1. There are lots of good mobile ereader applications out there: Stanza, Kindle, eReader, Kobo, not to mention dedicated readers like Nook and Kindle and the Sony Reader. Why do we need Ibis?

Ibis isn’t meant to compete with any of these. In fact we’re quite open about encouraging readers to take their books off Ibis Reader and put them on a preferred device. You can download a complete epub off the web site any time, and on the mobile devices we provide some quick “Read in Stanza” links on the iPhone (or Aldiko on Android).

What we hope to be able to do in the coming months is provide features that are only available on a web-native platform. Because everything is just a web page, and the code is common across all devices, we can roll out new features and fixes quicker than any of the above. We should be able to innovate as fast as the ideas come.

2. How does OPDS work with Ibis?

OPDS is critical to discovering and acquiring books in a mobile context where people don’t want to type and can’t upload their own books. At launch, we’ll use OPDS similar to the way Stanza and Aldiko do: we browse public catalogs of free content and let people get those books with just a click. The catalogs are always up to date and provide great metadata, covers, etc., all in a commonly-understood data format.

Eventually, of course, we’re interested in using OPDS to manage paid transactions, and we’ve got some other ideas about how OPDS can help people discover books outside of just browsing catalogs.

3. The big problem with mobile readers right now is availability of titles. How will Ibis users get access to new books?

We’re committed to a DRM-free approach, which we know is going to be tricky in terms of acquiring popular content. But there’s great literature and non-fiction being created outside of the traditional publishing industry. We’re still calling titles on Ibis Reader “books,” but in the digital space it doesn’t have to be a traditional book at all. We want to help readers and authors connect with all forms of writing — short stories, literary criticism, poetry, comics, even interactive fiction or video! It just has to be wrapped up in epub, and despite some anti-hype, epub is a great container for any content you want to distribute digitally.

4. Will people be able to buy books and read them on Ibis?

We sure hope so. For us, it’s critical that paid content be almost as frictionless as free content. Anyone who’s bought an ebook lately (outside of the Kindle hardware ecosystem) knows that it’s anything but straightforward to buy digital books. So we won’t go ahead until we’re happy with our approach.

5. Will publishers be able to sell books to Ibis users?

We’re definitely interested in talking to publishers who want to be able to sell direct-to-consumer. That’s been very successful for small to medium niche publishers.

6. What’s so great about HTML 5?

HTML5 has definitely been a wild ride. It’s got weaknesses for sure — Ibis Reader on a mobile device definitely isn’t as fast or as feature-filled as a native app, and Android doesn’t behave the same as the iPhone. There are limitations we’d love to be able to overcome. On the other hand, it’s a tremendous asset for a tiny company to have a cross-platform environment to work with, and adoption of HTML5 on devices and by consumers is only going to grow. It’s a good place to be even though it hasn’t been easy.

7. What is the relationship between ePub and HTML5?

Right now it’s uncertain. There’s definitely movement within the IDPF to make some kind of forward-looking statement about HTML5. In particular I think it’s critical that we adopt the <video> tag, to avoid unintentionally tying ePub to proprietary technologies like Flash. But HTML5 is more than just video and offline usage, and I don’t want ePub to stagnate.

8. What about DRM and Ibis?

Easy question. No DRM.

9. What do you think is the biggest challenge to for ebooks in the next few years?

Right now the fight is over pricing, but I think ease of purchase is the real barrier to consumer adoption. It’s so puzzling right now. People are going to be much more willing to pay publishers’ dream prices if they can just get the books with minimal hassle and have some of the same freedoms of use that print books have allowed.

10. What do you think about global markets for ebooks?

This is a huge area for us. I expect mobile reading and information access to be a key growth area for digital content globally, and in the developing world especially. The old publishing territorial rights models aren’t going to last long. I can’t think of a better way to ensure that ebook piracy becomes entrenched than a refusal to adopt worldwide rights for digital content sales. During Ibis development we’ve taken special care to make sure that we fully support non-English content and scripts.

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Find out more about Liza & Three Press Consulting, and go play with Ibis Reader!

Yet, as we’ve tried to illustrate numerous times before, the “investment” idea of publishing—that publishers buy the risk from authors in exchange for the reward—is exactly the economic model that is collapsing for publishers, with or without the threat of digital distribution. Makinson seems blind to the basic facts that his industry is facing a crisis of oversupply and too much risk. As publishers pull back from buying the rights to as many books as they try to husband their capital in fewer, more successful titles, they will open the door for new hits to be developed outside of their control.

Amazon’s new 70 percent royalty opens the door for enterprising authors—and authors are shockingly enterprising—to invest in themselves. If Makinson thinks this can’t or won’t happen, he should look at the last 20 years’ transformation of research and development in the U.S. economy. Corporations once accounted for the vast majority of new ideas and technology. But the venture capital revolution of the 1980s and 1990s created an entirely new economic landscape for the launch and creation of new products and technology.

Now companies find it more efficient and productive to buy established companies. Self-published authors have been doing a version of this for decades, too. Amazon and Apple (AAPL) are now making that much easier. Through a combination of forced circumstances and a desire to limit their exposure to failed book projects, publishers like Penguin will continue to chase the book projects that come with the most publicity attached, leaving the rest to self-fund through digital distribution. [more...]

Whoever won, ebook pricing is a hot, tough topic. I’ll guess this chess match isn’t over yet, so we’ll be watching this space.

But in the mean time, I must say, I like Macmillan’s stance on pricing: new releases between $12.99 and $14.99, and backlist ebooks as low as $5.99. To me, that $5.99 is the key number, and I think it might be very smart.

Price your new release ebooks high, along with hardcovers; and then drop below paperback when the book is no longer commands the cultural hype/attention.

This does a whole host of interesting things:

• it implicitly explains to people that what you pay for when you buy books is not the paper & print, or electrons, but the cultural value of the book itself
• it addresses the famous cannibalizing worry, so that your margins on ebook sales can be high enough, without pissing off your e-buyers
• it lets cheapskates like me (who already have a backlog of dozens of books) wait till prices get reasonable before buying

If I interpret Macmillan’s stance on Aamzon, the problem is that in the current pricing scheme, Amazon is setting prices:
a) so that Macmillan has no control over cashflows
b) so that Macmillan’s had no ability to convey messages about the value of books

(My knowledge of the ins and outs of book pricing are pretty sketchy, so apologies if I got that wrong).

But: as long as we see commitments to low backlist ebook prices, I think this is a win for readers, as well as writers, and publishers. Amazon, I’m not so sure.

If it turns out, based on solid evidence, that DRM is better for the business of publishing, I’ll change my mind (though I will grumble about it).

But right now the debate around DRM is couched in moral rhetoric (DRM is fascist!! vs. You are all thieves!!!), and sensationalized balderdash (piracy = $3 billion in lost sales!!! gasp!), and I look forward to the day when that is behind us.

Darwin has decreed that eventually it’ll all shake out: those who choose the “right” business models will survive; those that don’t will fail.

And that’s why I think it’s important to look at good evidence when making these decisions: it’s critical for survival.

If all goes well, there will be more and more good evidence out there in the next year or two, so that publishers and other businesses can make informed decisions.

Right now I’m confident in my own hypothesis, because of the evidence out there, as well as certain moral leanings. We’ll see how it all plays out; and I will gladly change my mind when compelling evidence suggests I should.

But I’ll bet you any DRM-free ebook you care to choose that my hypothesis is right.

Companies that sell textbooks to California universities must offer electronic versions by 2020, under a new state law…

The law, Senate Bill 48, says any individual or company selling textbooks to the University of California, California State University or private colleges must make them available electronically by 2020, “to the extent practicable.” Sen. Elaine Alquist, D-San Jose, authored the law, saying digital textbooks are the future of the market and can significantly reduce costs for students. [more...]

[via The Cite]

I started off 2009 with a trip to London, to attend BookCampUK – an unconference about books. While there were big rumblings of fear and hand-wringing about the arrival of the digital age in the publishing world, BookCamp was a great start to the year: a group of publishers, technotypes, writrers and book-lovers collecting in one place for some open discussions about the future of books. I left more enthused about books than ever, and promptly started organizing BookCampToronto, leading into another group of West-coasters putting together BookCampVancouver.

By March, the rate of change in the business had become positively dizzying. At BookNet Canada’s Tech Forum, Neelan Choksi, of the beautiful iphone ereader Stanza, presented a slide listing all the major announcements in the ebook space in the first three months of 2009 (Amazon’s new Kindle, Google Book Search, Indigo’s Shortcovers which has since become Kobo, and on and on). By there end of 2009, there would be no font small enough to allow all the significant announcements in publishing and digital to fit on one slide.

So, where are we, and more importantly, where are we going? …[more...]

[link]

At the end of 2009 Shortcovers changed into Kobo (one presumes to better capture the international market?):

We have changed our name from Shortcovers to Kobo. Kobo is an anagram of the word “book” and we think that it is a name that will appeal to readers around the world….plus we think it’s a catchy name!

We’ve also updated our web experience (http://www.kobobooks.com and mobile apps. If you are a Shortcovers customer, your account, password, library, profile – all remain the same…

So Coming Soon, we’ll be adding:
Over 1.8 million free eBooks from the Internet Archive!
New apps for smartphones, and the desktop (PC & MAC)
New supported devices…
More books from publishers around the world and the ability to buy in your local currency

Our objective with all of these changes is to give you, our valued customer, the ability to read ebooks anytime, anyplace, on the device of your choice. We hope you love our updated look and feel, new features and apps. There is more to come soon!” [more...]

I’ve always like the Shortcovers approach: get books to the devices people have (rather than building a new device for readers). It makes a lot of sense to me.

Good luck.

It’s:

A revolutionary online Bible that enables community and collaboration like never before. Organize important content; share thoughts, links and videos; and collaborate with others.

There is a quite great mobile app app as well – for the iphone/blackberry/android etc.

So:
- You can comment on any verse of the bible at their website or from your phone
- All those commentaries are synced across all devices
- You can choose from 22 different translations

There appears to be more stuff, of the social network variety.

I’m pretty sure this the the best implementation of community annotation of a text yet. Read more about it, or check their blog.

Frankly this is leaps & bounds ahead of anything else I’ve seen – though maybe I’ve been sheltered?

Oh, here is a video. They’re on the ball, these Christians:

Mike argues for, and I am with him all the way, a digital book where every word/sentence is associated with metadata.

All of this hidden information — exploded out like that, made explicit — turns an ebook from a dumb object into a smart object.

Further, it’s then possible to associate it with other such objects in ways that are not currently possible. It would enable queries such as these:

Show me all mystery fiction books set in Los Angeles in the year 1945.

Show me all romance fiction books set in Maine in the year 2009.

Show me all fiction books set on Mars in any fictional year, published between 1940 and 1960.
…

It seems to me that the challenge is to make it easy to build this new layer “on top” of a book (epub or whatever digital format).

Maybe: (e)book as API.

That is, the book itself – epub or whatever – maintains its essential bookish quality, but we “allow” the building of a new layer of metadata/multimedia etc on top of the “book itself”. Wikipedia with increasingly semantic mark-up is a nice analogy – where you have the “electronic encyclopedia” that 99% of the people *just read* but behind it you have oodles of metadata in addition to discussion in addition to a history.

More from Mike:

This would open up book discovery in a way that’s just not possible with today’s crude and coarse methods. It would enable scholarship that has been impossible. It would give eBooks more possibilities than anyone today can envision — or should try to envision….

With such exploded data, an eBook is not just an eBook — it becomes a ticket for admission to a vast collection of databased information.

An eBook becomes a local terminal connected to a growing and living cloud of associated information, with meanings and implications no publisher or writer can currently imagine. It lets the reader make those connections. It’s an eBook that can do something.

and:

Print publishing freezes information into a static object — an object that dies a little with each passing day. An object that stands alone, disconnected, unable to do anything.

and:

It’d no longer be a flat, linear collection of words. Dimensions have been added to it that breathe and grow. The eBook price –again — becomes a ticket. People are no longer buying an object — they are also buying into an ongoing experience.

But, there’s a whole host of missing names, so here is my list of:

“15 Other Twitterers I Follow for Insight about the Future of Publishing.”

I’m missing some more names for sure, but these are a great start. Also, an up-front disclosure: I’ve gotten to know, and like, many of these Twitterers over the past year. I’ve even met a few of them in person.

The List

@jafurtado: The Human News Feed. José Afonso Furtado, Portuguese university prof and Director of the Gulbenkian Foundation, has been called the “Associated Press” of digital books. His twitter stream catches just about every major event, announcement, and interesting blog post about the future of publishing before anyone else. Essential reading for anyone wanting to keep tabs on new developments in digital and books.

@booksquare: Defender of the Reader. Kassia Krozser writes the BookSquare blog, and is a passionate defender of “the reader” in the debates about the future of books. She was one corner of the sadly-demised Quartet Press. Not sure what she’ll be up to next, but she’s always worth reading, if only to remind everyone in publishing that in the end, it’s the readers who matter most.

@eoinpurcell: The Small Publisher: Eoin Purcell is a driving force behind digital publishing in Ireland, and a and thoughtful blogger about the changes as seen from the inside of the industry.

@liza: The Queen of epub: Liza Daly is doing more interesting work in pushing the future of books than just about anyone I know.

@andrewsavikas: Vice President of the Future, Now: Andrew Savikas is the VP of Digital at O’Reilly Media, the most digitally innovative publisher in the world (followed by Harlequin). Andrew preaches the successful future of digital, from the perspective of the “canary in the coal mine:” O’Reilly looks now like most (surviving) publishing houses will look in ten years, and many of the questions we all have are being answered as we speak by Andrew and the folks at O’Reilly.

@mdash: The Off-Centre Thinker: Mark Bertils is a Toronto blogger who continues to write some of the most incisive posts about what publishing will look like in the next decade. Mark always seems to come from a fresh angle, and poses questions no one else seems to be asking.

@jane_l: The Romance Reader: Jane Little ostensibly reviews romance novels on her blog, but like many romance readers, she is deeply engaged with technology. Connecting readers to writers is what publishers ought to do; new technologies help them do it; and Jane is a prolific advocate for doing just that.

@katmeyer: The Perfect Hostess: If Mike Cane is the crazy uncle, Kat Meyer is the perfect hostess guiding you through the future of books. Another corner of the missed-before-it-arrived Quartet, Kat’s mission is connecting readers, publishers and writers together, and finding new ways to use the web to do it.

@brianoleary: He Who Knoweth What DRM Hath Wrought: Brian O’Leary seems to be the only guy in the universe who has asked, and tried to answer that all-important question: “Well, what is the impact of DRM?” He didn’t just start writing moralist screeds – as everyone else on either side of the question seems to do – he actually studied empirical data. But is anyone listening? Not yet, it seems. But it ain’t all Digital Rights Management & data with Brian: he’s also among the more entertaining pub-mates in the digital book game.

@danwagstaff: The Book Fetishist: Dan Wagstaff, of Canadian book distributor Raincoast Books, has one of the prettiest blogs about books: Casual Optimist. He occasionally takes to task the self-anointed digital punditry (me included) for not being sufficiently knowledgeable about the actual constraints of running a small publishing house.

@stml: The Mad Genius: Brit James Bridle should be celebrated high-and-low for his brilliant experimentations in the future of publishing, but he seems to fly under the radar of the mainstream. James is behind such initiatives as: Bookkake, Bkkeepr, BookSeer, BookCampLondon, the first Tweet Book.

@naypinya: The Radical Librarian: Peter Brantley, Director of the Internet Archive, is the best kind of librarian: he defends access above all else, embracing technology as a means for people to get, and interact with text in new ways. He’s also picked a public fight with Google’s book project, arguing in favour of what might be called the bookish public option. Some call him “the most powerful man in publishing.”

@ljndawson: The Trusted Advisor: Laura Dawson, a consultant who works with writers, publishers, big companies, and little guys. She seems to get just about everything going on in publishing.

@mtamblyn: The BookSeller: Michael Tamblyn, is VP of Sales and Shortcovers, a digital book reading platform and bookstore (owned by Canada’s big retailer, Indigo). Always thoughtful and energetic, and you have to cheer for the little guy, eh, in the context of the big gorilla in the digital book retail space.

@anjelajames: The Editor: Angela James is an editor who is “passionate about digital publishing.” That just about sums it up.

So, that’s 15 more that I suggest you follow. How about you? Who are your 15? (Or 5 or 10?).