iPad What will iPad do for e-books?

[thinkpad]

Originally Posted by tommywjf

Kindle 2 sales would not be affected by this iPad. I will no way bring this iPad to my bed to read the novels. But there is a problem with Kindle DX since it is targeted to bring text- and tech- books to customers (as Amazon has distributed Kindle DX to some universities), but iPad is just far better than DX in displaying such books and plus 10 bucks only. Therefore I suppose any similar attempts (10-inch ereaders) would not be successful this year and later on.

Any thoughts?

One can only hope that the pricing of the larger devices comes down. I don't see how they will be able to compete otherwise. All of a sudden paying more than $500 for a 9-10inch e-ink reader sounds expensive.

[DawnFalcon]

Never mind

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

The iPad is not a dedicated e-book reader; it obviously isn't designed to be one. But it could still take some market share from other readers, especially if the e-book producers make, or okay, iPad apps for e-book reading (as, for instance, Amazon has already said it plans to do).

What I see out of this device is hardware good for digital magazines and other periodicals, especially those with color. Magazine publishers and textbook makers have so far been frustrated by the current greyscale e-book readers, and hoping for a color device to give them the entry into the portable digital media market that they want. The iPad may be exactly what some of them are looking for.

It's been my feeling for years that creating a portable digital market for magazines and other color-enabled texts would get more Americans into digital reading than novels have so far... specialty and theme magazines, especially, are a major and so-far largely untapped market for portable digital media. Further, enabling owners to be able to "clip and save" select portions of magazines and discard the rest, would create a digital scrapbook that could be hugely popular with the public (Personal plug: I described this in my novel Chasing the Light).

iPad looks like just the kind of hardware needed for the e-scrapbook software I described (though I can tell from descriptions that screen resolution could use some improvement).

At any rate, if people buy the iPad for reading digital magazines and similar content, or for that matter any other media, they will most likely use it to read the occasional e-book, too... especially if it is easy enough to get e-books for their device. An iPad-optimized e-book portal combined with e-book reading apps could, therefore, bring a lot of new readers to the "e" side. Those who won't buy dedicated devices will use a device they already use for other things, because... well, they have it. The same way I use my PDA for reading e-books, and other people use cellphones, a purpose for which they were not originally purchased, but which they handle admirably.

And there's every reason to expect some owners of dedicated devices will decide the iPad is actually more in line with what they want, and will abandon the dedicated devices in favor of a multi-use, multi-media device.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Um, it's pretty darn clear what happened. It was EMI's hail mary pass. They missed, but took out eBook DRM as collateral damage. It's notable that only EMI were in at first (and I won't go into the long winded explanation, but EMI are probably the company in big music most insulated from direct pressure, even if only marginally - it's not really believable they caved in first and separately!) and with a higher price.

Apple like DRM because it ties you into their infrastructure.

Apple love control, and DRM is a form of control. End of story, afaik - their using their own propitiatory DRM for ePub was sadly predictable - they get their PR, and they get their control. I'm going to be VERY interested in their pricing, and I bet iBooks dosn't come to the PC anytime soon either.

So you believe if Apple had their way, all iTunes music would still have DRM. But the record industry forced them to remove it. Is that a fair assessment?

[DawnFalcon]

Never mind

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by BWhite

I agree with those posting here that the iPad has a good chance to have more of an impact on the Periodical market going wireless, electronic and essentially being saved.

OK, but why would you pay for an electronic version of a magazine, when you're walking around with a fully functional web browser, and can access the periodical content -- and competing content, like blogs -- for free?

It may be easier to read periodical content on an iPad, but I'm not convinced that a lot of people are going to pay extra for the privilege -- or at least, not enough to "save" the industry.

[WillAdams]

Well, GQ managed to sell 7,000 copies of their November issue as an iPhone app, and twice that for December, so there's a market and the question is where the ceiling is after the novelty factor wears off.

I can see people switching from paper subscriptions to electronic for this --- an interesting question will be how advertising in such are handled.

William

[enygmatic]

I think with time iPad will do for Magazines, Newspapers, textbooks, technical manuals, coffee table books (will these be called coffee table pads ?) and most importantly comics what the Kindle did for books

[DawnFalcon]

Never mind

[deltop]

txtr have a brief entry announcing an iPad app on their blog. With support for drm'ed epubs and pdf's. Just like their iphone app.

Kobo and txtr are either extremely optimistic, haven't thought about the possibly of their apps being denied or they know something we don't

[CCDMan]

I think that everything changes quickly and trying to predict what the situation will be in a year, much less 5 or 10 years, is hopeless. Clearly, within a couple years, Amazon and others will be able to respond with color touch displays that will have battery lives way better than the iPad's LCD. In turn, the iPad and similar devices may go to OLED, also more efficient but very bright and responsive.

We can predict all we want, but really will just need to wait and see. Too many variables here to make any kind of reliable prediction.

Will I buy an iPad? The jury is still out on that one. I will wait for more details. I am pretty sure that other DRM content will not be allowed on the iPad because it makes no sense given Apple's history on this sort of thing. What I am waiting to see is whether iBook will read non-DRM content like BAEN or public domain. I would suggest that it will since Apple will not want to lock users out of the huge number of public domain books and their publisher partners probably do not feel threatened by either public domain or publishers like BAEN.

Overall, the reactions (not so much here - for some reason Mobileread users seem to be somewhat more sane <G>) have been the same as to most new high profile products. There are the folks that love it. There are the folks who (like me) tend to say "wait and see". Then there are the usual "this stinks and I hate it" folks who are VERY LOUD and often somewhat obnoxious. Devices change - people don't.....

IMHO, what will make or break the device is not so much books, most of which work well on e-paper readers, but newspapers and magazines (which do not). It will be interesting to see what publications sign on before launch. Given the recent financial failure of the paper versions of many publications, the newspaper and magazine publishers pretty much have to embrace this and other similar devices. It is that or cease to exist.

[DawnFalcon]

Never mind

[deltop]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Bluntly, I'd count on optimism. Apple have not been shy about shafting entire categories of apps before or ones from big names. Given the fact that the app conversion won't be a ton of work (a few days I'd be thinking), it's really, really not a big gamble.

I tend to agree, I'm also trying to be optmistic since I quite like the device. Mainly for it's comic book potential rather than ebooks. But if they don't allow 3rd part ebook readers (or allow non-drm'ed ebooks to be viewed in iBook) even with comics it'll be a no sale here.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

OK, but why would you pay for an electronic version of a magazine, when you're walking around with a fully functional web browser, and can access the periodical content -- and competing content, like blogs -- for free?

It may be easier to read periodical content on an iPad, but I'm not convinced that a lot of people are going to pay extra for the privilege -- or at least, not enough to "save" the industry.

The problem with accessing the web content is that you need to be online to do it, and that is not always possible (or desirable). Downloadable and save-able content is preferable to online content, especially if you have some control over what parts you save or discard (thereby not wasting memory).

People who presently have magazine subscriptions, or purchase the magazines, but appreciate the advantages of going digital (not the least of which is cutting down on paper consumption), will be more willing to pay for digital content--especially if the downloadable magazines have exclusive content that isn't on a free website.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Again, my bet is disallowing other people's apps. They've proven quite unresponsive to criticism about this sort of thing in the past...

Hey, if they want to do it that way, that's fine. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, soon we can expect a competing device that will have more flexibility than Apple, like an Android device, and people will get their desired apps anyway.

Note: According to TeleRead, Kobo has announced an iPad app in development, too.