And with books it’s not just an economic equation: we have to consider social impacts.
So which channels will open up for ebooks? We’re in the early stages of developing a “full price” channel and still have a lot of work to do selling the value of digital books to consumers. And we can expect that libraries will offer some sort of free channel, whether selectively or open to all. Other (legal) free-to-consumer channels might emerge, perhaps through ISPs—and might have to develop to stem piracy.
I personally would like to see a vibrant rental channel for ebooks. And I’d like to see both libraries and booksellers participating, perhaps with release dates delayed just as DVDs today follow cinematic release. This would be an interesting “back to the future” scenario for booksellers. Before the public library movement, they had a thriving book rental market and in their heyday, there were more than 1000 “circulating libraries” in mid-nineteenth century Britain.
A paid rental option could bring much-needed money into libraries’ strained coffers, resulting in a better service to patrons who can pay and, with this improved funding, a better free service for those who can’t. For publishers and authors, it offers the prospect of fair compensation for readership through libraries.
While booksellers might be concerned that libraries are straying into commercial territory, it will be worse all around if they are backed into a corner by politicians and a public with high expectations, while not given the resources to deliver on these aspirations.
We’d then confront two equally grim scenarios: a high quality free service competing aggressively with booksellers and largely paid for by onerous terms thrust on publishers and authors by legislation. Or a crippled public library service struggling with dwindling patronage and increasing irrelevance.
These are tough issues with far-reaching impacts. Time to start talking and find a way through this.
While book lovers console each other with anecdotes about how hard it is to beat the experience of a real book, it seems that they’re already telling researchers a different story.
A new usability study by leading usability researcher Jakob Nielsen lined up the printed book against digital editions on the Kindle, iPad and PC. It came up with results that might surprise advocates of the printed book.
After using each device, we asked users to rate their satisfaction on a 1–7 scale, with 7 being the best score. iPad, Kindle, and the printed book all scored fairly high at 5.8, 5.7, and 5.6, respectively. The PC, however, scored an abysmal 3.6.
The poor showing of the PC was predictable but it’s interesting to see just how well these first-generation e-readers stack up against the printed book. Admittedly, my headline is a slight beat-up: the lead that Kindle and iPad had over print was not statistcally significant. But it’s a strong showing, especially since the reading material being tested was narrative fiction so e-readers would have gained no advantage from digital-specific functions such as search or portability.
In case you think these results might have been biased by a bunch of geeks in the survey sample, it seems the main criteria for selecting participants was that they like reading and frequently read books.
Nielsen’s study did find that electronic readers still can’t match the printed book for reading speed: the iPad was 6.2% slower than the printed boook and the Kindle was 10.7% slower.
Nielsen says the difference between iPad and Kindle reading speeds was not statistically significant but the difference between electronic and print was. However, the e-readers are already close to printed books and will rapidly improve.
Amazon dropped the price of its Kindle almost 30% to US$189 from US$259. This is less than half the original US$399 price tag when it was launched two and a half years ago. Amazon’s move trumped Barnes and Noble which just a few hours earlier cut its Nook eReader’s price from US$259 to US$199.
These big price cuts from the top sellers mean the gap has narrowed considerably between them and the low cost Kobo Reader. In the US, the Kobo is sold by Borders at US$149. While its no-frills package of essential features looked attractive when the gap was large, it will put pressure on that strategy now. Rather than cutting the Kobo’s price, Borders in the US has offered a US$20 gift card to effectively cut its price to US$129.
No sign at this stage that Australian and New Zealand prices for the Kobo reader will change. In Australia, where both the Kobo and Kindle are available, the Kobo is still A$199. A Kindle including freight will cost A$235 at the current exchange rate, plus GST if any is levied. In New Zealand, the Kindle — frustratingly — remains unavailable so the price drops in the US are mostly academic at this stage. But, if it were available in New Zealand, a Kindle would be about NZ$290 landed. The Kobo is currently NZ$295 incl GST.
While it might be tough on margins, the momentum of the iPad and the push for further price drops for the e-Ink devices is going to be great news for ebook sales.
Martin Taylor has been involved in the publishing, technology and internet fields for more than 20 years. He is director of the New Zealand Digital Publishing Forum and publisher and managing director of Addenda Publishing. In a former life, he published technology and business magazines, and has been involved with the internet almost as long as Al Gore.
