“Who will want to read books on a tiny computer that costs hundreds of dollars, when they can read them for free from the library?” the doubters asked. Then it was, “Who will want a tablet that only lets you read e-books when the iPad and other tablets do so much more, for not much more money?”

Sometimes, there’s just no explaining human behavior. It turns out, people really like e-readers. They like having a reasonably small (paperback-sized) device that holds literally thousands of books and displays them—and doesn’t do much else. Most don’t have web browsers or color screens or let you tweet or anything else. They’re a reading tablet for readers, not a Star Trek-like “tricorder” for techies who want to do it all, and do it all at once.

Proof of the continued success of e-readers comes from the market leaders, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, who have both recently introduced new e-readers. B&N introduced the NOOK color last year, which was basically a color LCD Android tablet geared toward book, newspaper and magazine readers, and introduced the NOOK Simple Touch Reader this spring, priced at $139 and featuring a touch-screen.

Amazon followed this fall with several new models announced this week: a non-touch screen Kindle without a keyboard, a touchscreen Kindle, and the Kindle Fire, an Android tablet designed to compete with the iPad (and ostensibly the NOOK Color). These models vary in price from $79 for the basic, non-touch Kindle with ads that display on the menu screens and the screensaver, all the way to the Fire, which lists at $199 and will surely siphon some customers from Apple. Unlike the NOOK or Apple offerings, the Kindles get a price break if you let Amazon show you ads, and the Kindles don’t have a wall charger included, meaning you have to plug into a nearby PC to charge the battery, or buy a wall charger.

Just a few days before Amazon’s release of its new products, Barnes and Noble announced it would release a few new NOOKS of its own: the Encore, rumored to be priced at $249, and the Acclaim, at $349, both in time for the holidays. The Acclaim is also rumored to be a gaming platform developed in conjunction with Disney and videogame renter GameStop.

Whew.

Dead? Hardly. Stay tuned.

Even though some pundits were tossing dirt on the coffins on the NOOK, Kobo and even the Kindle recently, the darn things just keep on selling. Barnes & Noble and Kobo (which is affiliated with troubled Borders books) just released new versions of their e-readers that

What’s so great about the new NOOK and Kobo? Size (lighter than the Kindle), battery life (in the NOOK’s case, the same two months as the Kindle, and a respectable month for the Kobo), and a new e-ink screen (all now share the sharp Pearl display). But what sets the NOOK and Kobo apart is that both incorporate a touch screen for all navigation. Gone is the original NOOK’s nifty but fickle and energy-intensive LCD screen. Like the iPhone and other smart phones and devices like the iPod Touch, both the NOOK and the Kobo utilize the familiar touch screen interface complete with gestures. The Kindle, with its physical keyboard and page turn buttons, now looks like a calculator, while the NOOK has 37 fewer buttons, as the Barnes & Noble execs bragged during the media event at which the new NOOK was released.

Now, the point of all this isn’t to poke fun at Amazon.com or review the NOOK or the Kobo. It’s to point out that when large companies spend millions developing newer and better versions of their products (and we haven’t even mentioned Sony here), it’s because the consumer is demanding them. So despite what the grim reapers of punditry think, e-readers aren’t going away and aren’t going to be merged with smart phones or much more expensive tablets like the iPad. No, there’s no doubt that there is a proven, viable and robust market for devices dedicated to reading digital content, and for digital content itself.

Reading is too fundamental a human endeavor to be relegated to an app on a cell phone. It deserves its own device. You can eat spaghetti and meatballs with a Swiss army knife, but the fork and spoon are custom-tailored for it. The same goes for reading, and the e-reader.

To quote Star Wars, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

The New York Times is betting that its content will be good enough for web surfers to cough up a measly $3.75 a week for access to it. They’re wrong.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The New York Times is considered as one of the finest newspapers in the world by some, but in cyberspace, free overrules good nearly every time. And almost no one gets their news from just one or two sources any more.

By implementing a paywall, the NY Times has virtually guaranteed that its visits will plummet. And they have—according to an April 12 article in PC Magazine, from March 28 (the day the paywall went up) to April 9, total page views decreased by 11 to 30 percent.

I don’t want to be a cynic who offers only criticism without offering solutions as well. The fact is, something must be done in order for high-quality, reputable news media to survive in a world where more and more people get their news from amateurish websites full of errors and bias.

The solution is to keep the paywall, but make it less painful. A reader may not pay $15 a month for unlimited articles, but he or she might pay, say, 2 cents an article. It’s called a micro-pay system. The theory is that readers connect an online pay service (such as PayPal) or credit card when they register with a site. They’re then billed for their exact usage. If a reader consumes 50 stories a month from the Times (about one or two per day), they’d be billed just $1.

Sure, for hard-core news junkies, the New York Times’ subscription fee is a bargain. But for the casual reader who may get their media from a variety of sources, including free news aggregators like Google or Yahoo!, paywalls are pricey.

Suppose you’d like to read a half-dozen articles each from the New York Times and five or six other paywalled publications every day. Soon you may be paying $100 a month or more to read online newspapers, when much of the same information is available for free. But if those sites all used micro-pay, and you read a total of 1000 articles a month, you’d pay about one-fifth that much, without being tethered to a particular set of publications.

The Times has to ask itself, do we want to get a small amount of money from a lot of people, or a larger sum from fewer people? Ultimately, they’ll have to run those numbers and decide. But in the meantime, the numbers don’t lie—a 30 percent decline in page views is significant and doesn’t bode well for the future.

First, it’s important to remember that Kindle and NOOK are both pieces of hardware, as well as cross-platform apps that can run on a variety of hardware, ranging from PCs to smartphones. When you publish a document for the NOOK or Kindle, it will be available for owners of the Kindle and NOOK hardware as well as anyone who downloads the free app to access Kindle and NOOK content for their device of choice.

Kindle

Kindle hasn’t yet released specific guidelines for publishing a Kindle Single, but one might assume the process would be similar to Amazon’s system for publishing traditional Kindle books, the Digital Text Platform (DTP). DTP allows authors to upload their content for publishing on Kindle, while setting their own price, determining their royalty amount (35 or 70 percent; restrictions and conditions apply) and choosing whether or not they want to use digital rights management (DRM). Content can be created using Microsoft Word, saved as an HTML file, and uploaded to Amazon for conversion into the mobipocket format that Amazon uses. A similar process is available for blog authors who wish to have their blog published on the Kindle, as well as newspaper and periodical publishers.

NOOKColor

Barnes & Noble’s answer to rival Amazon’s DTP is PubIt! As you might expect, PubIt! does some things better than DTP, and some things not as well. On the plus side, PubIt! allows authors to publish in the EPUB format, which is the open digital standard used by most libraries that offer e-books through the OverDrive system. Of course, if you don’t plan on having your book available through public libraries, this won’t matter to you. However, the EPUB format can also be read by e-readers manufactured by Sony and a few others, so even if the library isn’t a venue for you, EPUB does offer a little wider hardware base. You can also read PubIt! e-books inside Barnes & Nobles many brick and mortar stores with your NOOK or NOOKColor, something Amazon.com can’t offer.

On the negative side, PubIt! e-books can’t be sold outside of the US, and the NOOK is not as popular as the ubiquitous Kindle. Also, it’s not as easy to create an EPUB file with PubIt! as authors must convert their Word (or other word processor) files to EPUB via one of several third-party sites before submitting. It also appears that you can’t publish blogs, newspapers or periodicals via PubIt!, so magazine and newspaper article authors’ access to the NOOK maybe limited to those large publications available through the NOOK.

Like DTP, PubIt! offers a variable royalty scheme (65 or 40 percent depending on price).

As you can tell, either system is a little confusing. Fortunately, Trade Press Services can walk you through the process for either publishing portal, and help you make certain that your work is timely, informative and well-written. If you’d like to learn more about how TPS can get your book, magazine or periodical into the e-book universe, contact me.

Amazon.com announced that it will begin offering “Kindle singles,” works that have traditionally been too long for feature magazine articles (less than 10,000 words) but too short for full-length books (more than 50,000 words). Amazon says these 30-90 page pamphlets will fill a traditional print publishing void for ideas, concepts or stories that merit more length or shelf life than a magazine article, but may not contain enough text to fill out an entire book of 200 pages or more.

This format seems ideal for companies who wish to produce detailed white papers, in-depth sales brochures, or annual reports. Writers of both fiction and non-fiction who may not wish to tackle a full-length novel may also choose the new Kindle singles format and opt to publish their work digitally. In any case, the Kindle single is a great example of how the flexible boundaries of digital publishing and distribution can move beyond the limitations of print media.

Amazon.com’s chief e-reader competitor, Barnes and Noble, announced its second-generation e-reader, the NOOKcolor. In addition to being an Android tablet with a color LCD screen, the NOOKcolor also opens up even more publications to users than does its original NOOK. Customers can now subscribe to 64 magazines, including National Geographic, the New Yorker, Harvard Business Review, Barron’s and the Christian Science Monitor, as well as 24 newspapers, including USAToday, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. All of these publications are downloaded daily to the user’s NOOKcolor and are displayed in full color. Unlike the iPad, which offers similar newspaper and magazine reading capabilities, the nookCOLOR is half the price ($249) and does not require the user to download multiple apps. A pad that is custom-made for readers, the nookCOLOR puts a wealth of media content at the user’s fingertips.

So, while print outlets are still a strong and viable outlet for companies that wish to gain editorial coverage and position themselves as thought leaders, these new emerging formats can’t be ignored as more and more readers opt for silicon and plastic over paper and bookbinder’s glue.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal on the impact of ebooks on writers, publishers and agents mixed genuine concern for the little guy with a lot of misplaced sympathy for industry fat cats.

The article describes how major publishers are signing fewer authors and offering smaller advances due to declining print book sales. The piece seems to want to point the finger at the ebook, rather than the recession or an overall decline in reading among Americans. After all, recent polls like the Harris survey I described in my last blog entry show that people who use electronic book readers purchase more books than their non-e-reading neighbors, and are a rare bright spot in the publishing industry.

The article doesn’t stop there. It quotes literary agent Ira Silverberg calling the digital media revolution “this digital disruption,” as if digital media were a bad thunderstorm that would soon pass.

More:

Much as cheap digital-music downloads have meant that fewer bands can earn a living from record-company deals, fewer literary authors will be able to support themselves as e-books win acceptance, publishers and agents say. “In terms of making a living as a writer, you better have another source of income,” says Nan Talese, whose Nan A. Talese/Doubleday imprint publishes Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood and John Pipkin.

Au contraire. “Cheap digital-music downloads” have opened the doors for thousands of previously unheard-of bands to reach new audiences. And has writing as a career ever paid well, except for the select few? And why are e-books to blame?

"Ping," part of Apple's iTunes, helps users discover new music.

Even more:

Unlike traditional bookstores, where a browsing customer might discover an unknown book set out on a table, e-bookstores generally aren’t set up to allow readers to discover unknown authors, agents say. Brand-name authors with big marketing budgets behind them are having the greatest success thus far in the digital marketplace.

The article fails to understand that social media and online reader reviews allow readers to discover unknown authors even more easily than stumbling across “an unknown book set out on a table” (that’s marketing?).

Perhaps it’s the raw deals e-book authors are signing. For example, the article says authors make about $4.20 on every $28 hardcover, and just $2.27 on a $12.99 e-book. Yet their work hasn’t changed. What’s changed is the publisher’s cost—close to nothing in terms of printing, binding and distribution, because it’s all digital. Any teenager with a computer can run an electronic bookstore from his basement for the cost of the electric bill. And perhaps it’s some authors’ world views:

(John) Pipkin, who has a Ph.D in English literature, says he cobbles together an income based in part on grants, fellowships and a partial advance he has received for his second book. “I’ve had to rethink my plans in terms of supporting my family full time as a writer,” he says.

His wife, a tenured professor, provides health benefits for his family. Mr. Pipkin, who teaches an undergraduate creative-writing class at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, receives no benefits. Although he has an IRA, he doesn’t receive employer contributions. Mr. Pipkin, 43, says his goal is to find a full-time teaching position with benefits.

“Unless you’re a best-selling author, I don’t see how it’s possible for an author to get together enough income to pay for health insurance, retirement and other things,” he says.

Welcome to the recession, Mr. Pipkin! Thank goodness your wife has full-time employment, and that you have several advanced degrees which should make you eminently employable. If only the rest of the estimated 15 million unemployed Americans were so lucky.

The articles bemoans the fact that Mr. Pipkin’s award-winning novel “Woodsburner” has sold just 359 digital copies, compared to 10,000 print copies. Maybe that has something to do with how people buy books. In a brick-and-mortar bookstore, browsers judge books by their covers and have to hope the book is worth the cash they lay down at the counter. Buyers are more susceptible to traditional marketing—quotes from book reviews on the jacket, employees’ “picks of the month,” and so on. However, on a website, browsers can read reviews and comments by other readers (social media), which greatly influence their buying decisions. And Mr. Pipkin, patrons of Amazon.com are lukewarm on your book—it’s garnering 3.5 out of 5 stars. That’s a “C” average.

The real problem here is three-fold: one, a continuing failure of the publishing industry to embrace digital media, regarding it as an enemy rather than the future. Jann Wenner pushes print magazines and chides the Internet in those well positioned “Power of Print” ads seen in many magazines, even as his employees down the hall at rollingstone.com lure thousands of visitors to the iconic magazine’s website every day. It must feel odd and come off as more than a little counter-productive to have your boss publicly demeaning your work every day.

The second part of the problem is greed on the part of publishers, who want to pay authors less for the same amount of work, simply because a book is being published digitally and not on paper. And finally, there seems to be a failure on the part of some authors to understand the depth of the recession and the nature of their profession. Writing novels is an art, and art is largely a discretionary expenditure that comes well after food, rent, clothes and many other needs on most families’ shopping lists these days. As in all things, the days of oversized bonuses and easy money are gone.

Overall, just eight percent of the 2,775 adults polled use an e-reader such as the Kindle or nook to read books. However, those polled who do use an e-reader read more books in a year than non-e-reader users, suggesting that reading enthusiasts have been the first to adopt this emerging technology. For example, 62 percent of those polled read 11 or more books a year, compared to just 38 percent of non-e-reader users.

A similar pattern was seen when respondents were asked how many books they purchased per year: 67 percent of e-reader users purchase six or more books a year, compared to just 38 percent of non-users. And 53 percent of e-reader users say they read more now than they did before acquiring an e-reader.

Growth in e-reader adoption rates appears to be in the cards as well—12 percent of non-e-reader users say they are likely to get one in the next year.

Compare these numbers to a September 2009 survey from the research firm In-Stat, which showed that just 5.8 percent of respondents owned an e-reader, and it’s clear the e-reader market is growing, if slowly. Recent price drops by industry leaders Amazon and Barnes & Noble have helped to fuel sales of the book-size electronic devices, which now retail for around $140. This is significant, because high cost of the readers, which once sold for $250-$300, was a reason given in the In-Stat poll for not purchasing a device.

To read into the numbers a bit, it’s clear that avid readers are the early adopters of e-readers, and a slim majority of them are now reading more as a result. Price drops are sure to help lure more casual readers into the fold, although they are probably more likely to read an e-book on another device they already own, such as a smart phone or netbook. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Apple and others produce device-independent e-reader software and apps that allow users who purchase a book to read it on the device of their choosing. However, e-readers, which are tailored specifically for reading with their e-ink, low-glare screens, will likely remain the device of choice for more enthusiastic bookworms.

She quotes him as saying “we will stop printing the New York Times some time in the future, date TBD.”

This is another story in the ongoing shift from print to digital media. Recently, the Detroit Free Press stopped home delivery of its print edition four days a week, opting instead for newsstand delivery and a special online edition of the paper that is identical to the print version. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer stopped printing newspapers altogether in 2009, and is now available exclusively online. I’ve documented on Trade Secrets the rise of ebooks, ebook readers and tablet PCs, all of which are helping to facilitate the transformation from trees and ink to silicon and e-ink screens.

Sulzberger’s comments, given at the Ninth International Newsroom Summit in London on Sept. 8, were really just flip remarks at the end of a talk on how the NYT plans to implement a pay system for most of its web content in 2011.

Many newspapers are considering pay systems for some or all of their content. The Wall Street Journal reports success with its system, which limits access to some articles to just the introductory paragraphs for non-subscribers. The NYT’s proposed system would allow free access to light users of the Times, such as those who come across NYT content with a search engine and just want to read an article or two, but would charge those who want access to more content.

I don’t think the Times’ idea is a good one. The WSJ may succeed because it offers unique content for a specific audience that can’t be found elsewhere. Most of the content in the NYT can, however—or at least content like it.

One of the strengths of the Internet is a user’s ability to surf seamlessly from site to site, accessing the information they desire. When those sites begin to set up their own proprietary pay systems, the information superhighway becomes a series of roadblocks and speedbumps. Suddenly, users will have to remember dozens of usernames and passwords to navigate through their daily media consumption. They’ll simply avoid paid content and stick to news aggregators like Google and Yahoo!, or news sites that have smaller budgets and can get by on their click-through ad revenue. However, smaller budgets usually mean less reliable news and poorer journalism.

A better solution would be to implement a global micropay system, in which member news sites charge all users a very small amount to access an article on their site (pennies per view). Users would simply register with this global news “Paypal” and accumulate invisible, behind-the-scenes charges that would be billed monthly to a credit card. Not only would users have to remember just one username and password, the system would bill light users less and heavier users more—no one-size-fits-all, $12.95/month subscription for someone who just wants to follow the Yankees or do the crossword puzzle.

Think about it—what if your cell phone company wanted to set up separate billing plans for each state you call, or even each friend? Or if cable TV billed you separately for each channel? Likewise, we shouldn’t be bombarded with dozens of bills from the news sites that we frequent.

When it comes to paid news content, KISS—keep it simple, stupid—should be the defining framework.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was recently quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that in July, his online company sold 1.8 ebooks for every hardcover book sold. Barnes & Noble, the chief competitor to Amazon in the ereader and ebook market, hasn’t released figures, but says its share of the digital book market is bigger than its share of the print market, and that sales of its nook, released in late 2009, have exceeded expectations. The brick-and-mortar retailer, which also operates online, plans to add nook boutiques in its stores to promote sales of the nook and ebooks.

It’s not just for-profit retailers who are getting aboard the ebook train. The nation’s public libraries are adding ebooks by the thousands to their collections, using services like Overdrive and NetLibrary. These ebooks, available in both the ubiquitous Adobe pdf format and the industry standard EPUB wrapper, are checked out just like regular library books, downloaded and read on a device like an ereader or PC. Then they’re returned online, or simply allowed to expire when the loan period is up. The Cleveland area library system (CLEVNET) has some 7,000 ebook titles available for loan to area library patrons, while the Philadelphia Free Library offers anyone in the country a $15 a year library card, with which they can check out any of their nearly 3,000 ebooks.

Add to this the hundreds of sites that house free, downloadable ebooks, typically classics whose copyright has expired, government publications, and unpublished books submitted by aspiring authors, and you have have an ebook tsunami on your hands. One of the more well-established free ebook sites, Project Gutenberg, has over 33,000 free books to download—books that “were previously published on paper by bona fide publishers and digitized by us with the help of thousands of volunteers.”

Paperless society? Probably not any time soon. A less paper society? You bet.

First, let’s look at some of the common devices you can use to read digital or electronic books, a.k.a. “ebooks.”

iPad

The iPad is an ebook reader, in addition to doing many other things as well. You can purchase ebooks from Apple or any vendor that has an app for the iPad, including Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. The downside to the iPad is the high price and the glossy LCD, which can be hard to read in the sun. Also, the iPad has far less battery life than its dedicated ebook competitors below (10 hours vs. up to a month). Not to sell the iPad short, but it’s really a small computer and less an ebook reader. Choose the iPad if you want e-mail, web browsing, music, video and other features in addition to ebook reading.

nook

The nook is Barnes and Nobles’ ebook reader. Like Amazon.com’s Kindle and ebook readers from Sony, the nook uses “e-ink” to form the words on its unlighted, matte screen that looks more or less like paper. You’ll need a light to read the nook at night (just like a real book), but it’s easy to read in bright sunlight (just like a real book). Perhaps the best feature for budget-minded users is the nook’s compatibility with free ebooks available for download from your local library and Google books. Plus, the device itself is affordable—you can purchase a wi-fi and 3G-enabled nook for $199. With wi-fi and 3G, you can download books anywhere you can get a wireless Internet signal (such as at home or a coffee shop) or a 3G cellular signal (such as sitting on the beach). And the 3G is free—no cellular plans required, and no charges for downloading books.

Kindle

The Kindle is the nook’s main competitor, and uses a similar e-ink format for that paper-like look on the screen. What you need to know is this: most folks say the Kindle’s hardware is a little faster and better than the nook’s. On the downside, it won’t play nice with your local library or Google books, and you have to purchase your books from Amazon.com. However, the wi-fi and 3G-enabled Kindle is $10 cheaper than the nook. The Kindle is also a bit smaller, and adds a QWERTY keyboard, which the nook lacks. The Kindle DX is a larger version of the Kindle for a much higher price (read: double). Go with the Kindle if a keyboard or a really large screen (on the DX) matter to you, or if you’re a fan of Amazon.com, which didn’t become the world’s #1 online retailer for nothing.

.pdf

There are thousands of free books available via Adobe’s free .pdf (portable document format). Most are classics whose copyright has expired, although newer books are available. The choices are plentiful—just do a Google search for “pdf books” and enjoy. The viewing software, if not already loaded on your PC, is available for download for free from adobe.com. In addition, many of the same books are available for viewing right in your web browser—no .pdf viewer required.

There are other choices as well: Sony makes an ebook reader, and many ebooks can be downloaded to your “smart” cell phone (e.g., Blackberry or iPhone). And many people use a “netbook” (a tiny laptop computer, usually with a 10-inch screen that costs $300-$400) to read ebooks and do low-power computer tasks like e-mail as well. Whatever you choose, you can rest easy knowing that there are indeed affordable choices out there for every budget and use requirements.