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Now Available for Pre-Order: Amazon Launches the Kindle Tablet – It’s the KINDLE FIRE, for just $199!

September 28, 2011 by KND

Now Available for Pre-Order:

Amazon Launches the Kindle Tablet:

It’s the KINDLE FIRE!

By Steve Windwalker

September 28, 2011

Click here to pre-order your Kindle Fire

Amazon has just announced that, at long last, its Kindle tablet — the Kindle Fire — is now available for pre-order. You can place your pre-order right here, right now to have it shipped starting November 15 for a price of just $199.

How’s this for a value proposition? Amazon announced 4 new Kindle models today, and you can buy all four of them for less than the cost of a 32GB wi-fi only iPad.

Here’s the rest of the story on the new device:

What is the new Kindle tablet called? The Kindle Fire.
How much does the Kindle Fire cost? $199
When is the Kindle Fire available for pre-order? Right now.
When will the Kindle Fire ship? Starting November 15.
Will it sell out before Christmas? We won’t be surprised if it sells out this week, but if that happens it should be available again within a few weeks.
How should one balance one’s reservations about buying version 1.0 of the Kindle Fire with the fear that one may be left behind if it goes out of stock. Amazon’s no-hassle, no-questions-asked 30-day return policy makes this a no-brainer. Grab it, test-drive it, and make your decision at the 25-day mark, two weeks before Christmas. We’ll be very surprised if you don’t want to keep it, but if you don’t want it and Amazon does sell out, you might even end up being able to decide whether to return it to Amazon or to sell it for a profit on eBay.
Is the tablet the only product that is being announced with this event? No, Amazon also announced a $139 e-Ink Kindle Touch with a touch screen (just $99 with special offers) and a $79 base model e-Ink Kindle. These all ship at various points in November and are available for pre-order today.
How large is the Kindle Fire display? 7 inches on the diagonal, and yes, it is color and backlit with capacitative touch.
How much does the Kindle Fire weigh? 14.6 ounces.
What’s the battery life? It’s be a little hard to get a handle on this given the different effects on battery life of reading, listening to music, watching streaming video, websurfing, and other uses, but if you are going to get full enjoyment from the Kindle Fire you’ll probably find yourself charging the battery at least as often as you charge your cellphone.
Does it come with 3G? No, but we won’t be surprised to see a 3G or 4G option in 2012.
If Amazon is selling a tablet for $199, a touch Kindle for $99, and a base model Kindle for $79, how can it possibly make a profit? Covers, content, e-commerce, and special offers sponsorships.
As a content delivery system, what are the Kindle Fire’s areas of strength? The Kindle Fire will allow seamless, wireless delivery from the cloud of Kindle books and periodicals, Amazon MP3 music files, Audible.com books, streaming movies and television programs with Amazon Prime Instant Video, and a wide range of Android-compatible Apps available from Amazon’s own AppStore for Android.
What about YouTube, email, VOiP, Angry Birds, Facebook, Twitter, texting, web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, blog posting, gaming, Groupon, LivingSocial, Woot, Windowshop, Amazon Mobile, Amazon Local, Amazon Fresh, and everything else you’ll ever want to do on the Kindle Fire? In just about every case, there’s an app for that.
Is the Kindle Fire essentially a closed environment controlled by its manufacturer, like the iPad and the Nook? Essentially yes, but operationally it may be far more open than those competitors, given selection and pricing in Amazon’s content platforms, the growing scale of Amazon’s AppStore for Android and the easy access that content providers have to platforms such as Kindle Digital Publishing and, ultimately, Amazon’s MP3 and video platforms.
What’s the unlikeliest word that we can expect to hear repeated by Jeff Bezos and his minions as they describe the Kindle Fire in the next few days? Best guess: “Sofa.” As in shopping on the sofa, reading on the sofa, watching movies on the sofa, etc. This is probably not a good thing for the future of laptops, notebooks, netbooks, and even some other tablets.
What special “value proposition” features might be bundled with the Kindle Fire to entice buyers. Best guess: free or cheap Amazon Prime, a $79 a year value that would underline importance of the Kindle Fire as the sofa shopper’s favorite gadget.
So which is it, a content delivery device or a sofa shopping portal? Both, but if the Kindle Fire’s primary uses list too much away from ebooks and toward shopping, a nice countervailing value proposition would involve the offering of some form of a Netflix-type bundling of free ebooks to steer folks toward reading.

But here’s the bottom line for the Kindle Fire:

There is an understandable tendency, when new products like the Kindle, the iPad, and the Kindle Fire are launched, for many of us to focus too narrowly at first on hardware specs and feature sets. It is important to remember that it wasn’t only hardware features that set the Kindle Revolution aflame, it was Amazon’s remarkable edge in each of the 4 C’s of customer base, catalog, convenience and connectivity. The Kindle capitalized dramatically on each of those unfair edges, and so will the Kindle Fire.

No single competitor can touch Amazon in more than one of these areas.

Click here to get yours now.

Great Expectations and Kindle Fire: What to Look Forward to with Wednesday’s Kindle Tablet Press Conference

September 27, 2011September 27, 2011 by KND

“More and more, over time, people are going to be buying from tablet computers. They’ll lean back on their sofas…. That’s very exciting for us. It gives us a new environment to experiment and invent in. “

–Jeff Bezos

By Steve Windwalker

First, we’re very pleased and excited to announce that we’ve arranged for podcaster extraordinaire Len Edgerly of The Kindle Chronicles to live-blog Amazon’s 10 a.m. Wednesday press conference announcing the new Kindle Tablet, a.k.a. the Kindle Fire, for Kindle Nation readers at http://bit.ly/LEN-LIVE-FROM-NY-ON-KTAB. Len promises to start posting as he travels to New York via Amtrak later today, and the action will really heat up shortly before 10 a.m. Wednesday, which is when we expect Jeff Bezos to take the stage at Stage 37 in New York.

So we’ll be covering the big announcement from multiple vantage points. You can follow Len’s live blog here, we’ll be gathering all the key information on our Kindle Nation Daily blog, and we’ll send out an email to our thousands of opt-in email subscribers when the Kindle Fire is available for pre-order.

Here are some of the questions we expect to see answered, and you can count on us to pass the answers on to you as soon as we have them. The “best guess” answers below come from a variety of sources and our own brain cells, but they will all be replaced with hard information tomorrow morning.

What is the new Kindle tablet called? Best guess: the Kindle Fire.
How much does the Kindle Fire cost? Best guess: $299, with a “Special Offers” version for $249.
When is the Kindle Fire available for pre-order? Best guess: at or about 10 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday.
When will the Kindle Fire ship? Best guess: Thursday, November 17.
Will it sell out before Christmas? Best guess: We won’t be surprised if it sells out this week, but if that happens it should be available again within a few weeks.
How should one balance one’s reservations about buying version 1.0 of the Kindle Fire with the fear that one may be left behind if it goes out of stock. Best guess: Amazon’s no-hassle, no-questions-asked 30-day return policy makes this a no-brainer. Grab it, test-drive it, and make your decision at the 25-day mark. We’ll be very surprised if you don’t want to keep it, but if you don’t want it and Amazon does sell out, you might even end up being able to decide whether to return it to Amazon or to sell it for a profit on eBay.
Is the tablet the only product that is being announced with this event? Best guess: No, Amazon may also announce a $189 e-Ink Kindle with a touch screen and a $99 base model e-Ink Kindle with Special Offers, but these might not be available for pre-order until later this fall.
How large is the Kindle Fire display? Best guess: 7 inches on the diagonal, and yes, it is color and backlit with capacitative touch.
How much does the Kindle Fire weigh? Best guess: 12.8 ounces.
What’s the battery life? Best guess: It may be a little hard to get a handle on this given the different effects on battery life of reading, listening to music, watching streaming video, websurfing, and other uses, but if you are going to get full enjoyment from the Kindle Fire you’ll probably find yourself charging the battery at least as often as you charge your cellphone.
Does it come with 3G? Best guess: Doubtful; it may be wifi-only this year, but we won’t be surprised to see a 3G or 4G option in 2012.
If Amazon is selling a tablet for $250, a touch Kindle for $189, and a base model Kindle for $99, how can it possibly make a profit? Best guess: Covers, content, e-commerce, and special offers sponsorships.
What are the most important accessories for the Kindle Fire? Best guess: a power adaptor and USB cable, a cover, and — if it is enabled — a micro SD card.
As a content delivery system, what are the Kindle Fire’s areas of strength? Best guess: the Kindle Fire will allow seamless, wireless delivery from the cloud of Kindle books and periodicals, Amazon MP3 music files, Audible.com books, streaming movies and television programs with Amazon Prime Instant Video, and a wide range of Android-compatible Apps available from Amazon’s own AppStore for Android.
What about YouTube, email, VOiP, Angry Birds, Facebook, Twitter, texting, web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, blog posting, gaming, Groupon, LivingSocial, Woot, Windowshop, Amazon Mobile, Amazon Local, Amazon Fresh, and everything else you’ll ever want to do on the Kindle Fire? Best guess: there’s an app for that.
Is the Kindle Fire essentially a closed environment controlled by its manufacturer, like the iPad and the Nook? Best guess: essentially yes, but operationally it may be far more open than those competitors, given selection and pricing in Amazon’s content platforms, the growing scale of Amazon’s AppStore for Android and the easy access that content providers have to platforms such as Kindle Digital Publishing and, ultimately, Amazon’s MP3 and video platforms.
What’s the unlikeliest word that we can expect to hear repeated by Jeff Bezos as he describes the Kindle Fire? Best guess: “Sofa.” As in shopping on the sofa, reading on the sofa, watching movies on the sofa, etc. This is probably not a good thing for the future of laptops, notebooks, netbooks, and even some other tablets.
What special “value proposition” features might be bundled with the Kindle Fire to entice buyers. Best guess: free or cheap Amazon Prime, a $79 a year value that would underline importance of the Kindle Fire as the sofa shopper’s favorite gadget.
So which is it, a content delivery device or a sofa shopping portal? Best guess: both, but if the Kindle Fire’s primary uses list too much away from ebooks and toward shopping, a nice countervailing value proposition would involve the offering of some form of a Netflix-type bundling of free ebooks to steer folks toward reading.

But here’s the bottom line for the Kindle Fire:

No single competitor can touch Amazon in more than one of these areas.

What are some of the other questions you’d like to see covered?

Kindle Jumps Ahead of Competitors in Library Lending: Kindle Books Now Available — and Delivered Wirelessly! — at over 11,000 Local Libraries

September 21, 2011 by KND

Amazon has just announced the immediate availability of a feature that we have been waiting for since the Kindle’s launch almost four years ago — public library lending for Kindle books at over 11,000 local libraries.

While that “11,000” figure is an important one, an equally important number will be the one that counts how many Kindle books are available for library-based borrowing. A first look at the Seattle Public Library’s Kindle offerings suggests that about a little over 25,000 Kindle books are available for borrowing on Day 1 — that’s less than 2.5 percent of the total Kindle catalog of 1,014,555 titles as of this morning.

Importantly, the library lending feature for Kindle is the first ebook platform to feature wireless delivery for library lending, which is likely to provide a major advantage for Kindle over its competitors.

A second important advantage for the Kindle library lending platform involves the fact that public library ebook borrowers will be include, in the words of Amazon’s Kindle director Jay Marine, “extending our Whispersync technology to library books, so your notes, highlights and bookmarks are always backed up and available the next time you check out the book or if you decide to buy the book.”

The extension of these annotation, highlighting and bookmarking features to the Kindle library lending platform is bound to turn borrowing into buying for many readers — something that may help Amazon convince publishers and authors to expand their participating in the program.

Here’s the rundown on how to use the service from Amazon’s new Library Lending Kindle page:

Borrow Kindle Books from Your Local Library

You can check out a Kindle book from your local library and read it on any generation Kindle device or free Kindle reading app.When you borrow a Kindle public library book, you’ll have access to all
the unique features of Kindle books, including real page numbers and
Whispersync technology that synchronizes your notes, highlights, and
last page read. After a public library book expires, if you check it
out again or choose to purchase it from the Kindle store, all of your
annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.Kindle books are available at more than 11,000 libraries in the U.S.

How It Works

You can borrow Kindle books from your local library’s website and, with
the click of a button, have them delivered to your Kindle device or free
reading app.

• Visit the website of a U.S. library that offers digital services from OverDrive.

• Check out a Kindle book (using a valid library card).

• Click on “Get for Kindle” and then sign in to your Amazon.com account
to have the book delivered to your Kindle device or reading app.

Note: Public library books can be sent wirelessly to Kindle devices via an active Wi-Fi connection or transferred via USB.

Help

For technical assistance and frequently asked questions, please visit the Helppage at http://amzn.to/KINDLE-LIBRARY-HELP

For questions about availability of Kindle library books, loan duration, and terms of use, please contact your local library.

We welcome your feedback at
kindle-publiclibraries-feedback@amazon.com.

Here’s the guts of Amazon’s press release this morning:

Kindle Books Now Available

at over 11,000 Local Libraries

Kindle the only e-reader to deliver library books wirelessly; read on
any Kindle or free Kindle app
Amazon’s Whispersync technology automatically stores and synchronizes
bookmarks, margin notes and highlights – all available the next time you
check out or buy the book

SEATTLE, Sep 21, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — (NASDAQ: AMZN)-Amazon.com today announced that Kindle and Kindle app
customers can now borrow Kindle books from more than 11,000 local
libraries in the United States. When a customer borrows a Kindle library
book, they’ll have all of the unique features they love about Kindle
books, including Whispersync, which automatically synchronizes their
margin notes, highlights and bookmarks, real page numbers, Facebook and
Twitter integration, and more. For more information about borrowing
library books for your Kindle or free Kindle apps, go to www.amazon.com/kindle/publiclibraries.
To start checking out Kindle library books, visit your local library’s
website.

“Starting today, millions of Kindle customers can borrow Kindle books
from their local libraries,” said Jay Marine, Director, Amazon Kindle.
“Libraries are a critical part of our communities and we’re excited to
be making Kindle books available at more than 11,000 local libraries
around the country. We’re even doing a little extra here – normally,
making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we’re fixing
this by extending our Whispersync technology to library books, so your
notes, highlights and bookmarks are always backed up and available the
next time you check out the book or if you decide to buy the book.”

Customers will use their local library’s website to search for and
select a book to borrow. Once they choose a book, customers can choose
to “Send to Kindle” and will be redirected to Amazon.com to login to
their Amazon.com account and the book will be delivered to the device
they select via Wi-Fi, or can be transferred via USB. Customers can
check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on
any generation Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod
touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry or Windows Phone, as well as in their
web browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.

“This is a welcome day for Kindle users in libraries everywhere and
especially our Kindle users here at The Seattle Public Library,” said
Marcellus Turner, city librarian for The Seattle Public Library. “We’re
thrilled that Amazon is offering such a new approach to library ebooks
that enhances the reader experience.”

When borrowing a Kindle book from their local library, customers can
take advantage of all of the unique features of Kindle books, including:

Whispersync technology wirelessly sync your books, notes, highlights,
and last page read across Kindle and free Kindle reading apps
Real Page Numbers let you easily reference passages with page numbers
that correspond to actual print editions
Facebook and Twitter integration makes it easy to share favorite
passages with your social networks
Popular Highlights show you what our community of millions of Kindle
readers think are the most interesting passages in your books
Public Notes allow you to share your notes and see what others are
saying about Kindle books

To start checking out Kindle library books, visit your local library’s
website.

New source of bargains for Kindle Nation! Announcing the Kindle Daily Deal

August 27, 2011 by KND

This just in from Amazon!

“We’re excited to announce that we’re unveiling one Kindle book at a specially-discounted price each day as a part of the new Kindle Daily Deal. Bookmark http://amzn.to/Kindle-Daily-Deal and check back daily to see what’s next. Deals go live at approximately 12:00 A.M. Pacific time and run for 24 hours.”

Don’t want to miss a deal?

Just click here to subscribe to the Kindle edition of Kindle Nation Daily for just 99 cents a month and the Kindle Daily Deal will be delivered directly to your Kindle along with our eBook of the Day at about 7 a.m. Eastern every morning!

See You in Court? The Kindle Class Action Lawsuit Against Apple and the Big Publishers Over Agency-Model Price-Fixing: What It’s All About, How You Could Benefit, and How You Can Join the Affected Plaintiff Class

August 13, 2011 by KND

By Steve Windwalker

At long last, citizens of Kindle Nation, justice may be at hand!

Attorneys filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit this week that could bring an end to the onerous, collusive, anti-competitive, anti-consumer and illegal “agency model” price-fixing scheme concocted by Apple and five of the Big Six publishers early in 2010.

The agency model scheme raised retail ebook prices for new releases and bestsellers from the $9.99 standard that Amazon had established in November 2007 with the launch of the Kindle and set new mandatory retail prices between $11.99 and $14.99.

The opening salvo in the lawsuit is a 42-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by Jeff Friedman, Shana Scarlett, and Steve Berman of the firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP. The initial named plaintiffs in the lawsuit are two customers named Anthony Petru and Marcus Mathis, “individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated” … but they could be joined, very soon, by you and me.

The defendants, of course, are the original perpetrators of price-fixing scheme: APPLE INC.; HACHETTE BOOK GROUP, INC.; HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS, INC.; MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS, INC; PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.; and SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.

If the case is successful, Kindle Nation citizens and others could be eligible to receive partial refunds for ebooks that they have bought at prices higher than the original $9.99 Kindle Store standard for bestsellers and new releases. Such restitution payments — and possible additional amounts in damage — would of course come out of the pockets or corporate coffers of Apple and the aforementioned publishers.

The court filing seeks important substantial remedies on behalf of all members of the class:

A declaration that Defendants’ conduct constituted a conspiracy and that Defendants are liable for the conduct or damage inflicted by any other co-conspirator;
A declaration that the pricing formula contained in the agency agreements described above is unlawful; and
Restitution and/or damages to Class members for the purchase of eBooks.

Individuals who believe they have been affected by the price-fixing scheme can apply to become plaintiffs and to join the class action on the Hagens Berman website at http://bit.ly/FIGHT-EBOOK-PRICE-FIXING.

The filing describes a chain of events that is well known to many Kindle Nation readers. After the launch and initial success of the Kindle, “faced with disruptive eBook technology that threatened their inefficient and antiquated business model, several major book publishers, working with Apple Inc. (“Apple”), decided free market competition should not be allowed to work – together they coordinated their activities to fight back in an effort to restrain trade and retard innovation. The largest book publishers and Apple were successful.”

The big publishers had wanted to slow down the growth of the Kindle and Kindle book sales and raise ebook prices, but feared the loss of sales that would ensue if they insisted individually that prices be raised. They “solved this problem through coordinating between themselves (and Apple) to force Amazon to abandon its pro-consumer pricing. The Publisher Defendants worked together to force the eBook sales model to be entirely restructured. The purpose and effect of this restructuring was to halt the discounting of eBook prices and uniformly raise prices on all first release fiction and nonfiction published by these Publisher Defendants. Under the Publisher Defendants’ new pricing model, known as the “Agency model”, the Publisher Defendants have restrained trade by coordinating their pricing to directly set retail prices higher than had existed in the previously competitive market,” the complaint alleges.

Why did Apple participate in the alleged conspiracy? The complaint alleges that Apple believed that it needed to neutralize the Kindle when it entered the e-book market with its own e-reader, the iPad, and feared that one day the Kindle might challenge the iPad by digitally distributing other media like music and movies. That day is coming very soon, of course, with the anticipated launch of the Kindle Tablet.

The complaint notes that Apple CEO Steve Jobs foreshadowed the simultaneous switch to agency pricing and the demise of discount pricing in an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg in early 2010. In the interview, he was asked why consumers would buy books through Apple at $14.99 while Amazon was selling the same book for $9.99. “The prices will be the same,” he stated.

When I spoke earlier this week with attorney Friedman, he agreed with Kindle Nation’s assessment that Jobs’ comment amounts to, at least, a circumstantial “smoking gun” with respect to the collusive behavior by the defendant companies.

The lawsuit claims Apple and the publishers are in violation of a variety of federal and state antitrust laws, the Sherman Act, the Cartwright Act and the Unfair Competition Act.

The named plaintiffs, Anthony Petru, a resident of Oakland, California, and Marcus Mathis, a resident of Natchez, Mississippi, each purchased a least one e-book at a price above $9.99 after the adoption of the agency pricing model.

Once approved, the lawsuit would represent any purchaser of an e-book published by a major publisher after the adoption of the agency model by that publisher. Friedman told Kindle Nation this week that the usual timetable for such cases can run from two to four years.

Friedman and the other attorneys who filed the suit are especially interested in securing plaintiffs from the following jurisdictions, which have particularly applicable consumer-protection law: Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Vermont.

Amazon Announces Kindle Cloud Reader, Ready Now for Online & Offline Reading Anywhere With Safari on iPad, Safari on Desktop and Chrome

August 10, 2011 by KND

Introducing Kindle Cloud Reader

Read over 950,000 Kindle books in your web browser – no download or installation required
Based on HTML5, Kindle Cloud Reader optimizes for the platform you’re using and automatically stores your latest book locally for offline reading
Instant Books – no waiting for a download, start reading the book immediately, offline or online
SEATTLE, Aug 10, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) —

(NASDAQ: AMZN) – For over two years, Amazon has been offering a wide selection of free Kindle reading apps that enable customers to “Buy Once, Read Everywhere.” Customers can already read Kindle books on the largest number of the most popular devices and platforms, including Kindles, iPads, iPhones, iPod touches, PCs, Macs, Android phones and tablets, and BlackBerrys. Today, Amazon.com announced Kindle Cloud Reader, its latest Kindle reading application that leverages HTML5 and enables customers to read Kindle books instantly using only their web browser – online or offline – with no downloading or installation required. As with all Kindle apps, Kindle Cloud Reader automatically synchronizes your Kindle library, as well as your last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights for all of your Kindle books, no matter how you choose to read them. Kindle Cloud Reader with its integrated touch optimized Kindle Store is available starting today for Safari on iPad, Safari on desktop and Chrome at www.amazon.com/cloudreader.

“We are excited to take this leap forward in our ‘Buy Once, Read Everywhere’ mission and help customers access their library instantly from anywhere,” said Dorothy Nicholls, Director, Amazon Kindle. “We have written the application from the ground up in HTML5, so that customers can also access their content offline directly from their browser. The flexibility of HTML5 allows us to build one application that automatically adapts to the platform you’re using – from Chrome to iOS. To make it easy and seamless to discover new books, we’ve added an integrated, touch optimized store directly into Cloud Reader, allowing customers one click access to a vast selection of books.”

Features of Kindle Cloud Reader include:

An immersive view of your entire Kindle library, with instant access to all of your books
Start reading over 950,000 Kindle books instantly within your browser
An embedded Kindle Store optimized for your web browser makes it seamless to discover new books and start reading them instantly
New Kindle Store for iPad is built from the ground up for iPad’s touch interface
Your current book is automatically made available for offline use, and you can choose to save a book for reading offline at any time
Receive automatic software updates without the need to download new software
Select any book to start reading, customize the page layout to your desired font size, text color, background color, and more
View all of the notes, highlights, and bookmarks that you’ve made on other Kindle apps or on Kindle
Sync your last page read across your Kindle and free Kindle apps so you can always pick up where you left off

Kindle Cloud Reader is available for Safari on iPad, Safari on desktop and Chrome starting today. Kindle Cloud Reader on the iPad is optimized for the size and unique touch interface of iPad. Without even leaving the app, customers can start shopping in the Kindle Store and will find a unique and immersive shopping experience built specifically for iPad’s Safari browser.

Kindle Cloud Reader will be available on additional web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, the BlackBerry PlayBook browser, and other mobile browsers, in the coming months.

Amazon.com customers can start reading their Kindle books immediately using Kindle Cloud Reader atwww.amazon.com/cloudreader.

Publetariat Dispatch: Publishers Be Crazy…Or Desperate

June 15, 2021August 9, 2011 by KND

In today’s Publetariat Dispatch, Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton marvels at Bookish.com, major publishers’ latest plan to compete with booksellers directly.

I just read this article about Bookish.com, a new joint venture being launched later this summer by Hachette Book Group, Penguin USA and Simon & Schuster. Per the article:

The site intends to provide information for all things literary: suggestions on what books to buy, reviews of books, excerpts from books and news about authors. Visitors will also be able to buy books directly from the site or from other retailers and write recommendations and reviews for other readers.

The publishers — Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group USA and Hachette Book Group — hope the site will become a catch-all destination for readers in the way that music lovers visit Pitchfork.com for reviews and information.

A couple of sentences further down, you’ll read:

“There’s a frustration with book consumers that there’s no one-stop shopping when it comes to information about books and authors,” said Carolyn Reidy, the president and chief executive of Simon & Schuster. “We need to try to recreate the discovery of new books that currently happens in the physical environment, but which we don’t believe is currently happening online.”

There are three problems with Ms. Reidy’s statements.

First, there is NOT “a frustration with book consumers that there’s no one-stop shopping when it comes to information about books and authors,” because in fact, there are several sites that offer one-stop shopping for author/book information. Perhaps Ms. Reidy just hasn’t heard of such obscure, underground sites as Amazon.com, Goodreads.com, Shelfari.com, and LibraryThing.com.

Second, nobody needs to “recreate the discovery of new books that currently happens in the physical environment,” because for the average consumer, discovery of new books NO LONGER HAPPENS IN THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT. Once again, it’s Amazon, Goodreads, Shelfari and LibraryThing to the rescue here, not to mention genre-specific online communities like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and format- and device- specific online communities like Kindle Nation Daily.

Third, Ms. Reidy and her compatriots don’t “believe [this is] currently happening online.” Why not?! How is it possible that publishers are THAT FAR out of touch with book buyers? I’ll tell you how: traditionally, publishers have viewed booksellers as their customers, and book-buyers as the customers of booksellers. They have little to no idea what’s bouncing around in the head and life of the typical consumer, because they haven’t had to know those things to run their business at any time in the past—past being the operative word there.

So these three major publishers are sinking massive amounts of time, effort and money into a huge new initiative that I think just about any typical book-buying consumer on the street could tell you today is destined to fail. And how do you suppose they’ll be financing this new initiative? Certainly not by reducing the prices of their books, or signing more new, unproven authors, or keeping books on physical shelves longer to give them a better chance of catching on, or giving individual authors more marketing money.

I’m sure the publishers would say this initiative is all about supporting their authors and marketing books in a cost-effective way, so kudos to them for good intentions. But while they may know book and author marketing today is all about author platform, they clearly don’t understand that author platform is all about community, and community is about making personal connections and feeling like you’re part of a movement. Which do you think a fan of Stephen King would rather visit: Stephen King’s personal site and online community of fans, or the obviously corporate umbrella site, Bookish.com?

Bookish.com content will necessarily be vetted and vanilla, so as not to hurt the corporate images and reputations of its backers and to avoid offending any site visitors. Anyone who wants the raw, unfiltered version of musings from their favorite authors and opinions of others in those authors’ communities won’t bother with Bookish.com when they can get the straight scoop right from the horses’ mouths elsewhere.

I hate to sound so negative and dump all over publishers like this, because it’s a good thing that they’re finally willing to try something new. But at this point, they face the same problem Microsoft did with its Zune MP3 player: Apple got there first with the iPod, and they did it very well. If you’re going to enter the marketplace with a new product for which the demand has already been fulfilled by someone else (or several someone elses), then your product has to be so incredibly, amazingly compelling that consumers will feel they’re missing out by not switching to it. Microsoft tried it with the Zune; I think by now we can all agree they failed to capture enough of the MP3 player market to even make Apple break a sweat. And Microsoft has decades of experience with technology and marketing direct to consumers.

So Bookish.com gets an A for effort, but a goose egg for vision and sustainability.

Publishers: maybe you’re looking at this all wrong. Maybe instead of trying to supplant the Amazons, Goodreads and Shelfaris of the world, you should be looking for ways to leverage what those sites and communities are already doing, and doing very well: crowdsourcing.

Let them tell you what the readers want to see in print and ebook forms. Listen to consumer complaints about ebook release windows and pricing, and respond accordingly. Switch to POD book production so you can offer a much wider variety of titles at a much lower cost; grousing about the lack of variety and fresh, new voices from mainstream pub is so common as to be a pastime in reader communities. Stop chasing after blockbusters and start tuning into the pre-existing discovery network to locate your new literary stars. Keep your ears to the ground for breakout indie authors, and sign them, knowing they’re already proven commodities. Get and keep a bead on technologies consumers are excited about (color ebooks, interactive book apps, etc.) and invest in those technologies.

Your role as arbiters of taste and gatekeepers is a thing of the past, and the position of Reader Community Leader has already been filled. Own it. Restructure your businesses and legacy thought patterns to embrace this new reality. Now, your role is to find out what consumers want in print books, ebooks and emerging media technologies, and give it to them. Period.

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

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