Archive for the ‘Ebook Publishing’ Category

The Times Healthland Blog has an article by neuroscience journalist Maia Szalavitz that suggests that reading an ebook makes it more difficult to remember, and sometimes to truly understand, what is being read.

This is a particularly troubling claim for textbook and educational publishers.

Here’s a quote:

Context and landmarks may actually be important to going from “remembering” to “knowing.” The more associations a particular memory can trigger, the more easily it tends to be recalled. Consequently, seemingly irrelevant factors like remembering whether you read something at the top or the bottom of page — or whether it was on the right or left hand side of a two-page spread or near a graphic — can help cement material in mind.

Read more:
http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/14/do-e-books-impair-memory/

BakeSpace.com — the Webby-honored food social network and recipe swap –has launched its Cookbook Cafe as the first do-it-yourself digital publishing platform for grassroots cookbook authors. It enables anyone to create, market and sell their very own cookbook as a native iPad App, as well as an interactive web-based eBook.

“We’re using technology to democratize cookbook publishing,” said BakeSpace.com Founder Babette Pepaj. “Why should only ‘big name’ culinary stars have an opportunity to achieve success as a cookbook author? Our goal is to make publishing and distributing a cookbook easy for every home chef, group, company and nonprofit organization with great recipes to share!”

Unlike other do-it-yourself publishing services that help authors create traditional eBooks or mobile apps, Cookbook Cafe is free AND not limited by technology platform. It functions across different types of devices, including the iPad and any desktop or mobile web browser. It takes full advantage of the app environment, without trapping authors inside a technological “walled garden.”

Cookbook Cafe was inspired by Pepaj’s desire to transform how nonprofit organizations (schools, faith-based institutions, clubs, civic groups, etc.) use crowdsourced cookbooks for fundraising. While such cookbooks are an important fundraising tool, their value has, until now, been limited by the cost and complexity of book publishing, marketing and distribution.

“In the past, independent authors and nonprofit organizations were forced to publish cookbooks that were modest in format or designed for a single technology platform, while distribution was usually limited to a small network of friends and family members,” Pepaj added. “We created Cookbook Cafe to replace this antiquated model.”

How it Works:

The Cookbook Cafe platform is built upon three core components:

1) A free Cookbook Cafe iPad App with the cookbook storefront and reader. 2) A web-based version of the storefront and reader accessible through any web browser. 3) A web-based cookbook builder that automatically creates both a native iPad app and a website version of each cookbook.

A New World of Possibility for Indie Cookbook Authors:

There’s no cost to create a cookbook and market it in the Cookbook Cafe iPad and Web-based storefronts.

Each author determines his/her own price — from giving a cookbook away for free to selling it for a price ranging from $0.99 to $9.99 (in one dollar increments). Each cookbook is acquired by the end-user as either a free download or in-app purchase on the iPad, or as a simple download or online purchase on the web. BakeSpace.com collects a commission only when an author sells a book for profit or fundraising. The commission covers all costs, including Apple’s app store transaction fee and credit card processing fees on sales made through the online storefront.

Commercial brands can also use Cookbook Cafe to create and market cookbooks themed around specific ingredients, types of recipes, events, etc. Cookbook Cafe’s launch brand partners include Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker, Driscoll’s Berries, Chobani Greek Yogurt and Sabra Hummus.

A Dynamic New Experience for Cookbook Lovers:

The Cookbook Cafe iPad and web-based reader makes it easy for users to not only view the cookbooks they’ve downloaded, but also search and access each recipe individually by type, ingredient and author. This eliminates the need to search an entire cookbook (or cookbook library) to find a specific recipe.

“Imagine if you could search all of your cookbooks at home with a single click,” Pepaj added. “Home chefs often use more than one cookbook to plan a meal, so our advanced search feature means less stress and hassle in the kitchen.”

The free Cookbook Cafe iPad app also includes helpful kitchen tools such as multi-function kitchen timers (five different timers that work even when you close the app), interactive substitution charts and conversion tables.

To Get Started:

If you have an iPad: Visit the App Store, search for “BakeSpace” and download the free Cookbook Cafe app. You can also find the app on iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bakespace.coms-cookbook-cafe/id467167455?mt=8 .

To check it out on the Web: Visit http://cookbookcafe.com for an overview. To build your own cookbook or visit the web storefront go to http://BakeSpace.com/cookbooks .

Amazon recently introduced the Kindle Fire, an Android-based tablet computer that they are selling for $199 each. The pricing is a great deal for consumers – it’s $300 less than the least expensive iPad 2 and $50 cheaper than Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color — but a loss-leader for Amazon which loses approximately $20 on each unit sold.

While there are no figures from Amazon on the number of units pre-ordered so far, the retailer reportedly took 95,000 pre-orders on the first day, and other reports say they’ve been selling approximately 50,000 a day since then.

Putting the Kindle Fire in so many hands is a great move if all the folks who buy them are tied to Amazon’s books, music and apps, but is that really going to be the case?

The Kindle Fire is an Android tablet, and while it may be an Amazon-modified version of the operating system, users are going to want to put their own apps on the device. If this isn’t possible out of the box, within a few days of shipping, some enterprising hacker will make it possible.

The problem isn’t new. Even Amazon’s e-ink ebook readers can display content not purchased at Amazon, but at least with the dedicated readers all you can really do with the device is read books.

Not so with a tablet. Amazon isn’t going to make money off users who only bought the tablet to have a portable YouTube and Facebook screen. Even if someone buys a few cheap apps, it’s going to take a while for Amazon to get back its investment, if it ever does.

Likewise, they’re not going to sell ebooks to someone who bought the tablet to load up free videos from the Web and keep their kids amused on long trips. And if it’s possible to add random apps, what if they load a competing ebook reader and use the tablet for reading books bought at B&N or Sony?

Michael Norris, senior analyst of Simba Information’s Trade Books Group, has noted that their data suggests that, “the more multimedia capabilities some devices have, the less likely the consumer will be to purchase e-books on that particular device.”

Simba has also reported that 40 percent of iPad owners have never used their tablets to read or purchase an ebook. I didn’t find that statistic terribly surprising either. After all, you’d have to be a pretty dedicated reader to choose a book over YouTube, Facebook and Angry Birds, and even die-hard readers can get distracted by the bright and shiny bling that you can get on your tablet.

Maybe Amazon is crazy by selling so many tablets at a loss. But maybe not. After all, one third of all US e-commerce sales happen on Amazon. If that statistic holds, maybe it doesn’t even matter that the Kindle Fire can read non-Amazon books and play non-Amazon apps… Amazon is pretty much guaranteed a certain percentage of those digital sales anyway. And getting their online store front-and-center on that many portable devices can only help boost their percentage of sales overall.

Whether the move is good for the book industry, and for Amazon, is soon to be seen, as the Fire is slated to begin shipping on the 15th.

Amazon has announced that it is dropping .mobi formats for it’s Kindle ebook readers and the upcoming Kindle Fire, and moving to a new format — Kindle Format 8 — KF8.  The new file format is HTML5-based will include more formatting tags like embedded fonts, drop caps, fixed layouts, sidebars, SVG graphics, and more.

A new set of publishing guidelines will be available to authors and publishers soon, but in the meanwhile, a list of the HTML and CSS available in KF8 can be viewed here.

More information from Amazon here.

A recent report by media and publishing forecast firm Simba Information found that even though bookstores have lost some of their customer base over the years, the channel feeds into the e-book universe by serving as a ‘book showroom’ for the roughly 10% of U.S. adults who buy e-books.

“Believing that adults will begin taking to e-books in large numbers because of Borders’ liquidation is a dangerous assumption,” said Michael Norris, senior analyst of Simba Information’s Trade Books Group, commenting on the report. “Since most adults buy books from multiple channels and enjoy using bookstores for browsing, the loss of a ‘book showroom’ can impact print books and e-books in unexpected ways.”

Data from Simba indicates that the more channels a consumer uses, the more likely he or she is to buy — even though bookstores are sometimes cut out of the action. In a Simba survey of over 110 bookstores across the country, 38% indicated that their (former) regular customers who own a Barnes & Noble Nook or an Amazon Kindle ‘often or very often’ return to browse without buying anything. 43% of the same booksellers also said non-regular customers often or very often come to browse before leaving to buy from another retailer.

“Publishers should be working around the clock to find ways to make chain and independent bookstores stronger, and not for reasons having to do with sentimentality,” Norris said. “If the only retailers left selling books are those that don’t need to, publishers will lose their power and relevance overnight. I genuinely worry that books may follow the same dreadful path of music, where gadgets like the iPod spring up to make consumption easy, the showrooms for media discovery close, piracy becomes a cultural expectation and the market shrinks by billions as more people buy less.”

The report, “Trends in Trade Book Retailing 2011,” also shows the interconnected world of retailing with thorough profiles of the bookstore, online and other major retailing channels, outlining key demographic details and trends unique to each, including the gender, age, household income, education level and purchasing habits of the buyers. The significant influence of non-bookstore physical store retailers like Walmart and Target and the influence of e-book sellers like Amazon.com are also covered.

SOURCE: Simba Information