Round up #169: ultimate PAW EBR, publishers bullied by Apple?

Round up #169: ultimate PAW EBR, publishers bullied by Apple?

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Earl: the backcountry survival tablet

If “Earl” seems to good to be true, you are right…it’s not true yet. Take a look at it:

MeetEarl.com

This is a (deep breath) solar-powered, water-resistant, GPS-loaded, weather-detecting, walkie-talkie, Android E-Ink device…with a flexible screen.

It’s the ultimate EBR (E-Book Reader) for the PAW (Post-Apocalyptic World).

It’s only being crowdfunded right now…you can “invest” in the development, and that’s how you end up getting one at this point (for as low as $249).

They are about 55% of the way to the goal as I write this, and there are 25 days left to help them get to the $250,000 needed to launch it.

Would it replace a Kindle?

Not in the marketplace…most people don’t need all that stuff, and it’s a lot more expensive than the “Mindle” (that’s what I call the lowest priced device). However, you should be able to install the Kindle app on it, and, well, it would certainly appeal to some people (including people who worry that a Kindle is too fragile for their kid).

I think it may happen…they could hit the goal.

The nice thing then would be if some of the tech spread into other tablets, which is certainly possible.

Amazon’s problems in Europe

There have been a couple of interesting bad PR (Public Relations) situations for Amazon in Europe recently.

First there is a 1-day strike in Germany over pay:

The Guardian article

The argument is over how the workers at Amazon’s warehouses should be classified. Are they working in retail, or are they working in logistics? Amazon does a lot with logistics, no question…in the USA, they have a big business delivering things for other people.

Oddly to me, retail workers get a higher wage in Germany than logistics workers.

However, that’s not the only source of the problem here. There was a TV show back in February that alleged abuses by Amazon, including the use of security connected with neo-Nazis:

DW.de article

That documentary probably contributed to this strike…Germany is a big market for Amazon, and you know how it goes…once a powerful entity gets hit, the hits may keep on coming.

I’ve written before about negative stories about how Amazon treats warehouse workers in the USA. There may be a reason Amazon bought a robot company, partially to automate warehouses…

Then, there is this article about Amazon.uk (as opposed to Amazon.de, which had the strike:

Reuters article

Amazon recently reported financials, and, well, they fed concerns people have had about the e-tailer running business through a Luxembourg division…which means they don’t pay the same taxes they would if they were housed in, say, the UK.

According to the article, Amazon paid $3.7 million in taxes on an income of $6.5 billion…note those initial consonants. That’s a rate of about….0.06%. It’s a good thing Europe is rolling in the dough right now and doesn’t need money, right? Just kidding…my guess is that Luxembourg isn’t too upset by this. Amazon does have to be careful about it’s reputation, though, and not just in the USA.

How logo would you go-go?

One of my regular readers, Lady Galaxy, gave me the heads-up on this

Daily Finance article

about “subliminal” company logos.

A lot of people became familiar with the concept with Wilson Bryan Key’s book,

Subliminal Seduction

which isn’t currently available in a Kindle edition.

Certainly, Keys’ ideas have been challenged…see this

The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams article

The basic idea is that images of which you are not consciously aware can influence you…in particular, there might be unrelated images (such as sexual ones) in an ad for a drink, perhaps, and that would make you want to buy that drink.

Anyway, the Daily Finance article included Amazon’s logo…and that prompted some comments from another regular reader, Roger Knights, and my responses to them.

Before I tell you what we were saying, let me ask you some questions:

Reportedly, it’s intended to look like both a smile and carry that “A to Z” message. The latter is also supported by Amazon’s research department being called Lab 126, about which Jason Merkoski in Review: Burning the Page says,

“As for the “126” part, well, you have to realize that there was never a Lab125 or a Lab124, just like there was only ever a Preparation H, never a G or an F. The “126” part stems from the fact that “A” is the first letter of the alphabet and “Z” is the 26th, a techno-geeky homage to the “A to Z” development center. Jeff liked his geeky in-jokes— you could have heard his laugh a mile away when they came up with that name.”

The discussion Roger and I were having was over whether the line is an arrow pointing to the “O” (and therefore a mistake) or a flowchart type connector with the arrowhead just indicating direction (so it is “A to Z” and not “Z to A”). Roger thinks they should change the logo so that the arrowhead points more clearly to the Z. I don’t feel the need for that. For me, that message is done correctly…the arrowhead even distorts the bottom of the Z, pushing it up out of the way and deforming it.

What do you think?

New York Times: “U.S. Now Paints Apple as ‘Ringmaster’ in Its Lawsuit on E-Book Price-Fixing”

This New York Times article

reports something which simultaneously seems obvious and makes you shake your head in disbelief.

The DoJ (Department of Justice) has now released e-mails which make it really clear that Apple wanted e-book prices to go up when it masterminded the Agency Model for e-books.

That’s the allegation…and unless Apple is going to say the e-mails are false, they are pretty convincing (take a look at the article by Edward Wyatt and Nick Wingfield).

I suppose the shift here is in seeing publishers as the victims of Apple, rather than as co-conspirators.

It always seemed apparent to me that Apple had come up with the idea, and floated it to publishers. One question was whether or not the publishers discussed it with each other (which could make them guilty of a conspiracy to fix prices), or just each individually made a deal with Apple.

It’s not a surprise that Apple might have been the “ringleader”. It’s hard for me to imagine the publishers all sitting together and saying, “You know, it’s rumored that Apple is going to be producing a new tablet computer. Let’s suggest to them that they make us raise the prices on e-books…”

What do you think? Would you want a waterproof solar-powered EBR…even if it wasn’t a Kindle? Would you pay almost $200 more for one? Does Amazon’s treatment of its warehouse workers bother you? Are the publishers victims of Apple? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Does Amazon need DRM?

Does Amazon need DRM?

Why do people buy e-books at Amazon? Will they continue to do so in the future?

Let’s take the latter question first: I think they will, and I’m going to explain why. That should also answer the first question (although I’m going to ask you why you buy them also).

What got me thinking about this was a nice

iReaderReview article

I saw it in my morning Flipboard read, although I have some correspondence with the author of that blog. Some of us Kindle bloggers do correspond some, but we don’t send each other a heads-up on every article we write. We probably all read each other pretty much, but reasonably assume that we’ll look at the blogs.

The article explains about gatekeepers, and breaks it all down with bullet points and speculation.

I’ve written about the idea of flattening the market, of consumer buying directly from creators, notable in this article:

A Tale of Two Middles

However…

I think Amazon has an appeal to people that will survive the removal of apparent competitive advantages. This is a key short excerpt from switch11′s post linked above:

“It’s all a House of Cards. The New Gatekeepers lording over Authors and Readers and Publishers. Pretending they are indispensable. Using everyone’s fears to exploit them and gain power.

What’s going to happen if DRM is eliminated and Authors, Readers and Publishers (especially Publishers) realize that Amazon and B&N are 100% redundant and replaceable by hot air.”

In the status quo, people obviously buy e-books from Amazon.

The status quo isn’t going to continue, though.

There is a chance that equal collection legislation will pass, and internet companies will collect sales tax at the point of sale the same way that brick and mortar stores do. That wouldn’t affect me on e-books (California doesn’t currently charge sales tax on e-books sold electronically…they are treated like contracts, not like objects). Some other states apparently do, since I see a lot of people commenting on sales tax on their e-book purchases.

That’s a change.

Another potential change, addressed by the article that sparked this, is the possible end of DRM (Digital Rights Management). Basically, that is electronic code inserted into content by the publisher to control the use of the content.

As I wrote about yesterday, Tor (part of Macmillan) has been DRM-free through Amazon for over a year, and they aren’t reporting adverse effects from it.

DRM is part of what keys your file to your device, meaning that you can’t just copy your e-book file from one Kindle to another and read it. It also limits your ability to copy and convert the file…you can’t simply take your Kindle e-book file and turn it into a file which can be read by a NOOK.

The article (which I recommend) suggests that if DRM was gone, people would have no reason to buy e-books from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

I just don’t think that’s the case.

Equal access doesn’t mean equal trust.

Equal access doesn’t mean equal convenience.

Equal access doesn’t mean equal service.

I want to get my content from Amazon because I trust them, because I can centralize everything in one place, and because of their service.

Let’s say that five different publishers start making their books available broadly from their own sites.

Even if the prices are equivalent, I don’t want to have to go to five individual sites to get those books…and I don’t want to have to go back to them to retrieve them (if they’ll even archive them for me for free, like Amazon does).

We use the term “one-stop shopping” to describe all sorts of things…it’s a shorthand for convenience, for not having to go several places to do several things.

That’s one of the big appeals of Amazon.

My life is my life…it’s not a whole bunch of separate transactions. I might want to know if I bought a household product at the same time I bought a food or an e-book. I want to be able to look at my purchases for a month sometimes…not just my e-book purchases, but all of them.

I can’t do all that from Amazon right now…but I can do a lot of it.

There are times I want to browse for something…I want to see all of the e-books on one subject. If I was at publisher A’s site, I wouldn’t see publisher B’s books. The publishers are trying to address that with Bookish.com. Bookish, though, isn’t going to show me independently publisher books. It’s also not likely to show me critical reviews of books by other readers, like Amazon does.

Hey, I might also want to browse for movies, games, t-shirts, and toys related to that topic…not as likely from a publishers’ site.

So, centralization is key. It’s like the internet: can you imagine logging into separate networks for each of the sites you visit?

Trust is another issue.

The “middle-less market” imagines that I’ll see a tweet from somebody with a link in it for a book. I’ll click on that link, and end up directly on the author’s website. I would then presumably give my credit card (or Paypal, or Bitcoin) information to this person that I have maybe never heard of before. I’m going to trust them with my information.

I’m also going to trust them to send me a good quality copy of the e-book. I’m going to trust them to deal with any problems I might have.

Look, if there is something I find unacceptable about an e-book I buy from Amazon (whatever it is…I don’t have to give a reason), I can “return” it myself within seven days of purchase for a refund. I can do that just by going to

http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle

and click or tap

Actions…

Is every author going to have that reassurance and convenience for me?

It’s like when I managed a brick-and-mortar bookstore, and an independent would come in ask me to put a book on the shelf “on consignment”. I wouldn’t pay them unless the book sold.

One of my first questions to them would be, “If I wanted a thousand copies of this tomorrow, could you get it to me?” A traditional publisher typically could (or nearly that quickly). That indie didn’t have those resources. In a physical store, shelf space costs you money, because you are paying rent on it. It’s advertising space…I couldn’t have something sitting there that couldn’t result in more sales if I needed it.

What was our arrangement if the book was shoplifted (surprisingly  common in bookstores)? What if I wanted to get rid of the book? How would I return it to them? How did I know the book wasn’t defective, and if it was, how would that get remedied for my customer?

As a manager, I had to go with the people who could best service the store.

As a customer, it’s similar.

One more major point: Amazon not only stores all those books for  me (and my annotations, if I want): I can share them easily with other people on my account. Amazon knows me. If somebody has a device registered to my account, they are fine with it being downloaded to that device (as long as it is compatible, and we don’t go over the simultaneous device limit the publisher has set).

How is an author with a website selling maybe one book going to know that someone else is on my account? Are they going to let me have unlimited devices on my account, the way Amazon does? Will I even have an account, or will it be one purchase and “see ya”?

Does DRM help Amazon lock in a customer base? Sure. If it was gone, would that mean people would stop shopping at Amazon? I don’t think so. You can already get DRM free books at Amazon (Amazon gives that option to publishers using their Kindle Direct Publishing, and there are those Tor books), and people still buy them from Amazon.

So, let me ask you…

While I think “middle-less” will certainly grow, I also think Amazon will still hold their “end” up in the future.

What do you think? Do you feel trapped into buying from Amazon, or are you doing it entirely by choice and preference? If you could buy your e-books from a thousand different sources, would that be better or worse? Can you envision some other system besides either retail or “island suppliers” (everyone is independent) that would work as well as what we have now? Maybe some central rating and payment site for indies…and why wouldn’t that be Amazon? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

What do you like in ILMK? 2013

What do you like in ILMK? 2013

Regular readers know that I’m always asking for your opinion.

I typically put something at the end of a post, and prompt you to comment on what I’ve written.

I also, from time to time, ask your opinion about what I should be writing.

Now, I know that part of the attraction of a blog like this is that it is personal…that who I am affects what I write and what you read. For that reason, I can’t simply write what people ask me to write. I have to write what feels real to me, and that I think can both help people and keep me creatively satisfied.

That doesn’t mean, though, that I can’t shift the focus to more of what people want and less of what they don’t.

I polled my readers a bit more than three years ago

You tell me…what do you like in ILMK?

and based on those responses and other subsequent questions and answers, I have made changes.

For example, I’ve stopped doing as many excerpts from public domain works of fiction. I still do those from time to time, but not as many.

I know I can’t please all of the people all of the time, and I’m not trying to do that. That’s part of why I make an effort to keep the blog eclectic: I really try not to write about the same thing two posts in a row, although when something big is happening, it does happen sometimes.

I was saddened recently when someone commented that they were going to stop reading the blog because I was writing too much about the Kindle Fire.

I wasn’t sad that they had commented: I appreciated that, really. I wish that they had commented before deciding to drop it…that’s my natural tendency. I try to change something before I give up on it…sometimes, that has worked out very well.

I did go back and check in that case: I’d written one purely Kindle Fire post (a menu map) and one app review in the past ten. Apps don’t do you any good on an RSK (Reflective Screen Kindle…anything but a Kindle Fire), but they do also work on other devices running Kindle apps…Android phones, for example, and the app about which I wrote is also available on iPhones, Blackberrys, and more. Not every app is available for every device, but yes, you can’t use an app on your RSK.

That’s another part of the balance. I have people who read this blog who are old hands at the Kindle, newbies to it, people who use the Kindle app on a PC or a Mac…and people from all over the world. It isn’t possible to always write things that are of universal interest, so I hope readers accept that not every post will be applicable to them. That’s part of why I try to stick to that “no two posts the same in a row” guideline. For subscribers (thanks, subscribers!), I really try and make it worth their ninety-nine cents a month. Hopefully, if one of those posts seems like it wasn’t worth the three and a third cents it costs you (approximately), another one is worth more than seven cents.

I’ve also started adding little “bonuses” at the ends of some posts, particularly those which might appeal to a smaller audience. It might be a bonus sale, like one of the Kindle Daily Deals…those appeal to a pretty wide spectrum of my readers (but not everybody…for example, they may not apply outside the USA. In 2012, I had readers in 189 countries, according to WordPress).

I think those help, but I do want to hear what you think. I’m going to poll you, but also please feel free to comment on this post if you’d like to give me more information. You can ask me to keep the comment private, if you like…that’s up to you. I get private comments from time to time (I’ve gotten them about the content of the blog), and I don’t publish those to the blog (I review every comment before it gets published).

So, here we go!

Let’s start out with categories of posts…these won’t match up exactly with the categories you can see when you go the blogsite: the latter tend to be more narrow.

Sales

Category link: Sales (and others)

I write specifically about things where the price is reduced temporarily. That might be a Kindle Daily Deal, or Amazon’s monthly 100 books for $3.99 or lower. I try not to just list them, but to give you some insight about them, even if it’s just that I found a subset interesting. I do think this is one of the things that can really save you money. Still, I could see how someone might think they could get that information elsewhere, or that that isn’t personalized by me enough, or that the sales aren’t available to that person, or that it seems too commercial. In the polls, I’m going to include free books…that can be the ultimate sale, of course…unless the book is always free (as is the case, generally, with public domain books).

Tips

Category link: Tips

There are several sub-categories to this, but this is basically when I tell you about things that can help you use your Kindle or the Kindle service better. That includes things like alerting you to new or old features (the Menu Maps are one way I do that). I really like these, but honestly, I’ve covered a lot of stuff already. That’s one reason I like it when Amazon introduces new features, say, through an update…gives me something new where I can help you.

News

Category link: News

For the purposes of this poll, I’m going to include news about traditional publishing houses, copyright and other legal issues, and so on. Think of it of something of more general interest, rather than specifically how you use your device. While it may affect you, it is more about the information. One place I do a lot of this in the Round-ups, where I do shorter pieces and often direct you to other news sources.

Analysis, Opinion, Humor, Reviews, and Bufo’s Life

I’m lumping a bunch of things together here, but they can be broadly thought of as my really original material. Analysis (such as the Snapshots I do every month has to do with me looking at something, and often applying number crunching to it. Opinion (and the newer category called Thoughtabouts) are me just thinking about things, mostly. I didn’t really intend to write reviews when I started this blog, but I have done those and gotten good response to them. I do humor pieces as well, and from time to time, I tell you some things about my life. While you might see things about what I write about in sales or news somewhere else, these are really going to uniquely be seen here. They are different enough, though, that I’m going to approach the polls a bit differently in this section:

Topic Categories

I wanted to ask you more broadly about topics. I’ll do two polls here, one for wanting more of it, one for wanting less.

Whew! I know that’s a lot of questions…just answer the ones you want. I also know that this doesn’t come close to covering everything…feel free to give me and my readers more information by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

How often do you use these Kindle features/services?

How often do you use these Kindle features/services?

It’s been a while since  I’ve asked how you use your Kindle device, and I actually want to expand the question this time to Kindle services as well.

We’ll start out with different types of content, then move on from there. On these questions, a “Kindle” would include a Kindle Fire, an RSK (Reflective Screen Kindle…any hardware Kindle but a Fire). If your device can not do something, please skip the question rather than answering “Never”. For example, skip the music question for the Mindle, which does not have speakers.

Now, let’s talk about some of the other types of things.

One of the cool things about the Kindle service has been Whispersync. You can start reading a book on one device (say, a Kindle) and continue reading it on another (such as your SmartPhone). This can work very well when one person is reading the same book on more than one device.

Another great thing is that more than one person on an account can read the same book…for one purchase price. For example, my Significant Other and I might buy a book once, and then both read it.

Whispersync for Voice (WSV) is a fairly new feature that lets you switch back and forth between an audiobook and the e-book, and lets you buy the audiobook for a reduced price (after having bought the e-book).

Well, that’s probably enough for this time.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Senate approves equal collection budget amendment

Senate approves equal collection budget amendment

I’ve written many times about equal collection legislation.

What that would be is federal legislation that would result in large internet retailers (like Amazon) collecting sales tax at the time of sale on purchases in states where they do not have a nexus (essentially, a physical presence, but a sales force counts in addition to buildings). That would make your purchase from an out-of-state retailer seem more similar to your purchase from a brick-and-mortar store: sales tax would be collected when you made your purchase.

It’s very important to realize that this is not a new tax. Generally, purchasers are supposed to pay those taxes (they may be a “use tax” at that point) on their annual state taxes, the same time they pay they income taxes.

We do that every year (I’m still working on our taxes for this year), and it’s been a bear in the past. We have to go through our internet purchases, figure out whether or not taxes were collected, then figure out which purchases are taxable in our state (not all purchases are…e-books delivered electronically, for example, are not subject to sales/use tax in California where I reside…but e-books on a CD would be), then pay one big lump sum.

I was quite happy when Amazon started collecting and then paying the sales tax for me on purchases. That makes it far easier than doing it myself.

However, it is likely that the vast majority of people do not pay those taxes. The states don’t (currently) have a way to know about those purchases, so it’s hard for them to enforce the payment. Oh, I assume they can sock it you for penalties and fees if they catch it on an audit, but that’s an expensive thing to do.

So, people have been introducing equal collection legislation for some time, which would compel the collection (although it’s a bit complex).

How do you think Amazon feels about that?

They are for it…big time.

In 2011, Amazon Vice-President Paul Misener testified before Congress in favor of it, and you don’t send a top executive to do that if you don’t mean it.

Why would Amazon support the company having to collect taxes, therefore raising the bottom line that the consumer pays at the time of purchase (but not the bottom line overall for that consumer, if they properly pay their use taxes later)? Isn’t it more expensive for them? Doesn’t it cut into a competitive advantage?

Yes and yes.

However, if it doesn”t happen federally, then states start passing all kinds of “Amazon laws”, that have different rules and different processes. That’s more expensive.

Amazon already collects sales taxes in a lot of places (the state of Washington, of course, but also a lot of places outside the USA), and has repeatedly said that it doesn’t significantly hurt them.

What they don’t want is to have to do it a whole bunch of different ways.

That suggests that equal collection is inevitable in some form or another, so Amazon is trying to get it into the best form for them.

Now, I need to say that this amendment doesn’t make it law. There is a law under consideration called the

Marketplace Fairness Act

and a vote will likely come on that fairly soon.

Will it pass?

Well, the amendment passed handily, 75 to 24…bilateral support.

It’s being sold by some groups as making a “level playing field” for brick and mortar stores and e-tailers, but of course it doesn’t. It’s still more convenient to shop online, for example, and it’s still possible to get something in a brick and mortar store more quickly (although not by much).

One of the reasons it has support?

Money.

Remember, this is money that taxpayers should already (according to the law) be paying. If they start paying it, that will put more money in state coffers, which in turn makes things easier on the feds.

For the Congresspeople who are staunchly against new taxes, this is not a new tax. No one will owe an additional penny in taxes, as I understand it…it’s just that (I would guess the vast majority of) taxpayers will pay more taxes.

It’s not going to save main street. As a former retailer (including having been a bookstore manager), I’ve written about that many times, too. You have to make the buying experience such that your customers are willing to pay more money than they would online. You can not sell in a brick and mortar more cheaply than you can online and make a profit. You have literal overhead, and more payroll per sale, and shoplifting losses in a way quite different from an e-tailer. You have to appeal on other bases, and then you’ll survive…and thrive.

As you can imagine, there has been some coverage of this…although I think the issue has been going on for long  enough that the sharpness of any protests have dulled.

I think that this

Forbes article

gets it right, but this

cnet article

doesn’t make it clear. They say, for example, that “The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly today to endorse levying Internet sales taxes on American shoppers…” Dictionary.com says in their definition (which I am briefly excerpting):

“verb (used with object)

5. to impose (a tax): to levy a duty on imports.”

They are not imposing a tax: they are changing the point in the cycle at which an existing tax is collected, and changing who has to do the collection and submission from the consumer to the seller.

If the MFA (Marketplace Fairness Act) passes, how will affect you?

It probably won’t affect you on e-books delivered electronically, unless your state already has a tax on those. Oh, it’s worth saying…why don’t they tax those? Remember that what you buy is a license to read the book, which is like a contract…you aren’t buying a physical object. Generally contracts are not subject to sales tax.

It might affect you when you purchased an EBR (E-Book Reader), tablet, or accessory from Amazon. Again, it wouldn’t add sales tax, but you would have the sales tax collected at the time of sale.

I think it’s probably pretty obvious here that I’d like to see this passed…it would simplify my life. However, I would be interested to hear what you think about it, particularly if you think it should not be passed (and why). Feel free to let me and my readers know your thoughts by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Buying a book twice

Buying a book twice

Have you ever bought a book twice?

On purpose.

Not because you didn’t mean to do it, like all the people who bought Bladerunner back in the day, not realizing that they already owned it as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

I’m talking about a situation where you already had purchased the book in the past, most likely had already read it, might even still have it…and yet, you bought a second copy for yourself.

I’ve done that many times. I was thinking about why I had done that, and how e-books might change that.

For me, part of the question is how it affects the publishing industry.

First, I can see how re-buying has been tremendously helped by e-books. The very first e-book I bought I already owned…in fact, I had several copies. I bought it because I wanted the search capabilities, but also because it was going to be a clear comparison for me between e-books and p-books (paperbooks).

I also bought it, honestly, to pay homage to the author…even though the author hadn’t been alive for some time, and the book is in the public domain in the USA, meaning even the author’s estate got nothing from my purchase.

That’s one reason I buy things…to support something, even if that’s just psychologically in my mind, as in the case above. It’s funny, but I feel like I owe  some fictional characters something. That’s one reason we saw

Oz the Great and Powerful

this last weekend. I’m a big Oz fan: I’ve actually been to an Oz convention (traveled to another state for it), owned one of the Russian parallel Oz series in Russian, gone to Egghead’s Restaurant, an Oz themed restaurant in Ft. Bragg, California. As my Significant Other put it, “I don’t see how we can not go.”

I wasn’t disappointed in the movie, because I had my expectations in the right place.

However, I did feel I owed it to Oz to go to it, because I’ve gotten so much from Oz.

There’s a book where I own several copies in a variety of formats: The (Wonderful) Wizard of Oz.

I’m even writing something about Oz myself right now…I’ll tell you more about it when I get closer to publishing it (it’s not a new Oz story, but about Oz).

So, I might buy something I already own to “vote for it” in the marketplace.

Then, there’s the “completionist” aspect of being a collector. I might want different versions of the same book, just because they are different. For example, I might buy a paperback of The Wizard of Oz because it had a different cover (back in the day).

As a collector, there is also the “reading copy” motivation. You buy one to keep in perfect condition, and another that you can carry around with you and feel comfortable having out and about in the big scary world of soda spills, rain, and cats.

Somewhat related to that was buying several copies of the same book, so I could have ones to give away to people. I consider that somewhat different from just buying one for somebody as a specific gift. For example, I used to buy cheap used copies of Man of Bronze in used bookstores whenever I saw them, so I could comfortably give it to somebody who I thought would want to read it. I might have six or seven at a time, and if people gave them back, great…if not, I didn’t have to worry about it. I learned my lesson about that, when somebody borrowed that Russian Oz book and, well, I never got it back.

In very rare cases, I might be replacing a lost or damaged copy. I say “rare” because I almost never lose or damage books (knock virtual wood). I have bought books to replace ones that the family had when I was a kid…I hadn’t paid for the first copy, but it is a case of me buying a book I’ve already read.

That’s a situation where e-books might depress the market a bit. Hypothetically, you should never have to re-buy an e-book  you’ve bought before due to loss or damage, since it shouldn’t have either (although I know some people worry about a format shift or, say, Amazon going out of business and not having access to your archives/Cloud).

Another thing: I’m sure a lot of us have bought books for ourselves, and then later bought the same book to give to a family member (like a kid) in the same  household. There are two copies purchased by the same “buying pool” in a case like that, even though the second copy may eventually leave.

That last one may change if our descendants have access to our e-book accounts, which I think is a likely scenario. I expect my eventual great-grandkids will have a better chance of accessing my e-books than of accessing my p-books. We have bookshelves in our homes, in large part, thanks to the founder of modern public relations, Edward Bernays (whose book, Propaganda, is available in a Kindle edition). In the 1930s, several major publishers hired Bernays to help the book business. One way that the “architect of spin” did it was to encourage actual architects to design new homes with built-in bookshelves. That, in turn, encouraged people to buy books to put on them, in addition to showing the value.

I’m not convinced that fifty years from now, new dwelling places will commonly have built-in bookshelves, or freestanding ones, for that matter, as a typical thing.

My great-grandkids will probably see p-books as a burden, or something to sell…but they might read my e-books.

So, having e-books makes is less likely that I’ll buy in some way additional copies for my descendants. However, they have also made it more likely that I’ll re-buy books to format shift them (e-books have a lot of advantages over p-books…and vice versa, of course).

How about you?

Have you re-bought books? If so, why?

I’m curious about your thoughts on this. Do e-books increase or decrease re-buying, and if so, is it enough to have an industry impact? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

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DecalGirl sale ends today

Well, something didn’t go right with their e-mailing system. I got an e-mail yesterday (March 18th) telling that St. Patrick’s day was almost here! Yes, it’s a mere 364 days away. It included a coupon code you can use to save 25% on items (skins, cases) from DecalGirl, good through today only (Tuesday, March 19, 2013). The skins are fun…I got my Significant Other one with a favorite image on it.  Sorry for the late notice on this, but I assume I was supposed to get it days earlier. The coupon code is

patrick25

I think it’s okay to share the code with you, because it says I can send it to a friend.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Gglasshole! The pushback against Google GLASS has begun

Gglasshole! The pushback against Google GLASS has begun

You know how people talk about the 24-hour news cycle? Well, now it has accelerated so much that people are making mock videos…of things that haven’t even happened yet. It appears that we now travel “faster than life”, which has caused us to go back in time…perhaps transiting a “Snark Hole” to get there.

In this case, the target is Google GLASS.

That’s an upcoming (for general commercial release…possibly late this year) gadget (I’m guessing they won’t like that I am using that word) from Google.

It’s a pair of glasses with a heads-up display…you can see things provided by software in your vision. You can also use it to record video.

It’s important to note that it’s a two-way street. You can see things that aren’t there, but your Google GLASS can see things that are…and react to them.

Before I get too much into what that might mean (specifically for e-books, since that’s the focus of this blog), let’s settle on terminology.

People are tending to call them “Google Glasses” which makes sense. I used “Gglass” (“GEE-glass’) in the headline here. That would tie it into, say, Gmail. However, if they were really successful and became ubiquitous, it’s quite possible that people will just call them “glasses”, in the same way most people say, “I can’t find my phone” rather than “I can’t find my cellphone”. I think the context will make it clear enough. “Ask your glasses” should work*.

For some folks, they really will be the same thing…Gglasses might be the prescription lenses they need for corrected vision.

What concerns do people have?

I’m seeing two main threads.

One is people being even more distracted than they are now. For example, you are talking to someone, and they are simultaneously watching YouTube videos. That might be okay in some cases, but might not be a good idea when the person was driving, or walking down a crowded sidewalk.

I think that’s going to depend various much on the person, and on how smart the glasses are.

For example, the Gglass could be aware of someone or something rapidly approaching, and return you to a clear view…perhaps with some sort of alert. It’s possible that it could actually reduce pedestrian/vehicle accidents. I remember years ago when a friend of mine had a facial injury. Asking what had happened, the friend had been riding a bike…reading a book…and slammed into the back of a parked truck. An intelligent  collision  avoidance system would have helped in that case. I don’t read books while I’m driving or when I was riding a bike, but I’ve certainly done it while walking somewhere.

I think a certain percentage of the population could read a book while watching a TV show or carrying on a conversation (see this earlier post). Will some people walk off a cliff or into traffic? Sure, it’s possible…just like they can do now when navigating a bag of french fries.

The other concern I’m seeing is not from the data the Gglasses give you, but the data they gather.

They can identify people, prices, and so on, and that’s one thing. Could you use them, for example, to identify where a stranger lives? I can see ways that could work. First identifying them through facial recognition and scanning Facebook and other sources, then using public records to locate, perhaps, a property tax record.

The other thing is that they can record video…and it may be pretty unobtrusive.

In fact, I can picture a system that records all the time, probably taking the data to the Cloud. Then, the active decision you make is whether to keep something or not, rather than to start recording.

Maybe you only have a day to decide to preserve something before it gets “recorded over” (although I know it wouldn’t exactly work that way). You could verbally mark it afterwards, give it a time to preserve (“from noon to one”), or, depending on how smart it is, tell it to “Save parent-teacher conference”.

It could become like Russian dash cams

Wired article with video

where we gets tons of video on YouTube (or Vine). Got robbed? The video is in the Cloud. Want to prove what happened at work, or when that inspector came to your house? Already recorded.

That obviously raises some interesting issues…which David Brin has addressed in

The Transparent Society

In terms of just reading, I see some applications.

First, I’d like it if it could block everything except what I am reading…of course, being able to change back again quickly. That might be a challenge, but an opaque page might be nice sometimes.

Second, how about simultaneous translation? You are reading a book written in  Spanish, but reading it in English. That seems (imperfectly) possible.

Third, you could certainly look at something that has a “tag”, and maybe see video or information about a character about which you are reading. If it was tied into Amazon, for example, you could see the Shelfari Book Extras. This could even work with paperbooks (through text recognition, rather than tagging), conceivably, giving them some of the advantages of e-books. Seamless dictionary lookup in a paperbook? Hm…there might be hope for them yet.

Fourth, what about a Zeebox type app (Zeebooks?) for books, magazines, comics, and more? You could have social interactions with other people, see what they find interesting, and so on? Who wore it best? Instant polls!

Will this be a culture changer, like Tivo or the Walkman? It’s hard to say at this point, but a lot of people are already offering their opinions.

Official Site, including the “How It Feels” video
TechCrunch comedy video “How Guys Will Use Google Glass”
Engadget: This is the Modem World: The dark side of Google Glass

What do you think? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post and/or participating in the poll below:

* I did call them “datacles” (data spectacles) in this earlier post, although I wasn’t limiting them to Google’s product.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

New Kindle Paperwhite ad: what do you think?

New Kindle Paperwhite ad: what do you think?

Amazon has posted a new

Kindle Paperwhite ad (Update: YouTube has apparently removed the ad. For more information, see my later post. 2nd Update: access to the ad at YouTube has been restored.)

to YouTube, and I think we may get a lot of commentary about it. I don’t want to say a lot about it before you see it, but after you do, I’m curious about your opinion(s). The order of the questions you are seeing is randomized, and you can pick more than one answer:

Update: in looking at commentary and talking about it, I’m adding two polls (again, the answers are randomized and you can pick more than one in each poll):

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Do you need a quiet place to read?

Do you need a quiet place to read?

Hats off to Laura Miller at Salon for this post:

Bring back shushing librarians

That’s not because I particularly endorse the admonition in the headline. It’s for catching something which hadn’t stood out to me in the recent

Pew survey on libraries in the digital age

Miller observes, that, in what people value about public libraries

“”Quiet study spaces for adults and children” comes in fourth, and here is where the results go rogue. The percentage of people who consider quiet spaces to be a very important element in any public library is 76, only one percentage point less than the value given to computer and Internet access. A relatively silent place to read is almost exactly as valuable to these people as the Internet!”

That one fascinates me, because it’s the opposite of how I read.

I prefer to be in a noisy environment. I want to read with the TV on in the background, or in a crowded and noisy restaurant.

Now, I know that’s not how most people feel, and the Pew survey demonstrates that to some extent. I say to “some extent” because the question isn’t just about reading, but about study, which could be different.

It’s more important for me to have a data rich environment when I am studying than when I am reading for pleasure (although studying is a pleasure for me…but I digress).

I remember when our kid (now an adult) was first starting to do serious studying for school. My Significant Other said (and I’m paraphrasing): “Should we allow music during the studying?” I said, “How can the kid study without music?”

That concept actually baffled me. I couldn’t imagine studying for school while in the low-tech equivalent of an isolation booth.

I want something else happening…so I don’t get bored with the studying. The studying doesn’t take up my full attention, typically. I’m understanding and remembering it all with only part of my mind. If there isn’t already something going on in the environment, I’ll look for something…and that’s a distraction.

I was explaining this to a class once (of highly educated adults), and somebody said to me, “Is that like attention deficit?” I replied, “No, it’s more like attention surplus.” I have “more attention” available than the work can occupy. It’s not that I can’t keep paying attention to the work…it’s that I want to pay attention to that and to something else.

I want to put up a sign that says, “People are trying to work…please make some noise.”

Now, I’ve heard from people over and over again about how humans can’t really multitask. While I won’t debate the mechanics of what is happening (are successful multitaskers really just very good at switching back and forth rapidly and repeatedly), I’ve found that about fifteen percent of people are good at having two things happening at once.

With that group, if you stop them from being on the internet while you are teaching, they aren’t going to learn it.

The problem arises because a lot more than fifteen percent of people think they are in that group, when they really aren’t.

Not too long ago, they asked us not to use our computers while we were in a recurring team meeting…that lasts basically a whole day. It was nice that they asked if anybody had a problem with that, and I explained that I did. There would be little point in my being in the meeting if I couldn’t be doing something else at the same time, since I wouldn’t absorb any of it. I was the only person to say that, by the way. Oh, and I am perhaps the most participatory person in the meeting in those situations (one of the top three, I’d say), while I’m checking my e-mail.

The solution in that case was for me to take the minutes (and fortunately, I’m good at that). That gives me something else to do, and that certainly helps.

I am not saying that this is superior. I think it’s connected in some ways to my having quite a lengthy process to get to sleep, and to waking up slowly. I am very envious of my Significant Other’s ability to just announce a twenty minute nap, and then be up, active, and refreshed twenty-two minutes later! It takes me that long just to get to sleep (although I now have the process down so it isn’t difficult, it’s still a complicated procedure).

It’s just different.

So, I was curious about you.

I realize some of you would pick all three of these answers: try to do the one that’s true the most often:

I’m also puzzled when people seem to think that having multiple things happening around you at once is a modern development. I’ve never understood that. If you were painstakingly making a stone knife in the Paleolithic Age and weren’t constantly aware of rustles in the tall grass, and movement behind the rocks, you’d never get a chance to use your fancy high-tech artificial fang.

I think we’re likely to have evolved to work on one task while paying attention to what is happening around us.

This “Cone of Silence” idea for studying? That just seems very artificial.

That people rate it nearly as highly as having internet access while in a library is surprising to me. Oh, it’s cool when I’m in a library and it’s all quiet…I think in part because that makes it a different environment than what I normally encounter. I suppose a laser light show might have a similar sense of “altered reality” for me.

For those of you who like the quiet (and again, my guess is that’s the vast majority of people), have you ever gone to the library just to have that around you? Do you ever go in, find a quiet spot, lean back, lace your fingers behind your neck, close your eyes, and just soak it all in? I’m sure people must.

Maybe we should have “quiet booths” on the street, where you could just go in there and shut everything else out. Of course, those would inevitably be used for activities some would consider unsavory.

Say, I do remember that in The Jungle, a sort of giant Habitrail for kids, they did have a quiet room for parents! You’d be there for a birthday party, and two hundred kids were yelling and screaming and getting stuck on a platform because they were afraid to go down a tunnel, and you could just go somewhere else and let the employees deal with it. I do think people read in there…when we were going, we didn’t carry the internet with us.

What do you think? How important is quiet to you when you read? Is it natural to prefer focus and exclusion when studying? Is it a reason why you go to the library? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

Oh, and I do recommend the post I linked at the start of this article…just read it quietly.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Poll Party #2

Poll Party #2

My regular readers know that I really like to hear your opinion. I often ask for it at the end of posts (and I try to give you conversation starters), and I love reading (and responding to) the comments.

I know not everybody wants to, or has the time and energy to, write something like that.

That’s one reason I love the polls we do here. It gives people another way to be heard. Even though we certainly aren’t a scientific sample of the mainstream, I find it interesting to see what we are saying. I suspect we might even be predictive as a group, as far as e-books are concerned, but I don’t really know that.

Let’s go through a few polls!

My answer to that one? Five years old…we have one of the first Kindle models. I haven’t tested it for a while, but I”m pretty confident it still works.

You can get the answer to this next one at

http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle

by clicking Manage Your Devices.

My answer on that one? Seventeen. We have four people on our account, and I certainly can’t say we use all of these all the time. I keep different models around for testing so I can answer questions for you, and that’s part of it.

While you are on that page, let’s do this one:

I’m only counting books here, but I thought we’d have more. We have 2,843.

I’m just curious about this next one. You can take this next number, divide it into the number immediately above, divide that by 365, and figure out the minimum number of years your library will last you. Of course, that would presume that you are willing to re-read, but re-read only once…it’s just a fun number.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this here before, but my number is three and a half. They were definitely “popcorn books”, but that was a good day in my life.

Let’s see: I’ve visited a brick and mortar public library, donated books (with my grown-up kid, who was moving), and borrowed an e-book.

I’ve mentioned this before…I always finish them. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book I thought was valueless, and I once read a book that I didn’t like much, but loved the last line.

Let’s see: word of mouth, Twitter, blog, e-mail…I think those are the main ones.

I’m honestly not sure on these. I haven’t checked to see if they block text-to-speech…if they do, interested or not, I don’t buy them. I don’t tend to look that far ahead. I’ll admit that the idea of a sequel to The Shining intrigues me, and that Robert Ripley book caught my eye.

I own reflective screen Kindles, Kindle Fires, a Samsung phone…I would actually assume I have a turntable some place, but I’m not sure.

I think I’ll wait to see your answers on that one.

Enjoy!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.