Publishing – Page 28

The Second Front

August 25, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Sony unveiled a new e-reader this morning. Here’s the lede from the L.A. Times:

Sony this morning unveiled its answer to the Kindle 2 — a wireless electronic book reader with a 7-inch touch screen that’s 17% larger than Amazon’s device.

The fact that basic specs of the new reader are defined not in terms of utility but rather competitive advantage tells you everything you need to know about what’s going on in the e-reader arms race. A serious fight is on to see who produce the dominant reader, just as the fight is on to see who will become the dominant content provider for those devices.

Note also, however, that the two fronts in this global war to control the portable text industry are already deeply enmeshed:

Sony’s Readers have another feature that’s not present in the Kindle: All of the devices are capable of displaying digital books that have been borrowed from thousands of public libraries that lend electronic books. The Daily Edition goes one step further by finding local libraries with a digital-books collection and letting users wirelessly download the book for 21 days (provided they have a library card for that particular branch).

The machines enable delivery of more content: demand for more content drives sales of the machines. At some point in the not-to-distant future, this simmering symbiosis — backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing campaigns — is going to explode onto popular culture.

Which explains why Google is not simply trying to become the dominant content provider, but why they’ve also allied themselves with Sony, against the Amazon/Microsoft cabal. From Bloomberg:

In March, Sony gained access to more than 500,000 e-book titles for its readers through an agreement with Google Inc. The deal expanded Sony’s e-book store to about 1 million titles at the end of last month, compared with the more than 320,000 Amazon.com offers.

Sony gets content for its e-reader: Google gets a friendly device manufacturer for its content delivery system.

It’s going to be very hard to bet against a Google/Sony alliance, even against the combined might of Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo and others. More on this here. (That link is to a Macworld.com article, because “the new Daily Edition comes bundled with Sony’s eBook Library software 3.0, which is newly Mac-compatible” [emphasis mine]. Whether Apple is thinking about getting into the device business as well — iBook II anyone? — or whether they’re simply throwing their lot in against Microsoft is anyone’s guess. But that Apple seems to be on the sidelines should not be taken to mean that Apple is on the sidelines.)

— Mark Barrett

The Iceberg in the Ditch

August 24, 2009 By Mark 3 Comments

I intended yesterday to follow up on a tease at the end of this post, but the more I thought about the issue the more I realized it was the tip of a very big iceberg. Apologies for the delay, and apologies in advance for what may seem a bleak assessment.

For several days now I’ve been visiting sites that contain internet fiction of various stripes. I’ve been reading and trying to get my mind around what’s good about internet fiction and what’s not so good. I’ve been trying to come up with a way of comparing apples to apples across different sites and different authors, yet all the while something has been nagging at me so quietly that it took a while to realize what it was.

I don’t like reading fiction on the internet. Assuming that my view represents a non-trivial percentage of the world population, as opposed to the ravings of an ugly American, this would seem to be a problem. [ Read more ]

The Ditchwalk Name

August 22, 2009 By Mark 5 Comments

Naming a web site used to be easy. You thought of the name you wanted, you registered the name, you put up your site.

Then came the speculators. Search for your domain name of choice today, or your second choice, or third, or tenth, and you’re likely to discover that the name has already been registered by someone who has no intention of ever using the domain to establish a web site. Rather, they hope to sell you the name for a vastly inflated price and turn a profit in doing so. Because domain names are based on language, and there are a finite number of words in any language, the speculators know that if they buy up the most common words and phrases, someone will inevitably come knocking….

In the parlance of business, this is called ‘making a market’ for a commodity — in this case, domain names. Other well known examples of this entrepreneurial spirit include Enron’s electric power market, oil topping $140 a barrel and driving gas prices past $4.00 at the pump, and those sexy real-estate-backed derivatives that were based on inflated mortgage values, leading to the housing crisis and the worst American recession in seventy years. (Your free markets in action.) [ Read more ]

Googlezilla vs. Micromonster (and friends)

August 21, 2009 By Mark 3 Comments

I don’t pretend to know the full story behind the battle that’s shaping up over Google’s plan to make millions of books (many of them out of print and hard to find) available for purchase online. I don’t even know all of the arguments so I’m going to dig into the issue more tomorrow.

There are two conclusions I can draw, however, based solely on last night’s lede from the New York Times:

Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo are planning to join a coalition of nonprofit groups, individuals and library associations to oppose a proposed class-action settlement giving Google the rights to commercialize digital copies of millions of books.

First, whatever the outcome, after all the trials and suits and counter-suits are settled the landscape for writers will have fundamentally changed because distribution will have fundamentally changed. The current technological marvel and oddity that is electronic publishing will quickly become the norm, even if individual copies of these books are also made available in printed form.

Second, none of the musclebound corporate antagonists fighting to control this process is involved because they love writers and want to protect them from bad people. Profit motive is driving everyone’s interest, and the names of the tech-company titans who are squaring off should suggest just how much money is involved.

More soon.

— Mark Barrett

Getting Underway

August 18, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Launching even a small web site like this is both fun and frustrating. It’s fun because it holds promise. It’s frustrating because for every coding rule there’s an exception, or a variance necessary to coddle some third-party application or software or browser which steadfastly refuses to join with the rather blindingly obvious cause of standards compliance.

Still, at some point in the development process (which is itself a grand term for what I’ve been doing), the cobbled-together back end and the bells and whistles out front achieve a state of grumbling tolerance, and there’s nothing left to do but get on with it. Call it a shakedown cruise. Call it a public beta. Call it open-source testing.

All of which is to say that you’re going to find some glitches here and there as I continue to tweak this and that. If something doesn’t work for you, or displays poorly, please let me know.

— Mark Barrett

You Say You Want a Revolution…

August 17, 2009 By Mark 3 Comments

The more things change, the more they stay the same. When it comes to human beings and their actions and choices, I believe that.

But sometimes change really is change. And once in a great while, change is revolution.

Right now — today — is one of those times, because the internet is clearly a revolution. (At least until a global power shortage forces us all back to cold chisels and granite slabs for communication.)

I’ve been a professional writer and storyteller for more than twenty years, and for over a decade I’ve been making a living as a direct result of the advent of the internet. But that’s only looking at the internet as a communication pipeline that allows me to work for clients across the country and around the globe without leaving my chair. Amazing as it is (and it still amazes me), that part of the revolution is pretty much over.

But there’s another way of looking at the internet, and that’s as a medium — as this web site, web page, and these words attest. As a publishing medium in particular the internet is still evolving and growing, while powerful established industries such as newspapers, television and the book business are already reeling as a result of the force of this change. [ Read more ]