Top 10 Reasons Why iPad Marks Kindle’s Death

in Amazon Kindle, Apple, Books, e-books, Web/Tech | February 3rd, 2010

Caveat: If you missed it, yesterday’s post was 10 Rea­sons iPad Will Not Kill Kin­dle. So take every­thing here with appro­pri­ate grains of salt.

10.) Books with graph­ics. Many books con­tain pho­tos, graph­ics and dia­grams that the Kin­dle does not han­dle well, if at all. When peo­ple real­ize that the iPad will do this flaw­less­ly, they’ll head in that direc­tion. Exam­ple: while read­ing the new Carv­er biog­ra­phy on my Kin­dle, an expe­ri­ence that I loved, I had to miss out on all of the pic­tures col­lect­ed from Carver’s life. Once you take into account news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines, there’s even more weight on iPad’s side.

9.) Cost: Seri­ous­ly, Ama­zon real­ly over­stepped their bound­aries when they set Kindle’s price at around $300, as they did. If they had made it $100 or less, they would have prob­a­bly have sold 4 or 5 times the num­ber of devices, hook­ing more read­ers to their book­store and their device. Look at Gillette as an exam­ple: which costs more—the razor or the razor blades?

8.) “I love my Kin­dle!” – less than two mil­lion peo­ple have bought the Ama­zon prod­uct. By com­par­i­son, over forty mil­lion iPhones and iPod Touch­es have been sold. No one knows how many folks will rush out to buy an iPad, but if pre­vi­ous iPhone sales and the buzz around the iPad are any indi­ca­tion, this is going to be anoth­er big win for Apple.

7.) iPad is a Kin­dle: just use that free Kin­dle app on your iPad and you’ve got the whole Kin­dle store wide open to you. You can even take your whole Kin­dle library right over to Apple’s iPad with the Kin­dle App.

6.) Cost, again: with iPad com­ing in at a low $499 for a device that’s much bet­ter made and fea­tures much more capa­bil­i­ty than the Kin­dle, with at least four times the mem­o­ry… well, you get the pic­ture. Oh jeez… I just found out the Kin­dle DX goes for $489. Oh, Mr. Bezos… what are you think­ing?

5.) Capa­bil­i­ty. Peo­ple don’t want a ded­i­cat­ed read­ing device: if you can car­ry around a device the size of your e‑reader, but also use it to check email, surf the web, watch TV and movies, lis­ten to music, use office-type apps, etc. then that’s going to win in today’s econ­o­my.

4.) Book pric­ing. It looks like Apple, the dia­bol­i­cal pricers of all songs at $.99, might wind up being the pub­lish­ers’ dar­ling in the e‑book mar­ket by pric­ing their titles high­er than Ama­zon has been. So far it looks like ibooks will be clos­er to the $14.99 price point that pub­lish­ers like. Right now, as evinced by this past weekend’s squab­ble between Ama­zon and Macmil­lan, pub­lish­ers appear to be fed up with Amazon’s pric­ing strat­e­gy. Apple may just become pub­lish­ers’ white knight. (more…)

Hayek vs. Keynes Rap

in Economics | January 27th, 2010

Russ Roberts, the George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty econ­o­mist and host of Econ­Talk (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site) recent­ly teamed up with John Pap­o­la, a tele­vi­sion exec, to pro­duce “Fear the Boom and Bust.” It’s a rap song/video with intel­lec­tu­al sub­stance that fol­lows this premise:

John May­nard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great econ­o­mists of the 20th cen­tu­ry, come back to life to attend an eco­nom­ics con­fer­ence on the eco­nom­ic cri­sis. Before the con­fer­ence begins, and at the insis­tence of Lord Keynes, they go out for a night on the town and sing about why there’s a boom and bust cycle in mod­ern economies and good rea­son to fear it.

This clip is now added to our YouTube favorites. You can get the full lyrics, sto­ry and free down­load of the song in high qual­i­ty MP3 and AAC files at: http://www.econstories.tv

via the always great Plan­et Mon­ey Pod­cast

A History of the World in 100 Objects

in Art, History | January 26th, 2010

Work­ing with the BBC, Neil Mac­Gre­gor, the Direc­tor of the British Muse­um, has launched a down­right smart project. A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects uses impor­tant pieces from the muse­um’s col­lec­tions to recount the long his­to­ry of human­i­ty. Through­out the year, the seri­al­ized radio pro­gram will air 100 episodes, each aver­ag­ing 15 min­utes, and they will cov­er two mil­lion years of human inno­va­tion and artis­tic cre­ation. Below, I’ve includ­ed a recent episode that revis­its the Oldu­vai hand axe, a tool invent­ed some 1.2 mil­lion years ago that proved vital to human evo­lu­tion and our migra­tion out of Africa. You can access the full series in audio via iTunes, RSS Feed, as well as oth­er for­mats found here. A big thanks to Stephen in the UK for flag­ging this pro­duc­tion for us.

Jared Diamond Explains Haiti’s Enduring Poverty

in Current Affairs, History | January 21st, 2010

Jared Dia­mond, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author of Guns, Germs & Steel (and Col­lapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suc­ceed), offers some time­ly thoughts on why Haiti, once a fair­ly pros­per­ous coun­try, has sunk into endur­ing pover­ty — a con­di­tion not com­par­a­tive­ly shared by its neigh­bor on the same island, the Domini­can Repub­lic. Accord­ing to Dia­mond, Haiti’s envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions offer a par­tial expla­na­tion. But you will also find clues in the coun­try’s lan­guage, and in the lega­cy of slav­ery that has shaped Haiti’s eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ship with Europe and the US. This inter­view — quite a good one — aired this morn­ing in San Fran­cis­co. You can lis­ten to it below, or access it via MP3,  iTunes or RSS Feed.

Experiments in Publishing: Kindle Rush Results

in Amazon Kindle, Books, Business, e-books | January 11th, 2010

Click here to lis­ten to this post as audio. (Right-click to down­load.)

As some of you already know, back on Decem­ber 27th, I released a sam­ple of my first short sto­ry col­lec­tion A Long Way from Dis­ney on Amazon’s Kin­dle store and used social media strate­gies to mar­ket it. I did this for var­i­ous rea­sons, but main­ly because, as I’ve said here on OC before, I believe authors need to take on the role of sci­en­tists and exper­i­ment with what’s pos­si­ble in today’s pub­lish­ing world. (If you’re inter­est­ed in how I pub­li­cized this, see my recent posts at AuthorBootCamp.com.)

From a sci­en­tif­ic point of view, the exper­i­ment was a great suc­cess. I learned a great deal, which I’ll dis­cuss below. I sold a lot of books (at $.99 each)–around 350 in the first week–and I got my name and sto­ries in front of a lot of new peo­ple. I also heard from a num­ber of them who read the book right away and real­ly loved it! For you authors out there, I hope you can relate: Get­ting pos­i­tive feed­back on your work from total strangers is about the best feed­back there is.

[For those of you keep­ing score at home, those sales put $260 into Amazon’s pock­et and $140 into mine. Not too shab­by, I think, but also not the split an author might hope for.]

Okay, with­out any fur­ther delay: Here are the Results (what I’ve learned) from Exper­i­ment 1:

1)   Timing can be essen­tial. I posi­tioned myself to hit the Kin­dle store just after Xmas, think­ing that with many new­ly gift­ed Kin­dles out there, a lot more Kin­dle ebooks would be sell­ing and that I could cash in on this rush. I was cor­rect in this pre­dic­tion (Ama­zon sold more ebooks than paper copies over Christ­mas), but what I didn’t pre­dict was how much hard­er this made it to reach the Top 100 Kin­dle best­seller list, a goal I had set for myself. I want­ed to hit the Top 100 because it would give the book addi­tion­al expo­sure and stim­u­late more buy­ing from new­bie Kin­dle own­ers look­ing for quick, cheap con­tent. (more…)

Michael Sandel: Our Bodies in the Marketplace

in Philosophy | January 4th, 2010

Last year, Michael Sandel made a splash when he put online his pop­u­lar Har­vard phi­los­o­phy course, Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? Over the past 30 years, more than 14,000 Har­vard stu­dents have tak­en his course. And now you can access the course online at no cost. (Details here.) In recent days, Sandel has sur­faced one again, this time on Phi­los­o­phy Bites (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a British pod­cast that fea­tures top philoso­phers being inter­viewed on bite-sized top­ics. In this con­ver­sa­tion (lis­ten here or below), Sandel and Nigel War­bur­ton tack­le some big ques­tions: What are the lim­its of free mar­ket think­ing, espe­cial­ly when it comes to what we can do with our bod­ies in the mar­ket­place? Can we sell blood con­sen­su­al­ly? Per­haps. But what about sell­ing our kid­neys on the open mar­ket? Or “rent­ing wombs”? (There are whole vil­lages in India where women act as “paid sur­ro­gates” for West­ern cou­ples.) Or what about con­sen­su­al pros­ti­tu­tion? Or engag­ing, how­ev­er will­ing­ly, in degrad­ing forms of wage labor? Are these inher­ent free­doms, as some free market/libertarian thinkers might hold? Or do these acts vio­late our col­lec­tive sense of the “good life”? And do they dimin­ish our free­doms in some kind of larg­er sense? The con­ver­sa­tion gets more heat­ed (in a good way) as it goes along. Give it some time, hang with it, and see what you think. For more phi­los­o­phy, see our col­lec­tion of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es.

Free eBooks for Your PC, iPhone, Kindle & Beyond

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, iPhone, Literature, Most Popular | December 27th, 2009

Today, we’re rolling out a siz­able col­lec­tion of Free eBooks, most of them clas­sics, that fea­tures major works writ­ten by James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Jane Austen, Niet­zsche and oth­ers. (We have even thrown in a lit­tle Paulo Coel­ho.) You’ll find 100+ free ebooks in total, and you can down­load the texts to your com­put­er, smart phone (iPhone, Android, etc.) or Kin­dle, depend­ing on the for­mat you choose.  Our eBooks Primer overviews the dif­fer­ent down­load options, so please give it a quick read over. Below, we’ve post­ed a quick sam­ple from the new col­lec­tion (plus a link to the entire list of Free eBooks). Feel free to offer feed­back and share the list with friends. Down the road, you can always find this col­lec­tion in the top nav­i­ga­tion bar. Just looks for eBooks.

• Austen, Jane — Pride & Prej­u­dice — Google Mobile — Guten­berg — Kin­dle — Feed­books
• Coel­ho, Paulo — War­rior of the Light — Feed­books
• Dos­to­evsky, Fyo­dor — Crime and Pun­ish­ment — Google Mobile — Kin­dle — Feed­books
• Fitzger­ald, F. Scott — This Side of Par­adise — Google Mobile — Guten­berg — Kin­dle
• Melville, Her­man — Moby Dick — Google Mobile — Guten­berg — Kin­dle — Feed­books
• Niet­zsche, Friedrich — Beyond Good and Evil — Google Mobile — Guten­berg — Feed­books

For more ebooks, please vis­it Free eBooks: Great Books on Your PC, iPhone, Kin­dle & Beyond

Note: Don’t for­get to check in on Seth Har­wood’s big Kin­dle exper­i­ment. What hap­pens when you sell your book for 99 cents on the Kin­dle? Find out as the exper­i­ment unfolds. Sto­ry here.

Talking American History with Joseph Ellis

in History | December 23rd, 2009

Let me quick­ly call your atten­tion to an inter­view with Joseph Ellis, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning and best­selling his­to­ri­an, who most recent­ly pub­lished Amer­i­can Cre­ation: Tri­umphs and Tragedies in the Found­ing of the Repub­lic. In this casu­al, wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion (lis­ten below or here) with Russ Roberts, the host of Econ­Talk, Ellis talks through the found­ing years of the Unit­ed States — the break with Eng­land, the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War, the draft­ing of the con­sti­tu­tion and the forg­ing of the nation. A good con­ver­sa­tion for his­to­ry buffs, and an infor­ma­tive talk for those less famil­iar with Amer­i­ca’s begin­nings. You can gen­er­al­ly find Econ­Talk (which typ­i­cal­ly focus­es on eco­nom­ics) here: iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site.

Making Books Free: David Pogue’s Experiment

in e-books | December 22nd, 2009

He’s a tech­nol­o­gy colum­nist for The New York Times, and the author of many pop­u­lar tech­nol­o­gy man­u­als. And today, David Pogue writes about an exper­i­ment he con­duct­ed last year, test­ing the hypoth­e­sis that free e‑books can dri­ve sales of print copies (rather than eat into them). How did it work out? He writes:

My pub­lish­er, O’Reil­ly, decid­ed to try an exper­i­ment, offer­ing one of my Win­dows books for sale as an unpro­tect­ed PDF file. After a year, we could com­pare the results with the pre­vi­ous year’s sales. The results? It was true. The thing was pirat­ed to the skies. It’s all over the Web now, ridicu­lous­ly easy to down­load with­out pay­ing. The crazy thing was, sales of the book did not fall. In fact, sales rose slight­ly dur­ing that year. That’s not a per­fect, all-vari­ables-equal exper­i­ment, of course; any num­ber of fac­tors could explain the results. But for sure, it was­n’t the dis­as­ter I’d feared.

A nice con­clu­sion. But then the next ques­tion. Will free e‑books do any­thing good for e‑books being sold on the Kindle/Nook/Sony Read­er? Still an open ques­tion…

Final­ly, speak­ing of ebooks, we’ve just launched our new col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. It includes over 100 free e‑books, most­ly clas­sics, that you can read on your com­put­er, smart phone (iPhone/Android), or Kin­dle. Please take a look (also read the relat­ed eBook primer) and offer any feed­back you might have.

Orhan Pamuk Reads Vladimir Nabokov

in Audio Books, Literature | December 14th, 2009

Image by Giuseppe Pino, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you don’t already know about it, The New York­er Fic­tion Pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) fea­tures authors read­ing the works of oth­er major authors. One of the lat­est and great­est exam­ples: Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 win­ner of the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, read­ing from Vladimir Nabokov’s “My Russ­ian Edu­ca­tion” (MP3 — iTunes — RSS Feed).

With­in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books, we have sev­er­al oth­er good reads from this series, includ­ing Paul Ther­oux read­ing Borges, Jef­frey Eugenides read­ing Harold Brod­key, Richard Ford read­ing John Cheev­er, and T. Cor­aghes­san Boyle read­ing Tobias Wolff.

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