During News Corp’s quarterly earnings conference call, Rupert Murdoch finally revealed his true feelings about the deal between HarperCollins, which News Corp owns, and Amazon for ebooks in the Kindle Store. “We don’t like the Amazon model of $9.99….we think it really devalues books and hurts all the retailers of hardcover books.”

That pretty much says it all. Now that the company has an option coming with the iPad, it no longer needs to succumb to Amazon’s demands. Things are just the opposite, in fact, thanks to flexible pricing options from Apple. The competition is forcing Amazon to renegotiate prices with publishers for fear of losing market share or publisher support altogether.

It’s tough to say that increased ebook prices actually preserves the value of the book, particularly after prices have been so low. Fortunately for publishers, the ebook reading population was small enough that the rest of the world might not know to care about the difference.

Following a very public feud over ebook pricing, Amazon has caved to Macmillan, giving the publisher it’s desired $14.99 price point for ebooks. The switch came after Macmillan threatened to pull all future publications from Amazon’s Kindle Store if it wasn’t given flexibility with regard to price.

Amazon announced the news to its customers with the following statement:

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Thank you for being a customer.

I can’t help but feel Amazon is making an irrelevant appeal to the Kindle consumer base. By and large these will be people with more money to spend on books, considering they’ve dropped a couple hundred bucks up front to gain access to the titles. If they really want one of the books, would the consumer base really not buy because of a $15 price tag, one that’s still far cheaper than the hardback option? Probably not.

As a writer, I’m reassured to see publishers taking the reins on this one.

Source: Amazon

At some point yesterday Amazon pulled any ebooks from publisher Macmillan due to a pricing dispute, according to the New York Times. Apparently Macmillan wanted to raise prices from $9.99 to $15 and Amazon didn’t approve.

You might remember the same thing happening as iTunes was starting to get its legs. Apple used its massive marketshare to strong arm media companies to the $.99 price point, which most everyone felt was too low. Obviously that model has worked out in Apple’s favor, if not in the favor of most record labels, a few of which were able to strike more flexible deals.

There is one major difference – Macmillan has somewhere to go. Apple is just about to open the iBook Store for its new iPad, which, in all likelihood, is going to outsell the Kindle by quite a bit. Most estimates put the Kindle’s installed base around 3 million. The iPad could easily have that by the end of this year.

I would be pretty surprised, though, if Jobs was willing to give Amazon the price advantage in the ebook war.

Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/amazon-pulls-macmillan-books-over-e-book-price-disagreement/

It’s not a revolutionary concept. You want some visibility so you offer what would normally be a paid service or product for free. As word of mouth grows, you bump the price back to normal levels, occasionally higher, and profit. Easy enough.

That’s what many book publishers are starting to do with titles on the Kindle, the New York Times reported this weekend. The article focuses on Maureen Johnson, an author whose young adult fiction has climbed as high as number three on the Kindle best-selling charts. It’s being run for free on the device to drive interest in her upcoming sequel, which will release this February.

While some publishers – Random House and Scholastic for two – embrace the free model, others, like Hachette, find it “illogical.” They believe the price of ebooks is already too low, so why go any lower? In fact, a lot of publishers delay ebook publication for a few months after a book’s release to capitalize on hardcover sales.

Obviously, as time goes on, we’re going to see publishers get more and more creative to keep profits up in the face of lower prices for retail media.

Amazon announced today that the Kindle would be opening up for development of third-party apps. It’s getting everything too, not just weather widgets and email browsers. You want games? You got ‘em. Though, you’ll probably hate most of them on that e-ink display.

Really, this has to be a future-proofing move for Amazon. I can’t imagine many developers will be clamoring to get apps on the device, especially with the limitations in place. Free apps have to be less than 1MB and use less than 100KB of data per month. Paid apps are under the same usage limit but can be as large as 100MB, though anything over 10MB has to be downloaded via USB.

It’s hard to imagine the kind of apps that could be successful on a Kindle. The screen refresh works for ebooks, but imagine trying to play a game. It’s just not going to work out. The real benefit, it seems, will be to get developers involved before the release of some sort of color Kindle with a real screen. Until then, I’m pretty sure the “apps” will just be ebooks that serve specific markets.

Everyone’s saying it. I’m jumping on board. Whatever your feelings about tablets – they should exist, they shouldn’t, they’re pointless, they’re great – there’s no denying the potential market impact of a quality tablet. Quality is the key factor here. Much like ereaders, which no one cared about until the Kindle came around, tablets need a frontrunner, something to rally around and aspire to beat. My bet, like so many others, is on the Apple tablet.

It’s not just that I trust Apple, which I do, but that the market is so ripe for a Apple created device. The world has fallen in love with the iPhone and the iPod Touch, the App Store continues to grow at alarming rates, and everyone is imitating multi-touch wherever it makes sense and in plenty of places it doesn’t. Imagine your iPod Touch on ‘roids, powerful enough to run 1080p video, do some simple editing, and wirelessly post to YouTube. Did I mention you can surf the web and read your ebooks? How much would you pay for a device like that? $500? $600? More?

Amazon and Barnes & Noble don’t think the consumer’s financial tolerance is so high. I do. I think people would be willing to spend as much as a grand on an Apple tablet because it could potentially do everything I mentioned above. In the face of that kind of device, the Kindle starts to look a lot like the Peek, specializing in a service handled just as well, if not better, by a more versatile device.

The one thing that could stall tablets for another year is premature release. Everyone knows the tablet is the next big thing, but if it gets rushed, consumers could see the failed device as a reason to buy an ereader. Wait until the tablet people get it right before diving in.

What do you think? Is this the beginning of the end for ereaders? Will they still have their place in the market? Can they get cheap enough to stay relevant?

The magazine industry has finally announced what people have speculated for months now: several publishers will collaborate to introduce a digital format for existing print magazines. The project includes Time Warner, Hearst, Meredith, Condé Nast, and News Corp. and will exist as its own entity, replete with a full corporate infrastructure, including a new CEO.

The most glaring problem with this plan is distribution. The unnamed venture hopes to control publishing, something neither Amazon or Apple can possibly like. This new venture has to keep both those companies in mind as it’s their devices this media will release to.

And then there’s the issue of value. Are people really going to pay for this kind of content? I’d say it’s doubtful at best, and the odds go down if it can’t be tied into an existing Amazon or iTunes account. I’d say the target for this sort of project already has their online subscriptions to sites that offer high value per dollar. Can the same be said for a digital version of Condé Nast Travel? I don’t think so.

Source: All Things D

Either the Nook is set to become more popular than the Kindle or Barnes & Noble is having very serious trouble with manufacturing the device. This morning the bookseller changed the next ship date available for its ereader to January 15th, up from January 11th.

For those of you who have already pre-ordered, it’s no big deal. Existing ship dates should not be effected. Anything from here forward, though, will be subject to the new date. It’s not terribly unsettling news, but it does make you wonder just what sort of further delays to expect. People are already waiting on pre-orders that were placed shortly after the device was announced.

By far the worst part, if you were hoping to catch a Nook in stores, is that no in-store purchases will be available. Barnes & Noble has committed itself to fulfilling the pre-orders that have already been placed. How very…noble.

If you didn’t pre-order your Nook, you won’t be seeing a holiday arrival. Barnes & Noble announced today that it had sold through the initial order and wouldn’t have more before the holidays are out.

“While we increased production based on the high consumer interest, we’ve sold out of our initial Nook allotment available for delivery before the holidays,” said a company statement. It’s not a huge delay – any order placed from today forward will be filled on January 4th. Anyone who pre-orders up to that date will receive a holiday certificate. Sometimes those are the best gifts. Right when you thought the festivities were over there’s a package on your doorstep.

B&N announced the delay after Sony did the same for its “Daily Edition” ereader yesterday. Despite the high price of ebooks and still limited functionality, ereaders seem to be one of the hottest items on the world’s gift list. Amazon’s Kindle and Kindle DX are both in stock and ship immediately.

Source: Reuters

Amazon today quietly confirmed that it would start selling the Kindle DX in international markets in the near future. The news isn’t really a shock after the GSM Kindle announcement. As you may recall, the DX is the bigger version designed for textbooks and newspapers. It’s the model that was offered to Princeton students free of charge. The model those same students hated.

According to SlashGear, Amazon has only said “next year” with regard to a date and won’t say anything about pricing. The international Kindle 2 runs $20 above the states-only version. I’d guess the DX will be about the same, giving Princeton the unique opportunity of subsidizing $20 toward even crappier AT&T service for the rest of us. Thanks guys!

Amazon is cutting the price of the Kindle once more, this time hoping for a holiday rush. When the Kindle 2 launched it was $359. It dropped to $299 in July and has now cut another $40, bringing the world’s most famous e-reader to an almost reasonable $259 ($199 and we’ll talk, Bezos).

With the price cut also came news that wireless download capabilities have been added internationally in 10 different countries. That’s a big update for a feature that was previously only available stateside. The updated wireless also comes with a carrier change, from Sprint to (gasp!) AT&T. Yes, AT&T will be handling wireless communications for the internationally capable device in the US and abroad, which makes me wonder, does AT&T want to bury itself under a mountain of complaints? Of course, there are so few Kindles in the wild compared the newly VoIP over 3G enabled iPhones that this is probably a molecule in the vast ocean of AT&T’s wireless demands.

Remember that pilot program for the Kindle DX? Yeah, that thing at Princeton where Amazon subsidized some of the cost of a Kindle DX for a small group of students and Princeton paid the rest. Despite the early rutting from everyone involved, it looks like the Princeton side of the deal is none too happy. One student is so displeased with the device that he called it a “poor excuse of an academic tool.” Snap!

The e-readers have been in student hands for two weeks across three classes. The Daily Princetonian claims many students are “dissatisfied and uncomfortable” with the Kindle DX. Most students cite the lackluster annotation features, though a lack of page numbers has also proven a bit of a setback. One professor added concerns for transitioning from physical to digital forms. His own texts are riddled with highlights and scribbles for noteworthy passages. Transferring those notes to the Kindle would take days.

Despite the inconvenience, students have not yet decided to opt out of the pilot program.

In case you missed it yesterday, Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle to $299. Rumor has it the price drop comes as a result of increased competition from other manufacturers eager to enter the market.

Ross Rubin, a consumer analyst at NPD group had some disparaging remarks. “While it is a significant drop both in terms of the overall percentage of the price as well as getting under the $300 barrier, it is still not going to be enough to break it out of its niche,” he said. For the most part I agree. Getting under $300 probably means a few more people will pick up the device, but the price of the media hasn’t changed, and neither have the DRM issues, so it’s tough to see the Kindle really “take off” as a result of the cut.

Amazon will be offering consumers a $60 credit if they purchased a Kindle in the last 30 days. The Kindle DX, which sports a larger screen, remains at the $489 price point. For now, anyway.

A couple days back I made a post about what it would take for me to get a Kindle. I’m looking for cheaper access to ebooks on more devices, and according to Jeff Bezos, I should be getting one of those wishes in the near future.

At a conference this week, Bezos laid out his plan for Amazon’s Kindle brand in full detail.

The device team has the job of making the most remarkable purpose-built reading device in the world. We are going to give the device team competition. We will make Kindle books, at the same $9.99 price points, available on the iPhone, and other mobile devices and other computing devices.

The good news, obviously, is that we’ll start to see ebooks on more portable and more versatile devices. The Kindle App for the iPhone is a great example of this, bringing the books to a device you’ll have with you regardless, not requiring you to lug something like a Kindle around.

As for bad news I can’t help but wonder, what’s the lifespan of the Kindle? Bringing ebooks to devices that have more features than the Kindle means one thing – the Kindle is going to die. Purpose-built devices have been disappearing for decades as consumers look for that all-in-wonder device. Cellphones, portable gaming systems, digital cameras, and digital camcorders have now all been wrapped up into one device. We went from word processors to computers to laptops to laptops with built in fingerprint readers and webcams and anything else you can imagine. Purpose-built devices are a dying breed, at least for the consumer-level use, and particularly in the case of the Kindle.

Unfortunately, Bezos’ $9.99 price point is still too rich for my blood. I rarely buy books at that price, and for the new releases I’ll splurge on, I want more than a restrictive file format to show for it. As Amazon’s eBooks get more popular and become available on more devices I know prices will go down, but I doubt Amazon will loosen restrictions.

With the release of the Kindle DX, plenty of folks have been asking the same question: will you get one? For me, the answer is no. I like the feel of a physical book in my hands too much to let a Kindle take its place. I also love used book shopping, where I can pick up classic (and sometimes new) titles for less than a buck.

It was this post over at Crave that really made me wonder, what would it take to get me interested in a Kindle? For me that question has a simple translation. When is it more convenient to have a Kindle than a book? The Kindle doesn’t have enough features outside book reading to make it compelling for reasons other than book reading, so I’m going to ignore them. For me, it comes down to convenience and the emotional experience I get from reading a book.

I like the reasons Stein gives for his own experience. Pulling a book out on the subway is much more cumbersome than flipping to the Kindle app on his iPhone. The appeal is the same in my life, but paying full book price for something I can only read on a Kindle or an iPhone seems ridiculous.

What I could really use is both – something like movie studios have been doing recently to attempt to combat downloads – adding a digital copy to the physical media. As it currently stands, downloading books from the Kindle store is incredibly restrictive, and if you lose your Amazon account, you lose your books as well. Offering an option to download the book when I purchase the physical media could change that, giving me control of the storage (and yes, distribution) of my media.

Obviously there are pirating concerns for Amazon, and they lose the sweet deal they have going now whereby they reap most of the profit from selling digital copies. It’s hard to imagine, though, that they wouldn’t see increased usage from this sort of change. The iPhone Kindle App becomes a lot more appealing when it means I can continue my reading without lugging a book around but still have the option to kick back and fill margins with notes when I get the urge.

For now, a Kindle is the wrong device for me. I can’t help but think I’m paying a fee to relinquish control of my purchase, and that just doesn’t feel right.

As soon as the Kindle hit the market, people started talking about a full color version, but according to Jeff Bezos, they’ll have to wait. Years. He can’t say how many.

I’m not entirely surprised. The e-ink screen technology doesn’t directly adapt to a color format, which means developing a new display medium for the device. We all know how long that can take. Most concepts for such a display are just that: concepts. Perhaps the best one from Philips is still FAR from production, particularly in something like a Kindle.

Bezos has also reconfirmed that Amazon will not release any specific sort of sales numbers for the Kindle. It’s obviously not because they don’t care. I guess they just don’t want us to know.

Alongside the Kindle DX announcement, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled plans to partner with several post-secondary schools to get the DX into students’ hands. Included in the schools are Bezos’ own Princeton and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.

Both schools will be giving a Kindle DX to a select group of students, subsidizing a portion of the cost while Amazon picks up the rest. In a flurry of Ivy-league snobbery, Princeton was quick to call their program unique because it focused on using the Kindle as a form of sustainability. Wait, you mean the Princeton Kindles don’t use paper?!? That’s so GREAT! It really warms my eco-friendly heart to hear someone using the Kindle in super innovative ways.

As far as books are concerned, I’m a bit of a luddite. I don’t want a Kindle. I will likely never want a Kindle. I like the feel of books. I like having a shelf for my books. I like to mark up the pages with all sorts of stupid comments. And though I understand the eco-friendly features of ebook readers, I think recycled paper and alternative mediums (hemp, Family Guy fans?) can help assuage some of Mother Earth’s bruises.

Blackwell’s Espresso Book Machine throws digital media to the wind, opting to print hard copies of books from a database including 400,000 titles, right on the spot. The machine is designed around getting out-of-print books into the hands of readers, or keeping up with stock demands on hot sellers. The machine also allows users to come with a CD of their own work and have it printed a bound on the spot – not a bad deal for aspiring authors.

Source: Daily Mail

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had fairly trusting parents as a kid. They were in touch, aware of the nuances of my youthful existence including my strongest likes and dislikes. The unfortunate side effect here was an exacting system of punishment should I stray too far from the path of reason. I spent plenty of time grounded, relegated to my room with a few cleaning projects and a stack of books to keep me busy. Even at my worst offense, though, my parents never considered taking the books away.

That’s exactly the type of punishment you’ll receive if you lose face in the eyes of Almighty Amazon. Get your account suspended and you lose the ability to manage your ebooks and worse, buy new ones. An Amazon user named Ian recently had his account suspended for too many returns and subsequently found his Kindle had been crippled. The ownership (or lack thereof) concerning Kindle titles and books for other electronic readers is old news, but this is the first we’ve seen a company dole out extraneous punishment for account-level offenses. Ian has since had his account reinstated but with one major caveat: screw up again and it’s no books for you!

Source: MobileRead

Interesting article by popularmechanics.com this week. Here they explore “5 Design Flaws that Ruined Otherwise Smart Gadgets.”

In order for a touchscreen to be successful, the user needs to feel that he is in constant control, and for this, responsiveness is key—even small lags can prove immensely frustrating. One recent offender of this rule is the Blackberry Storm, RIM’s first touchscreen phone.

Some history: Before the Storm was released, there was a lot of buzz surrounding its supposedly ground-breaking touchscreen, which depresses like a button, giving users a satisfying “click”.

But when users and reviewers actually got their hands on their device, the real shock was how buggy the whole thing was. The touchscreen suffered from long delays—often a second or more—that made users yearn for their old button-based Blackberry. And completing simple tasks took an unnecessary number of steps. For example, inputting the letter “C” involves putting one’s finger on the letter, waiting for the phone to respond by highlighting the letter, and then pushing down. All that for a simple letter.

I can definitely agree with some of this. BlackBerry, for instance, had a good vision when designing the touch-and-click function in the Storm, but the execution was less than stellar. Have you tried this thing? Press and hold, press harder, wait for it… wait for it… and click. Are you kidding me? That’s the ultra-innovative touch-screen we’ve been waiting for? Please.

I can’t agree too much with the Wii Remote. After all, they did include a wrist strap with every Wiimote. If you choose not to use the wrist strap, that’s at your own risk.

I’ve already touched on the Kindle vs. the Kindle 2 here, so I won’t go there right now.

Check out the article and let me know if you know of any sweet gadgets that have a clear miss in the design.