Jul 18
Walter Cronkite was a consummate news professional: perhaps the last of his breed. “The Most Trusted Man in America” helped to shape this new media that we’re bending out of true; that we’re beaming around the world and now reading and viewing on all manner of space age gadget and gizmo.
I have missed his impartiality.
CNN has an excellent article on his passing here.
Jul 17
Jointech’s JE100 eBook Reader is a $270 mystery that I just found out is delivering to first adopters. Two words for Jointech to remember:Â press release. Click here to visit Jointech for the full specifications. (Mystery or not, it is a sweet looking ride.)
This is the first I’ve heard about the JE100 eBook Reader with it’s 7-inch LCD touchscreen (not E Ink) panel. Read a short review of the device at Slashgear.com here. I’m amazed that there are so many of these devices coming onto the market that they’re starting to slip by me. WOW!
I must remain vigilant, yah?
Jul 16
A florida hotel’s EPIC Page Turner program loans free eBooks and a Sony Reader to their Club level guests. This perk includes an EPIC Virtual Nightstand for reading exerpts from eBooks.
Read the full article here at Gadling.com. I’ll give top marks to this hotel for embracing the eBook Revolution.
The full scale adoption is underway. It would go a lot faster with cheaper eBook Readers, yah? (Just give it time!)
Jul 15
All the developments in eBooks and eBook Reading Devices and things are quiet in the Apple orchard. Not even a whisper. We’ve heard rumors about an Apple eBook Reading Tablet before.
Now we’ve got links to articles here at PCWorld and here at Macsimum MacOSG Forum where the ‘rumored’ tablet is mentioned again.
It’s driving everyone crazy. We all know something BIG is coming that will knock the eBook Revolution on its ear.
Jul 14
Techshout.com has a story about a Chinese-made eBook reader that bears a striking resemblance to Amazon’s Kindle. Read the story here.
What’s surprising, when we look at the rumored $210 price tag and year-end release, is that the North American companies insist on leaving this price gap in their defenses. After its release in China, it will only be a matter of time before its ‘developer’ Peking University Founder Group sells them at Wal-mart at half that price.
North American companies might be able to profiteer before its arrival in western stores, but that’s time that could be better spent capturing the marketplace with competitively priced eBook Readers.
Jul 13
Sourcebooks is releasing 14 mass market romance novels under its Casablanca imprint as DRM-free eBooks. They’ll be priced at $6.99 and available in nine formats at Smashwords.
While Sourcebooks stops short of a wholesale endorsement of DRM-free eBooks, their actions do suggest they’re responding to the marketplace instead of trying to control it like so many other publishers. Read the full story here at Publishers Weekly.
Before you know it, publishers will begin to let demand dictate price, yah?
Jul 12
We talked before about the concept of ‘Freemium’ here.
The New York Times Sunday Book Review offers a more in-depth analysis of ‘giving it all away’ in Virginia Postrel’s article:Â “What you pay for $0.00.”
An excellent piece, that breaks it all down quite nicely, though absent again, I have to say is any mention of the effect of ‘fairly priced goods’ on the idea of selling cheap and easy to replicate products.
That’s the real issue. Digital content providers who overcharge create a demand for shared or pirated versions. As the article says, people will pay for what they love, but they know when someone’s taking advantage of them, yah?
Jul 11
Bajillionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch announced plans to invest in his own mysterious full-color eReader back in April of this year. Read about that here.
Now Slashgear is reporting that Murdoch’s publishing empire will be focusing on subscriptions to existing eReaders. Murdoch said: “We’re very happy to have our products distributed over any device provided it’s only going to subscribers who are paying for it.”
You have to wonder what changed his mind. Did he realize that he was too far behind the leaders and catching up was an expensive undertaking that couldn’t guarantee success?
Sounds like it, yah?
Jul 10
Publishers are worried that Amazon.com will eventually force them to lower their eBook prices and diminish their profits. An excellent article here at Bloomberg.com claims that publishers now make “$2.15 per digital book versus 26 cents for a print copy” and they’re afraid that Amazon.com’s dominance of the eBook sales market will give the online eBook giant profit-slashing bargaining power and control.
I’m still wondering where publishers establish these figures. What are the actual costs of producing an eBook? (Show me…) Is their profit model based on the paper book business model or the digital? If those numbers are correct then at $9.99 per digital copy (right around the price of an ‘actual’ paperback) one wonders what the other costs are. Since there is no manufacturing (other than layout and file conversion), storage (other than mirror internet locations for an approx. 1 MB file), and no shipping to speak of (except for the download and cost of maintaining a web presence) then where does the other  $7.84 go?Â
I have a hard time believing it is split between the writer, advertisers and Amazon.com? Rent on a virtual warehouse? I just want to know how this works if the end price of the paperback version is about the same, but carries ‘real world’ costs.
Something fishy here, yah? Is it possible that these companies will continue to expose their soft underbellies in an effort to justify profiteering from eBooks, and in the process show us how much they want to overcharge? Honestly, can’t they see what they’re doing? Do they think the consumer is stupid? Consumers want to pay a fair price for a product. They don’t have a responsibility to maintain a publishing company’s pre-digital age profits. The publishers have to change to suit the new market or face extinction.
Jul 09
We’ve been predicting this for a long time. Amazon has been forced to lower the price of its Kindle 2 from $359 to $299 in order to stay relevant in the exploding eBook Revolution.
Get the full story about the $60 price cut from the Associated Press here.
I can’t believe it took so long, but there it is. Instead of controlling the market and dictating terms, Amazon has been forced to compete.
Now Sony will have to drop the price of its eBook reader under $299. And once that starts happening, it’s just a matter of time until…Â
$299 is still too much for the average household, and they know it. This is the start of a pricing freefall that will result in the $99 eBook reader, yah?
