my Kobo fails again

My Kobo has died. The screen has gone. This is the second time. I have rung Borders - who were charming - and they'll fix or replace, when I find the receipt.

The other issue I've been having is that when I plugged it in, it would charge but the icon would not appear on my desktop, so it wouldn't synch my new purchases. I've returned it to the default settings by putting a paperclip in the back, but no luck. I'm wondering it is being in a mac environment.

Labor and jobs

Once Labor cared about jobs but now they are too dry for that.

Bill Shorten is happy for people to shop offshore, and Stephen Conroy is philosophical about the loss of jobs from the collapse of the REDgroup. He's right that in the case of the REDgroup that the reasons for the collapse are complex and not directly attributable to the growth of online shopping. He goes on to say that technology changes industries and new jobs are often created. He cites the example of Kodak, not mentioning that it is now a much smaller business than it once was. And he's missing the point about online shopping, deliberately or not, that there will be fewer of these new jobs and many of them will be offshore.

Where are the unions in this debate?

pissed-off consumer

I'm feeling discriminated against as an Australian. I wanted to listen to Tobias Wolf's This Boys Life (a Year 12 book) as an audiobook, but I was not allowed to download the file as I have an Australian IP address. I wanted to watch the movie but when I finally legally borrowed a copy it was coded for another region. And I read this, this morning: http://delimiter.com.au/2011/02/10/no-touchpad-for-you-hp-tells-australia/ My friend Brian, something of a computer guru (being in IT), says, "I hate DRM". Even though he endeavours to buy legally (and happens to be a huge fan of print books) he points out how easy it is to download anything you want from the internet if you want it enough. Frustrating the consumer so obviously legitimizes piracy. As a consumer, my response to this frustration is to say bring on a global market where I can buy what I see and what I know other people can buy.

Getting a book for sure onto my ereader (I hope)

I've been having a little trouble getting The Guardians of Ga'hoole loading onto my Kobo ereaeder via my Borders app. I did do a reset (aka a pin in the back) but that didn't help. I rang Borders and spoke to Kobo - those lines are blurry. And they said download a copy from my Borders account accessed via the webpage (not the application) and then click on the downloaded item which will then load into Adobe Digital Editions. I can then drag the file from ADE onto the icon of my ereader when I next connect.

The other advantage of this process is that I now have a copy of the file on my laptop, which is backed up, so if something happens to my reader and I can't access the web. I can still read the book.

Wolf Hall Enhanced

I've downloaded the Enhanced Edition of Wolf Hall. I'm in the middle of reading the print edition - and I'm loving it. So having the ebook on my phone will help me complete the book faster (not that I need to find out what happens in the end). The Enhanced Edition comes with some video and extra text. If I wasn't interesting in a bit of app experimentation I don't think I'd be paying the extra $5 bucks for the enhancements. It is also kind of chunky at 20 megabytes. Reading the offer didn't convince me of the value. I never watch the extras on a DVD and suspect most people don't. Maybe after I've experienced the enhancements I'll feel differently, but I don't think publishers are making a convincing offer as yet. I'll keep you posted.

enewsy morning

Lots of enews this morning. A furore about Meanjin maybe going online - solely! Louise Adler said: " The ratio of what you print and what you publish onlline is a question that is changing for all of us. I don't want to be prescriptive."

Peter Craven in the Age does not see online as a substitute for print, at least for Meanjin; online lacks Meanjin's hallmark permanence. "It's a magazine that people look back on." says Craven. I'm not quite getting this argument - online allows for editions of the magazine to be online permanently and to be searchable, more so than print. There's another argument here that he's not putting forward. Is it that the subscriptions for an online version would dry up, killing the magazine?

Max Barry's novel Machine Man,which he published one page at a time on his website, is to be made into a Hollywood movie. A previous (print) novel of Barry's has been optioned but never filmed.

The ebook sales in this country are still more hype than reality from what I've heard - less than 1% of print sales. But the landscape of publishing is changing fast and ebooks is part of that shift, but ebook sales aren't part of that - at least as yet.

rebranding and rereleasing a series

There's been a lot of discussion about this at the kennel this morning. It's no uncommon but does it work or is it just hopeful? It seems to be more common over on the other side of the Pacific than here, say or this. In my time in publishing has worked but my suspicion is that, more often than not, it is about travelling hopefully. Has Nielsen and computer inventory systems loaded the dice against success?

more froth than coffee

What I'm getting out of this article from Publishing Perspectives is that outside the US ebook sales are still negligible. There's a lot more froth about ebooks than there is revenue.

The music industry has publishers bothered, but is it going to be the same?

Kobo ereader

I bought a Kobo ereader on the weekend for the family. A self-purchased father's day gift. It was sold to us by the lovely Jess at Carlton Borders - I do think the Red Group should spring for a few readers to share among the staff.

I was surprised to discover that my Kobo account didn't synch with the ereader and I had to open a new Borders account - irritating. It would have been nice if the time zone on the device had been selected already and that it had come charged. Apart from those things it was a pretty smooth exercise to charge and open an account and load the first book.

Miles (11 years) has taken over the reader for himself to read the fifth book in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, which he has been absolutely hanging out for. (Nothing like a new book to drive a series.) I've seen him reading ereader for most of the weekend: at dinner, standing in the corridor, on the couch and in the car. Quizzed he said he thinks he likes it better than paper. (That's a drink for some else.) And he's even thinking of reading one or two of the classics that came preloaded.

When I looked through what was available from Kobo in children's literature only two out of the five Skulduggeries were available and only two out three of the Hunger Games. It'll give me more confidence in the whole ebook exercise when these sort of availability glitches are ironed out.

I'm looking forward to giving it a try. It's light and the type is easy to read and approximates the feel of paperback in the hand. The iPad (which I lovely) by comparison is bigger and much heavier. Miles would have like the ereader to have also played audio books. That would, in fact, be rather nice.

Kobo ereader availabiltiy

Curiously, the first and the third book of the Hunger Games is available from Kobo as an ebook, but not the second. (i'm reading the third on my iPhone, an it will be the second book I've ever read on my iPhone. But Mockingjay is not showing the strength of plot of the Hunger Games.) That could be frustrating for someone. Who was managing those rights?

Don't throw the book out with the social media

Seth Godin said recently of publishing and of books: “I like the people, but I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread.”

I think he's missing the point. He's fallen in love with the glitter of immediacy. Books aren't an elegant way of spreading ideas. They are an elegant way of understanding ideas - in depth. They're a much more solitary and personal experience than social media. Social media is fast fun and flexible, but it's about grasping something now. If we only have social media we'll have a broad and shallow culture. They're curl-up-in-front-of-the-fire-on-a-peaceful-rainy-Sunday-afternoon. They're about creating a space in a busy world. They're about creating something that will last. Social media complements but can't replace the function of books. Did TV replace radio? People seek more ways to express themselves not less.

Henry David Thoreau on the Melbourne Writer's Festival

"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind."

From On Walden Pond

Neilsen figures

I've been looking at Neilsen Bookscan figures and one thing that is impressing me is how the YA writers I'm seeing around today (say at the Melbourne Writers Festival) have a longish publishing history and you can see their sales building from book to book, each release doing better than the other. It's commonsense but it reassuring seeing it writ in the figures.

pricing ebooks and other formats

I just bought Suzanne Collins Mockingjay (the third book in the Hunger Games series from Scholastic): a print copy for $18.99 from Tim's Bookshop (our local) as a gift for Daniel, and I downloaded an ebook format on the iPhone from Kobo for myself. (We just finished Catching Fire as an audio book last weekend.)

The list price on Amazon is US$ 17.99, which converts to a little over the $20 AUD mark in my calculations, but Amazon has discounted it to US$8.45, which they convert to $9.78 and then they add $11.55 in postage and packaging giving a total of AU$21.33, and I have to wait up to 30 days for my book.

And I could have bought it on audio for $19.58 from Audible for instant download.

The Kobo scenario looks good pricewise and in terms of convenience and I feel quite green about it, Tim's pbook pricing looks good in comparison to Amazon, but who will have the better reading experience, Daniel or me?

Spanification

I'm observing the increasing spanification of the US and thus the world. I happened to note two Spanish language titles in the top 10 TV morning shows in American on my Variety feed this morning, and I'm enjoying the growing numbers of Spanish and South American restaurants in Melbourne.

ebooks in China are exploding

Read the last question of the interview!

a dead tree by any other name

Given that most of our electricity (in Victoria, Australia) comes from coal then the p-book is the dead-tree edition and the e-book is the really-dead-tree edition.

Australian Amazon v US Amazon

The table is definitely sloping away from us.

ebooks

I reckon that kids like to get away from the screen to read a book. Screens are for homework, games and social media. A book is picked up for an escape from that environment. Comment?

who is reading ebooks?

Do let me know if you live in Australia and ARE reading ebooks?