In a publishing discussion forum I participate in, a friend recently posted her concerns over a recent announcement regarding exclusive content for the Amazon Kindle:

An article in today's New York Times announced that the Atlantic will sell some short stories exclusively on Kindle… This concept bothers me for a couple of reasons. First, the Kindle seems to be the most restrictive of the e-readers… Second, selling a short story exclusively to the Kindle is essentially creating a work that only a privileged few can ever read.

She's right that the Kindle is more restrictive than other readers, but not by much. The only advantage Sony's e-reader has over it in format compatibility is in its support of ePub files, for example. Wikipedia has a handy chart that compares all the hardware's compatibilities.

As for why anyone would choose to make their content available on only the Kindle, check out this table of who owns the e-book market: a quarter of all e-book readers are Amazon Kindles. That's twenty-five times greater than the Sony eBook Reader, and many more times still than the unproven nook. If the Atlantic wants maximum exposure for their content, it makes sense to go with the market leader. (And it's possible Amazon offered them some strong incentives to provide this exclusive content — something e-publishing fledgling B&N couldn't afford while investing in launching their own product.)

However, though there's something to be said for getting in on the ground floor, I think it's too early to be pledging allegiances just yet. It was just last year that early adopters of the HD-DVD format found themselves orphaned in the face of Blu Ray's victory, as this comic strip recently reminded me, for example. How many of today's e-readers will soon be similarly unsupported? The Atlantic may see the potential in taking a risk with a particular product, but I'm more than happy to wait this one out, and then through my weight behind a sure thing.

If e-books were a technology that needed my support to survive — so many people skipped the Sega Dreamcast in favor of its eventual successor that there was never the sales to warrant a successor — then I would be less hesitant. But given the nook's overwhelming presales, I don't think electronic publishing's pioneers will suffer for my economical patience.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story about how Wikipedia is losing editors faster than it's recruiting them. There are a variety of proposed reasons for this exodus. Some are content-driven, such as many essential entries having already been written, thus requiring fewer contributors than when the site was founded. But many reasons are bureaucratic:

"Wikipedia is becoming a more hostile environment," contends Mr. Ortega, a project manager at Libresoft, a research group at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. "Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again."

Mr. Ortega is not alone in identifying the trials and tribulations inherent in Wikipedia's open source nature. Digital historian Jason Scott (based in nearby Waltham, Mass.) has often criticized Wikipedia not for the accuracy of its final product, but for the system by which that product is developed:

This is what I mean; you have a brick house that, from a distance, looks decently enough like a house that people say "see, community building works". But what isn't obvious on the surface is how many times those bricks have been pulled apart, reassembled, replaced, shifted, modified, and otherwise fiddled with for no good reason other than battling an endless army of righteous untrained bricklayers who decided to put a window there… no, there… wait, no window at all. If you declare the final brick house a "victory" while ignoring the astounding toll of human labor required to get it so, then you are not understanding why I consider Wikipedia a failure.

Scott's essay was posted in May 2005; now, in light of the Wall Street Journal's report, it seems as much diagnostic as prognostic. Wikipedia is consulted by professionals, academics, and the curious worldwide, but the value derived by its visitors may not justify the overwhelming energy and exhaustion that powers its content's formative stages.

The issue calls into question the value of crowdsourcing, which is intended to take advantage of the diversity, expertise, and sheer quantity of the masses. But to tame that plurality, Wikipedia has devised standards that could be contributing to the problem, says the WSJ:

… Wikipedia, one of the world's largest crowdsourcing initiatives, is becoming less freewheeling and more like the organizations it set out to replace. Today, its rules are spelled out across hundreds of Web pages. Increasingly, newcomers who try to edit are informed that they have unwittingly broken a rule — and find their edits deleted, according to a study by researchers at Xerox Corp.

Take a look at the Wikipedia editors' manual and you'll see the problem: twenty-one grueling chapters from which to learn about the database's style, format, and purpose. Such rules are typical of a professional publication whose staff have been trained and compensated for learning and applying such guidelines, but there is little incentive for a drive-by contributor to dedicate herself to memorizing the manual. Perhaps those organizations that Wikipedia set out to replace existed for a reason — one that, in the move from print media to digital, we've forgotten, leading to mass layoffs of copyeditors and other quality control staff. Wikipedia's current straits may signal a return to those more expensive but more authoritative sources.

Despite these issues, Wikipedia is still seen by many as a definitive reference, with a 20% growth in site traffic in the last twelve months. Wikipedia's founders feel they can continue to grow its content with a smaller core of contributors, and they are also rolling out a redesigned interface that they theorize will be more welcoming to newcomers.

Of course, none of these problems or solutions address the observation some have made that Wikipedia is a valuable source for nothing that matters. As the WSJ reports, "By [Wikipedia's] own internal grading standards, the article on Louis Pasteur, one of the founders of microbiology … is lower in quality than its article on James T. Kirk, the fictional Star Trek captain."

It's been an interesting last week for e-readers.

First, the Barnes & Noble Nook, due in stores November 30th, is enjoying such great demand that, unless you preordered one, your order will not be fulfilled until 2010. I expect demo units will still be available in retail outlets, as I doubt B&N would miss the opportunity to market to the 2009 holiday crowds, thus generating even more sales for 2010.

Then, as a response to growing competition, the Kindle got a firmware update that offers better battery life, PDF compatibility, and easier landscape orientation. However, just like Amazon's removal of 1984 from some readers' Kindles, this update was pushed automatically to users, leaving them to wonder: who's really in charge of their e-readers?

And, despite all these advances, here are eight reasons e-readers could fail:

1. Price of devices
2. Price of e-books
3. Smartphones
4. Apple's rumored tablet computer
5. Popular authors aren't sure about e-books
6. Digital rights
7. Open publishing standards, or not?
8. Librarians and small bookstores

In evidence of #5, last week I attended a book signing by fantasy author R.A. Salvatore. As we discussed the unknown future of the publishing industry, he offered his own anecdote: Vector Prime, his only Star Wars novel and the one that infamously killed Chewbacca, sold 145,000 copies in hardcover and 500,000 in paperback. The title's e-book sales to date? 147. There are no zeroes after that — Vector Prime has sold under two hundred digital copies.

Despite these experiences, I don't think it's likely e-books will fail. As the technology progresses to offer a more pleasant user experience, and prices drop to more affordable levels, we may see e-readers become as commonplace as Star Trek's PADDs. But, as with the rest of Gene Roddenberry's vision for the future, we're still a long ways off.

The move to an electronic format holds many potential ramifications for literature. Is it the same content in a different medium? Or does the move from text to hypertext offer more possibilities for storytelling?

When I was a kid, I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books. These young adult novels were interactive, giving the reader control over the main character's actions by offering branching paths. Do you follow the forest's beaten path, or forge your own? Do you fight the giant lizard, or do you run away? The page you flip to next is determined by your choices.

Interactive fiction is well-suited to hypertext, with each choice becoming a link to a new Web page. Using this format, Choose Your Own Adventure-style games have become playable in such digital venues as a Web browser or even the Xbox 360. So why not the Kindle?

ChooseCo, the company behind the original Choose Your Own Adventure brand, has also recognized this opportunity and is bringing their series of novels to Amazon's e-book reader. House of Danger is currently a free title, with additional CYOA books selling for $6.99, roughly the same price as the print edition.

Rather than try to change the definition of what a book is by adding multimedia or other gimmicks, ChooseCo is taking advantage of the native capabilities of both hardcopy and digital formats by offering their books as they were meant to be read, only better. This is the best example I've found of the possibilities of e-books.

What other possibilities do you see for e-book readers like the Kindle to change how books are presented and read?

(Hat tip to Jason Scott)

A modern book launch requires a media blitz that includes a Web site, a blog, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more. What happens when an author dedicated solely to his craft is expected to handle such technological promotions? Observe one such case in the video "Book launch 2.0":

Hat tip to Tracy Mayor.

Copyeditors are essential to quality publishing, yet the economy and advances in technology have made them vulnerable. Many organizations' management philosophy is that the advent of online publishing offers the opportunity for errors to be corrected post-publication. Those copyeditors who remain in the industry often prioritize stories that are destined for print editions, which do not have that luxury.

The ability to improve something even after its mass market distribution has both pros and cons. On the positive side, there is no longer a deadline to a product's evolution; it can be improved indefinitely, eliminating a penalty against early adopters. It is also affordable for the publisher, who can issue updates without a costly reprinting.

However, it also lowers the standard at which a product ships. Does it have a few typos or unchecked facts? That's no longer a reason to miss a shipping deadline; such trivial details can be attended to once sales warrant it.

We've already seen this trend with video games. Twenty years ago, games shipped on physical, immutable cartridges; any defects would require an expensive recall, which was a powerful incentive to get it right the first time. By contrast in today's age of digital media, consumers don't think twice about their Xbox asking them, "Would you like to download the update to your purchase?"

I expect something similar will happen with books. Once these publications move to an electronic format, readers will become copyeditors, reporting typos to the publisher, who can then correct them remotely. It won't be long before Stephenie Meyer fans have to update their e-books to Twilight v1.1.

What do you think? Does the transition from a static medium to a dynamic one bode well or ill for the quality of our literature? And is that because e-books may eliminate more than just the retailer and distributor from the publication process?

A benefit of e-books is the lack of returns, benefitting publishers who have often contended with the fluidity and impermanency of books shipped versus books sold. But the current technology of e-books is such that the reselling of books is also eliminated. With no physical product, customers have nothing to trade or sell secondhand. This isn't true of all digital media: iTunes Plus tracks have no digital rights management (DRM) and thus can be traded or sold (or copied) freely. But I suspect e-books will be bound to the device to which they are sold, leaving them forever locked to their original buyer.

This must be a bookseller's dream, as it means every copy read is another copy sold. No more will used bookstores or library donations cut into the potential to sell directly to new readers. In some industries, such as electronic entertainment, the used market is seen as the bane of publishers, and even some retailers aren't fond of it. As long as four years ago, Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, wrote to some affiliate publishers: "If your aggressive promotion of used book sales becomes popular among Amazon's customers, this service will cut significantly into sales of new titles, directly harming authors and publishers."

But is that an informed opinion? A 2005 academic paper entitled "Internet Exchanges for Used Books: An Empirical Analysis of Product Cannibalization and Welfare Impact" suggests that used books are valuable to the sales of new books:

Our analysis suggests that used books are poor substitutes for new books for most of Amazon's customers. … Only 16% of used book sales at Amazon cannibalize new book purchases. The remaining 84% of used book sales apparently would not have occurred at Amazon's new book prices. … This increase in book readership from Amazon's used book marketplace increases consumer surplus by approximately $67.21 million annually. This increase in consumer surplus, together with an estimated $45.05 million loss in publisher welfare and a $65.76 million increase in Amazon's profits, leads to an increase in total welfare to society of approximately $87.92 million annually from the introduction of used book markets at Amazon.com.

E-books are often cheaper than physical books, though, and they don't deteriorate like printed goods. So is the used books model even applicable to digital media? Either way, are publishers and retailers truly doing themselves a favor by eliminating the secondhand life of e-books?

(Hat tip to TechDirt)

With a touch interface, accelerometers, and an online store that boasts over 100,000 apps, the Apple iPhone is fast becoming a mobile gaming device to compete with the likes of the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.

But despite the App Store's "games" category enjoying more new releases than any other category in the last year, in September and October 2009, the most popular genre of new app published was book-related. Specifically, "In October, one out of every five new apps launching in the iPhone has been a book… The sharp rise in e-book activity on the iPhone indicates that Apple is positioned [to] take market share from the Amazon Kindle as it did from the Nintendo DS." (This may not be significant data, however, as many of the book apps are duplicates of public domain novels. For example, there are over 30 apps that offer Sun Tzu's The Art of War.)

The trend toward smartphones as e-readers may have already begun. Publishers Weekly recently printed a chart of who owns the e-book market. The iPhone and iPod together have captured 22%, which makes it the second most popular e-book reader, behind only the Kindle itself. It also makes Apple's product line 22 times more popular than the Sony eBook Reader.

Are Amazon and Barnes & Noble approaching the market the wrong way by hawking dedicated e-book readers? Why spend $259 on a Kindle when you can get a multipurpose iPhone 3G for $99?