Kindle MatchBook

Coming next month, Amazon is launching a cool new feature called Kindle Matchbook. Think of it like a digital backup for paper books you already own: for many of the hard copy books you've bought through Amazon, you'll be able to buy a Kindle ebook at a discount-- $2.99 or less. No word just on how many books qualify for this yet, but the page says thousands and it goes back to purchases from 1995. 

This is an interesting strategy to try to bring more readers into the ebook fold. If your favorite, dog-eared book is available cheap (or even free) on a Kindle or Kindle app, why not check it out? As selling digital content becomes more and more important, this is the kind of move that can help get traditional book buyers into ebooks. Kindle readers: would you buy discounted Kindle books that you already own? As a Nook reader, I'd love to see Barnes & Noble make this available. 

StoryBundle has a fantasy mini-bundle, but it's expiring in two days so act fast if you're interested. 

Bookbub and a New Bundle

There's an ebook startup located right here in the Boston area. Cambridge's Bookbub is a simple service-- you sign up with your email address, check the genres and readers you like, and they send you regular emails listing free and discounted ebooks. Big publishers and indie publishers alike pay Bookbub to advertise their sales, and Bookbub employees choose which books to promote. 

Publishers put their ebooks on sale quite frequently to drum up interest, and this is a great way to keep track of the sales before they expire. They advertise ebooks for all the major readers, and they currently boast over a million subscribers. 

Also, there's a new bundle at StoryBundle and this time it's science fiction. Be sure to check it out!

Script Lit

Every Hollywood studio has piles of scripts that collect dust and never get made into films. James West saw a way to bring these stories to life: as ebooks. West started Script Lit, a publisher that licenses film scripts that have been optioned but never produced, develops them into novellas, and sells them as ebooks. 

The licensing process can be challenging-- Script Lit licenses the script directly from the writer's agent and the process can be drawn out. However, West is able to capitalize on the huge number of great scripts that--for various reasons--never become a film. Script Lit lets the screenwriter (who is still credited as the author), see his or her story see the light of day. 

Script Lit's first title is Mom of the Year by Denise Pischinger. The price is $2.99 and it's available for all major e-readers. The next title will be Ambrose Fountain by Brian Sieve, which is due out this month. 

Out of Print: the Documentary

This year's Tribeca Film Festival features a documentary called Out of Print, about the future of ebooks and the ways they are changing reading throughout the world. The film, from Vivienne Roumani, features interviews with science fiction legend Ray Bradbury, Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and self-published author Darcie Chan among others. 

One important point the film makes is the importance of ebooks to humanitarian efforts. Organizations like Worldreader would not be possible without electronic publishing, due to the challenges of transporting physical books in undeveloped parts of the world. 

If you get a chance to see Out of Print, check it out.

An Update on Used Ebooks

Back in February I wrote about Amazon's interest in selling used ebooks. This topic has come up again recently: this week the German district court of Bielefeld ruled that digital books cannot be resold by purchasers. The ruling states that an ebook can only be resold with the consent of the author and publisher. We'll have to see how this decision effects sales in the US market.

Bestselling science fiction author John Scalzi blogged about the concept of re-selling ebooks. Naturally as an author, he brings an interesting perspective to the matter. What follows is a pretty lively debate in his comments section. Whatever does happen, it's a safe bet that there is going to be a great deal of litigation on this matter. I can certainly understand why authors and publishers are concerned about this. 

Should ebooks be treated like print books, able to be resold at a discount? Or is re-selling a digital file too similar to the file sharing that shook up the music industry?

Overdrive Media Console

With all of the changes we've seen in publishing thanks to ebooks, one has to wonder how libraries are affected. We already showed you San Antonio's bookless library, but what about current brick and mortar libraries? Are they getting in the digital game?

Absolutely. Meet the Overdrive Media Console, a free app that you can download to any of your devices. If you have a library membership you can use this app to connect to your library and rent ebooks and audiobooks, which you can access on any of your devices.

They're temporary ebooks that will disappear from your device after two weeks; you will need to check them out again if you're not finished at the end of the two week period, but the app will remember your place. The best part is that just like the library, it's all free. 

Ebook Bestsellers And A New Bundle From StoryBundle

Publishers Weekly has an article on the Ebook bestsellers for 2012. A few interesting things to note: this list only includes data from big publishers that have titles in the print bestseller list, so it doesn't include figures from the many smaller publishers and self-publishing authors that are out there. Also worth noting, although print books are still outselling ebooks, it appears the digital counterparts are getting closer and closer. 
 
StoryBundle has a new bundle available: fiction from female authors, curated my bestselling author MJ Rose.

StoryBundle

I'm back from a fantastic vacation in Florida. I loaded up my Nook before leaving, and I had plenty of reading material for the beach. 

One of the ways I've been able to load my Nook up with so many options has been StoryBundle, a new e-publishing venture that sells quality indie fiction ebooks in bundles. The bundles usually consist of five ebooks or so, and they come out with a new bundle every few months. The ebooks come in EPUB and MOBI formats, so they can be uploaded to any computers or devices. 

You can choose how much you pay-- as little as $1, but paying a set amount (usually around $10) unlocks special bonus ebooks. You can also decide how much of their payment goes directly to the author and how much goes to StoryBundle. They can even choose to have a portion of their payment go to a selected charity. 

Each bundle has a theme, and the current one is fantasy fiction. You can sign up to get email notifications every time they come out with a new bundle. 

The current bundle is only available for four more days. If you're looking for a new novel and you may be interested in fantasy fiction, you can pick up six new books for as low as $1. 

Disappearing Ebooks, Part 2

My experience with my Nook resetting reminded me of this story about a Norwegian woman who had her ebooks taken away by Amazon. Now, there was a happy ending when the story went public and Amazon realized their error. This was an extreme case and nothing like my situation, which was just a device problem that was resolved extremely well (more on this later). 

Nygaard's story brought something to light: when we buy ebooks from a retailer like Amazon, we are really borrowing the files, and they reserve the right to remove them from our devices. Back in 2009 there was this story about Amazon pulling Animal Farm and 1984  from customers' devices (I can't help but chuckle at the irony of their book selection here). That turned out to be because of a vendor selling (or should I say licensing?) the ebooks without the rights, and the customers' accounts were refunded, but I imagine it was still a shock to people who thought they had purchased and owned those files.

We all agree to the terms of service when setting up our devices. We do need to realize that those terms of service involve the provider pulling the content in the event of a digital rights issue.

As for my story, all is well. I took my Nook in to a BN to see if anyone there could help and they were nice enough to swap it out with a 16 gig, factory refurbished Nook Tablet. I still had to download all of my ebooks and apps all over again, but since they're backed up in my BN account I didn't have to pay a dime and now I have an upgraded device.

I had been thinking about buying a Google Nexus 7 if I had to replace my Nook, but BN won me back with their customer service. Thank you Dan from the Prudential Mall Barnes & Noble! 

My problem was just an issue with a device, and of course I had all of my purchases backed up through BN. It's convenient to be able to put all of your ebooks on one device but remember to make sure they're synched with the retailer in case you lose your reader. Also remember that most retailers have ebook apps for cell phones and computers as well. 

Have you had a situation where your ebooks disappeared? Or have you had to replace them after losing a device? 

Disappearing Ebooks

I enjoy ebooks and I'm excited to see what the future of publishing will bring us. However, this innovation is not without its drawbacks-- for one, you generally don't have to worry about all of your paper books disappearing one one fell swoop. Unless your house burns down and you can't salvage your library, I guess. 

This weekend I grabbed my Nook Color for some reading, and I get a strange screen with a status bar and a cryptic message about downloading data. I'm hopeful that it's just an automatic software update, but when it's finally done and the Nook restarts, I see the "How to use your new Nook" intro video. Not a good sign. 

It gets worse. When I skip through the intro, it asks me to register my account. Uh oh. 

After registering all over again, I come to realize that my Nook has reset itself for some reason. It was back to the original, standard background, with a few obvious interface changes. Now, the saving grace is that all of your ebooks and apps are backed up through your account, and because I had re-registered my email, everything I had ever purchased for this device was available to be downloaded again. All of the icons showed up on the bottom scroll and in the library section with the option to download each one. Still, I had to download and install everything all over again. Not fun. 

To make matters worse, although the books came back fine (even remembering my last page), I could not get my apps back. I kept getting a message that they were not available for this device when I tried to re-install them. I did a little reading on BN's official Nook Color forum and found that a number of people have had these problems-- restarting itself and inability to download apps-- but I hadn't seen anyone posting about having both problems like I did. I didn't see any official responses from BN which was disheartening. I did get some tips from a few forum super users. Even though I hadn't canceled any updates, my Nook was only running on software version 1.2. The latest was 1.4.3, so I downloaded that and updated my device. After that I was able to download my apps all over again, but I still felt like I was starting from scratch. 

I don't understand why the software updated itself to an older version-- it had updated itself a few other times and I had recently checked to make sure it was up to date. The "restart" update brought a few changes to the navigation controls, but when I updated to 1.4.3 it went back to what I'd been used to. Very strange. Maybe my Nook was way behind, but I doubt that because I use it with a WiFi connection just about every day. Other people had had their Nook reset itself like mine, but I hadn't seen any official explanation on why that happened. 

Fast forward to today: I turned my Nook on while riding the train to work, and it only went to the animated white NOOK intro page. I couldn't get past that, and when I reset it, the same thing happened. So yesterday I had a Nook that had reset itself, and now I have a Nook that won't work at all. It's not that old--I bought it brand new in July of 2011. Tonight I'm going to bring it to a BN to see if an employee can help me. I can't help but be amused by the irony that while many brick and mortar stores are shutting down in favor of ebooks and online stores, I'm hoping to get help from one for my reader.

Would You Sell Your Used Ebooks?

I hope everyone in the northeast is staying safe and warm, and enjoying a good book. I'm currently hunkered down with a cup of tea, deciding on what to read. 

Here is some really interesting news-- Amazon is developing a way to lead a reader sell used ebooks. Essentially, you will be able to transfer an ebook from your reader to another's, and it would disappear from your library. This sounds like just another way ebooks are going to become more like paper books. In a future post we will discuss this feature along with ebook "lending". 

Note that Amazon has the patent for this technology, so it sounds like it will only work for Kindle ebooks. Publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin suggests that Amazon may have secured this patent just to keep it out of the market, since it could be extremely disruptive to the already volatile book market. 

Would you sell your "used" ebooks? Would this make ebooks seem more like paper books to you?

Total BooX: Pay As You Read

A start-up called Total BooX is going to allow consumers to buy ebooks on a pay-as-you-read basis. In other words, instead of paying for a book upfront like you normally would, Total BooX would have you only pay small fees in increments as you read the book. So for folks who like to start a lot of books and don't finish them, you will no longer need to pay for a full book unless you actually read the whole thing. 

According to the site, the Total BooX app will be available on Google Play early this year. Users will set up Total BooX accounts and use PayPal or credit cards to add to their balance. They can use that balance to set up their own bookshelf and they only need to be online when downloading new books. So far, it's not clear if this will be available on all major devices. 

How does this match up to the free sample downloads that you would get from one of the big ebook stores? Is this something that you think could disrupt ebook sales? 

EditionGuard and Digital Rights Management

Security concerns have long been a hobgoblin of ebook publishers. Do you have an ebook that you'd like to sell on your website, but you're concerned about unauthorized sharing? EditionGuard provides DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection for PDF and ePub ebooks. 

Normally, utilizing Adobe is too expensive for a small publisher, but EditionGuard starts at $39/month (including a free 30 day trial) and offers the same protection that Barnes and Noble, Google, Sony, and Overdrive use on their sites. 

If you just want to sell your ebook through the various ebook marketplaces like Amazon and Google Play, then this isn't something you need. However, a product like EditionGuard could make way for more ebook stores, and that's great news for self-publishers and small presses. 

Are Print Books Going Away?

Back in June I noticed a ZDNet article about how e-books had outsold hardbound books for the first time. This shocked a lot of people. Personally, I didn't realize we'd be seeing that so soon, but the future is now. An interesting side note there is that it was the paperback books that really took a huge hit in sales thanks to ebooks. It seems there's still a market for quality cloth and hardcover books, even with e-books flooding the market. The reason for this is simple: people who buy paperbacks (trade and mass market) just want the content. People who buy hardbound want the full book experience.

In my senior year of college, I interned at a small, independent press in the heart of Boston called David R. Godine. Godine and other independent presses like them publish books for serious bibliophiles--not just people who love great literature, but also people who appreciate the craftsmanship of cloth binding, the feel of certain types of paper on your fingertips, and of course, that wonderful book smell. I have to imagine that no matter how well ebooks do, there will always be a market for hardcovers printed with that kind of care.

Fast forward to this month and I see a Wall Street Journal article about ebook and ereader sales slowing down. Are consumers being swayed back to more print books? At the very least, it seems readers are not abandoning "analog" books. According to the article, 59% of readers polled are still not interested in purchasing an ebook. Another telling stat from the article is that 90% of ebook readers continue to read paper books as well.

I strongly agree with the WSG article on mass market paperbacks--it seems that for many readers who enjoy genre fiction, ebooks will be replacing cheap paperbacks eventually. 

Do you read both? What makes you choose an ebook over a printed book, and vice versa?

McGraw-Hill's SmartBook

Last week, McGraw-Hill unveiled a new series of e-books known as SmartBooks. These digital college textbooks will adapt to student learning needs and act as tutors, changing the content of the e-book the more information it gathers from the user.

When I heard about this, it reminded me of the GMAT, which I took when applying to business schools. The test was a standard multiple choice test (think shading in the bubbles with your #2 pencils), except I took it at a computer terminal. As I answered each question, the test changed. For instance, every correct answer prompted the computer to bring up a more difficult question next, and every incorrect answer brought an easier one; as the difficulty increased, so did the possibly points. I knew about this ahead of time, as our instructors advised us that the earliest questions set the tone for the rest of the test. This helps the computer get a more accurate assessment of a user's grasp of a topic instead of just letting him blindly fill in bubbles before time runs out. 

A product like this, which will be available on multiple devices, gives a taste of where educational publishing can go with electronic publishing. Interactive books means personalized learning for every level, which is great for teachers and publishers trying to sell to every niche market. 

This is interesting news coming out of McGraw-Hill, especially since they're selling off their textbook division to private equity firm Apollo Global Management this year. Of course, one of the reasons they've cited for this is the instability of educational publishing from the ebook shakeup.

San Antonio's Bookless Library

A Texas judge is spearheading the creation of what will be America's only bookless library. The library, which will be known as BiblioTech, is being developed for San Antonio's South Side neighborhood. Judge Nelson Wolff describes it as similar to an Apple store; he got the idea from reading Steve Jobs' biography. 

Standard libraries, like the Boston Public Library, are joining in by partnering with the Overdrive Media Console, which lets member "rent" temporary ebooks and audiobooks for various devices. We'll talk more about Overdrive and my experiences with them on an upcoming post. 

What makes BiblioTech different is that the library will be entirely digital. Wolff sees this as a cost-effective way to bring library services to more people in the county. They're even going to have personal devices that members can rent for two weeks at a time. 

Welcome!

Hello and welcome! I love books and over the last few years I've become more interested in ebooks as well. I decided to start this blog about electronic publishing and how it is changing the industry. 

A little about me: I've been working in the publishing industry for nearly ten years, most of which has been in educational publishing. I have seen the industry undergoing a lot of changes recently, with more in sight. Electronic publishing continues to shake things up. A lot of publishers don't know what to do about the ebook, and they seem to treat it as a nuisance or an obstacle. However, the ones that embrace and adapt with the changes will be better off in the long run. We're going to discuss the many opportunities that ebooks provide us, and what's going to happen to the publishing industry. 

In my day to day duties, I work in copyright permissions securing, so I will be discussing permissions and digital rights management issues as they apply to e-publishing. 

On a personal note, I use Barnes and Noble's Nook Color. I've had it since 2011 and I really enjoy reading on it. I also like that it has some basic tablet functions. I never got around to rooting it, and at this point I will probably just wait and get a better tablet/reader down the road. For now, I'm happy with my Nook books and a small selection of apps. I plan on writing about various readers and tablets as well.