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Hearst To Launch E-Reader For Newspapers
thefickler writes "The credit crisis couldn't have come at a worse time for newspapers, which were already suffering at the hands of the Internet. Now it seems that the Hearst Corporation is planning to launch an e-reader later this year to try to save its dwindling newspaper readerships. Apparently the e-reader will have a bigger screen than the Kindle, helping it to accommodate ads. It's not clear whether Hearst will go it alone, or try to gather wider industry support for its venture. As one pundit observed, 'it seems a slender thread on which to hang the entire American newspaper industry.'"
"Rosebud"
(it'll be interesting to see how this gets modded)
There is already some movement from an "Anybody can provide" model, to an "Only we provide, but we do it very well" model. Case in point, iTunes music store, and the iPod.
I wonder if an iTunes model would work. Get any magazine for $1. Maybe back issues older than a year for $0.50. Blend it with the mobile phone market's ideas, and subsidize the device with a two-year subscription on (a group of) magazines. Get the major magazine publishers and papers on board and split the proceeds honestly.
Of course, if they could actually do the right thing wrt technology and consumers, their industry wouldn't be dying right now.
I just can't quite get into a book on the Kindle the way I get into a real book. The rough feel of the pages, the smell of old binding glue, or the waft of a woman's perfume in a library book are great. Even the sound of turning a page, or the satisfying crackle of the fabric binding on a brand new hard cover are fantastic.
Here's a contrasting perspective.
I got a Rocket e-Book a few years ago (for free; I'd never have paid money for it). I've gone through a couple of others since then, and I'm now to the point where my reading choices are hugely influenced by what I can get electronically. I actively DISLIKE reading paper books. I find them inconvenient and limited. You need two hands to hold them, you can't read in the dark (nor can you with a Kindle, unfortunately), you can't adjust the font size, you can't carry a dozen books conveniently, you can't search them, you can't back them up... paper books have lousy usability.
Even though I grew up reading huge amounts on paper and loving it -- through my high school years I averaged over 1000 pages per week -- and even though ebooks weren't even available until I was in my mid 30s, I have completely converted. I only read paper books if they come with strong recommendations from people I trust, and even then I grumble.
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I was reading a blog article in the LA Times concerning the Internet's killing of the printed newspaper. He comes up with a solution similar to the one I'd use: Make a "news" subscription fee that would include big newspapers that are interested in charging and meet certain criteria.
This could work either through a central site (which would be great as it could provide comparison stories between Fox, CNN, and BBC for example) or simply have it as an add-on to your ISP bill (which would give you a login and password).
A service like this could certainly provide E-book downloads, etc. Information does want to be free as in freedom, but collecting and organizing it takes people who still need to eat. I'd be for paying a fee for news sites, personally, as long as (just like the blog says), it's as simple as iTunes.
My library spans over 20,000 volumes of public, pirated and paid for e-books and the Amazon Kindle 2 is simple inadequate for anything beyond a few hundred books, imho.
I usually have a laptop with me. I view it as the library and the few hundred books on my e-book reader as the subset of current interest.
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E-reader, hmm, ever sat on a paperback you where looking, or the TV remote, or even a cell phone. At $359 an e-reader is just way to expensive, it has to achieve disposable prices to survive let alone get past the issue of just way too many devices. The closest in reality that most people will get to an e-reader is a netbook with a rotating touch screen display along the lines of http://www.cnet.com.au/laptops/laptops/0,239035649,339294108,00.htm.
In a depression a mass market product like a newspaper has to be sufficiently cheap that it reaches the majority of it's target audience and make that audience available to advertisers, prices range from free to at most a couple of dollars ie. pocket change. An e-reader for the majority on a very limited income is completely unrealistic and sounds more like a desperate bid by the current executive team to bleed off as much of the shareholders remaining value in the company before the doors are finally shut or the shareholders wake up and remove the current way overpaid executive team and replace them with people who can adapt to internet publishing.
Oddly enough the print industry is likely to do a little better in the depression even in light of falling advertising revenues. As people wind back on their expenditures, cut back on internet access fees, don't buy a new computer, cancel cable TV, avoid expensive software and end up spending on the news the only thing they can afford, pocket change. After all newspaper often has many diverse money saving uses after you have read it, perhaps they are better off promoting those uses than spending money on expensive digital readers.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Agreed. I'm thinking that the Kindle market and the newspaper market probably have a decent overlap. Why not try to get newspapers going on the Kindle. Amazon could become the iTunes Store of print media.
Personally I don't really have the desire to shell out $359 for the Kindle. But I don't know anyone who will put out that money for 2 separate ebook readers. Especially if the Hearst version will be filled with ads.
Relying on ads and classifies is what got newspapers into this situation in the first place. They need to figure out a way of working back to a subscription based model.