Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

One of the interesting trends intertwined with the rise of eReaders and eBooks is the rise of various alliances.

Adobe DRMed ePub – Everyone except Amazon

Adobe has made huge gains in creating an Adobe DRM powered, ‘open’ alliance -

1. Sony Reader has adopted Adobe DRM and ePub.
2. Nook has too.
3. Most other companies are adopting ePub and Adobe DRM and Digital Editions.

This means that Adobe DRMed ePub books will be readable across all these eReaders – no matter where you buy them or for what device. At the moment Sony respects this and B&N doesn’t.  

The Adobe and ePub alliance is becoming the most widespread alliance and perhaps the biggest threat to the Kindle.

Google Free Books and Android – Alex, Sony Reader, Nook, Entourage Edge, Cool-er 

Google has been handing out their one million free public domain books like candy at Halloween -

1. Sony Reader gets them. In return Sony became the first company to announce Android laptops. 
2. B&N’s Nook gets them. Nook uses Android.  
3. Entourage Edge gets them. Edge uses Android. 
4. Alex gets the free books. Alex uses Android.
5. Cool-er gets the million books but doesn’t use Android (yet).

Most of the time eReader companies that accept Google’s million free books adopt Android – further strengthening the Google Alliance.

Google Android Operating System

Android is becoming the de-facto eReader operating system.

This creates the possibility that at some later point all eReaders using Android can band together (or be banded together) to form a very powerful alliance -

1. There’s interoperability i.e. using ebooks across eReaders. This would be Google’s equivalent of Adobe’s DRMed ePub. 
2. A common eBook store – perhaps Google Editions.
3. A large connected social community of readers.
4. Shared applications and programs that standardize the eReader experience across eReaders.

Google Android might become the Windows OS of eReaders. 

It’s a possibility both Amazon and other eReader companies should consider. Edward Burke said it best -

 ”Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”

Barnes & Noble Stores, Que, iRex

Barnes & Noble sell, or have agreed to sell, the following eReaders -

1. Their own eReader, the Nook. 
2. Plastic Logic’s business reader, Que. In return, Que will use the B&N ebook store.
3. iRex 800. In return, iRex will use B&N’s ebook store (though only as a non-exclusive content partner).

Borders Stores, Kobo Books, Alex, Sony Reader

Kobo Books itself is an alliance between -

1. Indigo Books and Music of Canada. 
2. Borders US and UK. 
3. A Li Ka-Shing company which owns 3 Mobile and other European telecom operators. 
4. RedGroup which owns Borders Australia and stores in Singapore.

Borders branded eBook applications will use Kobo as the underlying ebook store.

Borders are also jumping in and selling eReaders -

1. Spring Design’s Alex. Alex, in return, will feature KoboBooks.
2. Borders already sell the Sony Reader at select stores.
3. Borders also sell the Elonex eBook.

Various Alliances

Here are various other alliances that are somewhat interesting -

1. Publishers struck up an alliance with Scribd, as did Lulu.
2. Baker & Taylor partnered with ebrary to make it easier for academic librarians to acquire ebooks. 
3. Baker & Taylor partnered with Ray Kurzweil’s K-FNB to create Blio.
4. Microsoft Press and O’Reilly Media partnered up and O’Reilly even got Microsoft to forsake DRM. O’Reilly must have signed a deal with the devil to get Microsoft to quit DRM .
5. Lightning Source (part of Ingram) and Glassbook signed a deal to distribute Lightning Source books as ebooks.
6. Thomson Multimedia and Gemstar signed a similar agreement.
7. McGraw Hill entered an alliance with Entourage Edge.
8. ShortCovers (now KoboBooks) partnered with Internet Archive to add 1.8 million public domain titles to its store.
9. Dawson Books and eBooks Corporation struck up an alliance to market the latter’s eBook Library product to academic libraries in UK and Europe.

Publisher Alliances and Related

There are various overt and covert alliances -

1. The Grand Magazine Consortium with Hearst, Time Inc., Condé Nast, Meredith and more. 
2. The make-shift alliances the big 6 publishers form – such as when 4 of them delayed ebook release dates by 4 months.
3. The Authors Guild and the Publishers Guild.
4. Google and Authors Guild allying in favor of the Google Books Settlement. Sony was a part of this too.
5. The Open Book Alliance that opposes the Google Books Settlment.

Smashwords, Sony, B&N, KoboBooks - Alliances for Indie Books

Smashwords has managed to get its independent books into -

1. Sony’s Reader Store. 
2. The B&N eBook store.
3. Kobo Books.

It provides alternate channels to indie authors and slightly weakens a big Kindle Store advantage - cheap, plentiful indie titles.

Wireless Alliances

First we have Alliances the wireless providers are making with eReader companies -

1. AT&T now has Amazon, B&N, Plastic Logic, Sony Reader Daily Edition, Cool-er, and more.
2. Sprint has Skiff. 
3. Google has tied up with TMobile for the Google Phone and might use them for Google Editions.

We also have the agreement wireless carriers probably struck amongst themselves to keep data charges ridiculously high and charge 10 to 20 cents per text message.  

the Apple iSlate Alliance

Given that there is no official confirmation of the Apple iSlate it’s interesting that -

1. Condé Nast and New York Times are already showing off a Tablet formatted version of their offerings.
2. There are numerous rumors that Apple has approached newspaper and book publishers.
3. Newspaper executives are mentioning ‘Apple Slate’ in their talks as if it already exists.

Apple is building up an anti-Kindle alliance that might end up being more dangerous than the Adobe Alliance.

Filed under: eBook Reader Devices Tagged: | ereader alliance, future of ereader