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iPad is bringing new life to the e-book debates

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

With Apple’s announcement of the iPad and the Apple iBook store, people have been noticing the ongoing debate about e-books, e-readers and the ugly concept of DRM, which assumes that paying customers are thieves.

Joining the fray, is is Stephen Green, also known as the Vodkapundit.

Of course, I had join in.

Originally published at Urbin Technology.

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Quote of the Day

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

“I’m betting the Apple product announcement today will have a more positive effect on the economy than Obama’s attempt to rebrand himself on national TV tonight.”

Source: Me.

It’s called the iPad and Apple is announcing their own bookstore, in direct competition with Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Update: Here are some details on the iPad.  Pundits were wrong on the pricing. They were talking $1000.

The intro price is $499.  That’s for 16 Gig and WiFi. The iPad comes in two basic flavors: WiFi & WiFi+3G.

Both models comes in 16, 32 and 64 Gig models.  So here is the pricing

WiFi only: 16: $499  32: $599  64: $699

WiFi+3G: 16: $629 32: $729 64: $829

The announcement said that the iPad will run iPhone/iTouch apps, so you can load the Amazon Kindle app and read books from Amazon, as well as e-reader apps like Stanza and Bookshelf.

So it looks like that the tech rumor that there will be a lot of Kindles on e-Bay once these start shipping is probably on target.

The iPad won’t start shipping for 60 days, another 30 days after that for the 3G models.

More details at Urbin Technology.

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Barnes and Noble enters the e-book reader market

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Barnes and Noble has announced the Nook, their e-book reader.

This is in direct competition to Amazon’s Kindle. It’s a very similar bit of technology, the major difference being that the B&N Nook will allow users to “share” e-books with other Nook users. It works this way. You purchase an ebook from B&N on your Nook. You like it. You think your buddy, who also has a Nook, would like it. So you can “loan” that book to said buddy. It will be available to be read on his Nook for two weeks. My bet is that this will generate a lot a ebook sales.

Now, some may argue that Amazon already owns the mind share for e-book readers, having crushed the Sony E-Reader in the market. The Kindle took off because Amazon was already seen as a major e-retailer of books and they had the ability to buy books immediately on the Kindle using mobile Internet technology. Sony wasn’t known as a book seller and they had no such “instant buy” option. The Nook has a similar broadband connection to the Kindle and B&N is seen as a major retailer of books by the public. The fact that B&N has a much larger ebook library than Amazon doesn’t hurt either.

There are two major flaws I can see with the Nook. First, the whole DRM thing. Second is that it only supports three formats, EPUB, eReader and PDF. A few more, including unencrypted Mobipocket, would be nice.

Amazon has responded, quietly, with the announcement that they will release free “Kindle software” for the PC platform, so people can read Amazon’s DRM crippled ebooks on their desktop or notebook computers. MAC and LINUX users are not supported in this release. Amazon is also selling refurbish (i.e. used) first gen Kindles for $150.

Originally published at Urbin Technology.

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Leasing ebooks from Amazon

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

I came to the conclusion a while ago that you don’t buy ebooks from Amazon, you are only leasing them.

First off, the highly restrictive Amazon DRM not only limits access to the ebook to their proprietary Kindle device, it restricts it to your specific device. Once you are done with the ebook, you can loan it to friend or sell it at used book store. If you want your friend to read the book, you have to give them your Kindle, because that is the only place that ebook will be displayed.

Second, Amazon doesn’t pay it’s associates a fee for any Kindle books “sold” through them. Why not? They pay the associates for just about everything else sold through their sites. Could it be that Kindle owners really are not “buying” the ebooks, but are just paying for a very restrictive lease in order to access the ebook?

Next, Megan McArdle just discovered a catch in the Amazon ebook fine print.

…there is always a limit to the number of times you can download a given book. Sometimes, he said, it’s five or six times but at other times it may only be once or twice. And, here’s the kicker folks, once you reach the cap you need to repurchase the book if you want to download it again.

I know people who buy paper books in both hardcover and paperback, but that is a different scenario. You have two separate versions of the book in different formats. One for the shelf and one to carry around and loan to friends. Amazon wants its customers to buy the exact same content, in the exact same format, multiple times, because their business model assumes that their paying customer are thieves.

That is not a consumer friendly business model.

Also posted at Urbin Technology.

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Amazon pokes associates in the eye

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

Amazon has a nice program going for years, called the Associate program. Associates link to Amazon from their websites for books, music, table saws, etc., and if someone uses that link to buy the item, the associate gets a referral fee. It’s a small fee, we’re talking pennies from a new paperback sale, but it adds up and a lot of Associates get their referral fee in Amazon gift certificates, so the money gets poured back into Amazon.

Recently, Amazon changed it’s policy on Kindle ebook referrals. The associates don’t make any referral fee at all. Nix, nada, nothing.

Thanks Amazon, at least you could have bought the associates dinner and couple of drinks first.

The book I was going to buy as an ebook from Amazon is now a sale going to go to my local brick & mortar bookstore as a dead tree version.

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Fujitsu enters the e-reader market

Friday, March 27th, 2009

Before you get too excited, it won’t be released until next month, it’s only available in Japan, and it has a $1,000 price tag.

The FLEPia will however have a color screen with touch capabilities. Old School Palm OS stylus touch control though.

The display uses a variant of LCD tech that doesn’t use a backlight. The backlight is the power hog that has kept it from being used in a ebook reader yet.

I wouldn’t call this a threat to the Amazon Kindle or the Sony EBook reader, but it shows the market is opening up.

First posted at Urbin Technology

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