I’ve been criminally negligent in not keeping up with the news in the past few weeks but real life intruded. We’ll have a similar black out at the end of the month here, but in the meantime, here’s some choice bits of ebook tech news:
- Barnes and Noble acquires Fictionwise for $15.7 million.
- Gaming industry foresees physical distribution disappearing in the near future. (ebooks anyone?)
- Allison Brennan expresses fear about the rise of ebooks given that piracy is destroying musicians. Unfortunately Brennan doesn’t see the real problem behind the music industries lack of response to Napster. It wasn’t the failure to educate, but the failure of the music industry to respond to the changing market and allowing one entity, Apple, to come in and dominate the void, creating a monolopy share of the digital download market (80%).
- More publishers are getting into the free ebook content game: F&W Media and Random House have created free content libraries.
- Stephen King’s Kindle exclusive, UR, has reached sales of five figures in three weeks.
- Gizmodo thinks that the Apple tablet isn’t likely and doesn’t make sense. SB Sarah reported that an Apple rep told her that there would be no Mac Mini (ala the Asus or HP Mini). How does that square with the recent rumors that Apple wants in on the ebook market?
- Asus showed off a prototype dual monitor laptop. Is this the answer for reluctant ebook readers?
- Not content to sell content, Hearst publishing is developing its own e Ink device that will deliver its content. Whee! Another closed system, I bet. Makes lots of sense. Not.
- Ebooks is the fastest growing category in the Apple Store. I bet some of that is due to the “Classics” app being featured in one of the iPhone television commercials but that the Kindle App will contribute to this number growing in the future.
I keep hearing the whole “pirating is destroying musicians” argument (and actually waiting for the, “…and eatin ur babeez, too!”). I wonder how much of that is digital music killing musicians, versus digital music killing all the leeches in the music industry feeding off musicians like promoters, packagers, distributors, sales reps, etc. After all, a musician’s ability to make music hasn’t been changed much by digitalization (in fact, musicians might be having an easier time of it with computing power for mixing and sampling, and lossless digital formats), but everyone else in “the system” of How Things Are Done is certainly having to rethink their usefulness when How Things Are Done is changing.
Ditto the book industry. My ability to write stories hasn’t changed from ten years ago to today…it’s everybody else involved in the process of delivering my stories to other people that’s changing.
Is there an actual industry study that supports this unfounded opinion?
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/h_ip01456.html
Yeah, I did not think so.
Uh, Jane, Apple does have a Mac mini. It does not, however, have a UMPC. (Not using the term netbook since Psion has it trademarked.)
@Ann Bruce: Yeah, I know, but that’s not what SB Sarah was referencing.
@Jane: I haven’t been to the SB’s site in a while, but I did understand you were referring to a UMPC. However, “Mac mini” was a little confusing at first glance.
“It wasn't the failure to educate, but the failure of the music industry to respond to the changing market and allowing one entity, Apple, to come in and dominate the void, creating a monolopy share of the digital download market (80%).”
I’ve wondered about that. The first law of evolution is to ‘Adapt or Die.’ There’s got to be a more effective way of dealing with the issue than ranting, because that might drive away honest readers as well as pirates.