Manfred Macx

Welcome, Meetup.com members!

We're doing a deal with Meetup.com - we're sponsoring ten Meetup writing groups. Every member of a group that accepts the sponsorship gets 50% off our revenue sharing rates. That means that ManfredMacx.com only keeps 5% of all the money you bring in instead of the standard 10%.

Meetup.com members (and anyone else interested), please contact us if you have questions, or if you want to take advantage of the deal.

Seth Godin inadvertently describes our business model

Boing Boing posted an interview with Seth Godin this morning, and one passage really stood out.

Avi: OK. More generally, you could talk a bit about how books are changing. You're one of the first people who realized that books were souvenirs?

Seth: Yes, I started writing about books as souvenirs 11 years ago, when I did a book called "Unleashing the Idea Virus." What I discovered is that when I separated the idea from the book by giving the entire text of the book away for free online, it had a transformative effect on the idea as well as on my career.

So far that book has been downloaded probably more than 4,000,000 times. It's one of the most popular e‑books ever because it launched at the right time, it was easy to spread, it was easy to share, it was worth talking about. People would then say, "That's fine but how do you make a living doing that?" Well, my original answer was that I wasn't trying to make a living, I was trying to make a point. Then I discovered that if you make a point, making a living takes care of itself.

That book, when we came out with the souvenir hardcover edition which had no extra words in it at all, and cost $40, that book went to number five on the Amazon bestseller list, number four in Japan; was sold in dozens of foreign languages and I actually made more money on the book that I gave away than on the bestseller I had had before that.

I think that most people in the publishing industry show up every morning to do their job instead of showing up every morning to fulfill their mission. And their mission ought to be connecting readers and writers. And as soon as you can get rid of paper, that job becomes infinitely easier.

This is a really nice summary of a lot of the things we're trying to do here. When more and more people read your work, everything you do becomes more valuable. Whether it's a really nice coffee table hardback, or whatever else it is you might produce, having a huge audience makes it worth more.

Don't be afraid of free. It can be a really powerful tool to help you make a living. Godin is a perfect example.

You should read the rest of the interview, because it makes a few more relevant points about the future of publishing.

Piracy and Gravity

Piracy of digital content is a lot like gravity. You can fight both, and you can even make some headway, especially if you spend a lot of time and money. But, at the end of the day, they're still here, and now you're tired.

It's probably a better idea to figure out good ways to take advantage.

Somebody noticed!

Sometime late last night, we got our first spam comment on our homegrown blog/forum/static page engine, Django Convo. It's so lovely to think that some clowns selling fake Rolexes online approve of what we're doing here. I feel tremendously validated.

A Sustainable Indie Bookstore?

A part of my dream for this site has always been to open an actual physical bookstore once the website became successful. It may be a bit early to talk about what to do when we're raking in millions of dollars, as we still don't have our first author yet, but I have this idea rolling around in my head for what the store might be like, and I wanted to share.

There's no question bookstores, indie and otherwise, are struggling. Business models haven't really caught up after the internet (Amazon, mostly) disruption. I'm not going to get into how to save all the indie bookstores, or whether that's something we should expend a lot of energy to do (Though if YOU want to do that, feel free to use our forum. I'll join the discussion if you start it). But I will describe the bookstore I'd like to own.

So, picture this . . .

You walk into the store. Your smartphone beeps to let you know that there's a really strong free wifi signal here, and it would like to connect. At the center is an Espresso Book Machine, beckoning. "Come, print a book with me." It says. There are comfortable chairs and couches all around. There is no shortage of surge protectors, waiting for you to plug in. There are tables, where you can put down your outside food and drink, which you're encouraged to bring with you.

And books! The shelves are full of books. There's also a counter where you can check out electronics - a Kindle, a netbook, an iPad - in case you don't have your own.

That probably doesn't sound too different from stores you've already been to, or at least heard about. But I was thinking - how do you involve the community? We'd start with selling your used books. Instead of the store buying your books, you'd just drop them off, and we'd tag them to your account. When they sold, you'd get your cut, and we'd take ours. You could manage your account online - request a check by mail, apply your balance to a purchase from the store, or come in and walk out with cash. The percentage you got to keep could vary - an extra 5%, say, once you've sold ten books, or if you buy a lot of books from us. And we'd list your book on AbeBooks, too, so it wouldn't just be people in the store who might buy it.

I was also thinking - how do you compete with Amazon? You can't compete with their selection, or their prices. So why not help people use them? If you come in and order something from Amazon, or any other online store, you can register to have it shipped to the store instead of your house. How many times have you missed the UPS guy by five minutes, or come home to find a soaking wet package hidden behind a plant? Forget all that. Just ship it to us.

Space permitting, I'd love to host book clubs and do author readings and any other kind of book-related activity we could think of. Since I'm dreaming, I might as well dream that we can afford a space large enough for that.

What else? Could this work?

Reverted backlist titles scream for a new distribution model

As I'm not a romance reader, I find this news exciting for a different reason, but exciting nonetheless.

With right returning to authors, backlists are being digitized and sold by the authors using services like PubIt!, Barnes and Noble’s self publishing platform.

PubIt! emailed me to give me a heads up that authors like Barbara Freethy, Alexis Harrington, and Susan Elizabeth Phillips, among others, are bringing their backlist titles to readers. It’s pretty hard to keep track of the folks that are digitizing their backlists so I thought it would be fun for readers to share with each other their favorite backlist titles that are being digitized.

Established authors just regaining rights to backlists have challenges they may not have faced before. There's a discussion in the comments at the linked article about a fair price for backlist titles, and people suggest a broad range. But a common theme is that readers aren't necessarily looking for deals - they're looking to read more from authors they already know and love. And they're willing to pay more for these authors, too. But how do you price it?

This is a perfect opportunity for the author to use a non-traditional publishing model. Upfront costs are very low - all you really need is a format conversion, and most of that work is probably already done. You've already written the book, and it's already been edited. And you already have fans eager to support you.

Rather than fighting with readers over a fair price, or worrying that you've priced it wrong, why not set the price to zero? You have the fans. You have the book. Give them a chance to show their support. Readers understand that most authors don't make buckets of money. And they also understand that authors are people, and therefore value a personal connection, perhaps more than they value a backlist ebook.

If you have a backlist coming back to you, and don't want to deal with the same old publishing deal, get in touch. We'd love to help you connect with your fans and make money from your book.

Don't think we're just about novels

There's an article on BoingBoing about independent comic books, struggling with the current distribution models, and turning to Kickstarter just to be able to release new stuff. This particular example is a 200 page graphic novel for kids from critically-acclaimed creators, and they still couldn't make the money work through a traditional publisher.

This also illustrates the big drawback with using Kickstarter for publishing. One advantage of using an established publisher is that they have all the processes in place to get your work out there. Kickstarter can't really specialize like that.

Now, if only there were a publisher with crowdsourced funding built right in to the business model . . .

Talking about publishing

I'm having a nice conversation with Douglas Nerad over at his blog about what we do here. Come join in.

Sad day for Columbia Heights

Sunday (2/27/2011) is the last day for one of my favorite local bars. I had to change one of the items for sale related to my book - I can no longer offer drinks with me at Commonwealth.

Commonwealth was the first outing for both of my daughters - they slept in the stroller while the wife and I enjoyed Bellhaven Twisted Thistle on tap and a big cheese plate. Nearly everyone who has visited us - family and friends both - has come to Commonwealth. It opened shortly after we moved to the city,

Something else is coming in its place, owned by the same people who own the soon-to-open sports bar two doors down, and they promise to keep something of the same atmosphere. I hope they mean it. Spring is right around the corner, and I was looking forward to afternoons outside on their patio.

From gatekeepers to enablers

There's a post at Techdirt from Monday that I've been meaning to write about. As usual, it makes me think about what we're doing here.

What's fascinating (and wonderful) to see today is how the changing marketplace means that the actual content creators are in control. This doesn't mean the death of middlemen -- not by a long shot. There's still a huge role for middlemen to play -- but it's as enablers, not gatekeepers. In a world with enablers, the content creators are still the ones in control. The middlemen becomesupporting players.

The world of distributing content in all forms has changed. A lot of the stuff that used to be really hard isn't hard anymore. That's the way progress works - things that are hard tend to become easier, and that often causes problems for those who used to get paid for doing the hard things.

And we used to need gatekeepers because it was expensive to take content, package it up nicely, and get it out to all the stores where people can buy it. If every bit of content that anyone created got put through that process, the publishers would quickly go broke. But now there are other processes, and many of them are much, much cheaper.

What we still need are the enablers. Everyone could do it all themselves, but that's not terribly efficient. There's still a need for publishers to get the work of many content creators together to keep each one from inventing their own wheel.

The really big difference is that content creators are now the publisher, and the publisher is now the support staff. You're going to see more and more of this, especially with the creators who are already well-known (Conan O'Brien, for example, as the article explains). But it won't stop with people who are already famous. In fact, you can do it yourself right now.

Cool stuff from Tools of Change

The O'Reilly Tools of Change publishing conference is going on right now, and there have been some really interesting announcements and talks. The most interesting, perhaps, is PressBooks.

PressBooks lets you and your team easily author and output books in multiple formats including: epub, Kindle, print-on-demand-ready PDF, HTML, and inDesign-ready XML.

PressBooks is a new project from Hugh McGuire and the folks behind Book Oven, and it looks pretty amazing. They're still transitioning from private alpha to a more public release, and details are still a little scarce. As far as I can tell, it's a custom fork of WordPress optimized for publishing books online, and in downloadable and printable formats.

This is the way people are reading now - they want the content optimized for whatever device they happen to be reading on, whether that's a phone or a laptop, an ereader or an actual (gasp) print book. For nearly all readers, it's not about which format is better, but which format is most convenient, right now. And that might change in five minutes. Projects like PressBooks recognize this, and are providing tools for authors to meet those demands.

As a publisher and a lover of books, it's really exciting to see things like this coming out. The barriers between authors and readers are not just being lowered - they're being destroyed. This is wonderful for both authors and readers, and for the publishers agile enough to get on board.

Changes and changes

There have been some changes around here. Most obvious should be the improved navigation and the use of SSL (https) for the entire site. We take credit cards and process login information, and while that's always been encrypted with SSL, there are reports of browser exploits that let malicious code creep in to the un-encrypted parts of a site, and do nasty things.

Rather than try to track down every little nook and cranny where we might be vulnerable to that sort of thing, we've just encrypted the whole site.

The other thing is the navigation. It has become obvious that we are not explaining ourselves sufficiently. The way the site works makes total sense to us. It is our site, after all. But it was confusing many of you. So, we've simplified our explanations, and added some FAQs. You can even ask a new question on the FAQ page if you'd like.

There's still plenty of work to do, but we think it will make more sense now. If not, we'll keep working until it does.

Manfred Macx news

Nanowrimo is over. I have written a putrid novel that will never see the light of day (though you can see an excerpt here). But that's not important. What's important is that some things need to change around here, and, even more important, they will.

It's become quite obvious that people do not understand what this website is all about. They don't get what we're doing, or what we can help them do. This is my fault - this has been my dream for a while now, and I know every little bit of it and why it's wonderful and why you should love it, too. But I've done a miserable job of explaining that to you.

That will change. While it's not nearly as interesting to me as writing code (I fall more in love with Django every day), over the next few weeks the About page will get a makeover, and all the questions that people always seem to have will be answered.

If you have questions now, please, PLEASE contact us and we'd be happy to help you. Otherwise, keep an eye on the site, and get ready for some enhanced verbiage, marketing buzzwords, and . . . wait, no. Get ready for some clear, concise explanations of what we are, and what we are not. Also what it costs. Get ready. It's coming, we promise.

Partially moved the blog over

After having some problems with Wordpress, and having wanted to move the blog over to Django for a while, I finally did it. There are still a lot of little things to work out, but the important stuff is working. All the old posts from ebooksyearntobefree.com are moved over to manfredmacx.com/blog, and all the old links should still be working with permanent redirects, so Google's spiders should be happy.

I still have some prettying up to do, and some functionality isn't quite there, but I can write a blog post, and you can read them, and that's really the important part.

Pardon our dust

We're doing some site updates, and the theme for the blog isn't quite as pretty as we'd like. Bear with us, and we'll get it straightened out.

Call a lease a lease

The Federal Trade Commission, according to its website, has been told by Congress to protect consumers from "unfair and deceptive acts or practices". Why, then, does it not force companies to correctly identify transactions as leases rather than purchases?

When you buy a Kindle from Amazon, it comes with a long list of restrictions. Amazon can remove files from your Kindle. They can prevent libraries from loaning them to patrons.

When you buy nearly anything from Apple, it comes with a long list of restrictions. You can only install certain programs on an iPhone or iPad. Violate the rules, and Apple may turn your device into a sleek and stylish paperweight.

When you buy a Droid X from Motorola, it comes with a long list of restrictions, despite running a supposedly open operating system from Google. If you try to do something with the phone that isn't authorized, your phone may become a slightly less sleek and stylish paperweight.

How can you call this a purchase? If I purchase something, it is mine. I can do what I want. I am free from restrictions imposed by the seller. Now, I understand many of the business decisions behind the restrictions. Most often they are designed to protect the user experience, either from excessive data usage by unauthorized third-party applications, or from poorly designed applications that may do all kinds of nasty things to the device.

But a valid business reason doesn't justify misleading consumers. And I'd like to see the FTC live up to its mandate and do something about it.

Effective risk management in publishing

One of the major issues facing publishing today is risk management. And it's not just the advances that get paid out and never recouped - it's the books that never get published because the risk is too great. When someone isn't published because they can't write, that's fine. But when someone isn't published because their book is too long for a first novel, or in a genre that's not hot enough right now, we all lose.

So how do we fix it?

What if we take a page from the mortgage industry? I know, they don't have the greatest reputation these days, and when I say, "mortgage-backed securities", you probably get a little nervous. But the underlying idea behind mortgage-backed securities is sound. It's just the implementation that failed. Bundling risky things with less risky things to create a package of moderately risky things makes a lot of sense.

How would it work for publishing? Let's say you have two known authors in the same genre. Pick three other authors that no one has heard of, but writing similar stuff in the same genre. Package them all together. If you buy the two books from the known authors, you get the three unknown authors for free. This works even better if we use ebooks, where "printing" and "shipping" one additional unit doesn't cost anything.

Another option is for a group of unknown authors with a similar target demographic to form a legal partnership and act as one unit. They could save on marketing costs and act as evangelists for each other. Share the costs, share the risk, share the profits.

If publishers could lower their risk, they could publish more authors. As long as we keep effective filters (like indie bookstores!), publishing more authors is a win for everyone.

Should you be in publishing?

The only really surprising thing about Seth Godin's announcement last week that he was leaving traditional publishing behind was that so many people were surprised by it. If you were one of them, and you work in publishing, you should start updating your resume. You've got a few years, at most, before you're in an industry you don't understand.

There are a couple of big, important functions that traditional publishers have always provided: editing, filtering, distributing, and marketing. All of these things are still important. The big change is that you can get pretty good providers of all of these outside of traditional publishing. This is not to say that traditional publishers aren't doing these things well. It just means that people now have other options that are good enough to be successful.

First, editing. I don't have any sort of data on comparing editors at big publishing houses to good freelancers. I suspect that there are really good ones and really bad ones of both categories, with a better good-to-bad ratio at the big publishers. But I do know that you can get a good editor without a big publisher. This has probably been true for a while.

Next, filtering. The self-publishing world hasn't quite figured this one out yet, but neither have traditional publishers, so I'm going to call it a wash. There are plenty of books that get published by respected publishers that are just garbage. And there are plenty of books that are really good that don't get published at all because they don't hit enough of the checkboxes to qualify them as a good bet, so they get ignored.

Amazon and Lulu have distribution pretty well covered.

Marketing is the one big thing where traditional publishers still have a huge advantage. Unless you're Seth Godin, and know a thing or two about marketing yourself. People talk about authors needing a "platform", and some hate that word, but having a platform makes the marketing a lot easier. The bigger the platform, the less marketing you need to do, and the more your network will do for you. Seth Godin's platform is one of the biggest out there.

The point is, everything that traditional publishers do is easier now than it was ten years ago. Some of it is easier than it was last week. It will only get easier. Smart publishers will start focusing on the advantages they still have, and look for new ways to use what they know and what they do well to gain more advantages. Smart publishers will survive. Others won't. Whining about the death of this or that, the relative merits of ebooks versus print books, and most of the rest of it just isn't productive.

I think what we'll start seeing is publishing-as-a-service. Make a list of every step that goes between the author finishing a first draft and a satisfied customer parting with money. A good publisher can help with all those steps. A smart publisher will figure out how to let authors do some of those steps themselves, perhaps in exchange for a higher royalty rate. An author should be able to choose which of these steps to handle, and which to let the publisher handle.

Some will probably say that sounds like vanity publishing, and I agree. There is nothing inherently wrong with vanity publishing. If the publisher is taking money from the author and not giving anything back, then that's wrong, but that's the publisher, not the process. If I give you a list of services related to publishing that we do, along with a list of prices, and you choose which ones you want and which you don't, no on is taking advantage of you.

The bottom line is that there is no one right way for every author to make a living by writing. There are more paths available now than ever before in human history, and this is a fantastic, exciting time to be starting in the industry. And I'm really looking forward to what's going to happen when the big publishers start thinking about where the market wants to go, and how best they can serve it, rather than crying about agency models and ebook cannibalization and copyright infringement.

But if you are stuck in the mindset where this is the way it has always been done, so this is the way we must always do it, then you're going to have a problem. The subtext of Godin's announcement that I haven't seen discussed much is the implication that he's not even sure the book form is useful to him anymore. For most people, the books will be important for a while (though I think the ebook transition will happen faster than many are predicting), but getting stuck thinking about selling books is dangerous. Think about selling your authors, or helping them sell themselves. Then, when we transition from ebooks to direct brain interfaces with nearly human-equivalent artificial intelligences designed to immerse you in a story, you still have your business.

Edit to add: I've been asked to firm up my conclusion. It is this: If you want to remain in publishing longer than a few more years, stop whining. Stop thinking about how you can make the industry keep behaving like it always has. Think about things you are good at that are hard for other people. Find more people who need those things done. Make a compelling case to those people that you should be the one to do those things for them. Continue to refrain from whining.

Industries change. The companies that survive those changes are the ones who scour those changes for opportunity.

Philiosophy of Use Versus Payment

Good post at Techdirt on Friday about a particularly nice response to debate about the morality and whatnot of sharing digital content online. Two things jump out at me. First, Alex Feerst, the IP lawyer who wrote the response, lays out a lot of the underlying ideas at Manfred Macx a lot better than I ever have. If you don't understand our philosophy, read his letter. Or, read this excerpt:

These two issues - payment and ownership/control of copies should be conceptually separated. They are connected under our current system, but they are not naturally or necessarily connected. We can unfasten them and toggle them separately to see what happens. If we could imagine other ways for you to get paid for your work (maybe we can't, but assume for argument's sake we can) as an artist, then whether or not people "take" your song is beside the point. You only want to stop people from taking things because you need to get paid. If you got an acceptable income from your work, you would probably not care about who plays or doesn't play your song. This is because, unlike a screwdriver, it is not bound by physical world zero-sumness. In fact, you'd probably prefer such a system because you'd get paid and at the same time a greater number of people would hear your song. I think your teen correspondent mentioned a similar point.

Emphasis is mine. This is what we do at Manfred Macx. We are trying to allow authors to earn an acceptable income from their work without needing to think about who might have given a digital copy to a friend (or a couple thousand anonymous P2P users). Fighting against what technology allows is a losing battle. Embracing new technology, and seeing how it can work for you, not only good business, but it's future proof. If you stop caring about copies of your content, you still have a business when the next killer delivery system comes out.

Both articles, however, don't address one important point made by Jason Robert Brown, the composer who originally argued with the fan and started this whole thing.

Let's say I invent a self-replicating screwdriver. There's a whole pile of them in my driveway €“ if you take one away, another one will appear in its place. Weirdly, my neighbor also invented a self-replicating screwdriver. I think mine is better, but that's neither here nor there. On my driveway, there's a sign saying "Screwdrivers $4.00". On his driveway, there's a sign saying "Free screwdrivers!" There is no legitimate defense of the idea that it's okay to take my screwdriver for free just because there are an infinite number of them available. If you want a free screwdriver, go get the one from my neighbor; but if you want mine, the fruit of my labor, as Locke would have it, then you are obligated - in every sense of the word €“ to pay me the price I am asking. I don't owe the commons a free screwdriver, nor do I owe them free sheet music to my songs. Nothing you've written above changes my mind on that matter.

This is really important. When someone is using a business model that you feel is outdated, you may write blog posts about how wrong they are, you may boycott them, you may even petition your elected officials to relax the laws on which these models depend if you feel they are no longer just or relevant.

What you can not do is take and share their content without their permission, and then think you have the right to tell them why their business model is wrong. You forfeit that right when you fail to respect the wishes of the content creator.

An interview with me about ManfredMacx.com

I was interviewed last week by a local blogger about what Manfred Macx is all about, and she just posted it. If you're looking for a better understanding of what we're doing here, or just want to check out a lovely portrait of me taken by my wife on short notice, check it out.

Our first free ebook!

We reached our goal! $515 and counting for Reach Incorporated!

Another haiku for charity

Our second haiku is for my brother, Sam. He's not only studying to be a lawyer and a sports agent - he's also been doing a lot of public relations for us. We're very glad he's family so we don't have to pay him.

If you could be any animal, what would it be?
Of all the people you don't know personally, but who are generally considered to be unpleasant, who would you most like to have a drink with?
Is it better to be early and have to wait for someone, or be late and make them wait for you?
If you could find out the true meaning of life, would you?

Answers:

It's a tough call, deciding between something like a lion, being a total badass, or being something like a bald eagle and getting to fly. I think I'd go with flying, so mark me down as a Bald Eagle.
Unpleasant people who I'd like to sit down with for a drink...another tough one. I think I'd do George W., just to see if he really is that stupid.
Definitely be early and wait. It's a sign of respect to be punctual for others, in my opinion.
I would love to find out the true meaning of life. In my opinion, our purpose is to do enough in our own lifetime to be remembered once it is over.

Haiku:

George and an eagle
Drinking, talking about life
Meaning? Ask eagle.

Four question haiku

Tomorrow will be two weeks, and we're at 81% of our goal.

One of the items for sale related to my books is a four question haiku. I ask the buyer four questions, and write a haiku based on at least three of their answers. I'll be posting all the results both here at the blog (see all of them here, though there's just one so far), and also in a thread in the "social" section of ManfredMacx.com.

The first haiku is for Frannie Serafin, a friend who "introduced" us to our charity partner, Reach Incorporated.

Questions:

If you could be any animal, what would it be?
Of all the people you don't know personally, but who are generally considered to be unpleasant, who would you most like to have a drink with?
Is it better to be early and have to wait for someone, or be late and make them wait for you?
If you could find out the true meaning of life, would you?

Answers:

does a dolphin count even though it's a mammal? If not, then a chimpanzee
Justice Scalia
Early and wait.
Yes.

Haiku:

Drinks on Scalia
The dolphin understands life
Early, never late

Manfred Macx, week one

Well, half week one, anyway. I know that in many respects, the internet is closed for the weekend, so it makes sense to look at Wednesday (launch) to Friday (now) as our first week.

It's been a good week. We've raised $185 towards our goal of $500 (with all the money raised going to Reach Incorporated). That's 37%. Not bad for a couple of days.

Next, we need some new authors. Raising money for charity with my book is great, but if this little venture is going to succeed, we need to help some authors make a living. Do you have a book you want to sell? Do you have a friend or a loved one, perhaps, who you know has a book in them, but might be afraid of letting it out? We want to help. We want to help you find your audience, connect with them, and give them something they're eager to pay for. If you or someone you know is interested, let us know. Or, sign up for an account and follow the instructions to become one of our authors.

Bowie, books, and business models

I just bought an album of MP3s from Amazon. I saw this tweet from @ninhotline, and watched this video of David Bowie performing with Nine Inch Nails playing behind him. I'm a huge Nine Inch Nails fan, and at this point it's nearly criminal that I have almost no knowledge of David Bowie, who Trent Reznor counts as one of his biggest influences. One thing led to another, and I decided to buy the album.

Now, for most people, buying an album of MP3s makes a lot of sense. I mean, who uses cds anymore? I don't even know.

But I've never bought an album of MP3s. I bought a single MP3 before, but it was an extenuating circumstance, and not characteristic of my behavior. I don't like buying MP3s. I've mentioned before that I think it's immoral to sell something that can be instantly and perfectly copied, and I still stand by that.

And it's equally immoral to take that thing without permission, so I only use BitTorrent for authorized files, like Linux distributions.

So, how did I end up buying an album of MP3s? Well, it's because Amazon isn't Manfred Macx. They don't give you the options that we do. I can't download the album (Outside if you're curious) for free and pay $500 to have a drink with David Bowie (which would be pretty cool. You'd pay for that, wouldn't you? He's, like, a legend). And it just seemed silly to buy a cd that I didn't want, and then wait for it to ship.

As an aside, the process to buy an album was incredibly annoying. Amazon requires you to use their special MP3 downloader if you want to buy a full album. Installing it wasn't too bad, but every time a song finished downloading, it tried to open up Windows Media Player. I don't use Windows Media Player. It's a piece of junk that came with the operating system, and I want nothing to do with it. I couldn't choose a download location, either. The entire experience was just bad. But now I have the MP3s.

I realized at some point that my stubborn refusal to buy digital content was hurting me more than it was hurting those selling it. I still don't like it, and I still won't do it often, but it's silly to stick to my guns, at my own expense, while the vast majority still thinks I'm crazy.

Better to show them that these old business models are tired and outdated, relics of a time when it was hard to distribute content. Creating the art is still hard. So is polishing it (the sound engineers, the book editor, etc), and marketing it. But distributing it? The only reason you need anyone to distribute your work is to collect the money. Stop charging for the content, spend that money connecting with your fans, and make it easy for them to give you money for other things. That's what we're doing, and we hope you all will join us.

ManfredMacx.com is live

At long last, ManfredMacx.com is live.

Tomorrow is the big day

We're launching tomorrow. Manfred Macx will be open for business. It's been quite a long time coming, but barring unforeseen disaster (and, if necessary, in spite of it), tomorrow the wait will be over.

We are very excited, and more than a little terrified of what's to come.

A perfect way to announce our new charity partner

I've been chatting this morning with Mark Hecker, Executive Director of Reach Incorporated, about the plans for the launch of ManfredMacx.com. And then I saw this post come up at Techdirt.

A fascinating new study has shown that "pay what you want" offerings seem to maximize the net take for those using it if they include charitable giving. The study was done at an amusement park, where people could buy a photo of themselves on a roller coaster, and four different situations were tested: (1) the standard "pay a fixed price" (2) a straight "pay what you want" (3) fixed price with part of the money going to charity and (4) pay what you want with part of it going to charity.
What's amazing is that the fourth one was the best one in terms of the net amount to the seller (yes, after giving the portion to charity). Sales were much higher and the net dollar amount to the seller was much higher than the straight "pay what you want."

"Pay what you want" is definitely one aspect of the model at ManfredMacx.com, so it's wonderful to see that a partnership with a charity can be beneficial to everyone involved.

That said, we are proud to announce that the money raised with our first book is going to Reach Incorporated. They find students who are struggling with reading, help them to be better readers themselves, and help them teach younger children to be better readers, as well.

We'll have more details soon, so be sure to check back.

New mobile blog site

I just installed this fantastic mobile site plugin for Wordpress on the recommendation of a wine-blogging friend. If you visit this site using a mobile browser, you should get a really nice view optimized for your smaller screen. Let me know if you have any issues.

FYI - this site is no longer using Wordpress. The above plugin remains fantastic if you ARE using Wordpress, but it just didn't make sense for us to run Django for the main site and Wordpress for the blog. Left too many un-leveraged synergies flapping in the wind.

ManfredMacx.com, coming soon

Anyone paying attention has been hearing this for quite some time, but we're really almost ready to launch ManfredMacx.com. It's been a long and eventful road, but it really is almost time to start publishing some books.

The first book we're going to publish is my 2002 National Novel Writing Month effort, The Dance of the Ducks. All the proceeds will be donated to charity, so if you want me to call you on your birthday, you can make that happen, and know that your money is going towards a good cause. And the novel still has an unnamed character, so the naming rights will be available, too.

And if you have a novel you'd like to publish, let us know. We'd love to talk to you about your book.

Merchant services update

ManfredMacx.com has a merchant services provider! Nothing is set up yet, so we can't launch the site, but this is the last piece of the puzzle. All that remains is getting the information to connect to the card processing system, writing a bit of code, and then finding some authors who want to sell some scarcities!

Direct Connect is the company that's going to process cards for us. So far, everyone there has been really helpful. I'll keep updating as we really get a sense of what it's like to work with them.

Who knew merchant services was so hard?

No one should be surprised when a website launches late - the bigger surprise is when things go as planned. Manfred Macx is no exception. However, the primary reason the site isn't live now is that I grossly underestimated how hard it would be to find someone to process credit card transactions.

So, to help those out there with a great idea but just as clueless as I was about what it takes to get a merchant services account, here are things I've learned.

Forget PayPal. Sure, they'll approve you when others won't, but this is just so they can take the first month's fee. They don't actually do any review of your business model when you sign up. They take your fee, then when you try a test transaction to make sure you're connected properly with their API, they'll lock your account for review. Had they bothered to read the information they took when I signed up, they would have known that my business plan violated their terms of use. They chose not to read, and I wasted a few weeks thinking my problems were solved. Their customer service is great for the purchaser, but TERRIBLE for the merchant. Stay away.
Collecting money on behalf of a third party is risky. I never really thought about it, but there's a big difference between "the customer pays you, then you deliver the product", and "the customer pays you and someone else delivers the product". Even if you don't see the difference, the underwriter will. It's important to know who is responsible for making the customer happy.
There will be more chargebacks than you expect. You may think your customers will love the service you provide, and maybe they will, but your merchant services provider will assume that many of them will be unhappy and want chargebacks. Lots and lots of chargebacks.
Merchant services providers have bad websites. Don't know why.
There are more layers than you realize. I thought, going in, that I would find someone to process credit cards. But in most cases, you need the front end (Authorize.net, for most providers) and the back end (First Data is the largest, but there are tons). Plus you need a bank. And you'll probably run into resellers, where you make a deal with Company X, but the application actually goes to Company Y, and Company Z actually processes transactions. It all seems sketchy to me.
The application will be unintelligible, and mostly boilerplate. It annoys me to no end that legal documents intended for non-lawyers are so ridiculous. Being a lawyer is hard - ask anyone who's gone to law school. Reading a basic legal document shouldn't be hard.

So, I have two promising leads on the table. If neither one of them pans out, I'm going to try Amazon's services. They do the processing for two websites with similar models (Kickstarter and IndieGoGo). But Amazon is notorious for cutting off partners who annoy them (see: MacMillan, the states charging them sales tax). I hesitate to depend on Amazon for a vital part of my business.

I'll keep you posted on progress. We're ready to go once we have a credit card processor.

The problem with ebook windowing

For years, people in the business of publishing content have used windowing to maximize revenue. The most expensive version comes out first, and the die-hard fans who have to have it right away will buy. Lesser fans wait for the the next version, a little cheaper, and the casual fans or not-even-fans wait for the bargain version. This worked because each version was a reasonable substitute for the others. For books, reading a hardcover and reading a paperback are not so different.

But as we move farther in the direction of digital distribution, this substitution goes away. As more people read books on screens instead of paper, the hardcover and the ebook are no longer substitutes. Sometimes they are complements, and sometimes they are completely unrelated. For authors we love, we will read the electronic version and take the pristine hardback to the author's reading at the local bookstore for a personalized signature. For other authors, more and more people are only going to be interested in the ebook. The hardcover will not be a substitute or a complement - it will be a waste of space in their living room.

Unless we rethink the way windowing is done, and really only window the substitute goods, this practice will only hurt authors and publishers. When goods are complementary or unrelated, holding one back hurts sales, not helps. If you put out the hardcover first, people who want the electronic version will be angry, and are more likely to look for entertainment elsewhere, or turn to filesharing sites who are sure to have nice leaked or scanned copies.

"Readers, please subsidize our failure", say publishers

There are a great many things that frustrate me about the current state of the publishing world. I've discussed many of them here and elsewhere. The latest thing that really gets under my skin is this idea that publishers have to have the blockbusters to pay for all the books that don't pay for themselves.

If you are in the business of selling things, and you sell something for less than you paid for it, this is a failure on your part. Now, it's a little different if selling that thing at a loss enables you to sell more of other things (see loss leader). But that's not what's happening here. The publishing industry is essentially selling the profitable thing to pay for the loss leaders. This is not how selling things works. This, incidentally, is why the publishing industry has such a problem with Amazon - Amazon is very good at using loss leaders, and it undercuts the way publishing has always worked.

There are numerous solutions to the problem, but all involve a big change in the way publishers do business.

First, they can make the "losses" less costly. Move compensation towards the back - advances are gambles by publishers that often don't pay off, and guess who gets to make up the difference? That's right, the reader. Won't this hurt authors, you ask? Probably. This is not what anyone wants, so we're going to have to figure out ways to fix it.

Perhaps a better idea is for the publishers to learn how to use loss leaders correctly. When someone buys the latest Dan Brown hardcover, give them the debut novel from a relative unknown who writes fast-paced conspiracy thrillers. Note that this works even better with ebooks, where the marginal cost to produce another copy is infinitesimal. You've now increased the value of Brown's book, and maybe you've gained a fan for the new author. I rarely buy books from authors I don't know (not without strong and trusted recommendation), but I often by the second and third and fourth books from authors I first read for free.

As an aside, this works even better if you're an indie bookshop run by someone who would know right away which unknown author would perfectly complement a Dan Brown or other famous author.

Publishers, recognize that the way (most of) you do business now is broken. It is fixable. Go figure out how.

The publishing industry is losing control

If you ask around, you'll get a bunch of different opinions on why the book publishing industry is having trouble. Often you'll hear that piracy is the problem. Amazon is another usual suspect. The internet in general, encompassing piracy, Amazon, and this horrible new generation that thinks everything should be free . . .

But to place blame on any of the above is to really miss the point. The publishing industry is struggling because it is losing control of the process at both ends. The distribution channels, led by Amazon, perhaps to be joined by Apple, are taking bits of the process. They have said, "you need us as much as we need you, and it's time to start negotiating with that in mind". And on the other side, the quality and availability of tools to self-publish have risen dramatically, and are continuing to rise. That's not to say that an author with a blog and an account at Lulu is on equal footing with a best-selling author with the backing of an entire publishing company. But the gap has closed enough that the author, too, has a bargaining chip.

At the end of the day, the price paid by readers and distributors is dropping and the price paid to authors is rising. This makes it easy to think that price is the root of the problem rather than merely the most visible effect.

Publishers need to step back and think about what they can provide that has real value. They have editors on staff, and authors need editors. They have marketers on staff, and authors need marketers. What authors no longer need is someone dictating the terms of everything.

This does mean that publishers will make less money. But this is a reflection of the natural economic process rather than something that must be stopped with new laws and regulations. It is easier now to produce a book and get it into the hands of readers. There are cheaper substitutes for the services provided by publishers (again, not necessarily of the same quality, but increasingly good enough).

In a free market, this means that profits for publishers will fall. This is progress. It is only tragic for those unwilling or unable to adapt.

Things that have nothing to do with ebook pricing, part 2

The myth of marketing costs

No, I don't mean that marketing is bad or that it doesn't exist or that you shouldn't pay for it. Good marketing is a very valuable tool.

However, when you say, "I have to charge this much for my product to cover marketing costs", you are doing it wrong. If you aren't making back the money spent on marketing in extra profits, you should find someone else to do your marketing, or stop doing it altogether.

If you spend $10 on marketing, your profits (not your total sales) should increase by at least $11. Otherwise you were better off to just keep your $10.

So what "I have to charge this much for my product to cover marketing costs" really means is "I am charging you more so I can make more money". Good work if you can get it, but you'd better make sure your customers never find out what's going on. They aren't likely to be happy about it.

See part 1

Ebook pricing - Here's why everyone is wrong

This is the first in a little series of posts on why Amazon, Macmillan, and everyone else are all wrong about ebook pricing.

The myth of devaluation

If anyone ever tells you that low prices for ebooks are devaluing books, you can be sure of one thing - what you are about to hear is not a logical argument on ebook pricing. Either this person is lying to you, or this person is making an emotional or psychological appeal to you to pay more. You can not "devalue" an ebook by lowering the price. You can undermine the leverage the seller has to charge a higher price, but you can't make a potential buyer value the book less. People like to confuse value and price. They are related, to be sure, but are very different concepts.

Let's look at an example. Let's say you and I have each written a book. We have an imaginary consumer who likes your book twice as much as he likes mine. If both books are priced at $10, he will certainly buy yours. If I drop the price to $9, he'll still buy yours because he likes you that much better.

But what if I drop the price to $1? Have I devalued your book? No, absolutely not. He still values it twice as much as he values mine. But my price is 10% of yours. He's probably going to buy my book, and he'll do it because he'll get half the enjoyment of your book at 10% of the price. This is, for most people, a good deal.

Now, if we pretend that collusion and price fixing aren't illegal (and let's do that, just for the sake of argument), you could call me and we could agree to both charge $10. This would work if we were the only two games in town. But we aren't. We have to compete with not only all the other authors out there, but all the other things that people might possibly do with their free time.

And there will always be cheaper alternatives to your book (well, there's maybe a case or two where that's not exactly true, but we'll get to that another day). Movies, music, walks in the park, the internet, the list is endless. Blaming me for "devaluing" your book is just silly. You might as well blame the beach for all the nice sand there is to walk on, and the cool breeze coming in off the water.

So what can you do? First of all, the only reason that what I'm doing matters to you is that I might be doing something you hadn't thought of, and you can learn from me. Beyond that, don't worry about me. Worry about making your book the best it can possibly be, and worry about how to get more people aware of it. There are a million ways to do this, and none of them start with accusing your fellow authors and publishers of "devaluing" your work.

See part 2

A couple favorite moments from Digital Book World

The Digital Book World conference started today in NYC. I couldn't go, but I did get to follow along on Twitter. I know I missed a lot, and I'm waiting for some more detailed write-ups from people who were there, but I think I got a pretty good feel for the conference.

Some highlights from Twitter (Follow along with the Twitter hashtags listed here):

LJNDawson (website) quoting Richard Nash (website) "not selling the book; you're selling the author." First of all, if you're at all interested in reading, writing, or publishing, you're on Twitter, and you aren't following these two, you should fix that right now. And the quote gets right to the heart of what publishing increasingly is becoming. It used to be that an author had to have a publisher to have any sort of chance of selling a book. That's not true anymore. Publishers are still very valuable, but if they don't start rethinking the relationship they have with the book and with the author, that's going to change. Some of them are going to wake up one day and find that the gap between what they offer and the POD and DIY stuff is so narrow that their services are no longer worth the extra money.

Will Entrekin (website) So while pubs flail to fight pirates, golden opportunity for writers to better reach more passionate readers. Brian Napack, President of MacMillan, gave a controversial presentation on book piracy. The basic gist was that he plans to fight pirates tooth and nail without ever looking into why people pirate books, and trying to find something they want to buy. He seems to want to revisit all the mistakes the music industry made. If the rest of the big publishers feel the same way, there is a huge opportunity for others who take a more pragmatic approach (and perhaps learn from the mistakes of others).

Suzi Steffen (website) Book "piracy" & music "piracy": Offered free download of song or 2, I'm MUCH more likely to spend $$ on other work/merch/concerts. Using free downloads as advertising or promotion - it amazes me how many people refuse to believe this can ever be beneficial. Not all downloads are a lost sale, and some lead to multiple sales in the future. This never gets counted in the "cost of piracy" numbers.

Kelly Leonard (website) "young kids have a disdain for media companies" um no they have a disdain for spending $ Know your market. Before you start filing lawsuits and asking for new laws against unauthorized downloads, think about whether you're meeting the needs of your customers. Before demonizing an entire generation, try to understand where they're coming from, and think about whether there might be a middle ground where everyone can get what they want.

In general, it sounded really cool. I am looking forward to tomorrow, and I am determined to make sure it makes business sense to attend the conference next year representing Manfred Macx. I couldn't justify the expense this year, but next . . .

A global copyright API

I attended World's Fair Use Day the other day. It was a really cool conference, and not just because of the free food. It got me thinking a lot about fair use and copyright and what that means to all of us.

Some of the most interesting things that I heard were questions about how copyright and fair use spread beyond the United States. More and more we live in a connected world where boundaries of states, countries, continents, or any other geographical issues just aren't that important any more in a lot of meaningful ways. I sit here writing this in Washington, DC, but anyone with an internet connection, all over the world, can read it. With a little help from Google, people can even read it in a language other than English. Most of our copyright laws were written before that was a real possibility.

So what does that mean for global copyright (or whatever you want to call it)? It's trivial to share content across the world, but how do you know what laws apply? Do the laws of the country you're in apply? The laws of the country where the server is? The country the creator is from? It got me thinking about potential solutions.

As I'm a programmer, one of the first things I thought of comes from programming. What if we had a global copyright API? For the non-programmers, think of an API as a restaurant menu. You get a little blurb about each menu item, so you have good idea what you're getting, but you don't know every step in the process to prepare the food.

So, let's say the world agrees on a set of copyright levels. A level would be everything from copyleft through Creative Commons through All Rights Reserved. You can call it whatever you want, but the first level would be less restrictive than the second, which would be less restrictive than the third, and continue on from there. We would then come to an agreement on what each level means, and then it is left to the country from which the content originates to define how to attach a level to your work.

So, for example, one of my favorite Creative Commons licenses is the attribution-share-alike license. That means you are free to do whatever you want with the content, but you have to credit the originator, and you have to apply the same license to your derivative works, so anyone can use your work in the same way you used the originator's.

The world would agree on what this means. For Creative Commons, that happens to be easy because the different licenses are each explained in plain language (Even in many different languages) that don't require a lawyer to understand. For other levels, it might be harder.

Then, each individual country (or city, county, region, whatever) would determine the rules for classifying your work at that level. If one country wants to say that no work can have an attribution-share-alike license, that's up to that country. But reasonable countries would provide a set of guidelines to their citizens, explaining how to apply this license to their work.

When that work crosses a border, the country it finds itself in would be bound to honor the definition of the license, even if that particular country doesn't allow works to have that license.

This should satisfy the big content companies, because they could apply the most restrictive license their respective countries allow, and everyone around the world would have to abide by it. It would satisfy content creators, because they could feel confident in allowing their work to cross borders, knowing that they had set the rules for its use. It would satisfy lawyers by creating all sorts of wonderful case law to digest and bill for. It would satisfy politicians because making everyone happy tends to help out with re-election campaigns. And it would make me happy.

So, all we need is a global agreement on the set of levels. That shouldn't be too hard, right?

Last night I dreamt of Manfred Macx

How do you publicize a self-published book? You're already blogging and Tweeting and taking part in any online scene you can, hoping to attract the attention of people who might like your book. But this isn't enough. You still want to make the jump from online to off, getting people who don't live online interested, too. I know I forget sometimes that not everyone spends as much time in front of a computer as I do No matter how many people read my blog or follow me on Twitter, lots of potential customers still won't have any idea who I am.

It's a hard road - marketing may be the hardest part of selling a book to do on your own. It's easy to find a professional editor to work with, and there are plenty of print-on-demand publishers. But marketing, getting your book out where people can see it, is still tough to do outside of traditional publishing.

Last night I had a dream. In my dream, an author, who had signed up to publish with Manfred Macx, and I were setting up a booth on the Mall in downtown Washington, DC. We had paper copies of his book, information about Manfred Macx, and some free stuff to give away.

I woke up thinking to myself, "That's not a bad idea". I'd still have to work out some details - I'm not even sure it's legal to do that on the Mall. But that's not the point.

The point is that it could be a great way to get the author's name out there, and get some nice publicity for Manfred Macx, as well. So, I need a local DC author in need of a self-publishing platform. A local works best - because there aren't travel expenses, and, more importantly, there's a connection to the city.

I want to make this happen. Not now, because no one wants to sit outside in a booth all day when the weather stinks. But this spring, when the tourism season really picks up again, I'm going to be out there with someone, promoting a book on a soapbox.

How to save the indie bookstore

Two of the most common complaints about the publishing and bookselling world are that easy self-publishing is flooding the market with junk, and little independent bookstores are dying. Can't these things help take care of each other?

Self-published books don't have the same filter on the front end. There's not necessarily an experienced editor polishing the work until it shines. There's no one rejecting books because they aren't marketable. So we have a lot of self-published books that only a mother (specifically, the mother of the book's author) can love.

But small bookstores are fantastic filters on the back end. Now, the image of the helpful clerk picking the perfect book for a customer after a thirty second conversation may be romanticized a bit. But a bookstore full of employees who love to read, who read all the time, is a wonderful tool to cut through the self-published forest and pull out the stuff that's really worthwhile (or even just really appropriate for the customer at hand).

Complaining about both of these problems at the same time is a bit like complaining that it rains all the time, but no one will buy your umbrellas. Either it's not really raining as much as you think it is, or your umbrellas aren't very good.

Now there's a good idea

This is a slightly different context than Manfred Macx - the money goes to charity - but it's the same idea. You can have your name or the name of your choosing featured in an upcoming book by a best-selling author. Here is the first one I became aware of (via draccah), but there are a bunch of similar items for sale, proceeds all going to charity.

It's interesting - this sort of thing is not that uncommon in a charitable context, but it's pretty rare for the author to be using a similar technique to make a living. Is it a perception thing? That this is okay for charity, but not to make a living? I think the idea that we can get a pass for doing otherwise objectionable things if it's in the name of charity is wrong. Either the ends justify the means, or they don't.

If the ends justify the means, the end result of raising money in this manner is that an author can make or supplement a living by writing. This is generally seen as a good thing. It may not be as important in the grand scheme of things as feeding the hungry or fighting disease, but advancing the arts is universally accepted as a positive outcome.

And if the ends don't justify the means, then anything objectionable is objectionable in the name of charity or otherwise.

In either case, authors should be doing more of this sort of thing.

Manfred Macx Needs Authors

It's getting closer and closer to launch time. Manfred Macx is looking for authors interested in taking control of their book and using free infinite goods to sell more of something else. Leave a comment here or send us an email if you're interested. We'll even let you poke around the private alpha release of the website so you can get an idea of how it's going to work and what you're getting yourself into.

Needless to say, we're pretty excited. There's still plenty of work to do, but the site launch is getting close. It will only get more exciting as launch gets closer, so drop us a line if you want to get involved.

Interview with me on publishing with Manfred Macx

I recently met Henry Baum of Self-Publishing Review over Twitter, and he's just put up a post all about Manfred Macx. Go check it out. And while you're there, take a look at the rest of the site - it's full of all sorts of stuff related to self-publishing.

Lay off the hard sell, Wired

I recently read The Long Tail by Wired editor Chris Anderson. It's a good book, though not a lot that I hadn't heard before. It is presented in a very accessible way, and so I bought the audiobook version to send with my mom and grandmother on vacation this summer. A lot of the issues brought up in The Long Tail are the things I'm working with on Manfred Macx, and I thought the book would help them to better understand what I wanted to do.

At that, it succeeded. Now, when I talk to them about what I'm doing, they no longer look at me like I have two heads.

My mom even bought two subscriptions to the print edition of Wired - one for herself, and one for my brother-in-law. The more interesting one is for my brother-in-law. Here's a little timeline.

9/2/07 - Purchased a gift subscription for two years
7/21/08 - Received an email from Wired, breathlessly stating that the subscription was about to run out!
8/14/08 - Another email, another urgent reminder to renew!
9/X/08 - Renewed for a year (until 9/2010), thinking the subscription was about to expire
6/17/09 - Another email from Wired - your gift subscription is expiring!
7/15/09 - Yet another email
9/16/09 - Finally, a letter urging her not to "disappoint a friend who's looking forward to staying on top of our technological future", once again making it as hard to figure out as possible that the subscription still has a year to go before it expires.

Now, I understand that the magazine industry is struggling. There is so much competition for our time and attention. Honestly, when was the last time you read a magazine when you weren't on an airplane or in a waiting room?

But you would think that the magazine that employs the guy who wrote The Long Tail would maybe have a clue. Deceiving your customers is no way to keep them. Wired tried to walk a fine line between aggressively pursuing subscriptions and outright lying to customers, and then crossed right over. It's possible that the software people who wrote their email reminder system forgot to look at the year the subscription expired, only focusing on the month. As a software person myself, I'd be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. But when my mom emailed Wired to complain, she got a form letter that totally ignored her question and suggested that it was her responsibility to keep track of her subscription, not theirs, and that she should just ignore their urgent emails if she had already renewed.

It's sad - I think the magazine industry fills a good niche. They're more specialized than the newspapers, though not as timely. But they're more succinct and faster than books. There is clearly a spot for something resembling a magazine in the future of media. But when the pursuit of another year of subscription fees becomes more important than how you treat your customers, you're waving a white flag. You're telling the world that you are unable to compete, unable to adapt to a changing world, and you're clinging to deceptive marketing to prop up the status quo.

I feel like I repeat the same thing, over and over, but too many people don't seem to get it. There will always be a place in the world for talented people. But when those talented people refuse to acknowledge that some of the ways they used to make money might not work anymore, and start demanding that the world change back to the way it was, they lose their relevancy. You can't try to limit technological advances to save you from having to redefine the way you do business. You have to look at what the technology enables, and how it can help you.

You'd think a technology magazine would get that.

It's mostly working

I'm not quite there, but at least the domain is transferred from Dreamhost to Webfaction. There are two reasons I transferred. The first is that Dreamhost doesn't support Django out of the box. The second is that, while I'm very happy with my Dreamhost experience (Happy customer since 2004), and will continue to use them for my personal sites, when I asked about setting up an account for Manfred Macx LLC, they didn't seem that thrilled. It would have been possible, but registering two accounts to the same person is against their terms of service (No idea why), and they seemed a little hesitant that the contact for the LLC already had an account.

All that to say I would recommend either host if you're in the market. I'm new to Webfaction, but so far I've been very happy. And this is the only complaint I've had with Dreamhost in five years.

So, please excuse any hiccups in the site, and thanks for following along.

Quick technical note

Over the next day (Or perhaps weekend), I'm going to be moving this site from my personal hosting to Manfred Macx corporate hosting. Shouldn't be any real interruption, but if you happen to comment here after I dump the database, it'll probably get lost.

One book does not a reversal of policy make

I don't share the optimism of Teleread and Kindle Nation, but it appears that Amazon has not entirely deserted free ebooks.

They do, however, remain committed to controlling virtually every aspect of the Kindle that they've leased you, which is not terribly consumer-friendly.

Still, at least it's not as bad as it originally seemed.

Free ebooks back at Amazon- John Lutz Urge to Kill | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home.

Free content doesn't mean free everything

Over and over, when someone proposes giving away something for free in order to make more money on whatever else it is you're selling, whether it's the hard copy of your book, the tickets to your show, or anything else, some people see "free" and can't understand that it doesn't end there. People get so mad that you'd suggest that everyone starve because "kids these days" don't want to pay for music.

One of the comments on the really nice article linked below is one such person.

Eric: I have to say that this model saddens me. Where's the respect for the value of the artist's labor when its given away free? In over 25 years as a music writer for film/tv/theater, etc. I have many times been approached with some version of "We don't have much budget on this one but do us a solid and there should be a good budget on the next...." NEVER, has one of these ever come back with a decent paying gig and more than once people have come back with, "Oh, but last time you were able to do this for us. How come?"

First of all, it's clear the guy didn't read the post. No one was suggesting you do the show for free. The author of the article (Derek, not Eric) didn't actually say to give anything away for free. He just advocated making an appeal to fans to buy your cd. Pay what you want, even if it's nothing, but walk out of the show with a copy of the cd.

The point is that, in his experience, the bands make more money this way. This has nothing to do with giving away your work for some idealistic notion of good for society. It has nothing to do with disrespecting creative works. The opposite, in fact - it's all about compensating the creator in a way that allows him or her to continue creating, and treats fans like fans, not potential thieves.

You have to stop and think - is it better to make a living doing what you love, or to be compensated for each and every use of your work?

Article: Emphasize meaning over price = More paid sales | Derek Sivers via CwF RtB on Twitter

This wouldn't be so bad if the Kindle were more open

Bad news for Kindle readers, especially the less computer-savvy.

But it is worth noting at this juncture that Amazon appears to have made a business decision, at least for now, that "free" will play an increasingly limited role in the Kindle Store

Amazon certainly has a right to shift focus and resources from free and public domain books to the books they're trying to sell. But it's pretty disappointing. For many people, unfortunately, the Kindle is the ebook reader. It's done wonders in showing the non-technical part of the population that ebooks and readers are out there. But it's these very same non-technical people who are likely to get all their reading material from the Kindle store, which is of course what Amazon wants. They've put up all sorts of hoops to jump through if you want to put other content on the Kindle.

And so these non-technical people are effectively cut off from public domain books, or books from other publishers who can't or won't play ball with Amazon's restrictions on the Kindle.

Also disappointing is that Amazon doesn't want to deal with free promotional titles.

The number of free promotional titles has been dwindling since August, and no new free promotional titles have been added this month despite numerous publisher requests to offer free titles.

There is no question that free promotional titles can grow your fanbase. Two of my favorite science fiction authors reeled me in with free ebooks (here and here). I've since not only bought books from them, but pre-ordered a couple. Again, Amazon certainly has a right to do what they're doing. I'd just rather they chose not to.

Fortunately, it keeps plenty of room in the ebook market and the ebook reader market for others to come in and fill the holes.

Article: Kindle Nation Daily: Honey, They're Shrinking "Free" in the Kindle Store via Teleread.

It's hard not to hate Dan Brown

But we should try. I mean, unless you know something I don't - I assume he's a perfectly pleasant guy. But it's pretty much Dan Brown, then everyone else (See here via here). Of course we'll be at least a little annoyed at the guy who's lapping the field.

And of course, we tell ourselves we don't think this way, but we really do - we secretly maintain that anyone that popular can't be any good. If it appeals that strongly to the unwashed masses, it must be beneath us, the civilized and knowing.

The question comes down to, "Is Dan Brown's success good or bad for other authors?" It appears that, as his sales go up, overall sales are going down. Dan Brown is an ever-increasing piece of a shrinking pie. When the US economy turns around, maybe the pie will expand a bit again. But for now, it's his world.

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I think his success is good for authors.

He's proving that people will buy (and perhaps more importantly, read) books if you get them excited. Some may complain that it's only the very biggest and most popular writers who are getting this kind of marketing and attention, and that the lesser-known authors are being ignored. This may be true, but I choose to see that as opportunity rather than tragedy. People are buying books. If they aren't buying yours, maybe you aren't getting them excited enough. But that means there's something you can do.

If no one is buying any books, then authors are in trouble. But if people are buying books, just not yours, then you have opportunity. You can do a better job of selling your book, of promoting your book. Maybe you even write a better book. But you can do something.

I wish Dan Brown the best, though he doesn't seem to need it. And I'm excited about the opportunity to get people excited about books not by Dan Brown.

Word count limits don't have to happen

I've been thinking about this post for a while.

I would say that the absolute upper limit of OK is 100,000 for a debut novel, but you'll find some people turned off to it if it's anything above 80,000.
I'm not making these numbers up from my experience--I've read identical stats on a lot of agent blogs. It's pretty much an industry standard.

There is effectively a hard cap on the number of words you can have in your debut novel. More words equals more expensive to print, and a new author is too risky.

That sucks.

Let's assume that we're talking about a book that 1) would have a reasonable audience if it were published, and 2) would be significantly harmed by chopping words off until it got under the cap. That is, this cap is the only thing keeping it from being published. So how do we fix this? How do we get these books out where the author can make some money, and people can experience a book from a new author?

Well, the simple answer is to remove the risk.

Luckily, digital distribution and print-on-demand makes it much easier to do just that. The up front costs are much lower, which allows the non-traditional publisher to take risks that a traditional publisher couldn't dream of. There are no expensive print runs, or extra books to be pulped.

If you're interested, let us know. We're still on track for a November launch of ManfredMacx.com, and we'd love to talk to interested authors.

Using free to sell more

My last post got linked with a very flattering writeup on Techdirt, which is pretty awesome. The conversation in the comments, however, is a bit disappointing. A lot of people still think that giving away the infinite goods means you give away everything. They think that by giving away the content, you make it impossible to make any money on anything related to the content.

This is completely untrue. There many differences between scarce and non-scarce goods. The important one here is that the marginal cost (the cost to make one additional unit) of a scarce good is greater than zero, while the marginal cost of a non-scarce good is either zero, or close enough to zero to no longer matter.

Cheap or free goods have always been used to increase the value of more expensive goods. For example, I worked at Boater's World in Annapolis in high school. One of my managers used to tell the young associates, "Whenever someone drinks a soda or a beer on the Chesapeake Bay, I want it to be in a Boater's World can coozie". He gave them away all the time to good customers, or to someone making a large purchase. The can coozies are cheap - Boater's World charges 99 cents, so I imagine they cost something like 25 cents. But sometimes a free coozie is just the thing someone needs to decide to buy that expensive new fishfinder. And it's always good to have things out there advertising the name of your business.

Of course, Boater's World loses some money by giving the coozies away. But in return, they have a sale on a larger item, and a satisfied customer, and marketing materials out where people can see them. Even if you make the false assumption that every coozie you give away is a lost sale, meaning the marginal cost to the store is 99 cents rather than 25, it doesn't take many large purchases by happy customers to recoup the losses.

But does giving away the coozies prevent all sales of anything else? Of course not. It also doesn't force Boater's World and all of its suppliers out of business. And this is a situation where the marginal cost of the giveaway item is greater than zero, so the store does take a real loss when it gives them away. Imagine how much better it would be for Boater's World if the coozies cost them nothing to produce?

Infinite goods and artificial scarcity

It's no secret that I read Techdirt a lot. I think they have a lot of good ideas, and a good attitude about things. A lot of the ideas behind Manfred Macx are ideas that Techdirt talks about all the time.

I was arguing with a friend about this article, which talks about creating artificial scarcity in place of something in infinite supply. They give an analogy - what if we had Star Trek replicators for food, so everyone in the world could always have enough food, and no one would have to pay for it? Who, then, would take this food away from the starving? My friend argued that this would be terrible, taking jobs from everyone who works in the food industry.

Unfortunately, it's not a very good analogy. There's no real substitute for food - people have to eat. Whether or not you consider high-fructose corn syrup to be food, you can't escape the need for calories to survive. For the analogy to hold, we'd have to replace the entire music industry, or the entire publishing industry, with something free. No one is talking about doing this.

A better analogy would be if the replicator only made tomatoes. You could have as many tomatoes as you wanted, they'd always be perfect and delicious, and they'd always be free. This would put tomato farmers out of business. But these tomato farmers could likely start growing something else instead. And what happens to the rest of the economy? Pizza and pasta restaurants suddenly find that a major ingredient in many of their dishes just became free. Now, for the same dish, they can charge less, or buy higher quality ingredients, or make more profit. And if you're a really talented cook specializing in tomatoes? Your skills are now in very high demand.

And there is still a demand for the people who bring the tomatoes from the replicator to your table. There is still a demand for the person who stews and cans the tomatoes, or dices and seasons them. And all the other food items, the ones that aren't in infitnite supply, still need people to produce, process, and distribute them.

This is what's happening in the music industry, and starting to happen in the publishing industry. Some parts of the industries are finding their functions obsolete. Instead of looking at the money they could save with electronic distribution, and what good use they could put that money to, the industry is seeking new laws and regulations to limit the infinite supply so business can continue as usual.

Even if every single song, book, and movie was distributed digitally for free, there would still be a need for the music, publishing, and movie industries. There would still be demand for editors, producers, marketers, and all sorts of other services that these industries have always provided.

Reasonable people aren't calling for the abolition of the music, publishing, and movie industries. They're just asking these industries to look to the future, and stop trying to limit supply to protect obsolete business models.

Edit to add: This post has been translated to Spanish by a reader. My Spanish isn't good enough to read the whole thing, but the parts I understand look good.

Introducing Manfred Macx

It gives me great pleasure to introduce you all to Manfred Macx, a new kind of publishing company. It's not a new idea - bands big and small have been doing it for a while, and authors are just starting to try. But as more and more of our media of all kinds is being distributed digitally, where making an extra copy (or a thousand) is nearly instantaneous and effectively free, we have to rethink the way we compensate creators of content.

At Manfred Macx, the author has a book, and the author has a goal, a target dollar amount that unlocks the electronic version of the book. The author can sell almost anything; Paper copies of the book, dinner with the author at a fancy restaurant, a character in the book named after you - whatever. When the target goal is reached, everyone gets the ebook.

Beyond that, Manfred Macx is creating a community around authors and fans, fostering communication and connection in ways that weren't possible before the internet changed our lives.

Watch this space for updates, or sign up for the mailing list. We're looking for authors right now, and expect the site to go live in November.

Labor Day Weekend Project

Over the long weekend, I have a lofty goal for myself. I'm going to put up the teaser site for the project this blog helped inspire. Keep watching this spot, and I'll have all the details.

Something better this way comes

You probably think this blog is abandoned. It is not, really, though it is on extended hiatus.

When it returns, which I hope will be early fall, 2009, it will be more than a blog. It will address some of the ways in which the publishing industry is horribly broken. I will explain what's been keeping me busy since I last posted, and why it's more important to me than keeping up with the blogging.

This is the sort of thing that will make ereaders work

One of the big problems with ereaders is the cost. Even if you get a great deal on the reader itself, you're still stuck paying the exorbitant prices that Amazon and the like charge if you actually want to read a recent book.

The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials.

Manuscripts, rare books, significant cultural materials - these are the things that are in danger of being lost, things that only exist on paper. While it's great to have a paper copy of something written or printed long ago, in the end it's the content that's important, and the permanence of the content that's more important still.

And all for free? Some time in the not-too-distant future, we'll see a day when the quality and quantity of free content for ebook readers will make companies like Amazon rethink the way they do business, and maybe even start charging for the real scarcities while giving away the infinite.

World Digital Library via TeleRead

AT&T looking to monetize things

With the success of Amazon deal with Sprint on the Kindle's always-on internet connection, it should come as no surprise that others are going to want to get in on the synergies.

There's a whole bunch of ways to monetize that type of device, [head of emerging devices at AT&T Glenn] Lurie said in an interview with Bloomberg at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas. "It's coming, it's coming fast," he said. "We're going to be part of it."

This may be putting the cart before the horse - jumping into a market just because you see the dollar signs is a good way to lose your shirt - but doubtless AT&T has the money and the resources to do it right. Whether they do or not remains to be seen. Competition for the Kindle certainly won't hurt consumers.

via AT&T May Enter E-Book Market, Dominated by Kindle Update2 - Bloomberg.com.

The depressing same-ness of the ebook reader industry

This is what qualifies as news these days in the world of ebook readers.

As for features, the device is simple but practical: SD card support guarantees easy storage of eBooks and music it's an MP3 players too, and Foxit, a company most famous for its lightweight PDF software, guarantees the device will read PDFs very well, a factor that help mitigate the reader's lack of a Whispernet-type service.

So, this ebook reader is exciting because it's sure to be really good at handling a file format that, while common, isn't particularly well-suited for ebooks.

via Ebooks: $260 Foxit eSlick eBook Reader Makes Its Way to Cheapskate Readers.

The demise of the newspaper will make us better off

Much has been made of the impending demise of the newspaper, as the Old Media (With a few exceptions) has steadfastly refused to embrace the new opportunities of digital delivery of content. Many seem to think that, without newspapers, we will have no accountability, no one to peel back the layers and expose the wrongdoing in the world and in our government.

Meanwhile, Comedy Central and The Daily Show are making a pretty strong case that we may actually have more accountability.

blockquote>Stewart's point was that Wall Street got fat off of all our pension plans, 401K's and long-term investments, while the "Fast Money" crowd cashed in our long-term investments -- and CNBC was complicit in the entire gambit...

Click through below and watch the video, which I believe includes unaired content, and watch Stewart skewer Jim Cramer over CNBC's role in our financial mess.

Far from needing newspapers to keep everyone honest, perhaps the time has arrived when newspapers are actually holding us back. If they go away, we won't see an end to journalism. In fact, with greater freedom, unshackled from the old ideas of what journalism is, we may see a renaissance. In some ways, with anyone who cares to observe and share the world, we already have. People can complain about the quality of much of this sharing all they want, but the fact that much of it is well-produced, well-thought-out, and spot-on is inescapable.

The world does not need newspapers. It simply needs good journalism. And that shows no signs of going away.

via Jon Stewart slaughters crazy finance guy Jim Cramer -- video - Boing Boing.

How NOT to sell ebooks

Astak got a lot of press last year for promising an ebook reader in the $150 price range. That never materialized, but they are now selling a rebranded Hanlin V3 for $270, putting them right alongside much of the competition. Cheaper than Sony and Amazon, but not cheap enough to change anything.

So, they've launched Mobiebook, an ebook store to go along with their reader. This makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is the giant disclaimer on the front of the site:

All eBooks on this website are powered by Mobipocket eBooks common library and you can read them on your PC, but not on the EZ Reader. This is because the EZ reader currently does not support DRM ebooks. We are working hard on supporting the DRM format, and we will notify EZ Reader users when a firmware update is available it will be displayed on this website.

Can you imagine if you bought an iPod and followed Apple's instructions to head over to iTunes, and then were told you were welcome to buy songs, but you couldn't play them on your new device? iTunes would have lasted about a week with no sales before disappearing.

When you have two complementary products (MP3s and MP3 players, ebooks and ebook readers, whatever), sales of one are supposed to drive sales of the other. Ideally, this even works both ways. But here, because of the ongoing ebook format wars and the inclusion of anti-consumer DRM, we have a situation where the complementary goods aren't even complementary.

They also have a really interesting "promotion" going on, where you can pay extra for things that are usually included in the price. Maybe I'm missing something - the website is pretty awful - but I'm not sure where the deal part of this is.

The "iPod of books" will be something like this

There has been a lot of talk about whether or not the Amazon Kindle is "the iPod of books". People who aren't desperately trying to attract search traffic will tell you the truth - niether the Kindle nor any of its competitors are anywhere close to having the impact on the industry that the iPod has had.

But if you're looking for a game changer, look at stuff like this. For $40 more than a Kindle, you get a full computer.

The specs, from their site:

9.4" x 7" x 1.4" for 2 lbs (with keyboard)
ARM Texas Instruments OMAP3 chip
1024x600 8.9'' screen
Storage: 8GB micro SD card
Wifi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth
3-dimensional accelerometer
Speakers, micro and headphone
6 USB 2.0 (3 internal, 2 external, 1 mini)
10h to 15 hours of battery life

Sure, there are netbooks out there for less money. But detaching the keyboard (or even not purchasing it, for $100 less) leaves you with a tablet with a ten hour battery. Sure, eInk ebook readers have a longer life between chargings, but how often are any of us away from a plug for more than ten hours?

You give up the ubiquitous internet connection and a bit of battery life that the Kindle offers, but you gain so much in openness and flexibility. You have a Linux-based operating system and a touchscreen. What more do you want from an ebook reader? It comes with WiFi and a web browser, so any ebook store that isn't closed to the non-Kindle-owning-public like Amazon's is easily accessible.

I want one of these.

I am curious, though, as to what they mean by "3-dimensional accelerometer". It sounds like something the marketing department made up.

Thanks to Alex for pointing this out.

Digital distribution - doesn't anyone get it?

This has nothing to do with ebooks directly, but everything to do with the same old problems of creating and distributing non-scarce content.

Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner, thinks the solution for online television is "asking online users to verify they subscribe to some form of pay TV before they get to watch content on other platforms. Whether consumers pay through their cable company, the telephone company or a satellite provider doesn't matter. This, Bewkes says, will preserve a robust environment for video by making sure that no matter where it is watched, it continues to benefit from a dual-revenue stream of subscriptions and advertising." Check out the rest of the article.

The problem here is that, once again, the distributor is looking to preserve the old ways of making money without a thought to how to provide more value to the customer.

You know why Hulu is great? They provide easy-to-access, totally free video online. They show commercials, but not many of them, and they try to make the ones they do show count. Most of them are a little longer than your typical tv commercial, but usually quirky and just more interesting than your average commercial. I've found myself actually paying attention to commercials on Hulu.

And of course, the big content providers are constantly trying to kill Hulu. In the end, they probably will, making everyone worse off than before.

So, why won't this "dual revenue stream" model work? First of all, it will be impossible to implement with anything resembling the convenience of Hulu. How do you prevent sharing of accounts? That is, me and 1,000 of my friends get one cable subscription, and share a user id? Well, what the cable companies will do is limit the number of computers you can use, or limit the IP addresses, or something like that. Inevitably, this will prevent legitimate uses of the service. For example, in my house we have four computers regularly in use - my personal laptop, my work laptop, my wife's laptop, and the desktop hooked up to the tv. Can my one cable subscription allow me to watch on any one of those? If so, how can it prevent me from giving my user id to my neighbor?

What's really absurd is the underlying assumption that, without subscription fees as well as advertising revenue, quality video content just can not be produced. Think about all the television shows that only have one of those - HBO series, for example, or anything on regular network television. Are these shows of substandard quality?

The next revolution in the way we watch video content won't come from Time Warner, or any of the other big content providers. They have too much invested in the old ways of doing things, and are terrified to embrace the new. For the most part they seem afraid to even try to understand the new.

Online video isn't about convincing people that "if content has value to them, it's worth paying for". That's utterly irrational. Online video is all about taking something in infinite supply and using it to increase the value of things that are finite. Until the content providers realize this, they will always have to crush the Hulus of the world out of existence before they show people that there's a better way to do things.

It's too bad Amazon didn't ask for advice

Many people are calling the Amazon Kindle the "iPod of books". It's really unfortunate that, while it had a chance to change the market the same way the iPod did, Amazon's shortsighted focus on locking down their content and protecting sales of paper books has made the Kindle an interesting but ultimately flawed device.

It's pretty simple: many book publishers look at this new medium and ask, "how can I use it to augment my current business model." I'd like Amazon to challenge that thinking and say to the world, "how can you use this platform to create a new business model?"

There were really two ways to look at the release of the Kindle. On one hand, you could look at it as an extension of the current market, something to fit nicely into the well-defined parameters of the publishing world. Or, you could look at it as something entirely new, something unrestricted by past practices and old ways of thinking.

Clearly, Amazon chose the former. There are advances in the way you can buy and read books. The always-on internet connection is a great idea. But there are no giant leaps. It's more business-as-usual in a slightly new way.

Article: Seth's Blog: Reinventing the Kindle (part II).

Guaranteed cash up front, everyone might win

The industry needs to understand that a) fans are always thirsty for more content, b) thereÃ¢‚¬„¢s a lot of content to give, and c) this is not the time to be cheap.

What industry are we talking about here? Obviously it doesn't matter. It happens to be the music industry, but the idea applies to anyone who deals with distributing content.

iTunes Pass, as the article says, is a great idea. You pay now, and you get everything the artist releases in the future. It guarantees a payment up front, some of which Apple might even pass on to the artist. And, since we're talking about infinitely copyable digital content, there's no "loss" when the new content is released straight to the customer who has already paid. Being paid up front means the risk is lower for the content to come - not only is there already money to go towards production, but there is a better sense of the demand, as well as committed fans who may be eager to pay for related goods.

There's even a small chance that fans win here, too. If a model like this is successful, and the content companies realize that they don't have to collect money for each and every transaction, maybe we'll see some real change in the markets.

Article: Why iTunes Pass is a Great Idea.

Screen breakage is not the most common complaint

"Screen breakage is the number one complaint with today's e-reader technology. Our display can take a lot of rough and tumble," says Joe Eschbach of Plastic Logic.

Why don't I believe that?

Perhaps because I've never once seen someone complain about an ebook reader screen breaking. Sure, I don't work for a company making a much-hyped reader like Joe Eschbach does, but I do read a lot about ebook readers.

A common complaint is that they are ridiculously expensive, rivaled only by the ridiculous expense of the ebooks themselves. Also, they don't really do anything except allow you to read things, and who wants to carry around yet another device that only does one thing, even if it does it better than anything else?

It sounds like Plastic Logic has some really cool technology, but a poor understanding of what the market wants, and how to serve it. A magazine-sized ebook reader is even harder to carry around than the smaller Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle, making one of the most common complaints even worse.

It's disappointing that New Scientist actually took the time to publish this article, which reads like a press release from Plastic Logic more than a scientific article.

Article: Flexible electronic books to hit market soon - tech - 23 February 2009 - New Scientist.

A small step forward, a giant step back

The world's leading provider of e-reading solutions, Netherlands based iRex Technologies (www.irextechnologies.com), has today announced that it has reached agreement with Adobe to license the Reader Mobile 9 SDK which provides support for the PDF and EPUB file formats plus support for Adobe's content protection technology which it will offer on its iRex DR1000 series.

It's great that iRex is supporting EPUB. The more support this format gets, the more likely it is we'll have a standard format for ebooks across all platforms instead of all these competing formats. Imagine if you needed a different web browser for different websites you visited (Beyond the terrible websites that only work in Internet Explorer).

And reflowable PDF support is fine - PDF isn't an open standard, but it's widespread enough that it doesn't have the large drawbacks of some of the other formats.

Of course, no format support is complete without the inevitable DRM announcement. It's nice to call it "content protection", but we all know it's anti-consumer technology that doesn't work.

An extra kudos to iRex for including this message on the email they sent me with the attached press release (a PDF) - "Please consider your environmental responsibility before printing this e-mail on paper." I not only considered my environmental responsibility, but also my convenience, and didn't print a piece of paper for me to lose.

You can see the press release here.

It's about time someone automated this process

In order to facilitate the process of connecting writers with publishers, then, these two Millennials are building what you might call a digital social marketplace for books. Not eBooks, primarily, though WordHustler is optimized for Amazon Kindle and iPhones, but physical books. "We didn't set out to reinvent the wheel, just to make the wheel turn better," Walls explains.

This is good news. Over at WordHustler, they'll take your digital manuscript and submit it to publishers, as well as provide all sorts of tools to help you along the way. Looking at their FAQ, they understand giving away the stuff that doesn't cost them much (or anything) and selling the stuff that's hard. You can search their database for free, and even bypass all of their services and go straight to the publisher. But they're betting that they can print and ship your manuscript and handle it properly at a price that makes it worthwhile to pay them instead of trying it yourself.

When you have a valuable service to sell, it makes sense to give away the related things that promote your service and make it more valuable.

Now, they need to take it one step further. What about the people who don't find a publisher? Or who don't want a publisher in the traditional sense? WordHustler already has the digital version of all the manuscripts. It's a small step from there to a "store" full of free ebooks. Rather than gathering dust on the author's shelf, rejected manuscripts have a new chance at life. And giving them away for free means that they may still find their niche, making it much easier to find a market for the next book.

And then there are those who aren't interested in finding a traditional publishing outlet. There are many more ways to get a book into people's hands and make money. Sometimes it doesn't involve a book at all.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The site sounds really helpful. If you have something you're trying to get published, go check them out.

Article: BNET Media Blog | WordHustler Aims to Build Digital Marketplace for Book Publishing

If convenience predicts success, the Kindle could be so much more

[Forrester Research] says convenience is key. It defines the concept in this way: A "comprehensive measure that considers the total product experience." That includes researching the product, obtaining the device, using it, and eventually getting rid of it. The study also says that in successful products, convenience is not a benefit, but "a measure of how easy your product makes it for people to get the benefits your product promises."

They also cite the easy downloading of books without needing a computer as the reason that the Amazon Kindle was an unexpected success. They call ebooks on Amazon "cheap", which is funny, but the point remains.

So, if the convenience of the total product experience of the Kindle was what made it so successful, how much more successful could it have been if Amazon had removed the intentional inconveniences?

What if you could install additional software on it? Software to read other formats, perhaps? An open web browser? What if you could plug in an SD card, like every other reader on the market?

Amazon couldn't do these things without giving up a lot of their control. If you could use an SD card, then maybe you could use an Eye-Fi card and not depend on Sprint's network to provide the Whispernet. If you could use a web browser, you wouldn't need to pay 99 cents to access a blog.

And that's not to say that both generations of the Kindle aren't convenient. Being able to get a new book wherever you are is tremendously convenient. And Amazon's marketing (not to mention Oprah's) means that, while few have heard of many of the ebook readers on the market, most people are familiar with the Kindle. For the non-technical user, perhaps this is enough. Amazon's sales support that theory.

Article: How to predict gadget success | Business Tech - CNET News.

Ebooks on the iPhone

For someone who spends a lot of time thinking and writing about ebooks and ebook readers, I've spent a shamefully small amount of time actually reading ebooks and using ebook readers. But today I got to take a look at an ebook on an iPhone for the first time.

It's not terrible. I should have asked if it was using Stanza or something else. It was a plain white screen with some controls on the side that disappeared after a few moments, leaving me alone with the text. I had a little trouble with the scrolling, but I suspect an experienced iPhone user wouldn't.

The screen is a bit small. This whole experience started while waiting for a meeting to begin. My coworker was reading something on the phone that required both horizontal and vertical scrolling. It looked pretty awkward. But it started the conversation, and then he showed me an ebook he had on the phone. He doesn't read much on it, and unfortunately the meeting started before I could really grill him.

But I can see that some people would be perfectly happy to read books on an iPhone (or an iPod Touch, for which Stanza is also available). It's not paper, or even eInk, but it is something you're likely to have with you all the time, so the extra convenience will make up for many of the shortcomings.

The eSlick at CeBIT

Foxit will be showing off their new eSlick at the CeBIT Global Conference and Expo in Germany at the beginning of March. They've already sold out of their first batch of them, and expect the next shipment around April. At $259, the price is very competitive.

They are also using their experience working with PDF software to add value - they include software to convert "any printable document" to PDF for display on the device. That means it's probably safe to buy one for your mom and not worry that she'll have to learn the difference between mobi and epub and all the other competing formats out there.

If you're going to be attending the conference, I'd love to hear about their exhibit. My travel budget is currently insuffiecient for a trip to Europe.

Bookworm - A platform for open ebooks

A friend pointed me to a new service to store all the ebooks you have in epub format so you can read them wherever you are - at your computer, on your web-enabled mobile phone, or on an ebook reader that supports the format.

I just signed up. I downloaded Ayn Rand's Anthem and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations from Feedbooks and added them to my new Bookworm account. Before you ask: Yes, I would love to sit in a room with Rand, Smith, and Jeff Bezos and discuss the state of the electronic publishing market.

It is unfortunate that I have no mobile device capable of trying this out, but it's not entirely unpleasant to read on my laptop. Bookworm remembers my place, as promised.

More exciting than the service is the attitude. From their about page:

Will other book formats be supported, such as PDF or mobi? What about DRM ebooks?
Bookworm is meant to push adoption of the open ePub format and there are no plans to support closed formats like mobi or those with limited flexibility like PDF.
DRM (digital rights management) has been shown to be detrimental to technology adoption, does not significantly prevent piracy, and provides a terrible user experience. Bookworm will never support DRM'ed ebooks that require special software to unlock. Instead we encourage publishers to explore forms of "soft" DRM (such as watermarking digital books with the name of the purchaser).

"Soft" DRM is silly - the idea is that if you stick the person's name on the digital file, they won't share it with others. It is an improvement over typical DRM, but still decreases the value of the book while offering nothing to the customer in return.

However, open source publishing software, using only open formats, can only be good for consumers. Openness leads to innovation because one group can build on the work of another. And sooner or later, some of those groups will figure things out, and you'll never again have to pay $9.99 for an infinitely copyable ebook.

Check them out - they're getting a lot of things right, and the backing of a big company like O'Reilly will help show other publishers what's possible.

Nothing surprising from the Kindle 2

How did Amazon do on fulfilling my wishes for the Kindle 2? Failure on four of five counts, and no compelling reason for current Kindle owners to upgrade. SD card support? WiFi? Free things staying free and a reasonable pricing structure for books? All ignored by Amazon. Clearly they aren't reading this blog. They did improve the user interface, to the surprise of no one.

And they haven't given any current Kindle owners a reason to upgrade. The battery life is better, and it's thinner. It's easier to use. It works in the two states that couldn't get the Whispernet connection before. All of these things are nice, but not game-changing.

Amazon had (And still has, with future generations of the Kindle) a chance to change everything about reading. Instead, they chose to release another device with bells and whistles and a pretty package, but locked down tightly to protect their ability to continue overcharging for digital content.

Gutenberg.com launches today

Chris Andrews, the Executive Producer of Gutenberg.com, is particularly excited about bringing together people who read ebooks into a new network, where they can learn, discuss, and have some fun. "I think it's important that we remember that reading is fun. It's fun whether it's in a printed book or an ebook. And people love to discuss books. Let's not let the "computer syndrome" hit us, where we make everything complicated. Keep it simple, this is a book, everyone knows what a book is. It's been around for over 500 years."

A lovely sentiment, and it really gets to the heart of the problem with ebook readers. It is not that people are sitting around wishing for a new device to allow them to buy their beloved books all over again. People are thinking, "I live in a world where information is increasingly digital, and my books remain mostly unchanged in 500 years."

If we focus on what is great about books, and what we can add to them now that internet connections are everywhere new things are possible, the ebook readers will come.

The new Gutenberg.com is hoping to do that. They have a social network built on Ning that they'd like you to be a part of. They have a blog. And if they're lucky, they'll ride the coattails of the Amazon announcement rather than get buried by it.

Press release: Gutenberg.com Officially Opens - Invites Ebook Lovers and Neophytes Worldwide to Become Part of Growing Ebook Community.

I feel like it's the Super Bowl Pregame Show

And I hate the Super Bowl Pregame Show. Also, I think I just violated the NFL's concept of its rights to the words "Super Bowl". Please, NFL, send a bogus lawsuit my way, I could use the publicity.

Amazon is starting their press conference at 10AM. So the next hour and a half will be filled with posts, just like this one, from all the tech blogs and the publishing blogs and all the other interested people. They will all say the same nothing that we've been hearing for a while. Yes, shots of the new Kindle leaked. Are they real? Probably. Who cares?

As you can see, I have nothing to say on the Kindle that hasn't been said too many times already. And neither does anyone else. So we will all spend the time between now and when something interesting happens by rehashing the same things, over and over, trying to make them sound new and fresh.

10AM can't come soon enough.

A Stephen King story just for the Kindle 2?

It's unclear whether this will be a permanent exclusivity arrangement or for a limited period. According to the WSJ, the new story features a Kindle-style ebook reader playing an unspecified role

Oh, if only Stephen King would write a story about a DRM server that became self-aware, killing millions before a plucky little hero saved the day and showed us all a new business model for infinite goods.

I'm actually a big fan of Stephen King, and this is a cool promotion. What would be even cooler is if Amazon had just paid him to write the story, then released it to the world for free. After a few months, less maybe, they could still sell paper copies of the book. Everyone wins.

Article: Kindle 2 to debut with exclusive Stephen King story? - SlashGear.

The new Kindle will disappoint

By managing both the content and the device on which to consume it, Amazon is in a fantastic position to do great things in the electronic publishing market. Later today, they're expected to announce the new version of their ebook reader, the Kindle. The speculation is that it will be thinner, lighter, and easier to use. "The "Previous Page" and "Next Page" buttons are smaller and less intrusive, to prevent accidents.", Forbes says. Most other articles about it are even less interesting.

The new Kindle will probably be the best ereader on the market. The current model is already arguably the best available, so improvements should cement that position. But until Amazon stops thinking about how to sell books in a new format and starts thinking about what fundamental changes to the way people read are now possible, whatever they might announce will be a disappointment.

It may be great for their bottom line - Amazon's stock is doing quite well - but for everyone who isn't a stockholder, incremental improvements to an expensive device that displays expensive words isn't nearly as exciting as Amazon would like you to think. It's still just a slightly more convenient way for people to purchase and read books.

What about enabling things that just weren't possible with books made of paper? Interactive book clubs, automatic updates to serialized novels, communication with the author, or any number of things that become possible when you have an always-on internet connection. But Amazon, like everyone else in the market, is too focused on protecting the old way of doing things instead of embracing everything new.

Today, and in the days to come, you will hear a lot about how wonderful the new device is, how this one is really "the iPod for books", and how great Amazon is. And then you'll go back to reading books in more or less the same way you did before.

Amazon is surely wetting its pants now!

Google is constantly updating its library of public domain books, currently 1.5 million strong, so you should expect an ever-increasing number of books available to read both on both PCs and on your phone.

While it's great that Google is making more and more books available in electronic format, I hardly think Amazon is worried about error-filled scans of public domain books.

Article: Google Makes iPhone the New eBook Reader: Watch Out Kindle - PC World.

Something to sell, something to give away

I love Techdirt. Many of the ideas I present here are based on (or, honestly, stolen from) things I read there. If you don't read Techdirt, you should.

Here's a good article to start on. It helps that it's about both my favorite band and one of my favorite concepts. Nine Inch Nails has made a lot of money recently since ditching the record label and experimenting with new ways to sell music. Giving away MP3s and other digital content and selling collector's editions, cds, dvds; Recently they've made concert footage available for people to mix and edit and do whatever they want.

This concept of taking things that you can copy as many times as you want and using them to promote the things that can't be easily copied, the things still worth paying for, is the future of most media. TV, movies, books, music - new technology means that you can do so much more with your content, things that weren't possible even a decade ago. It just takes a little innovation and good ideas on how to make people want to give you their money.

Take the example of two of my favorite authors, Charles Stross and John Scalzi. I became fans of both by reading novels they were giving away in electronic form for free.

I first read Stross' Accelerando a few years ago. It was, and still is, available as a free download. Since then, I have had a beer with Charlie, and read most of his books. I own probably half of them (including a paperback copy of Accelerando, though that's because I inadvertently put it on my Amazon wish list, and someone bought it for me for Christmas). I will continue to buy his books as they come out.

I first read Scalzi's Agent to the Stars at about the same time. It, too, remains available for free online. I have not had any personal contact with him, but not because I couldn't - his blog is widely read, and he really communicates with his commentors. I haven't spoken with him because I haven't really had anything to say, though I read his blog regularly. I own a few of his books, too.

Both of these authors gave things away for free, connected with fans, and made me want to buy their books. Will this work all the time, for every author? Well, maybe not in exactly the same way. But the model has so much possibility. Eventually, no one will pay to simply watch a movie or read a novel. People will still pay to see a movie in the theater, or see a musician in concert. But the content itself will be free. Some people won't be able to make any money any more, and that's unfortunate. But many will, and some will make much more than they ever thought possible. In the end, society will be better off.

It's not clear that reading is really evolving

CBC said Shortcovers is like a bookstore in your pocket - no matter you are, in the back of a cab, at a Starbucks or Tim's - you can find your next great read, click, buy and get it downloaded instantly. You only need your existing mobile device: like an iPhone, Blackberry, or a web browser. That's a huge convenience for consumers, especially because you can use the mobile phone you already have vs some special ereader.

Perhaps it's sour grapes because their PR people didn't reply to my inquiry, but I don't find very much exciting or innovative about Shortcovers. Or maybe they're just being secretive leading up to their big launch, promised sometime this month.

The idea seems to be very similar to what Amazon has done with the Kindle, except not restricted to a particular device. While this is a fine service that's sure to get some use, it's hardly ground-breaking.

However, they hint at "surprises" when they launch, so we could still see something amazing. At the very least, increased competition in the market should be good for consumers.

via Shortcovers - Leading the evolution of reading.

Ebooks - will we ever learn?

There's a long and interesting article at Ars Technica from a guy who's been in the ebook business for a long time. His point is, basically, that everyone has gotten it wrong for the last ten years, making the same mistakes, over and over. And the big players today are still making those mistakes.

He lists many of them, and most will sound familiar - Ebooks are too expensive; DRM hurts honest customers and doesn't do a thing to stop piracy, which is a vastly overstated problem anyway; No one has tried anything really and truly new with ebooks.

It's all a little depressing. I was hoping he'd get to some brilliant idea to save the book industry, but he never really does. But he gets it - he sees the ridiculous state of the industry now, stubbornly clinging to the old way of doing things instead of embracing all the new things you just couldn't do before.

The world is still looking for publishing business models that work and will continue to work when all books are ebooks. Someone could make a lot of money . . .

Ebooks and strange bedfellows

If your lover is an erotica-lover, get him or her one of the incredibly sexy erotic ebooks available at Adultebookshop.com. Starting at $2.65, these ebooks can be downloaded and enjoyed with privacy on the computer, iphone or ipod touch. (Or, if you really want to splurge, pair the ebook up with an ebook reader, $265 and up.)

A nice ebook reader could do the same thing for erotic literature that the internet-connected computer did for erotic movies. Never underestimate the power of the porn industry to drive technological innovation.

via Denver Sex and Romance Examiners: Unique, sexy gifts for Valentine's Day.

The Kindle wouldn't have happened without the iPod

But even the 500,000 estimate would mean that the Kindle is outpacing iPod unit sales in the iPod's second year on the market, when it sold only 378,000 units. That means if you turned back the clock and launched both at the same time, the Kindle would be outselling the iPod by 32 percent.

The problem here is that you can't compare sales figures. The Kindle is, in some sense, standing on the shoulders of the iPod. The iPod changed the way people thought about buying and listening to music. The Kindle hasn't even yet earned the "iPod of books" title that was nevertheless bestowed upon it almost immediately.

Yes, Amazon has sold a lot of Kindles. Yes, they sell them so fast they can't keep them in stock. But the Kindle is just a pretty slick new package on essentially the same old business model. It hasn't fundamentally changed the market.

If you had released the two at the same time, Kindle sales would have been much lower because people would have had no idea what to do with it. The iPod paved the way for the very idea of the Kindle. It gave it a context in people's minds, something similar that it could be compared to. It's impossible to measure what this did for Kindle sales, but it did something, and you can't ignore that something in making hypothetical projections.

Article: Is The Kindle Outpacing Early iPod Sales? - washingtonpost.com.

Free Kindles and no newspapers

If [T]he [T]imes killed its paper print-run and followed the Kindle-only model, that would leave the newspaper with $346 million in its pocket. Okay, distributing the newspaper electronically in a secure way needs some electronic infrastructure...let's stick a figure of $10 million on that. That still leaves $336 million to spare--a figure not to be sniffed at.

While it's true that printing and delivering a newspaper is a huge cost that makes less and less sense by the day, this analysis still misses the point. Replacing one ridiculous expense with a more ridiculous but smaller expense is not the way to succeed. Newspapers must accept that the only way forward is to focus on the the scarce things they have to sell, and give the rest away.

And no, I don't mean selling the printing presses and the buildings that house them. While these things are scarce, and might bring in some extra cash, they won't solve the problem.

But what do newspapers have that they could sell? They have experienced reporters who will do more than scan Google and Technorati for the latest news. They will actually investigate, research, and report. These are all valuable things that take time and effort. Businesses would pay for extensive, accurate, and timely information about their respective industries. They already do pay for information like this. Collecting this sort of information, weeding out what's not important, presenting it in a readable way, these things are all hard. These things are all valuable. These are things you can sell.

But how does everyone else get their news? For free. Delivered via blogs and RSS feeds and however else people find it convenient. Some will still pay for paper copies, at least for a while longer.

The difference is that, instead of trying to figure out ways to restrict your content, to keep people from getting at it, to inflate the price with artificial scarcity, you get it out there. You use your content to build your reputation as a great place to come for good information. And when people want to pay for your reporting and researching skills, you keep giving the content away. Those who are paying you can have it first, maybe, but after that it goes out onto the internet where others can use it and build on it and consume it and keep building your reputation and naturally inflating the prices, sustainably inflating the prices (provided you continue the high level of service).

Saving the newspaper industry won't really be about the newspaper at all. It will be about transitioning an old industry that focused on putting things on paper into a new industry that focuses on collecting information and putting it together to be consumed.

Article: Fast Company - Should The New York Times Ditch Paper, Distribute Kindle E-readers?

My Kindle 2.0 Wishlist

If you'e been paying attention to the ebook world lately, you've no doubt heard that Amazon is expected to announce the second generation of their Kindle reader on February 9th. Rather than add to the already rampant speculation, or further insult the UI (I haven't seen a Kindle, so I'm not really qualified to judge the UI anyway), I thought I'd talk about the things that I'd like to see in the new device.

SD card support - It's a great feature that they back up all your files in case you lose or delete them, but every other device on the planet supports some kind of removable media. I already have a half dozen SD cards lying around, so that's my removable media of choice.

No charge for stuff that's already free - Ten cents to put a PDF on your Kindle? 99 cents a month to read an RSS feed, and only for approved blogs? It's like they built a big fence around your house, and then told you they had to charge you a dollar every time you want to go to the grocery store so they could pay for the fence.

WiFi - Even Amazon admits that their Whispernet connection only works in 48 states, and nothing international. Montana, Alaska, and the entire rest of the world is left out. The Whispernet is a fantastic idea, but with WiFi available in more and more places, it would be nice to be able to take advantage of it.

Improved user interface - As I said, I've never used it. But with so many complaints, it must need improving.

A reasonable pricing structure for books - $9.99 is highway robbery for a book that you can't resell, can't loan to a friend, can't do anything with but read. Amazon is one of the few, if not the only, company that has the opportunity to completely change the way the market works. It would be wonderful if they did it the right way. A subscription service like Netflix would probably work.

Aside from the user interface, I don't expect to actually see any of these things. And that's why I don't expect to buy one.

New site all about e-paper

Today, EpaperCentral.com (www.epapercentral.com) announced it is now available to the public. EpaperCentral.com is a hub for news, analysis, information and discussion on all things relating to electronic paper. The site is also dedicated exclusively to delivering the newest, most up-to-date information about electronic paper's nearly endless applications ranging from next generation newspapers, textbooks, signage and mobile devices, to more obscure applications such as windshield navigational displays.

Why anyone would put out a press release on Sunday is beyond me. And doing it on Super Bowl Sunday is utterly insane. But I'm not in marketing, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

In any event, the site looks pretty slick, and they've got details on products that I wasn't aware of, so definitely worth watching.

via EpaperCentral.com Launches Dedicated Hub for E-Paper Developments.

A failure for Amazon

kindlefeeder.com is a service for Amazon Kindle owners that lets you aggregate your favorite feeds and have them delivered to your Kindle in a convenient, easy-to-navigate format. You can also have your feeds delivered to your Kindle automatically on a schedule.

While most of the Amazon-related news these days is about the next-generation Kindle that everyone expects to be announced on February 9th, there are still things going on with the old version.

The mere fact that kindlefeeder.com exists and is not a part of Amazon means that Amazon isn't meeting all the needs and desires of their customers. That's okay, and to be expected. They can't think of everything.

But the fact that the site owner is now afraid that what he's done (make the Kindle more valuable by providing additional services for it) is actually against Amazon's terms of service means that Amazon probably did think of this, and decided they didn't want people doing it.

This insistence on controlling every word that goes onto your Kindle is the main reason I didn't buy one, and won't buy generation two unless it stops. It means that Amazon hasn't figured out how to properly monetize the Kindle. In general, the company is pretty open with how you use their services - they try to help people sell their stuff in the Amazon marketplace, they provide online storage and processing power for people to purchase, as well as numerous other things. These services are very open because Amazon knows how to charge you. Each gigabyte of data you send or store using their service has a calculable price.

But the money is much fuzzier with the Kindle, and so it's much more restricted. In the long run, this is a mistake. Basing your business on preventing people from doing what they want with your device will always limit your market. You may make more money now, but you leave so much potential on the table.

Link: kindlefeeder.com - RSS and Atom Feed Subscriptions For Your Amazon Kindle, via MakeUseOf.com - Cool Websites and Tools (#258)

Fiction isn't just going to disappear

A comment I left at Teleread prompted a contributor there to send me to an interesting article on the future of novels. My first thought was, "that's the biggest and most obnoxious tip jar I've ever seen on a website". That led me to think, "There's no way the person who wrote this article has any concept of infinitely copyable digital content".

But I was very wrong. And the article comes from an author, someone who has experienced some of the changes in the world of publishing fiction, which puts him in a much more qualified position than many to speak about the industry.

He makes the point that some will be harmed by changes - the electronic revolution will mean that some won't be able to make a living by writing any more. That's unfortunate - no one wants anyone to lose their livelihood. Certainly when I say that you can't charge for an ebook, I don't mean that I think authors should work for nothing just so I don't have to spend $9.99 at Amazon.

I do think that authors need to find new ways to make money, and it's nice to see some authors agreeing with me. People are thinking about new ways to publish fiction. It's not going to be the end of fiction, but it might be the beginning of the end of the way the publishing industry does business today.

Luckily, many authors will adapt, and many publishing companies will adapt, and people will still get to consume fiction. But the way it gets paid for will probably be very different. Not scary, but different.

All signs point to a new Kindle

Amazon press conference on 2/9: I can haz kindle too?.

Interesting article at CrunchGear about the upcoming Amazon press conference. It seems very likely that the second generation Kindle will be announced.

More interesting, though, since it's been widely assumed that the new Kindle is coming out early this year, is the wish in one of the comments for the ability to resell an ebook purchased for the Kindle. This is not going to happen, and it's a big reason why ebooks are going to have to wait to become a real part of the mainstream.

There are two possible ways in which it might be possible to resell ebooks, and neither of them works.

First, you could apply DRM to the ebooks. This removes the concept of ownership - it is impossible to own something that can be revoked by the "seller" at any moment (see here, here, here, and here). Without owning the ebook, any reselling would have to go through the original "seller". The DRM would have to be transferred in some way, and the new "owner" would still depend on some indifferent third party to allow access to the content. This third party will be incurring costs for each transaction, and would be crazy not to pass these costs onto the customer.

So every time you "sold" the property you "own", the original seller would take another cut. And what happens when they decide to stop supporting the DRM anymore? It's bad enough if you've bought from someone and they take back what you bought. What if you buy from someone and someone else takes back what you've bought? In almost every case, the reseller could make more money than the original seller. The reseller has no costs beyond the original purchase price, and therefore can sell at a much cheaper price. Since the copies are exactly as good as the original, only one original need ever be purchased. This is not a sustainable business model. Bargaining on irrational behavior on the part of all of your customers will not get you very far.

Clearly reselling DRMed content doesn't make sense. So what are the alternatives?

You can resell content without DRM. But why would you? You can copy it as many times as you want. If it was worth $10 to you, surely you can find twenty people to buy it for $0.60 and make a profit. Or you can give it away, since it doesn't cost you anything, and the new friends you might make would be worth more than your initial investment.

So reselling non-DRMed content doesn't make sense, either. Where does that leave us?

Well, that's great for a band . . .

Anyone who reads Techdirt regularly will recognize many of the themes here, particularly those dealing with making money in an industry where it doesn't make sense to charge for your content. And every time they post about another band succeeding with a new business model, I try and imagine how that model could be applied to writers and books with any degree of consistency.

So far I've been frustrated. Certianly there are opportunities for authors as we move into an age of reading digital books instead of paper ones, but I have yet to see or hear or imagine any model where authors will be compensated for their work at a level that will allow them to live while giving away electronic versions of all their work. That is not to say that it can't happen, or won't, but it means that there is more work to be done, and it means that there is tremendous opportunity for someone who can solve the problem.

There is no question that people will continue to write if they aren't being paid. Thousands of fan-fiction sites, Nanowrimo, and any number of other groups, online and off, demonstrate that people like to write for themselves, or just for the sake of writing.

But if we can't figure out how to pay writers enough to do it full-time, the quality of the writing will go down. Sure, Nanowrimo has shown that one can write a substantial piece of fiction in a short time. But to get something equal in quality to your average published novel takes more than a month. And books like that will be hard to come by if no one can quit their day job and write full-time.

So readers and writers alike are in this boat together, in need of a new plan to compensate writers when people finally realize that it doesn't make sense to pay for something you can copy instantly and perfectly, as many times as you want.

Two minus two is not five, either

The new offline Follett Digital Reader will become available for downloading and installation on customers' computers on February 9. Users will be alerted and directed to the Follett eBook Web site, www.follettebooks.com/readersupport for the installation. The new Follett Digital Reader will replace the Adobe technology customers currently use to download and read a Follett eBook.

Instead of using PDF format, which is proprietary but ubiquitous, Follett Digital Resources will force customers to use software that only works on Windows and Mac. And this comes at a time when Linux is becoming more and more user-friendly, and when schools are realizing that they can save a lot of money by skipping expensive operating systems and using free ones.

So in response, to "protect publisher content", Follett is forcing a new proprietary format, even for books that schools thought they had already purchased. As of March 2nd, your collection will be "transitioned" to the new format, like it or not.

The company claims that this "increas[es] the value of the Follett eBooks in a library's collection". This is strange math. They've taken something that can be used on virtually any platform and made it only available on recent versions of OSX and Windows. It is difficult to see how this increases the value to the customer.

It clearly increases the value to the publisher, who can now collect money for every usage of the content, and certainly they have the right to do that. But it would be nice if they could come out and say that rather than pretending that this change is intended to better serve the customers.

Article: Follett Digital Resources Introduces ''Education-Friendly'' eBook Reader.

How much should you charge for an ebook?

The proper price for an ebook in relation to a printed book is an increasingly common debate. It's very difficult to put a price on something that you can give away as many times as you want without losing anything.

Publisher Walt Shiel offered these thoughts: ". . .We publish all our e-books with a coupon for a discount (equal to the e-book purchase price) applicable to the purchase price of the print edition."

It's nice to see publishers realizing that ebooks can be used as promotion for print editions. But even this is not a sustainable business model. The day will come when printed books are merely collectors items, something to keep behind glass. What will ebooks be used to sell then? Some authors might give away ebooks to promote speaking tours, seminars, or some other sort of access to the author. Some could use them to promote limited print editions, such as signed copies.

And for some, this will be enough. But there's a limit to the number of collector editions anyone can sell, and many authors aren't interested in public speaking or teaching. It's different for musicians, in the same boat in terms of distributing digital content, but much more likely to do live performances, and therefore able to give away content to promote concerts.

The search for an effective business model for ebooks and the next generation of readers will continue. The music industry may be a good guide, but the solution may come from an entirely unexpected source.

Article: Ongoing Reader Debate: Why Are E-Books So Expensive? - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat.

Ebooks anytime, anywhere

Shortcovers, Indigo Books & Music tells Internet Retailer, is a new division of the company with its own e-commerce infrastructure. Shortcovers in February will launch its web site and a mobile application for the iPhone.

Shortcovers seems to have the right idea. They're looking to support the iPhone first, then expand to other smartphones - Blackberry, and phones running Google Android or Symbian.

Michael Serbinis, executive vice president and chief information officer at Indigo Books & Music, says, 'Shortcovers is a service for anyone who wants instant access to content with the convenience of having that access from the device they already own.'

A software approach is certainly more adaptable to changing markets. It won't be long before everyone has some sort of device with them all the time that could be used for reading ebooks and other digital content. Just because readers using E-Ink are popular now doesn't mean it will continue. As mobile phones become more and more like full computers, with larger screens and more powerful processors, and more and more people find that a data plan is just as vital as a voice plan, those same people will realize that any reading they might have done before on paper or on a computer screen can be done on the mobile screen, as well. The companies that are positioned to take advantage of that before it becomes mainstream will be ahead of the competition.

What isn't so clear is what exactly they mean by "shortcovers". They offer previews - first chapters and things like that - with the focus on mobile devices. But it's difficult to see what will set them apart from simply using Amazon.com on a mobile browser.

Article: InternetRetailer.com - Daily News for Tuesday, January 20, 2009.

A failure of the market

So how does it differ from the flock? Well, if you can't find anything to carry around and read then the web service lets you make your own ebooks. A file converter service allows a user to convert text files, documents, RSS feeds and even web pages into eBook format.

The fact that we need a service to take text documents and create ebooks from them to read on the device of your choosing is a failure of the ebook reader market. If you make a reader that can't render a particular file format, it's your responsibility to make sure you handle the conversion.

Article: Make Your Own eBooks With eBook Hood | MakeUseOf.com.

Un-leveraged synergies

Motley Fool | Where's Your Kindle Now, Oprah?.

However, according to The Register, less than half of her monthly book club recommendations are presently available for the e-book reader. Winfrey magazines O and O at Home also aren't available for the Kindle.

It seems that either Amazon wasn't expecting the endorsement, or Oprah's marketing people didn't really take full advantage of the possibilities. Her magazines aren't available on the Kindle. Most of the books on her book club aren't available (Although that's likely due in part to Amazon's insistence on controlling the flow of books to its device).

The biggest winners here may be resellers on Ebay, who probably make a bigger profit on sales of the Kindle than Amazon does.

And the strangest part is that, despite the obvious demand for similar devices, no one has brought anything to market that really competes. Even in this economy, there seems to be a lot of money left on the table that people would be willing to put towards ebooks and ebook readers, and no compelling (and avialable) products to meet the demand.

Using digital goods to sell your other content

When the time comes to sell infinitely copyable goods, like MP3s or ebooks, some try to legislate away anything that hurts the business. Others, like iLearningGlobal, take advantage of manufacturing costs that go to nothing and work to sell scarce things.

Sales people and sales managers can learn how to sell, stay motivated and focused when they listen to MP3 and videos from legends in the sales industry, including Brian Tracy, Harv Eker, Scott Siebold and Mark Victor Hansen. New videos, ebooks, MP3s and articles are added each week. Each member can view as much material as they like, for one low, fixed price of only $79.95 per month.

They allow unlimited downloads of the things already created, where the production costs are already sunk. Then they use that to encourage future payments for non-scarce goods, like custom training help and materials. $80 a month seems pretty high, but this is the business world, where these costs are tax-deductible.

"If companies cannot find the time or resources to train their personnel, iLearningGlobal can step in to help," Snow said. "Now there is no excuse for not training your sales people so companies can beat the recession."

Neither the press release nor the website mention the costs for the custom training, but you can be sure it will be more than $80 a month.

From: Sales Training Doesn't Have to Suffer During Rough Times as Affordable Distance Learning Library Features Topics from Leading Sales Trainers.

Competition for the Kindle?

Via Verizon To Support Kindle Rivals - Technology - redOrbit.

"Competitors to the Kindle are out there and ready," [Verizon head of device certification Tony Lewis] told Reuters. "In 2009 I'd expect them to come to the market."

A while ago, Verizon announced plans to open their network to third-party devices, and gadget-loving users began to salivate at the thought of a fully open network. So far, Verizon hasn't delivered.But maybe this will be the year. Amazon has been unable to keep the Kindle in stock. People have suggested that sales numbers are exaggerated, but it still sells for more than the Amazon purchase price on Ebay, and that is probably a much less biased method to estimate the true demand. People really seem to want these things, thanks in no small part to Oprah and her endorsement.

So why haven't the competitors appeared already? The technology in the Kindle is not groundbreaking. The idea of a lifetime subscription to the data connection being included in the price hasn't really been done before, but there's nothing stopping anyone else from doing it. Having a huge support system like Amazon certainly makes it easier for the Kindle, but Verizon is hardly a mom-and-pop outfit without any money and resources.

Perhaps it is Verizon and the other mobile carriers' reluctance to accept a device that they have so little control over. Verizon sells most of its phones with a proprietary operating system, which makes it easy for the less technically inclined to switch from one Verizon phone to another, but doesn't foster innovation and growth.

Verizon must see the exclusive deals that its competitors have made on devices like the Kindle and the iPhone, and certainly someone has suggested it do the same. It remains to be seen whether it will be before or after the next-generation Kindle, and whether or not anyone cares.

iPhone vs. Kindle - Are they both wrong?

Via New iPhone e-book application takes aim at Amazon's Kindle - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source.

The New York Times today explores the growing visibility of electronic books, with the Kindle leading the way. Amazon doesn't disclose Kindle sales figures, but the Times says estimates range from 260,000 to a million units sold. The story also notes that iPhone applications gave a boost to electronic books this year and "are already starting to generate nearly as many digital book sales as the Sony Reader, though they still trail sales of books in the Kindle format."

The iPhone and the Kindle are two very different approaches to the ebook market. The Kindle is a dedicated gadget for reading ebooks that happens to do other things. The iPhone is coming from the other direction - a device that everyone wants that now happens to do ebooks.

While both are great for the industry as a whole, neither has yet done for ebooks what the iPod did for digital music. When it was released, the Kindle might have been that game-changer, but it hasn't quite worked out that way. Hope remains for the new version of the Kindle, rumored to be released early this year.

But which is a better approach? Should you make a device specifically for ebooks? Or should you take a device that can be adapted to do ebooks, and find a software solution?

The iPhone's software-based solution is closer to the ideal, but it has a long way to go. First of all, it can't just be for the iPhone. It may be the hottest smartphone out there, but it's not the only one, and Apple has always been stingy with their software. And there are more and more screens in our lives, and more and more of the screens are connected to the internet. Why limit yourself to your phone or your ebook reader? In a decade, your toaster will have a four-inch LCD. Maybe you'll want to read an ebook there.

If we focus on the software solutions, and the problems common to all readers - ease of use, reformatting text for different size screens, etc - then we grow the entire market, and the next time something like the Kindle comes along, it has much bigger shoulders to stand on.

Coming Soon!

Most people aren't quite ready to replace good, old-fashioned books with ebooks and readers. But some of us are. Anyone who loves books or cares about writing, publishing, or selling books has to be thinking about what the future holds, and how to be successful when it arrives.

That's what I'd like to talk about here. The new gadgets that will enable the revolution, the new business models that will finance it, and the innovation that will move it along.