to the making of books there is no end, so let's get started!
Everyone likes free stuff! Now through the end of the year, Rolled Up Dimensionality: Short stories from a forgotten life, is free on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod! The book is a collection of SciFi short stories inspired somewhat by the great pulp classics of the 1950’s and 60’s.
If there’s enough interest, the good folks at Amazon and Barnes & Noble may let me drop the price to free for the Kindle and Nook versions as well!
Since closing down their North American manga publishing operations back in May, it seems that Tokyopop’s manga aspirations are doing anything but resting in peace. The Tokyopop Facebook page is still active and recent news that they may still publish Hetalia volume 3 has brought mixed reactions. The plan calls for a limited retail print release along with digital.
Prior to the shutdown, there had been indications that Tokyopop was going to expand their digital manga offerings. Perhaps this is being revisited in their Hetalia plans. But is it too late? Japanese manga publishers seem to be putting much, if not all, of their digital manga efforts behind the JManga project. Tokyopop would have to figure into this somehow, and it is unknown how much the May shutdown strained relations with their Japanese partners. Most of Tokyopop’s Japanese licences have reverted back to their owners, and some believe that fans would be better served if they gave up any remaining ones so that they may be published by more stable organizations.
Still, love ’em or hate ’em, Tokyopop is a well known brand in the United States. As a manga lover, I’d be very happy to see the return of Tokyopop.
A couple of days ago, I read of Michael S. Hart’s passing on the Project Gutenberg site. Up until that point I’d never even heard of him, nor knew the great debt that all of us who enjoy and promote eBooks today owe his pioneering spirit.
When I first got my Nook, some of the first eBooks I loaded on it were from Project Gutenberg. It was one of those Star Trek moments, having the feeling that the sum of human knowledge and thought was at my finger tips. Between Google and Project Gutenberg, I had it all! I think that someday we’ll look back on Michael S. Hart’s invention of eBooks as one of the turning points in the evolution of human society.
Thanks Michael. This site is here because of you.
I finally bought a Kindle this week. I ran into some issues publishing The Great Robot Adventure that could only be fully addressed with the actual hardware in hand. I’m happy to say that the issues have been resolved and the new book is now on sale for Kindle, Nook, and iPad.
At this point, I now have 5 electronic devices on which I can read eBooks. This was certainly not my intent. Ideally, I’d like to be able to read all of my eBooks on a single device, but this will remain only a dream and not something that most people will be able to experience in practice. There are too many strong commercial interests conspiring against one eReader to rule them all.
Right now the iPad comes closest to my ideal universal eReader. It’s perfect for digital comics and manga, and okay for plain text in low light situations where screen glare is not an issue. The iPad has reader apps for all of the major eBook sellers, but recent changes to Apple’s in-app purchasing rules are threatening to bring these apps to an end. While Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others have modified their apps to remove book purchasing links, the Financial Times pulled their app altogether. The Financial Times has replaced their app with an iPad/tablet optimized web site. Amazon has also launched such a site as their Kindle Cloud Reader.
Outside of multipurpose tablets and personal computers, the eReaders fall short simply because all titles are not available on all platforms. The popular ePub format goes a long way towards making this possible, but Amazon does not directly support it on the Kindle. And even if they did, competing DRM schemes would still stand in the way.
At the end of the day, it is not unusual now to find a stack of eReaders, an iPad, and my iPhone piled up next to my MacBook. And of course I still do a lot of reading the old fashioned way in printed books! I think this Balkanization of reading is unavoidable, but as our reading devices continue to get thinner and lighter, it may not be such a bad thing.
Thanks to this competition, stuffing a Nook, Kindle, and iPad into my messenger bag is still less weight than I typically had to carry in college. And I still have room for a printed manga or two!
It’s every publisher’s hope that new books will catch on and find an audience. You promote, promote, promote and then watch the sales figures. If all goes well, the rocket takes off and a smile comes to your face. I’d been smiling a bit lately about Oh My! A thinking man’s guide to crossplay.
The eBook has been doing reasonably well on the Kindle, but when sales recently spiked a bit, I was curious and began to do some digging. What I discovered was that the book was also available on a number of file sharing sites on the web. My book was being pirated!
I knew that this was a possibility from the beginning. Piracy is just an unavoidable part of the digital ecosystem that has to be accounted for in any modern business plan. So rather than becoming angry, I was rather proud that someone thought my book was worth pirating. At $1.99, it certainly isn’t too expensive, and the sales spike is very likely due to the increased exposure.
So it seems that there really is no such thing as bad publicity!
Oh My! A thinking man’s guide to crossplay is available for Kindle, Nook, and iPad/iPhone.
Anime News Network reported that the JManga web site had launched with a lineup of titles that included manga never seen in print in the United States. These new titles include Macross Frontier.
It was the Macross Frontier part that piqued my interest primarily. JManga is a web portal where manga can be purchased and read online in the most popular web browsers. Reading manga online is not new, but being able to do so legally is, for the most part. And any anime or manga fan can attest to the very loud absence of anything Macross Frontier (legally) on US shores. So as a Macross fan, I put aside my general dislike for web based manga reading and signed up for a JManga account to look around.
Well first, I should note, that at this time Macross Frontier is not yet available on JManga, but still there was quite a lot to see. And I wanted to see if the site would work on my iPad. All of the legal online manga reading sites make use of Adobe Flash based readers which don’t work on Apple iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. I had hoped to find that JManga was iPad friendly. Unfortunately, the JManga reader is also Flash based and didn’t work on my iPad.
The Flash based manga reader wasn’t really a surprise. But I was surprised and a little disappointed at the price of manga on the site. On JManga, readers buy manga using points. These points are worth a penny a piece. Many titles on the site do not have prices listed as yet, but of those that did, I found the range from 895 to 899 points for a volume. Nine dollars is not a bad price for a printed manga volume, but charging that for digital seems excessive considering that Viz typically charges $5.99 for their iPad friendly digital manga. JManga does have a $10/month subscription plan that currently has a one time bonus of 500 points and then a 50 point/month bonus after that. This brings the cost down a bit, but not enough to escape the fact that they essentially charge print prices for digital.
Pricing aside, I’m happy to see that new titles are being made available to US readers in digital format and hope we’re seeing the beginning of a trend. The general decline of retail bookstores and loss of Borders and publisher Tokyopop in particular has made it more difficult for US manga readers to find new titles. JManga was established by the 39 Japanese publishers who make up the Digital Comic Association with the goal of making manga available worldwide in a fashion that benefits the publishers, artists, and readers alike. If manga is to have a future in the US, JManga is going to be part of it.
With 39 publishers to manage, issues like pricing and availability will take some time to work out. But yes, even at print price I’ll be there for Macross Frontier!
A couple of weeks ago, Apple’s in-app purchase rules change resulted in a number of companies with iOS book reader applications to remove links to their online bookstores from within their apps. Along with this change, there was some speculation that this might encourage the introduction of HTML5 based web applications to sidestep Apple’s rules.
Last week Amazon fired back with its own web-based Kindle Cloud Reader. This iPad optimized web app in a hands-on review by Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica on the whole got pretty good marks for a 1.0 release. And, of course, it integrates the Kindle Store into the app. By all means, read the review and check it out for yourself at read.amazon.com. While not a complete replacement for the native iOS and Android apps yet, in our increasingly networked world, it won’t be too long before we’ll no longer notice the difference. And the speed at which Amazon introduced the cloud reader suggests that this project has been underway for some time and will likely see future improvements.
Audrey Watters at ReadWriteWeb writes that Apple’s new rules are encouraging eReader app makers to create HTML5 web applications rather than pay Apple 30% royalties on in-app purchases made on iOS devices, i.e. iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches.
I’d been watching this situation with a great deal of interest because it has affected the development of our own Learncrest iPhone app. Originally, the app was designed to follow the Amazon Kindle app model wherein if a reader clicked a purchase link in the app, it would start up mobile Safari and go to a web page to complete the purchase outside of the app. Unfortunately, Apple changed the rules to disallow this, forcing a rewrite of the app. Amazon, Kobo, Google, and other eReader app developers have been forced to remove buy buttons and any mention of their book purchasing web sites from their iOS apps.
Because the Learncrest app is being developed using PhoneGap, much of it is coded in HTML5, CSS, and Javascript. Rather than waste the affected bits, I decided to create a web version of the app suitable for iOS and Android mobile devices. This is still under development, but if you want to take a look, click here. Of course this looks best when viewed on a mobile device like the iPhone or any number of Android based smartphones.
Obviously, a web app is not the answer for every need right now, but as network connectivity becomes increasingly pervasive, soon the end user may not be able to tell the difference. If it is Apple’s grand strategy to encourage and promote HTML5 in this way, then kudos to them! If not, then WTF are they thinking?
Perhaps taking advantage of the demise of Borders, Amazon has lowered the price of their popular Kindle 3G eBook reader to $139. This is truly a great time to move to eBooks as the choices for quality readers have never been better. And I’m sure that the Borders closing stories have increased interest in eBooks in general and the Kindle in particular given that Amazon is getting a lot of credit for the demise of Borders and popularization of eBooks. Those who really like to pinch pennies may want to wait and see if Amazon also drops the price of their $114 Kindle with ads to the magical $99.
Anyone who’s been following the Borders saga is probably not surprised at the news that Borders is closing its remaining stores and liquidating. Like watching the decline of an ailing old friend, I’m somewhat relieved that Borders will soon be out of its misery. All remaining stores may close as early as this Friday.
That Borders execs continued to seek bonuses even as the company sank, seems like some surreal necrophilic episode as this ordeal draws to a close. Much has already been made of the company’s failure to compete with Amazon and the rise of eBooks. But in the end, I think shortsighted, greedy executives killed what was once a great bookstore chain.
The demise of Borders is going to leave publishers with a lot fewer places to sell books and ultimately with a lot less leverage on Amazon. Like Apple was to the music industry, the demise of the large bookstore chain is casting Amazon into a similar role in publishing. If publishers want to stay in business and sell books, they have to play ball with Amazon whether in print or eBook format for the Kindle.
While Barnes & Noble can offer some alternative for publishers right now, it remains to be seen whether or not they themselves will escape Borders’ fate. Reports are that the Nook is doing well versus the Kindle, but the balance of our own eBook sales here at Learncrest points up an enormous Kindle advantage. Titles are moving on the Kindle but not so much on the Nook. And while Barnes & Noble stands to gain Borders customers in places where they have stores nearby, those readers farther away will likely turn to Amazon. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of marketing pitch B&N will make to woo those orphaned readers. Heavily discounted Nooks would be nice!
If anyone had any doubts that the book business had changed forever, they can be sure now. Rest in peace Borders old friend. Rest in peace.
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