Let’s face it, the new Apple iPad is one sexy little beast when you see it in Steve Jobs’s hands. Whether you actually need one or not is another question. I think it’s one of those gizmos that you only really lust after once you’ve picked the thing up and used it for a minute or so. Then you “get it”, and Steve Jobs’s Reality Distortion Field enfolds you in its deadly grip and slowly drags your credit card out of your wallet. As it happens, when my 12″ MacBook G4 eventually meets its end, I think an iPad (or whatever the equivalent is at that time) will be all I’ll need for entertainment, reference, mail and note-taking.
But what I am really interested in is the iBooks application and idea. Jobs shows us that the format is ePub (great news – a non-proprietary format which can have DRM added if you want it to, but doesn’t have to have it added) and that five major publishers have signed up. All good so far as it goes, and the way that Apple has integrated the reading and purchasing experiences is nothing short of what we would expect from those wonderful people who gave us the iPod.
Now, where does this leave us, the authors, and the independent publishers? Well, we don’t know how easy it’s going to be to sign up as an independent or, more to the point, whether we will be able to use the reading software to read books that are not on the iBooks store. At the moment, I can rip my own CDs and I can load them into iTunes. Will I be able to run my Pages documents through a converter (maybe a new export option within Pages and load them into my iPad? I can buy MP3s through eMusic and play them on my iPod – will I be able to do the same from Smashwords and Feedbooks? We don’t know yet.
Incidentally, the book reader looks cool. Way cool. Lots of eye candy, but I saw no annotation or sharing features enabled in the demo. Maybe they’re coming – I would actually be somewhat surprised if they were not. And is this Ray Kurzweil’s Blio that I wrote about earlier? Maybe. That would be the million books that he was talking about.
And where does this leave Amazon and B&N? Apple’s habit up to now has been to disallow (or at least discourage) apps that duplicate the built-in functionality of the Apple devices. So what happens to the Kindle and B&N and Stanza apps, etc.? Or does Apple just intend them to wither on the vine, as iBooks engulfs the universe? My guess, if Kindle achieves legality on the iPad, is that Amazon has just produced its last Kindle. It will leave hardware production to Apple, and concentrate on software products (development costs, production costs, support costs, etc. are lower, and quite honestly, who is really going to blow that sort of money on a bigger Kindle now Apple has sliced the beast off at the knees, even if the screen is bigger?). Even the nook, which is closer to the iPad than the Kindle ever has been (color, touchscreen, etc.) looks like a one-trick pony now. And the Japanese hardware manufacturers (Sony, Fujitsu, etc.) who often really still don’t “get” software as the key element of their products, are going to be frozen out of the market in the same way as they lost MP3 player market share to the iPod and iTunes.
So, if the iPad sells in even reasonable quantities (and I think it will), it’s going to be a gamechanger for digital books. Of course, that’s in the US. Japan doesn’t have the book arrangements yet. But then again, the iPod sold in large quantities here in Japan long before there was an iTunes store, and so will the iPad, if Apple opens up the Books application to allow non iStore books, and allows other retailers to put up their readers as applications and allow sales.
Ugh, I typed a lot on my phone, but got an error on the submit. What do I think it will do for ebooks? A lot. Recently a survey was published in Japan. They asked how much you’d pay for an ebook reader. 45% said under 5000 yen, another 36% said under 10,000. Less then 2% said over 20,000. Amazon’s smallest Kindle is $250US, so you see where the problem lies for them. Jobs was right a few years ago when he said bookreaders where dead. Just not enough people read anymore to justify the cost (and the books aren’t cheap enough to make it up unless you read a lot)
I’m thrilled to see Apple is using the ePub format and worried at the same time. It’s a standard format that others are using and converters already support. O’Reilly for example already has lot of books in ePub. One problem with it is that is lacks support for exact layout which many technical books can really use. Also a problem for things like comics which are well suited to the iPad. I wonder if they have something else in the works here, or if ePub does.
Compared to the Kindle, Apple is going to sell a lot more of these. A LOT. Prices will come down even more making them even more affordable. The files should pretty much be readable on a normal Mac, iPhone and I imagine PCs too. All through one store. Publishers should like it.
I don’t think the color screen should be underestimated. Being able to provide photos, video and audio is a huge win. Publishing just isn’t B&W printing anymore.
Lastly, Apple has made it easy to pay for content. Have you seen the crazy stuff you have to go through to sign up to a new site for a month? Do you really want to give them your credit card number for $5? or even $10? People have gotten so used to clicking and button, password and they have a new app/song/video. If the prices are right, they’ll do the same for publishing media too.
I could probably write pages, but I think Apple really hit the sweet spot with the iPad. The size/weight/price is just right. Software will make or break it and I hope some developers come back after getting frustrated with the App store. It’s going to take at least a year to see what the machine is capable of and how developers use it. It isn’t exactly what I hoped for. Start looking forward to iPhone OS 4.0 (maybe to be renamed?). I have a feeling there are going to be some nice upgrades there.
Charles, sorry you had to type it twice. Thanks for the thoughts – of course, PDFs could end up being the delivery platform for the tech books with precise content. I’m sure the PDF format could be tied into the iBookstore content management.
Gizmodo’s take on the iPad here: http://tinyurl.com/yd9ln2s
Some great stuff – look at these statistics:
“Guess how many Kindles are estimated to have been sold ever since the very first one launched? 2.5 million. Nobody knows for sure because Amazon won’t release the actual figures. Guess how many ebook readers are supposedly going to sell this year, according to Forrester? Roughly 6 million. In a year. Compare that to 21 million iPods sold last quarter, along with 9 million iPhones.
“I am not suggesting that the iPod or iPhone is a worthwhile replacement for reading, but I am saying that, for better or worse, there are probably at least 2.5 million iPod or iPhone users who read books on those devices.”
Bye-bye Kindle hardware?
I think it could have a very similar effect on book publishing that downloading (paid, free and pirated) has had on the music industry.
Presumably, Apple will eventually make deals with aggregators (self-publishers like Lulu and who knows) to carry their books, if it does not work directly with the authors themselves. Less well-known authors will have the opportunity to reach millions more people and some will find that they are now able to make a living at writing. In the meantime, some of the major-names might even turn to self-publishing as the need for major publisher marketing becomes less important.
On the other hand, musicians can also make money from concerts, which is why some give away their music generously.
Anyway, off to the library.
Sorry for the late reply. For some reason I can’t reply on the iPhone. Just hangs while trying to submit.
PDFs are great for printing, but horrible for on screen reading. Large borders, no text resize or reflow. The aspect ratio is different from most screens (tall vs wide). I’d like to see PDF used less rather than more. (For things that will be printed it’s great for review) The screen resolution/size on the iPad still isn’t big enough to really be able to read PDFs. Ideally screen needs to be the size of the paper it would be printed on. After adding the edges to the device it would be even larger.
Great comments on the kindle/ipod/iphone sales. I’ve been telling my friends here the same thing. I read books on my Palm V, iPod Touch and now I’m reading them on my iPhone. I’m sure I’m not the only one. For languages like Japanese the screen on the iPhone really isn’t a big problem.