Betaler ikke på iPad

Bare 7,1 prosent av befolkningen betaler eller er villig til å betale for brettinnhold. Disse tallene står i sterk kontrast til flere optimistiske beregninger fra mediebedriftene selv.

Dette spørsmålet ble stilt: Er du villig til å betale for å lese nyheter som VG eller Dagbladet på nett brett?

- Abonnerer allerede: 2,5 prosent
- Ja: 4,6 prosent
- Nei: 83,3 prosent
- Usikker: 9,6 prosent

NextGenTel står bak undersøkelsen, og direktør for marked og kommunikasjon i, Morten Ågnes, mener undersøkelsen viser hvor vanskelig det er å spå om framtiden på nettet.

- Det er ikke vår oppgave å levere innhold. Vårt produkt er nettaksessen, og på tross av flere pessimistiske ekspertspådommer da internett var ungt, viser det seg at publikum i dag er villig til å betale for å komme på nett, sier han.

Kilde: N ettavisen

I Sverige er e-bøker altfor populære

Med ebøker forsvinner mange av ulempene med biblioteket. Plutselig er bibliotekbøkene øyeblikkelig tilgjengelig på leseenheten din overalt, uten at du trenger å gå til hverken bibliotek eller bokhandel. Norske biblioteker har til nå nesten ikke hatt tilgang på e-bøker, men i Sverige har låntagerne hatt ubegrenset tilgang på bøker i mange år.

Etter at nettbrett som iPad kom på markedet, har utlånet skutt i været i Sverige. Hele 80 prosent av lesingen av e-bøker har kommet fra utlån. For enkelte titler, som den populære selvbiografien Jag är Zlatan, har utlånsandelen vært enda høyere. E-boken er hittil kjøpt og lånt i totalt 13 000 eksemplarer.

I Sverige har e-bøker, i motsetning til i Norge, vært tilgjengelige i ti års tid. Bibliotekene har betalt rundt 20 kroner for hvert utlån, etter den såkalte utleiemodellen. Alle låntagere som ønsker det har kunnet låne bøkene, helt uten begrensninger. Hvert bibliotek har altså hatt et ubegrenset antall eksemplarer. Dette har ført til at rundt 80 prosent av svenske e-bøker har vært gratis for brukerne.

Kilde: Aftenposten

Barnes & Noble, Taking On Amazon in the Fight of Its Life

No one expects Barnes & Noble to disappear overnight. The worry is that it might slowly wither as more readers embrace e-books. What if all those store shelves vanished, and Barnes & Noble became little more than a cafe and a digital connection point? Such fears came to the fore in early January, when the company projected that it would lose even more money this year than Wall Street had expected. Its share price promptly tumbled 17 percent that day.

Lurking behind all of this is Amazon.com, the dominant force in books online and the company that sets teeth on edge in publishing. From their perches in Midtown Manhattan, many publishing executives, editors and publicists view Amazon as the enemy — an adversary that, if unchecked, could threaten their industry and their livelihoods.

NYTimes.com

- Lag dine egne e-bøker

Har du en forfatter i magen? Da kan løsningen være KindleGen, Amazons nye programvare.

Det dreier seg om et svært enkelt kommandolinje-program som konverterer fra en rekke kjente formater (for eksempel Word, HTML, XHTML og EPUB) til Kindle-vennlig format.

Det betyr at du kan skrive boka i det formatet du vil, og så lage en Kindle-versjon i etterkant. Det er fritt fram å legge bøkene sine ut for salg, selv om man ikke har kontrakt med et forlag.
Kilde: ITavisen

Apple vil gjøre skolebøkene elektroniske

«Ibooks 2» ble presentert under en pressekonferanse ved Guggenheim-museet i New York i ettermiddag.

Tjenesten er en oppdatering av «Ibooks», en gratis applikasjon til Ipad du kan kjøpe elektroniske bøker gjennom. Og nå skal Apple satse mer på faglitteratur.

– Det er ikke vanskelig å forstå at en fysisk lærebok ikke alltid er det ideelle læremiddelet. Det er tungvint, sa Apples markedsdirektør Phil Schiller under presentasjonen, ifølge Reuters.

Derfor setter Apple inn store krefter på å få skoleelever til å bruke deres nettbrett Ipad i stedet for fysiske papirbøker.

Kilde: NRK

Simplifying publishing could mean a flood of new content

Making ebook publishing easier has the potential to have a significant disruptive impact on information industries.

The first disruption of the web, after all, was making it possible for people to publish online without caring about money. Ebooks have already allowed a new generation of small-scale (and large-scale) publishers to reach an audience — sometimes for money, sometimes just for passion’s sake. But the process of ebook publishing today reminds me a bit of the early days of blogging, when publishing online was possible but still a pain.

The web as a platform dates back to 1991, and nerds like me were publishing personal webpages not long after. But it took the development of tools like Blogger, Greymatter, and Movable Type — nearly a decade after the web launched — for the power of personal publishing to start to be fulfilled.

Doing it by hand meant learning HTML, then manually FTPing an updated .html file to a remote server. It wasn’t outrageously complicated, to be honest — but it was enough of an obstacle to keep most folks from writing online. When tools reduced personal publishing to typing words in a box and clicking “Post,” a whole new universe of potential contributors was suddenly ready to pitch in, and you saw the blogging explosion of the early 2000s.

Nieman Journalism Lab

Forskere slakter utredning om bokbransjen

En utredning om bokbransjen, bestilt av Kulturdepartementet, er tilnærmet verdiløs som saklig grunnlag for litteraturpolitikken, skriver forskerne Vidar Ringstad og Knut Løyland.

På nettstedet Minervanett.no skriver de to forskerne i dag om utredningen som er gjort av Oslo Economics på oppdrag fra Anniken Huitfeldt.

Vidar Ringstad og Knut Løyland i Telemarksforskning, har stått bak flere av analysene av på norsk bokbransje de siste tyve årene.

Utrederne fra Oslo Economics har med ganske få unntak oversett alle tidligere analyser av norsk bokbransje og internasjonal litteratur på området, skriver Ringstad og Løyland.

– Hadde de ikke gjort det, ville de funnet at det er svært få indikasjoner på at faste bokpriser er overlegne frie priser, står det blant annet i artikkelen.

Kilde: Aftenposten

Apple to announce tools, platform to "digitally destroy" textbook publishing

Apple is slated to announce the fruits of its labor on improving the use of technology in education at its special media event on Thursday, January 19. While speculation has so far centered on digital textbooks, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Ars that Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books—the "GarageBand for e-books," so to speak—and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users.

Along with the details we were able to gather from our sources, we also spoke to two experts in the field of digital publishing to get a clearer picture of the significance of what Apple is planning to announce.

So far, Apple has largely embraced the ePub 2 standard for its iBooks platform, though it has added a number of HTML5-based extensions to enable the inclusion of video and audio for some limited interaction. The recently-updated ePub 3 standard obviates the need for these proprietary extensions, which in some cases make iBook-formatted e-books incompatible with other e-reader platforms. Apple is expected to announce support for the ePub 3 standard for iBooks going forward.

Source: arstechnica.com

Amazon Kindle Owners Are “Borrowing” Nearly 300,000 Electronic Books A Month

Amazon is releasing new data on its Kindle Lending Library, which the e-commerce site says now has over 75,000 books. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is a collection of books that Amazon Prime members who own a kindle can borrow once a month, with no due dates.

Amazon recently launched KDP Select, a fund that lets indie authors and publishers make money off of lending. Basically, if a KDP author or publisher chooses to make any of their books exclusive to the Kindle Store for at least 90 days, those books are eligible to be included in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and can earn a share of the KDP Select fund.

According to the company, customers borrowed nearly 300,000 (295,000 to be exact) KDP Select titles in December alone, and KDP Select has helped grow the total library selection. With the $500,000 December fund, KDP authors have earned $1.70 per borrow.
Kilde: TechCrunch

E-books sales surge after holidays

An unprecedented surge in e-book sales is changing publishing and challenging traditional bookstores.

It's reflected on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list, which tracks combined sales of e-book and print editions. The latest list, based on sales data from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1, shows a remarkable burst of digital book sales after e-readers were unwrapped as gifts — for 42 of the top 50 titles, the e-book editions were the most popular format. The previous high, in July, was 25 of the top 50.

USATODAY.com

How Barnes & Noble Can Take a Bite Out of Amazon

Barnes & Noble’s strategy is to do everything that Amazon does, but to do it later. It’s rare in corporate America that a management fights so hard to be #2. This is not the same thing as the Avis car rental company’s media strategy of old: “We’re #2, so we have to try harder.” At the time of the Avis campaign, Avis was in fact tied for #2 with National Car Rental, behind #1 Hertz. Avis’s target was National, not Hertz. It was a winner. But the B&N strategy is of a different kind, a deliberate effort to be second best.

I happen to believe that B&N’s position is better than many pundits would have it. Comparing B&N to Borders is a mistake; Borders was a shipwreck even in a strong economy. B&N has displayed great skill in managing its bricks-and-mortar stores and has surprised everyone by coming from behind and grabbing 25% of the e-book market. B&N has also attracted investment from Liberty Media, which could help in getting the kind of media properties it feels it needs for the Nook tablet, though that in itself may not help it with its book business.

The Scholarly Kitchen