With the launch of Odyssey Editions, has Andrew Wylie turned publishing on its head?

Is this a tipping point? Did publishing power just shift a little in favour of authors? Are agents publishers now?

Über-agent Andrew “the Jackal” Wylie – no doubt with his little finger at the corner of his mouth, Dr Evil style – has hatched an audacious plot. Or maybe he has just seen the future. Either way, he has disintermediated the publishers he works with – for ebooks at least. With last week’s launch of Odyssey Editions, his Kindle-only ebook imprint, a range of his authors are now available digitally for the first time. And we’re talking some pretty big names here: Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, Evelyn Waugh, Oliver Sacks, V.S. Naipaul, and Martin Amis are among 700 authors and estates.

To me, this seems inevitable. Many authors and their agents get the new digital realities – and, more importantly, the opportunities – while too many publishing discussions still focus on a protectionist response to the ‘threat’ of digital. If publishers won’t grasp digital, authors and agents will. Ebooks are increasingly maintream, with Amazon now selling more ebooks than hardbacks. Publishers can be slow on the uptake with ebooks, while consumers want to read them. Publishers have a vested interest in holding on to traditional print publishing models – while agents have a vested interest in the success of their authors. This is where the battle lines will be drawn in the coming war of the business models.

It is no surprise that the big publishers don’t like this. They don’t like it at all. Random House disputed the deal. And Macmillan CEO John Sargent was quick to respond on his blog:

This is smart retailing, and a great deal for Amazon. But it is an extraordinarily bad deal for writers, illustrators, publishers, other booksellers, and for anyone who believes that books should be as widely available as possible. This deal advantages Amazon, which already has the dominant share in this market.
JOHN SARGENT, CEO of Macmillan, 22 July 2010

Is it really a bad deal for writers? The comments say it all, such as this one from Richard Askenase:

Sounds like a VERY sound business deal to me. First, Wylie probably got about 70% royalties for his company/author. Second, the sale price of the ebooks are reasonable (unlike so many of your company’s prices). Third, if you wanted to publish these books, why didn’t you do so already? The point is, Wylie acted for his clients in dealing with the present/future and getting them very good money. MacMillan et al? They sat on their hands and overpriced them, with LOW LOW royalties to the authors.
RICHARD ASKENASE, commenting on John Sargent’s post

The Authors Guild described the move as ‘weird’. But added that: “This sort of weirdness will only multiply, however, as long as authors don’t share fairly in the rewards of electronic publishing.”

You may recall, at the London Book Fair Digital Conference this year, there was palpable eye-rolling in the room when agent Ed Victor asked why, if there are no warehousing costs, no manufacturing costs, no distribution costs, and no bookshop returns, did agents have to drag publishers kicking and screaming to 25% of net receipts? This is not a question most publishers like to engage with.

But the harsh truth is: it doesn’t matter whether publishers engage or not. Those publishers who don’t engage will be cut out of the loop as the world rolls on regardless. It doesn’t even matter whether they decide to pay fair royalties or not. Ultimately, it’s not their decision any more. The economics of the new publishing are open to all. Publishers no longer have the monopoly. Anyone can play. And if someone chooses to take their ball away and play a different game with someone else, what, exactly, are you going to do about it?

To a large extent, publishers have brought this on themselves. This storm has long been gathering. Literary agencies have refused to sign e-rights deals for countless backlist books with traditional publishers, even though they and their clients, no doubt, see real benefits in having a single publisher handle the print and electronic rights to a book. Knowledgeable authors and agents, however, are well aware that e-book royalty rates of 25% of net proceeds are exceedingly low and contrary to the long-standing practice of authors and publishers to, effectively, split evenly the net proceeds of book sales.
AUTHORS GUILD statement

The Authors Guild also estimate that author income from ebooks will be 300% higher under this deal than under traditional publishing contracts – 60%-63% of retail price rather than 25% of net receipts. What’s not to like?

The big publishers may rage against the dying of the old business models. They may even delay the inevitable. But they won’t prevent it. As ‘Skip’, a commenter on John Sargent’s post put it: “John is worried that in a few years nobody will want to buy his buggy whips any more, so he’s doing anything he can to stop those new-fangled automobile things.” Welcome to the 21st Century. Adapt and survive, or disengage and die. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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Which digital format is best for authors? Tom Evans considers some of the options.

Well I never thought I’d ever buy Knitting for Dummies. But I just got a copy via the Amazon Kindle Store to read – or is that to watch? – on my iPad.

So am I taking up crocheting iPad covers? No, I am just checking out how embedded video and audio in Kindle books for the iPad and iPhone works.

Somewhat ironically perhaps, the video and audio doesn’t work on the Kindle. Is this a sign that Amazon are moving away from hardware – or preparing a son of Kindle?

So what should authors and publishers do? Here are just some of the current options:

• Print – not going away in a hurry
• Publish for the Kindle and iPad via the Amazon Digital Text Platform
• Publish for the iPad via the iBookstore
• Publish via a third party ebook app like Stanza
• Publish via an aggregator like Smashwords, Lulu, Myebook, Issuu

Well, before you make a decision, note that almost certainly Apple will be bringing out an ebook format based on HTML5 – and hopefully some book creation and publishing software.

In 2011, we are bound to see an end to end solution from them with Apple aiming to do for books what it did for music in the last decade. It opened the iTunes store in April 2003 and by the end of the decade they dominated the music download market.

ePub2 perhaps – Betamax and VHS – here we go again.

If you are an author however, my advice is to write, create accompanying audio and video assets and by the time you are ready to publish, there will be more than one route open to you.

There are also differences in margins between Amazon and Apple – and if you are non-US a couple of hoops to jump through which should be sorted shortly.

Smashwords and Lulu don’t necessarily allow multimedia embedded at the moment. Note that they also take a little margin but this is just a sign of how a new Pie Chart will look for books in the coming decade – will blog about this soon!!

Myebook does do embedded multimedia and may well come out with a route – worth keeping an eye on – see my sample ebook www.wordlube.com to see what you can do today – for free!

P.S. Actually this knitting malarky looks kinda fun …

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Jon Reed is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Publishing Talk, and author of Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing. Follow him at @jonreed or @getuptospeed.

There are natural advantages to being a small, independent publisher when it comes to social media marketing. So are the big publishers too big to use it effectively?

I spoke at the Inpress Digital Conference at Foyles bookshop in London this week, a one-day digital conference for independent publishers run by Inpress, the sales and marketing agency for independent publishers in the UK and Ireland. The conference included: an industry overview of the digital future from Benedict Evans of Enders Analysis; a report on ebooks from Julie McNair; Julia Kingsford, head of marketing at Foyles, on how the company has diversified into selling ereaders and ebooks – including the revelation that Faber and Transworld dominate ebook sales simply because they bother to include bibliographic data; and Inpress MD Rachael Ogden on the explosion of book apps available for the iPhone and iPad and how to get involved.

It was great to see a room full of independents getting to grips with digital publishing. I was speaking on social media marketing for publishers (of course), a two-hour workshop session with plenty of practical advice on creating social media marketing plans, and getting the most out of a range of social media tools.

The independent advantage

I think this is one area where it is actually easier for small, independent publishers to succeed than their corporate counterparts – something I’ve previously written about in The Deal. Why? Because:

1. Social media is a personal medium where things like personality, tone of voice and authenticity matter – things that are much easier to achieve if you are a small business. Last week the Huffington Post identified who it considers the best publishers on Twitter. It is telling that six of the 11 chosen were independents; two were imprints and the remaining three were big publishers. When it comes to engaging people on Twitter, it helps to have an independent voice. Find out more about how two of those publishers, @AAKnopf and @AlgonquinBooks use Twitter for community building in this week’s Huffington Post article Does Twitter Sell Books? Yes, It Does.
2. You can punch above your weight. Because the tools are – mostly – free, you can use them without a huge marketing investment. Indeed, this is why social media is so widely used by independents – they have no choice but to use these tools since they have little or no marketing budget. The investment may be in time rather than money – but they have the commitment to put in the hours.
3. Social media levels the playing field. Independents have the potential to reach as wide a market with these tools as big corporates – especially since some of the big publishers are still not really engaging with social media.
4. Social media is about relationship building – something independents have always done well.
5. You can just do it. No need to worry about getting your corporate comms strategy through a series of committees and approved by a manager who doesn’t get it. Independents are nimble and agile, and adopting a new strategy isn’t like turning a battleship around. If you’re small, you can just do it.

One advantage that big publishers historically had was the resources to create rich media such as podcasts or video, or to terraform islands in Second Life. But now you don’t need expensive equipment or recording studios – just use AudioBoo to create a podcast, or a Flip or Zi8 camera to record video. Everyone has abandoned expensive brand islands in Second Life – though there are still plenty of low-to-no cost opportunities for independent publishers and authors ‘in-world’. Bigger is not necessarily better.

Big or small, there’s a social media marketing strategy for you. Just keep it appropriate to your type of organization, make sure you engage your audience, and go for a personal voice – whether that is you and/or your authors.

I was lecturing at Birkbek yesterday, on digital publishing, social media marketing – and men in their pants in Basingstoke. For this was the key takeaway message for me at this year’s London Book Fair Digital Conference, which I attended and live-tweeted last weekend: if publishers don’t produce digital content, such as apps, there are plenty of men in their basements in Basingstoke in their pants who will.

This industry doesn’t owe publishers, authors, agents or bookshops a living. We need to find a useful service in the space between authors and their readers. We need fewer people in publishing who are English graduates called Jocasta. But why would developers be attracted to publishing? If we don’t produce digital content, there are plenty of men in basements in Basingstoke in their pants who will.
KATE WILSON, Nosy Crow

In a Book Fair blighted by volcanic ash, this seemed to be one event the volcano couldn’t spoil. With only three last-minute speaker replacements, and grounded delegate spaces back-filled from the waiting list, there was plenty of  lively discussion from the platform and the floor. And it was the first digital conference I’ve been to for a long time that wasn’t dominated by Digital Rights Management (DRM) and protectionism, and left me feeling more positive about the future of publishing.

I should clarify something here: I feel positive about the future of publishing – not about the future of the publishing industry. An important distinction. Digital publishing opportunities are huge. Publishers are not necessarily the ones who will benefit.

Speakers included game developers, app developers and mobile experts as well as traditional publishers who are doing digital, plus one author, Alison Norrington, who has been experimenting wildly with social media, and presented her experiences to the slack-jawed amazement of publishers. All positive stuff for a digital conference, since publishers can learn a lot from other industries who have engaged sooner with digital – and from authors, who are often way ahead of their publishers. As Kevin Shrapnell of EA Games pointed out: “The lines between books, ebooks, websites, games are blurring”.

The real asset publishers have is their content – yet they are not really set up to capitalize on the digital economy. David Miller of Rogers, Coleridge & White (@drearyagent) said: “Publishers don’t have the structure to choose whether to publish their content as a hardback, paperback, ebook, website or  app – they need to invest in staff and skills to make that possible.”

Publishers don’t have the structure to choose whether to publish their content as a hardback, paperback, ebook, website or  app – they need to invest in staff and skills to make that possible.
DAVID MILLER, Rogers, Coleridge & White

I think it is even more serious than this. While publishers agonize over business models and skill sets and which direction they should go in, the world moves on regardless. It is not just men in pants to watch out for – it is authors. As the stigma and barriers to self-publishing continue to drop, authors are not only doing their own marketing with social media, they are disintermediating their publishers with the online self-publishing tools that are also available to them.

The Profit Imperative

Conference chair Richard Charkin said in his opening remarks that there are no shortage of books – but we should be concerned not about volume but value: “Please, please, in the digital age let us price at a sensible level and not underprice to gain volume”. Profit is the real issue in the industry. That suggests to me premium pricing – something difficult to achieve in a digital world where we expect things for free or cheap.

One attempt to maintain the print price of a book in the digital space is with ‘enhanced’ ebooks. Peter Collingridge revealed an interesting new business model for his company Enhanced Editions: no upfront costs for app development (though these are costed and shown to the publisher in advance), and then revenues are split 50/50 with the publisher after development costs have been earned out. This reduces risk and means you don’t need to be a big budget publisher to get started. I would go further and suggest that, to use services such as these – which are proliferating – you surely don’t even need to be a publisher.

I can see enhanced ebooks really working for certain genres: children’s, textbooks, illustrated non-fiction; any sort of ‘how to’ material such as cookery books; and travel books that use augmented reality. I’m less convinced by their potential for fiction – unless you want to avoid carrying around a massive tome – which is the reason I downloaded the app for a book written by a neighbour of mine called Hilary Mantel. I don’t want to read Wolf Hall in the bath, but I’d like to read it while waiting for the bus. I did buy it for a discounted £3.49 though. Would I have paid the full £6.99? I don’t know. But with such a massive market for the iPhone – much bigger than the Kindle – low pricing can surely work in this market. Premuim pricing isn’t the only way to make a profit – mass distribution is another.

It’s not about creating books any more – it’s about creating content.
JOHN DUHIGG, Dorling Kindersley

Simply transferring a printed book to an app – even if it is enhanced with a bit of add-on video – seems less of a value proposition to me than creating something specifically for an app in the first place, such as Jamie Oliver’s hugely successful 20 Minute Meals. Some publishers are doing this. Kate Wilson said: “We’re not interested in transfering books to apps. We commission for apps, and some of them spin off into books.” John Duhigg of Dorling Kindersley previewed the augmented reality iPhone apps they are experimenting with for their Rough Guides, such as an augmented reality version of the Rough Guide to London which ovelays tags of nearby restaurants onto the image of the London street in front of you. And Fionnuala Duggan of Random House introduced their Nigella Quick Collection app, which was produced in-house.

Those publishers not doing this – well, your author can do it anyway and disintermediate you. Jamie Oliver went to a software developer called Zolmo to produce his 20 Minute Meals app. Are they his developer – or his publisher? I see app developers, in the publishing ecosystem, not as service industries operating in the space between publishers and readers but as publishers in between authors and readers. I know not everyone has the profile or resources of Mr Oliver. But, to varying degrees, we can all do this.

A QR Code

Ways of selling cheaply were explored by various panelists. Agent David Miller floated the idea of using technology to enable people to buy books, such as by selling ebooks for £1 or £2 and including a QR code as a voucher that could be used to redeem the cost of the ebook against a printed book. Mobile expert Tony Lynch of Spoken Group Ltd suggested selling ebooks cheaply but making them expire after a certain time, like library books. He also pointed out that mobile networks see books as a major content category in the next five years, and are trying to create a buying culture on their networks – partly through giving books away for free.

But who pays for ‘free’? Someone has to work to create the content in the first place, right? I was pleased to see agent Ed Victor on form, asking sharp questions of the publishers on the panel, as he often does at these conferences. He asked them to explain: “If there are no warehousing costs, no manufacturing costs, no distribution costs, and no bookshop returns, why did we have to drag you kicking and screaming to 25% of net receipts?”

If there are no warehousing costs, no manufacturing costs, no distribution costs, and no bookshop returns, why did we have to drag you kicking and screaming to 25% of net receipts?
ED VICTOR, Literary Agent

Obviously there are costs associated with the production of digital content – but not everyone is going to spend tens of thousands of pounds or dollars on a Jamie Oliver style iPhone app. What if you’re just transferring a printed book to an ereader? I’m a publisher turned author, but even when I was a publisher I think I’d have had sympathy with Ed’s point of view. Despite palpable eye-rolling in the room, this is a fair question that deserves an answer.

If publishers charge too much for digital content, they are at risk of piracy. If they pay authors too little for creating it, their authors will self-publish. And self-publishing was tacitly agreed upon as ‘A Bad Thing’ in the room. But the new digital economy requires new business models – not new ways of holding on to the old ones.

Anyone can do it

It’s great that publishers are engaging in a more open way with digital, making it part of their publishing, and exploring the models for doing so – rather than using these conferences to reassure themselves that everything will be OK, we can protect ourselves with DRM, and it’s still business as usual. But I can’t help thinking that they are still not being radical enough. The problem is that publishers no longer own the publishing industry. When the cost of producing and delivering digital content is minimal, anyone can do it. Where does that leave publishers?

I say anyone. I mean anyone with some creativity. As Kate Wilson said: “Publishers have always outsourced creativity. It’s called authors.”

Richard Charkin concluded the conference with a Jerry Springer style closing thought: “Publishers used to be generalists a few decades ago. They used to have a fiction division, a children’s division, an academic division and so on. We also used to have a single, unified sales medium – called a bookshop. Publishers gradually specialized into more and more niche areas at the same time as they reached more readers with direct marketing. Today we once more have a single, unified sales medium – called the Internet. Perhaps it is time for publishers to become more generalist again?”

Perhaps. In the digital age, there may be opportunities for publishers to publish anything they like and find a market for it online. Trouble is, those same opportunities are open to all. Anyone can be a publisher.

Overall, this conference successfully moved the debate on, and the tone was more of a wake-up call than an invitation to lock the door and have a lie in. More engagement with what is happening than squishing the new digital realities into old business models – what David Miller called “putting new wine in old bottles”. The problem I still have with all of this is that, while publishers are still receiving wake-up calls, the rest of the world has Carped the Diem, been to the gym, had breakfast, taken a few calls and is on the way to a lunch meeting. The world has moved on.

I have some sympathy with Jocasta, the English graduate. She went into publishing to publish books, not develop apps and monetize content. Unfortunately for Jocasta, the market is always right. Responding to what the market wants – how people want to consume and pay for content – is what is needed, rather than reacting to the ‘threat’ of digital.

Is the future as hard to predict as a volcano? Not really. It’s already here.

Catch up on the conference tweets at @publishingtalk. Were you at the conference? Let us know your thoughts.

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How do you protect your books in the digital age? Tom Evans suggests an alternative approach to thinking about rights.

In case you hadn’t realised before the announcement of the Apple iPad in January, this is the decade of the eReader. The publishing industry is going through a similar transition to that of the music industry in the last decade.

In these days when you can publish direct for ereaders like the Kindle, Cool-er and soon the iPad – or just blog a story – what’s to stop anyone stealing and copying your work illegally?

Or if you submit your novel to a author community site like Authonomy, what’s to stop someone stealing your idea and writing their own book inspired by your theme?

So how do you go about protecting your books in the digital age?

Well if you think about it … you can’t really and it’s not much different from how it has been since Caxton invented the printing press. If you produce a printed book, there is nothing to stop anyone photocopying it. How many times have you borrowed a book and read it and not paid the author or the publisher a penny? How many times did you not give it back to the original owner?

For digital products, you can add password protection but there is nothing to stop someone telling someone else the password. Even if the digital rights management is tied down to a particular computer, as it is for  iTunes, there is nothing to stop people other than the purchaser enjoying the work on that device.

I am sure when you write your book, you didn’t do it in isolation of any influences from other authors, friends, colleagues or teachers.

By far the best way by far to protect your work is to look at your behaviour and modify it so it’s karmically balanced. Now I am not trying to preach here or be holier than thou – this is just good common sense and politeness and I too have fallen foul of not playing by the karmic rule book.

My seven top tips for karmic rights protection

1. Don’t run the fear your work will be copied

2. If you use a quote or concept from another writer, give them some credit in a Thanks section of your work or, at least, list their book in references

3. Be open to your payback coming back in another form other than the sale of your books

4. Don’t steal another writer’s work

5. If you like a book you borrowed, buy a copy or buy another book from the same writer

6. Give loads of stuff away for free

7. Be thankful for everything you receive

_________________________________________________

Related blog – How to Void Karma

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In a year when the iPod moment for books looks increasingly likely to happen, failure to pass the Digital Economy Bill isn’t a lost opportunity, it’s a tragedy.

Opposition is growing to the UK government’s Digital Economy Bill, which includes a “three strikes and you’re out” clause to deal with Internet piracy. The Guardian reports “strong criticism” within the House of Lords to the plan to cut the Internet access of persistent file-sharers.

These latest objections centre around concern by businesses and institutions, including public libraries, that they could be caught out if the penalties are introduced. An open letter signed by, among others, the British Library, states: “Because public institutions often provide internet access to hundreds or thousands of individual users, the complexity of our position in relation to copyright infringements must be taken into consideration.

“If this is not done, a public institution such as a library, school or university’s internet connection as a whole could be jeopardised, resulting in loss of internet access to large sections of the public, particularly the 15 million citizens without an internet connection at home.”

The news should concern anyone involved in book publishing and distribution, because anything that threatens to slow progress of the bill through parliament means this landmark legislation is unlikely to be passed before the General Election. If that happens the chance of it being introduced by an incoming government are very slim indeed.

Last year John Whittingdale, Conservative MP and chair of the culture, media and sports committee, told me: “If this issue is not tackled before the election, an incoming Conservative government will be confronted with a huge agenda and a stack of manifesto commitments and one would have to say, being realistic, this is unlikely to be a priority.”

With the Tories ahead in the polls, Whittingdale’s prediction looks likely to come true.

In a year when the iPod moment for books looks increasingly likely to happen, failure to pass the Digital Economy Bill isn’t a lost opportunity, it’s a tragedy. Aside from the understandable concerns of access providers, objection to “draconian” punishment centre on the social implications of cutting off net access in a society increasingly dependent on the web.

Well, hello! If it didn’t hurt, it wouldn’t be a punishment.

Let’s get some perspective here. The bill is needed because peer2peer file-sharing poses a very real threat to the global creative economy, including the nascent ebook industry. Piracy has already decimated the music industry – it is responsible for a 30% decline in revenues over the past six years, according to the latest figures from the IFPI, which represents the international recorded music industry.

Those who claim file-sharing is a blow against big business that does not harm small, independent players, should think again. The IFPI’s figures provide a salutary lesson: bore down to local market data and you find that between 2004 and 2009 Spain, which has one of the highest rates of illegal file-sharing in Europe, witnessed sales by local artists in the top 50 drop by an estimated 65%. In France, which recently introduced legislation against pirates similar to that proposed in the UK, local artist album releases fell by 60% over the same period. According to the IFPI, a quarter of France’s internet population downloads illegally

Ah but books are different, you might think. Well, no. A study released last month by Attributor, whose FairShare Guardian service monitors the internet for pirated content, provided startling data on the impact of file-sharing on books. It estimated that publishers were losing as much as $3bn to online book piracy. You didn’t misread that: it said three BILLION dollars, more than the total value of the UK book market. As more readers move to digital formats, that figure will only get worse.

You see, despite the way it is reported, the campaign against online piracy is not just about money. It is about culture, and the ability of smaller players – be they publisher or author – to sustain their work.

If the music industry is anything to go by, it is not the J K Rowlings, Stephanie Meyers or Dan Browns who will suffer if peer2peer file sharing becomes rampant in books. It is the already beleaguered midlist authors, whose work already struggle to find a place in a market dominated by multi-million pound global hitters and celebrities.

Piracy is a huge and growing problem that needs to be tackled now. Objections to the use of harsh penalties for the worst offenders fly in the face of evidence that shows that file-sharing has dropped sharply in countries where account suspension is used as a penalty of last resort.

A government crackdown in Sweden introduced early last year had an immediate impact. Sixty percent of users of file-sharing sites stopped completely or significantly reduced their downloading. The Swedish law demands internet service providers provide copyright holders with details of service users who share files, which opens the way for prosecution.

Britain is only the latest country to follow the Swedish lead. In France tough penalties, including account suspension, have already come into place. Legislation is before the House of Representatives in the US, and the European Parliament is also working on draft legislation to deal with the problem although it is expected to drop plans for account suspension.

If the Digital Economy Bill falls at the last hurdle, Britain will be left behind. And for those of us producing work that other people wish to steal, that will cost us dear.

[Image ©iStockphoto.com/Trebaffetti]

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The debate is not about which device is better than the others. It’s about authors and publishers embracing a whole new world of opportunity.

Much has been written over the last 48 hours or so about Apple’s new iPad. Some think it’s the best thing to hit the planet this decade and that it will change the face of publishing. Others are moaning about its bezel and that it doesn’t have a camera. Some are obsessed with the connotations of the word “pad”. Some people should also get a life.

I thought I’d let the dust settle and look at the introduction of the iPad from the perspective of authors and publishers.

As a serial gadgeteer and technophile, even I resisted the temptation to buy an eReader. By the way, when I refer to the Kindle, I am using it generically like Hoover. This applies to the Sony eReader, the Cool-er et al.

As an author, I don’t want an eReader; I want an e-writer too.

The iPad wins hands down on this front. The fact I can surf the Web for research too and Mind Map are other bonuses.

What about battery life and reading it in bright sunlight on a beach? Well I don’t want sand in any of my gadgets and to protect what little street-cred I may have; I’m more comfortable holding a paperback when I get to relax on holiday.

Apple brings more to the party than just screen technology. You get access to the riches borne by an operating system that is 30 years old. Email, word and image processing, calendaring to boot.

The iPad is a boon for a writer.

If all you want to do is read, however, as I predicted in this blog earlier in the year, then ereaders will go sub $100 on eBay this year and this is hard to resist.

With the fabulous e-ink technology, two weeks of battery life is just marvellous. So, if you are a reader and want to dabble in technology, get an ereader.

The biggest opportunity though lies in the user base.

For publishers and authors, the users of the various devices represent a new and growing sales channel.

There are something like 10 million iPhones already with predictions of a further 20 million more this year.

This compares to 2.5 million Kindles and a little less for Sony.

You can even get a Kindle reader for the iPhone which makes things even more complicated for us to get our head around. Will Kindle ever support iBooks though? I think not.

So the smart money is to get as many existing titles in as many formats as possible and to let the user decide how they want to consume the book.

For new titles however, there is a whole new world opening up. From books that can either read to you or be read, or books that contain multimedia elements, Internet content, geo-coded information and merge elements of gaming. Travel books for example will be completely different and contain videos, reviews, local information, the ability to make bookings and the like – all from the app or iBook as they will be known.

So the debate is not about which device is better than the others. It’s about authors and publishers embracing a whole new world of opportunity.

Useful Links:

iPhone stats for 2010

Kindle vs Sony eReader stats

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The opportunities for authors and publishers abound to create an experience for readers which delivers an amazing array of immersion and interactivity. Watch this short video with me and soon to be published author Jackie Walker to find out more.

Related articles

• “Apple tablet event” set for end of January (MacUser)
• CES 2010: Gadget show begins ‘year of the tablet’ (telegraph.co.uk)

The various blogs and Twitter accounts covering the Book Fair include @thebookseller, the ever irreverent and entertaining @missdaisyfrost, and @pubperspectives – whose Frankfurt Book Fair Daily can be downloaded as a PDF.

It seems to have been a relatively subdued Fair, with fewer publishers than usual – at least fewer editors attending from the big publishers, allowing more space for independents. But there have been plenty of digitalists.

The highlight has to be the first European O’Reilly Media Tools of Change conference, held yesterday – which we could also vicariously follow with the Twitter hashtag #tocfrankfurt. Speakers included Sara Lloyd, Joe Wikert, Neelan Choksi and Cory Doctorow – and you can find some highlights over at The Scholarly Kitchen.

If you missed out on TOC Frankfurt, or want more of an author’s point of view, here is one of the highlights from the TOC conference in New York last year: Seth Godin’s presentation “Using New Media, New Marketing, and New Thinking to Create 10 Bestselling Books”. Enjoy – and maybe I’ll see you in New York next February!

The Kindle 2 is the next generation of Amazon’s wireless e-book reading device, and it started shipping yesterday. If you’re in the USA, that is. Amazon have confirmed that it will launch internationally – we just don’t know when. The device does work outside the US – but the wireless network it uses isn’t compatible with European telecoms.

Despite that, is this, finally, the iPod moment we all keep talking about? Many observers see this as yet another incremental step, rather than a tipping point – largely because the price tag (still $359) keeps it out of the mainstream. But take-up of the Sony Reader in Europe, plus the reading of e-books on the iPhone, seem to indicate a gathering of momentum at least. My money is on the iPhone proving to be the iPod moment – but we shall see.

The other trend to keep an eye on this year is the impact the Kindle will have on self-publishing. I know several authors who are ‘writing for the Kindle’ – self-publishing e-books specifically for the Amazon device. The Kindle is just another tool that facilitates the increasing move to authors doing it themselves. Self-publishing remains my key trend for 2009.

While many traditional publishers panic about keeping up with the tech, or how to price their e-books, the real revolution is happening over there, just out of sight – and could have a more profound impact on the publishing business than simply the format people choose to read books in.

An recent article in Computer World sums it up well:

The book publishing industry is one of the most backward, musty, obsolete businesses in our economy. While every other kind of information moves at the speed of light, the process of publishing a book is like something from the Middle Ages.

For authors, it can take months to even find a literary agent willing to represent their work. Then the agent takes months to find a publisher. Then it takes ages for the publishing company to get the book out there.

People are already circumventing all this by self-publishing. The self-publishing industry is the only area of paper-book publishing that’s thriving right now. Soon enough, a huge number of authors are finally going to get fed up with the publishing industry and just self-publish electronically. They’ll hire their own freelance editors, and do the marketing themselves. The publication of a finished manuscript will take minutes, rather than months.

Should publishers be worried by this? We all know that, by the time you’ve finished eating that cookie, you’ll remember that you don’t believe in all this publishing revolution stuff anyway, and go back to your paper peddling day job. And you can cheer yourself up with this video.

This is what we all really want to see: Jon Stewart interviewing Jeff Bezos, promoting the Kindle’s USP of one-handed reading. Visionary disruptive innovator or chuckling maniac? You be the judge.

Related articles

• Tips on How to Write an Amazon Kindle Book (kindlereaderreview.com)
• Stephen King Helps Amazon Launch New Kindle (Guardian, 9 Feb 09)
• The Revenge of Amazon.com’s ‘Chuckling Maniac’ (gawker.com)
• Doing the Math on a Amazon Kindle (puhala.com)
• Elgan: Here comes the e-book revolution (Computer World, 7 Feb 09)
• Kindle and eBook Formats (loo.me)

See also

• Joe Wikert’s Kindleville blog