Round up #199: bundles, B&N
The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.
Digital downfall!
Okay, I would not want to be Barnes & Noble trying to compose this
Press Release on Q1 finances
Actually, I might…I do love a challenge.
Maybe you could hire somebody like an old Catskills comedian to do it like a stand-up routine…
“Hey, it’s nice to see all the investors in the audience. You know, I was afraid this place was going to be like one of our stores…empty. Just kidding…revenues were only down 9.9%, which comes out to 111,000,000 bucks. With all those ones and zeroes, it looks like our name on the internet. Speaking of digital, if you think our retail sales are bad, you should see our NOOK sales! Yeah, take a look at them…no, lower…lower…lower…yep, that’s them down there. Our NOOK sales were down 20.2% over last year. A 20% decrease…that’s like saying you have a perfect attendance record at work…if you don’t count Fridays. On the other hand, we only dropped $39 million there…so we lost almost $72 million less than we dropped in the bookstores: go, progress! You ready for the good news? Wait, wait, don’t get so excited…I didn’t say there was any good news, I just asked if you were ready for it. Actually, the college bookstores did have a 2.4% increase…up 5 meeeeeeellllllliooon dollars! Let’s see…five million up, compared to $111 and $39 million down: I’d do the math for you, but I couldn’t afford my algebra textbook after I paid ten dollars for a pack of Post-It notes in my campus Barnes & Noble…”
This
GIGAOM article by Laura Hazard Owen
does a nice job of analyzing the Q&A part of the investor call. Are they going to stop making tablets inhouse? Um…maybe not. They are committed to continuing with the NOOK side of the business…at which point, I’m all of the investors in the room snuck a sideways peek at the person next to them, to see if they were dumping the stock and making a break for the exit.
Owen included this quotation:
“At least one new Nook device will be released for the coming holiday, and further products are in development. At the same time, we will continue to offer our award-winning line of Nook products, including Simple Touch, Simple Touch with GlowLight, Nook HD and Nook HD+ at the best values in the marketplace today.”
I think we may continue to see reductions in NOOK hardware prices, which does exert a downward price pressure on Amazon…which the latter might choose to ignore, of course.
The USPTO wants your input on “Copyright Issues in the Digital Economy”
There is a debate going on right now about extending copyright terms.
This is going to be worth another, separate post from me, but I wanted to go ahead and give you the place to make your comments, if you want:
http://www.uspto.gov/blog/director/entry/we_want_to_hear_from
It relates to this
PDF entitled COPYRIGHT POLICY, CREATIVITY, AND INNOVATION IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY
I plan to listen to that in the car today, after which I’ll write my response.
Listen to a PDF?
Yep. I recently bought
ezPDF Reader PDF Annotate Form
which has text-to-speech for PDFs. I actually finally spent some of my Amazon Coins on an app, and that was it and this is why.
Remember when a “bundle” in publishing meant newspapers tied together with kite string?
Many people bring up the idea of “bundling” e-books and p-books (paperbooks) in the Amazon Kindle forums.
The idea is that you would buy a p-book and get a free e-book, or vice versa.
That often comes from a position of naivety: they think that Amazon can just give you a digital copy, I guess by scanning the p-book. They don’t understand (and there is nothing wrong with not understanding, as long as you are willing to learn) that Amazon pays the publisher for both the e-book and the p-book, and that in turn is part of how authors get paid.
However, a publisher (not Amazon) could work out a deal with the author that included both the e-book and the p-book…and some publishers (not a lot so far) are.
PM Press in Oakland is one, according to this
Publishers Weekly article by Judith Rosen
I have to warn you, though, when I went to the PM Press site to check it out, the home page had an NSFW (Not Safe For Work) image right at the top.
I tried to find something about their Paperback Plus! program, and they don’t seem to be promoting much. When I searched for Paperback Plus, I did find these eleven results:
https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=search_list&s[search]=paperback+plus&s[title]=Y&s[short_desc]=Y&s[full_desc]=Y&s[sku]=Y&s[match]=all&s[cid]=0
So, you buy a paperback, and get a free e-book copy.
Now, honestly, I’m not sure to whom this appeals. I don’t want p-books any more, even for free. I’m sure I’m not the only person in that category. I love the ones I have, but I don’t want more in my house and I don’t like the ecological impact of the manufacturing process.
Also, I’m never quite sure what prevents somebody from simply doing a deal like this, and then selling the p-book. One barrier is that you would pay more for this combo than you might pay for the e-book alone, but I still don’t quite get it. It used to be different with DVDs and CDs, because there was a clear division in the player. You wanted a physical version to watch/hear on your superior, non-portable hardware, and a convenient digital version. I think increasingly, though, people don’t want the CDs or DVDs either, and for the same reasons that many of us don’t want the p-books.
Alexander Turcic reported in this
mobileread post
that the University Press of Kentucky is doing something interesting. You send them a picture of you holding the p-book, and they send you a pdf of it for free. Again, a kind of bundling…and I’m guessing they can use your picture for promotional purposes, although I haven’t checked.
I don’t expect bundling to become commonplace, except on expensive books, where it will be just part of the luxury service.
What do you think? How good/bad does the Barnes & Noble report look to you? Do you want both an e-book and a p-book when you buy something? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.
Update: bonus deal
I meant to include this this morning.
End of Summer Savings: Kids & Teen Kindle Books up to 75% off
Right now, there are 149 titles in there, and there are some good and “brand name” choices. They don’t say how long this will last, and it may not be available in your country, so as always, check the price before you click that Buy button.
Good time to look for gifts for the holidays…you can delay delivery.
Enjoy!
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.