In case you hadn't heard, there's a bit of revolution underway in the way books are published. Whether they're printed or laid out in pixels and read on screens, authors are increasingly able to publish them on their own, using a growing selection of self-publishing software and websites. Early excitement over Apple's new iBooks Author app quickly gave way to concerns over its restrictive licensing agreement, which Apple then clarified.
For those disappointed in the current selection of self-publishing tools, there's a new option. BookType is a self-hosted, open source and collaborative authoring tool for e-books and print books. Think of it kind of like a Wordpress for books.
When Apple unveiled plans last week to ramp up its efforts in the education space, the company's announcement was met with decidedly mixed reactions. While many welcomed Apple's foray into digital textbook publishing, others were less enthusiastic. The idea of delivering textbooks via tablets may have promise in theory, but Apple's initial execution doesn't look all that disruptive yet.
The latter part of the announcement covered the impressive expansion of iTunes U and the launch of iBooks Author, a DIY tool for publishing digital textbooks. If anything could pose a threat to the status quo in the textbook industry, it would be such an application. But wait. As it turned out, the so-called "Garage Band for e-books" wouldn't be quite as open and revolutionary as some thought.
When the concept of libraries lending out e-books first came about, the idea had its skeptics. Some in the publishing industry worried that the practice could eat into e-book sales, while others questioned whether such a system would be popular or effective among consumers. Some recent statistics suggest that library e-book lending is taking off.
Driven in large part by the proliferation of tablets and e-readers, digital book lending is on the rise, according to OverDrive, a leading supplier of digital content to U.S. libraries. The company, which partnered with Amazon for its Kindle lending program, reported recently that it saw a 130% increase in traffic to its "virtual branch" websites last year. OverDrive works with 18,000 libraries to offer e-books and other digital content to members.
It's hard to wrap my brain around the cold cynicism of Apple's releasing a new tool to democratize the publishing of eBooks today, only to include in the tool's terms and conditions a prohibition against selling those books anywhere but through Apple's own bookstore. There's just something so achingly awful about it.
Portland, Oregon iOS developer Dan Wineman calls it unprecidented audacity. Writer Ed Bott calls it "mind-bogglingly greedy and evil." I just find it very, very sad.
Apple revolutionizes stuff. It's practically conventional wisdom in the tech world that, even if they're not first in the game or necessarily even the best, the Cupertino-based giant has a tendency to make a noticeable impact. They didn't invent the MP3 player, smartphone or tablet, but they sure have redefined all of those products. Even if this tendency is strong, it's not necessarily always how things play out. For an example, look no further than the Apple TV.
Today, the company set their sights on textbooks, an industry Steve Jobs himself described as being "ripe for digital destruction." True as that may be, is what Apple planning to do in the space really all that disruptive?
Remember Choose Your Own Adventure books? They pioneered the idea of the book as a game, an interactive form of reading that let the reader control the direction of the story. You reached a decision point in the plot, the book presented options, and you turned to a different page depending on your choice.
A startup called Coliloquy launches today to bring that concept to the e-book market starting with four titles. They're young adult romance novels, each written by an established author who took a bet with this new format. These teen fantasy stories will be a testing ground for whether interactive texts could be a new frontier for all kinds of publishers.
Amazon reports today that the Kindle E-Book Lending Library now offers over 75,000 books, boosted by the launch of the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select program for independent publishers. The KDP Select program launched in December, and Kindle customers borrowed 295,000 KDP Select titles that month. The top authors in the program earned thousands of dollars on top of their regular monthly sales.
Amazon increased its monthly funding for KDP Select from $500,000 to $700,000 this month after the strong showing. KDP authors earned $1.70 per borrow. The top 10 KDP Select authors saw a 30% increase from lending on top of the royalties they earned from sales of the same titles. Amazon's end-run around Big Publishing shows promise for authors.
Moonbot Studios has released The Numberlys, its second story app for iOS. It's an interactive tale with a massive visual scope appropriate for people of all sizes. Its stark, soaring black-and-white aesthetic draws on Fritz Lang's Metropolis to tell the story of five characters' quest to create the alphabet in a world run by numbers.
The story plays out as a hybrid of a film, a book and an interactive game. Kids can just watch it unfold the first time, skip around with the page arrows, or crank a mighty gear to jump to their favorite parts. Moonbot co-founders Brandon Oldenburg and Lampton Enoch described the process by which they, along with co-founder William Joyce, create their stories, and its as charming a story as The Numberlys itself.
Amazon has launched a more touch-friendly, Web-based iPad Kindle Store. A tablet-optimized Kindle store was available through the HTML5 Kindle Cloud Reader Amazon launched last August, but the new iPad Kindle Store is a standalone Web app. Upon visiting amazon.com/iPadKindleStore from Safari, a pop-up prompts the user to add it to the home screen. This is the most seamless way for Kindle users to buy books on the iPad.
Apple's in-app purchasing rules prevent e-book sellers from offering stores in their native apps (without giving Apple a 30% cut). The route around that was to include a link to the Web store inside the native reader app. Last July, Apple forced Amazon and other e-reader apps to remove this link, so users of e-book platforms other than Apple's iBooks must buy their books in the browser, in a separate place from where they read.
Google Books has had trouble on the content side. Google's approach has been too gung-ho, trying to "digitize the world's books" before publishers were ready for it. It also doesn't have the hardware reach that Amazon and Apple have. The only Android tablets taking off are the ones custom-built by Amazon and Barnes & Noble, who obviously prefer their own book businesses.
But Google's game is information. That's how Google Books is positioned - not as a content business or a hardware business, but as an information business. Google wants knowledge to be accessible. The Kindle service might be the best integrated with devices, and iBooks might look great on the demo floor of an Apple Store. But as a set of features for an e-book service, I'm rooting for Google Books.
