Hearst Launching Kindle Competitor and Platform "By Publishers, For Publishers"

The Hearst Corporation has announced their intention to launch an e-reader competitor to Amazon's Kindle and a supporting store and platform that is much more "publisher friendly." More details are available form their official press release this morning. "Launching in 2010, Skiff provides a complete e-reading solution that includes the Skiff Service platform, Skiff Store and Skiff-enabled devices. Skiff will sell and distribute newspapers, magazines, books, blogs and other content. Skiff gives periodical publishers tools to maintain their distinct visual identities, build and extend relationships with subscribers, and deliver dynamic content and advertising to a range of dedicated e-readers and multipurpose devices."

Comments

Publisher friendly?

[Maximum Prophet]

Translates to: Screw the authors & screw the customers.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly what I thought. As a customer, why do I want a platform that caters, not to me or the author, but to the publisher?

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Chyeld]

Executive Summary: We are out of our frigging minds and don't realize this is going to bomb faster than the orginal DIVX.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[timeOday]

Translates to: Screw the authors & screw the customers.

Are you so sure? Alienating customers won't help publishers any, since they're where the money comes from. I'm sure the prevailing slashdot assumption will be that publishers somehow fail to realize this, but I doubt that. The fact is, both parties in any business transaction are participating for their own benefit; that doesn't preclude rational self interest, i.e. providing value, too.

So here is why this might work: Skiff eliminates a middleman, namely Amazon. Thus consumers could end up paying less, while publishers (and even writers) get more. You can go on all you like about how evil and stupid publishers are, but they're already part of the process; the only difference is, no Amazon. What if Skiff ends up a lot like Kindle, but with a lower price for professionally written and edited content?

Re:Publisher friendly?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Translates to: Screw the authors & screw the customers.

Many don't know that copyright in England was originally put in place to protect the authors from the publishers, not the readers with their pirate ink plates.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Zerth]

Actually, Amazon has also been getting rid of the other middleman, publishers. I've been finding a few decent short to novel length ebooks in Amazon's self-published section for quite cheap($2-4).

Until somebody starts reviewing them, they aren't easy to find and there is a much higher chance of crap without the filter of marketability, but that filter works both ways. I've read a few I know would never have been put in print because they were too niche.

Plus, I know the authors get a better cut than if I had bought the hardback.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Captain Splendid]

Skiff eliminates a middleman, namely Amazon...

Which is a worthless point since that elimination will not be passed on to the consumer in the form of "cheaper than Kindle".

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, cause I was just thinking to myself, "Shit, I'd buy a Kindle but I wish it were even more Orwellian and there just aren't enough ad's crammed into my reading material. Oh, and you know what... more paid subscriptions would be a good addition."

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently a lot of people don't mind a reader that caters to the book seller rather than the reader (Kindle)....

Re:Publisher friendly?

[bill_mcgonigle]

hey, that's not the *official* line. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#History

Most publishers worth worrying about can only exist as creations of government as well, so it's quite the tangled web.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, copyright was an agreement between publishers who wanted (previously not legally enforceable) price-fixing and the King of England wanting censorship.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[fredjh]

I'm sure the prevailing slashdot assumption will be that publishers somehow fail to realize this, but I doubt that.

Does success mean "not alienating?" All of these successful DRM practices alienate customers, it's just that there's enough who are disinterested to make up for it. I give the example of audio cassettes which, despite opposition by recording companies, not only gave them a new outlet for their music, but made vinyl MORE worthwhile because the consumer had more options. Ditto video cassettes... they whined and whined until they found out they had a whole new revenue stream, at which point they were making more money than ever.

Are they shooting themselves in the foot? I don't know, maybe not, maybe it'll be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I really don't believe it's naive to distrust publishers.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[NecroPuppy]

Customers are not the primary source of income for publishers.

Ads are.

What this will be is Kindle--, now with extra ads. Ads you can't skip. Ads interrupting you every 60 seconds while reading a story. Ads that pop up between stories and can't be avoided.

Did I mention the ads?

Re:Publisher friendly?

[pydev]

Are you so sure? Alienating customers won't help publishers any, since they're where the money comes from.

Works for anybody with a monopoly. Since they will have exclusive rights to a lot of content, they'll be able to screw anybody who really wants access to that content.

What if Skiff ends up a lot like Kindle, but with a lower price for professionally written and edited content?

What if all men just united in brotherly love, lost their selfish instincts, and peace reigned on earth?

Re:Publisher friendly?

[NeutronCowboy]

No. Skiff eliminates Amazon, to be replaced with itself. This is just Hearst wanting a piece of Amazon's pie, and they think that appealing to the content distributors is going to be the way to produce a better product... yeah, I'm not following either.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[dangitman]

You can go on all you like about how evil and stupid publishers are,

Yes, we can.

I'm not so sure about evil, but most publishers really are fucking stupid. Not just slightly dumb, but so stupid you wonder how they put on their shoes in the morning. Which makes it unsurprising that they would fall for a plan like "Skiff." I can just see them ooohhhing and aaahhhing at the Powerpoint presentation and the fancy buzzwords.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[tnk1]

That's not just publishers. Most execs are too stupid to realize that powerpoint presentations do not equal success.

And they wonder why their employees doze off in the middle of their presentations where all they are doing is reading the Powerpoint slides off the screen.

To them, genius looks like a few KPI charts and some clip art borders. It's a wonder that businesses still even function at all these days.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[amplt1337]

This is great in theory, but not how it works in practice.

In practice, publishers are terrified, because they make all their money in hardbacks. But nobody except for a few freaks (the "I'll never touch a paper book again!" crowd) is actually willing to pay hardback prices for an e-book. eBooks are a much better natural competitor to mass market paperbacks.

Well, okay, that's great, but why not just sell the ebook for cheaper? Amazon would love to. The problem is that the cost to print and bind an individual book (the unit cost) is pennies. Most of the price of a book is in the fixed (i.e. not-per-unit), upfront cost of editing, putting the files together, and (the big one) marketing. (And that's not just subway ads. It's mainly marketing to bookstores, and to the TINY HANDFUL of buyers who actually get to decide what books Borders and Barnes & Noble carry, and thus what Americans read.)
Publishers cannot cope with this. Their business will collapse if they release ebooks at the same time as hardcovers, because the ebook would horrifically undercut their hardcover margins. But they cannot afford to set a market expectation that an ebook costs a reasonable (i.e. under-$15) amount. They cannot afford to do anything that discourages people from buying hardcovers; why cannibalize your own business? And they will not get fully behind the ebook platform so long as that fundamental logic stays the same.

That's for book publishers, anyway, which is what the parent was about. From TFS, it sounds like this is as much about the newspaper and magazine business, who seem to think that people will magically want to pay for their content if you put it on e-paper instead of the e-, er, internet. GLWT, lemme know how it works out, I'll just be over here browsing the real web from my smartphone...

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Archangel Michael]

Yup, Amazon and Publishers are both "middle men", between Authors and Customers.

My guess, is that at least ONE middle man between the two is ideal, a bazaar, a single place where authors can meet and sell to their customers. It would require standards.

I can even seeing a couple three alternative choices out there, including Amazon and the Publisher's Marketplace, and perhaps one built by and for authors.

Layers and layers of "middle men" are not needed anymore. I am about to self publish a book, so I would love to have a couple options available where I can market it, directly. I really don't want to tied to Amazon/Kindle if I don't have to be.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

We've already seen publisher's attempts at e-book readers. They failed, the industry gave up a while ago. Amazon decided to give it another whack and got it, if not right then close enough with Kindle. Personally, I think Kindle has not enough features and function, too much cost and too many restrictions and scary factors (Amazon can brick my device remotely? They can delete content I paid for? No thanks.) How will publishers possibly produce a device that is more attractive to both customers and to them? Either they have to reduce the price of the device (not likely), increase the features (possible, not likely), reduce the restrictions (Hahhahaa!), reduce the price of content (possible, but not likely) or stop offering any alternatives (choke out the Kindle by refusing to publish on it). I'm betting that they're going to go for some combination that includes increasing restrictions, choking out the kindle and keeping more or less on-par with Kindle's features. This should be an amusing failure.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[stripes]

Layers and layers of "middle men" are not needed anymore.

Or more to the point, each layer of middle men need to add value. Between author and reader the author wants someone to deal with all the bother of collecting money, the reader wants someone to deal with filtering out all the obviously bad works, and either or both the author and reader wants someone to fix up the language usage and the other nice stuff the publisher's editor normally does. There are some other tasks in there that are useful as well.

There is no need for that to be spread across two middle-men (publisher + bookseller), but there is no special need for it to be one middle man vs. one per operation as long as having 12 companies touch the book doesn't make it cost more then only having 1 or 2 touch it.

With the current state of things the publisher filters out the worst of the bad writing (that is to say 99.998% of what they get), fixes up the english usage, remind the author when the sex of one of their characters changes midway through the book, when things get talked about in Ch4 but don't happen until Ch7, and all that kind of nice stuff. Then Amazon makes sure the book got nicely "kindle formatted" puts a price on it, handles some of the money, arranges network service for Kindle devices (iPod touch and iPhone users get to manage that on their own), handles long term storage of customer purchases.

All of those are valuable. If we stuff all that into one company that charges me less, I'm happy. If we stuff that all into one company that charges me the same amount, I'm still happy. If we break that out into 1 companies that charge me the same or less, well I'm still happy. If we charge more, I get cranky. If we do less stuff for the same money, I get cranky. If we charge less for less I probably still get cranky.

So I'm less happy by the proposal of a bizaar. Sure I probably pay less, but did the author hire a proofreader? How do I find the tiny number of authors that don't suck? It would work out well for authors who are already successful under the existing system. I know some of their past works weren't crap, so their new works have enough chance to be not crap that I can "afford" to spend the time to read a review or just buy the book. I know they have published stuff in the past, so they will know the value of a good editor and hire one. I might even pay less. It will totally suck for knowing what new authors I could buy from and not run into extremely poor writing, or a good story but no proofreading....

Solvable problems, but mostly by adding middlemen back in (for example, tags for "professional editing", tags for "slushpile review" and the like). They may not be middlemen in this model, but they still operate on the text, and then a tag gets affixed to it, and I filter out stuff lacking the tags. How they get payed might be the only difference (plus the "in theory" difference that people could choose to buy stuff that didn't pass a slushpile review, or wasn't edited by anyone....but I doubt enough people would do this to make dismantling the current system a good idea!). If we move the way something gets a slushpile review we could also break the value of that system. Currently a publisher does that, and if a publisher culls too many books they can lose good sellers. If they cull too loosely then they run the risk of people deciding "oh they publish crap, I won't risk reading that". If the "publisher middleman" goes away and an author has to pay for a slushpile review then they have incentive to pick registered slushpile reviewers that rubber stamp the most content. There may be ways to fix that, but struggling to get "as good as the existing system" while offering no real advantages doesn't sound exciting.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[stripes]

But nobody except for a few freaks (the "I'll never touch a paper book again!" crowd) is actually willing to pay hardback prices for an e-book.

There are some people that are extremely space constrained (fulltime RVers for example) who won't buy paper books, but I would't say are freaks. Well, technically they are more weight constrained then space constrained for books. I don't think many of them want to pay hardback prices for ebooks, but some will. The people that pay hardback prices for ebooks tend to be the people who were aware of why hardbacks really cost more and come out sooner. They are just a way for book publishers to rent seek (get the highest price people are willing to pay). That could actually be done even better with ebooks. Start the price at hardback level, and decay the price each week, hitting a somewhere under paperback price about a month after the paperback is out.

In a perfectly rational world it would work well, people would buy when the price hit what they are willing to pay to read it now...and since it has more steps then the current scheme many people that would pay a little more to read it "now not next month" but not "a whole lot more" can actually do that (this works better with a series of novels that is still being added to, or a author with a distinct style). In the real world however it does run the risk that it will just piss people off because they don't like rent seeking except when they are the seeker.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[DadLeopard]

Checkout Fictionwise.com, they have a lot of this type of stuff and most is in non-DRMed formats! You can have it sent to your kindle in locked down mode if you wish!

Re:Publisher friendly?

[amplt1337]

I think your conception of this is interesting from a pure economics standpoint, but it's a little off from how publishers are actually viewing the situation.

The hardcover release *is* the release, set at a price that the market will bear that attempts to maximize profits. Indeed, usually there's only that first run of hardcovers (with the exception of big hits). Books that meet or exceed expectations and are felt to still have legs then get a mass-market release, as "bonus" revenue, trying to squeeze a few more drops out of the rag.

I don't believe that there's as smooth or continuous a scale of when readers want to read something as you suggest. People either want to read it right away, or they'll read it when they get around to it. Besides, knowledge of a predictably dropping price would encourage most people to delay gratification longer than they ordinarily would ("eh, I'll read something else instead for another week").

Re:Publisher friendly?

[stripes]

I think your conception of this is interesting from a pure economics standpoint, but it's a little off from how publishers are actually viewing the situation.

Fair enough, I'm not an author or a publisher, so I don't know how they really work. It is the model movies use. Theater release (in fact in 4 different runs), Cable TV release, DVD priced to rent, PPV release, DVD priced to own. Oh, and digital downloads are in the mix somewhere. Foreign and domestic releases as well. All timed to try to extract the maximum revenue, all the same or nearly the same actual product.

I don't believe that there's as smooth or continuous a scale of when readers want to read something as you suggest. People either want to read it right away, or they'll read it when they get around to it.

I'm not so sure. When I get to the end of a book I like, if it is part of a seres I'll look at the next book. If it is a hardback I make a choice about buying it now at that price vs. reading something else now and checking back later to see if it has hit paperback. If I like the book enough (or the ending was enough of a clifhanger) I'm more likely to pay the hardback price.

Since I have switched to exclusively ebooks (partly because they really are more convent, and partly because I'm planning to retire to an RV) I'm less likely to pay hardback prices then I use to, but it does happen. It would happen more if the choice wasn't $30 now vs. $5 later, but $10 now vs. $5 later.

You are right that people don't have a fine grained idea of a price they are willing to pay for a given book. However if you give people a price for a book they tend to be able to very easily decide if they are willing to pay that much. Generally people are better about making a "buy/no-buy at $X" choice then a "what would you pay for this?" choice.

Most people are aware that (many) things will be cheaper if they wait ("wait for a sale, those things always go on sale"... "new movie for $30, or I could wait two months and I bet it will be $10", "new high end laptop now, or next years mid range"), but they still buy stuff now when they feel like it. The interesting question is how transparent can you make the "price decay" part before people stop being happy when they get something for the price they want, and start being resentful when they pick their price (or decided to wait).

Yes if you drop prices week by week some people will wait until next week. You may need to make the process a little more random. Or you may find that it really works just because you pick up a lot more sales somewhere in the middle of the curve that otherwise waited for paperback prices.

Unfortunately as long as it is "might be better", "could get higher margins", and even "could get higher margins AND more total sales" publishers will rightly say "um, dude, we have a book publishing model that makes money why do you think we want to experiment with it?". They are totally correct, I find the problem space interesting, and would be pleased to come out with a better book market to buy stuff from, but at the end of my day my paycheck comes from outside the book industry, and they have a paycheck that comes from entirely within it. It would be insane to just tinker with stuff because it "might" get better since it "might" get worse, and it isn't too badly off just now (note that is books, not newspapers or magazines).

Re:Publisher friendly?

[AmiMoJo]

Amazon does seem to understand that they are middlemen between the author/artist and the consumer. They are trying to set themselves up as just a marketplace, a place where consumers can review things and the authors can get paid. They don't edit self-published books, they don't provide authors with advances or try to dictate what sort of material gets written and published.

Basically they provide the services authors need to sell books and consumers need to buy them. Nothing more.

Look at how their music store works. It's all MP3s with no DRM. I think the DRM on the Kindle is just bowing to pressure from publishers so that they can get into the market as soon as possible much like Apple did with iTunes. Eventually the DRM will be dropped when it becomes obvious that it a) doesn't work and b) will just drive consumers away.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Runaway1956]

Ehhh. I won't even consider the technology or the product. The name is enough for me to decide what I think. Hearst. Patty Hearst. The terrorist little bitch with the rich daddy. Should properly have been executed decades ago. Fuck 'em. Given the choice between being screwed by a Hearst, or a Jobs, or a Gates, or any of dozens of other rat bastards, Hearst will come in last. I hope their reader turns into one HUGE money sink, that never makes them two cents.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[iamacat]

How so? Kindle contains some features that publishers most probably do not want - such as ability to install a book on unlimited number of registered devices, exportable clippings for fair use and ability of independent entities rather than just big corps to publish their material. It can be seen as striking a balance between interests of publishers and readers rather than being overly biased.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Zerth]

Filters already exist outside of publishers, called "reviewers" or "friends" or "preference correlation graphs". Publishers are only filters because they are a chokepoint in the system.

You might find that certain reviewers carry more power than others and try to bribe them to review your book, but if the reviewer just rubberstamps books for pay, they won't have any weight when correlated with a reader's preference database.

Similarly, editors are only middlemen if they work for the publishers. If an author contracts them directly, that's the same as them buying electricty for their computer or ink for their typewriter. It may add to the cost of writing, but it isn't an element imposed between the buyer and writer to make up for the inefficiency of the writer doing all the work to market/print/stock/sell his own work.

When getting your book in front of buyers was several full time jobs, publishers were necessary. As it become easier to contract editors, market, print or sell through places like Amazon for almost no upfront cost, and reviews of your work can be googled, then publishers as a conglomerate become less necessary.

I've bought more small/new authors since Amazon started carrying them, as I mentioned, because the system allows me to take more chances at less risk. I pay less, authors make more, and Amazon compares my purchases to the purchases of people who bought it befor me, as well as providing a rating system. Print publishers don't provide that.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

So are you saying the concerns addressed by old English laws are the same as the concerns we have today?

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Randle_Revar]

I am high as a kite.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[jkauzlar]

Currently, according to popular rumours, Amazon takes 70% for themselves on Kindle purchases. From that figure, it doesn't sound like publishers are doing too well, and I know from my literary fiction instructor that they're operating on bare bones. What I want is an open format/protocol that allows publishers to register in some central, open registry and optionally provide payment preferences, etc. That way, there is no distributor like Amazon-- it goes straight from the publisher to the consumer.

Secondly, if it is easy for a publisher to register themselves in this open registry, then independent publishers, or the authors themselves, are on the same playing field as the largest publishers.

Third, the device will be independent of the format & distribution method, so this will encourage device providers to be competitive: give choices of telecom providers, support pdf w/ a thumb-drive-like interface, etc.

People should just STOP BUYING STUFF that locks you into proprietary formats. Yeah, I bought an iPhone when it first came out, so I'm guilty, but I don't need an e-reader so badly I can't wait for something that doesn't screw the consumer.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[dangitman]

That's not just publishers. Most execs are too stupid to realize that powerpoint presentations do not equal success.

I don't know about "most." I think that most executives and managers are smart enough to see through that, but publishing is a field in which the upper-management is particularly stupid. Of course, there may be fields in which management is equally stupid, but that doesn't mean it's true across the board.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[davester666]

Like how Amazon gave away my fair-use right to use text-to-speech to listen to purchased books?

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The problem is that the cost to print and bind an individual book (the unit cost) is pennies."

You don't work in the publishing industry, nor do you run a business.

There is cost of the printed book, very true--and it's more than pennies considering salaries, equipment, heat, etc. Still, you are right in a way, it's not much, like $1-3 for the typical book depending on quality of materials and ink.

Then there is warehousing and distribution, which will add a few more dollars. Not much, but not cheap.

What you are overlooking is the grey market book area. Printed books have to be sold, destroyed, or taxed. Sold is obvious. Destroyed isn't--they pay recyclers to get rid of excess inventory. A lot of these recyclers simply get rid of the books, including selling off supply or "losing" them, which cuts massively into sales, since they simply hand of destruction papers without actually destroying the books outright. (Later, I put this on level ground with piracy of ebooks to level things off, so you can overlook this issue if you want.)

Worse, if the publisher doesn't destroy books, that inventory is taxed at retail value every quarter.

With ebooks, certainly you have piracy concerns and all that, but you don't have quarterly maintenance, inventory and accounting, and tax liability to deal with. You don't pay for warehousing, distribution, etc. to the same extent as with ebooks.

The publishers holding out on ebooks will and are missing opportunities. Even semi-popular niche authors, like William Gibson, has a publisher or two who refuses to publish a couple of his titles in ebook format; I simply don't purchase them, and have used the money for something else, usually targetting away from publisher (Random House usually).

"They cannot afford to do anything that discourages people from buying hardcovers; why cannibalize your own business?"

However, the book industry had/has been going downhill for quite some time. People were not buying books, hardcovers included. In fact, books in a way were become niche by themselves.

The reason was those hardcovers that cost $19-30. You can buy video game, couple DVDs or Blu-Ray, *go* to the movies, buy 3 months of Crunchyroll, or have a decent meal out, for cheaper than that hardcover. People were spending their money elsewhere already. The people who cannibalize an industry is usually always the industry holdouts, who complain as they ream themselves.

Further, sure, they don't want to cannibalize their own business, but the publishers that go under the $15 and $10 a book mark will sell more, and readers that adopt the (still) expensive ebook readers may also be inclined to try that $2-5 a pop book and find an author that has cut out a publisher entirely. iow, the high end publisher has been entirely sidestepped.

The successful publisher will release all their books in every format imaginable, and in a ready and timely fashion, and will be rewarded for it. This is why many ebooks on the NYT bestseller list sell on the Sony and Amazon store.

Note, multi-format release of titles is not the end all or be all. For example, O'Reilly, which refused/s to sell their ebooks much less than list price of the physical book (and thus are $10-12 more than what Amazon sells their physical books _shipped_ to the customer), will still sell their books, because of their quality of editing and content and reputation. However, even there, while I was an O'Reilly fan, I've already looked elsewhere for my technical books and found them to be satisfactory alternatives, instead of paying full price for an ebook when I could buy the softback for cheaper--I can't carry a library, and I'm one of the few who dislike Safari. Saving a couple of hundred a year going to another publisher is worth it for me, and the content, while O'Reilly is superior, is not that far off. Then again, Timmy hasn't been too smart about the whole ebook thing then or now, he just doesn't realize he's been missing out because publishers, in general, cannibalize their own business. He's content in owning his business, controlling it, not maxing the potential out. Any author or publisher who does otherwise usually does better in the business world.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[winwar]

"The interesting question is how transparent can you make the "price decay" part before people stop being happy when they get something for the price they want, and start being resentful when they pick their price (or decided to wait)."

The transparent part is the issue. Ever notice that new DVD's go on sale, then revert to full price, then eventually fall in price? It is not very predictable. Likewise, I know that the paperback will be cheaper or that the hardcover will be discounted but not when. But if I knew that it got X cheaper per week, then the publisher is screwed. Most people will wait if they know for certain they will get a deal.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[metamatic]

Any publisher who wants to can sell Kindle-compatible ebooks on their own web site, not go via Amazon, and not pay Amazon's cut.

They just can't do so while screwing the customer with DRM.

That's a choice I rather like them having to make.

Re:Publisher friendly?

[Phoghat]

I have an i Touch and it can read Kindle books and ePub format, but not PDF and .pdb which are fast becoming the formats of choice.

All the other readers can read these formats but not Kindle.

Don't care what you say about Amazon, but they do have some choice bargains i ebooks. Best sellers $9.99 and free and 0.99 books all the time. Yesterday I "bought" some Phillip K Dick short story collections for 0.99 and a novel from someone I hadn't heard about free (which I am enjoying).

So, just give me one reader to read them all. It would be nice if it was color, but that's secondary.

Easy for publishers?

[mcgrew]

Who's their purported customer?

Despite all the problems with the Kindle -- poor PDF support, low-contrast screen, Orwellian fears -- it makes for a mighty-fine reading experience for users. From a publisher's perspective it stinks, with Amazon reportedly sucking down 70% of a sale's proceeds.

How much of a markup does a brick and morter store that sells dead tree books have? I've heard that it's about 70%, so what's their problem, anyway?

Skiff promises better graphics and better layouts of digital content, which is encouraging, but it'll also allow the easy injection of advertising into paid content -- something we're less happy to see making the transition over from print.

That's a deal-killer for me; the first time I see an ad in a book I'll return the damned thing where I bought it. If you're going to put ads in your books, I'd damned well better get it for free or there's NO SALE.

I'll put up with ads in a printed magazine, because all I'm paying for is paper and ink, ads pay for the rest. I'm not going to pay for electronic media with ads; no paper and no ink. That's just ubergreed, double dipping, and is completely unwarranted and unacceptable.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[selven]

How much of a markup does a brick and morter store that sells dead tree books have? I've heard that it's about 70%, so what's their problem, anyway?

70% markup != you get to keep 30%. If you only get to keep 30%, that's a 233% markup not a 70% one.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[NoYob]

With a brick & mortar store, that 70% (gross) pays for: insurance, property taxes on equipment and real estate if they own the property, building, employees pay, utilities, rent, etc....

Amazon: that 70% (gross) of the price of an electronic copy of a book that has an marginal cost approaching zero is just about all profit.

Personally, I think when it comes to electronic books, the royalties to the author should be based upon what a printed book would cost, the publisher works out a cost plus system for charging for the copy wholesale, and then Amazon adds their mark up. Charging a price close to a paper book for an electronic book just seams wrong to me - one of the largest costs of a printed book is its paper and ink.

Amazon is making a killing off of Kindle books and they're not passing that on to subsidize the price of the Kindle device. Without subsidies, they could sell that device for almost half and make a decent living on it. With subsidies, they could those suckers for $50 - easily.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll put up with ads in a printed magazine, because all I'm paying for is paper and ink, ads pay for the rest. I'm not going to pay for electronic media with ads; no paper and no ink. That's just ubergreed, double dipping, and is completely unwarranted and unacceptable.

Let me get this straight. You acknowledge in your first sentence that ads are largely what makes the production of the content possible. Then in your next sentence, you turn around and say "But I won't take an electronic magazine that has ads". Who exactly is being greedy here?

Re:Easy for publishers?

[mcgrew]

I never could understand why ebooks were so expensive, and it's one reason of many I don't own a reader. I don't see any reason why a paperback version of a book should cost less than an electronic version.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[NoYob]

I don't see any reason why a paperback version of a book should cost less than an electronic version.

Me neither.

The Kindle device has a life of what? Five years? Ten, maybe if its taken care of really well? And all the kindle books are tied to that device - are they not? That paperback book will be around for decades after that Kindle has had to be thrown into the garbage - along with all those expensive Kindle version of those books.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[Scorchio]

The ebook prices are ridiculous. I was tempted to download a book for the Kindle app on my ipod touch. Amazon cheerfully informed me the digital version was $9.99, the paperback was $7 new or around $2.50 used. What?! This is exactly the reason that I haven't bought an actual Kindle device.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[cmiller173]

Amazon: that 70% (gross) of the price of an electronic copy of a book that has an marginal cost approaching zero is just about all profit.

I'm pretty sure that amazon has to kick some cash over to the wireless carrier(Sprint) to cover whispernet. And maintenance on the servers, IT guys saleries, etc. The biggest piece being the payment to Sprint.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kindle books can be transferred to multiple devices (it's a limited but sufficient number) including the iPhone. much like the with Apple iTunes, you can unregister a device to open up a slot to move the book to an additional device. So no, Kindle books do not die when the Kindle you purchased them on is dies.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[cmiller173]

I don't see any reason why a paperback version of a book should cost less than an electronic version.

Me neither.

The Kindle device has a life of what? Five years? Ten, maybe if its taken care of really well? And all the kindle books are tied to that device - are they not? That paperback book will be around for decades after that Kindle has had to be thrown into the garbage - along with all those expensive Kindle version of those books.

No, the books are tied to your amazon account. If your Kindle dies you can link another kindle to your account and re-download all your books. You can get a second kindle for your wife linked to your account and you both have access to your entire library. You can get the kindle app for the iPhone and read your entire library there as well. AND if you have a kindle and an iPhone and read for awhile on one, when you open that book on the other device it picks up where you left off on the first device!

Re:Easy for publishers?

[Enry]

I've had books published (one even reviewed here), but that was almost 10 years ago, so YMMV (but IAAA (I Am An Author)):

How much of a markup does a brick and morter store that sells dead tree books have? I've heard that it's about 70%, so what's their problem, anyway?

It's usually on the order of 100% markup (so a $10 book from the publisher goes for $20). I should also note that authors get a percentage of the publisher sales price, so if a book sells for 30% off or at full price, the publisher and author receive the same amount.

Despite all the problems with the Kindle -- poor PDF support, low-contrast screen, Orwellian fears..

Having owned a Kindle 2 for the past two months, the PDF support doesn't bother me (and is apparently fixed in the latest release). The screen and form factor are FAR better than I thought they'd be. It's easy to read in just about any light, and it's as easy to hold as a thin paperback book. As for the Orwellian fears, I have to admit the first thing I'm doing with the Kindle is getting books I already own, but want to reread so I can donate the book to the library or some charitable organization - did I mention I have a LOT of books?. As long as the Kindle and my e-books will be around for a long time, it doesn't matter if I have the physical book anymore. So I'm more worried about Amazon going out of business or getting out of the ebook business and my ebooks become unusable.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[mcgrew]

Look, you need more coffee or something, or maybe I'm just not being clear. When I buy a paper magazine, I'm paying for paper and ink. The advertisers are paying for everything else. No paper and ink, either don't have ads or don't charge me.

For books, I've never bough a book with ads and I'm not about to start now.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[Anonymous Coward]

If your Kindle dies you can link another kindle to your account and re-download all your books.

My WebTV box just died. Microsoft'll get me another one, right?

And could your Grandma get a replacement for her I-Opener after three years (while the company was still in business, although it had ceased hardware support and told its users to use a PC and Earthlink dialup account), let alone ten years? Like WebTV, the I-Opener's also about ten years old today.

A book is static. You may not be able to buy a replacement if it burns down with the house, but unlike WebTV set top boxes, I-Openers, or a million idle Geocities sites, it doesn't require external inputs (be it electrons to spin disks, or infusions of capital to pay for the bandwidth and business model) to last for decades. Books decay naturally with the passage of time, but they do so so slowly that most books outlive their owners.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[mcgrew]

I still have the paperback versions of LOTR and Foundation. LOTR I bought around 1970, Foundation even earlier. Of course, the pages are brown and the covers are coming off, but they're still readable and have been read many times.

If I'd bough hardcovers with acit-free paper they'd likely still be like new.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[dangitman]

Amazon is making a killing off of Kindle books and they're not passing that on to subsidize the price of the Kindle device. Without subsidies, they could sell that device for almost half and make a decent living on it. With subsidies, they could those suckers for $50 - easily.

I think part of the problem is that they can't make them fast enough to meet demand. This is just speculation based on the availability problems the Kindle has had, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. E-Ink displays aren't exactly a common consumer technology at the moment. When it does become common, and manufacturing issues are sorted out, you probably will see those kind of prices.

If you can't make enough to meet demand, why would you lower prices?

Re:Easy for publishers?

[dangitman]

The thing about paperbacks is that they often print too many. Therefore, storing the unsold copies becomes a burden, so the seller wants to get rid of the stock to use that storage space for something else. The whole thing is an exercise in waste. Funny how people are always attacking oil and car companies over environmental concern, but the publishing industry somehow escapes a lot of criticism, because books are 'quaint' or aesthetically appealing or something.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought markup was relative to the sale price. i.e. a 50% markup means the dealer acquired it for half what they're selling it for.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[NoYob]

Amazon: that 70% (gross) of the price of an electronic copy of a book that has an marginal cost approaching zero is just about all profit.

I'm pretty sure that amazon has to kick some cash over to the wireless carrier(Sprint) to cover whispernet. And maintenance on the servers, IT guys saleries, etc. The biggest piece being the payment to Sprint.

I am sure of that and agree. I hope I didn't give the impression that Amazon had no costs associated with the distribution of the Kindle books. But do you really think that overhead adds on that much cost - as much as an individual store has to apportion to the books they have to sell?

An individual store has to pay their overhead with the thousands of books under their roof. Whereas with regards to the e-books, the cost of the bandwidth, servers, IT salaries and other infrastructure costs dedicated or apportioned to the Kindle stuff is pennies per "book". Based upon the odd data I've been seeing in the business press, I really believe that Amazon is making a killing on Kindle.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[amplt1337]

This is a really common question, and it has to do with the economics of book publishing. Sorry for linking you to my own post, but the odds of you going back up to see it are slim, so: see here.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[dissy]

Having owned a Kindle 2 for the past two months, the PDF support doesn't bother me (and is apparently fixed in the latest release). The screen and form factor are FAR better than I thought they'd be. It's easy to read in just about any light, and it's as easy to hold as a thin paperback book. As for the Orwellian fears, I have to admit the first thing I'm doing with the Kindle is getting books I already own, but want to reread so I can donate the book to the library or some charitable organization - did I mention I have a LOT of books?.

I have to fully agree about the kindle hardware. It is a mighty fine ebook reader in and of itself.
I don't care for reading on a computer screen, unless it is for reference or extremely short to keep eye strain to a minimum. The kindle display is a pleasure to look at in comparison, and I would guess about as easy on the eyes as regular paper.

It has decent open-book format support, which is a deal breaker for me. I refuse to support DRM in any way. Anyone thinking of using DRM to annoy a paying customer? You just lost a paying customer.
Not to mention I don't trust you to release a non-DRM version before your copyright expires as you are required to by law. How can it be expected, when you will have been dead for 70+ years by then? My point however remains.

I actually was planning to do the same thing with my physical book collection. That is, give them away once I get an ebook version of it.

But my very next worry with that was the Orwellian fears you touched on as well, and slashdot is very familiar with. That stopped me dead in my tracks for now.

As long as the Kindle and my e-books will be around for a long time, it doesn't matter if I have the physical book anymore. So I'm more worried about Amazon going out of business or getting out of the ebook business and my ebooks become unusable.

The sad thing is, it already has happened for two books for kindle, and amazon isn't even out of business nor out of the eBook business to this day!

While I wouldn't let a single mistake put me off of buying a new/another Kindle, I would however go as far to say I would not put up with a second mistake.
Amazon to me happens to be one of those companies that makes so few promises, but the ones they do make they seem to keep. So I'm going to tend to believe them for now that they will not delete any more kindle books, and hope that doesn't bite me in the ass too.

Unfortunately for amazon, I personally like the look of the B&N Nook a lot better. I haven't had a chance to see one physically yet, but I think when I do I will be hooked (no puns plzktnx)

But from a pure technology point of view, I actually like the Kindle a lot and it is a damn fine ebook reader.
With alternate software (IE every feature identical to now, except those kill bits to delete books) I would say I have no problems with it.
But being fair, one can't blame the device for what its makers enslaved it to do :P

The features of the nook are pretty nice as well, and most of the major changes to the user are the interface, which I am really looking forward to sampling. If apple teaches us anything, a good GUI can put a product over the top for no other logical reason :}

Re:Easy for publishers?

[masmullin]

For me it depends on how many times I read the paperback... I am very ungentle to my paperbacks. Of course, most of my books I only read once, so I'll be able to give them to my children... but certain books, like LotR which was handed down to me by my father, are held together with tonnes of scotch-tape and are unreadable

Re:Easy for publishers?

[masmullin]

would you "consume" an ad "enhanced" book if it were free?

Re:Easy for publishers?

[innocent_white_lamb]

Several paperback books in the mid-70's had ads bound into the middle of the books.
 
They were printed on a similar cardboard to the book cover, but were generally not glossy like the cover might have been.
 
Unfortunately, due to the stiffness of the cardboard, the book tended to split in half and fall apart even more easily than "regular" paperbacks did.
 
As far as the advertising content, I think most of them were cigarette ads, but I haven't seen one for so long I'm not entirely sure any more.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[cdrguru]

Charging a price close to a paper book for an electronic book just seams wrong to me - one of the largest costs of a printed book is its paper and ink.

Your average book costs less than $2 to make in quantity. It might cost another $0.50 to ship it in a box with 20 others just like it.

You are completely wrong about the costs in the publishing business. Most of the cost is editing and promotion. The author gets a small bit and yes, the bookseller gets to add somewhere between 50% and 100% markup.

Now, I suppose you might be able to sell a book for $1 if there was no editing and no promotion. But it would be mostly unreadable garbage. I can find you some web sites where they have plenty of those sorts of books.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[cdrguru]

Assuming your new hardcover book selling for $27 is sold for $9.99 on the Kindle, I don't think they are making that much. The publisher was probably charging $13.50 (or maybe a little more) to Border's. And OK, for a high-quality hardcover book the production cost is maybe $3. Add another $0.50 for shipping the book (in a box with 20 others just like it). So if you remove the production costs and shipping you are now at $10.00.

Amazon probably beats up the publishers to get the price down to $8 and sells it for $10. I don't think I would call that a "killing".

The folks that think the hardcover book costs $15 to print and $5 to ship aren't aware of the realities of the printing world. It really doesn't cost that much. What does cost lots is editing and promotion, and the fact that a lot of books do not cover their costs, so the ones that do have to make up for the others. Nobody knows if a book will sell or not, but as long as they get one out of every three that sells big they are OK. A much bigger problem is trying to make sure there are no books that aren't big sellers.

Re:Easy for publishers?

[mcgrew]

Yes. But I'd pay for one without ads if I had the choice.

For who?

[DinDaddy]

They appear to ahve mid-identified their customers.

Re:For who?

[DinDaddy]

or, you know, have misidentified. I think I shall go trade in several of my thumbs for fingers.

Spliff?

[lobiusmoop]

Love that their logo has a lit joint in it.

"allow the easy injection of advertising"

[decipher_saint]

I'd say this skiff was dead in the water.

Crash

[hackus]

and BURN baby....burn!

Hey I got a great idea? Lets make everyone pay for a crummy E-Reader at high prices PLUS make them pay for the book subscriptions, PLUS sell advertising to make the reading even less enjoyable after the user gets the bill!!

PLUS we can just kill the book we sell, so the customer can never have a copy and of course, we can sell the same book to them twice!!!

-Signed...your average everday greedy American Corporate Scum.

Re:Crash

[CannonballHead]

Do you think they intend to torture consumers until they buy the device? Or something like that?

And force authors to use that publisher? Why not just self-publish using PDFs? Many authors could do that, you know. And if you get so outraged at publishers and the way they treat their authors, then maybe don't read the authors that consent to dealing with those publishers (probably for monetary gain, I suppose?).

I don't know how Hearst is going to MAKE everyone pay for a costly e-reader.

Re:Crash

[Bat Country]

Do you think they intend to torture consumers until they buy the device? Or something like that?

And force authors to use that publisher?

No, they're going to make it attractive for publishers, pay them for exclusives, make it not super inconvenient for readers, encourage subsidized reader programs in schools, give them away like iPods, sell them to college students promising cheaper textbooks, etc. Then they're going to torture the customer, once they've become a preferred conduit for the paperback market.

Re:Crash

[QuantumRiff]

and BURN baby....burn!

You bring up a good point.. How are we supposed to have a good, Fahrenheit 451 style book burning, with E-books?

they require way too many accelerants to burn with the same intensity!

Don't care. I'm boycotting it

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hearst Corporation was launched by the son of George Hearst - the heartless maniac who ordered the killings of multiple people on HBO's Deadwood miniseries.

Take your ebook reader and shove it.

great for publi$her$?

[L3370]

More competition and new products entering the E-reader market? Awesome. I love it

If they think I'm still going to pay the price of a hardcover book for nothing but a digital copy that can be revoked from my reader, I'M STILL NOT BUYING THIS JUNK.

Re:great for publi$her$?

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Maybe if the gave it away like the CueCat? My hope is that it will be possible to use this device in ways that weren't foreseen.

Re:great for publi$her$?

[Blakey Rat]

The more competition there is, the more likely that'll go away.

Just like higher competition in the online music sales market basically killed DRM for online music.

Re:great for publi$her$?

[Bat Country]

The CueCat is a fabulous example of how not to give away free technology.

They need to give it away like the iPod - in contests, sweepstakes, Oprah shows, affiliate deals, car trade-ins and open houses.

Re:great for publi$her$?

[commodoresloat]

Maybe if the gave it away like the CueCat? My hope is that it will be possible to use this device in ways that weren't foreseen.

Yeah, just like the CueCat, this thing will make billions of dollars and become a widely accepted technology used by everyone. Those Cuecat guys really knew how to monetize a product!

The lesson here is, if you really want to make the big bucks, put a silent colon in front of every syllable.

DRM

[eav]

And if it has DRM I am not buying it.

Hmm, where is the customer in this?

[nweaver]

The Kindle for all its annoyances attempts to be as customer centric as possible.

But this, "publisher centric" model seems really l8me... EG, advertisements built into the fabric?

Mystery, unavailable devices?

An over-leveraged print empire driving it?

Re:Hmm, where is the customer in this?

[Al Dimond]

Iunno, the Kindle makes a lot of sacrifices to publishers. Including incredibly stupid sacrifices like allowing them to disable text-to-speech for whatever books they want (I don't have a Kindle but I know some people that work for Amazon, one of whom does marketing for Kindle).

Amazon's model seems to be centered around itself foremost, and clearly it must balance customer and publisher demands. If this other company wants to cater more to publisher demands I guess they can try it that way. But don't tell the public that!

Re:Hmm, where is the customer in this?

[maxume]

I don't find that sacrifice to be all that stupid, text-to-speech is generally terrible, and something the size of a book makes for a horrible audio device (sure, there are certainly people who want to listen to books that aren't available as audio, but that market isn't big enough for Amazon to care much about).

Re:Hmm, where is the customer in this?

[mcgrew]

But this, "publisher centric" model seems really l8me

Rather "late me?" Do you mean "14me"?

Re:Hmm, where is the customer in this?

[Anonymous Coward]

l8me

Mod parent down.

Re:Hmm, where is the customer in this?

[Qzukk]

Close, but your accent is a bit off. Try pronouncing it more like "|4|\/|3"

Re:Hmm, where is the customer in this?

[vcgodinich]

Meh. I haven't bought a book on my kindle yet, just reading the classics that are free.

That being said, I haven't once felt like Amazon is doing anything, or that anything about the Kindle 1 or 2 wasn't / isn't designed / done with the customer in mind.

Sure, the prices for books are high, but they make every effort to help you get your content on your kindle, whether you got it from them or not.

Yes, i like real books, but any book that you really love you will buy hardback anyway. Am I concerned that in 10 years my copy of Dan Brown's crappy book is tied to Amazon will disappear? Not really. I have backups of my books on my computer, in well known DRM free formats, and i can transfer then to whatever device i am using then.

People seem to be freaked out about being locked into a product, or a company, but honestly it isn't a big deal with the Kindle. There are easy to use converters on the web for free, and its not like your files are hard to get to.

So all in all, the people out there complaining about the kindle probably don't own one, or probably don't read a great deal. For those of us who do, the Kindle is fantastic. Perfect? No, but i think anyone using one wouldn't think that Amazon is doing anything other than working hard to make the experience good ffor the customer

Re:Hmm, where is the customer in this?

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf does lateme mean?

Re:Hmm, where is the customer in this?

[cdrguru]

If you are a big publisher, you get to select if text-to-speech is disabled. I am just waiting for that to bite someone when the first "Read by a Kindle" audiobook is released for $0.50.

If you are doing self-publishing through Amazon, you do not get to elect to disable text-to-speech unless you pay Amazon to do the Kindle conversion for you. Last I heard it was a flat fee of $10,000.

If you don't believe the "Read by a Kindle" audiobook will sell, you are probably wrong. And for a major hardcover book with the "official" audiobook selling for $30 (or more), there will certainly be people that will buy up a $0.50 audiobook with the same content. Maybe not as professionally read, but still something to play in the car on the way to work.

Welcome to the land of fail...

[BrianRaker]

I wish them luck in this venture... they're going to need it with a market that already has widely accepted semi-user-friendly devices (Amazon Kindle, Sony eReader, etc).

Also, haven't they learned their lesson already in other markets? Publisher (content-owner) friendly rarely ever is accepted by the marketplace as it wasn't designed with the end user (the people PAYING for this "service").

For Publishers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't publishers be for all platforms in order to get the largest audience? It seems fairly trivial for them to change their prices for different providers to get the same margins everywhere and it's not like it's technically difficult to deliver different formats.

Even worse

[Anonymous Coward]

The unit has two spikes that can deploy on command/DRM violation, rendering the user blind.

But it does have a nice display.

Re:Even worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, I thought the Wizzo company made chocolates not e-readers!

http://www.google.com/search?q=whizzo+chocolate+company

Re:Even worse

[couchslug]

"The unit has two spikes that can deploy on command/DRM violation, rendering the user blind."

Your ideas intrigue me and my company would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Big mistake

[Locke2005]

Any product not designed "By Customers, For Customers" is doomed to failure. Seriously, I don't want an e-book reader that makes the publisher's life easier; I want an e-book reader that makes MY life easier! And since the customer, not the publisher, is the one purchasing this device, I don't anticipate a huge number of sales.

Re:Big mistake

[dangitman]

Any product not designed "By Customers, For Customers" is doomed to failure.

Any product designed by the customers is doomed to failure. Do you really think that the customers have any idea about how to design/engineer a product?

Re:Big mistake

[Locke2005]

So the Microsoft I'm a PC, and Windows 7 was my idea campaign is doomed to failure?

e-readers ARE publishers, not for/by publishers

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't get it-- seems like the whole benefit of an e-reader is to remove the need for old-style publishers.
Authors, editors, reviewers, and users are still a requirement of course, but it seems like e-readers could just as easily be called e-publishers.

Re:e-readers ARE publishers, not for/by publishers

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I just don't get it-- seems like the whole benefit of an e-reader is to remove the need for old-style publishers.

And that's the key.

This is an old-style publisher trying to avoid being eliminated and bankrupted as the readers desert old-style publishers for new-style "content delivered electronically" (publisherese for text documents).

By trojan-horsing a "publisher-freindly" e-book reader he hopes to hang on to some of the future market.

IMHO even if he could have gotten away with it he doomed his project by letting the readers know up front that the engineering is being done with the publishers' interest prioritized above the theirs.

But who knows? Maybe it will have enough bells and whistles, a good enough initial cost structure and advertising campaign, and/or enough desirable exclusive content (ala VHS drubbing Betamax) that he'll acquire a following.

Re:e-readers ARE publishers, not for/by publishers

[vcgodinich]

Publishers are also -importantly- for proofing writers works, making sure things are logical etc. . . And also for managing the writers themselves. All great artists are a little. . . off, and most need help in one way or another transferring their vision to others.

Many (most) authors love their publishers for helping them get their ideas out of their head and to others (Marketing, finding artists, arranging book tours, not to mention proofing, improving etc)

Obviously the side of the publisher that we the customer sees is just a guy and a printing press, but i assure you, they do alot more than that.

Time Enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

After society is dead and gone, and there's no more electricity... these things will be useless... but... I'll still have my paper and ink books... until my glasses fall off my face and break.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_at_Last

Because, of course...

[Chris Mattern]

...the publishers are the reason it all exists. Long live the middleman!

I PREDICT...

[gbutler69]

...EPIC FAIL...

Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

a PattyPad ? to soon?

So long

[ewe2]

*waves goodbye*

In other news, publishers get their priorities right: At The Dallas News, a New "Bold Strategy": Section Editors Reporting to Sales Managers Says it all.

Advertising is clearly the endgame

[macwhizkid]

Quote: Skiff gives periodical publishers tools to maintain their distinct visual identities, build and extend relationships with subscribers

Translation: Skiff gives periodical publishers tools to mix advertisements within content and to shove said ads down the throats of their subscribers.

I agree that the Kindle is far from perfect, but I can't say I'm too excited for this Skiff thing either.

Re:Advertising is clearly the endgame

[cmiller173]

If the periodical subscription is free to me then I can live with the adds.

For the record I don't disable adds on slashdot either, even though I have addblock plus installed.

Re:Advertising is clearly the endgame

[Anonymous Coward]

FFS, it's ADS not ADDS!!! Did you fail second fucking grade?

Re:Advertising is clearly the endgame

[JohnBailey]

Translation: Skiff gives periodical publishers tools to mix advertisements within content and to shove said ads down the throats of their subscribers. I agree that the Kindle is far from perfect, but I can't say I'm too excited for this Skiff thing either.

Didn't Amazon take out a patent on inserting advertising in books recently?

Re:Advertising is clearly the endgame

[cmiller173]

No, but I got a D in typing...

Heasrt e-Book Reader?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say this one is DOA.

Why Should I Buy It?

[Rycross]

So, why should I buy a product designed with the publishers' interests in mind over a product with the customers' interests in mind? I don't particularly care about the publishers' interests, but I do care about mine.

Canada?

[colesw]

Who ever releases a decent e-book reader in Canada with connectivity included will have my sale. I want my global market place!

Re:Canada?

[masmullin]

Sony 505 baby... sure it doesn't have any fancy wifi or cellular radio. But on the plus side, I didn't have to pay for any fancy Wifi or cellular radio.

Missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I think many are missing the point. When it says "for publishers", I think they are referring to the ability to have better graphics and better typography. Sounds like a huge step forward for these mainly black and white devices. I know there is this whole idea that stuff like this is driven by greed, but this device may pave the way for future devices which have more features. Think about how websites used to look in 1998. It's only because of professional webdesigners trying to maximize usability, time on site, ad clicks, and return on investment that we've moved to the sleek look of what is web 2.0 which has been used for so many free and open projects (most of which are supported by ads).

Reading comprehension?

[FatSean]

He puts up with ads in a print mag because his money pays for the ink and paper and the ads pay for the content. He means that if an electronic magazine had ads, he'd expect to get the magazine for free. The reason being that the ads pay for the content and the user pays for the delivery mechanism. He's already paid for delivery of his electronic book when he bought the reader and downloaded the content. He paid for the delivery of the paper mag content when he drove to the store and paid for the bound paper and ink.

If you don't like copyright infringement, make something that can't be copied.

Re:great for publishers?

[daVinci1980]

Here's my slightly offtopic rant for you slashdotters that think it's funny or clever to replace an 's' with a dollar sign.

I get it. You think that the entity being referred to is greedy. Here's what you don't seem to get. It's childish, and it does one of three things:

1) It gives the impression that your rhetoric wouldn't be strong enough to stand on its own--therefore you need a gimmick to ensure that people really get your message.
2) It's unrelated to your rhetoric, and therefore distracting from your overall message.
3) It makes you seem to be an uninformed, out of touch individual who has no concept of how things work in the real world.

I'm going to offer a bit of free advice, whether you want it or not. Spelling and presentation matter. And do you know why they matter? They matter because you're trying to convey a message. Your readers and listeners only have so much concentration they can or will devote to understanding your message. If we have to spend effort translating your spelling or grammatical errors, or we have to perform in-place symbol substitution, that is distracting us from the point you are trying to make. Do yourself a favor, and give up on these childish devices.

Here's a short list of the slashdotisms that need to die:

- Substituting '$' for 's'
- ^H (acceptable for Funny posts only)
- Calling Microsoft employees or users Microserfs

What timeOday Said Plus....

[mpapet]

Most of you are perfectly okay with companies treating their customers like cr@p. It's called the entertainment industry.

Bluray is even worse than the DVD in terms of limiting your clearly defined rights to personal use and dramatically raising the costs of entertainment. How many of you are loading up on those BluRay players/content this holiday season? You are happy about it too.

I think the basic notion that this will fail is right. It will fail because they will seek to extract similar profits AND lard on costs so early into the project that it won't ever have a chance.

I don't see the problem.

[jandrese]

I hope a lot of publishers go and buy these things, they'll apparently be really happy with them. I just hope they aren't expecting consumers to actually buy any.

Delivering a Press release is easy

[strangeattraction]

Delivering a product is hard.

By publisher for publishers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be better to be "by publishers for readers"?

First Marijuana now this!!???

[Anonymous Coward]

Weren't they happy enough with lobbying for banning Marijuana, and now THIS?

I can see this being useful if they give it away.

[corran__horn]

I can see this style of device being accepted if it comes with magazine subscriptions (free reader with your newsweek subscription, reader copies only), but otherwise I would anticipate it flopping. People don't like cash outlay for products to use other products, leading to the razor/razorblade phenomenon.

Re:great for publishers?

[fotbr]

Calling Microsoft employees or users Microserfs

Shouldn't that be:
Calling Micro$oft employees or users Micro$erf$

Sounds nice...

[calmofthestorm]

targeted ads, complete publisher control. Where can I pick mine up, and how much will I get paid per month to use it?

Re:great for publishers?

[dangitman]

Calling Microsoft employees or users Microserfs

Has this actually happened on slashdot since 1999?

"By publishers, for Publishers"

[interval1066]

Great. Then they can use the friggin' thing, because I sure won't.

ummm no

[Is0m0rph]

Another expensive ebook reader. I'll stick to my 7" Chinese Chuwi M70 PMP. No it's not e-ink but I don't care for e-ink anyways. I don't need any proprietary formats or DRM either. I want a adjustable brightness/contrast back lit ebook reader (text format) which my Chuwi does flawlessly and plays most music formats and HD videos as a bonus. I don't have to worry about my connected device deleting paid for books at the command of a publisher either.

Customers first

[Kimen]

Perhaps they should be more concerned with customer friendly than publisher friendly. Even though we like having competition, I am very suspicious of a company that uses phrasing like this. It usually is an indication of an underlying viewpoint and in this case I am led to believe that viewpoint is decidedly not customer centric.

By publishers for publishers?

[WiiVault]

Do they mean to suggeest that the only people who read papers and magazines are the people who publish them? If so this industry is in more trouble than I expected. Either way this is a moronic stance to take. Where does the customer come in?

Hearst Corporation! Sound like a job for...

[Foobar of Borg]

Sounds like a job for... the Symbionese Liberation Army!

(Those who wish to mark this off-topic are respectfully invited to get off my lawn!)

Magazines and Newspapers

[TomRC]

Note that Skiff is aimed (initially) primarily at magazines and newspapers, not books. That has a different use model - not "buy and keep", but mostly "buy, skim & read, discard". Sure, Kindle does magazines and newspapers too - but clearly not as well as might be done with a larger, color display.

Websites already fill this need, mostly for free - but web publishers can't cover costs of in-depth news and make a profit.

To get the market share they need AND avoid hardware freeloaders, Skiff will have to offer a hardware + 3 year multi-magazine subscription bundle for at least $10/month, probably $15. They can beat out paper magazines by giving people who'd normally subscribe to only one or two magazines, access to dozens for the same price, creating a higher perceived value.

Re:Magazines and Newspapers

[vcgodinich]

Larger color e-ink display? 3 years @ 15$ will not even cover the hardware. . .

Magazine subscriptions are cheap right now, mostly around 2 dollars a magazine, on a yearly plan. If this is the idea, to make a magazine reader, its a poor one.

Newspapers are better, but the Kindle already does this. Yes, we ALL want a large cheap color e-ink display, but it simply isn't here yet

Re:Magazines and Newspapers

[euxneks]

To get the market share they need AND avoid hardware freeloaders, Skiff will have to offer a hardware + 3 year multi-magazine subscription bundle for at least $10/month, probably $15. They can beat out paper magazines by giving people who'd normally subscribe to only one or two magazines, access to dozens for the same price, creating a higher perceived value.

I can tell you right now, no amount of cost savings is going to get me to buy something built for publishers - this implies to me they don't care about consumers, and they can revoke content or make me view ads when all I really want to do is read stuff by content providers - I'm fine with having full page ads, but I need to be able to skip them - and something designed for publishers is not going to allow that.

Re:Magazines and Newspapers

[TomRC]

Color eInk is a ways off, but there are other short-term compromise solutions out there.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/17/pixel-qi-e-ink-lcd-hybrid-display-to-debut-on-tablet-next-mont/

Paper magazines are cheap - but suppose you could access EVERY magazine and newspaper for $15/month, WITH an eReader, and a reading experience superior to the Web? Could the economics for that work? Sure! Few people subscribe to more than a few magazines and newspapers (and many subscribe to none). So the average amount paid for paper subscriptions is probably under $15/month/family now. They just have to start collecting that and dividing it up "fairly" amongst publishers.

They are at risk in one way though - they need to make sure that they're still part of the web. They want to be so cheap and so cross-linked with the web, that pretty much everyone subscribes, and all publishers flock to them.

Maybe they will provide a "free, text only, dull formating, advert surrounded" version for the web (so bloggers and such still feel somewhat comfortable linking to them), but subscribers to Skiff could browse the web and full quality magazines without barriers in either direction. (An eReader is incidental to this, really - but a good way to get some attention.)

Not saying they're smart enough to do that - the "by publishers for publishers" bit does seem to indicate they've got the wrong attitude.

Hearst? Such nice people! (sarcasm)

[DadLeopard]

I bet this thing is going to be locked down tighter than Fort Knox! They will probably bring out their own DRM scheme to be sure that you will have to re-buy anything that you already have in ebook versions from anyone else! I'll stick with a device that supports as many Open formats as I can get, thus enabling me to shop around for the best content at the best prices! Right now use a Sony prs505 with Ubuntu linux and Calibre for a library organizer and ebook converter!

They can't help it.

[rebel]

see subject

Digital Virgin Suicides

[vorlich]

Hearst Corporation announce the development of a Kindle type gadget publishers can use to publish their last will and testament, their memoirs and their suicide notes.
Rupert Murdoch is first to place an advance order.

Another great idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Finally, an mp3 player by the RIAA for the RIAA"

Back to the future!

[argent]

Think about how websites used to look in 1998.

Let's see. Small, fast, efficient, readable.

It's only because of professional webdesigners trying to maximize usability, time on site, ad clicks, and return on investment that we've moved to the sleek look of what is web 2.0

Where you too can download 600k of Javascript, flash, and animated GIFs to view a simple page of text that actually came up faster over my 33.6k modem than it does over my 256k DSL.

Re:Back to the future!

[vcgodinich]

readable in 1998? I think you are thinking about a different 1998 than i am.

Remember tiled backgrounds? Animated gifs? -shudder-

Not to mention, what websites do you go to now that "aren't readable?" name 3.

Re:Back to the future!

[argent]

Not to mention, what websites do you go to now that "aren't readable?" name 3.

I'll cut you a deal and name one. Slashdot Beta.

Slashdot light, with all the beta web 2.0 crap peeled off, is a classic 1998 website and infinitely superior to what Taco's turning it into. Worse, they've broken all the internal links so the only way you can avoid the image spam is through the home page. The story link from the comment takes you to a kind of "Web 1.5" version.

And Slashdot Beta is less "web 2.0" than most of the sites linked to.

Re:great for publisher$$$$?

[L3370]

Here's my slightly offtopic rant for all you slashdotters that go on multi-paragraph tirades about personal pet peeves.

Woop dee doo. I don't deem my own message all that important so I could care less if my $ signs are distracting from the overall message.

It's the internet, man. Can't we just have a little fun with it?

informative!

[commodoresloat]

Why was this moderated flamebait? The poster is exactly right; somebody needs to read about the history of copyright and the Stationer's Company.

Yay! Another publisher is crying.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time for us, (meaning me) to stand up and say, "screw you publishers." When you can man up enough to offer something of substance, then you have something to offer. Another eReader with restrictive DRM. Go ahead and build it and see if anyone buys the damn thing.

Screw you publisher. You not screw us long time.

Publishers are media companies

[PeanutButterBreath]

Are you so sure? Alienating customers won't help publishers any, since they're where the money comes from.

Yeah, and cable TV, internet and mobile subscribers are where the money comes from, so obviously providers in those industries would never do anything to screw their customers. Business transactions, rational self interest, providing value and all that good stuff.

I worked in the book industry for 7 years that spanned the short-lived Rocket eBook generation of electronic books. I can assure you that the majority of publishers I worked with (my employer represented more than 100 independent publishers) would have laughed you out of the room with that "providing value" nonsense. Book publishers are no different than record or film companies, they just work on thinner margins taken from smaller revenues.

So here is why this might work: Skiff eliminates a middleman, namely Amazon. Thus consumers could end up paying less, while publishers (and even writers) get more.

What on earth makes you think that prices are based on the layers of middle-men (or any other cost)? Good grief!

Publisher gizmo

[Ilgaz]

If it is "by publishers for publishers", only people who will buy it are publishers themselves. E.g. Dan Brown's manager.

Some "get marketshare quick" book around?

[Ilgaz]

Is there a popular book about business management that suggest to target the largest marketshare owner?

First Palm claims they will kill iPhone, Verizon attacks directly AT&T/Apple and now this.

Such basic "rule of thumb" things do not work. You can't beat Amazon in anything online unless you change the way you think. Amazon would happily allow _your_ ads inside their pages. Do you have such vision? Amazon could let you use their own idle processing power for your services and can happily rent cheap bandwidth to you. That is the kind of a company you race with.

Will you sell any book about Citizen Kane in your store to begin with? How many years have your media empire boycotted Orson Wells because of his work? Start with answering it and apologizing him/his fans.

Readers/Writers are getting rid of all

[Ilgaz]

There is an amazingly multiplatform reader "wattpad", it has applications for every kind of platform you can imagine including J2ME.

The content looks like crap sometimes but you can see the incoming nightmare of big publishers. People can sit with a keyboard and write actual novel you know. This time, they can publish it electronically too. Just like Youtube.

"Have you been published?" "No but, I got like 3.000.000 readers who read my story. How many books have you sold?"

It is too early to talk about yet, the content is not mature yet but trust me, it is coming.

So not for users eh?

[Snaller]

Meaning its another brick not worth having.

Hearst launching dud product. News at 11...

[keneng]

The Skiff platform is not applicable...We have p2p web sites for that.

The unseen Skiff device may be enticing but smartdevices.com.cn SMARTQ7/SMARTQ5 Mobile Internet Devices allow you to read/create .pdf files. Can the skiff device allow you do create a .pdf file of your own? I would bet that it doesn't because Media Content Creator's focus is for its consumer to JUST CONSUME. www.hearst.com has a page mentioning their skiff services are "...all optimized for wireless delivery to dedicated e-readers..." which backs up my point. Hearst isn't interested in encouraging the "Do-it-yourself" revolution; Hearst is only interested in keeping their media content empire status quo. Good luck with that ;)

boats?

[Anonymous Coward]

what the hell do boats have to do with books? someone must have been on a really boring fishing trip recently...

hard to get more publisher friendly than Kindle

[OrangeTide]

Amazon apparently makes small margins on their ebooks (and in some cases take a loss when a user makes a wireless purchase). The profits mostly go towards the publishers because Amazon wanted to sign up so many of them so quickly they didn't negotiate well. I think what publishers are realizing is that when it's time to negotiate future deals with Amazon that they will be in deep doo-doo. Gravy train is over for publishers, and they are scrambling to get back the deal by building a platform and infrastructure. Something that took Amazon and its competitors 3.5 years to build from the ground up.

In summary

[bradley13]

In summary, the important points:

• The goal of Skiff (from the press release): "connect publishers and marketers with consumers". Translation: getting advertising to the consumer is just as important as getting content to the consumer. The isn't anything the consumer wants; we see where their priorities are.
• Eliminate the middleman: Who the heck said this? It isn't in TFA or even in TFS. Skiff wants to be the middleman.
• Kindle; no control over your content: Lots of comments complain about the Kindle, the lack of control over the content you have purchased, and being tied to a particular company. Why has no one stated the obvious solution?
  1. Buy eReaders that support the ePub format (Kindle does not, guess why).
  2. Buy ePub books and keep your library on your own computer.
  3. Most important of all: support publishers like Baen Books, whose eBooks are DRM-free.

Re:great for publishers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your obviously superior intellect is truly inspiring. Just remember to be careful when it's time to get off that horse you're sitting on at the moment. It's a very, very long way down to the ground. You might get hurt, and we wouldn't want that.

You're right, of course, and I do agree.

But damn if your tone isn't a pretentious one...and it's distracting. And I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not: This fact alone will ensure that the people you would like to get your point will absolutely fail to do so.

In short: Nice try, but you missed the target.