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Emerging cult author Nick Harkaway muses on ebook pricing. Accurate and punchy. "So I find myself looking at the ten dollar eBooks and thinking: huh. That cannot possibly cover everyone’s costs."
Ebooks in Africa: 2
Posted by
15 June, 2009
Posted in General, Publishing
After writing about the general landscape of digital publishing in South Africa a few weeks ago, I thought it was time to look at some of the specifics. There is a lot of cool stuff going on out there that deserves more attention. Here are some highlights:
- Arthur Goldstuck is something of a web celebrity out in SA. He heads World Wide Worx, a company engaged in web research which leads of the field on the Continent. As an advocate for increasing the much needed bandwidth going into the country Goldstuck is second to none. The web needs people like Arthur to be making the case for it in the face of many competing demands for investment.
- In the absence of a major corporate books channel a young American entrepreneur Ben Williams set up books.co.za. This is an all round books portal, being something of a news service, blog, retailer, reviews hub and all encompassing literary destination website. In the UK there is no comparable website. Sites like Bookbrunch and Book2Book are too industry focused, while other books blogs are more personal and less plugged in to the latest news, focusing on reviews. A one stop site that is plugged into all the de rigeur social media channels would be fantastic. Books.co.za also comes with a business model beyond the obligatory advertising- it is aggressively plugged into retailers affiliate programs and never misses an opportunity to sell.
- SA has it’s own version of Lulu, Crink. Other than the localisation I couldn’t off the top of my head list any differences or advantages over Lulu. However from the demo I remember a slick looking interface and a well thought out process.
- Electric Book Works is the kind of company you can’t help but love. Not only is it’s founder Arthur Attwell a seriously good guy, but it’s the kind of clever, agile and cool business that makes digital publishing a fun area to be in. They offer various ebook services and are doing some great bespoke digital work for, amongst others, healthcare charities. This is a great example of how publishing digitally can accrue benefits in cost, access and exposure not open to traditional forms of print publishing. Check out the informative twitter stream for some great nuggets.
- Pharos is a major publisher of dictionaries, and has just put the authoritative Afrikaans dictionary onto mobile. As mentioned previously, given the importance of mobile this is crucial- rather than create web platforms, it makes sense for Pharos to go straight to mobile with a mobile optimised experience.
- Founded by Pieter Traut and Bertus Preller digiwords is a digital services company behind the Pharos dictionary, and various other projects, like cellbook and esplash. While I haven’t properly checked them out, their websites look professional and sharp. Preller is also co-founder of Christmobile, a powerful example of the Christian digital trend that is pioneering ebooks amongst South African readers.
- Pan Mac SA publish this brilliant book about trends, from super smooth agency Flux Trends. Book, agency and founder Dion Chang are all a classy act, that brilliantly entwines an analysis of global trends to local issues. If anything illustrates the ways in which SA converges and departs from the North America or Europe this is it.
- Lastly, but by no means leastly, I should highlight some of the work being done by New Holland Publishing. Their map imprints have been pushing the boundaries of what a map publisher is even as the cartographic industry has taken a shake up that makes the music industries ride look a boating trip on the Serpentine. They too have been active on the Christian front with Struik Christian Media- this is truly multimedia publishing. They are also on the cutting edge of mobile content and ebook content, so are helping to forge the space in Southern Africa.
There is then a huge variety of work taking place. For me it only goes to show how broad and deep the changes in our industry are- wherever you are in the world, people are out there doing interesting things, making change and innovation happen, creating a new wave of publishing for a new generation of readers across the planet.
Pictures (CC licence)
Cape Town Waterfront by slack12
Cape Town by Night by mrhappy
Friday Entertainment: Everything is Amazing, Nobody is Happy
Posted by
5 June, 2009
Posted in General
Via Mark Seabrook of New Holland Publishing. This clip will resonate with anyone involved in digital publishing…
Cool-er e-reader
Posted by
2 June, 2009
Posted in General, Reading devices
Nick sent me a link to the COOL-ER reader, and I have to say I’m impressed. Somehow the launch of a totally new, and if I may say so, totally sexy, device passed me by. This is launching at BEA right now and is available for pre-order in the UK, shipping later this month. They have also got an ebook store ready to launch in the States, with up to 700k titles (so they claim).
In terms of functionality it doesn’t seem to go beyond the Sony- no touch screen, no colour, no wireless. In some ways this might put it a a disadvantage against the Kindle, but on its side it has the most iPod-esque design of any ereader yet, ADE compatibility, lightness (45% lighter than others apparently) and, from our perspective at least, availability in the UK.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I think ebook readers will only take off in a mass way once they are seriously desirable devices. These are, and hence form an important step. Activity around devices is hotting up. With the recent announcement that Amazon and the newly bought E-Ink corp are working hard at developing colour e-ink screens, the staturation point for ereading devices inches closer.
Repeated for the nth time: it’s not about an iPod moment, it’s about iPod moments plural. And I think this might just be one.
Count Me In
Posted by
1 June, 2009
Posted in Publishing, Twitter
Boyd Tonkin’s article in the Independent argues that the #wossybookclub is a distraction from what books are all about. Many readers I’m sure agree; Twitter, blogging and all the rest of it might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
However I think there is something to be said for it. Jon Ronson was very positive and we got an extremely enthusiastic response from readers.
Firstly a clarification. We gave free web access, for a limited period, not a download. This meant that you could link to specific pages relevant to the discussion. We felt this was better for online reading groups because you can’t do this with a download and there was no danger that the work would be pirated.
The argument here is basically that all of this Twitter stuff is a distraction from the real business of publishing, that publishers should be less beholden to trends. Rather than following, publishers should be setting the agenda. We really couldn’t agree more with that sentiment, but believe that engaging with new forms of communication is the best way of doing it.
All of us want a vibrant future for reading, and we hope to be wherever that is.
Ebooks in Africa: 1
Posted by
28 May, 2009
Posted in General, eBooks
Recently I had the pleasure of going to South Africa, and whilst there attended a conference in Joburg on how digital books are impacting publishing, and what kind of changes and strategic decisions need to be effected as a result. In this post I’ll talk generally about the situation out there and in a follow up post I will highlight some of the initiatives I came across.
The conference so easily could have been the same old thing we have all been hearing about for the past couple of years, but was added with a fresh set of challenges that mean ebooks and digital publishing in South Africa, and indeed the continent as a whole, are likely to be substantially different than in the UK.
There are two main challenges. Firstly is the low level of bandwidth in the country as a whole. The low capacity of the data cables in and out of SA creates expensive and slow broadband, which in turn has meant broadband penetration is slight. In the first half of the nineteenth century Cape Town was at the heart of global trade; in the 21st century only a new cable coming into effect this year is bringing SA into the terabyte, let alone petabyte, age. General desktop access is also low, reflecting this infrastructural blockage.
Secondly is that the distribution of internet access is heavily weighted towards mobile (as many as double the number of people have access to the mobile web against desktop) with this trend continuing apace. However for most South Africans the internet is way down the list of priorities, given endemic poverty, the AIDs epidemic, world beating crime statistics, mass unemployment and a host of other issues largely alien to the populations of North America or Europe. That said people are willing to spend large portions of their income on “cellphones” and the phenomenal growth in this area is expected to continue.
The retail situation is also different. I visited the brilliant people at Pan Mac SA and learnt more about how things work out. For a start Amazon has no direct presence, which alters the web retail environment immensely. Instead online portals like kalahari.net and distributors like Booksite Afrika are the dominant players. However somewhere like Exclusive Books will be familiar to any UK consumer who has been in Waterstone’s, and even more aptly Ottakars, before the merger.
With desktop web access not being key and without the ready availability of e-reading devices, a significant amount of the content focus is on mobile, and specifically ways of cleverly adapting content to mobile. In this and related areas like micropayments we are way behind. We don’t have a developed reading audience comfortable with this, and neither have we thought as deeply about how to use our content. In engaging with mobile- although not necessarily smartphone- SA publishers are leading the way.
Against c4.5 million web users there are 43 million mobile phones (80% of the population), a $2.4 billion market dominated by carriers Vodacom and MTN (collectively 82.5% marketshare) and manufacturers Nokia and Samsung. Local services like mxit, a chat app, have been in the vanguard of SA tech innovation and scaled rapidly.
Selection of content is, understandably, also crucial. In a country with the historical and present day divisions of SA, a nation of no less than 11 official languages, broad appeal is going to be tough and niches important. An ecosystem has evolved that combines local with international publishing; international being the broader base.
Interestingly many people said that it was Christian content that had a bright future in digital. This seems to be a massive area of publishing, and critically an area that is already working in digital versions- something I confess to never having previously thought of as being a digital pioneer.
In sum South Africa is, like everywhere, poised on the edge of a revolution in reading. With its feet in the developed and the developing camps, its outward looking temperament balanced against limitations in the market and the technology at home, this will differ greatly from the experience overseas, where expensive devices and online access are already realities. Yes, that might be a trite statement, but all too often we forget about the genuinely global impact of how reading is evolving and the enormous ramifications of this.
Ebooks in Africa could be a way of massively increasing people’s exposure to books, people who historically have been denied the opportunity to read. That has to be important, and worth following.
Pictures (CC licence)
Johannesburg1 by lemoncat1
Joburgcity by a_kep
#wossybookclub digital editions
Posted by
22 May, 2009
Posted in Publishing, Twitter, eBooks, read/write culture
The week has been a twitter with the news of @wossy’s book club, or #wossybookclub as it is also known, or Jonathan Ross’ twitter book club as it is definitely not known. Happily a Picador book was chosen, Jon Ronson’s THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS.
We decided that to get the book as widely distributed as possible we would zoom the book out in digital editions, both as a subscription access title and as a download. Check out this piece on the Picador blog for more details or go to either Exact Editions or Waterstone’s to view or download the book.
There are a few firsts here for us. This is the first time we have ever used a subscription access model. Readers can buy a years worth of online access for cheaper than the price of the book, £4.99 against £7.99. One advantage of this access is that it allows deep linking and so stimulates the kind of conversation book clubs are all about. Like a passage? Then via Twitter, or wherever you are, you can easily direct a distributed set of people to it.
Which brings me on the second first (as it were)- on Sunday between 17.00 and 18.00, in the midst of the bookclub, we will be allowing free access to the work. This should further allow people to discuss, point, link, look, read, flick, browse and comment on the book, recreating the back and forth dynamic of a book club online, with thousands of people involved.
The ebook download means that those who cannot buy the physical book (unprecedented demand means stock has been rapidly disappearing) can at least have a read before the club gets going.
Hopefully this is the correct response to a book club that is not just web native, but entirely twitter native. If ever the future could be said to hit group reading, it has now, and hopefully we can use what is unique about the web- that ability to share, the immediacy- to try and bring something to the bookclub that works for its twitter based format.
We would be interested to know your thoughts on the subscription model, so do get in touch.
Ask and Ye Shall Receive
Posted by
27 April, 2009
Posted in General, Publishing, Reading devices, mobile
A little bit ago I wrote a kind of iPhone app wishlist for independent publishers. Well, it looks like Indiebound made good on their promise. Their new iPhone app (in the U.S.) is the exact right step booksellers should be taking. For more on the genesis of the project, here’s a great overview at Follow The Reader.
A Bookish Experiment
Posted by
14 April, 2009
Posted in Reading devices, eBooks
A while ago you may remember Book Camp, a day of bookish experimentation. On the back of that I’ve been thinking of a bookish experiment and was wondering if it’s been done.
We are seeing a proliferation of reading formats- from grand, Royal hardbacks to reading on the Nintendo DS. Each of these has a different style, a different tempo to how one reads.
I’m convinced that all reading relies on rhythm in some way, a rhythm that is signified by breaks in the text. Turning the page establishes a certain rhythm, just as swiping a page on the iPhone does, or even the lines between tweets. Nonetheless what remains consistent is that we rely on the relationship between rhythm, break and comprehension for our experience of texts.
Big blocks of text have no break and rhythm, hence they are so intimidating to look at and confusing to read. Ebooks fundamentally work as they effectively recreate, if subtly alter, the rhythm and beat of reading long form texts.
My experiment would be something along the lines of: assemble the same text on every different reading platform, device and print mechanism possible. Get a focus group and then either get them to read the passage on every device and answer a series of questions, or get everyone to read on one platform and answer a set series of questions.
The goal would be to try and work out how our understanding and enjoyment of texts shifts with the platform and the various rhythms established. With that data writers and publishers could then start to think of optimising, adapting and even composing content for different reading experiences.
Bindun?
@rnmorris - a good read
Posted by
27 March, 2009
Posted in General
One-time Macmillan New Writing author, Roger Morris, and now hugely successful crime fiction writer, R.N. Morris is twitterizing his novel A Gentle Axe. Reading it in my twitter feed each day is a fantastic experience, and of course one can go back into the archive at twitter.com/rnmorris to read the story from the beginning.
Roger writes about this serialisation transposition of his novel onto Twitter on his blog plog. I think his thoughts are very interesting, and say a lot about the role an author can take in the digital arena.
Blogbook dismisses it as a publicity stunt, and a failed one at that. I admit that part of my motivation was to try and attract new readers to my books. Guilty as charged. We writers do not have the massive budgets spent on advertising that a new blockbuster film has, for example. So we have to do what we can. That said, I was interested in how this way of receiving text differs as a reading experience from sitting down and reading a book.
It’s true, getting a sentence or a fragment every hour - that’s how I am now scheduling my tweets - is not like sitting down and reading an extended section of the book through. You won’t necessarily remember what went before. The text will work on the reader in a different way - but I am interested to see just how.
