We are well aware now what the big Apple announcement for January was: their new iBooks Author program.  It is a program that allows for easy creation of books, most notably textbooks, for free.  iBooks might have failed to kill the Kindle platform, even given the whole Agency Model collusion with publishers (the legality of which we’ll have to wait and see about), but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to give up.  After some experimentation with the new program I find myself conflicted.  I wanted it to be mediocre, but it’s not.  And therein lies the problem.

You see, there is a bit of a problem with the program’s EULA.  It won’t be a deal breaker for just anybody, but there is definitely important information to be aware of.  By using the iBooks Author program, you are agreeing that not only will anything you sell be available in Apple’s eBook store but also will never never be sold for the Kindle, Nook, or any other non-Apple device.

Before going into the subtleties of the wording, and there are a few arguments with varying degrees of merit that have been made toward the harmlessness of this clause, consider that this can definitely be read as a response to the recent Amazon effort to gain author exclusivity.  The only difference is that Amazon brings in authors with a chance at more money while Apple just quietly restricts their distribution rights with a clause that users not only never explicitly accept, but don’t even see unless they go out of their way.

That said, there are a few situations where I think this will be an extremely valuable thing to have.  If you are planning to create and distribute your work permanently free of charge, I have yet to find a more intuitive, affordable tool for making textbooks or manuals.  If your book was always intended to be marketed primarily to users of the iBooks store, this probably won’t have much of an impact on you.

Now, let’s acknowledge some ambiguities in the wording and clarify some of the many common points of contention:

Restrictions Only Apply To iBook Format:  FALSE

The definition of “Work” used in the EULA clearly indicates that anything generated using the software counts.  It does not matter if you export to PDF, for example.

Apple Is Stealing Author Copyrights:  FALSE

Anything you create is yours from the moment you create it unless you explicitly hand over permission.  What Apple is doing is telling you where you can sell it.  Using iBooks Author allows them to restrict distribution of your work, but otherwise seems to offer them no rights to it.

All This Applies To Is The Formatted Product, Not The Content:  AMBIGUOUS

Leaving aside the textbook for a moment and assuming we are talking about a book that is completely text based.  If you want to release a Kindle version, it would seem possible to just copy the text and reformat.  The wording of the EULA describes “Work” recursively as “any book or other work you generate using this software”.  This can, and hopefully would be, read to mean that only the final, fully formatted output is affected, but the ambiguity is troubling.

It Is Free Software, They Have A Right To Expect A Return:  TRUE-ISH

Nobody is forcing you to use this program.  It is being provided free of charge by Apple and provides far greater functionality than any other free program out there for the same purposes.  Most such restrictions are aimed toward restriction the active use of the software rather than restricting how a creator can manage their own work, though.  Neither illegal nor unprecedented, but odd and somewhat troubling.

Not A Consumer Targeted Software Anyway:  FALSE

This one comes up a lot.  Despite the large number of advertisements being done involving the cooperation of such publishers as Pearson and McGraw Hill in the iBooks Textbook initiative, there has been no indication that they are contributing work under the same agreement.  This is free software pointed at teachers and authors in the advertising (particularly the promo video).  It has bundled templates to simplify the work, a simple drag and drop interface, and tons of automation.  There is depth for those who need it, but definitely not aimed solely at experienced professional textbook publishers.

Apple Can Prevent A Finished Book From Ever Being Sold:  TRUE

All that is required for a book to be covered by these restrictions is that it be a product of iBooks Author.  Publication is neither automated nor guaranteed, and just because Apple turns you down does not mean that you are free to market your work through another platform or sell through your own means.

Apple Offers Better/Worse Royalties Than The Competition Anyway:  FALSE

Apple is effectively offering the same cut of all sales to authors as the vast majority of authors receive when selling for the Kindle and nearly the same (within 5%) as that offered to Nook sellers.

Now, I’m not about to claim that this is the most horrible thing ever done to authors or even that it is deliberately malicious.  Some have claimed that just as this is a 1.0 software, so is the EULA in early versions too and ambiguity will inevitably be removed.  If so, and there was no intent to deceive or control, so be it.  It is already a complicated enough process to get anything out of your eBooks that authors should be aware of what they are getting into, though.  I, for one, wouldn’t want to be locked out of the Kindle platform by accident when that’s where all the readers are.

This is good software.  Possibly great software.  But the limitations aren’t the same as you get when publishing a Kindle Edition, where all you need to worry about is not selling things cheaper elsewhere.  Under the current wording it seems to literally stop you from reaching an audience.  That’s just unpleasant, and something that people need to be aware of when deciding whether or not iBooks Author is for them.

Since the Kindle and other e-reader have been available, there’s been speculation of how they would do in the K-12 environment.  A few schools across the US have piloted programs that provide Kindles for students.  The Kindles would hold all of the student’s textbooks and any other school related reading material.

This past year is the first year that kids have had a real opportunity to use a Kindle.  It is now cheap and easy enough for them to use.  it also now includes a huge collection of children’s books and games.

A recent article in American Libraries, a publication run by the American Library Association, focused on e-books in school libraries.  I was surprised to read that a lot of the books commonly read in K-12 are not available on the Kindle yet, like The Catcher in the Rye or To Kill A Mockingbird.  There are many classics currently available on the Kindle for free, however.

There are still many hang ups before school libraries can provide e-books, but the Kindle Library Lending program has shown great success in public libraries. So I can definitely see it coming to school libraries in the near future.  Getting the publishers on board and establishing a payment plan are the biggest hurdles.

Now, on to the benefits.  If Kindles and e-books were available in school libraries, the lure of technology would be enough to entice more kids into reading.  The point that the article made about seeing one page at a time is a really good one.  A lot of kids get overwhelmed by thick books, and often compare thickness to how advanced their reading level is.  Kids can feel free to read what they enjoy and not worry about what their peers might think.

The future will bring much lighter backpacks.  Now that the Kindle Fire is out and is more graphic friendly than traditional e-ink versions, graphic heavy textbooks have a better platform to use.  All textbooks and other reading material can be stored in one tiny little device that is compact enough to fit in a purse.

With a Kindle, there’s no need for large print books.  Visually impaired children can carry a Kindle around just like everyone else, and can adjust the font to fit their needs.  The Kindle is not accessible for the blind yet, but hopefully this issue will be addressed as more people use e-readers.

Technology is changing the face of libraries and the way we view reading.  I am excited to see what the future brings.

From January 4th-13th, the New York Public library is stepping up their efforts to help new owners of the Kindle and other e-readers learn how to download e-books from the library’s vast digital collection.

NYPL has over 22,000 e-books ready to check out, and in addition to on site help through trained reference librarians, the library system has also launched a website called E-Book Central.

Lending Kindle e-books in libraries is a fairly new service, but as a librarian I see first hand how much a service like E-Book Central is needed.  I get questions about it often at the library where I work.  E-reader sales this holiday season were record breaking, so the demand is  much greater.  Just like regular books, good Kindle books are snatched up quickly.

The process for checking out e-books is quite simple once you find the book you want.  The New York Public Library provides a detailed, step by step guide for downloading e-books from their collection onto any mobile device or e-reader.

Two things you need before you start: An Amazon account, and an account with your local library that supports Kindle e-books.  If you don’t have a Kindle itself, there are apps for the Mac, PC, smartphones, and iPad that you can download for free.

Kindle books from the public library appear in your Kindle’s home screen just like other books.  After the check out time is up, it will automatically disappear.  Check out times usually run anywhere from 7-21 days depending on the library.

Now that the Kindle Library Lending program is up and running, I hope more libraries will follow NYPL’s example and provide more formal e-book training for their patrons.  Many libraries don’t have the staff or time available to dedicate to a project like this, but it is something that would save time in the long run.

So, if you live in NYC, see the E-Book Central website for dates and times when training is available, or check out the guides for checking out e-books on different mobile devices.

There have been several posts about the Amazon Kindle Library Lending program that was launched earlier this fall on here, but there hasn’t really been a good explanation of how the whole thing works.  With that in mind, I found a good step by step guide for searching for and downloading Kindle books from your local library.

My local library recently added the program, and I downloaded a book on my Kindle Touch.  There isn’t a huge selection available yet, but I can tell that they are steadily adding new titles.  Authors such as Janet Evanovich and James Patterson are available on the list.

I think the biggest challenge for library patrons is getting to the list of e-books that the library offers.  Durham County Library hides their e-book link under a series of pages, so I have to really dig to find it.  Placing a link in a prominent place so that patrons can access it will go a long way to help this program flourish.

Once you find the link, the process kind of guides you through each step.  Search for the book you want.  Click on the “Get for Kindle” link.  You will then be taken to your Amazon account where you just click “Get Library Book.”  A more detailed overview, and video of the process can be found here.

The check out time varies by library.  14 days is about the average length.  The downloaded book becomes part of the list of titles on your Kindle, and you can view it in your digital items list on you Amazon account.

Most of the newer Kindles rely on wi-fi, however, even if you don’t have wi-fi access, you can hook up your Kindle to the computer and download the book via USB.  You can choose that option when viewing the library book in your digital items list.  That option came in handy when I was stuck out in the middle of the country with no wi-fi access.  I love how this program brings the library to you rather than you having to drive to a physical location.

So, I encourage you to check out your library’s website to see if they offer Kindle e-books.  The number of libraries offering the service is growing, and will continue to do so.  If you can’t find a link to it on the  library’s website, librarians and staff are always there to help.

Don’t have a Kindle?  You can download library books on all of the Kindle apps for the computer, iPad, and smartphones just like you do with other Kindle e-books.

Since the launch of the very first Kindle eReader, the persistent and constantly repeated complaint has been that it lacks color.  Everything else that began problematically, from screen refresh time to clunky controls, has been addressed in later iterations of the Kindle line.  Sadly, you just can’t do much yet in terms of color without sacrificing the E Ink screen.  Barnes & Noble managed to effectively market their Nook Color for over a year on nothing more than the ability to overcome this limitation (regardless of the resultant shortcomings of their device) and it was inevitable that it be a big issue in terms of Kindle Fire reviewing, no matter how much Amazon might prefer to focus on other things.

How big a deal could this possibly be, though?  Upon closer inspection, more than I thought.  The obvious example that most people jump to for their color reading needs is the magazine.  Let’s simply disregard that one for the time being, though.  It involves a slightly different pricing model since only the newest issue of a given publication is likely to be in demand, shortening the life of each installment to a month or so in many cases.  I would love to comment but, without a better understanding of how the advertising model generally makes the transition to the sort of device that has the potential to simply block out images with a few tweaks, I simply don’t feel qualified at the moment.

We can definitely consider general book sales, though.  Assume that the majority of book sales are fiction.  Particularly Romance novels, I’m told.  Not too much need for color illustration in those, for the most part.  That does not mean that non-fiction is a negligible area, however.  Self Help and History are two of the most impressive genres of the past few years in terms of sales.  Both of them, in their own way can benefit from the inclusion of color.

While this is definitely important, though, it’s difficult to believe that it will really be a major factor moving into the next round of Kindle vs Nook competition.  Barnes & Noble’s book focus is completely understandable.  It only makes sense to do what you know best and they simply don’t have the structure in place to handle much else.  Amazon has already moved past that, adding competing capabilities and book selections almost in passing, and brought the emphasis around to video.

The Kindle Fire might not be a match for the iPad when it comes to hardware, but Amazon is building up their whole digital presence to the point of rivaling Apple’s more established one.  The book emphasis only made sense as long as the limitations of the device being sold restricted use to that media.  The future will be an overall digital experience.  Sure magazines and color reading will be a part of it, but on their own the effect just doesn’t seem likely to be big enough to matter.  There are rumors of a Nook Tablet video store on the horizon, as well as a push to increase the app content for that line of devices.  That’s likely to make a far bigger difference.

I was reading an article a couple of days ago that I thought made a good point.  It discussed how despite the surge of e-books and e-readers in recent years, there is still a place for print books.  On a personal note, I can still appreciate reading a print book from time to time despite owning a Kindle Touch, iPad and iPhone.

There seems to be a general consensus that print is on its way out, and getting an e-reader means you’ll never read print books again.  I think instead of replacing print books, digital books will just be adding to the types of formats that people can use to read.  Digital books allow more font adjustments and lighting, so they offer a more customized reading experience.

With the rise of e-readers including the Amazon Kindle, and the e-books that go along with it, many of the major book chains have faltered or have gone out of business.  Borders declared bankruptcy earlier this year, and Barnes & Noble is not doing all too great.  It does have the Nook in its arsenal however, and it has definitely provided healthy competition for the Kindle.

I think the foreseeable future still holds a big place for both print and digital materials.  Print books give a certain feel that digital books cannot.  There is really something for everyone.  You have print, e-readers, and most recently, tablets.  The Kindle Fire has taken the tablet market by a storm, and is taking a hit at the iPad sales already.

The thing that has hurt the big chain bookstores so much is that Amazon offers books in all formats so much cheaper.  Independent bookstores can also offer used books at competitive prices.  They can also offer a sense of warmth and community that you don’t get with a larger bookstore.

So, smaller bookstores have the potential to shine.  It is all a matter of addressing what the customers want.  I’ve always dreamed of owning a used book store where people can come to read, work, or just gather.  Maybe one day soon there will be more independent bookstores that sell both e-books and print books.

The big news of the day is Amazon’s introduction of a potentially huge incentive for authors to make their content exclusive to the Kindle platform.  Starting immediately, any author or publisher who chooses to go entirely Kindle will be eligible for a share of the monthly Kindle Owners’ Lending Library fund after 90 days. it isn’t a guarantee of immediate profit any more than self publishing is an inevitable path to success, but for successfully marketed books it can spell some great new income in return for withdrawing from overall less profitable competing stores.

The payment scheme is based on the total number of rentals in the Lending Library, the percentage of rentals of a given book within that larger number, and the amount of money placed into the monthly fund by Amazon.  The promise they have given in the press release is for equal distribution based on the popularity of a title, meaning that if 500,000 people each borrow a book then every rental will earn one dollar.  If fewer than that join in, which seems likely at first since the pickings have been slim enough to prevent much excitement in the program so far, then each could be worth significantly more.  Best case scenario, this has the possibility of being more profitable than actual sales revenue for some authors.

Since at present the monthly installments are expected to remain at $500,000 through at least the entirety of 2012, the only real question is how much interest can be drummed up for a given title and the service as a whole.  Amazon does not release numbers on this, but the success of both the Amazon Prime program and the Kindle in all its many iterations would seem to indicate an impressive amount of overlap being likely, especially as the Kindle Fire continues to enjoy ongoing popularity and extra Amazon Prime functionality.  Each such instance is eligible to participate, supporting a favorite author if nothing else.

The fact that this requires the authors and publishers in question to completely withdraw from the Nook, Kobo, and other platforms will likely cause more ideological upset than financial distress for participants.  In general many make as much as 90% of their digital sales revenue through the KDP program already, according to some sources.  In doing so, however, these individuals may incur some bad press overall.  No author wishing to make a living on their craft is likely to easily make the decision to turn down an increase in income, but there is the very real possibility that this could be a crippling blow to other eBook vendors.

This is clearly a move on Amazon’s part to increase the Kindle platform’s lead over the competition.  Not only does the new program mean that more high quality titles will be showing up in the free-ish category that the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library represents, it decreases the value of competing devices by taking away the content they need to thrive.  Self publishing is an increasingly important area to control, given how much the Agency Model pricing scheme imposed on digital book vendors cripples competition over pricing of products passing through traditional publishing. It’s easier to get your books out on the market than ever before thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing, but it’s worth weighing the decision carefully when it could mean fewer options in the long run.

Don’t mistake me for being against the program.  I’m not.  Anything that supports authors and makes books more readily available to readers with Kindles is wonderful in my eyes.  There is definitely reason to worry about it being too successful in the end, however.

When it comes to video games, Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls franchise is a giant and the latest installment, Skyrim, received an almost ridiculous amount of attention in the months leading up to its release.  It’s one of the largest, most ambitious developments in the genre so far and the depth of the game world is such that you’re faced with around 16 square miles of highly detailed world space packed with interactive content.  Now, fans can take some of that to go on your Kindle thanks to a big fan who took the time to reformat some of the in-game text for eReaders.

In various places throughout Skyrim players are likely to come across books.  Some are obvious, others might require some fairly extreme efforts to get to.  Regardless of their “physical” situation, they serve to enrich the game world by offering interesting bits of history and culture built up across thousands of simulated years.  The writing is surprisingly good, if predictably cliched for the most part.  When put together they make up a huge collection of relatively short stories and articles.

The eBook that Skyrim fan Capaneus put together contains literally every bit of book text in the game.  It seems that upon inspection it was discovered that the entirety was contained in unencrypted text files that were somewhat easily broken down and arranged. As a result, interested readers can now check it all out on their eReader of choice.  There is even a table of contents to make it simple to find whichever piece of literature might be particularly interesting to you at the moment.

The whole file is just over a megabyte worth of text, amounting to slightly less than 2,000 page turns on my usual reading settings.  Your own may differ, of course.  It has been made available both in EPUB and Mobi, so practically any modern eReader, phone, computer, etc. should be able to display it without trouble.  While it is entirely possible that the legality of this distribution is questionable, given that it is game data that might be picked up by people who don’t own the rights to use the game, real problems seem unlikely.

This is, when it comes right down to it, exactly the sort of added value content that many media distributors would kill for.  Owners of the Kindle w/ Special Offers might recall an ABC offer back in October that allowed users to pick up a free copy of the script to one of their new pilot episodes.  This is essentially the same idea.  While I consider it unlikely that this will set the trend for future use of eReaders as venues for promotional material built along these lines, it’s also hardly the first time that fans have found ways to bring content to the Kindle in unexpected ways.

Should the Kindle Fire take off in the long run, of course, things may be very different.  Allowing a TV network or publishing company to throw up additional content for limited periods of time via an app might just make it worth the effort in a way that is not currently the case.  Time will tell, but either way we can see the importance of Kindles as advertising avenues increasing.

To get a copy for yourself, head over to http://capane.us/2011/11/24/dovahkiin-gutenberg/

Kindle owners found themselves targeted recently in a fairly unpleasant way.  Penguin USA, one of the largest publishers in the world, decided that it would be a smart business move to pull their entire collection of publications from libraries across the country for Kindle owners.  Everybody else, including owners of competing eReaders like the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch, could still get these books.  Now, while things have been temporarily dealt with since then – Penguin has temporarily stopped singling out the Kindle users entirely – new Penguin books will not be made available anymore and there is reason to believe that the event will recur unless Penguin and OverDrive (the service providing eBook lending services for most libraries these days) are able to work out a deal by the end of the year.

Neither Penguin nor OverDrive has said anything about the exact details of Penguin’s problems.  OverDrive was simply sent word to disable the “Get for Kindle” functionality for all Penguin eBooks immediately.  There was not even a warning sent to the affected libraries before the change took effect, which led to a great deal of ill will.  These libraries purchase each copy of the eBooks they rent out and as such were left sitting on the results of essentially wasted money that could not be lent out despite Kindle-owning customer demand.  The expected outcry for massive refunds, which would certainly have garnered a great deal of public sympathy, might well explain Penguin’s temporary capitulation.

Many have believably argued that this is a direct response to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library that Amazon launched recently for their Prime members.  The timing certainly fits.  Amazon got around the fact that major publishers have refused to buy into this new program by focusing on their KDP titles, smaller publishers, and by outright purchase of each rented eBook that they could get their hands on through wholesale arrangements.  This last move is what causes the ill will since many publishers and authors feel that this exceeds the scope of their current relationships with Amazon.

While nobody involved in the Prime lending library is directly losing money, a major worry in the industry is that eBooks will lose perceived value.  If customers start thinking of eBooks as somehow inherently cheaper that printed books, then printed Book sales will suffer and publishers would be forced to rely on sales of the eBooks, which means being subject to Amazon and Barnes & Noble even more than they are now.  This is the same sort of reasoning that brought on the behind-the-scenes deal with Apple to fix prices of eBooks around the time the iBooks store opened up.

I would say that this is going to go poorly for Penguin.  While their need to react is understandable given that they feel wronged, the targeting was off a bit.  Instead of attacking Amazon directly, they have gone after their own readers.  Yes, the Amazon deal with OverDrive increases the incentive to purchase a Kindle, but going after libraries doesn’t do a lot to make you look better to a customer base that loves to read.  The Kindle is unlikely to be pushed out of the #1 slot in eBook Readers any time soon, even if all the major publishers pulled out of the library system in the same way.  It’s difficult to understand what Penguin is still hoping to accomplish here.

Amazon made what appeared to be some fairly big opponents in the earliest days of the Kindle.  All they had to do was decide to go with a closed format.  Unlike some companies who might have decided that a strong DRM scheme was plenty of protection, they made sure that Kindle owners were locked in by consciously failing to support the industry standard eBook format.  It struck many people, myself included, as manipulative and more than a little bit condescending.

Thinking back, many of my earliest complaints about the Kindle revolved around the EPUB format.  I was ideologically supportive of the Nook in a very strong way as a result.  They might have wanted to lock in customers via DRM, but at least things like outside purchases and library books would work if the user wanted to make the effort to access them.  MobiPocket format was already too outdated in many situations.

Oddly enough, in principle the objections remain to this day.  The difference is that now customers aren’t expected to buy into an unproven platform with no guarantee that success was ahead.  Keep in mind that the Kindle was not the first E Ink eReader.  Sony was already doing a fairly good job of fizzling out by then and has been taking a back seat in the field ever since as a result.

My own change of opinion regarding the importance of the eBook format conflict stems from purely practical matters.  We have reached a point where there is literally nothing you can’t do with a Kindle that can be done on another device.  Library books are plentiful, no author or publisher is likely to boycott the Kindle platform in favor of the competition, and on the off chance that you find a DRM-free eBook you want on your device you can convert it for free with Calibre (a practical necessity for the eBook enthusiast in case you haven’t adopted already. Google it!).  In a situation where the format itself offers no particular advantage inherent to itself, there is no longer much reason to cling to it.  There is a reason you don’t see much use of HD-DVD anymore, or Betamax before that.

As we move forward into the next generation of formats, HTML5 forms the underlying structure.  Kindle Format 8 looks to allow for as much, or as little, formatting as the person producing a given publication desires as a result.  This will improve Amazon’s ability to present their media equally well on practically any size display, which makes sense given speculation regarding future Kindle Tablet options.  Nobody else seems to have really adopted an equally versatile approach yet, and even if that happens it won’t necessarily change anything.  There is only so much you can do in order to essentially show off text in an attractive manner.

What it all comes down to is that customers will go where they get the best experience.  EPUB might be better than Mobi, but with the Kindle providing the better hardware and Amazon backing their product with strong infrastructure and a great book store that didn’t matter enough.  It’s one more format war down.

Assuming you have both a Kindle and an active Amazon Prime membership, you now get to make use of Amazon’s latest eBook related service, the Amazon Prime Kindle Owners’ Lending Library!  Aside from having a rather unwieldy name attached to it, this will be a good thing for those who get to take advantage of it.  Of course, aside from being occasionally lucky it might be hard to figure out how to take advantage right off the bat.  We’ll start there.

First off, it is helpful to be aware that you need to do your borrowing from the Kindle itself.  While you might find books that have borrowing enabled while browsing the Kindle Store on another device, in which case you will see “Prime Members: $0.00 (read for free)”, you cannot begin the borrowing until you pull it up on your eReader. If your Kindle software is up to date, the Kindle Storefront will now have a “Kindle Owners’ Lending Library” category to choose when you click on “See all…”.  Look around from there and choose your book!

As far as what is currently available, none of the Big 6 publishing houses are currently taking part in this program.  They have cited concerns that offering something like this will devalue the eBook as a format in the minds of customers.  Strange reasoning, but not much we can do right now.  Among the 5,000+ titles that are available, though, expect to find selections in pretty much every category.  Keep an eye out for things like Vook Classics titles, which will work just fine but encompass titles that most people will get just as much out of when reading for free anyway.  You only get one rental per month under this program, so it’s worthwhile to use it wisely.

That one rental will strike many people as rather little to get for the $79/year Amazon Prime membership, making this an ineffective marketing tool on its own, but it will probably help drive sales of the new Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire eReaders among existing Prime customers.  Amazon is clearly convinced about this since they are once again putting their own money into getting a Kindle program off the ground.  Not all of the books being offered are in the Library by publisher agreement, it seems.  In cases when Amazon is able to grab eBooks through non-Agency Model relationships, they are simply buying at wholesale and then lending to customers, eliminating any publisher participation.  The jury is still out on how long this will last before somebody gets really upset about it.

Reading a book every couple weeks is not at all unreasonable for anybody, and Amazon has said on multiple occasions that their data shows that Kindle owners buy more books than most people.  We have to hope that translates into more books being read as well.  Perhaps the intention here is to keep people interested in continual consumption and draw in those who haven’t yet gotten too invested in their Kindle.  Regardless of the reasoning behind it, there’s no downside if you’re in a position to take advantage.  Enjoy your book.

The iPad and the Kindle have always had a curious love/hate relationship that can be enough to drive many users nuts.  While they were expected to compete for users from the moment they were both on the market, the iPad depended on the Kindle for iOS app to deliver a great reading experience to potential adopters while the Kindle just didn’t even try to offer the same kind of tablet versatility.  The iPad does lots of things quite well, the Kindle does one thing really well, and users of both devices like to read.  Of course it’s at that point of overlap that problems arose.

Amazon was making money, Apple wanted that money for themselves, and now there’s nobody really making much money.  You can’t buy books through the Kindle app, the iBooks app is still not really something most people have any particular desire to adopt, and getting the Kindle Cloud Reader set up requires users to look outside of the Apple App Store.  eBook acquisition is still perfectly doable, but it is a bit more of a hassle and that means some people just won’t bother.

Enter Inkstone Software with what they hope will be the solution to many peoples’ eBook problems.  The company has claimed that this is their way to help out the community that they have benefited so much from.  Their new free iPhone and iPad app, called simply “eBook Search”, will allow users to peruse over 2 million free titles from all around the internet.  Not only that, the app will allow users to select their reading app of choice and will then acquire their books in a compatible format, ending the hassle of maintaining multiple collections in multiple apps or converting hard to find titles to your preferred format.

The attraction of such an application goes beyond convenience in acquisition of out of copyright “classics”.  The developer claims to have allowed for discovery of free eBooks being offered by indie authors, and even popular fan fiction.  They hope that this will allow readers who do not have a sufficient budget to allow for prolific reading in an environment where eBooks cost as much or more than physical books to indulge with less hesitation.

If this is at all up your alley, it is definitely worth checking out.  Not only will you be getting great literature that can be read on your iPad, Kindle, or whatever else you happen to have, but the more people take advantage of these types of offers the better things start looking for the future of eBooks.  If authors are successful in gaining exposure through free eBook offers, more authors will be inclined to try similar campaigns.  If readers are loathe to purchase high priced eBooks in the Kindle Store because they can find equally good titles without spending the money, maybe publishers will start getting the message. If nothing else, the worst that can happen from giving it a chance is the loss of a few moments of your time.

Apparently Amazon has been working on a way to offer Amazon Prime customers a Kindle platform lending library experience similar to what Netflix users have come to expect.  While this is in its extremely early stages and will depend on reaching agreements with publishers who have not been particularly fond of Amazon or the Kindle, if it were to be realized it would be a game changing addition to the eBook world.

It is important to note that this will be distinct from Kindle Library Lending.  An Amazon Prime membership will not be required for Kindle Library Lending.  This service would allow subscribers to access a certain number of titles per month, after which it is unclear whether these users would be cut off or given the option to pay overage fees of some sort.  At launch, and possibly permanently depending on the eventual structuring, this service would be only for older works, leaving the bestsellers list alone in favor of less profitable titles that publishers would have less reason to object to.

Publishers are not terribly enthused by this idea, unfortunately.  While Amazon has reportedly offered a substantial fee for any publishers who join in on the program, there are concerns.  One, executives are apparently concerned that the idea of such a rental program would devalue their publications in the eyes of potential customers.  Two, with Amazon already being in a highly influential place in the eReading world, many are concerned that such a program would alienate competing retailers.

The former concern isn’t exactly surprising in an industry that already seems to view libraries as little more than theft.  The fee offered for participation would have to be substantial indeed to overcome the industry’s anti-lending attitude.  As for the damaged relations, it seems shortsighted.  If Amazon did pioneer a successful subscription based lending program, it would open the door for publishers to arrange similar deals with competing platforms.  That relies on the assumption that the publishers do themselves a disservice by alienating their customers and will eventually have to give people what they want, which apparently is a difficult concept to swallow in many cases.

In all honesty, the fact that one executive defended their position by saying that “What it would do is downgrade the value of the book business” says to me that publishers still don’t quite get the fact that there are few inherent differences between the print and eBook mediums in most peoples’ minds.  Just as public libraries don’t keep people from valuing books, being able to access a Kindle library equivalent wouldn’t change anything for the vast majority of customers beyond removing the need to worry about waiting lists and local availability of lend-able titles in the public library system.

Going along with a plan like this would be great publicity, make author back lists more accessible for potential customers, and quite possibly make the companies more money than would otherwise be the case on these titles, if the fee Amazon is offering is large enough.  Shunning this sort of idea on principal does everybody a disservice.

Michael Hart, the founder of ebooks and Project Gutenberg, died on September 6, 2011 at the age of 64. His death will be a huge loss for the digital book and literary community. However, the work he has already done has set the groundwork in the ebook world. Other members of the literary community will have to continue his mission to provide global literacy. Hart founded Project Gutenberg in 1971, and it is the longest running literary project recorded.

Project Gutenberg currently offers over 36,000 public domain ebooks that are available on the Kindle, iPad, PC and other computers or portable devices that allow ePub, HTML, or Simple Text. All of the books are free, and there’s no cost to join. A wealth of information is literally at your fingertips. The information is top quality.

Hart’s ebook idea began when he typed up a copy of the Declaration of Independence on his computer and sent it to others in the network at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  This was barely after the internet was created.

Hart’s literary impact was profound because through ebooks, he opened up literature to the global audience. Project Gutenberg currently has ebooks available in 60 languages. It is also a huge asset to libraries and research. The longevity of this project proves that it the ability to adapt right along with the rapid changes in technology.

E-book readers such as the Kindle, Nook and Kobo are just part of the progression towards better literacy. They add portability and easy access to millions of ebooks. The Kindle has made life much easier for people who can’t read small print through its font size adjustments feature.

One of Michael Hart’s goals was to reach out to children. This goal is being realized as more children’s books are being added to ebook collections, and as Kindles and other e-book readers are being introduced in the schools. The lure of cool gadgets are enticing children who normally do not like reading, to consider it.

It always amazes me when I read about how long some technologies have really been around. I have only thought of ebooks being a new, twenty-first century invention. But, in fact, they have a rather long, rich history. Project Gutenberg dates all the way back to 1971, before computers really became a household item. E-books were around 36 years before the Kindle was even invented!

So, a big thank you goes out to Michael Hart for being such a champion for literacy, and for making information accessible to a much greater, and more diverse audience.

While eBook sales have been expanding across the board and the Kindle is flourishing with ever-increasing sales each year, very little has been heard about the Kindle Edition eBook / A/V hybrid that was once touted as a potential future for the eBook.  The explanations for this failure to thrive is fairly simple are understand, but do they mean that the format is dead?

Probably the main failing, in my eyes, was the lack of logical transition for the customer.  Books are familiar territory for most people.  Audio and video are separate concerns.  The only place that the average eBook customer is likely to encounter a combination of the two is while browsing the internet.  When the best comparison that a reader can draw is to something they already encounter for free on a daily basis, it would take some fairly strong marketing to increase the perceived value.

It didn’t help anything that the nature of the integration made it impossible to access on the Kindle eReader itself.  The whole platform, while offering a reading experience to anybody with a screen and internet access, is pretty much built around the eReader.  Having content that cannot be accessed through this doesn’t do as much good as one would prefer.

On top of that, you have no Android app access, meaning that the only customers who even have the option of reading their purchases away from the PC are Apple iOS users.  Soon even they won’t be a valid audience.  Given recent issues with the Apple App Store guideline enforcement, Amazon is clearly prodding iOS users in the direction of the new Kindle Cloud Reader which does not yet (and seems unlikely in the near future to) support A/V integration.

Price must also be considered a factor.  While it is true that the integration of extra-textual layers brings some added value to a book, it seems difficult to justify the additional cost for many of the available texts.  The experience is often similar to the special features on a DVD.  It might be worth a small about more than simply the main experience, but not enough to justify a noticeable jump in price.  Of course, without that price you have added investment beyond the core book that is not being compensated for.  A bit of a dilemma.

Does this mean the end of the project?  While it is clear that priorities have to be elsewhere right this minute, I can see this being something Amazon comes back to in the future.  The upcoming Kindle Tablet will have the hardware necessary to allow this sort of integration again and will hopefully be accessible to far more users, in terms of price, than the iPad was at launch.  Assuming that Amazon does not intend to break the Kindle completely away from the app marketplace in favor of browser-based applications, this would also finally result in a working Kindle for Android A/V presence which would further increase the value of the product line.  For now, not really a major factor in the Kindle‘s success.

Fascinated as we are by the platform here, Kindle users are far from the only group to be inconvenienced by Apple’s in-app purchasing guideline enforcement.  Apple built the popularity of their iPads on the availability and functionality of apps being developed by other parties, only to change their minds once an ownership base was established.  Certainly totally within their rights to do, but more than a little unpleasant for both the app developers and users who are accustomed to better treatment.  Amazon has retaliated by releasing the Kindle Cloud Reader, which completely bypasses the iPad’s App Store, and they aren’t the only ones looking at the options.

Kobo, the leading international Kindle competition, has announced plans to follow in Amazon’s footsteps with an HTML5 Reading app of their own.  When it is complete, users should be able to read their Kobo purchases on any device with a web browser, effectively bypassing Apple’s restrictions.  You should even be able to save the app to your iOS device Home page for seamless integration.  As with the Kindle Cloud Reader, users will be able to sync their collections for offline browsing, which addresses the largest possible shortcoming of a browser-based solution to the problem.

The only major problem with apps like these is the loss of Apple App Store exposure.  To effectively bypass Apple’s fees it is important to already have a substantial user base, since random discovery is far less likely.  Existing Kobo customers will have little problem, and will likely welcome the chance to make use of the store again without the price increases that would have been necessary to profitably continue operation within Apple’s guidelines.  New users will almost certainly be harder to come by.  We can expect to see continued support for the Kobo iOS app as a result, for exposure’s sake if nothing else.

This is not the only obstacle that Kobo has had to face recently.  With the end of Borders, their US distribution partner, exposure will be harder to come by in the current largest eBook market.  Although they remained separate companies, Borders was directly linked to the Kobo eReader in the minds of consumers for having been the first ones to bring to to the US.  Regaining that kind of presence will be a slow process.

Outside the US, the Kobo Store is reported to have perhaps the best selection of eBooks currently available.  Due to ongoing licensing right disputes, the Kindle Store is not yet always able to consistently provide the same level of service that Kobo has managed to over such a large number of markets.  The release of this HTML5 app should do them a great deal of good in expanding their lead, given the number of Tablet PCs hitting the market recently.  This may allow readers to enjoy the service even in countries where localized selections are not currently available and shipping the Kobo eReader itself is problematic.

We can expect the official release of the new Kobo app later this year.

When it comes to deciding who had the biggest impact in the earliest days of eReading, perhaps the only real answer is Microsoft.  Long before the Kindle, or even the first Sony Reader, you could pick up many of your favorite titles and read them on whatever computer or PDA you happened to have handy.  It wasn’t perfect, but it started something big.

Now, after over a decade of usefulness, both the MS Reader application and its associated file format (.lit) are being retired.  According to a notice posted without fanfare on the Microsoft support page, the last day that .lit eBooks will be available anywhere will be November 8, 2011.  The program itself will be usable through August 30, 2012, after which the whole project will be permanently retired.  While it has been a fairly long time since Microsoft was anything resembling a big name in eReading, it’s still almost shocking to see them go.

Yes, you could get electronic books before the year 2000.  I recall several public domain titles floating around my computers as far back as the early 90′s.  The .lit format broke people away from the generic document format or the restrictive PDF and provided a way to just read books.  Reflowable type, bookmarking, text searches, dictionary integration, and more made up a selection of features that improved the whole experience and went on to become the basis for everything that came after.

After the Kindle came around, the game changed significantly.  Microsoft didn’t ever really get the kind of widespread adoption that they needed to compete with such a huge, centralized platform, nor did they offer anything in the way of dedicated reading devices.  While the latter is certainly not essential for general reading, it makes a big difference for the most avid readers.  Combine that with the vastly superior selection of Kindle Edition eBooks and there was no real way to keep up.

While it will be sad to see this old, reliable system fade away, I think it is safe to say that superior alternate options abound and people should not generally be terribly inconvenienced by the announcement.  Should you have an existing library of purchased DRM-enabled .lit books laying around that you want to hold onto, you still have a couple options.

Obviously, you can just hang onto your copy of MS Reader.  They aren’t going to show up and start deleting things from your computer, nor are the countless archived copies around the internet going to disappear.  If you are interested in moving entirely to a new platform, however, there’s no point in cluttering up your system with multiple reading applications.

A simple internet search will find programs available to strip the DRM from your .lit files, provided you are indeed the legal owner (I recommend looking into “ConvertLIT).  They are simple to use, tend to be quite fast, and the product will be simple to plug into Calibre for conversion into MOBI or EPUB format.  Just because you jumped on the eReading trend early doesn’t mean you should be held back by the death of a format.

Aside from the psychological transition required for new users, perhaps the largest thing standing in the way of Kindle adoption among book lovers is the element of collectability that often goes hand in hand with reading.  Over the years, book lovers are prone to ending up with large numbers of books, which only makes sense.  In a situation where not every book you have can be replaced in the new format, especially for a reasonably cheap price, it can be difficult to justify the move to a medium that seems at a glance to offer few advantages to the well stocked book owner.  A new service, 1DollarScan, makes the transition rather significantly easier.

Their focus is, unsurprisingly, cheap scanning of large quantities of documents.  For just $1 per 10 pages of business document or 100 pages of book, getting anything you have on paper converted into a PDF is no longer particularly troublesome.  Due to the way their pricing scheme is set up, any book you might want to have converted will be done for no more than $6.  Not necessarily the solution for a huge library, for a couple reasons, but I could see it being an amazing value.

The most important thing to keep in mind when considering the value of such a service is that you will not be getting your books back.  This is a full move to digital, with no going back, since they chop off the spine of each book to facilitate scanning.  In many instances this will mean you either want to hang onto your original book or find alternate means of eBook acquisition, but not always.

Take, for example, the obscure reference book shelf.  I’m sure many people have one.  Am I attached enough to each particular title to make keeping them around necessary?  Chances are good they would see more use on a portable device anyway.  If we’re talking about particularly narrow-niche publications then you often get a combination of minimal annotation, impossible to find in inexpensive eBook format, and only occasional usefulness.  If you can remove them from your shelf, while making them more functional by having them always available, for just $2-3, it’s worth it.  Even for larger or more well-loved titles, this is the first simple, cheap method that I have found that will allow for retention of your handwritten notes.

Right now, 1DollarScan is only offering their results in PDF format.  For some things, like heavily annotated books, this is ideal.  For the most part, however, I’m looking forward to Kindle compatibility.  They list both the Kindle and the Nook as soon to be supported, so hopefully this won’t be long in coming.  At the moment all documents include an OCR layer anyway, so it seems like a logical next step once they get some momentum behind them.

I don’t believe that anybody will ever want to completely do away with a well established personal library, but that doesn’t mean that every title has equal value.  Not everything needs to take up shelf space.  Now that there are options like the Kindle that allow users to maintain most of their collections without sacrificing actual space in their home or office, where’s the harm in converting?

Check out 1DollarScan at http://1dollarscan.com/

One of the biggest flaws in the idea of a Kindle purchase for a lot of people has been the complete lack of library lending support.  This isn’t a new problem.  It stems from Amazon’s refusal to open up compatibility with the industry standard EPUB format.  While Amazon may not have been willing to concede on that point, however, library lending is a must have for customers so they have worked with OverDrive Library, the most popular library lending management tool available today, to bring the capability to the Kindle.  Several months back we heard that it was due before the end of the year and little has come up since then, until now.

Toward the end of OverDrive’s Digipalooze conference, one of the biggest unanswered questions was that of Kindle support.  When would it be coming, what would it include, how hard would it be to use, and all the other little details.  Though many of the specifics are still up in the air, the major points of the final presentation’s focus tell us a lot.  Specifically, the final summary:

Streamlining (both downloading and ordering)
Explosion (we have gone from two reading devices to 85 and more are coming)
Premium (the library catalog as the most premium, value-added site on the Web)
Traffic (enormous growth coming by year’s end)

Naturally no specific dates were given, but I’m catching a rather obvious hint hidden in there as to when we can expect results.

This software update will not just include Kindle support.  It will also mean an improvement to the experience for all library patrons.  The acquisition process will be simplified significantly, for example.  While the Kindle will be the only device that maintains persistent notes (meaning that anything you annotate in your library rental will still be there next time you rent or buy the text) , everybody will benefit in some way.  There will also be an emphasis on allowing readers to express their preferences when it comes to library ownership.  Not every library can keep every title in stock, especially with some publishers disliking the idea of eBook rentals enough to force libraries to keep repurchasing their books constantly, but now users will be able to point out their desired titles to the library or even go directly from the library rentals page to a purchasing option if they don’t feel like waiting.

From the sound of things, this is going to be the biggest thing to hit libraries in a long time.  OverDrive is reportedly putting systems in place to handle demand a hundred times more intense than this past year.  Kindle support will certainly do a lot to contribute to those numbers, but this may end up being the beginning of a whole new way to view libraries.  If everything goes as planned and September is indeed the month of release, it is going to be a big one.  Having a library card has never been such a good investment for the eReading enthusiast.

One of the biggest advantages of something like a Kindle is supposed to be the amazing savings that one can expect from owning such a device.  Books should be cheaper, according to the vision that many had of what eReading was going to be.  Obviously we have not quite realized that dream, with publishers keeping eBooks at prices similar to hardcover books, but all is not lost!  There are hundreds of authors releasing free or nearly free books every day through the Kindle Direct Publishing system.  So many, in fact, that it is all but impossible to even keep up with a list, let alone read them all. There are plenty of established successes to draw on even now, though, while I try to come up with a decent list of newer authors to pass along to you.  (I would welcome suggestions at [email protected])

The often overlooked, or at least undervalued, source of cheap literature is older titles that have fallen out of copyright.  Sometimes they’ve fallen very far out of copyright.  For a while, it was pretty obnoxious to even try looking through these books in the Kindle Store since anybody who felt like going through the effort could post their own copy in hopes of making a few dollars.  In the past several months they have made a major effort to clean things up and remove duplicate copies.  It’s a mixed blessing since some of the approved ones remaining seem to be bad OCR copies rather than something a person has actually looked over, but suddenly it is a lot easier to find interesting things to read.

Now, a lot of people definitely seem to think that the so-called ‘classics’ are by definition dry and hard to get through.  I certainly wouldn’t recommend Bleak House to a Harlequin fan, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of perfectly approachable titles out there to take a look at.  Here’s a few that I hope you’ll find enjoyable.  Not all are free, mainly in cases where free copies were poorly formatted to the point of being hard to read, but all are under $3.

She by H. Rider Haggard

You’ve got an ancient family mystery dating back thousands of years, a secret society hidden in the heart of the unknown, supernatural powers, and near immortality.  This would be an amazing movie, if only the reaction to certain scenes involving the treatment of death wouldn’t be so extreme.

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Everybody knows the broad outlines of the story, from movies if nothing else, but you miss a lot without reading the book.  Some of the most hilariously flawed ‘heroes’ that you are ever likely to read about.  You may be surprised by how off base your expectations are, if you’ve never read it before

Sherlock Holmes Collection by Arthur Conan Doyle

Another selection that a surprising number of people have never given a chance to.  This particular collection contains all four of the novels and 46 short stories, which I believe make up the whole out-of-copyright collection.  It’s been said that what fascinates people about Holmes is not the process he uses, but how much fun it is to watch him do it.  Give it a try for yourself.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

This book is a great suspense/mystery book with just a little bit of the fantastic thrown in.  It is really a fun time overall and has quite possibly the best villain ever(who was, coincidentally, modeled physically on the author himself according to many accounts!)  This one would be worth it for that character alone.

As most of you will almost certainly be aware by now, the ever popular Harry Potter series is on its way to the Kindle.  The author, J.K. Rowling, is keeping control over the distribution of the books by attaching her sales platform to the Pottermore companion web site that will be opening this coming October.  While the combination of extra content and fan loyalty will certainly make the site and eBook sales even more of a success than we expect, in the meantime the anticipation building around the site has left over-zealous fans open to scams built around the pre-release proceedings.

You see, a lucky few have managed to secure invitations to experience the Pottermore site well ahead of time.  There was a contest of sorts that allowed the truly interested to get their names in, but it was arranged in such a way as to technically allow somebody to get multiple invites.  This, of course, opens to door to eBay sales even if they are technically against the site’s Terms & Conditions.  Sadly as we all know by now, I hope, where there are electronic invitation sales, there are scams.

Harry Potter fans hoping to get in have been singled out for everything from hundred dollar fake early access accounts to total identity theft from some fairly convincing dummy sites asking people for far too much information in order to gain entry.  Pottermore admins have, naturally, warned people against falling for these scams and have pointed out that even if people do manage to find a legitimate account transfer they will still be banned for breaking the rules, but when people are trying this desperately to get around existing restrictions and rules there is little chance of such advise from the people creating the barriers being heeded.

If you are one of the millions looking forward to the Pottermore site, whether for access to Kindle versions of the books or to enjoy the content, your best bet is to just wait it out.  The only worthwhile avenues at this point are the official ones, so if you don’t see what seems to be your way in written about on the Pottermore placeholder like ‘The Magical Quill’ contest has been then you are inviting trouble by pursuing them.

When the site does open up, Pottermore will be completely free to the public.  Users will be able to access it in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, with more options coming within the year.  There will be over 18,000 words of new material for you to read through, a shop to purchase things like eBooks from, a number of simple games that go along with events in the books, and a generally social experience through which to share your enjoyment of the Harry Potter series.

There is a lot there to get excited about, and if you are a big enough fan to be interested in paying large amounts of money just to get into a soon-to-be-free site then you’re probably very excited indeed, but wait it out.  Rowling, Harry Potter, and the Pottermore site will all come together in just a couple more months.  No book is important enough to risk identity theft or large sums of wasted money.

One of the biggest concerns when deciding which eReader to go with is the DRM.  If you get a Kindle, then that means that you can’t read your purchases on a Nook, a Kobo, or pretty much anything else that happens to be competing with Amazon.  The same is true of Barnes & Noble and, to a greater or lesser extent in varying ways, to everybody else.  This isn’t news, and it isn’t necessarily a problem that can be addressed right now.  The only way we’ll see a change is if somebody realizes that DRM-free eBooks are great enough to not cost publishers money.  Not going to hold my breath there.

What happens when the Kindle moves on from its current, already somewhat dated, proprietary eBook format, though?  We have to assume that the technology will evolve, as will the formats available, and that in time Amazon will want to give up on backward compatibility for their eReaders.  Should we just assume that this is another opportunity for retailers to sell us yet another copy of our favorite things?  That sort of logic annoyed me enough over the course of the VHS -> DVD -> BluRay cycle, especially since I got an HD-DVD player as a gift along the way.  It doesn’t really fit with books in my mind. What we buy in an eBook is not necessarily analogous to video or audio.  You don’t have to worry about reproduction quality in a text-based medium, generally.  There is no reason, therefore, that we should have to repurchase our books, having acquired the digital copies once already.

Believing as I do on the topic, I wondered how to avoid the cycle.  DRM is specifically meant to keep you from copying or converting what you purchase, after all.  Theoretically, if your favorite platform dies off, you’re just out of luck.  Realistically, though, why would a company move to a new format and DRM scheme?  Generally, and call it cynical if you must, because the old one does not control customer interaction as well as it used to.  Once the DRM can be casually broken, it isn’t worth using anymore.  This line of thought led to an experiment.

Sure enough, all of the books I purchased from the old Sony Store when I first bought an eReader are still there.  Even Sony doesn’t use BBeB anymore, though.  A quick search provided me with details on how to remove the obsolete DRM and convert my old books into a Kindle compatible format.  There are even scripts available that made the batch of just under 100 eBooks take just a few minutes.  Sure enough, the text is the same as it would be if I bought the book again.

My advice to anybody who genuinely who is worried about their purchases being rendered obsolete is to think the problem through.  Short of a complete end to the use of electronics, it is fairly clear that eReaders and Tablets aren’t going anywhere.  So far none of them, as far as I know, has been audacious enough to suggest that you shouldn’t be able to side-load your own files onto your device.  It probably wouldn’t go over well for whoever tried.  Get yourself a Kindle, a Nook, or whatever suits you best.  Make backups if you are afraid of the service just abruptly disappearing one day.  Don’t worry too much about the end of the line for your chosen platform, though.  There is always another one and it only gets easier to switch as time goes on.

At this point we know that the Kindle as a physical purchase is not where Amazon is looking to make their money.  If anything, the fact that they have gone to ad support indicates that there has been a need to get inventive to further reduce prices while not actually losing money on every sale.  Knowing this, we have to assume that the big focus will always be on selling the most content.  With an emphasis on renting, lending, and sharing eBooks lately, though, is this a genuinely achievable goal?

Right now we are hearing about the fact that Overdrive will soon be bringing Kindle compatible library books.  Definitely a selling point for Amazon, since up until now it has been a major complaint against the platform.  We also now have textbook rentals that can save renters as much as 80% over the purchase price of the book.  Between the two options, I’m seeing a theme forming and looking to other media rental business models that seem like they have a real chance of finding their way to the Kindle.

The obvious one would be the Audible.com approach.  Get users to subscribe for a monthly fee, perhaps as a means of getting a cheaper or free eReader, which locks them into picking out a certain number of eBooks to add to their library on a regular basis. Amazon has experience with this one and it would certainly work as a way to reduce eReader prices even beyond what the Kindle w/ Special Offers has been able to do.  I don’t think it will happen, though.  For something like this to work, Amazon would have to be able to provide value to subscribers beyond what they have control over with the current Agency Model pricing.  Lack of control means lack of options.

More likely, to me at least, is the Netflix model.  Picture spending $10 per month to access as many books as you want, so long as you only have one checked out at a time.  There would have to be some sort of artificially produced swap delay, of course, since otherwise subscribers could simply jump back and forth at will, but if the system only allowed a book to be checked out once per month or only allowed one change per day (which doesn’t seem unreasonable since the Kindle Store already generally provides sample chapters and this would only be for reading entire books) then it would work.  The profit would be available since most everybody has periods where their reading tapers off in spite of best intentions, and one would have to assume that an arrangement for multiple-use licenses would still be cheaper overall than per-user purchases.  If something like this could be managed in spite of the total control that publishers want over their distribution, it would be the next big thing for the Kindle. Admittedly, it is something of a divergence since reading has always had a certain element of collection attached to it for many people, but I think the opportunity to save the money would make all the difference.

In recent blogs and reports, a rumor has sprung up that the Harry Potter series being sold through the author’s soon to be opened ‘Pottermore” site will not include direct Kindle compatibility.  As should probably be fairly obvious, this is quite definitely not true.  The popularity of the rumor was such that Amazon even came forward and announced that the popular children’s books will find their way over.

The origin of the whole ruckus seems to have been an article about the Pottermore site teaming up with Google Books.  Probably just a matter of hopeful thinking on Google fans, I would imagine.  The post mentions efforts being made to integrate Pottermore and Google Books, including an agreement wherein Google Checkout is the preferred third party payment platform for the new site.  The phrasing is very positive for Google, which is to be expected on the official Google Books blog.  The only definite claims we have, however, are that there will be sufficient integration to allow buyers to push their new Harry Potter books out into your Google Books “library in the cloud” and that Google Checkout will be available.  No exclusivity is implied, whether it be in terms of eBook platform, payment platform, or anything else.

One of the more interesting spinoffs from that somewhat overblown topic is the idea that the Harry Potter series will in some way be used to force Amazon into adding EPUB compatibility for the Kindle line.  While there has been no official word on this, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there’s not a chance it will happen.  For one, Rowling is maintaining complete control over her products and has not, to the best of my knowledge, ever expressed a strong inclination to advocate for her favorite file format.  Why would she?  Also, it would make little sense to alienate Amazon in any way give that they currently have the largest customer base in the eReading world.  Given that the Kindle can already read DRM-free MobiPocket eBooks, there is no reason that I can think of for the Pottermore site to try to force the EPUB issue.  What business would want to lose money by failing to spend a minute or less converting a file from one format to another?

When October rolls around, I would anticipate that it will be as easy for a Kindle user to get their new Harry Potter stuff as it will be for anybody else, even if Amazon is being fairly quiet about their integration efforts right now.  The new eBooks should be available in every format still used today, and quite possibly some truly obsolete ones.  Since there will be no DRM included in the files, even if your favorite is not represented there are always programs like Calibre.  Let’s face it, though, unless you are still using the Sony BBeB out of personal preference or something, there is little chance of being overlooked.  The Pottermore site will be taking care of the fans.

In the early days of the Kindle, especially after the initial release of the Kindle DX, it was pretty clear that Amazon had high hopes of it being the biggest piece of portable electronics to hit college campuses since the graphing calculator.  Sadly, this didn’t work out quite how they had hoped.  The Kindle, especially the original Kindle but to an extent even now, was simply unsuited for optimal use in even its most obvious settings.

Of course a 7 inch black and white screen would work out poorly for displaying a chemistry textbook that uses full-color diagrams and often takes up approximately fifty square feet of desk space when opened, but when they couldn’t compete with cheap paperbacks in literature classes, it was time to consider backing off for a bit.  The Agency Model of eBook pricing just drove that ideal moment even further away by removing the element of student savings from the equation.

Now, they’re going back to school and taking a new approach to things.  Not an original approach, per se, but perhaps more effective than what came before.  Even now, the Kindle is perhaps not best suited for the college text, but the fact that the word Kindle appears in the program name might be a bit misleading in this case.  It is hard to see any indication that the Kindle eReader is meant to be an important part of the new program.

Electronic book lending is becoming a big thing on college campuses already.  It makes a lot of sense compared to physical book rentals since the provider isn’t left with stacks of last year’s editions when the release cycle rolls out a new, marginally updated text.  Companies like Chegg and CourseSmart have made names for themselves in this area, though Chegg still seems concentrated on the physical rental option.  Renting saves students money, decreases production/transportation/storage overhead, and has the potential to become the next big thing on campuses.  Of course Amazon would want to get in on this.

Now, you can rent a textbook (assuming the publisher has chosen to make it rentable) for anywhere from 30 to 180 days and save significantly over the purchase price.  The selection isn’t strong yet, but it seems to be growing and the savings can be as much as 80%.  Very few of these books will be worth picking up to read on your Kindle, however.  All of the old objections to textbook reading on a small black and white screen still apply.  That does not make this a silly move for Amazon so much as a possibly mislabeled effort.

When people think of the Kindle Store, they generally associate it with the Kindle.  This makes sense.  In the case of textbooks, however, the target audience is the Kindle App user.  Be it on a PC, Mac, or iPad, a textbook is just going to be more useful on a larger color display.  While I am personally seeing just about everything Amazon does lately as a move to get ready for the upcoming Kindle Tablet, and this would certainly help, even without that they have a solid customer base and freely available software that pretty much everybody knows about.  If they can just find a way to point out to people that the value of the program is not connected to its integration with their Kindle, it could be a huge thing in months to come.