Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

The increase in eBook prices is a pretty devastating blow to the future of books.

While there will be some token $5.99 books thrown in most new books are going to be $14.99 – which is a 50% jump.

eBooks might survive despite this 50% jump in prices. There are a few reasons -

1. The Backlists.
2. Lots of smart smaller publishers.
3. Lots of indie authors.
4. Authors doing direct deals.
5. Gutenberg and MobileRead and other sites.
6. Things like the British Library (and evil Microsoft) offering 65,000 free books – rare first editions that will work on the Kindle.  
7. Things better left unsaid.

Let’s say eBooks manage to survive. Then Publishers will have played their trump card and still failed to kill ebooks. 

What will Publishers try next?

Let’s go through the whole eBooks and eReaders eco-system and look at weaknesses in the system and how Publishers might attack them -

1. Content - The Big 6 Publishers provide most of the quality content. They could refuse to provide eBook versions – the high prices are, in effect, a move towards that. 
2. Sharing and Resale – eBooks don’t have resale or sharing. Publishers cold turn around and start promoting physical books for having these features.  
3. Licensing vs Ownership – Publishers could attack the fact that eBooks are more like licenses than actual sales.
4. Smell of Books – Physical books still have a lot of association with reading. It’s possible to push the ‘smell of books’ angle.
5. Inertia and Nostalgia – The change is an uncomfortable one. It’s possible to play on people’s fears that eBooks signal a death for physical books - perhaps even a death for all of books.
6. Authors – Authors are still largely dependent on Publishers who could (and would) use Authors to plead in favor of physical books and moves that hurt eBooks.
7. Multi-Purpose Devices - Promote devices that don’t really increase reading. In the short term it’s good for Publishers as people buy less eBooks – In the long term it’s going to hurt books.
8. Efficiency - Claim that the costs of technology makes eBooks inefficient.  
9. Formats – Claim that supporting all the formats makes eBooks more expensive than physical books.
10. Cost of eReaders – Attack the cost and fragility of eReaders.
11. Legal - Ask for laws to save Publishers – making free eBooks illegal since physical books can’t compete, making it illegal to read public domain books on eReaders, and so forth.
12. Bailouts - Ask for bailouts that let Publishers continue their inefficient ways.
13. Fixed Book Prices - Try to fix book prices i.e. eBooks are not allowed to be less than hardcover prices.
14. Prosecute eBook Customers – Attacks on people who use illegal books to scare people.
15. Attack eReaders - There are numerous ways to attack ereaders including the lack of color, claims that they threaten copyright laws, attacking some of their features, and the relatively high price.

Whatever Publishers do they have to make sure to paint themselves as the good guys – which makes things tougher.  

What are the best options?

The most powerful options seem to be -

1. Pushing Physical Books - They have the book smell, they can be shared and lent, they can be resold, and they’re very unique.
2. Legal Attacks - A combination of laws that severely restrict how eBooks can be used, what prices eBooks can be sold at, and their availability.
3. Attacking eReaders - Taking every single weak point and possible vector of attack and painting eReaders as inferior, low value for money, vulnerable, and a danger to books.
4. Pricing eBooks higher than Physical Books - There’s no reason to assume $15 is it. Publishers might soon come up with reasons that eBooks should be priced higher than physical books.

The likeliest next attack in my mind are lawsuits to stop the sale of eBooks to eReaders – claiming that it encourages infringement.

• Publishers would ask for tracking on all eReaders to prove that infringement isn’t being done. 
• They would want devices to be made closed i.e. the only way to get content is via the Stores.
• They would also want to limit features under the guise of ‘preventing infringement’. Things like no Text To Speech, no copy-paste, and closing down features like screenshots. 

It’s a potentially viable attack as it can be done under the illusion of preventing theft and piracy.

What can eReader companies and eBook companies do to fight back?

Publishers serve only one real function now -

Content.

They find, filter, polish, and promote content and authors.

Let’s break it into the four main sub-functions and look at whether each can be replaced -

1. Find Talent – This is easily achieved with indie authors on the Internet and in the Kindle Store.
2. Filter for Talent – While it’s questionable whether anyone can ever predict hits and misses eBooks do let us get back results and trends much faster than physical books.
3. Polish books and authors – Publishers will have an advantage here for a long time.
4. Promote books and authors – This is a really tough one to figure out. Platforms like iTunes and Kindle can use bestseller lists and recommendations to really promote books. However, there’s a lot of domain expertise that only Publishers have.

The main attack on Publishers has to be built around creating alternate sources for high quality content – lots of high quality content.

Exploiting Publishers’ weaknesses

In the transition from physical to digital Publishers’ weaknesses are really exposed -

1. Publishers are slow. They take a year or two to take a book from book deal to market. 
2. Publishers are inefficient and have high overhead costs. There are a lot of things authors are paying for – including rival authors that fail. 
3. Publishers know very little about customers and get to know sales data very late. The amount of data the Kindle Store and the iTunes store have on customers is amazing. Equally amazing is how quickly they get information on how customers behave, what they buy, and sales trends.

On the one hand Publishers are the gatekeepers and have the authors and the relationships and the domain expertise.

On the other hand they are slow, inefficient, unaware of their customers, and stuck in the past.

The rise of the Internet and of indie authors in the various eBook stores has meant that Publishers are no longer gatekeepers. Their main advantage is that they have most of the quality authors.

That’s one solitary advantage and it’s threatened by the fact that eBook authors are being given 70% of revenue by Apple and Amazon.

Publishers are desperate and the fight is going to get very dirty

Look at Publishers’ rapidly decreasing list of advantages and it seems likely that Publishers will take the fight to the courts.

There are a ton of benefits to Publishers if they start lawsuits against eBooks and eReaders -

1. It delays things. Often to the tune of 3-4 years.  
2. It puts doubt into people’s minds – Who’ll win? Will my eReader become useless? 
3. At best you can win and at worst you can severely limit eBook functionality. 
4. There are lots of ways to attack – You can use a completely different rights group and attack eReaders on a completely different front.

This really is the likeliest next step from Publishers.

2010 is going to see enough great eReader technology to continue the explosion in eBooks and eReaders and by end 2010 we will see Publishers take the battle to the courts.

Filed under: publishing Tagged: | kindle vs publishers