[LINK] kindle day 2 - from Publishers Lunch email

[Jan Whitaker]

>Kindle Day 2: King is "Publisher"; Does Read-Aloud Infringe? Waiting 
>for Mobile
>Things to say about Kindle 2 on day two are a lot more interesting 
>than yesterday's first shot. An Amazon representative explained 
>after yesterday's press conference that Stephen King is acting as 
>publisher of the Kindle-exclusive "Ur," through the company listed 
>as Storyville LLC on Amazon's site. The etailer says that the 
>"digital list price" of $3.99 was set by Storyville, and Amazon is 
>discounting the product to $2.99 in the same way that they discount 
>other ebooks. Amazon says it is distributing Ur electronically in 
>partnership with Storyville, and that the publisher is selling them 
>the ebook at a wholesale discount based on list in the same way a 
>traditional publisher would. Though the site does not indicate 
>length, an Amazon official estimates that Ur would run about 100 
>traditional print pages, calling it a more of a novella than a story.
>
>Some in the publishing community are raising objections to the new 
>device's deployment of text-to-speech software that lets users have 
>books read aloud by Kindle. Agents are raising questions and Authors 
>Guild executive director Paul Aiken tells the WSJ "they don't have 
>the right to read a book out loud. That's an audio right, which is 
>derivative under copyright law." Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener says 
>"these are not audiobooks. Text to speech is simply software that 
>runs on devices and reads content." To that argument, an agent 
>responds to us: "TTS is a tool. So is a knife. If I use it to cut 
>vegetables, I'm using it for its intended and lawful purpose. If I 
>use it to stab someone, I'm committing a crime. The fact that they 
>are using a technology to create an audiobook rather than recording 
>one has nothing to do with the issue. They are using a tool that has 
>lawful purposes to violate copyright." Asked about next steps, Aiken 
>says "we're studying it right now."
>
>Perhaps most interesting was the announcement Amazon did not make 
>yesterday but that company officials acknowledge is coming soon, 
>explaining their expansion to the mobile platform, most likely 
>through some kind of iPhone app. The Whispersync feature described 
>yesterday is one part of that extension strategy, to help users 
>coordinate Kindle with other devices.
>
>In a Seattle Times interview, ceo Jeff Bezos made clear that he sees 
>Kindle becoming a general ebookstore not tied only to their 
>proprietary reader (and thus presumably not tied only to their 
>proprietary format). "We want to make Kindle a bookstore -- the 
>largest e-bookstore in the world, with 230,000 titles and growing. 
>We want to make those titles also available on a bunch of different 
>devices and then synchronize them with Kindle," Bezos said. "If 
>you're in line at the grocery store and you want to read a few pages 
>on your phone, you can go right where you left off ... and then when 
>you get back home, maybe you pick up your Kindle and keep reading 
>there." The Times reporter observes, "Bezos wouldn't say much about 
>plans to put the same software on computers as well, but it's 
>clearly part of the plan to have Kindle software on many more 
>devices than the Kindle itself."
>
>In remarks to the NYT, publishing executives make clear they still 
>don't like Amazon's imposition of lower prices on the e-book market, 
>though it's not clear in those comments what if anything publishers 
>can and will do about it. (Bezos makes it clear in reply that 
>consumers like, and require, the lower prices.)
>
>S&S ceo Carolyn Reidy says "we do not agree with their pricing 
>strategy. I don't believe that a new book by an author should ipso 
>facto be less expensive electronically than it is in paper format." 
>(As we reported recently, S&S raised their e-book list price to 
>parity with their print book prices at the beginning of this year.)
>
>Bertelsmann's Richard Sarnoff suggests that fostering competition in 
>the growing market is one option: "The key thing for us as 
>publishers and our authors is that the value to a consumer of the 
>underlying content is not undermined by artificially low pricing 
>policies that end up sticking."
>
>Back in the Journal, Jeff Bezos says they expect to keep the new 
>model in stock: "We have taken a lesson from that, and are once 
>again taking steps in terms of increasing our manufacturing 
>capacity." In a story on Monday, a spokesman at Prime View 
>International (the company that manufactures the screens for both 
>Kindle and Sony Reader) said the difficulty in keeping the device in 
>stock was simply a matter of demand: "The sales were just faster 
>than expected."
>
>One other feature of the new Kindle not mentioned earlier is that 
>the battery--prone to exposure when the back door would fly off in 
>the first model--is now sealed inside the device. An Amazon 
>representative told us that they heard from very few customers who 
>had need or interest in replacing the battery on the device. (And 
>the loose door was a commonly-heard complaint.)
>
>Also just to be clear, since there was so much coverage of 
>yesterday's event from people that don't necessarily follow Amazon's 
>statements closely, bear in mind that much of what Jeff Bezos said 
>at the press conference (and that has been reported as new) simply 
>repeated things he and the company have said before.
>
>The fake sales statistic is exactly the same as the one provided in 
>their October 2008 earnings release. Amazon said then that Kindle 
>sales were "accounting for more than 10 percent of unit sales for 
>books that are available in both digital and print formats." So that 
>percentage hasn't changed in at least three-and-a-half months. Also, 
>Bezos's ultimate vision/fantasy of offering instant access to "every 
>book in every language" has been part of his Kindle presentations 
>from the beginning (and was repeated at his BEA promo slot among 
>other venues).


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
personal: http://www.janwhitaker.com/personal/
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Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

Writing Lesson #54:
Learn to love revision. Think of it as polishing the silver for 
guests. - JW, May, 2007
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