While there are any number of ways to enrich an ebook, I always envisioned them with rough drafts (so the reader can see how the story evolved), outlines, interviews, alternate endings and more.

Bestselling novelist David Baldacci has done just that with his new book Deliver Us from Evil (aff link). According to Galley Cat, he’s offering an enriched ebook with a smorgasbord of features including a video tour of his office (I love seeing author’s working spaces), audio Q & A about the book, research material, deleted scenes (including the original ending) and other goodies that will enhance the reading experience.

Why did he choose to create an enriched ebook?

“They [the reader] want to look behind the curtain and learn more about a writer whose work they love. To get into the head of the person who creates the stories that keep them enthralled. It gives you several entertainment experiences, and provides more than what you would get from simply reading the book. It allows the writer to connect with the reader in new and fascinating ways. It’s aptly named because it really does enrich the experience.”

He continues by saying:

“People want to be informed and entertained. The enriched E-book does both. Bottom line is the content should drive this industry, not the delivery system. An eBook by itself is not enthralling; what’s on it is. And we have the technology that allows us to do all of this. So why not use it?”

Yes, yes and yes! Finally, an established, bestselling, traditionally published author who really gets ebooks and their potential for the future of publishing. Furthermore, it’s innovation like this that will keep the publishing industry alive. Hopefully other authors (and publishers) will catch on and give readers a choice to either just read the book, or dive a little deeper and catch a glimpse behind the text.

What do you think about David Baldacci’s enriched ebook experiment? Would you pay more for all these extra goodies? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

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I’ve been reading ebooks for a while now, so I’m already reading an ebook. More specifically, I’m reading Stephen King’s Under the Dome (aff link). It’s the perfect novel to read as an ebook because the hardcover version is heavier than a brick. No way I’m lugging that thing around town with me.

I’ll be posting a review right here on Brad’s Reader when I’m finished with King’s magnum opus.

How are you celebrating Read an E-book Week? What ebook are you reading? Leave a comment below and share your answer!

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I’ve been advocating for this type of bundling for a while now. The obvious advantage is that you can read the print version in the comfort of your own home, and then take the ebook version with you while you’re on the go. This would work especially well with dinosaur-sized books like Stephen King’s Under the Dome (which I’m currently reading as an ebook). If I had bought King’s latest magnum opus as a hardcover, you certainly wouldn’t see me lugging it around so I could read a few pages in the doctor’s office waiting room.

However, there is one caveat to B&N’s plans to bundle print and ebooks together, as the Teleread post explains:

But from the article, it does not sound as if B&N is truly planning what people usually think of as “bundling”—you will have to pay some extra money for the e-book version. Given that the e-book version has no marginal cost to produce, I expect e-book fans will still express disappointment that this offer does not go far enough.

So it’s not a true “bundle” where you get both for one price. However, I think B&N and publishers are taking a step in the right direction. People want choice. They want to read books when they want, where they want and in the format they want. This faux bundling starts to make that possible.

While not the ideal situation, having to pay a reduced price for the ebook version of your newly purchased print edition will not be the end of the world. However, the key word here is “reduced.” If B&N and publishers think consumers will pay much more than $5 for the ebook, then they’re going to have a lot of angry consumers to deal with.

Print-On-Demand at B&N Stores?

Another interesting item brought up in the PW article is that B&N is playing with the idea of maybe bringing POD technology directly to stores (think: Espresso Book Machine):

He said at some point it could be possible to put a pod machine directly into a store, providing the store “was big enough.” He would also not rule out the possibility that B&N could make a “small acquisition” in the technology field if it fit with its digital plans.

Very interesting indeed. I have read a lot about this type of portable POD technology, but would love to see one of these machines in action for myself.

Reading about B&N’s future plans for ebooks got me thinking that they are now taking the lead in innovation. Amazon has been the leader in ebooks for a few years now, but they really haven’t done anything that innovative in a while – other than releasing updated versions of the Kindle every few years or so.

What do you think about B&N’s plans to bundle ebooks and print books? Would you go for it? Or is this just a cheap marketing gimmick to get people to buy their Nook? Leave a comment below and share your answer.

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Surprisingly (at least to me), the one subject that never comes up is DRM. I’ve “educated” a lot of newbies to the world of ebooks about the dangers of DRM, and most simply aren’t that worried about it. Their main concern is ease-of-use. Downloading an ebook via  a wireless network with the touch of a button is quick and easy – instant satisfaction with no tech skills required.

I know I’m only speaking from anecdotal evidence, but it seems odd that for all the ranting I see around the blogosphere (myself included) about the evils of DRM, the average person isn’t that concerned. Most just want to buy an ebook for their device, read it and enjoy it.

So are the evils of DRM being blown out of proportion? I don’t think they are. Limiting how someone uses a product they buy is just plain wrong. If I buy an ebook and I want to share it with my wife (on a different device), I should be able to do so without any problems. Same goes if I want to share an ebook with a friend or other family member.

Furthermore, I think those of us that do keep DRM in the spotlight keep much-needed added pressure on publishers and e-retailers alike. If allowed to go unchecked, we’d see a lot more “incidents” like the one where Amazon remotely deleted a George Orwell novel from the Kindle.

I think a bigger concern than DRM is ebook pricing. This hits people right where it hurts: The pocketbook. No one wants to pay prices that are almost up there with the price of a hardcover, no matter how hard publishers try to justify it. One of the big selling points of ebooks is the lower prices.

In the end, I really think ease-of-use and pricing are the two biggest concerns the average ebook consumer has. DRM might be right up there for some of us, but not those I’ve talked to.

What is your biggest concern when it comes to ebooks: Price? Ease-of-use? DRM? Or all three? Leave a comment below and share your opinion.

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In a post announcing the sale, David Rothman writes about Teleread’s future:

I’m leaving as editor-publisher, but Co-Editor Paul Biba (left photo) will remain—as full editor. What’s more, Senior Writer Chris Meadows (right), the second most frequent contributor, will stay. Both Paul and Chris have been e-book-lovers for eons, and publications ranging from the New York Times to the Guardian have quoted Paul over the years. Under Paul, who has supplied most of TeleRead’s posts since September 2008 and managed it day to day, you’ll continue to be able to speak up for or against DRM and share your thoughts on e-book formats or the Macmillan-Amazon controversy.

As for David’s own plans:

Along the way, I want to devote more time to reading p-books and e-books, not just writing about them. I may even perpetrate a few more books of my own. I’ll miss TeleRead and the gifted people who have contributed to it, but there’s no halfway; I don’t want to be just semi-retired from here.

Teleread was one of the first blogs I began reading about ebooks and where I first learned about the ePub format. That was a few years ago and I’ve been reading Teleread ever since. While I don’t expect much to change, I will miss David Rothman. He has been generous with his time in responding to my emails and considering news tips I thought he’d find interesting. He’s also a novelist, having wrote The Solomon Scandals (aff link), which I reviewed here.

I will continue to read Teleread on a daily basis and look forward to their insightful posts and great community of ebook lovers who comment on a regular basis. I’ll also continue using Teleread as source material for this blog.

If Teleread isn’t a part of your daily blog diet, I’d highly recommend it. Especially if you’re a fan of ebooks or at all interested in how digital technology is changing the face of literature.

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When I first began Brad’s Reader, my main focus was on literature and writing. Since the world of literature is so big, I needed a way to see all the important bits of news and related blog posts at-a-glance. What did I use? I created a Google Alert using the search term “literary news”.

Every day (usually in the morning) I get an email in my inbox entitled “literary news” that has a comprehensive list of links related to literature. These include links to news stories, blogs and even current literary events like book fairs. In fact, I have received a lot of blog post ideas from that one Google Alert.

Now that Brad’s Reader has expanded into the world of ebooks and self-publishing, I created a Google Alert for those respective search terms as well. Bang! All relevant news and information in my inbox each day. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

A few easy tips

Setting up a Google Alert is easy. Just enter in a search term, decide if you want a comprehensive, news, blog, web, video or clips alert. I use comprehensive, as it includes everything in the email. Then select how often you want your alerts to be sent to you. I always choose daily. But you have a choice between daily, weekly, and as-it-happens (this one can fill up your inbox fast). After that, select the length of your alert email. You can choose between 20 and 50 results (I keep mine limited to 20 to make scanning the email much easier).

Finally, select the email you want your alert to be delivered to. This is a lot easier if you have a Gmail account – then you can manage everything all in one place without logging in and out of multiple accounts. I use one account for my Gmail, Google Reader, News, Google Alerts and Notebooks. Keep it simple.

The sky is the limit to what your alert can be. Here are a few suggestions for you regular readers of this blog:

• Literary news
• Self publishing
• ebooks
• Your favorite author
• A specific publisher/e-retailer (great to keep track of the current Amazon v. Macmillan feud)
• publishing news
• fill-in-your-own-preference-here

Google Alerts are a great way to stay informed about your topic of choice without spending countless hours scouring the web for important information. For me, this has been an invaluable tool and has really helped me grow Brad’s Reader. I hope Google Alerts can help you too.

Update 2/7: In a bit of irony, when I got my Google Alert for ‘literary news’ this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see this very post listed under the blog section:

Keeping up with the world of publishing & ebooks | Brad’s Reader
By Brad Vertrees
Since the world of literature is so big, I needed a way to see all the
important bits of news and related blog posts at-a-glance. What did I use?
I created a Google Alert using the search term “literary news”. …
<http://www.bradsreader.com/2010/02/keeping-up-with-the-world-of-publishing-ebooks/>
Brad’s Reader
<http://www.bradsreader.com/>

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Today the Author’s Guild released a statement that pretty much supports Macmillan in the feud. There’s really nothing surprising about that since the Guild usually supports the large publishers and higher ebook prices. The Author’s Guild believes that if Macmillan succeeds in having more control over ebook prices, it will be good for the industry as a whole:

Yet if Macmillan prevails, the eventual payoff for its authors (and all authors, if a successful result ripples through the industry) is likely to be significant and lasting.

It has been well-documented (on this blog and others) that what Macmillan seeks, and what the Guild supports, simply does not work. Authors don’t make more in royalties because higher ebook prices turn off a lot of consumers, leading to more piracy. Publishers still have a long way to go in learning about the economics of ebooks.

Macmillan wants to set higher ebook prices

Bad idea. The demand for ebooks dictate the consumers are unlikely to pay much more than $9.99 for ebooks (the price Amazon uses as a standard). Macmillan’s reasoning is that higher ebook prices will increase author royalties and not “devalue” the books sold on Amazon.

However, as I said before, it has been shown that just the opposite is true – lower ebook prices equals more sales and more revenue for the author and publisher. A great example of this is author Joe Konrath, who has been published through traditional routes, and self-publishes his novels as ebooks on the Amazon Kindle. His blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing chronicles his experience. He makes more money selling his ebooks at low prices than he does in royalties from his traditional publisher. Other authors have had similar experiences.

Use of “Windowing” as a tactic to increase print sales

“Windowing” is the practice of waiting until a particular edition of a new book has been on the market for a while before making cheaper editions available.

The Author’s Guild statement continues:

Windowing e-books is similarly believed to help protect a publisher’s sales channels for physical books. The risk with windowing is that some owners of e-book devices are angered that low-priced e-book editions aren’t available as soon as books are released in hardcover form.

The risk of delaying the release of the ebook version is more than just “angering” ebook device owners. The real risk is piracy. In fact most of the book piracy is scanning print books and converting them to ebooks. This is often done when the ebook is not available due to windowing or because the author/publisher refuses the ebook option. I wrote a recent post What can we learn from a book pirate that details this from one who actually pirates books.

The irony, of course, is that authors/publishers trying to prevent piracy through such tactics only encourage the practice.

Amazon also to blame

While it’s easy to demonize Macmillan for their demands, Amazon is by no means in the clear either. The largest online retailer has been criticized all around for everything from DRM, high ebook prices (a lot of consumers, myself included, think even $9.99 is too much for most ebooks), to prices not being high enough (from publishers), remotely deleting titles off the Kindle, forcing POD publishers to use Amazon’s own service, and the list goes on. So I’m not giving Amazon a free pass here. There is plenty of criticism to go around.

The ebook industry is still in its infancy and there are no ‘industry standards’ in place yet. Amazon is trying to set those standards and publishers still think ebooks should be sold and priced like print books. I hope that publishers don’t repeat what happened to record labels (who continue to self-destruct).

What do you think of this Amazon-Macmillan feud? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

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The first blog comes from Adobe, of all places. Reports say that Adobe is steaming mad that the iPad doesn’t support Flash. But on their blog, they go further than that. Apple’s iPad – A Broken Link?

It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple’s DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers.

In other words, I won’t be able to buy an ebook from Apple and then load it onto my Sony Pocket Edition. And I’m assuming that if I were to buy ebooks from other sites, I would not be able to load them onto the iPad’s ebook reading app.

Ars Technica also picked up on this DRM lockdown by reporting that a very small group of protesters from the Free Software Foundation were at yesterday’s Apple event. Protesters: iPad is nothing more than a golden calf of DRM:

Members of the Free Software Foundation staged a small protest outside today’s Apple event in San Francisco, making the case against Apple’s use of DRM.

The big question I have is now that Apple is in the ebook business, will they forbid ebook reading apps like Stanza (one of the most popular for the iPhone/iPod Touch? Will iPad users be unable to download such apps from the app store. If there are no such restrictions, than the DRM on iBooks becomes less of a worry.

Still, if Apple really wanted to put a dent in the Amazon Kindle and all the other ebook readers out there, they’d just have to open up their ebook app on the iPad by getting rid of the DRM. I guess they don’t see it that way.

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For the last year or so (maybe even longer) there have been rumors that Apple would eventually release a tablet device. That day has come. At first glace, iPad is a beefed up version of the iPhone/iPod Touch. But under the hood the iPad is impressive. I want onto the MacRumors blog and here’s what they had to say:

At today’s highly-anticipated media event, Apple announced the iPad tablet device, featuring a 9.7-inch, 1024 x 768 display and 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB capacities. Carrying a custom 1 GHz “Apple A4″ chip, the iPad weighs in at 1.5 pounds and is .5-inch thin. The iPad will be priced at $499, $599, and $699 for the varying capacity models without 3G, and $626, $729, and $829 with 3G.

The price surprised me, since everyone was speculating that the price point for the iPad would be around $999, the same price as Apple’s basic Macbook. The entry price for a basic unit is $499. This is just a little more expensive than the Kindle DX and about double the basic Kindle price. However, given the number of features the iPad sports, those considering the Kindle might be better off with a multi-use device.

For the sake of comparison, the Sony Daily Edition Reader comes in at $399 and the Barnes & Noble Nook is priced at $259. How will the iPad affect the sales of those dedicated e-readers? Only time will tell.

I think the most exciting thing about the iPad is the built in iBooks app – which allows you to buy, download and read ebooks. Before the release today, Apple had been busy negotiating with some of the larger publishing houses to make their books available on the iPad. If you watch the demo video on Apple’s website, you’ll see that the device renders the text beautifully and the page turning (with the swipe of a finger) is very realistic.

Dedicated or Multi-use?

This is the big question ebook enthusiasts and anyone looking to get into the ebook game now face. I’ll admit that I love my dedicated Sony Pocket Edition. No distractions. Just pure reading. Yes, I do read ebooks on my iPhone as well, but not nearly as many and my reading sessions are much shorter.

There’s also a good argument for multi-use devices like the iPad. It’s an all-in-one device (except for the phone) where you can manage your entire digital life from the tablet. The virtual keyboard is almost the size of a laptop keyboard, making typing emails, notes, working on your novel much easier. But again, all these other features can be distracting – especially when checking email or blog stats is one click away.

Will iPad revolutionize ebook reading?

It might be too soon to tell how the iPad will affect ebooks. Before the Barnes & Noble Nook was released, it had a lot of hype and people were speculating about how it would impact all the other e-readers out there. Now that the holidays are over and Nook has been out for a few months, the excitement has greatly dwindled and I really haven’t heard much about it.

This leads me to believe that it might be several months, maybe even a year or so, to see what impact the iPad has. Given the unexpected lower price, the iPad is now a much more realistic option for a lot of people. At the very least, I think the iPad will give the Kindle a run for their money. If Amazon isn’t shaking now, they soon will be.

ePub featured on the iPad!

One item I got really excited about was learning the Apple has chosen the open ePub format for the iPad. This means, in theory, that you can buy ebooks from Apple and read them on any other device that can read ePub (including my Sony Pocket Edition, Yay!). I’m thrilled that Apple didn’t create their own proprietary format for ebooks, bogging us down in yet another format and more DRM.

In the end though, I think that the iPad will make a great addition to an already impressive lineup of ebook reading devices, regardless if they are dedicated or multi-use. Furthermore, another device on the market means more competition, which means that we’ll see more advanced e-readers in the years to come, and lower prices.

For the record, I have no immediate plans to buy an iPad. My trusty 1st gen iPhone is plugging along just fine. And my funds are a little low to plunk down $499 on a shiny new gadget.

What do you think of the iPad? Are you going to pre-order one, or save your money for something else?

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In general, the publishers believe that ebooks strip sales from print books (of course, print books are more expensive) and that ebooks are so easy to pirate, they need to be loaded with draconian DRM to protect the financial interests of the publishing company and the author.

I think that these publishers are deluding themselves. Ebooks can help drive sales of print books and ebooks, in the end, are more profitable because of the ‘infinite supply’ theory. Furthermore, DRM has done little to stop pirates. DRM only serves to keep honest readers from buying an ebook.

So what goes on in the head of an ebook pirate? Are they rogue readers who refuse to pay for anything and get a rush off reading popular novels for free? Luckily for us, we can get some answers from the blog The Millions. They posted a fascinating article Confessions of a book pirate where they interview a book pirate, who of course stayed anonymous. What he says is fascinating and can shed light on on what ebook piracy is all about.

I picked out some important bits of the interview that I think are quite revealing.

Both print books and ebooks are prone to piracy

When most people think of pirated books, they think of ebooks. But that’s only half the problem. Print books are very prone to being pirated as well. It takes little more than a scanner and some time to properly format the text. Authors who refuse to release their novels as ebooks are frequently ‘victims’ of this type of piracy – which I detailed in the post J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, ebooks and the definition of irony.

According to the book pirate, scanning physical books is very common:

Between 2002-2005 I created around 200 ebooks by scanning the physical copy, OCRing and proofing the output, and uploading them to USENET. I generally only upload content that I have scanned, with some exceptions.

200 ebooks created from scanned copies of print books! That’s a lot. This shows that maybe publishers priorities are skewed in the fight against piracy. If a print book is not readily available as an ebook, then pirates will make it available.

When asked if scanned print books or DRM-broken ebooks are most common, the book pirate said:

Most of what I have seen is scanned physical books.

This shows exactly what I talked about in my post about J.K. Rowling refusing to sell her books in digital format. People want to read Harry Potter as ebooks, but since they aren’t available through her publisher, they turn to pirated copies.

Just how easy is it to scan a print book? Not hard, but time consuming:

The scanning process takes about 1 hour per 100 scans. Mass market paperbacks can be scanned two pages at a time flat on the scanner bed, while large trades and hardcovers usually need to be scanned one page at a time. I’m sure that some of the more hardcore scanners disassemble the book and run it through an automatic feeder or something, but I prefer the manual approach because I’d like to save the book, and don’t want to invest in the tools.

There you have it, someone with a the right equipment and some free time can easily scan a print book and upload it for others.

Even pirates would buy ebooks – at the right price

Since ebooks are still in their infancy, the price point for ebooks is all over the board. Amazon is trying to bring some order to the controversy by pricing most of their books at $9.99. For me, that is a little on the high side. The book pirate agrees:

I do not buy DRM’d ebooks that are priced at more than a few dollars, but would pay up to $10 for a clean file if it was a new release.

Publishers are balking at the $9.99 price, saying it’s stripping sales of print books. Yet, as the book pirate says, no more than a few dollars for a DRM’d ebook, maybe a little more for a new release. And to stop downloading pirated books altogether?

I guess if every book was available in electronic format with no DRM for reasonable prices ($10 max for new/bestseller/omnibus, scaling downwards for popularity and value) it just wouldn’t be worth the time, effort, and risk to find, download, convert and load the book when the same thing could be accomplished with a single click on your Kindle.

Yet publishers want ebooks to be just the opposite: Strict DRM at higher prices. They are encouraging piracy. I have always maintained that piracy itself is not the problem, it is a symptom of the larger problem – not giving consumers what they want.

Downloading pirated ebooks is fast and easy

It’s probably no more difficult to download a pirated ebook than it is to buy one from Amazon or Sony (for example). With the right torrent software and a little practice, downloading a pirated ebook is simple and then one can convert the book to whatever format is needed to fit their device:

Since books are generally very small files, they can be downloaded in minutes. You can then convert the file using one of many applications, for instance Mobipocket Creator, to PRC or another format that works with your reader. You can then plug your Kindle into your computer and copy the file over. The entire process typically takes 5-10 minutes.

It’s almost a no-brainer for consumers to download a pirated ebook that they can’t find through the respective publisher. Or, if the publisher locks the ebook with ridiculous DRM and wants an equally ridiculous high price for the ebook, then consumers have more of a reason to pirate – no DRM and no cost.

In closing, I hope publishers are paying attention to what this particular book pirate is saying. They can learn a lot. I’m guessing most book pirates are like him, they don’t want to screw publishers over and would gladly buy a legal DRM-free copy for the right price.

Sure, their are pirates out their who get a kick out of getting everything for free and simply don’t care. Even if publishers offered a reasonable ebook at a good price, they’d still resort to pirating. But I’m sure they are in the minority.

For the record I have never downloaded a pirated ebook, nor have I uploaded a print book I have scanned. I’m not saying I’m morally superior to anyone. When there’s a book I want to read as an ebook and I either can’t find it through all the ebook stores online, or the price is outrageous (ie $20 + ), I have seriously considered.

Maybe one of these days I’ll do a video post showing just how easy it is to download a pirated book. But I make no promises.

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