According to a report by PaidContent UK, the London-based publishing company expects ebooks to grow from 4% of its sales to 10% next year, thanks in large part to the market Apple is creating with the iPad.
John Makinson, the company's chief executive, said "the iPad represents the first real opportunity to create a paid distribution model that will be attractive to consumers."
Thinking outside the book
Thinking beyond the simple ability to just view the text of conventional books electronically as the Amazon Kindle does, Makinson said, "We will be embedding and streaming audio, video and gaming into everything we do. This will present us and the platform owners with technology challenges.
"The .epub format, which is the standard for ebooks at the present, is designed to support traditional narrative text, but not this cool stuff that weâre now talking about. So for the time being at least weâll be creating a lot of our digital content as applications, to sell on app stores in HTML, rather than as ebooks.
"The definition of the book itself is up for grabs. We donât know understand at the moment what the consumer is prepared to pay for [â¦] We will only find answers to these questions by trial and error.â
Apple's iBook Store vs the traditional book store
Asked whether his company was chafing at Apple's iTunes business model that takes a 30% cut of all sales, Makinson said that this is actually better for publishers than the existing agency model for books, where retailers take 50% of sales.
"There is an argument," Makinson said, "for saying Apple needs the content; that they should be paying us for our content." That argument hasnât worked however.
"We'll have to become more innovative and take some risks," Makinson said. "We'll need above all to listen to our readers, to understand what they want and what they'll pay for. But if we can do all that, which is a big task, I agree, we'll have a great and varying digital business."
72 Comments
hopefully o'reilly gets their "ipad recovery techniques" in e-book format so i can ... oh, wait ...
Makinson sounds relatively open-minded and willing to embrace new technologies, as contrasted to the image of some media companies who have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the scary future.
Makinson sounds relatively open-minded and willing to embrace new technologies, as contrasted to the image of some media companies who have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the scary future.
He definitely gets it.
I wonder if Apple will release a proper format for interactive material using the iTunes LP and iTunes Extra forma. While all the video and audio can be encrypted I'd think that content owners would like the other data encrypted, too.
-Penguin Books demonstrated of a series of interactive ebook titles-OH MY!!! Face it folks...THINGS ARE NEVER GONNA BE THE SAME...EVER AGAIN!!!!
This beats the toaster by a universe!
Thanks Steve. This may be the turning point for society.
Interactive, color and sound books for children, adults, doctors and repairmen.
If it's broke, anyone can fix it now.
How about danish furniture assembly! You won't have to take it apart and reassemble
the bookshelves anymore, because you can see it being put together on the iPad and you won't get part A mixed up with part D!!!
Is the iPad a game changer ... that seems to be what everyone is arguing about. At its core its not incredibly unique as far as technology or software goes (more evolutionary than revolutionary). However, the potential of the iPad given Apple's public reputation for innovation, and yes ... its closed ecosystem demonstrate how it can excell where other have failed.
I have been still debating whether or not I would buy an iPad, but after watching that video, and seeing what Penguin is preparing for the iPad there is no way I wouldn't buy one now. I'm convinced ...