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."
Publisher friendly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Publisher friendly? (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly what I thought. As a customer, why do I want a platform that caters, not to me or the author, but to the publisher?
Crash (Score:4, Insightful)
and BURN baby....burn!
Hey I got a great idea? Lets make everyone pay for a crummy E-Reader at high prices PLUS make them pay for the book subscriptions, PLUS sell advertising to make the reading even less enjoyable after the user gets the bill!!
PLUS we can just kill the book we sell, so the customer can never have a copy and of course, we can sell the same book to them twice!!!
-Signed...your average everday greedy American Corporate Scum.
great for publi$her$? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they think I'm still going to pay the price of a hardcover book for nothing but a digital copy that can be revoked from my reader, I'M STILL NOT BUYING THIS JUNK.
Re:Publisher friendly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Executive Summary: We are out of our frigging minds and don't realize this is going to bomb faster than the orginal DIVX.
Re:great for publi$her$? (Score:2, Insightful)
Welcome to the land of fail... (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish them luck in this venture... they're going to need it with a market that already has widely accepted semi-user-friendly devices (Amazon Kindle, Sony eReader, etc).
Also, haven't they learned their lesson already in other markets? Publisher (content-owner) friendly rarely ever is accepted by the marketplace as it wasn't designed with the end user (the people PAYING for this "service").
Re:Publisher friendly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you so sure? Alienating customers won't help publishers any, since they're where the money comes from. I'm sure the prevailing slashdot assumption will be that publishers somehow fail to realize this, but I doubt that. The fact is, both parties in any business transaction are participating for their own benefit; that doesn't preclude rational self interest, i.e. providing value, too.
So here is why this might work: Skiff eliminates a middleman, namely Amazon. Thus consumers could end up paying less, while publishers (and even writers) get more. You can go on all you like about how evil and stupid publishers are, but they're already part of the process; the only difference is, no Amazon. What if Skiff ends up a lot like Kindle, but with a lower price for professionally written and edited content?
Re:Easy for publishers? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'll put up with ads in a printed magazine, because all I'm paying for is paper and ink, ads pay for the rest. I'm not going to pay for electronic media with ads; no paper and no ink. That's just ubergreed, double dipping, and is completely unwarranted and unacceptable.
Let me get this straight. You acknowledge in your first sentence that ads are largely what makes the production of the content possible. Then in your next sentence, you turn around and say "But I won't take an electronic magazine that has ads". Who exactly is being greedy here?
Because, of course... (Score:3, Insightful)
...the publishers are the reason it all exists. Long live the middleman!
Re:Easy for publishers? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see any reason why a paperback version of a book should cost less than an electronic version.
Me neither.
The Kindle device has a life of what? Five years? Ten, maybe if its taken care of really well? And all the kindle books are tied to that device - are they not? That paperback book will be around for decades after that Kindle has had to be thrown into the garbage - along with all those expensive Kindle version of those books.
Re:Publisher friendly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is a worthless point since that elimination will not be passed on to the consumer in the form of "cheaper than Kindle".
Re:Publisher friendly? (Score:0, Insightful)
Apparently a lot of people don't mind a reader that caters to the book seller rather than the reader (Kindle)....
Re:Easy for publishers? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I'm pretty sure that amazon has to kick some cash over to the wireless carrier(Sprint) to cover whispernet. And maintenance on the servers, IT guys saleries, etc. The biggest piece being the payment to Sprint.
Reading comprehension? (Score:3, Insightful)
He puts up with ads in a print mag because his money pays for the ink and paper and the ads pay for the content. He means that if an electronic magazine had ads, he'd expect to get the magazine for free. The reason being that the ads pay for the content and the user pays for the delivery mechanism. He's already paid for delivery of his electronic book when he bought the reader and downloaded the content. He paid for the delivery of the paper mag content when he drove to the store and paid for the bound paper and ink.
If you don't like copyright infringement, make something that can't be copied.
Re:Easy for publishers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, you need more coffee or something, or maybe I'm just not being clear. When I buy a paper magazine, I'm paying for paper and ink. The advertisers are paying for everything else. No paper and ink, either don't have ads or don't charge me.
For books, I've never bough a book with ads and I'm not about to start now.
What timeOday Said Plus.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of you are perfectly okay with companies treating their customers like cr@p. It's called the entertainment industry.
Bluray is even worse than the DVD in terms of limiting your clearly defined rights to personal use and dramatically raising the costs of entertainment. How many of you are loading up on those BluRay players/content this holiday season? You are happy about it too.
I think the basic notion that this will fail is right. It will fail because they will seek to extract similar profits AND lard on costs so early into the project that it won't ever have a chance.
Re:Easy for publishers? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I think part of the problem is that they can't make them fast enough to meet demand. This is just speculation based on the availability problems the Kindle has had, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. E-Ink displays aren't exactly a common consumer technology at the moment. When it does become common, and manufacturing issues are sorted out, you probably will see those kind of prices.
If you can't make enough to meet demand, why would you lower prices?
Sounds nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
targeted ads, complete publisher control. Where can I pick mine up, and how much will I get paid per month to use it?
Re:Publisher friendly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup, Amazon and Publishers are both "middle men", between Authors and Customers.
My guess, is that at least ONE middle man between the two is ideal, a bazaar, a single place where authors can meet and sell to their customers. It would require standards.
I can even seeing a couple three alternative choices out there, including Amazon and the Publisher's Marketplace, and perhaps one built by and for authors.
Layers and layers of "middle men" are not needed anymore. I am about to self publish a book, so I would love to have a couple options available where I can market it, directly. I really don't want to tied to Amazon/Kindle if I don't have to be.
Back to the future! (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about how websites used to look in 1998.
Let's see. Small, fast, efficient, readable.
It's only because of professional webdesigners trying to maximize usability, time on site, ad clicks, and return on investment that we've moved to the sleek look of what is web 2.0
Where you too can download 600k of Javascript, flash, and animated GIFs to view a simple page of text that actually came up faster over my 33.6k modem than it does over my 256k DSL.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Publisher friendly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, if it is easy for a publisher to register themselves in this open registry, then independent publishers, or the authors themselves, are on the same playing field as the largest publishers.
Third, the device will be independent of the format & distribution method, so this will encourage device providers to be competitive: give choices of telecom providers, support pdf w/ a thumb-drive-like interface, etc.
People should just STOP BUYING STUFF that locks you into proprietary formats. Yeah, I bought an iPhone when it first came out, so I'm guilty, but I don't need an e-reader so badly I can't wait for something that doesn't screw the consumer.