On the surface this looks like a nice deal, and it probably is, but you know that Amazon is in it to make money and dominate market share. Their M.O. has always been to make it financially irresponsible for anyone to compete with them in a market segment that they intend to dominate. If you’re  a Trek fan, think of Amazon like the Borg. Little shops are either assimilated (become Amazon partners and give a cut of their business in exchange for not being disintegrated) or they fail. There are obviously exceptions but overall this is how it works.

Amazon’s plan here looks a lot like a plan to cut Apple off at the pass.  Apple has been in talks with Harper that we know of, which means they’ve probably been in talks with other publishers as well. The iTunes store is currently the largest media distribution hub on the planet, and certainly the most profitable. Apple is about to unleash a Tablet on the world, a 10″ piece of technocandy that will have geeks fauning and eReader lovers drooling. If Apple is allowed to create eReader buzz with their tablet, hook it up to the iTunes store so that downloading books from the tablet is as easy as downloading stuff for an iPhone, and Apple gets a bunch of publishers on board with eBook distribution through the iTunes store – you can see where this might end: with Apple dominating the eBook market the same way they dominate legal music downloads. If this happens, then the Kindle will become 2nd fiddle in a market that is rapidly expanding and gaining in popularity. Amazon doesn’t want that.

So what do they do? They offer a 70% royalty deal that includes a clause to prevent you from offering digital copies of your book anywhere outside the Kindle store to intice people into their camp. Lowered eBook prices could generate a huge increase in sales volume for eBooks, which will make publishers see more profit potential in eBooks and the entire thing becomes a self-feeding, beneficial cycle, the “network effect” as it were.

A lot of people in the publishing industry might not know this, but 70% is what application developers get as royalty from sales in the iTunes store. What this really means is that for an indie developer, the entire production chain is taken care of for them – the only thing they need to concern themselves with is building the software. There is no distribution cost to them, and Apple only taking 30% is actually a bargain considering what the independent developer might have to pay otherwise to get their application out in the world.

The conspiracy theorist in me figures that since the developer royalty rate on the App Store for the iPhone is 70%, and Apple is about to unleash a Tablet, and Apple has been talking to publishers, and Apple is currently sitting on the biggest media hub on the planet, that Amazon figures Apple’s going to offer a 70% royalty rate as well. This is why I think they’re trying to cut Apple off at the pass. They get people to start coming up with plans to adopt Amazon’s DTP, Amazon gets their hooks in, and by the time people get ahold of the Apple Tablet, they’ve sold their souls to the Kindle.

This whole business reminds me of the HD-DVD/BluRay format wars. Do I get a Kindle and read only Kindle books? Do I get a Nook and read only Nook books? Do I get an Apple Tablet and read only iTunes eBooks? At some point the house of cards will fall and there will be one winner. Only time will tell if any of this is good for the consumer and how it will change the publishing industry as we know it. As I’ve said before, the bottom line is that if authors and publishers do not embrace change, adapt, and move forward they will be left in the dust.

Delicious Facebook Stumble This Post

Call me crazy, but I love the smudged thumbs I get from a 3-hour reading session where the real world ceased to exist and it was just me and my alternate reality, lovingly prepared for me by my favorite authors. I love the smell of books and the feel of curling up with a book in a comfortable chair with a ridiculously strong coffee.

Lately, however, after having moved a few thousand pounds of books from an apartment into a house, I’m considering a less analog solution. The big bonus to the eReaders is instant gratification – the shipping time on an eBook is roughly 60 seconds and there is no shipping cost.

The Amazon Kindle 2 is a great device. You can download any book from their roughly 350,000 book large collection. It comes with the ability to get magazines, newspapers, and you can even hit Wikipedia from the device.

Personally, I think the device looks decent, but it doesn’t draw me in. It doesn’t feel like something that could substitute for my need to curl up in my favorite chair with a good eBook.

Book prices are reasonable and it comes with the usual pile of acoutrements that you would expect from an eReader. The new offering from Barnes and Noble also seems to have the usual amount of goodies that you get with standard eReaders. Of course it uses “e ink”. If you’re not familiar with this, it isn’t the same thing as a computer monitor. You can read eInk in full-on glare and sunlight without a problem, just like a regular printed page. The thing that I find really appealing about the B&N Nook is that they’re trying some new innovative stuff. First and foremost is the ability to lend books to your friends. That’s right, if you buy a book from your Nook, you can send a lent copy of that book to a friend of yours with any eReader (Nook, iPhone, Windows, Mac, Blackberry, and more) for 14 days of free unlimited reading. This is a really cool feature because I hate how DRM (Digital Rights Management, the encryption technology that protects media) normally inconveniences legitimate owners more than it does pirates.

Another thing the Nook does is when you go into a Barnes and Noble, you can use the Nook to preview the contents of virtually any book in the store over the free in-store WiFi. This is really appealing to me because even if I do take the plunge and get an eReader, I still love the feeling of being in a book store and making my eReader give me bonuses for physically being in a book store is really nice.

Technically speaking, there are very few differences. The Nook has a second touch-screen that is full color that lets you browse content by book cover whereas the Kindle has nothing like that. The Nook weighs a couple ounces more and has 10 days of battery life whereas the Kindle has 14. Kindle is $279 and the Nook is $259.

From a writer’s standpoint, there are intriguing possibilities for eReaders of all kinds. I would like to see this technology used to shorten the life cycle between when the final manuscript is finished and when readers get a copy of the book. Safari, a website for computer programming books, does this already – you can see the contents of a book well before it is published and then purchase the print copy for a discount. I’d also like to be able to bring my eReader (say, my Nook) into a public library and be able to take out library books by putting them on my eReader and then the book just disappears after the 2-week take-out period.

To make a long story short, I’m leaning toward the Nook this holiday season both as a gift for my wife and possibly to get one for myself. It just looks cooler than the Kindle, B&N is offering 1,000,000 books to Kindle’s 350,000, and anything that gives me more reason to hang out in the in-store Starbucks and browse book catalogs is a huge bonus.

Delicious Facebook Stumble This Post