Hearst Launching Kindle Competitor and Platform "By Publishers, For Publishers" 155
The Hearst Corporation has announced their intention to launch an e-reader competitor to Amazon's Kindle and a supporting store and platform that is much more "publisher friendly." More details are available form their official press release this morning. "Launching in 2010, Skiff provides a complete e-reading solution that includes the Skiff Service platform, Skiff Store and Skiff-enabled devices. Skiff will sell and distribute newspapers, magazines, books, blogs and other content. Skiff gives periodical publishers tools to maintain their distinct visual identities, build and extend relationships with subscribers, and deliver dynamic content and advertising to a range of dedicated e-readers and multipurpose devices."
Re:Easy for publishers? (Score:2, Informative)
Amazon: that 70% (gross) of the price of an electronic copy of a book that has an marginal cost approaching zero is just about all profit.
Personally, I think when it comes to electronic books, the royalties to the author should be based upon what a printed book would cost, the publisher works out a cost plus system for charging for the copy wholesale, and then Amazon adds their mark up. Charging a price close to a paper book for an electronic book just seams wrong to me - one of the largest costs of a printed book is its paper and ink.
Amazon is making a killing off of Kindle books and they're not passing that on to subsidize the price of the Kindle device. Without subsidies, they could sell that device for almost half and make a decent living on it. With subsidies, they could those suckers for $50 - easily.
Re:Publisher friendly? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, Amazon has also been getting rid of the other middleman, publishers. I've been finding a few decent short to novel length ebooks in Amazon's self-published section for quite cheap($2-4).
Until somebody starts reviewing them, they aren't easy to find and there is a much higher chance of crap without the filter of marketability, but that filter works both ways. I've read a few I know would never have been put in print because they were too niche.
Plus, I know the authors get a better cut than if I had bought the hardback.
Re:Publisher friendly? (Score:3, Informative)
No. Skiff eliminates Amazon, to be replaced with itself. This is just Hearst wanting a piece of Amazon's pie, and they think that appealing to the content distributors is going to be the way to produce a better product... yeah, I'm not following either.
Re:Publisher friendly? (Score:1, Informative)
We've already seen publisher's attempts at e-book readers. They failed, the industry gave up a while ago. Amazon decided to give it another whack and got it, if not right then close enough with Kindle. Personally, I think Kindle has not enough features and function, too much cost and too many restrictions and scary factors (Amazon can brick my device remotely? They can delete content I paid for? No thanks.) How will publishers possibly produce a device that is more attractive to both customers and to them? Either they have to reduce the price of the device (not likely), increase the features (possible, not likely), reduce the restrictions (Hahhahaa!), reduce the price of content (possible, but not likely) or stop offering any alternatives (choke out the Kindle by refusing to publish on it). I'm betting that they're going to go for some combination that includes increasing restrictions, choking out the kindle and keeping more or less on-par with Kindle's features. This should be an amusing failure.
Re:Publisher friendly? (Score:3, Informative)
Amazon does seem to understand that they are middlemen between the author/artist and the consumer. They are trying to set themselves up as just a marketplace, a place where consumers can review things and the authors can get paid. They don't edit self-published books, they don't provide authors with advances or try to dictate what sort of material gets written and published.
Basically they provide the services authors need to sell books and consumers need to buy them. Nothing more.
Look at how their music store works. It's all MP3s with no DRM. I think the DRM on the Kindle is just bowing to pressure from publishers so that they can get into the market as soon as possible much like Apple did with iTunes. Eventually the DRM will be dropped when it becomes obvious that it a) doesn't work and b) will just drive consumers away.