Right on cue from the last post – this NYTimes article on interoperability of ebook readers and copyright protection for ebooks – check it out
Archive for the ‘ePublishing’ Category
NYTimes on Interoperatiblity of Ebook Readers and Ebook Copyright
Thursday, December 17th, 2009Finally – A Tool To Help Protect PDF Ebooks From Scammers
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
Every now and then one comes across a product that is a no brainer – and I
believe PDF Marker is one of those. For any digital publisher of ebooks, maintaining
the pdf format for ease of use for your cusotmers, exposes you to unethical
scammers who can purchase your ebook, then share it free with the world. Next
minute you find it on multiple free ebook download sites and the months of work
you just invested in is rapidly diluted to a low commercial ROI.
I have just downloaded this product to try for the next 30 days – for only
$USD37. [That's for a limited 50 downloads only]. So if you are looking for
a way around this ongoing issue – this just may be it. Well worth checking it
out. Let me know what you think?
Google Hug Feels More Like a Squeeze
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009As Google continues to roll out free services to lure its market, behind the scenes it is tightening the screws to help publishers restrict access to articles on their online news sites.
Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google. I expect this will be a welcome, and fair move, enabling online publishers more control over access to the assets that are essentially their core business. As print ad revenues continue to decline, most newspaper publishers are now seeking new ways to make money from their online content.
The ‘First Click Free’ program is in response to claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from their online news pages.
After five clicks in a single day, the user may be routed to payment or registration pages. This will only affect websites that currently charge for content.
Thus, the squeeze between old print subscription media and online subscription media is getting tighter.
Prior to this program, readers could avoid paying subscription fees by routing to the pages via Google. It seems Google searches could link directly to newspaper articles, bypassing subscription systems. Now just two lines of code on the server, and Google will back off. It will be interesting to see how this program impacts subscription rates.
Designing Interactive Learning
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009Designing effective business improvement programs can be difficult, especially when faced with too many technology options. Many of the more effective presentation methods are actually more traditional style, rather than the animated build so commonly overused in PowerPoint. And of course there is the content – how much is too much, or too little. Check out this simple, yet powerful presentation on how to create more effective business improvement training programs. By Cathy Moore.
For a comprehensive list of free and paid screencasting and authoring tools
Amazon Kindle Like Application for PC
Friday, November 20th, 2009Amazon have released a free PC application to allow access to books normally only accessible via its Kindle ebook reader.. This allows customers easier access to over 360,000 books [depending on country of access].
The application has core features synchronisation features to keep your reading in synch with Kindle, such as:
- Automatically synchronizes your last page read and annotations between devices with Whispersync
- Create bookmarks and view the annotations you created on your Kindle
New Review Guidelines by FTC Confusing at Best
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009The Federal Trade Commission [FTC] has revised its guidelines around endorsements and testimonials – online and word-of-mouth recommendations.
Bloggers - Their statement appears to judge statements by bloggers, even on person blogs as an ‘endorsement,’ or sponsored message – if the blogger has received any merchandise and been asked to review by an advertiser. In such instances, the connection must be disclosed.
Amazon Reviews – “reviewers” posting to sites like Amazon after receiving a free review copy also need to disclose that information.
Publishers - who “sponsor endorsers either by providing free products [ either directly or through an agent to generate positive word of mouth and drive sales need to advise endorsers to make the necessary disclosures and to monitor their conduct in respect of these endorsements.
The FTC admits its “guides” are “interpretations of the law aimed at helping advertisers comply with the Federal Trade Commission Act” rather than binding law, and the burden of proof is on the Commission. Fines of up to $11,000 per violation.
IMO – I can’t see that monitoring the Web and enforcing these new guides will be easy, and at best the new rules are confusing, ambiguous and likely unenforceable.
Should Publishers Support DRM-free Ebooks?
Monday, August 24th, 2009It seems authors and publishers are often at opposite ends of the tug of war between DRM ebooks and Open [DRM-free] Ebooks.
One such author struggled with his publisher over several months to have his books published DRM free. His reasons were typical of the two major hurdles faccing many other ebook authors:
Cost - this is largely a legacy issue through years of rather irrational pricing in the print publishing industry. Books seem to be largely priced on type of cover [hard or soft] and the number of page, and only then by the value of the content [if at all]. This same logic is being applied to ebooks – seen by many as having less intrinsic value than printed books. What nonsense – just because we have been doing it wrong for years, why should we continue now. Look at it this way. If we hire a professional or consultant to do some work for us, we evaluate their fees based on their knowledge and expertise, and the value we will derive from that. We don’t just evaluate them as one person per hour. Yet this is exactly how most people value books. All books are NOT equal. For example, the knowledge contained in a book like ‘The Logical Organization’. It’s a soft cover, 365 page book that retails at $USD79.95, but the content equates to hundreds of hours of consulting time and tens of thousands of dollars. Whether it is received as a print book or ebook is a personal preference of the reader. Myself, I am busy and travel a lot – I wouldn’t want to be lugging around TLO in my brief case. It wouldn’t fit anyway. But I can readily access it on my PDA or Kindle – and since it is a reference style book I can access it whenever I need to, wherever I am.
DRM - when you encrypt an e-book, DVD or computer game, you are immediately creating a relationship with your customer based on distrust. You don’t trust them. In reality – you don’t trust the low copyright laws of China or the fraudsters in Russia and Korea. Again, the logic is flawed. The normal customer is not going to rip off your ebook any more than lending a print book to a few friends. Copyright pirates and ebook theives will find a way to downloaded pirated copies anyway – they are much smarter at it than publishers, authors and readers combined. So the only people you are irritating are your so-called trusted paying public.
I hate DRM books – I can’t use them as I want, take notes out of them easily to reference quickly. Often, I can’t access it through more than one computer – yet I use 3 networked laptops at home, an ebook reader, PDA, PC and laptop at work. And I have to make sure I publish the password everywhere I go otherwise I forget it and can’t get back in!!! DRM-locked e-books will generally work with only one device, or one particular piece of software. No wonder print books are still preferred!!
New Wave of Real Time IP Collaboration
Friday, May 29th, 2009Google has come down from the cloud and is now skimming the waves in a new, higher level of collaboration for publishing online.
Announced yesterday, the Wave service will allow multiple users to chat and work together in real time within a window Google is calling a ‘wave’. Wave facilitates real time exchange of documents, photos, videos, maps and IM. The speed is supposedly down to the character level, but as yet, there is no VoIP facility.
On the document side, concurrent text editing, even on image lables, will incorporate a rather nifty playback feature to show how the image and content has evolved.
Wave is merely the next line of IP communication. Find more about Wave in this
The company demonstrated the service at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco on Thursday, to several thousand developers attending the conference. It is asking developers to give feedback on the service and to participate by creating further applications on Wave’s open platform.
The code will be open source, and developers intending to build on the platform are being given access to APIs, according to a post on the official Google blog.
The Great Publishing Divide Still Strong
Friday, May 29th, 2009In a recent post, Seth Godin made a brief comment about ‘When the Writer Becomes the Publisher’
His belief is that we have yet to reach the solution where someone can “collate, amplify and leverage the work of writers and turn it into cash”.
Sadly, I have to agree with him in part, but not in total.
I started out in digital publishing. I focused on building high value content sites that now generate a regular, and growing stream of revenue from advertising and affiliate products. These are not designed as product sales sites – the overriding aim was to disseminate good quality information, without bias to a particular product.
Then I advanced into other forms of publishing knowledge. Having over 20 years of consulting experience, and some expertise in highly sought after niches I decided to expand, backwards, into print publishing.
At first, this was merely to support an upcoming speaking series in a few advanced technologies that I believe will transform the way businesses work, and the role IT has to play in innovation and competitiveness.
Once I started, my publishing took on a life of its own, as other experts started approaching me to collaborate on books with them. So that would be fine, until we hit the distribution pipe.
Distributors are naturally keen to be efficient and economical in their dealings, and in line with the strategies I teach in SELL MORE, they have defined their ‘ideal customer’ and restrict their activities to only dealing with such. Hence, I had to expand my sphere of authors to ensure that I met the minimum number of author requirements to enable me to tap into profitable distribution networks.
In my digital publishing, I have more than a few different authors who contribute largely to the online content around their respective areas of expertise. But this does not count with print publishing. Hence it is quite clear that there is a great divide between the two.
Publishers that don’t have a US bank account cannot publish to Kindle. Yet, try to get a US bank account and it is not quite as easy as one expects it should be.
And the list keeps piling. The print publishing industry, whilst claiming on one hand to be embracing digital publishing options as the future of the industry are still clinging possessively to defining all their current relationships in terms of pure print publishing. Unless the print industry build operational and contractual bridges to meld a smooth continuum between the various publishing media, it is going to remain a messy business making progress into digital.
So whilst the technology and market are certainly in place for digital publishing, attempting to create a backward connection into the print format is more than ‘troublesome’.
No matter, I have more than my requirement of authors and book titles in the pipeline, and will keep my focus pointing squarely on the future.
New Larger Screen Kindle Due Very Soon!
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009For those of you who have held off being captivated by Amazon’s Kindle – good news! A bigger screen version of the Kindle ebook reader is due for release as early as next week. The new improved Kindle will have a wider screen better suited for reading magazines and newspapers – a common complaint with the current version.
Whilst the practical aspects of reading traditional media may be better satisfied, so too will advertisers, as the new version will provide a better platform for advertisements – and that means more revenue for starving publishers.
I will keep you updated on the actual launch.