eReader Chat

Que Dies Quietly While a Bambook is Born

Chris — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:46:09 +0000

The eReader market is quickly changing from one dominated by a few monolithic competitors into a highly volatile playground for small market also-rans. Consider Plastic Logic’s Que. Originally slated to be positioned opposite the Kindle DX in Barnes & Noble stores, Plastic Logic recently released a press release saying it was still-born even before it was able to hit the market.

“We recognize the market has dramatically changed, and with the product delays we have experienced, it no longer make sense for us to move forward with our first generation electronic reading product,” said Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta. “This was a hard decision, but is the best one for our company, our investors and our customers.”

While it resembles defeat in a way, this was a smart tactical move by Plastic Logic. The newspaper-sized eReader category, including the Kindle DX, has failed to gain much mass market acceptance. Users are more apt to expect an experience similar to Apple’s iPad from a device the size of the Que, replete with integrated multimedia elements and animated page turns. Devices sporting eInk technology are rapidly skewing cheaper and more portable, neither of which are the $649 8.5×11 inch Que’s forte.

Plastic Logic seems to be of the belief that their proprietary plastic electronics technology will carve out a niche for them when they do have a launch-ready product, but that remains to be seen.

Of course, while Plastic Logic is bowing out of the eReader race, albeit temporarily, the product category has seen the entrance of a new competitor: the Bambook, by China’s Shanda Literature company. While their approach to hardware appears fairly derivative, with a 6-inch display and Wi-Fi and 3G connections, their real game-changing twist is their approach to selling books.

While American eReaders continue to lean heavily on the big six domestic publishers for the content populating their devices, Shanda Literature utilizes direct relationships with many of their most promising authors. Their “cloud bookstore” offers just 10,000 books by traditional Chinese publishing houses, while playing host to the original published works of a whopping 1.1 million independent authors.

This is a revolutionary approach to selling the written word. In the Kindle bookstore, Amazon takes a 65 percent cut off the top, leaving just 35 percent of revenues for the publisher and author to squabble over. Meanwhile, Shanda Literature shares between 20 to 50 percent of their revenues directly with these independent authors. That democratic approach to revenue sharing is certain to make Amazon look like a money-grubbing corporation by contrast, should domestic authors ever get wind of this news.

Looked at together, this pair of stories underscores something very important about the eReader market. The key to the survival of entrants large and small is going to continue to be with innovation in the sales and distribution of eBooks themselves, not with hardware, which is made obsolete so quickly.

Amazon Announces Kindle 3

Chris — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 10:27:06 +0000

After lots of rumors and much speculation, Amazon has finally taken the wraps off the newest iteration of the Kindle, which we will colloquially call the Kindle 3. Styled in strikingly similar fashion to the new Kindle DX that Amazon only started selling this month, the Kindle 3 seems to represent the next logical step in the eReader niche. For Amazon, it’s an extraordinarily important step to re-securing their foothold in the face of an increasingly competitive market.

The Kindle 3’s list of features hits all the major selling points for eReader aficionados. It is 21 percent smaller in terms of surface area and 15 percent lighter, while retaining the same six-inch screen that Kindle 2 owners have come to know and love. Screen contrast has been improved by 50 percent, meaning that books should pop off the page a little more. The page-turn speed, which already compared favorably with Barnes & Noble’s Nook, has been improved by 20 percent. This increased screen refresh rate should also make the web browser and menu navigation that much better. They’ve also gone ahead and doubled the on-board storage from 2GB to 4, so you can now hold up to 3,500 books.

While all these changes have made an unquestionable improvement on the Kindle 2 experience, there are still a couple things missing. The absence of an SD card slot for expanding the on-board memory is a little baffling, though perhaps it would have gone against the general trend for slimming down the size. Amazon reported that their color e-Ink technology wasn’t far enough along to release at mass-market prices just yet, so readers will have to settle for black and white for the time being. Other than that though, there really isn’t a lot to complain about.

The biggest coup with the Kindle 3 announcement by far, however, was the price point. While the Kindle 3 will essentially replace the Kindle 2 at $189 with free 3G wireless internet service, Amazon has also introduced a new Kindle Wi-Fi model for just $139, undercutting the Wi-Fi version of Barnes & Noble’s Nook by $10 with newer hardware to boot. While the 3G service can definitely be handy in certain situations, it is by no means necessary for 99% of potential Kindle owners, and I’d expect the Wi-Fi model to quickly become the standard. They’re also offering both models in traditional Kindle white or the sexier new graphite finish, giving customers a little more choice.

While many in the media heralded the imminent death of the Kindle when Apple announced its iPad, it’s clear that the Kindle is here to stay. The iPad with its iBookstore makes for a passable eReader, based on my own experiences, but it’s no substitute for a dedicated device. With lawyers lining up to fire a class-action lawsuit at Apple because iPads overheat and shut down in direct sunlight, there is as yet a niche for Amazon to peddle their wares, even if it’s only beside the pool and at the beach.

With this new model and subsequent price drop, Amazon is finally starting to tickle the itchy impulse buy trigger-fingers of mainstream consumers. The traditional bargain point for impulse purchase electronics is at $99, but with they’ve gotten close enough with sexy enough hardware that it might just push many people over the edge. If you’re one of those considering jumping on-board, we heartily recommend it.

Kindle 3G (Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 6″)
Kindle (Wi-Fi, 6″)

Kindle Books Sales Eclipse Hardcovers for First Time

Chris — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:11:31 +0000

At eReaderChat.com, we’re obviously big believers in the future of eBooks. While a few mainstream media outlets here and there share our vision of a paperless future, I think the consensus amongst the general public is still that eBooks and eReaders will continue to represent merely a small chunk of the larger book retailer pie. I’m here to tell you that this is not the case.

In a statement released by Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Amazon revealed that for the first time, sales of books in the Kindle format have exceeded those sold in the hardcover format. According to the metrics they released, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon has sold, they have sold 143 Kindle books. In just the last month, since they slashed the price of the Kindle 2 to $189, that ratio has gone up to 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books sold.

“We’ve reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle–the growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189,” said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “In addition, even while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books–astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months.”

Of course, as with any corporate announcement of this sort, which is generally made for the benefit of the company’s share price, you have to take it with a grain of salt. Amazon very deliberately did not release any specific numbers about either their hardcover sales or their Kindle book sales. They stuck mostly to vague ratios, such as noting that three times as many Kindle books were sold in the first half of 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009.

What’s more, comparing overall Kindle book sales to hardcover sales is a little disingenuous. After all, the category “Kindle Books” encompasses more than two million titles in all, and includes nearly all the paperback titles you’re liable to find gracing the shelves of your local book retailer. Hardcover books, by contrast, usually only run for the first year of the life of a book, and are much more expensive than the $9.99 one expects to spend for a Kindle book.

Having made my semantic point, this is obviously still tremendous news for Amazon. With the Kindle 2 finally starting to reach a price point where it can enjoy mainstream success, and their Kindle App present on just about every mobile device under the sun, including Apple’s iPad, it’s clear that the future of eBooks for Amazon is quite bright.

iPad Acquisition Saga

Chris — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:02:21 +0000

With Apple’s iPad flying off the shelves, and analysts currently predicting they could have units in as many as 6.2 million hands by the end of 2010, it’s clear that the iPad is a force in the consumer electronics world that’s going to stick around for a little while. While all this is well and good for Apple and its stockholders, the people being left holding the bag in this situation are actually the consumers, as it turns out.
Wanting to expand my horizons in the eReader world beyond my Kindle 2, I decided to jump on the iPad bandwagon in its infancy. I thought it would be a simple matter of just walking into a store somewhere and picking one up, but as is usually the case with Apple products, it was not that simple.

June 15: I make the decision to purchase an iPad. Being curious about the device but not willing to commit full-fledged financial seppuku, I set my sights on the 16GB Wi-Fi version of the iPad, the cheapest model they offer at $499. I can’t even fathom paying an extra $150 just for the privilege of forking over an extra $30 a month for another data plan. And I figured 16GB was more than enough drive space, since I could just use Dropbox for offsite storage of documents, and Air Video to play movies from my PC. So I put in my order.

June 16: By the next day, Apple acknowledged my order with an email. That was the good news. The bad news was that they weren’t going to ship the iPad until June 30th, and the estimated delivery time wasn’t until July 6. Hearing good things about the reserve process on some Apple fan forums, I resigned to cancel my online order and reserve one in a local store.

June 17: I went to my local mall down in Fort Lauderdale and requested that my name be put on the reserve list. It was a painless process – you just give them your email and they sent you an email later that day confirming your place in the queue. The clerk assured me that it wouldn’t be more than a week.

June 21: Success! I got an email at about 11pm saying that my iPad had arrived in the store and was ready for pickup. I was in the grips of a full-fledged gadget nerd frenzy.

June 22: Failure. I walked into the store shortly after they opened at 10am, and the clerk informed me that iPad reservations are only good for the day that they’re sent out. Despite my reasoned explanation that it was physically impossible for me to come to the store the prior day, since they were closed before I received the email, I was told that my iPad had already been promised to somebody else. I’d have to go back on the list. Joy. I put my name back on the list and phoned another Apple store in Boca Raton to put my name on their list as well. We’re not taking any chances here!

June 26: I receive a single email saying that my name is moving up the priority list. I begin to worry, because I have a vacation planned on July 3

June 28: I begin staking out various Best Buy brick and mortar stores, hoping to catch one before the mobs find them. I am met only by the occasional 64GB 3G model and store clerk indifference.

June 29: I make a visit to the Apple Store again and a friendly clerk logs into their system and shows me my place in their queue. At one store, I was 35th on their reserve list. On the other, I was 75th. This is after a week! Facing up the grim reality of no iPad before my vacation, I decide to play another order with their website. My estimated arrival date this time was July 19.

July 3: I leave for a cruise on the Caribbean.

July 6: I receive an email from both stores saying that my iPad has arrived. Oh happy day!

July 8: I receive a shipment notification from Apple. My iPad is coming straight off the assembly line from China!

July 11: I return from my cruise tan, slightly drunk, and still without a brand new top of the line of the line tablet computer. My Kindle 2, which once seemed like it was going to suffer an early bout of obsolescence, has endeared itself to my heart once again, as I plowed through through four eBooks in eight days under the blinding light of the Caribbean sun.

June 12: The FedEx man comes, but the package requires a signature. Agh! Not to be defeated, I drove out to the local FedEx sorting facility and retrieved it later that evening. Finally! It only took a month, but I had my iPad in my hand.

While my experience shouldn’t be considered standard operating procedure for Apple, it did impart a number of important lessons to me for would-be iPad buyers. First, get on the reserve list as soon as you make the decision to buy one in as many Apple stores as you can. Put in an order on the website just to hedge your bet – you can always cancel it later. When they do finally call your name on the reserve list, make sure to print out the email, complete with a timestamp, it case they try and pull the same shenanigans they did on me. Be prepared to wait a while for the model you want – rather than sending a bunch of each model with every shipment, Apple seems to ship out tons of the same model all at once.

In short, be patient, because this isn’t going to be a simple process.

Let the eReader Price Wars Begin!

Chris — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:08:20 +0000

On June 21, Barnes & Noble made an aggressive pricing move, announcing a new version of their hot-selling Nook. This was a stripped down version of the Nook as we know it, without the 3G connectivity that lets users download books from anywhere in the continental United States. At just $149 though, users should be quite happy to do with just Wi-Fi. Even better, they lowered the price of their 3G-capable Nook to just $199, lowering the prices across the board.

Naturally, Amazon couldn’t just stand by and let Barnes & Noble get the better of them. They wasted no time and that very same day announced that the price for the Amazon Kindle 2 had been lowered to $189. It was an interesting strategy, undercutting the Nook model most similar to the Kindle 2 by $10, while not offering their own 3G-neutered Kindle for the particularly budget-conscious. The price of the infrequently mentioned Kindle DX remains at $489.00.

Let’s be realistic here though, neither Amazon nor Barnes & Noble are getting into the business of undercutting each other just for fun. The overnight success of Apple’s iPad, which sold three million units in its first 80 days of sales and is projected to sell as many as 29 million by 2012, has created downward pressure on the pricing structure of standalone eReaders.

According to the consumer electronics analysts, mainstream consumers were having a hard time justifying the cost of a straight-forward eReader when there was a relatively cheap and much sexier alternative on the market that could draw not just from one content provider, but all of them at once. Operating margins for both Amazon and Barnes & Noble are about to get much thinner, as both companies race to the bottom in price. They can afford to sell their hardware as a loss leader, much like game consoles do, as long as they’re able to make back the money on their cut of all books sold through their bookstore.

With iBooks having firmly established itself in the retail space and Borders jumping into the fray with their own Kobo readers and book offerings, the market is about to get a lot more competitive and thus, consumer-friendly. Those on platform-agnostic hardware like the iPad should be mindful of where they purchase content – it could very well tip the scales one way or the other!

Father’s Day Gifts for your Kindle-Toting Dad

Bo — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:00:51 +0000

Father’s Day is right on our doorstep and for many, that means a mad scramble to find gifts for Dad. Finding gifts for the old man can be difficult, because after a couple years, he’s probably got more neckties and grill covers than he’ll ever need in an entire lifetime. If your father happens to be a Kindle owner though, you might be in luck. We’ve taken a look at four accessories that could be game-changers for that erstwhile Kindle owner in your life.

M-Edge Guardian Case
Price: $79.99
Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Pros:

Takes your Kindle underwater
Only case of its kind
Heavy-duty construction

Cons

On the expensive side
Heavier than most cases
No access to power button

The newest case from the folks at m-Edge does something that no other Kindle case on the market can boast – it both floats on water and keeps your Kindle bone dry even after being submerged completely in water. I know what you’re thinking: as cool as it would be to be able to bring your Kindle with you on that inflatable raft in the middle of your pool, is it really worth potentially sacrificing your $259 piece of consumer electronics just for the novelty?

That’s where I come in. I’ve spent about a week with the m-Edge Guardian, giving it the full run-around in my community pool. As nervous as I was about submerging the Kindle the first time, I’m not entirely sure how I ever lived without it just a week later. It sports heavy-duty construction that keeps out water up to a depth of a meter, and contains special air reservoirs that allow it to float. Reading in the pool is pretty much as relaxing as things get, and since the Kindle is basically the king of reading devices, it’s a match made in heaven for the aquatic-oriented Dad.

It might not look like it, but you can actually navigate using all the normal buttons. There is softer plastic over those parts of the case. The only button you can’t access is the power button, so you’ll have to make sure not to get too relaxed out by the pool and let the thing go idle, because you’ll have to crack it open to turn it on again. My only other real complaints with the case are that it’s heavy and on the expensive side. Realistically though, both of those sins are forgivable, since you need top-quality construction if you’re going to go submersing electronics in water. If you’ve got a father in your life who loves to read and loves to swim, this is the perfect novelty.

OCTOVO Solis Reading Light
Price: $29.99
Rating: 5/5 stars

Pros

Compact size makes for easy traveling
Effortless, button-less design
Naturally tilted at an angle to reduce glare

Cons

Doesn’t match the Kindle motif
On the expensive side for a light

One of the necessary concessions that Amazon had to make in creating the Kindle’s e-Ink screen was in the area of backlighting. In order to give that full paper-like experience without having to worry about eye fatigue and battery life, the Kindle is often at the mercy of the ambient light you have around you. I’ve tried a number of Kindle book lights in my day, but the long-term problem I’ve had with many of them is that they add needlessly to the bulk when carrying around the Kindle.

Octovo has devised a rather brilliant solution to that with their Solis book light. Rather than attach the light to the case itself, the Solis clips on to the top of the Kindle (at an angle that prevents glare no less – they really though this through!), and you can turn it on simply by swinging the sleek aluminum arm out. The light is an LED, which means it’s fairly efficient in terms of battery life, gobbling up one AA battery in about 25 hours. It’s more expensive than most Kindle-centric reading lights, but it’s also probably the best I’ve tried so far.

OCTOVO Weave Leather Cover
Price: $74.99
Rating: 4/5 stars

Pros

Features Amazon’s Kindle hinge system
Really trendy-looking woven leather design
Has that wonderful leather smell

Cons

Way more expensive than comparable cases

When buying a third party Kindle cover, one of the unfortunate side effects is that most of them don’t make use of Amazon’s hinge mechanism. While all the covers I’ve trade to date have done a good job substituting for this with straps that hold the Kindle in by its corners, sometimes it feels like something’s missing with that hinge mechanism of the original case not being used.

The OCTOVO Weave Leather Cover is the first third-party case I’ve tried that actually utilizes Amazon’s hinge system. Like the official case from Amazon, it securely locks in your Kindle using the proprietary locking mechanism on the left side of your Kindle. It also appears to have the same microfiber interior that prevents scratching. Where it differs from the official cover is the outside. The woven leather exterior completely blows the official Kindle cover away in terms of a classy finish, as it well should for double the price of the official cover.

m-Edge Latitude Jacket
Price: $34.99
Rating: 4/5 stars

Pros

Light-weight design
Trendy camouflage pattern
Zippers for full enclosure and protection

Cons

Microfiber interior seems to attract dirt

The m-Edge latitude jacket is pretty straight forward as far as Kindle cases go. It is light-weight, sports a zipper for complete protection, comes in trendy camo colors, and even features an exterior zipper pocket so you can bring your charger cable along with you. While the Latitude is a solid case for your dollar, that’s not why I wanted to mention it.

The camo Latitude jacket is the flagship product to help promote the E-Books for Troops non-profit. This organization has undertaken the noble task of raising money to purchase eReaders for the servicemen and women risking their lives overseas. Whatever your feelings on the wars in which the military is engaged today, it’s hard to imagine a better way to contribute to their continued comfort and sanity than near-unlimited access to books, newspapers, and magazines via eReaders. Compared to hauling books around, a Kindle takes up almost no space.

M-Edge has promised to donate a Latitude Jacket and e-Luminator2 booklight for every Kindle purchased by E-Books for the Troops, but it’s up to us as eReader fanatics to donate the money that will put these eReaders in their hands. So maybe after purchasing dad’s Father’s Day gift, consider donating some money to E-Books for the Troops in his name. It’s a great cause.

Barnes & Noble Fires First Price Cut Salvo

Chris — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:17:55 +0000

The bid for your eReader dollar continues to get more and more competitive. The latest salvo was recently fired by Barnes & Noble, who emailed customers last week to inform them of a new promotion where the purchase of a Barnes & Noble Nook nets new owners a $50 B&N gift card that they can then turn around and use to start their eBook library. (It’s also available on their website.) At the typical Barnes & Noble price for a new best seller, it’s like getting four free books! The site does claim it’s a limited time offer, so if you’re in the market, don’t hesitate.

Since it’s a fair bet Nook owners were going to buy $50 in books at some point anyway, this is an effective $50 price cut. With Father’s Day right around the corner, it’s an aggressive move from the minds at the book mega-retailer, who are all quite familiar with the annual surge in “dad books” that are sold around the third week of June.

While I’m delighted to see some folks finally getting a price break, this deal only further deepens the question as to when we can expect a real round of price cuts from the major eReader manufacturers. With the much more feature-rich iPad starting at $499 and the market for early-adopters long since dried up, both B&N and Amazon need to start thinking about value and bargain positioning. Just last week, Amazon left us speculating whether the Kindle 3 would be a low-cost complement to the rumored Kindle Touch. A price drop on the existing stock certainly wouldn’t hurt either.

In fact, there are a number of things that both Barnes & Noble and Amazon could do to add value without even lowering the price:

Include a case – It continues to baffle me why both companies pretend that something as basic as a case isn’t standard equipment for an expensive piece of consumer electronics. Instead, both opt to nickel and dime customers for another $30. These should be standard issue, with fancier versions available for those that want to spend extra.
More free titles – There are literally millions of public domain titles out there, but neither company seems to do a lot to emphasize that fact, probably because it would hurt their bottom line to have people picking up free titles over paid ones. Would it really hurt to include more classics? (For the record, you can fairly easily get them on your own if you’re proactive enough.)
More sharing – One of the great joys of book ownership is being able to easily and seamlessly share new works with friends and family. Amazon still lacks a lending option altogether and B&N’s is limited to one lend per book. Encouraging more sharing encourages community around their devices, and they’re not doing enough of that.

Rest assured, when there’s actually a proper price cut, we’ll be on top of it.