No i'm not writing a review of the latest Kevin Smith movie, instead I am posting just to post.
I made a fairly good dent in writing my second Journalists Vs Bloggers post, however I left it too late and there is no way it will be finished in time. So in the interests of not missing a post in the Blog Duel, i will post this now and then put up a proper post later today or tomorrow.
Friday, 26 February 2010
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Journalism Vs Bloggers - Introduction
After a recent discussion with a newspaper journalist, the lasting impression i got was her general pessimism, both about the curent state of affairs and the future of the industry. The main thoughts i had on the subject were about why blogs are having such an influence on the decline of newspapers, why professional journalism is still important and what journalists can do to prosper going forward. I was originally going to cover all of that in one post, but it became rather long and unwieldy so i will split it out into a few posts.
I would like to preface this series of posts by saying up front that i am in no way a professional writer, which should become obvious quite quickly. Furthermore i harbour no aspirations of overthrowing traditional journalists or making money from this blog. On the other hand i think i have something interesting to say on the topic and i am grateful that even a small number of people will read it. The above 3 sentences contain the seeds of why newspapers around the globe are failing, but they should also give professional journalists hope for their future.
A lot of the commentary on this topic from traditional journalists, is really just whining about the demise of newspapers and looking for someone to blame. They blame everyone from the general public, for not caring about good reporting anymore, to MTV for shortening attention spans. But mostly they blame bloggers for making so much content free - how dare they! The more objective perspective, is that technology has fundamentally changed the landscape of media, rendering the old business model of newspapers unsustainable. No-one is at fault, it is simply evolution.
Bloggers can be equally sensationalist, proclaiming newspapers to be dead and professional journalists an anachronism. This is at best a partial truth. Newspapers are certainly in decline, but there is a good chance that they will continue on - in some form or another - for quite some time. Sensationalist bloggers are also guilty of being unable to separate the medium (newspapers) from the work (journalism) and it is an important distinction.
In this series of posts, i will specifically be discussing journalists and newspapers, but the points are applicable more generally to any traditional media industry (music, film, publishing; books and magazines). In the first post i will look at why blogging is killing newspaper reporting and why this isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the second i will move on to why there will always be a place for professional journalists. Thirdly - and most importantly if you hope to be a professional journalist - what professional writers will have to do to survive and thrive in the future. Finally i will post a round-up of the main points and some conclusions.
I would appreciate any comments on what i write in this and future posts, particularly if you disagree with me.
I would like to preface this series of posts by saying up front that i am in no way a professional writer, which should become obvious quite quickly. Furthermore i harbour no aspirations of overthrowing traditional journalists or making money from this blog. On the other hand i think i have something interesting to say on the topic and i am grateful that even a small number of people will read it. The above 3 sentences contain the seeds of why newspapers around the globe are failing, but they should also give professional journalists hope for their future.
A lot of the commentary on this topic from traditional journalists, is really just whining about the demise of newspapers and looking for someone to blame. They blame everyone from the general public, for not caring about good reporting anymore, to MTV for shortening attention spans. But mostly they blame bloggers for making so much content free - how dare they! The more objective perspective, is that technology has fundamentally changed the landscape of media, rendering the old business model of newspapers unsustainable. No-one is at fault, it is simply evolution.
Bloggers can be equally sensationalist, proclaiming newspapers to be dead and professional journalists an anachronism. This is at best a partial truth. Newspapers are certainly in decline, but there is a good chance that they will continue on - in some form or another - for quite some time. Sensationalist bloggers are also guilty of being unable to separate the medium (newspapers) from the work (journalism) and it is an important distinction.
In this series of posts, i will specifically be discussing journalists and newspapers, but the points are applicable more generally to any traditional media industry (music, film, publishing; books and magazines). In the first post i will look at why blogging is killing newspaper reporting and why this isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the second i will move on to why there will always be a place for professional journalists. Thirdly - and most importantly if you hope to be a professional journalist - what professional writers will have to do to survive and thrive in the future. Finally i will post a round-up of the main points and some conclusions.
I would appreciate any comments on what i write in this and future posts, particularly if you disagree with me.
Monday, 15 February 2010
Some More On E-Books ...
It would appear that i'm not the only one pondering e-books at the moment.
The Great E-Book War
This article takes a look at the recent skirmish between Amazon and some publishers. Apple seem to have given the publishers a better deal in the iBook store and they are looking for similar concessions from Amazon. Interestingly it looks like Amazon may have already been implementing some of the things i suggested, but the publishers are trying their best to replicate the mistakes made by the record and film companies.
Confessions of a Book Pirate
This article consists largely of an interview with an old-school book pirate. By old-school i mean he scanned the books, performed Optical Character Recognition on them and then distributed them in rich text documents. This is compared to the more new-school piracy of disabling the DRM on existing e-books. It covers a lot of the same ground as i did in my Books Vs E-Readers Series (see below) and makes many of the same suggestions, just in a more concise manner. Also as i mentioned, with the increase in availability of e-reader hardware at a sensible cost, e-book piracy is set to skyrocket. For me the ironic thing is that publishers had the opportunity to learn from other industries, to stop this before it started and yet they are obstinately staying the course that has already failed miserably for everyone else.
The one excellent point made in both of these articles, that the publishers are stubbornly refusing to accept, is that they cannot charge the same for an e-book as a physical book. Aside from the fact that an e-book is much cheaper for them to sell and distribute, customers simply do not get the same value from an e-book as a physical one, so they expect pay less for it.
This is a bit of a filler post, but rest assured i have quite a few irons in the fire. Books Vs E-Readers has lead me to think more about old media Vs new media in a couple of other specific areas, but also more generally about disruptive technologies and why people can't seem to learn from previous changes.
The Great E-Book War
This article takes a look at the recent skirmish between Amazon and some publishers. Apple seem to have given the publishers a better deal in the iBook store and they are looking for similar concessions from Amazon. Interestingly it looks like Amazon may have already been implementing some of the things i suggested, but the publishers are trying their best to replicate the mistakes made by the record and film companies.
Confessions of a Book Pirate
This article consists largely of an interview with an old-school book pirate. By old-school i mean he scanned the books, performed Optical Character Recognition on them and then distributed them in rich text documents. This is compared to the more new-school piracy of disabling the DRM on existing e-books. It covers a lot of the same ground as i did in my Books Vs E-Readers Series (see below) and makes many of the same suggestions, just in a more concise manner. Also as i mentioned, with the increase in availability of e-reader hardware at a sensible cost, e-book piracy is set to skyrocket. For me the ironic thing is that publishers had the opportunity to learn from other industries, to stop this before it started and yet they are obstinately staying the course that has already failed miserably for everyone else.
The one excellent point made in both of these articles, that the publishers are stubbornly refusing to accept, is that they cannot charge the same for an e-book as a physical book. Aside from the fact that an e-book is much cheaper for them to sell and distribute, customers simply do not get the same value from an e-book as a physical one, so they expect pay less for it.
This is a bit of a filler post, but rest assured i have quite a few irons in the fire. Books Vs E-Readers has lead me to think more about old media Vs new media in a couple of other specific areas, but also more generally about disruptive technologies and why people can't seem to learn from previous changes.
Books Vs E-Readers Series
Saturday, 13 February 2010
Shocking Book Piracy Exposed!
I am posting today, to tell you about an insidious and terrible threat to the publishing industry.
I was wrong in a previous post, when i said that book piracy was currently very low. It turns out that book pirates have been operating with impunity for decades, costing the publishing industry trillions of dollars in lost sales. These terrible crimes against intelectual property, are committed every day of the week around the world, often in full view of law enforcement and nothing is done. In plain sight, they offer people access to entertainment and information for free. No-one gets paid; not the publishers, not the distributors, not the authors - think of the poor starving authors. How can the publishing industry hope to survive in the face of such institutionalised theft?
Ladies and gentleman, who are these scurrilous villains, freely roaming the streets? I give you librarians!
I was wrong in a previous post, when i said that book piracy was currently very low. It turns out that book pirates have been operating with impunity for decades, costing the publishing industry trillions of dollars in lost sales. These terrible crimes against intelectual property, are committed every day of the week around the world, often in full view of law enforcement and nothing is done. In plain sight, they offer people access to entertainment and information for free. No-one gets paid; not the publishers, not the distributors, not the authors - think of the poor starving authors. How can the publishing industry hope to survive in the face of such institutionalised theft?
Ladies and gentleman, who are these scurrilous villains, freely roaming the streets? I give you librarians!
Friday, 12 February 2010
Service Is A Differentiator
If your product is pretty much the same as your competitors, all you are competing on is service.
In my last company i had an argument with one of the owners about whether 'service' was a differentiator for a business. He was adamant it wasn't and i must admit i still haven't read Killer Differentiators to find out why he thought this, but i had an experience last week that proves that not only is service a differentiator, sometimes it is the only differentiator.
When i was looking to open a bank account for my business, i did a little research online and found that most business accounts were similar. So i was pretty sure i would end up going with the same bank where i have my personal accounts. I have never had problems with them, i like their online banking and i thought being an existing customer i might get preferential treatment. As it turns out, when i wandered round branches of the main banks, the service was pretty bad in all but one ... and that one was not my existing bank.
All of the banks now seem to employ greeters, who approach you as you enter to find out why you are there. Generally all of these greeters are smiling and try their best to be helpful. How helpful they actually are, very much depended on the bank. I will cut the list down to 3 banks that were illustrative of the levels of service i received:
Bank 1 - Bank Of Scotland
This is who my mum has her business account with and she seemed to think they were ok, so i decided i would check them out. When i walked in and said that i was looking to open a business account, the greeter looked like i had just asked her to hand over all the cash. She seemed genuinely shocked. After overcoming her initial panic, she tracked down a more senior person, who told me that they no longer opened business accounts in branch and i would have to signup over the phone.
Let's see, i would probably spend ages on hold, followed by a lengthly phone call, with lots of trying to explain and spell things, probably with a call centre in India and either have to post my passport away or go into a branch to hand it over anyway. Not my idea of a good time, thanks but no thanks.
Bank 2 - The Royal Bank Of Scotland
It has to be said that my business was theirs to lose. By this point i had been to a few other banks and had similar experiences to the above. I decided; stuff it, i have my personal accounts with them, i might as well go with RBS.
The greeter was slightly less terrified than the one in Bank Of Scotland, but she also informed me that they didn't open business accounts in that branch. She did tell me that they had a business consultant at another branch in town, at which point i said i would just go there then. This did not go over well, she insisted that i stay so she could take my details to pass them on to the business consultant. Why? I'm really not sure. Maybe the greeter got some sort of bonus for referrals, or maybe she thought she was being helpful. Either way, i would have rather gone to the other branch to see someone who could actually help me. So after a bit of waiting while the greeter attempted to find some brochures and forms, she proceeded to ask me questions to fill in a form that replicated my account details. What a waste of time, both mine and hers. I was then told that the business consultant would call me later in the day ... or maybe tomorrow. Very reassuring.
Totally dismayed at the poor service, i thought i would try one last bank, which lead me to ...
Bank 3 - HSBC
Things i knew about HSBC before last week; 1) They have a lot of international branches, 2) They have a lot of intelligent adverts, particularly at airports and 3) Absolutely nothing about their accounts. It was a long shot, but i figured i might be traveling or living abroad, so international branches could be useful.
I went in and the service was radically better than i had received anywhere else. The greeter was pleasant and helpful, she told me that they had a business consultant in branch and she would check if he could see me there and then. While she went to check, she sat me down in a comfy seat, asked if i would like tea or coffee and quickly returned to let me know the business consultant would be out shortly. The business consultant was very helpful. While he couldn't open the account on the spot as he had appointments for the rest of the day, he did juggle some other appointments around so that i could open it as soon as possible. He listed everything i would need to bring with me, gave me a business card with the appointment details on it and i left. The whole experience made my decision easy and obvious.
Ok my company is unlikely to turn over a vast amount of cash and make HSBC lots of money. But consider how many people will be pissed off with other banks and open an account with HSBC, then square that number to account for all of the people they tell and that adds up to a lot more business.
Now there is a good chance i will never be back in a branch again (i do all of my personal banking online and i suspect my business banking will be the same) but it is nice to know that should i need to go in the service is good. It may seem slightly irrational to base a very rational decision (opening a bank account), on something as ephemeral as customer service in one particular branch at one particular time. But in the absence of any other meaningful difference in the product, it was all that mattered.
Service may not be the best or most secure thing to differentiate your business or product on, but it is definitely a differentiator in the eyes of the customer.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
How To Alienate Customers With One Question
On Monday i went to the cinema and was asked the following question; "Are you a Friend of Eden Court?" and i was tempted to reply with; "Well technically no, but i didn't realise we had to be enemies".
Ok the cinema is called Eden Court and they have a membership program called 'Friends of Eden Court', but taken out of context the question seems a little harsh. If i didn't know about the loyalty program, i would certainly have felt alienated, heck even knowing about the program i still felt a little sting. While i'm sure people on the program get a warm fuzzy feeling when asked if they are a friend and get to reply yes, anyone who is not a member isn't going to feel great.
Maybe that is part of the plan, to make customers who aren't members feel guilty until they join. But if so it seems like a pretty poor plan, sure some might join out of guilt, but the rest are just going to stop coming back because they are made to feel guilty when they do. What they need to do is give loyal customers the warm fuzzy feeling, without alienating new/returning customers who haven't joined.
The funny thing is that by making a subtle change in the wording of the question, you would still get the benefit for members and be less confrontational with non-members. I propose; "Are you a member of the Friends of Eden Court?". Ok it is not quite as snappy, but it makes it clear that you can become a 'friend' and doesn't make you feel quite so bad about not being one.
Ok the cinema is called Eden Court and they have a membership program called 'Friends of Eden Court', but taken out of context the question seems a little harsh. If i didn't know about the loyalty program, i would certainly have felt alienated, heck even knowing about the program i still felt a little sting. While i'm sure people on the program get a warm fuzzy feeling when asked if they are a friend and get to reply yes, anyone who is not a member isn't going to feel great.
Maybe that is part of the plan, to make customers who aren't members feel guilty until they join. But if so it seems like a pretty poor plan, sure some might join out of guilt, but the rest are just going to stop coming back because they are made to feel guilty when they do. What they need to do is give loyal customers the warm fuzzy feeling, without alienating new/returning customers who haven't joined.
The funny thing is that by making a subtle change in the wording of the question, you would still get the benefit for members and be less confrontational with non-members. I propose; "Are you a member of the Friends of Eden Court?". Ok it is not quite as snappy, but it makes it clear that you can become a 'friend' and doesn't make you feel quite so bad about not being one.
Monday, 8 February 2010
Books Vs E-Readers - Redux - An Open Letter To Jeff Bezos
Dear Jeff,
I am a long-time customer and fan of Amazon, even when I was in Australia I still bought all of my books from you. Every so often I am tempted to look through my receipts and add up all of the purchases I have made over the years, then I decide the number would scare me.
It saddens me to think that, as things stand, Apple are about to blow you out of the water in terms of e-books. This really should be your domain, you started off selling books, you brought the first viable e-reader to market and you have a large market share. Sadly all of that will cease to matter, when Apple bring out their shiny new hardware and iBook store.
There are some things you just can't beat Apple on:
Industrial Design - I'm sorry but all of the versions of the Kindle have been kinda ugly. Sure they're thin and light but the keyboard on the bottom makes it look ridiculous. The screen may have the same form-factor as a book, but the device as a whole does not, you need to ditch the keyboard.
Multimedia Content - With the LED-backlit IPS display, they will crush you at displaying colour magazines, movies, tv shows and websites. This gives them much greater flexibility on content.
Simplicity and Elegance - In terms of the overall user experience, you just can't beat Apple on making things easy for people.
So can we agree, that going after the tablet computer market is a waste of your time? What you need to do is out 'book' them! Where they go wide and try to do everything for everyone, you need to go narrow and do one thing really really well. Their success so far has been with products that take an existing model and make it shinier and easy to use - computers, mp3 players, phones etc. With e-books they have to totally change the way people use and interact with books, which is a much harder task. Just look at the difficulty they are having with the AppleTV. So if you focus on books and offer significant benefits to customers, you might just be able to take Apple on at e-books and win.
What do you already have in your favour?
E-Ink - Ok there are some issues with the refresh rate for page turns and lack of colour, but for reading it is still much easier on the eyes than an LCD. It also leads to ...
Great Battery Life - You get one week of reading on a Kindle on a charge Vs 10 hours on an iPad. That is another major advantage and a big benefit for travellers.
Database Of Reviews and Recommendations - This is a huge advantage for existing customers, from the start you can recommend the best content for them and you have a wide selection of reviews. Apple will have to build all of this from scratch.
Physical Distribution - You can sell both physical and electronic versions of books, they can only sell electronically.
Based on the above, what could you do that would offer significant benefits compared to Apple?
Free Downloads Of Books People Already Own - You have an enormous database of people's book purchases, why not combine that with the Kindle and offer them free versions of electronic books they have bought previously? It wouldn't have to be every book, but if you gave people say 20 free books that they had previously bought from Amazon when they got a Kindle, that would be a big incentive. Rather than paying for the hardware and having to pay again to get content, you could give them some free content, that you know is of interest to them, to get them started.
Cheap E-Books With A Physical Book Purchase - If when someone bought a book, they could get the e-book for a low price, say $2, it would be an easy decision. Again this would make a big difference, even if people weren't fully committed to moving completely to e-books, this might get them started on the way. It would also be useful for traveling, you might prefer to own a book, but having a library of e-books on a Kindle would be useful while you were away. Or if like me, they are concerned about not really owning electronic copies, the safety net of a physical book would be appealing.
Set An Open E-book Standard - Ok maybe this goes against the idea of getting paid for both the hardware and the content all the time. But how many people would buy from you, if they knew that they could use other sources of content on your hardware and your content on other manufacturers hardware? It would also give you greater flexibility because other manufacturers could come up with more niche hardware, but people would still buy content from you. Or if you came up with killer hardware, people could use content from multiple stores on it. This would break down people's resistance because they wouldn't feel locked in to a single ecosystem. The trick would be, to then build an ecosystem so good that people wouldn't want to go elsewhere (see Music - iPod + iTunes).
None of the above would be a panacea, you will still have to continue to improve the Kindle hardware. But what the suggestions above do, is reduce people's resistance to buying and if you can get more people started on your hardware and ecosystem, you have a much better chance of competing. Remember, you need to focus on adding value for your customers NOT trying to make more money for publishers. Though if you get the former right, the latter will follow.
I will certainly continue to buy my physical books from you and if you implement any of the suggestions above, there is a good chance that I (and many others) will buy e-books from you too.
Thanks,
Steven
PS Please feel free to check out the rest of my blog posts on the subject of physical books Vs e-readers.
I am a long-time customer and fan of Amazon, even when I was in Australia I still bought all of my books from you. Every so often I am tempted to look through my receipts and add up all of the purchases I have made over the years, then I decide the number would scare me.
It saddens me to think that, as things stand, Apple are about to blow you out of the water in terms of e-books. This really should be your domain, you started off selling books, you brought the first viable e-reader to market and you have a large market share. Sadly all of that will cease to matter, when Apple bring out their shiny new hardware and iBook store.
There are some things you just can't beat Apple on:
Industrial Design - I'm sorry but all of the versions of the Kindle have been kinda ugly. Sure they're thin and light but the keyboard on the bottom makes it look ridiculous. The screen may have the same form-factor as a book, but the device as a whole does not, you need to ditch the keyboard.
Multimedia Content - With the LED-backlit IPS display, they will crush you at displaying colour magazines, movies, tv shows and websites. This gives them much greater flexibility on content.
Simplicity and Elegance - In terms of the overall user experience, you just can't beat Apple on making things easy for people.
So can we agree, that going after the tablet computer market is a waste of your time? What you need to do is out 'book' them! Where they go wide and try to do everything for everyone, you need to go narrow and do one thing really really well. Their success so far has been with products that take an existing model and make it shinier and easy to use - computers, mp3 players, phones etc. With e-books they have to totally change the way people use and interact with books, which is a much harder task. Just look at the difficulty they are having with the AppleTV. So if you focus on books and offer significant benefits to customers, you might just be able to take Apple on at e-books and win.
What do you already have in your favour?
E-Ink - Ok there are some issues with the refresh rate for page turns and lack of colour, but for reading it is still much easier on the eyes than an LCD. It also leads to ...
Great Battery Life - You get one week of reading on a Kindle on a charge Vs 10 hours on an iPad. That is another major advantage and a big benefit for travellers.
Database Of Reviews and Recommendations - This is a huge advantage for existing customers, from the start you can recommend the best content for them and you have a wide selection of reviews. Apple will have to build all of this from scratch.
Physical Distribution - You can sell both physical and electronic versions of books, they can only sell electronically.
Based on the above, what could you do that would offer significant benefits compared to Apple?
Free Downloads Of Books People Already Own - You have an enormous database of people's book purchases, why not combine that with the Kindle and offer them free versions of electronic books they have bought previously? It wouldn't have to be every book, but if you gave people say 20 free books that they had previously bought from Amazon when they got a Kindle, that would be a big incentive. Rather than paying for the hardware and having to pay again to get content, you could give them some free content, that you know is of interest to them, to get them started.
Cheap E-Books With A Physical Book Purchase - If when someone bought a book, they could get the e-book for a low price, say $2, it would be an easy decision. Again this would make a big difference, even if people weren't fully committed to moving completely to e-books, this might get them started on the way. It would also be useful for traveling, you might prefer to own a book, but having a library of e-books on a Kindle would be useful while you were away. Or if like me, they are concerned about not really owning electronic copies, the safety net of a physical book would be appealing.
Set An Open E-book Standard - Ok maybe this goes against the idea of getting paid for both the hardware and the content all the time. But how many people would buy from you, if they knew that they could use other sources of content on your hardware and your content on other manufacturers hardware? It would also give you greater flexibility because other manufacturers could come up with more niche hardware, but people would still buy content from you. Or if you came up with killer hardware, people could use content from multiple stores on it. This would break down people's resistance because they wouldn't feel locked in to a single ecosystem. The trick would be, to then build an ecosystem so good that people wouldn't want to go elsewhere (see Music - iPod + iTunes).
None of the above would be a panacea, you will still have to continue to improve the Kindle hardware. But what the suggestions above do, is reduce people's resistance to buying and if you can get more people started on your hardware and ecosystem, you have a much better chance of competing. Remember, you need to focus on adding value for your customers NOT trying to make more money for publishers. Though if you get the former right, the latter will follow.
I will certainly continue to buy my physical books from you and if you implement any of the suggestions above, there is a good chance that I (and many others) will buy e-books from you too.
Thanks,
Steven
PS Please feel free to check out the rest of my blog posts on the subject of physical books Vs e-readers.
Books Vs E-Readers Series
6 - Redux - An Open Letter To Jeff Bezos
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Books Vs E-Readers - Conclusions
After having looked at the benefits of and issues with e-readers, along with Why E-Books Are Not MP3s, i think i have come to some conclusions.
I certainly wrote far more on my reservations about e-readers and it should be clear that there are currently some big issues to overcome before widespread adoption. However there are some things - in rough order of preference - that would make buying an e-reader a no-brainer for me.
I certainly wrote far more on my reservations about e-readers and it should be clear that there are currently some big issues to overcome before widespread adoption. However there are some things - in rough order of preference - that would make buying an e-reader a no-brainer for me.
If buying a physical book entitled me to a free (or very cheap) electronic version.
With this option you get the best of both worlds and a lot of the reservations are mollified. I would be happy to accept restrictive DRM because i would always have a hard copy to fall back on. While the publisher might be concerned that you would sell the physical book and keep the e-book, the DRM would at least prevent you sharing the e-book. It would cost the publishers a negligible amount in terms of distribution and I would be happy to pay an extra pound or two for the benefit. What really irks me at the moment, is that e-books cost the same as physical books, despite not having any printing or distribution costs.
This could be where Amazon can fight back against the iPad. They have physical distribution as well as electronic. So if they were to offer me a Kindle download of a book that i purchased as i was checking out, for say £2, i would jump at the chance. It would drive hardware sales, it would provide extra revenue for minimal effort and it would make customers happy.
If e-books were encapsulated in a non-proprietary, DRM-free file, that was mine in perpetuity.
Similar to the above, this would remove a lot of my objections. If e-books were all a common standard (PDF for example), without DRM and the files could be downloaded, stored and used on any computer or e-reader, i would be happy to buy.
Though this is very unlikely to happen because there is currently a low level of e-book piracy (compared to music, films and tv) and distributing DRM free files, would increase piracy exponentially. But it could also be argued that it won't be long before people break the DRM on e-books and piracy becomes more common anyway.
If i could get electronic copies of the books i currently own, for free or at an extremely low price.
Again Amazon would be in a good position to do this. They know which books you have paid for, so they could offer those books for free if you bought a Kindle. Perhaps you have sold the book, or given it away since you bought it, but the bottom line is that at some stage you paid for it and it costs them nothing to give you it.
Alternatively e-books could be priced more sensibly to reflect the real sales and distribution costs (next to nothing) and a small profit. If e-books were suitably cheap and you could afford to re-purchase content you already owned, again this would make an e-reader much more tempting.
I realise that the latter two are almost certainly never going to happen, but sadly even the first most realistic option is unlikely to happen because publishers are; 1) Protectionist. They are trying in vain, to protect the existing business model and margins. They are doomed to fail in exactly the same way that the film and record companies have. 2) Terrified of piracy. This is already an issue and no amount of DRM or lock-in will fix that. The only way to make piracy less appealing, is to provide extra value for purchasing the product. 3) Greedy. They are determined to try to extract every penny they can from you and by doing so, they make you spend less overall.
When i first drafted parts of this last Sunday, i was going to conclude that i was likely to get an e-reader anyway. But after looking at it in more detail over the week, i think i have talked myself out of buying one. As things stand, i don't see any major benefits and there are a lot of issues with the current system. I may well buy an iPad at some point as a tablet computer, but i won't be buying e-books for it any time soon.
Books Vs E-Readers Series
1 - Introduction
2 - The Benefits of E-Readers
3 - My Reservations About E-Readers
4 - Why E-books Are Not The Same As MP3s
5 - Conclusions
6 - Redux - An Open Letter To Jeff Bezos
Friday, 5 February 2010
Books Vs E-Readers -Why E-Books Are Not The Same As MP3s
In previous posts, i have looked at the benefits of and issues with e-readers. However many people extrapolate from the success of digital music, to suggest that the imminent dominance of e-books is inevitable, i disagree.
I think it is fairly safe to say that MP3s - or more generally digital downloads - are the future of music, however this was not always certain to be the case. Poor sound quality and restrictive Digital Rights Management (DRM) could have killed or constrained the adoption of music downloads, however both of these issues have now largely been resolved. E-books currently have similar problems (screen quality is not as good as print and DRM is almost always used for e-books), they also have some even bigger hurdles to overcome compared to MP3s. Below i will outline the additional barriers to adoption of e-books compared to MP3s.
I think it is fairly safe to say that MP3s - or more generally digital downloads - are the future of music, however this was not always certain to be the case. Poor sound quality and restrictive Digital Rights Management (DRM) could have killed or constrained the adoption of music downloads, however both of these issues have now largely been resolved. E-books currently have similar problems (screen quality is not as good as print and DRM is almost always used for e-books), they also have some even bigger hurdles to overcome compared to MP3s. Below i will outline the additional barriers to adoption of e-books compared to MP3s.
DRM and Poor Sound Quality were only a problem for legal MP3 downloads.
Looking back to the late 90's, MP3s did not become popular because the record companies offered digital downloads, they became popular because people could copy their own music and share it with their friends. Without this initial growth in usage, it is unlikely that MP3 players or digital downloads would have become popular. Furthermore if you ripped your own CDs or obtained copies from friends, they could be CD-quality and could be played on any device due to the lack of DRM. This offered a clear advantage over the legal sources at the time.
If the Napster/Morpheus/Kazza era was utopia, then why did legal MP3 downloads gain traction? In my opinion it was a perfect storm of 3 factors. 1) The record companies poisoned illegal sources with fake MP3s. There was a time on file sharing programs, when it felt like every MP3 was blank, looped or fake, which made things a bit pointless. Which lead to 2) Increased convenience and sensible pricing in the form of the iTunes Store. Ok you had to pay for the music, but the selection was vast and you knew you were going to get the right track. Finally, more recently 3) The availability of high sound quality, DRM-free downloads. It is much more palatable to pay for music when you know that you aren't locked into specific hardware or software. Also while you are paying the same price as a CD, the sound quality is as good.
Unfortunately e-books will be crippled by restrictive DRM and lower quality for the foreseeable future. Worst of all, because there are very limited illegal alternatives, there will be little pressure for publishers to improve the situation, they are in total control whether you like it or not.
MP3 is a common standard, e-books are not.
Fairly early on in the history of digital music, people settled on MP3 as a standard format. It was flexible - offering a variety of encoding qualities - there were also a wide variety of encoders and players available.
Over the years companies have tried to push proprietary competitors - WMA from Microsoft and M4A & AAC from Apple - however they are not widely used due to incompatibilities with hardware and software. In fact, they are almost never used voluntarily. They are either forced on customers due to DRM, or are used out of ignorance, as they are the default ripping options in Windows Media Player and iTunes. There are also some more open file types, most notably OGG and FLAC. While they offer many advantages over MP3 in terms of quality and a lack of license fees, they have never become widely used as MP3 is the established standard.
E-books currently do not have an established standard, each hardware manufacturer and store are pushing their own proprietary format. So while you can buy any MP3 player and be pretty sure that your files will work on it, there is a good chance if you switch e-reader manufacturer, your files will no longer work.
You can rip a CD you own to an iPod, you can't copy a book you own to an iPad.
An MP3 player made your existing music collection portable. Ok ripping CDs took time, but it meant the usefulness of your iPod was not totally reliant on making new purchases and a single source for content. You could copy your own CDs to it and acquire MP3 files from other sources, both legal and illegal. People were prepared to pay for the hardware because it meant that they could use their existing content in a new way, even if they never spent a penny after the initial purchase.
With e-readers you have to start from scratch, if you want to read a book on your e-reader you need to buy it, even if you already own it in paper format. This means that the usefulness of the device is limited to future purchases and does not make your historic purchases more valuable. This is the most significant difference between e-readers and MP3 players, the latter adds value to what you already own, the former requires you to spend and keep spending.
An MP3 player adds value to what you already own, an e-reader devalues what you already own.
MP3s changed they way people could buy music, e-books do not change they way people buy books.
An MP3 player made your existing music collection portable. Ok ripping CDs took time, but it meant the usefulness of your iPod was not totally reliant on making new purchases and a single source for content. You could copy your own CDs to it and acquire MP3 files from other sources, both legal and illegal. People were prepared to pay for the hardware because it meant that they could use their existing content in a new way, even if they never spent a penny after the initial purchase.
With e-readers you have to start from scratch, if you want to read a book on your e-reader you need to buy it, even if you already own it in paper format. This means that the usefulness of the device is limited to future purchases and does not make your historic purchases more valuable. This is the most significant difference between e-readers and MP3 players, the latter adds value to what you already own, the former requires you to spend and keep spending.
An MP3 player adds value to what you already own, an e-reader devalues what you already own.
You might only want to buy one track from an album, you almost never just want one chapter of a book.
Popular music is highly episodic in nature, each track can be enjoyed in isolation and sometimes there is little benefit to hearing the whole album. However historically you had to buy a whole album even if you only wanted one song. Therefore being able to buy only the songs you wanted, was highly beneficial to customers. Much to some artists dismay, being able to buy individual tracks changed the way people buy music.
Books on the other hand - with the exception of collections of short stories, poetry and some academic books - rely on the whole composition. No-one wants to just buy the start or end of a book, or a random chapter from the middle. The bottom line is, that other than increasing availability, e-readers will not change the way people buy books.
MP3s changed they way people could buy music, e-books do not change they way people buy books.
A book in isolation is useful, music has always been useless without hardware and power.
Since the demise of gramophones, you have needed a power source to listen to music. People accept that if they buy music, regardless of its format, they will require some hardware and proximity to a power supply to make it useful. Switching from cassette tapes, to CDs, to Minidiscs, to MP3s, the basic economics and function did not change. The paradigm was the same, people were using music in the same way they had been using it for decades. The advances in portable music players have been in making devices smaller, carrying a larger catalogue and increasing battery life.
This is not the case for books, people are used to the fact that they can use a book whenever and wherever they want. They don't have to charge it from a socket or buy hardware to read it, it just works. Moving to e-books relies on completely changing the usage model. While there is the benefit of being able to carry a larger catalogue, people still have to be convinced to buy additional hardware and accept the restrictions that requiring a power source brings.
A CD without hardware and power is a shiny coaster, a book provides value by itself.
Since the demise of gramophones, you have needed a power source to listen to music. People accept that if they buy music, regardless of its format, they will require some hardware and proximity to a power supply to make it useful. Switching from cassette tapes, to CDs, to Minidiscs, to MP3s, the basic economics and function did not change. The paradigm was the same, people were using music in the same way they had been using it for decades. The advances in portable music players have been in making devices smaller, carrying a larger catalogue and increasing battery life.
This is not the case for books, people are used to the fact that they can use a book whenever and wherever they want. They don't have to charge it from a socket or buy hardware to read it, it just works. Moving to e-books relies on completely changing the usage model. While there is the benefit of being able to carry a larger catalogue, people still have to be convinced to buy additional hardware and accept the restrictions that requiring a power source brings.
A CD without hardware and power is a shiny coaster, a book provides value by itself.
I guess you can't stop progress and for some people e-books will make sense, but i think the adoption of e-books will be far slower than the adoption of MP3s. And while the progress of MP3s has been relatively fast, keep in mind that even after over a decade, you can still get just about any music you want on a CD.
Tomorrow i will post a round-up of my conclusions and most importantly what publishers could do to make e-readers a no-brainer purchase.
Books Vs E-Readers Series
1 - Introduction
4 - Why E-books Are Not The Same As MP3s
5 - Conclusions
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Books Vs E-Readers - My Reservations About E-Readers
In my last post i focused on The Benefits of E-Readers, however there are some issues with them, that for me, are potential deal breakers.
You Never Really Own The Product - Your use of an e-book is not absolute. Effectively you pay a company to borrow the book indefinitely and they can chose to take it back whenever they want. You might think, that in the same way that you own a book, you would own an e-book. This is not the case, last year Amazon released a version of 1984 on Kindle and shortly thereafter withdrew it from sale. However it didn't stop there, in an ironically Orwellian twist, they also removed the e-book from the Kindle of everyone who had already bought it too. Ok they refunded the people who had bought it, but how would you feel if your favourite book one day disappeared from your e-reader? Worse still, that case was handled well. People got a refund and a replacement was offered quite promptly afterwards, but that is unlikely to always be the case. There is no reason an unscrupulous provider couldn't chose to selectively censor content or just decide to arbitrarily remove books on a whim. Even if the provider was not being malicious, many of the e-readers rely on a connection to a server to authenticate content. If that connection is lost, the content ceases to work. It could be a temporary outage, or the company could go bankrupt, either way you would lose access to something you have paid for. This is easily my biggest concern with e-readers and unless it is addressed, i can't see me making important purchases only electronically.
Useful Life - As with all computer files, how sure are you that you will be able to access an e-book in 3, 5 or 10 years time? A physical book, provided it is kept well, should be just as readable in 100 years time as it is now. An electronic file? ... who knows. Software and hardware change so quickly, that you cannot be sure that it will be easy to read the file in the future, especially if it is in a proprietary format or uses DRM. Similarly to the above point there is a good chance that you could lose access to something that you have paid for.
Useful Life - As with all computer files, how sure are you that you will be able to access an e-book in 3, 5 or 10 years time? A physical book, provided it is kept well, should be just as readable in 100 years time as it is now. An electronic file? ... who knows. Software and hardware change so quickly, that you cannot be sure that it will be easy to read the file in the future, especially if it is in a proprietary format or uses DRM. Similarly to the above point there is a good chance that you could lose access to something that you have paid for.
You Rely On Power - You can use a book anywhere, anytime ... except in the dark. An e-reader on the other hand is always reliant on having a power supply. It might only last 10 hours between charges like an iPad, or it might last 7 days like a Kindle. Either way if you lose/forget the power adapter, there is an extended power cut or you are somewhere remote, you are screwed. The same could be said for an MP3 player or a mobile phone, however the alternatives to those technologies require power too, a book does not. Power outlets are popping up all over the place these days, due to the prevalence of laptops and mobile phones, but it is still less flexible than a book.
You can't flick through an e-book - This is a minor point, that i'm sure could be adequately overcome with a good way to search the e-book. However one of the advantages of books is that you can flick through them quickly. You might remember roughly what the page looked like or where it was through the book and a quick flick will help you locate it. Certainly with e-ink, this is not feasible on an e-reader, the refresh time is a few seconds, so potentially it could take quite a while to 'flick' through an e-book. This is less of an issue with more traditional LCD displays, however it still wouldn't be as fast.
Hardware cost - A book is self-contained, you don't need anything else to use it, an e-reader requires additional hardware. Now that would be fine, if the purchase price of the e-books reflected the lack of printing and distribution costs. Unfortunately they don't, at the moment e-books generally cost the same as (if not more than) hard copy books. So there is no ROI, there is no tipping point where spending £300 on an iPad will save you money, if you buy more than say 60 books a year. The e-reader system, under the current pricing, will always be more expensive. Things become even more expensive if you don't read a lot. For example if you only buy 5 books a year and e-reader hardware lasts 2 years, you are paying an extra £30/book for the privilege of getting an electronic copy.
Second Hand Sales / Sharing - Unlike a real book, there is no way to sell or lend an e-book. Once you have paid for an e-book you are stuck with it. It might suck, you might never want to look at it again, but there is no way to recoup any of what you paid by selling or trading it. You also can't lend a great e-book to a friend, while it would be technically feasible, it isn't really in the publishers interest. In their view, as the printing and distribution costs are zero, why shouldn't your friend just buy a copy. Even if there was a system where you could share e-books, it would rely on your friend having the same (or compatible) hardware as you. With a book you can sell, trade or lend it at your discretion.
Regional Restrictions - For me the most annoying thing in the iTunes store is; "this content is not available in your region". Why the hell not? What does it matter where i am located, i am prepared to pay, it doesn't cost them any more to send it to me, so why turn down a sale. The only reasons for regional restrictions are; 1) With physical products you have to ship them, sometimes you don't have enough to ship or it takes longer to ship to certain places. In this case regional restrictions make some sense, why serve 2 markets poorly when you can serve one, then the other, well. However this is not even remotely applicable for electronic products, they cost nothing to reproduce or deliver, so why restrict their sale. Which leads us to; 2) It allows content providers to gouge certain locations at different rates. If a company has enough control and can charge twice as much in one place as another, why wouldn't they. In the past this worked acceptably, but only because it was not easy for people to find out if they were being gouged or find lower cost alternatives. With the internet people are immediately aware if they are being charged more and are often able to source cheaper alternatives. It is a global economy so why are there still regional restrictions?
Availability - I know i listed this as an advantage on Monday and while availability would generally be improved, there are a number of situations where it would not be as good. Provided a book is available in your language, you can have it shipped anywhere and use it. I used to get books shipped from the UK to Australia, because even including the postage charges, they were half the price and there was a better selection. That would not have been an option if i had a Kindle or an iPad and was stuck with the Australian store. It is also likely, that many older or more obscure books are not available electronically and therefore could not be purchased. That will improve as it becomes more economically viable to scan and digitise books, but it may never be economically viable for some titles.
So as you can see, there are as many problems with e-readers as benefits. Next I will look at barriers to the adoption of e-readers and in particular Why E-books Are Not The Same As MP3s.
So as you can see, there are as many problems with e-readers as benefits. Next I will look at barriers to the adoption of e-readers and in particular Why E-books Are Not The Same As MP3s.
Monday, 1 February 2010
Books Vs E-Readers - The Benefits of E-Readers
As an avid reader, i can think of lots of benefits that an e-reader would provide:
Backup - While i am sure a physical book is more robust overall than an e-reader, books are vulnerable - in a very permanent way - to fire, water, loss, theft, wear and tear. An e-book can be backed up and re-downloaded should the worst happen.
Portability - Books are heavy. As someone who had to ship 25kg (a years worth) of books from Australia to the UK, life would have been much easier if they were all on an e-reader or in the cloud. There may be some battery life issues in terms of portability, but physically an e-reader is far more portable. This also applies to travel, i normally carry 4 books in my hand luggage and a couple in my hold luggage, a total of around 3kg's. If i had an e-reader, i would only need to carry 1 book (for emergencies) along with the e-reader.
Multi-function - A book just does one very specific thing, you can't browse the web, watch a film or listen to music using a book. Really this is just additional portability beyond books, removing the need for other devices.
Searchability - I don't know whether this is a current feature, but how useful would it be to be able to search every book in your library from one place? In the past i tried to setup a system of note-taking and blog posts, to make some of the books i had read searchable. It failed for a number of reasons, most notably; there was a lot of effort required to take notes and the fact that what seems important to note at the time, may not be what you are looking for in the future. Having a global search of your books would be seriously useful.
Cashflow Optimisation - I currently buy books in batches and they can sit on my shelf for weeks, months or in some cases years. With an e-reader, i could just queue up books i want in my saved items and only buy them once i was ready to read them. With physical books, you never know when the mood to read a particular one will strike, so i keep a few on hand 'just in case'. By purchasing on-demand when i was ready to read a book, i would save a considerable amount of cash sitting on the shelf unused.
Availability - There will no longer be any need to worry if a book is in print, or whether it needs to be shipped from the states. Print runs will cease to have any meaning, as once a book is written it can be distributed electronically an infinite number of times. Also the lead time to anywhere with an internet connection shrinks to minutes rather than days or weeks.
Condition - Most books end up in worse condition after repeat reading and i am a little anal-retentive about keeping my books in top shape. No more worrying about cracked spines, or people folding over pages or tears or sweat from my fingers. An e-book is always in pristine condition.
Condition - Most books end up in worse condition after repeat reading and i am a little anal-retentive about keeping my books in top shape. No more worrying about cracked spines, or people folding over pages or tears or sweat from my fingers. An e-book is always in pristine condition.
There are probably some positives i have forgotten, so if you think of any please comment. Unfortunately there are also some significant issues with e-books, which will be discussed on Wednesday.
Books Vs E-Readers Series
1 - Introduction
2 - The Benefits of E-Readers
5 - Conclusions
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