Web users have been trained long enough to know what they want: everything.

That’s the promise of the web. Every book for sale at Amazon. Every search result visible on Google. Every auctioned item right there on eBay.

Not piracy. Availability.

...

Into this world walks the MPAA, the movie business and the folks who make books.

And once again, there’s the same mistake: they think piracy is the problem. It’s not. The problem is that these providers are doing nothing to embrace ubiquity, because their heritage is all about scarcity.

to paraphrase: By using [Apple's new iBooks Author] software, you agree that anything you make with it is in part ours. But if it can say that and have legal force, can’t it say anything? Isn’t this the equivalent of a car dealer trying to bind you to additional terms by sticking a contract in the glove compartment? By driving this car, you agree to get all your oil changes from Honda of Cupertino?

Apple, in this EULA, is claiming a right not just to its software, but to its software’s output. It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented. I’m sure it’s commonplace with enterprise software, but the difference is that those contracts are negotiated by corporate legal departments and signed the old-fashioned way, with pen and ink and penalties and termination clauses. A by-using-you-agree-to license that oh by the way asserts rights over a file format? Unheard of, in my experience.

When I make something myself, no matter what software I use to make it, then — assuming it doesn’t infringe any copyrights — it’s my right to distribute it however I want, in whatever format I choose, for free or not. I don’t lose the right to publish my novel if Microsoft determines that I wrote it using a pirated copy of Word. Would I lose that right if I tried to sell my iBook outside of the iBookstore and Apple got wind of it? I don’t know; we’re in uncharted waters here. Or how about this: for a moment I’ll stipulate that Apple’s EULA is valid and I’ve agreed to it implicitly by using the software. Now suppose I create an iBook and give it to someone else who has never downloaded iBooks Author and is not party to the EULA, and that person sells it on their own website. What happens now?

Also:

"Just as bothersome is the provision: '
(b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.'

Even if you want to sell it, and agree to sell it only through iBooks, if Apple doesn't like it they don't have to put it up for sale. And since you can't sell it anywhere else...."

http://venomousporridge.com/post/16126436616/ibooks-author-eula-audacity#comm...

even as the sales of e-books doubled from 10% of the overall market to 20% in 2011, print books still account for about 80% of the market

This USA Today article says that 'print books still account for about 80% of the market.' Wrong emphasis! The emphasis should be on 'ebooks already are 20% of the market and their market share doubled in just the past year alone.' Favor the momentum, not the decline...

The article also states that in the week after Christmas, for 42 of the top 50 titles the e-book editions were the most popular format.

If you look out five years and ask if there are going to be more bookstores or fewer bookstores, I think there will be fewer. Barnes & Noble is facing an uphill, structural industry headwind.

Readership of blogs is up infinity percent in the last decade (from zero), and online journals and magazines continue to gain in power and influence.

And there’s more unsettling stuff being read by readers of all ages. Books that question authority and force readers to consider deeply held beliefs. The words may have gotten shorter (along with the sentences), but there’s plenty of intellectual ruckus being made.

You could view this shift as the end of the world and a threat to how you publish, or you could view it as an opportunity and shift gears as quickly as you possibly can. Publish what people choose to read (at a price they want to pay), and odds are, they will choose to read it. There’s plenty of room for leadership and art here, but little room for stubborn intransigence.

What Amazon is doing is applying a technology industry mind-set to a very old business with lots of legacy infrastructure. Given how slowly publishers are changing their economic arrangements with writers, it is quite frankly like watching a hot knife cut through butter.

I don't think traditional publishers are too happy about that...

The share of adults in the United States who own an e-book reader doubled to 12% in May, 2011  from 6% in November 2010

Apple released the first iPad in April 2010

That was only 14 months ago. Look at what it's already done to a variety of different industries and our expectations about how we interact with information...

By 2015, twice as many people will own tablets as do ereaders. By the end of 2012, the number of people owning tablets will overtake the number of those owning ereaders, according to research by Forrester, a tech research company.

. . .

Already, the iPad is cutting into the ereader market at a rapid pace. While 47 percent of ereader owners in a November 2010 ChangeWave survey were Kindle owners, the number represents a rapid plunge from August, when 62 percent were. In the meantime, the iPad saw its share increase from 16 percent to 32 percent in the same period.

. . .

it’s not just about the book versus the screen anymore: It's about reconsidering what it means to read.

E-books currently make up around 11 percent of the total book market. The percentage of print book consumers who say they download e-books more than doubled between October 2010 and January 2011—from 5 percent to almost 13 percent.

In the UK, Amazon announced it had sold 242 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks since 1 April 2011. "Amazon.co.uk customers are choosing Kindle books more often than hardcovers at a rate of more than 2 to 1," said Gordon Willoughby, European director at Kindle. . . .

A spokesman for Amazon.co.uk said the figures included sales of hardback books where no Kindle edition was available, and did not include free Kindle downloads. . . .

The UK figures represent a quicker uptake of Kindle ebooks than Amazon saw in the US, although John Howells, spokesman for Waterstone's, said its own Waterstones.com ebook sales had outstripped hardbacks for "quite a while".

"For every hardback we sell online, we sell four ebooks online," Howells said.

Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.

a full 94 percent of iPad users and users of other tablet devices either prefer reading digital texts (52 percent) or find them as readable as printed texts (42 percent).

Contrasted with that were laptop users, a large portion of whom--47 percent--said they find reading texts on screen more difficult than reading paper. (The next-largest group among laptop users, 33 percent, said the experience was about equal to reading printed texts.)

The report, "Survey Analysis: Consumer Digital Reading Preferences Reveal the Exaggerated Death of Paper," surveyed more than 1,500 end users in the United States, the UK, Japan, India, Italy, and China in the fourth quarter of 2010. It found that the amount of time spent reading digital texts now nearly equals time spent reading printed materials.

Amazon announced a new feature for its Kindle e-reader called Library Lending, which will enable users to borrow e-books from more than 11,000 libraries in the U.S. The feature will launch later this year, and be available for all Kindle generations.

The competition for a Kindle book isn’t the hardcover. The competition is a game on the iPad or a movie from Netflix or a song playing on your Sonos. Pricing is about substitutions, and if we want books to avoid becoming a tiny niche, we need to price accordingly. There are more substitutes, and they are cheaper than ever before.

Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com. Last July we announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year, so this milestone has come even sooner than we expected – and it’s on top of continued growth in paperback sales.

2010 will end with $966m worth of e-books sold to consumers. By 2015 the industry will have nearly tripled to almost 3bn, a point at which Forrester said the industry will be 'forever altered'.

My No. 1 concern is the survival of the physical bookstore,” said Carolyn Reidy, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster. “We need that physical environment, because it’s still the place of discovery. People need to see books that they didn’t know they wanted.

Or they could utilize the various (and powerful) tools that exist online to foster serendipity and help people discover books. Nah...

Here's the new plan: Colleges require students to pay a course-materials fee, which would be used to buy e-books for all of them (whatever text the professor recommends, just as in the old model).

Why electronic copies? Well, they're far cheaper to produce than printed texts, making a bulk purchase more feasible. By ordering books by the hundreds or thousands, colleges can negotiate a much better rate than students were able to get on their own, even for used books. And publishers could eliminate the used-book market and reduce incentives for students to illegally download copies as well.

Of course those who wanted to read the textbook on paper could print out the electronic version or pay an additional fee to buy an old-fashioned copy - a book.

School districts - or, better yet, state departments of education - could do this too.

The mass market distribution systems that supported newspapers and books will die soon as a result. For traditional papers and books only have to shrink by 15 – 25% to make the economic burden of running the presses and the system too much. Once these systems have gone they will be gone for ever. New systems are emerging.

Russ Grandinetti, the vice president of Kindle content for Amazon, suggested that the publishers should lower their e-book prices in response to consumer complaints.

“Setting a price for a Kindle book that is higher than its print counterpart makes no sense,” Mr. Grandinetti said in a statement, although it was not clear who was the chicken and who the egg in this instance. “It’s bad for readers and authors, and is illogical given the cost savings of digital. We’ve seen publishers do this in a few cases, and we’ve been urging them to stop.”

Unless they're somehow ADDING value (e.g., multimedia) to the regular text...

Given that some e-readers can display books while connecting online, there’s a chance the erstwhile bookworm is already plugged into a conversation somewhere, said Paul Levinson, professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University.

“I think, historically, there has been a stigma attached to the bookworm, and that actually came from the not-untrue notion that, if you were reading, you weren’t socializing with other people,” Dr. Levinson said. “But the e-reader changes that also because e-readers are intrinsically connected to bigger systems.”

Amazon announced that sales of books for its popular Kindle reading device are far outpacing sales of hardcover books. The online retailer said that it's sold 143 Kindle e-books for every 100 hardcover books over the past three month. In the last four weeks, that figure has jumped to 180 e-books per every 100 hardcovers.

I saw a two-year old kid (in diapers, in a stroller), using an iPod Touch today. Not just looking at it, but browsing menus and interacting. This is a revolution, guys.

Traditional books are wonderful, but like my old IBM Selectric typewriter, they have their limits. Books haven’t really enjoyed a serious innovation update in a couple of centuries. What we love most about them are the language and ideas. The paper and bright covers are really no more than wrapping on a present. But that physical beauty is also a barrier. We can’t quickly or easily connect to other ideas and language. As great as books are, they are still a bit like my old IBM Selectric typewriter.

Apple is about to come out with what may be the biggest advance in reading since Guttenberg’s printing press. New York publishers and book chains have a lot to fear. But I see all sorts of possibilities for authors, educators, and companies. The gatekeepers are losing control, and books are about to be liberated.

You want to know the future of publishing? All you have to do is watch the kids. If teenagers love this new digital immersion model, there will be no turning back the page.

Jonathan Littman