Now playing on an iPhone near you…

by Eric Emin Wood

Turns out the fastest growing category on Apple’s iTunes app store isn’t games or music, but books.

At least, in terms of “unique applications” (i.e. individual titles). As the O’Reilly Radar points out, “releasing an e-book for the iPhone is a lot easier than writing a gaming application using the iPhone SDK.” However, while 2,065 “unique” e-book applications were sold this week versus 561 three months ago, gaming apps continue to be the most popular:

Games remain the dominant category both in terms of number of apps (24% of all apps), and in terms of sales. During a typical week, two-thirds of all apps on the TOP PAID APPS list are Games, while a lone Book spends time on the list.

If nothing else, this illustrates that while the format might be changing, the market for literary entertainment in some form will continue to exist.

Kindle ideal for self-gratification, says Bezos

by Derek Weiler

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos hit The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Monday night to promote the second-generation Kindle. Gawker has a clip collage that focuses on Bezos’s habit of laughing maniacally, but they seem to have missed a couple other things. One was Stewart’s instinctive pushback on the Kindle’s US$359 price. When Bezos tried to mollify him by saying that books are only $9.99, Stewart’s response was along the lines of, “You have to buy books too?”

Also notable: the loose and laughing Bezos tossed out a previously unmentioned fringe benefit of the device. To wit: you can, er, read it with one hand. Give Captain Amazon credit: it’s hard to imagine any other book-biz CEO being willing to mix it up with Stewart on the host’s own terms.

O'Reilly News Release: Tools of Change for Publishing Conference Shows Way to Digital Future

by Jackie Hadley, Communications Associate

Innovation Transforms How Readers Receive Content

Sebastopol, CA, March 2, 2009 - The O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, held February 9-11, 2009 in New York City, highlighted the many dynamic possibilities ahead for publishers who embrace a digital future. At the heart of the world’s publishing capital, TOC showcased the tools, the business models, and the knowledge that publishers need to succeed in a changing landscape. The conference deciphered trends and technologies that can keep the industry profitable and more connected to readers.

In a time when naysayers question publishing’s very survival, TOC showed the industry how to flourish.

Featured keynotes included one by Tim O’Reilly, CEO and founder of O’Reilly Media, who gave conference-goers reasons to stay excited and optimistic about the future of publishing. Nick Bilton, who explores technologies for The New York Times R&D Labs, talked about the future of news. Bob Stein, executive director of the Institute for the Future of the Book, said books are no longer objects but instead are becoming places where readers and authors congregate. Other keynote speakers included Chris Baty of NaNoWriMo, Peter Brantley of Digital Library Federation, Neelan Choksi of Lexcycle, Cory Doctorow of Happy Mutants LLC, Jason Epstein of On Demand Books, Jason Fried of 37signals, Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com, Sara Lloyd of Pan Macmillan, and Nina Paley of Nina Paley Productions.

Read the full press release.

NSR Interview with Susan Danziger, DailyLit

by spolanka

NSR introduces a new interview with Susan Danziger, CEO and Founder of DailyLit.   Susan discusses the idea behind DailyLit, to bring books to readers in small bit and pieces, via email or RSS feed.  For more info on DailyLit see the NSR Sept. 2008 blog post.

Catch up on other NSR interviews by visiting the interviews page.

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University of Pennsylvania to Digitize and Print-on-Demand

by spolanka

I read this article in LJ about another library digitization/print-on demand product.  This time it’s with the University of Pennsylvania (UP) and Kirtas.  UP is now part of the elite group of libraries providing print-on-demand services including University of Michigan, Emory, and Cornell.

The UP project will scan books in the public domain (200,000), but only when a title is requested by an end user.   So, it’s kind of like the Patron Driven Acquisition ebook model, but now it’s being done in reverse.  Take the print, digitize it, then print a copy on demand to ship to a user.  Price information was not listed on the UP Press Release.

E-Books Are Not Books

by spolanka

I read an interesting paper by Mark T J Carden of Ingram Digital. He presented this paper at the Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (see citation below).  Mark discusses how eBooks are following the same evolutionary path of physical books and won’t be fully adopted until the “traditional book is deconstructed and reconstructed to create new paradigms for storing and delivering content in electronic forms.”  He offers suggestions for re-inventing the eBook.

1.  classify the content into groupings like data, explanation, instruction, or narrative and identify user behaviors like look up, skim, view, enjoy - map these together

2.  examine models of acquisition and possession, skim or view vs. consume or immerse.  These require different business models and licensing

3.  examine page layouts and formats.  What might be suitable for a print page may be unsuitable for the electronic one. reformat as necessary

4.  establish effective reading devices and the unfortunate format wars that come with them.  DRM or no DRM. my format or your format, or do what the music industry is doing - open access to content, if you can find a business model to support it

Conference on Information and Knowledge Management archive
Proceeding of the 2008 ACM workshop on Research advances in large digital book repositories table of contents

Napa Valley, California, USA

SESSION: Enriched digitized books table of contents

Pages 9-12

Year of Publication: 2008

ISBN:978-1-60558-249-8

eBooks I: Business Models and Strategies, OReilly TOC

by spolanka

 The OReilly Tools of Change conference is underway in NYC, with many presentations and discussions about ebooks.  One that caught my eye was a panel discussion of eBook business models and strategies.  The presenters were:  Michael Smith (International Digital Publishing Forum), Kenneth Brooks (Cengage Learning),Leslie Hulse (HarperCollins Publishers), Cynthia Cleto (Springer Science+Business Media.  Cynthia Cleto was featured in the NSR audio interview in October, 2008.

The presentation demonstrates various drivers of ebook publishing, challenges, and patterns in user behavior that are driving the market to offer various business models.  It breaks down ebooks into the trade, higher ed, reference, and STM categories providing comparison charts on challenges, strategies, formats, etc.  I was happy to see catch phrases like - epub, DRM not necessary, and sales by the chapter, but unfortunately, they were not listed in each of the four categories.

eBooks II:  Formats, Standards, and Implementation, part two of the series on eBooks, discussed epub, but on the developer side of things.

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