Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review

The New York Times are releasing The New York Times Book Review as a separate app for the Kindle, the Nook, and the Sony Reader. It’s a brilliant move and a much-needed one.

James Dunn, director of marketing for The New York Times, spoke with Poynter’s Bill Mitchell and here’s the scoop on Times Book Review for eReaders -

Mitchell reports the Times will introduce a separate version of its Book Review for three e-reader platforms, beginning with the Sony e-reader in the next couple of weeks. Versions for Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook will follow.

There’s a lot of talk about the pros and cons. However, there is no debate here – This is a spectacular move regardless of whether or not Times fully realize it.

Times Book Review is set to be a Home Run

There are three main reasons this is an amazing move -

1. It’s targeting a niche and selling users exactly what they want (hopefully at a reasonable price).
2. It satisfies a pressing need – eReader owners really need a good book recommendation engine/service. 
3. It sets up Times’ Book Review to be the starting point and decision point for book purchases.

These are hugely significant and it’s the first time Times (or for that matter any newspaper) have shown such good sense. 

The more niche we go the more valuable content is

While people may be reluctant to pay for news about an earthquake in South America (especially as there are 10,000 different people writing about it) they are more than willing to pay for news and content related to things they are very interested in and things that appeal to them – their niches.

We see numerous examples of people paying for content they value - Stock Brokers buy financial newspapers and subscribe to stock news services, Sports fans buy HD packages and MLB apps, and Publishers themselves buy subscriptions to Publishers’ Weekly and Publishers’ Lunch.

The more specialized your focus the easier it is to get people to pay because the content you produce has a lot more value to its target audience. They live and breathe their niche and their happiness (and often their work) is tied up in the niche. Serving a niche makes it easy to make money and the money in turn makes it easier to increase quality and do a better job of serving the niche.  

By creating a Times Book Review App specifically targeted at eReader owners Times are delivering their book reviews to a group of users who will really value them and really benefit from them.

Times Book Review App perfectly matches the market demand

Some eReader owners are gladly paying for newspaper subscriptions – However, that is nothing compared to the number of eReader owners who would pay for a great app that recommends books and does a good job of it.

1. There’s no better proof of people’s love for and interest in books than spending $259 to buy a dedicated eReader. 
2. Their next pressing concern, and one that reappears every time they finish a book, is to find a great book to read. 
3. There are very few blogs or companies catering to this niche and none of them have the trust and brand recognition of the New York Times.
4. Perhaps most importantly no other company has something like The New York Times Book Review in place – Churning out exactly the content/service eReader owners are looking for.

Go to the official kindle forum and notice the threads – There are a lot of people interested in finding good books. The only thing more popular is finding good free books.

Now, consider how Wikipedia describes the Times’ Book Review -

It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry.

Each week the NYTBR receives 750 to 1000 books from authors and publishers in the mail of which 20 to 30 are chosen for review. The selection process is based on finding books that are important and notable, as well as discovering new authors whose books stand above the crowd.

The book review publishes each week the widely cited and influential New York Times’ Best Seller list, which is created by the editors of the Times “News Surveys” department.

Which are the books worth reading? Which books are selling the best?

Those are the main questions on eReader owners’ minds and those are exactly the questions the Times Book Review is answering each week.

The Starting Point and the Decision Point of Book Buying

Consider the huge amount of money search engines make due to being the starting point for the purchase process. The Times Book Review could not only become the starting point for book purchases it could also be the decision point – The only thing left would be taking users to the Kindle Store.

Times Book Review would be providing -

1. Information on what the bestsellers are. The New York Times Bestseller lists would get priority over the Nook, Sony, and Kindle bestseller lists.
2. Reviews of the most anticipated books. 
3. Reviews and recommendations about other books worth reading.

There’s an insane amount of influence and power wrapped up in that. If you’re the starting point AND the decision point you can make a lot of money in a lot of different ways.

If New York Times are intelligent about it and incorporate user feedback and user book recommendations they would become untouchable.

The scope of the opportunity is unlimited and there’s little competition

Not only is the idea brilliant the Times would be blessed by an almost complete lack of competitors. As opposed to the Internet where newspapers have near infinite competition eReaders represent a channel of good intent where there are few competitors. There are very few developers or companies that will compete because they’re all busy developing for the iPad or trying to make money from advertising or they just can’t afford to go through dozens of books every week.

There is a lack of competition even though eReaders are channels of good intent i.e. eReader owners are willing to pay for content – There are tens of thousands of Times newspaper subscriptions to show that. It’s likely that eReader owners would be even more willing to pay for a good book recommendation service.

Customers that are willing to pay and a dearth of competition – What more could a company ask for?

The Times have managed to identify one of the most critical aspects of the eReader user experience and they just happen to have the perfect product for it. The only thing that could go wrong is if they try to sell their app for $5 a month or try to support it with advertising (as opposed to taking a cut from every book purchase). If The Times do a good job on their Book Review App it might be a top 5 Kindle App Store app for a long, long time.