TheBookseller.com reports that United Kingdom retail outlet Waterstone’s, which started carrying the Sony Reader in 2008, has announced it plans to stock wireless-capable, and eventually 3G-capable, e-book readers in the near future. Like the Sony Readers, the new devices will have a link to Waterstone’s own e-book store. However, there is no word yet on whether these new devices will also be made by Sony or come from another manufacturer.
Barron’s “Tech Trader Daily” blog reports that a Piper Jaffray analyst is calling for Amazon to drop the price of the Kindle to $149 to better compete with the seductive wiles of the iPad. He also advises Amazon to stick to e-books and magazines rather than trying to compete directly with the iPad. Of course, there is no mention of the fact that an iPad sale will potentially be a Kindle sale, too, thanks to the forthcoming iPad Kindle Reader app. And speaking of which…
The Wall Street Journal reports on the iPad’s potential effects on sales of the Kindle and Kindle e-books. There’s not much here that TeleReaders don’t already know; it talks about Amazon’s plan to put a Kindle app on the iPad, and compares Apple’s 60,000-title library to Amazon’s 450,000-title one. Still, it’s good to see prestigious papers note that the situation is not necessarily iPad versus Kindle, but rather iPad with Kindle. (Assuming Apple approves the Kindle app, anyway.)
Kobo has posted some videos of its new e-book reader products on its YouTube channel. Included are a 30-second teaser for the hardware reader, a 1:31 demo showing how the Kobo hardware reader works (embedded below), and a 1:23 demonstration of the Kobo Reader app for the iPad. Interesting stuff.
Perhaps most interestingly, the Kobo hardware reader uses e-ink, but page turns are depicted in the demo without the trademark e-ink screen flash. Did Kobo lose the flash, or were they just simulating the page turns to make the video look nicer?
While searching for the Kobo videos, I ran across the following video by erotica author Euftis Emery, complaining about changes Smashwords insisted he make to his material. Emery said that after submitting his books, he was told by Smashwords to remove his in-book illustrations, and also to change the covers because they were potentially offensive.
Emery noted that the printed versions of his books were already being carried by Amazon and Barnes & Noble with the covers and illustrations intact. He feels that as a distributor rather than a publisher, Smashwords should not have any say over an author’s content.
Because Smashwords currently represents the only way for independent writers onto the Barnes & Noble and Sony e-book stores, Emery made the changes—but he is not happy about having to maintain two separate versions of his works for e-publication.
“(Assuming Apple approves the Kindle app, anyway.)”
The new Kindle iPad app is now in the App Store as of Friday evening so I assume Apple has approved it 🙂
“He feels that as a distributor rather than a publisher, Smashwords should not have any say over an author’s content.”
Although I can’t comment on that particular case, I have the same concern about Smashwords. I went through a long e-mail conversation with the owner of Smashwords to determine (in an abstract manner, because I wasn’t asking Mark Coker to actually vet my e-books) whether my romance stories – which had already been published at Amazon and Lulu for two years – would violate the terms of Smashwords’s content policy, which is more restrictive than the content policy of any major distributor I know of. (Skip down to “policy” on the FAQ page). So many novels (romance, crime thrillers, literary fiction, etc.) deal with the topic of evil behavior by villains – or, in the case of many of my novels, past evil behavior by repentant villains – that I couldn’t imagine I was the only novelist who was worried about the wording of the policy.
Mr. Coker was very attentive to what I had to say, and I was satisfied with the outcome of our conversation, but I think it’s a bad idea for a distributor to go beyond whatever content restrictions are necessary for legal reasons or are necessary for dealing with retailers. I think Smashwords could easily deal with the legal issues simply by requiring that authors/publishers adhere to the terms of service.
As you note, Smashwords is currently the only distributor to certain major retailers makes, so this issue is a matter of concern to me, in terms of how it will affect other authors. I would like to see Smashwords refine the wording of its content policy, because in most respects that I’ve seen so far, Smashwords is a well-run business.
I’ll readily admit that I come to this discussion more ignorant than informed. I don’t know exactly what the illustrations are or what the covers look like. I might very well find them offensive. But if I do, I won’t buy the books.
Smashwords can refuse to carry any content it finds objectionable. But as a consumer, I can choose to buy content from a distributor that censors work and gives me a version that passes through whatever committee decides what is objectionable and what is not, or I can find a distributor that doesn’t set itself up as the arbiter of what I can read.
Guess which one I’ll choose.