"digital content" entries
Ebook annotations, links and notes: Must-haves or distractions?
O'Reilly editors discuss ebook functionality and connected reading experiences
Should ebooks be chock full of links, annotations, and sharing tools? Or is a quiet and disconnected experience the way to go? O'Reilly editors recently tackled these questions in a great back-channel discussion. We decided to share a handful of notable excerpts
Some Tasty Bits from the StartWithXML UK Survey
We've got some raw results from the StartWithXML survey in the UK, and they are very different in some respects from the US survey we did. Some salient points:48.7% of the respondents were in the STM market, followed by trade (24.4%) and college (16%).The bulk of respondents were from large houses – 50.4% – and the rest were evenly divided…
Inside Look at RAND's $9.95 Ebook Pricing Strategy
Recently, the RAND Corporation announced that it has revised the suggested retail pricing on all RAND ebooks to $9.95 each. RAND ebooks are available through a wide variety of wholesale and retail partners. The press release provided some explanation for the decision, also discussed in Publishers Weekly. I have been asked by Tools of Change to provide some additional…
Google's Browser-Based Plan for Ebook Sales
BEA '09 may be remembered as the moment when Google formally entered the ebook market. From the New York Times: Mr. [Tom] Turvey [director of strategic partnerships at Google] said Google's program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle. "We…
One-Question Interview at BookNet Canada Tech Forum
Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the 2009 BookNet Canada Technology Forum in Toronto (motto: Even colder than you expected!), and Mark Bertils caught up with me on my way out for a quick video interview: Two follow ups on what I said, now that I have my del.icio.us feed handy: The Peter Drucker reference is from…
Jakob Nielsen: Kindle Content Must be Kindle-Specific
Jakob Nielsen offers an in-depth look at Kindle formatting best practices: For Kindle, it's certainly unacceptable to simply repurpose print content. But you can't repurpose website content, either. For good Kindle usability, you have to design for the Kindle. Write Kindle-specific headlines and create Kindle-specific article structures. [Link included in original post.] (Via Joe Wikert's Twitter stream) Related Stories:…
Hearst Gets Into the E-Reader Game
Hearst Corp. is developing its own wireless e-reader that may debut this year. From Fortune: According to industry insiders, Hearst, which publishes magazines ranging from Cosmopolitan to Esquire and newspapers including the financially imperiled San Francisco Chronicle, has developed a wireless e-reader with a large-format screen suited to the reading and advertising requirements of newspapers and magazines. The device and…
Expectation of Fair Pricing, Not Free
At Dear Author, a post stating that not all content should be expected to be free; rather it must be provided, free or not, in a realistic understanding of consumer needs and expectations, which might mean changing the way you do business. What content providers must realize is that a changing business model wherein revenues are no longer captured in…
Photos from New York Times R&D Lab
Nick Bilton was a hit yesterday at the TOC Conference, and during his keynote he talked about what they’re working on with content at the NYT R&D Lab. Nick was kind enough to give a few of us a private tour earlier this week, and here’s some photos from the trip:…
The Economic Realities of Digital-Only Newspapers
Alan Mutter has an incisive analysis explaining why an all-digital strategy would be unacceptably painful for the majority of established newspapers: Because newspapers on average derive approximately 90% of their sales from print advertising, the only ink-on-paper newspapers that can afford to attempt digital-only publishing are the ones that are irreversibly losing money. Moving to digital publishing is the…