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?

[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...

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.

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.

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").

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: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:Hmm, where is the customer in this?

[Qzukk]

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

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?