10:28 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Little is known of just how many Kindle devices Amazon has sold so far, but at least one of those ever-insightful analysts, Mark Mahaney of Citigroup, predicts that the number is huge. So huge, in fact, that he has upped his initial estimate for 2008 from 380,000 units to now 500,000. Think that's a lot? It would have been more - 750,000 - had Amazon not run out of Kindles before Christmas. Apparently, to support his guesswork, Mr. Mahaney used some disclosed figures from a Spring filing that referred to wholesale partners using the Sprint network.

Mahaney now thinks Amazon's all-in Kindle revenue could reach $1.4 billion in 2010, or an impressive 4% of Amazon's revenue that year. This assumes that Amazon will sell 1 million Kindles in 2009 and 3.5 million in 2010; that Kindle owners buy one book per month, etc. It's an admittedly rough estimate, but not necessarily an unbelievable one.

Just as important: Mahaney thinks Amazon could get relatively similar profits for each e-book sold that it currently gets for physical books.

Link: Silicon Alley

04:15 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

A new version of Adobe Digital Editions is available. Version 1.7 expands language support (newly added: Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese (Traditional+Simplified), Korean, Dutch, and Portuguese) and includes the option to download a standalone installer instead of the application itself (useful if you are in a networked environment).

[via TeleRead]

09:04 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

E-book addicts in Germany, rejoice! The Sony Reader is coming to your town. More specifically, the Sony PRS-505 -- along with a "great" choice of e-books in ePub format -- is going to be available at Libri.de and in plenty of Thalia bookstores on March 11th, 2009. Price: EUR 299,00.

Preorder: here or here

Link to the press release: here

06:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Many of us ponder this burning question why e-books are typically priced the same or just insignificantly less than their paper counterparts. Doesn't common reason dictate that the cost for producing and distributing e-books is considerably lower and that henceforth part of the lower cost should be reflected in a lower price? Well, many of us believe so, including yours truly. Still, it's worth taking a look at how publishers are trying to defend their current pricing policy. Mr. Michael Justus, CEO of a German publisher, gave an interview in a Sunday newspaper yesterday and summed it up like this:

The distribution of e-books on download servers is only half the story. In particular for bigger publishers, it requires substantial handwork to process the text and its meta data, to work on the necessary contracts and contract amendments, to analyze download sales, affiliate fees, etc. It requires a technical infrastructure and perhaps even additional full-time staff. (translated)

To support his argument, Mr. Justus made the following points (translated):

• Beside having to deal with PDF, the conversion into ePub or Mobi causes additional e-book specific production costs.
• The extra types of costs for production and distribution of e-books are comparable to the already existing types of costs of the traditional book business.
• The cost of investment in the technical infrastructure is similar to the cost of setting up a warehouse or a distribution system for printed books.
• It's required to set up a distribution platform for delivering e-books from the bookstores and middlemen to the customer -- and for sending the resulting revenue back to the publisher.
• It's required to set up a management system for taking care of the metadata.
• Larger publishers also require their own webstores to make the order processing for wholesale and retail customers easier.
• Additional operating costs are caused by the required use of data management systems, interfaces, servers, distribution systems, etc.
• Additional fix costs are caused by the required conversion into specific e-book formats and the indexing of content for full-text searches.
• Additional variable costs are caused upon the "delivery" of e-books, which requires sales data to be transferred into the sales and accounting systems of publishers, and fees to be paid to the authors and licensors. The cost for keeping the reproduction and distribution of e-books under control is at least as high as the variable cost of printing, paper, binding and delivery in the traditional book business.
• Scenario calculations (Edit: done by Mr. Justus) have shown that a number of conditions must be fulfilled so that the gross margin of e-books is equivalent to the gross margin of the corresponding book titles. If the gross margin of e-books is systematically below the gross margins of paper books, from which we currently live, we should better avoid e-books.
• Since we have to assume that any e-book sold replaces a printed book (Edit: Bezos, do you hear this?), we would have to be able to generate the same margins from the sale of e-books; otherwise, a successful e-book business could lead to publishers going out of business.
• We can only meet conditions for generating similar gross margins if prices for e-books don't go below prices of paper books, if actually fewer discounts are offered, and if the fee rates (contrary to initial claims by the authors) don't exceed 20% of net revenue.
• Many expect that e-books should be sold cheaper than printed books. The manufacturers of e-book readers, for example, would be quite happy to use it as a sales argument for the marketing of their (probably quite expensive) devices. Accepting this point of view would be equivalent to suicide from fear of death for the publishers.

Wow. This interview is not for the faint of heart. Anybody care to bite at this?

Related discussions: Why is the price of eBooks still so high?, Outrageously Priced Ebooks- Does anyone actually by them?, Ebooks high prices - the reasons beyond

02:00 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Finding a job in these difficult economic times can be daunting, to say the least -- whether you're unemployed or just want out of your current position. But, if you're bright and talented, happen to have a doctor degree in engineering, and would love to tinker with exciting new toys such as electronic paper, here might be your chance. E Ink is currently looking for an "Advanced Scientist/Engineer". According to the job profile, you'd be "primarily responsible for developing automated processes and apparatus for producing algorithms that create images in displays that use E Ink's imaging film." Ahh. Well, if you know what they mean, you're probably the right candidate.

01:15 PM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

We have no way to verify these numbers, but Nicholas Carlson of the Silicon Alley Insider argues that the New York Times could save half of their costs by abandoning the print medium and donating an Amazon Kindle to each of their ~830k subscribers - free of charge that is.

Beside the fact that it would probably save a few happy trees, do you think such a drastic change of direction would be feasible? How many of those 830k subscribers do you think would stop reading the NYT simply because they don't like using electronic devices?

For an ongoing discussion, visit this thread.

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

If you've been too busy to check out MobileRead this week, check out our usual roundup:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• DearAuthor's write-up about ebook publishing today
• Plastic Logic e-reader not before 2010 - Really!
• FTC hearings on DRM : Americans, make your voices heard ! (final days)
• Japanese using e-paper for evacuation guidance
• Finally: Tom Clancy e-books at Fictionwise
• Amazon Kindle 2.0 to be launched on Feb 9th?
• CW: How Amazon could screw up e-books
• Sony's profit plunges - no mentioning of effect on e-book biz
• Pixelar - New Hanlin V3 distributor in the UK
• Thousands of Public Domain ebooks added to the Kindle Store
• Amazon outperforms bricks-and-mortar competitors
• Plastic Logic to announce partners and start field testing
• The Sony Reader Gets a Library Card

E-Book General - Deals, Freebies, and Resources

• Cheap Spanish Books (5 euros each): Gabriel Garcia Marquez etc

E-Book General - Reading Recommendations

• The Guardian's 1000 novels to read before you die

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Reminder: Short downtime today 12:00pm EST
• Final reminder: MobileRead Paris Meetup tomorrow, January 31st!

06:34 PM by NatCh in E-Book General | News

Last week in Denver the American Library Association's held their Mid-Winter meeting. One interesting thing to come out of it is a new cooperative initiative between Sony and the OCLC's (Online Computing Library) Netlibrary service.

Many here will already be familiar with NetLibrary, but the nutshell version is that they focus on making more material available electronically to more people. You can find the long version here.

Now NetLibrary has worked out an arrangement with Sony to use Sony Digital Readers in that effort. They're going to be offering their users access to what they are calling "Sony Reader Mobile Collections" (five of them to start with), which are basically small collections of books that are readable on the Sony Reader -- all properly licensed, of course.

But there is a bit more to it than just the content. They have evidently worked out arrangements to use Readers in the mix, both on-site in the libraries, and for patron check-out as the individual library chooses to arrange, details of that apparent arrangement are not currently available.

“OCLC member libraries have indicated a strong interest in providing a mobile device that library patrons can use to read eBooks on the go,” said Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development. “The NetLibrary collections available with Sony’s Reader Digital Book offer great variety for readers with different interests, and make it possible for library patrons to enjoy many eBooks on one portable device that offers state-of-the-art readability.”

Library staff will handle the transfer of the content to the devices themselves, which relieves nervous users of that particular techno-hurdle.

This is part of libraries' efforts to keep up with changing times and habits amongst their patrons.

“In an era of diminishing time and resources, libraries can provide valuable convenience and flexibility for their patrons with downloadable books and the opportunity to read them electronically,” said Susan Hildreth, State Librarian of California. “Twenty-first century libraries are successful when they offer content in the widest variety of formats.

This whole arrangement goes to support Sony's repeated claim that they are less concerned with locking their customers into buying content from Sony for their Readers, and more concerned with providing a good overall experience with the devices themselves:

“From the beginning, we have emphasized the importance of choice when it comes to content for the Reader,” Haber said. “In addition to our Sony eBook store with its strong selection of premium titles, libraries offer another option for those who prefer to borrow books at no cost without having to leave home.”

I see this as a hopeful sign that e-reading will continue to penetrate more and more deeply into the general public's awareness. Though I do see some rather obvious concerns about lending out hardware to folks which is, after all, both rather pricey and rather delicate. What do you think? Brilliant, forward-thinking move, or hair-brained scheme, destined for failure from the outset?

Sony's press release is here, the OCLC and NetLibrary don't seem to have anything on it yet on their sites.