For Kindle 2 Review, Kindle DX Review …

Posted on April 19, 2009 by switch11

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Cheap and Free Kindle Books for February

Posted on February 8, 2010 by switch11

Some cheap books, deals and samples from the Kindle Store -

  1. Free Preorder of a short story – Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #3: Paragon. More of a sample really.
  2. The Great Game of Politics: Why We Elect Whom We Elect by Dick Stoken. Less than 50 cents. Rated 5 stars on 4 reviews.  

And we have our Kindle Exclusive – Special Kindle Edition of The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker. It’s $7.99. Rated 4.5 stars by 342 people. 

It seems like a great book so bought it – It’s about Listening to your own Intuition, looking for Survival Signals, and protecting yourself from Violence.

Some more good cheap books -

  1. A Children’s Tale (Tales of the Brass Griffin) by C B Ash. Just $1.50.   
  2. A Professor of Economics at Cornell writes – Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much. It’s $9.99 in case you were wondering.
  3. Some very well rated zombie and vampire novels by Rhiannon Frater – All at $5.99.

February is slow for free kindle books

There have been a lot of free religious themed books. However,

  1. The number and rate of free books in other categories has been abysmal.
  2. Even reliable sites like Suvudu have released just 1 free book this month.
  3. There aren’t quite as many indie authors handing out free books either.

It seems everyone is waiting – for what?

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eReader vs Multi-purpose device – Lopsided reviews

Posted on February 8, 2010 by switch11

A recurring pattern in eReader vs Multi-purpose device reviews is the choice of devices and contexts that support the reviewer’s beliefs and what he/she wants to be true.

If a reviewer thinks the Kindle is better than the iPhone – Her/His comparison is lopsided right from the start. Plus this bias is invisible to the reviewer. 

What exactly are we talking about?

  1. People tend to start with an outcome they think will turn out to be true.
  2. They approach the comparison from an angle that makes their assumed outcome likelier.
  3. They then choose devices and situations that make their assumed outcome even likelier.
  4. Even during the comparison they ignore obvious things that don’t match what they feel is right.

A lot of the times it’s not people being unethical – they literally don’t realize their comparison is lopsided.

Quick example of two lopsided comparisons – iPad vs Kindle

How could you set up a comparison to show iPad is better than the Kindle?

Remember that this is mostly done unconsciously –  

  1. Compare the Kindle DX with the iPad so the iPad’s price becomes a non factor. 
  2. Compare reading on newspapers, magazines, and books. 
  3. Compare cover flow with the random music player on the Kindle. 
  4. Compare Safari with the Kindle’s basic browser.
  5. Do the comparison in low light or normal light.
  6. Choose a huge PDF on the Kindle so that page turns are extra slow.
  7. Talk about innovative apps and show some truly innovative apps.
  8. Berate the Kindle App Store and point out the limitations i.e. bandwidth costs and slow refresh speed.

These are just the obvious things -

If you really want to make comparisons unfair you’d pick a cool person or a hot girl to show off your favorite product.

There are a lot more things that could be done and are done.

These last few tricks are obviously manipulation and much worse than an unconscious bias.

How could you set up a comparison to show the Kindle is better than the iPad?

Again we make unconscious choices that make our desired outcome likelier.  

  1. Choose the $259 Kindle 2 to compare with the $499 iPad. 
  2. Focus mostly on reading books. 
  3. Highlight the free Internet and 60 second downloads.
  4. Compare the devices in sunlight.
  5. Focus on book prices – especially for books that are not bestsellers as they are likelier to be more expensive on iPad.
  6. Talk about distractions and highlight time-wasting apps on iPad. 
  7. Focus on Kindle Apps that are suited to the Kindle i.e. simple games and reading related apps.

It’s really hard to realize a lot of these factors – to the point that you might think you’re being completely fair while being very biased.

Where does that leave us with comparisons and reviews?

Well, we could clearly show that most reviews and comparisons have conscious and unconscious bias.

It means that we have to approach reviews and comparisons from a completely different perspective.

Making reviews and comparisons very accurate

Step 1: Establish a clear purpose for the review and the device

The most important things to establish are -

  1. What purpose(s) are we using the device for?
  2. What is the purpose of the review?

The former is essential as it clarifies to the reader that the review meets their needs (or not). It also clears things up in the reviewer’s head.

The latter is important – Are you writing this review to make yourself happy about your choice? Is it to help people? is it to persuade people?

Sometimes establishing the purpose makes the review unnecessary – If you’re just writing something to make yourself happy it might not help anyone.

Step 2:  Identify all possible bias and remove it or list it.

Firstly, this is for yourself so that you figure out whether you are just stuck in your beliefs and your assumptions about the world.

Secondly, this is for customers so that they realize what they’re working with.

There are various assumptions we make -

  1. That readers are all smart.
  2. That our readers have the exact same needs as we do.
  3. That a device is the same thing in our eyes as in someone else’s.
  4. That a company being evil or good affects the device (which is not always true).

It’s worthwhile to figure these out and make sure they don’t mess up your review or comparison.

Step 3: Look at the comparison from multiple perspectives

This is best illustrated with an example.

For a Kindle vs iPhone review you should look at things from at least these perspectives -

  1. A Kindle owner or someone who loves the Kindle. 
  2. Someone who reads a lot. 
  3. Someone who only reads once in a while.
  4. An Apple lover.

It’s going to ensure you don’t miss the really big things. You are still going to miss little things like the fact that some people LOVE the shape and transparency of the dialog boxes on the iPhone.

Step 4: Provide the reader recommendations for different scenarios OR let them choose

There will usually be 3 or 4 main scenarios. You have to address these in your review.

There will also be a few dozen additional scenarios – To be able to address these you have to list the strengths and weaknesses of both devices and also compare them along several important dimensions.

At some level you don’t know what factors are most important to a reader – so there has to be flexibility in how a reader can interpret a review.

There is no perfectly fair review

The biggest takeaway is that you can’t assume your review is perfect. You put out something that helps people and has as little bias as possible and that’s the best you can do.

When Peyton Manning can throw an interception in the Superbowl it’s foolhardy to assume something you write or review is perfect.

Where does that leave us?

A review or comparison changes from ‘telling users what to do’ or ‘making a decision for users’ to -

  • Helping people make a smarter decision (for them). 
  • Minimizing the probability of regret.
  • Letting them gather enough reasons (rationalizations) to do what’s in their heart.

In a way reviews and comparisons aren’t about getting things right – because ‘right’ is different for every single person.

They’re about helping readers make a decision that’ll make them happy.

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Why do companies focus on short attention span users with little money?

Posted on February 8, 2010 by switch11

There are times when it seems that the Internet has left me behind. All the new products are seemingly targeting 13-year-old kids with 15 second attention spans.

Everyone wants to create trendy, sexy, cool products that entice and trap young, impressionable minds.

There are just two problems though -

  1. It’s you and me, the unfashionable, older people, who have all the money.  
  2. We’re much more dependable customers -  we won’t lose interest in a few days, we won’t get distracted as easily, and we won’t go through 5 different personality transitions in the next 5 years.  

Why are companies ignoring the most valuable customers? 

If you draw up a list of the most valuable traits in products and customers you’d get a long list including -

  1. Products that generate a lot of profits. 
  2. Products that require up-front payments or subscriptions.
  3. Products that are priced higher or are sold in volume.
  4. Customers with money.
  5. Customers who know what they want.
  6. Customers who will be stable, steady customers.

Yet a lot of the products released now seem to be focused on things which are just not that likely to make a ton of money -

  1. Social Games are fashionable while games for which people pay $50 seem to have taken a back seat.
  2. Social Networks are becoming big even though they have no money coming in.
  3. Free content propped up by advertising is becoming widespread.  
  4. Music streaming startups are in fashion although a lot of people don’t pay for music and iTunes has captured most of the rest.

And almost all of the new start-ups seem focused on targeting kids and teenagers.

Where are the examples of products built for actual customers?

It’d be really cool to see lots of products that fill actual needs and target actual customers.

  1. The Kindle and the iPad are actually two examples – though do-good people would argue that the latter doesn’t fill any need and the former has too small of a market. 
  2. There’s not one single great Baby Boomer site although they are going to be the most significant and valuable customers. 
  3. Speaking of boomers where are the devices targeting them – Shouldn’t there be at least 1 device targeted at them for every 5 gadgets/toys/thingies targeted at 15 year olds?
  4. The buzz and news is all about social networks and social gaming and free products.
  5. When it’s not about free products it’s about open OSes even though there is little money to be made.

All the news is centered around Facebook, Twitter and other things that just aren’t very good businesses. They’re just tools to entice and lock-in users and then figure out how to monetize them later.

The ‘we’re the good guys’ marketing spin has gone out of control – to the point that people forget that these companies just want to feed their users to advertisers.

We should be glad that Apple gets a lot of coverage or we might as well have a rule – ‘No company or business that is profitable can be talked about’.

The most profitable products get little coverage

Here’s a short list of some companies that do things extremely well -

  1. Apple with iPhone and iPod.
  2. Microsoft with Windows and Office and Xbox Live.
  3. Nintendo with Wii and DS.
  4. Amazon with Amazon.com and Amazon Web Services and Kindle.
  5. Google with Search. 
  6. Salesforce.com with subscription software.
  7. Intel with Chips.
  8. Asus and Acer with netbooks.

Except for Apple none of these companies get enough coverage.

Instead we talk about Farmville (which is basically a scam) and Twitter and free iPhone Games and Facebook and various product offerings that are free or disastrous financially.

Is there an inherent bias on the Internet against making money?

The Internet seems to be the technological equivalent of crabs in a basket – pulling down any crab trying to improve its place in life.

  1. It’s OK to talk about a company or product that makes zero profits. Examples are Facebook and YouTube.
  2. It’s even better to talk about a company that makes no money at all. Twitter is the best example. 
  3. It’s fashionable to criticize successful companies. That’s why Microsoft and Apple get a lot of criticism in certain quarters.
  4. It’s most fashionable to attack anything that prevents stealing (aka sharing and goodness). DRM is evil, copyright protection is evil - anything that stops us from free-loading is evil. 

The minute a company becomes very profitable or very dominant it becomes the enemy.

Why would the Internet be so negative to successful companies?

The only logical answer would be -

On the Internet people want a company that will sacrifice itself for the greater good.

On the Internet people hate any company that is more profitable or dominant than them.

It’s some sort of evolutionary instinct where we don’t want any company to become too successful unless it’s focused on giving us things for free.

Apple used to be the darling and represent all the things that Microsoft should supposedly be.

However, as soon as Apple became wildly successful with its iPod and iPhone and the App Store it became a target.

Underneath it all – Is it just jealousy?

People come up with loads of reasons to hate successful companies -

  1. Microsoft is evil because it has too much market share – It forces people to use its products (yeah – it’s forcing 90+% of a free market to use its products since forever).
  2. Apple is evil because it doesn’t allow free passage into its phones and store.
  3. Amazon is evil because its books have DRM and it doesn’t let people steal books.

Are these all rationalizations?

Are Open and Free and Rights just convenient crutches to hide the fact that at some level we are jealous that it was someone else and not us that built a product?

Do we want Microsoft to fail because it’s evil or because it’s making way too much money?

Coming back to Customers and Profit

This collective group negativity manifests in the priorities of new Internet companies - Instead of serving actual customers and focusing on metrics like profitability they seem to be focused either on giving away things for free or fooling customers.

In the past we had -

  1. Sell a good product.
  2. Make a lot of money. 

Now we seem to have one of two starkly different attitudes -

  1. How do we kill ourselves creating products that we sell at unsustainably cheap prices.
  2. How do we fool the largest number of people.

Often it’s the latter gift-wrapped with the former.

When did it become wrong to make money?

I seem to have missed the transition from ‘provide a valuable service to people and make money’ to ‘provide a valuable service to people and starve to death’.

On the Internet everyone is supposed to be doing things for free -

Why are people not entitled to a decent living?

Beyond that, if some people are very good, why are they not entitled to make a lot of money?

It’s really quite sad that the Internet has turned into a giant basket of crabs desperate to not let anyone or anything succeed beyond a certain point.

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The Devaluation of Low Quality Content

Posted on February 8, 2010 by switch11

David Carr at NY Times writes about plentiful content and content factories such as Demand Media.

It’s just the latest in a never-ending stream of articles about how content is being devalued and soon it’ll be free.

Don’t know about whether content is losing value – However, articles that claim content is losing value are definitely losing value. ;)

Jokes aside the notion that content is losing value because there’s a lot of it is rather ludicrous – Content varies wildly in quality and in other ways.

People are not going to stop buying books by Stephen King and James Patterson because someone working at Demand Media is churning out 40 articles a week for $15 an article.

This post will simply explain why the only things being devalued are low quality content and content that is being positioned as low quality content.

Let’s address the current situation with regards to content in a series of steps -

  1. Show what content is losing value and what isn’t. 
  2. Understand why it benefits some people to devalue content. 
  3. Figure out the best way to preserve the value of content that’s worth people’s time.

Underlying all of this is a core reality – Except for content creators it’s in everyone’s favor to pretend that content has no value.

Even though lots of readers (due to ethics, the goodness of their hearts, or other reasons) are ready to pay for quality content it’s worth keeping this in mind.

People are paying for Quality Content (that isn’t being handed out for free)

There are many examples of people paying well for content -

  1. Avatar just became the highest grossing movie ever. It’s in the age of YouTube so Avatar’s success should have been impossible (if you believe content is losing its value).  
  2. We are still selling a lot of books.  
  3. TV is still going strong.  
  4. The good blogs are still getting a lot more traffic than the bad ones.  
  5. The War for eBook Prices shows that content must have some value. Why else would Amazon agree to $14.99 prices?

These are just some examples of the reality about content -

  • Quality Content is still earning money. 
  • Very high quality content is earning a lot of money.
  • Quality content is doing much, much better than low quality content.

The only cases in which quality content is not making money is when it’s being given away for free.

People are not paying for quality content when its Free or Priced unrealistically

This might come as a surprise to some people – When quality content is available for free people are NOT paying for it. Neither are people paying for quality content when it is priced too high.

Here are some examples of how not to sell quality content -

  1. Making your product free hoping to make money in other ways – This is suicide if your primary product is content.
  2. eBooks that cost more than physical books. 
  3. Newspaper subscriptions that cost more than physical newspaper subscriptions. 
  4. Setting up checks and procedures that make it difficult to part with money i.e. complicated sign-up processes and not providing easy payment options.  
  5. Making it free in one channel and paid in another.

It’s not easy to strike a balance between giving away content for free (hoping to charm users into parting with their money in other ways) and charging too much (because you don’t factor in that users should not be subsidizing bad business models and other channels).

That’s why content creators have been struggling so badly with new channels in general and the Internet in particular.

Why is the ‘Content is losing its Value’ view so prevalent?

Notice that it is always people who either make money off of content or consume content who argue this point the most vehemently.

This comes back to the reality of the situation -

Except for content creators it’s in everyone’s favor to pretend that content has no value.

Look at every single element of any content eco-system -

  1. Readers would gladly read books and content for free if they were made to feel comfortable about it.  
  2. Search companies and aggregators would gladly accept free content – They can manufacture a product using free raw material. 
  3. Infrastructure companies love free content since they can sell $40 a month data plans without worrying about what users will consume on it.
  4. People who don’t understand content and play no part in creating it like to imagine it grows on a tree.

The only elements that are somewhat sympathetic to content creators are Content Publishers and Content Platform companies – They get a cut of content sales so it benefits them to not devalue content. That’s why Publishers and Apple and Amazon are the ONLY refuge for content creators.

Content is not free to make and it’s not free to consume

The ‘Content is losing its value’ argument is pretty illogical on both ends -

  1. Content creators have to put in time, effort and money to create content.  
  2. The higher the quality the more effort and time and money needed. 
  3. Content consumers use their time to consume content.  

Think about that last item again because ‘content should be free’ arguments miss entirely the fact that people want to consume great content and get good value for their time.

Let’s consider an example -

  1. Two of the best books of the last year for me were The Road and The Monstrumologist. 
  2. There were a few articles and blog posts that were as good. However, it took reading over 1,000 articles to get to them.
  3. High quality content from a known great source is infinitely more valuable than trolling through free content piles.
  4. People will pay for high quality content - Unless, the high quality content creator is giving away his work (out of stupidity, desperation or generosity).

A known, trusted source of very high quality content is immensely valuable to customers.

Users cannot spend hours trolling through the Internet every day just to find 2-3 good articles to read for 15 minutes. At least the ones whose time is worth money can’t and those are the only ones who can actually be customers if you sell content. 

Our summary of reality now expands a bit -

Except for content creators it’s in everyone’s favor to pretend that content has no value.

 A known, trusted source of very high quality content is immensely valuable to customers.

How do content creators preserve the value of content?

It’s quite simple for content creators to ensure their content doesn’t lose value -

  1. Embrace channels that value their content fairly.
  2. Stay away from any channel that sucks out the branding or the value of their content. No aggregators and no ‘content is worthless’ companies.
  3. Not give away their content for free – under any circumstances.
  4. Not share their content with any content creator that gives away content for free.
  5. Stay away from models that use content as free marketing.

In terms of being able to sell content for a fair price other factors come into play.

It’s basically a three-pronged strategy -

  • Address and target only customers of good intent. Additionally, do not let customers of bad intent access your content.
  • Make your content the highest quality possible. That’s instant differentiation and adds to the value customers get. 
  • Make it comfortable for customers to pay you for it. That includes explaining the cost of producing content, making it impossible for people to get it free anywhere, and not leaving any rationalizations for people to justify stealing it.  

 The first point stresses that your only customers are the ones that are paying you – If you leave a loophole that lets people access your content without paying they’ll rationalize that you never wanted to get paid.

The second point is crucial – People who give away content for free and content factories like Demand Media can never compete with high quality content. It’s simply impossible. Their only hope is convincing you that the book you spent 2 years of your life on is worth as much as a random article they wrote in 15 minutes.

The third is important – It’s not just enough for people to want your content and see its value. They need to be able to see that it cost money and effort to make, they can’t get it for free anywhere, and that you’re pro-customer. Create a long list of possible reasons people would choose not to pay you and eliminate them one by one.

It brings us to another bit of reality – If people can get your content for free or convince themselves that it’s OK to get it for free they will not pay you for it.  

Conclusion - 4 Realities regarding Content

We’re left with three truths about content -

Except for content creators it’s in everyone’s favor to pretend that content has no value.

 A known, trusted source of very high quality content is immensely valuable to customers. 

If people can get your content for free or convince themselves that it’s OK to get it for free they will not pay you for it.  

The Internet is the best invention ever for fooling people. It wasn’t built that way – However its academic and puristic beginnings resulted in a system that never had safeguards against a lot of evils.

If you have a great idea – then on the Internet you can fool people into working for you for free or into giving their content away for promises.

Content creators need to keep that in mind. It brings us to our last bit of reality regarding content -

Channels of Good Intent are crucial for Content Creators and the Internet is not one of them.

Filed under: Reality, content | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Free audiobooks for your kindle, snippets and news

Posted on February 8, 2010 by switch11

Let’s start with the free and cheap stuff -

  1. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe for 1 cent. A short story – not an audiobook. 
  2. She’s Got it Bad by Sarah Mayberry - Free Audiobook at Audible (via MobileRead). 
  3. Pulitzer Prize winning All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren. It’s narrated by Michael Emerson.

Speaking of free a quick reminder that 65,000 19th century fiction books from the British Library’s collection are going to be made available for Kindle owners this spring. The project is funded by Microsoft and comprises a lot of rare 19th century editions.

Nooks will be in stores starting Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Electronista cover the news that B&N will have some amount of Nooks available for purchase in stores starting Wednesday, February 10th -

Barnes & Noble today said that the Nook will at last reach its retail shops.

While it has had demo units in stores since launch in the fall, the bookseller now says it expects most locations to have units directly available to buy on Wednesday the 10th.

That would make it the perfect time for Amazon to announce something – Perhaps a price cut? Perhaps a new product? Perhaps a news conference?

It gives B&N quite an advantage and it’ll be interesting to see whether sales trends change. The Nook has had 2 software upgrades and that may have a big impact too.

Kindle and eReader Snippets

  1. Amazon hired Mike Nash (formerly of Microsoft) to work on the Kindle Team.
  2. Gavin De Becker has made his bestselling books The Gift of Fear and Just 2 Seconds available exclusively (exclusive in terms of ebooks) in the Kindle Store. Amazon certainly seem focused on exclusive deals of all sorts.
  3. True Slant point out that Random House are not pushing for the agency model. This quote from Madeline McIntosh of Random House regarding delaying ebook releases is very insightful -

    “I haven’t been convinced that it’s good for the author or consumer to delay the release.

    My fear is that the consumer who has fully embraced the technology will buy another e-book that is available or lose interest altogether.

    What if I train the consumer that the best scenario is to get it free?”

Kindle Apps beginning to get exposure

  1. Android Guys have a good post comparing Android and Kindle Apps - He’s basically saying that they both use Java and that Kindle Apps at launch might be a big opportunity though Android is (much?) better long-term. 
  2. Kindle Apps and the Kindle Development Kit are beginning to get a lot of coverage – The late friday announcement meant the press ignored it. However, today there are 21 news articles about it and a lot of blog posts. There are also a lot of people writing that they are signing up though whether or not they’ll code apps is up in the air. 
  3. It’s pretty interesting to see different people offer up ideas on what sorts of Apps might work and what Kindle Owners might embrace.

Filed under: free books | Tagged: | 3 Comments »

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