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Tag: ipad (Page 3 of 3)

Are Physical Books Really Dead Yet?

February 23, 2011 /

A new Amazon Kindle ad has Crave writer David Carnoy speculating that Amazon has pronounced the physical book dead. Long live the physical book! He writes,

By saying that the physical book “lives on,” Amazon is implying that it died at some point. That’s not exactly true, of course, but the messaging seems pretty clear, and expect to see more of it going forward.

It seems rather obvious that physical books continue to be printed and sold to millions of readers. But you know what? I think Amazon is on to something here. As an avid book lover, my heart has been torn by my growing love of eBooks and the accelerating disappearance of bookstores most recently due to the Borders bankruptcy.

As I sort through the remains of the store closing sale of my neighborhood Borders, I am filled with the same ambivalence about physical books as I’m sure was in part responsible for the store’s demise. I love the printed book, but these days I prefer eBooks whenever they are available, and in many cases, I am more than willing to wait for an eBook version to come out. As a result, the only printed books I buy now are graphic novels and manga because they are still mostly unavailable in eBook form, at least legally that is.

So maybe Amazon is right. Somewhere along the way physical books died, at least in my heart, but the soul of the book lives on. It lives on in Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and anything that can display the printed word. If that’s not going to heaven, I don’t know what is!

Borders Bankruptcy For The Manga Reader

February 15, 2011 /

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Borders is in the final preparations for declaring bankruptcy. When this happens, a lot of Borders bookstores are going to close. Borders currently operates about 650 bookstores and various reports estimate that they will likely close 150 of these. I think, for no reason other than things often being worse than they appear in these situations, that Borders is going to close a lot more stores than that by the time it’s all over.

But what does this mean for the manga reader? Personally, I’ve already made the switch to eBooks whenever a title I want is available in digital format. But many manga title are not currently available in any digital format, at least not legally. So I’ve depended on Borders for much of my print manga for years now because they always had the best and largest selection of titles, including mature ones.

After reading a bit of speculation on what the surviving Borders would look like on Japanator, I think the prospects for print sales of manga are rather bleak indeed. Between a smaller Borders chain only offering the most popular manga titles and Barnes & Noble maintaining its quick return policies and a ban on mature titles, that seemingly leaves Amazon as the winner in all of this. Or does it?

Manga publishers in Japan and their U.S. licensees have been fighting a seemingly losing battle against illegal manga scans, scanlations, on the web. Initially, many, if not most, of the illegal scans consisted of series that had little hope of being distributed in the U.S.. But the growth of the internet soon saw even those popular titles licensed in the U.S. easily available on a number of web sites for all to download for free.

Some of the highest profile scanlation sites have been closed down, but many remain and are relatively easy to find for the most popular manga titles. There are even scans of manga showing up as YouTube videos! By contrast, there are still few popular manga titles available in eBook format for eReaders like the Kindle or Nook. The number of popular titles is growing on the iPad, but few of the largest part of the manga buying demographic, teens and college students, own iPads. A growing number of popular manga are also readable on publisher web sites in a web browser where they must compete head to head with the often easier to read (i.e. no Flash or DRM required) illegal scanlations.

Against this backdrop, it isn’t clear that Amazon will be the clear winner as retail bookstore availability of manga decreases. It seems likely that at least some frustrated manga readers will turn to the grey market for their manga fix unless publishers and booksellers give them an easy way to get manga legally. For now, I’ll probably buy from Amazon because there are no longer any nearby bookstores that carry the titles I want and the selection available at anime conventions is haphazard at best. My hope is that in 6 months I’ll be writing about how all of the major manga publishers have released their titles in all of the popular eBook formats.

Courting Failure: Xoom Tablet May Be Overpriced

February 7, 2011 /

Ars Technica reports that the upcoming Motorola Xoom will launch at $799.99 and will require a data plan from Verizon to enable WiFi networking. That’s right, there’s no escaping a data plan, WiFi will be crippled unless users sign up with Verizon for at least one month.

I’d been watching the Android Honeycomb powered tablet since CES in the hopes that it would offer the iPad some real competition and be a viable option for reading eBooks. But launching at a higher price than the base model iPad makes this unlikely. It also raises a lot of questions about just how much it costs to manufacture the Xoom and the role Verizon plays in all of this.

Some estimate that it costs about $230 to manufacture an iPad. So even the $500 entry model nets a nice profit for Apple in the hardware alone. It seems reasonable to expect similar manufacturing costs for the Xoom. If not, then that would be the first part of Motorola’s problem. It is understandable for Motorola to pitch their new tablet as better than the iPad with a price to match that perception. But given the newness of the tablet market and the huge head start Apple has in both sales and mindshare, a high launch price and onerous data plan seems guaranteed to turn off potential buyers. More casual users will simply opt for the iPad their friends already have. While more sophisticated, tech savvy users will likely be incensed by both the high price and Verizon’s heavy handed tactic of disabling even WiFi unless a data plan is purchased.

One can only hope that the leaked Best Buy ad is inaccurate or perhaps a trial balloon, and the Xoom will launch with a more sane price point and data plan structure.

Update:

Ars reports that the WiFi only Xoom will be released for $600 and will not require a data contract to enable the networking. So it seems that Motorola is playing to win after all, which is good news for us all!

Update II:

The Xoom gets a pretty good hands on review. But honestly, I still think it’s a bit overpriced. Right now $500 gets you a contract free iPad and a ton of apps available in the Apple App Store versus $800 for the Xoom. While the hardware for the Xoom specs a little higher than the entry level iPad, the apps available tip the balance. And on top of everything else, Adobe Flash Player is not ready for Android 3.0 yet. So I think iPad wins this round.

iPad (Manga) Envy

January 27, 2011 /

Yesterday I was reading the latest issue of Shonen Jump and noticed the back cover ad for the Viz Manga iPad app. Through the app, readers can buy digital copies of a number of popular Viz manga. This is certainly great news if you already own an iPad and have a love for manga, but what about the rest of us who read our eBooks on Nooks, Kindles, or Kobos?

It seems likely, that if manga on the iPad is popular enough, it will find its way to other platforms. Popular iPad/iPhone apps generally spawn Android app versions, so perhaps there is some hope there. But who is actually reading manga on an iPad? Graphic novels and manga skew towards a decidely younger demographic than the 30 to 50 – somethings that make up the bulk of initial iPad users.

As time goes on, it is reasonable to expect more young people to own iPads. There are already a number of colleges requiring students to own iPads or providing them to students for free. But the iPad is still a fairly expensive tablet that will not serve as a viable laptop replacement for much of the college and high school aged demographic. And since the iPad was released, it now faces more competition from Android based tablets as well as improved eBook readers like the Nook Color. So it seems likely that Viz will eventually support its manga on other platforms.

eReaders and Tablets: Peaceful Coexistence?

January 18, 2011 /

Borders has extended its $99 Kobo eBook reader sale through Thursday. I wonder what this means. Does it mean that they received such a favorable bump in sales that the embattled bookseller wants to build on it? Or does it mean just the opposite, and they need to quickly clear inventory and raise cash to pay publishers?

I’d like to think that it is the former rather than the latter. Successful Kobo sales mean more eBook sales for Borders which hopefully offset any losses they take discounting the hardware. Not only that, I’d like to think that maybe they are establishing $99 as a permanent opening price point for a high quality eBook reader. This lower price would also further position eReaders versus tablets like the iPad.

Since the appearance of the iPad, I’ve wondered whether dedicated eReaders stood a chance of surviving in a market of more capable tablets. The falling prices of the Kindle, and Nook since that time will certainly help their survival. And the introduction and reported success of the Nook Color at $249 demonstrates that a middle ground between eBook readers and tablets may exist as well. Still, I think most consumers are thinking of getting one or the other. But if the impulse buy price point of $99 is established for eReaders, then I think buying both becomes an option for many.

So I hope that the $99 Kobo is not just a fleeting blip on my sensors.

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