Apple Unlikely to Directly Enter e-Book Market?

[Vulpinemac]

I can see reasons for staying away from ereader market and reasons for entering it. i think theyll stay away as long as amazon is kept at bay with the ereader apps in the appstore

I guess the problem with that thought is that both the Kindle Reader app and the Stanza e-book reader app are both owned by Amazon, and personally I think Stanza is the better choice since you can select from several public domain sources as well as DRM sources.

I'd like to have the ability to move a copy of some of my choices over to my iMac for reading, though. Guess I'll just have to wait for the tablet. Maybe you can synch between an iPhone and the tablet.

 

[mb2008]

I don't think Amazon is going to partner on this....apparently Amazon is losing money on the bestsellers that go for $9.99, but they are willing to subsidize to push the Kindle. If enough non-Kindle owners can purchase the loss-leaders, it will become too expensive for Amazon.

It will be an interesting couple of years for the publishing biz. I buy 150+ books a year, and hardly ever buy hardback unless it's a series I'm desparate to read (Harry Potter). But I find myself buying quite a few Kindle books for the iPhone at $9.99. I'm not sure I will continue when the prices go up.

 

[DELLsFan]

Too bad ... I would like to have seen some more pressure exerted on the other e-Book readers out there. No pressure = no innovation.

 

[pro2type]

What is the minimum facilities to have to have a true E-book application ?

Besides just reading (on phone, PC or tablet) I would say the possibility to annotate and make notes to text. To search and review the notes and annotations in an easy way on both my phone and my PC.

To easy import pdf-files as text/pictures, as well as buying regular e-books from publishers. Easy Cloud access is an other thing.

At the same time an e-book-application should try to copy the quality of a book standing in the bookshelf.

The strange thing is, that every smartphone on Windows or Symbian have access to first class general ebook-readers with nearly all the above facilities (except Cloud-access). Theres is none on iPhone/Mac.

MS did a great job back in the 90s with MS Reader (on Windowsmobile. Mobipocket (which is now the fundament of Amazons Kindle ?) do well on nearly all platforms except Linux and Mac.

I would say that a bookstore on iTunes with a decent reader-app - in time -would win, simply because of the amount of iphone and iTunes users existing.

Simply because the times is right now. 8 years ago when the last e-book mania was present, it was to early. Partly because the PDAs disappeared, and because publishers - like newspapers still made sufficient money to risk opening up on a new media.

On the other hand, Apple - while great on other platforms - dont have a good relationship with text. The bad iWork suite is one example. E-book readers like Stanza, eReader or Classic is very primitive compared with Mobipocket or MS Reader on Windowsmobile or Symbian.

The marked is now, especially on the education-marked. But we will probably see the same effect as with Netbooks. Everyone is demanding them for years, before the industri finally make some.

 

[iphones4evry1]

In the previous post on the killer feature, I never put the one I think many are hoping for: E-text books. I know book dealers would love to sell more electronic copies of their books. In talking with book sellers they are in bad shape. They really only make money on the first sale of textbooks, then they enter the used market and used book store rake in the money, but none goes back to the publisher and author (thus why book prices are so high, they have to recoup costs and profit the first sale, then it drops to near zero. This also explains while texts are usually on a 3 year edition cycle.)
The books sellers are pushing hard for e-texts as they can DRM them for a year, then no resell. The next year students must buy their own.

Excellent thinking. Students would not be able to buy used books. Each student would have to buy a new electronic version. When you say "the next year students must buy their own," I hope you are referring to the next generation of students. For the students that just finished a class, the E-book should never expire; it should be theirs to keep. This has an added plus in that instead of students reselling their books back and no longer having access to the knowledge, students will now keep the books to look back at for reference. One cool thing about this is that if a professor in a senior level class asks if anyone has or remembers a certain fact from the sophomore level textbook, students will be able to look up the info right then and there, and when they graduate they will have their entire collection of textbooks (and highlighting and notes!) with them all the time. Hopefully, this will help boost productivity. If E-books can prove themselves to be reliable, dependable, and "life long DRM ownership," then E-books can be a huge boost to society.

One huge problem that needs to be solved: Right now, Amazon has the ability to "remote wipe" a book if they want to. This functionality needs to be ruled illegal. Once someone buys a book, it should be regarded as their [physical] property (just like a paper book). Right now there is a court case in Federal Court in which and AP student is suing Amazon for remote wiping a book, notes, and a book report that he had read and written ... just days before it was due. He went to work on his book report one day and it was gone! http://www.minyanville.com/articles//7/31/2009/index/a/23821

 

[gunraidan]

Excellent thinking. Students would not be able to buy used books. Each student would have to buy a new electronic version. When you say "the next year students must buy their own," I hope you are referring to the next generation of students. For the students that just finished a class, the E-book should never expire; it should be theirs to keep. This has an added plus in that instead of students reselling their books back and no longer having access to the knowledge, students will now keep the books to look back at for reference. One cool thing about this is that if a professor in a senior level class asks if anyone has or remembers a certain fact from the sophomore level textbook, students will be able to look up the info right then and there, and when they graduate they will have their entire collection of textbooks (and highlighting and notes!) with them all the time. Hopefully, this will help boost productivity. If E-books can prove themselves to be reliable, dependable, and "life long DRM ownership," then E-books can be a huge boost to society.

One huge problem that needs to be solved: Right now, Amazon has the ability to "remote wipe" a book if they want to. This functionality needs to be ruled illegal. Once someone buys a book, it should be regarded as their [physical] property (just like a paper book). Right now there is a court case in Federal Court in which and AP student is suing Amazon for remote wiping a book, notes, and a book report that he had read and written ... just days before it was due. He went to work on his book report one day and it was gone! http://www.minyanville.com/articles//7/31/2009/index/a/23821

Possibly rent ebooks for the duration of a semester?

 

[iphones4evry1]

Possibly rent ebooks for the duration of a semester?

Although I cringe at that idea, it is probably what is going to happen. Over the past two years, college university bookstores have "invented" (there may be previous instances) and strongly embraced the practice of renting textbooks to students instead of selling the books. I suppose it's kind of like leasing cars. They get your money and they still retain possession of the book at the end of the semester.

 

[krimbo]

Creating eBooks is harder than you think!

That article appears to be based on an industry insider saying that Apple thought about it a few years ago and then decided not to. Someone has taken that and padded it out to come up with a reason why Apple won't do it now.

I can't believe that the setting up and running of an e-book store will be any harder than the music, video and app stores. Plus it will be a lot easier now than it was then as Amazon have done a lot of the hard work already.

I reckon the only reason Apple haven't done it so far is that reading books on the iPod/iPhone isn't a good experience so they're happy to take a back seat and let others do it. If they release a device that is suitable for reading books then they'll start selling e-books as it will drive hardware sales.

I agree with Babyj that setting up eBook storefronts on the web to sell eBook will be easy - the problems will come in getting eBooks from publishers or creating them yourself if you're an author.

All books start out life as manuscripts in Word (unless there are still quill-pen authors out there) publishers use Adobe InDesign, or some still use QuarkXPress (I'm showing my age) to layout and typeset the books for print and in general the creation of the eBook is an afterthought (at the moment).

Bowkers quote that their are 38,000,000 ISBN books in print in the US alone and currenty the effort to transfer those books to an eBooks format is massive.

In addition the current generation of eReaders are very simplistic browsers and only support very limited eBook layouts within their displays [apologies Neelan]. These first generation browsers don't handle the richness of layout you need to replicate or approach the typesetting of a book for print with the complexity of and styling of an educational text book. Hence the reading experience for eBooks at the moment will possibly be a diss-appointment for many who see the richness of the book layout as part of the reading experience.

2.5 Billion books were sold in the US in 2008 against just 3.2 million eBooks - eBooks have a long way to go to catch-up and their production is not simple for mass production. This coupled with the fact that an emerging standard for eBooks the EPUB format is only just gaining a hold amongst publishers means that the market will not explode tomorrow as Apple point out - but explode it will in time when there is a critical mass of eReaders Apple or otherwise [Sony, Kindle, Stanza, etc......] are in place.

Publishers beware the "tsunami" is coming. Niche devices like the Kindle will be swept away and the eBook will evolve to take its place in a world which will be integrated into the multi-media environment along with the eMusic, eMags and eventually the eNewspaper markets all personalised to your reading tastes.

What we need to think about is paper books consumed 48m tons of woodpulp and 22m barrels of oil in 2008 and the combined price of those natural resources went up 27%. A greener ecofriendly world probably doesn't need more paper books!

eBooks are the future whether we, Apple or Amazon like it and I suspect we and they will.........!