24Symbols: The Start of Books on Demand

Way back in January 2010 we wrote the following as part of our 2020 predictions:

‘This year will start to redefine ownership and see the entry of the streamed ‘read on demand’ model similar to what we have been raving about with the likes of Spotify. It will take the music model to open up consumers to its potential. The challenge will be the publishers and their obsession in supporting existing models that they understand and their reluctance to think outside the box on rights and royalties.’

Unlike others we have long seen digital as different, as a licence and not an outright purchase.

We believe that viewing digital as a mere substitution rendition is a dangerous route. This not only straightjackets creativity into yesterday’s economic models, it also ties royalties and rights to an inappropriate business model and further subjects the reader to ‘albums when they may find individual tracks more appropriate’.

Amazon are clearly lining themselves up to change the way we write, read and purchase material. What looks from the outside, as often disjointed steps, can be clearly seen as well thought through strides towards a new platform of writing and reading, that today others are struggling to comprehend.

We have recently seen the lending of ebooks enter the market, albeit under a social sharing umbrella. We have seen Amazon’s cloud offer continue to be developed. We have now seen Amazon start to advertise on the Kindle. Hello, can we add two and two and make four? Amazon is potentially one step away from a digital on demand service based on ads plus subscription. We could see it as a new global library, a new ‘book club’, a new way for ebooks to be read and if coupled with social networking, viral marketing, author buy in and also the wealth of tools Amazon has built, maybe a category killer that will be hard to emulate and compete against.

Yesterday we read that ‘24symbols’, a Spanish startup is planning to launch a subscription service with the aim to become the "Spotify for e-books." They will offer an ad-supported and a subscription-based access around 10€ per month for ebooks and the books will be streamed and cloud based. The challenges they face are the same as Spotify and others before them – grappling with a rights and royalty infrastructure not built for pricing not on demand licensing let alone ad supported revenues. They also have to accept that Amazon is about to set up in Spain.

Is it realistic to think that a new entrant can break the mould, or are we looking at the start of a process where the real winner has yet to enter the race. Remember Amazon wasn’t the first internet bookshop but the 14th and the first to get service right.

Book rental on demand certainly is the obvious opportunity for the industry. However, unlike music, and to a degree film, books do not have a consolidated source and supply and is highly fragmented so negotiating contracts could become a nightmare for anyone without true market clout and presence. Secondly, we have the current bookshop versus library mess, which would tend to indicate just how difficult it will be for the rights gatekeepers to see anything that is to them left field. Thirdly, we can’t even price ebooks today, let alone formulate a commercial rental model that is mutually rewarding, so moving to a lower pricing model based on term time licensing and reward could still prove a challenge. Finally, we still have to move to the cloud culture and on demand lifestyle. This may seem a natural evolution but challenges the very basics of a library and ownership that we have know for centuries.

We believe Books on demand via a cloud based services makes logical sense, but the question is less of if and who, and more when and how they can change book culture as we know it today.

Five Digital Publishing Considerations

We offer five insights into tomorrows world we believe should be considered in any digital publishing strategy.










The Future is Online

Many are still grappling with digital downloads and the various interpretations of epub standards, the myriad of ereader devices and how to price and sell digital titles. However when we look at other media markets we can already see a shift from download to streamed content or content on demand, from ownership to rental or subscription. Spotify and Pandora are changing music from buying tracks to renting music on demand. Video and TV is no different and here the shift is from schedules to viewing on demand.

Some think that books are different but why buy and download when the elibrary is effectively in the cloud? Why download when your GPS can already restrict what you can and can’t read? Why buy a file that is free from any armchair via your local library?

Online technology is now accessible 24x7 and as already proven, your latest read can be cached for continued enjoyment offline and can also be platform supported and not device dependant.

The Future is Agnostic

Today our views, interests and cultural awareness is restricted by what we can find and access, how we access it, what we can do with it and how we use it.

Interestingly, we are shaped more by what we don’t know, than by what we do know.Media is a classic example of where the technology and cultural restriction to information and content can narrow our perspective and thereby who we are.

Someone who grew up in the 50s did not have the access to the rich variety of music that existed then. Their taste was dictated by what and who they knew and could hear. Today, we all have access to just about every conceivable genre, taste and also every manifestation of any work every produced. This opportunity has been created by technology. However, the way in which we discover, access, experience and form opinions on music is varied and often haphazard. As a result everyone’s taste is more eclectic and the music industry now has to support a rich variety of taste. Genre and sub genre are still important but people expect access to a width and depth of range of music.

Merely expecting to sell front list titles forever maybe the quickest form of suicide we can think of.

The Future is Mobile

The most successful reading device to date, the book, is truly mobile.

The future may not be what we have in our pocket today but it will be what we have in our pockets tomorrow. User intuitive interfaces, micro technology and a different approach to mobile are going to shape the devices we will use. Th one thing that is certain is that we will not be tethered to anywhere or anytime. Digital reading will happen just as mobile email, wireless connectivity and digital music, games and video have all happened. The key is mobility. Today we take our phones everywhere and they are switched on 24X7. They go to the beach, in the car, on the underground and as they develop, must become our primary interface to everything. Books are not excluded merely waiting to happen.

The Future is Polar

We have ready seen the entry of the technology omnivores and they aren’t going away.

What is clearly happening is that the economies of digital scope and size are introducing new entrants who care less about books and more about selling devices, advertising, bandwidth and promoting their own brand. They only respect the existing channels if they support their brand and its they who own the transactions, the customer, the information and its their name on the tin.

This is actually creating a new opportunity for those who previously were forgotten and expected to die and small publishers and booksellers now have greater and different opportunities. The challenge is with those who once had the economies in their favour, the chains and larger publishers. Its fast becoming a case of ‘the king is dead long live the king.’

The Future is Vale Added

We have long argued that there is only two people that matter, the author who creates value and the consumer who pays for it. Everyone in between has to earn their place and add value.

This is changing the role of agents, publishers, service providers, distributors, wholesalers, bibliographic and secondary publishers, marketers, booksellers and librarians.

India Has its Own eBook Reader

EC Media has launched "Wink", which they claim as "India's first e-book reader".

We have to recognise Indian is not only the powerhouse of digital publishing today and itself is starting to embrace its output. We may think of India as third world but in many ways it is now casting that aside and generating wealth which EC Media is trying to capture through the Wink which can be picked up from a local Croma, a major Indian electronics retail chain. They claim over 200,000 titles as well as newspapers, magazines and journals. The Wink is specially designed for the Indians as it can support content in more than 15 Indian languages and They claim that they will soon support all Indian languages on the Wink. Books will generally sell for 50 to 75% of the cost of a paperback.

The Wink XTS model will have a 6” eInk screen, 2GB memory and has an SD expansion card slot, a miniUSB port lie, has a QWERTY keyboard and supports MP3. The XTS model on display supports Wi-Fi and will cost some $230, while the X3G model supports Wi-Fi and 3G and will cost some $320.

The point is that both China, where most ebooks are made and India where the west does its digitisation, have the ability to do it themselves. Maybe we should look at the history other electronics and manufacturing industries, such as cars and where the power now lies. Books may not be different.

Digital Reading Tests Prove Little?

So which would win the ultimate reading test out of the iPad, the Kindle, the PC and the physical book? Take 24 readers give them a short story by Hemingway on each of the four options, time them and then test their comprehension understand .

Jakob Nielson, a leading experts on usability ran such tests and has posted his results his Alert box website.

Based on this data, the study concludes that Books are still better for reading than ebook readers.

However the numbers are very small and the time taken was very similar. Nielson says that based on the tests, reading on the iPad is more difficult then a normal book, as the story took 6.2 percent longer to read, with the Kindle being even slower. Some suggest that the new or unfamiliar interface of the ereaders would easily account for the variance in results and that over time this would be obviated. Some would suggest that the tests ignored the benefits of the technology platforms and merely focused on one aspect reading. Some would also question whether speed actually matters?

So as eInk strives to play catch up to the iPad and the world gets addicted to tablets what can we draw from this small piece of research? Some would say very little, others that the book still wins, others that the tablet with its higher resolution and touchscreen interface wins over keys and poorer resolution. We think its all academic really but if it makes Mr Nielson happy and keeps him off the streets so be it.

There again its getting close to August and news is getting harder to find!

Does Digital Reading Endanger Your Health?

We all spend an extraordinary amount of time fixed looking into screens, with mobiles attached to the side of our brains, surrounded by WiFi and of course its all safe. Some will even play the ‘green card’ in support of digital reading.

Some interesting facts have again surfaced to show our addiction to the digital fix. The Mobile Data Association claim that in 2009, users of mobile phone in the UK sent some 265 million short message texts on average per day. In total around 97 billion text messages were sent over the year and some 600 million picture messages exchanged. This is represents an increase of 22 billion between 2007 and 20087 and 18 billion between 2008 and 2009. Whatever, it means a lot of thumbwork and staring at small screens!

A study by US welfare institute the Kaiser Family Foundation claims some children are now spending up to 10 hours a day between iPods, mobiles and computer games. 10 Hours is ironically the same time as the battery life of the new iPad. The research also found that much of this was multitasking and is an increase of some 1hour and 17 minutes over its findings in 2004.

Michele Elliott, a child psychologist and founder of the child welfare charity Kidscape, says, “When children are using these devices they are not communicating or interacting with anyone else [in person]. They may be very good at texting but how do they do when they have to meet someone face to face?”

Finally we have the battle between backlit LCD and eInk and the claims and counter claims on the health effect of screen technology. The recent Taipei International Book Exhibition saw several companies promoting LCD devices aimed at schoolchildren. We have already seen many initiatives to ditch textbooks and go digital in education. LCD screens are less expensive than e-paper screens and obviously offer full colour and multimedia and the new iPad also has an LCD screen. The American Optometric Association finds the tie between eye strain, blurred vision, headaches and neck pain and LCD inconclusive and based on current evidence it is 'unlikely that the use of VDTs (video display terminals) causes permanent changes or damage to the eyes or visual system.'

Taiwan's Delta Electronics promoted their colour e-paper screens and new 13.1” e-readers made with e-paper technology from Bridgestone the tyre manufacturers we reported on last year. There was many eInk ‘lookie likie’ ebook readers on show as well as the usual netbooks, laptops, smartphones and tablet PCs. Then we have OLED screens.

So as usage increases and our usage spreads to more devices the question remains, Is reading, texting and digital go or bad for your health?

Kindle 2: Reading Just Got Harder

So the K2 is the same experience as the K1, or should that be a better experience. You would not expect it to be a worse experience would you? According to a stream of reports, some 500 posted on Amazon forums, there’s a problem with reading the text. Well books are in the main text, so what up with K2?

According to an article in Wired the problem is the new K2 font smoothing algorithms and increased levels of greyscale. Pictures look better but text as it gets smaller in size goes fuzzy. Some users have even downgraded and exchanged their K2 for the K1.

So why isn’t everyone complaining? Does it only affect a certain group? Did someone test it out on a range of different eyesight levels before it was realised?

The K2 offers a single thinner and lighter default typeface that users can’t change and the grey shades have been increased from 4 to 16 "for clear text and even crisper images." However K2 users who don't have 20/20 vision are finding the smallest three font sizes fuzzy. The font smoothing algorithms render the pixels along the edge of a letter in several shades of grey as opposed to the earlier version where they were black. Apparently this works on conventional backlight screens but not well on reflective ones such as the K2.

We wonder whether the answer is a K2 set of glasses in funky colours and designs. Imagine not only do you have to carry the slab around along with the mobile and laptop and accessories but you can now have a dedicated pair of specs just to read what you could read on paper without them.

Can’t wait for them to get to K9.