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

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

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday December 4, 2009 @07:46AM from the thinking-bigger-picture dept.

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."

34 of 155 comments (clear)

Publisher friendly? by Maximum+Prophet · 2009-12-04 07:47 · Score: 4, Insightful

Translates to: Screw the authors & screw the customers.

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1. Re:Publisher friendly? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-12-04 07:49 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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?
2. Re:Publisher friendly? by Chyeld · 2009-12-04 07:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Executive Summary: We are out of our frigging minds and don't realize this is going to bomb faster than the orginal DIVX.
3. Re:Publisher friendly? by timeOday · 2009-12-04 08:21 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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?
4. Re:Publisher friendly? by bill_mcgonigle · 2009-12-04 08:25 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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.
  
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5. Re:Publisher friendly? by Zerth · 2009-12-04 08:33 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  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.
6. Re:Publisher friendly? by Captain+Splendid · 2009-12-04 08:33 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  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".
  
  --
  Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
7. Re:Publisher friendly? by NeutronCowboy · 2009-12-04 09:05 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  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.
  
  --
  Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
8. Re:Publisher friendly? by amplt1337 · 2009-12-04 09:28 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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...
  
  --
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9. Re:Publisher friendly? by Archangel+Michael · 2009-12-04 09:42 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  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.
  
  --
  Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
10. Re:Publisher friendly? by stripes · 2009-12-04 10:12 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  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.
11. Re:Publisher friendly? by AmiMoJo · 2009-12-04 11:20 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  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.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
12. Re:Publisher friendly? by jkauzlar · 2009-12-04 13:38 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  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.
Crash by hackus · 2009-12-04 07:52 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

--
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
1. Re:Crash by CannonballHead · 2009-12-04 08:31 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  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.
great for publi$her$? by L3370 · 2009-12-04 07:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
1. Re:great for publi$her$? by Lazlo+Woodbine · 2009-12-04 07:58 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  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:Easy for publishers? by NoYob · 2009-12-04 07:59 · Score: 2, Informative

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.

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It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Welcome to the land of fail... by BrianRaker · 2009-12-04 07:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

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").

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As I walk through the valley of death I fear no one, for I am the meanest sonova bitch in the valley!
Even worse by Anonymous Coward · 2009-12-04 08:02 · Score: 5, Funny

The unit has two spikes that can deploy on command/DRM violation, rendering the user blind.
But it does have a nice display.
Re:Hmm, where is the customer in this? by Al+Dimond · 2009-12-04 08:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

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!
Because, of course... by Chris+Mattern · 2009-12-04 08:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

...the publishers are the reason it all exists. Long live the middleman!
Re:Easy for publishers? by NoYob · 2009-12-04 08:33 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

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It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Re:Hmm, where is the customer in this? by Qzukk · 2009-12-04 08:42 · Score: 3, Funny

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

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If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Re:Easy for publishers? by cmiller173 · 2009-12-04 08:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.
Reading comprehension? by FatSean · 2009-12-04 08:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

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Blar.
Re:Easy for publishers? by mcgrew · 2009-12-04 09:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

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Free Martian Whores!
What timeOday Said Plus.... by mpapet · 2009-12-04 09:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

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http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Re:Easy for publishers? by dangitman · 2009-12-04 09:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

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?

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... and then they built the supercollider.
Re:great for publishers? by fotbr · 2009-12-04 09:16 · Score: 3, Funny

Calling Microsoft employees or users Microserfs
Shouldn't that be:
Calling Micro$oft employees or users Micro$erf$
Sounds nice... by calmofthestorm · 2009-12-04 09:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Magazines and Newspapers by TomRC · 2009-12-04 10:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.
1. Re:Magazines and Newspapers by vcgodinich · 2009-12-04 12:13 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  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
Back to the future! by argent · 2009-12-04 11:05 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.