First, the good news…

Like Hulu, Next Issue Media is owned by several big media companies, and at launch they’ve made nearly three dozen titles available. The service’s pricing plans are simple: $10 a month for access to 27 monthly titles, or $15 a month for those plus 5 more weekly titles. Paying $120 to $180 a year for virtual magazine subscriptions isn’t a trivial matter, but the more magazines you like to read regularly, the better the deal gets; you’d pay about the same for individual print subscriptions to just the five weekly titles.

And now for the bad news!

Before you get too excited, there are of course some big problems, both in usability and consumer rights.

1. If you own an iPad, Kindle Fire, or Nook, you can’t subscribe. The Next Issue app is only available for Android tablets running Honeycomb or higher, although an iOS version is supposedly in the works.
2. It’s only being offered to U.S. customers.
3. The Terms of Service you’re forced to accept wholesale are abusive. This is the case with pretty much every sort of consumer offering these days, but that doesn’t make it ethical or fair. In Next Media’s case, the two biggest problems are:
   • Mandatory binding arbitration, meaning you waive your rights to sue even if the company does something egregious with the service or with your personal information.
   • Lifetime download limits for every issue: no more than 5 devices, and no more than 10 times total.
4. In addition, I can’t find any information about how long you can keep old issues, or whether you have access to them if you end the plan. (The only information I found on this topic said that Next Media reserves the right to remove any content at any time without warning.) This more or less aligns with the Netflix approach — consumers don’t expect to be able to save permanent copies of the movies they stream on Netflix — but it’s not traditionally how magazine subscriptions have worked, so make sure you understand this and you’re okay with it before signing up.
5. As you might expect from a magazine company, the privacy policy notes that they’ll use your personal information and activity with the service for advertising purposes. You can request that they remove your information from their system by contacting them at the email address in their Privacy Policy.

Next Media’s executives told All Things D that everything about this venture is an experiment at this point, so everything from the plan pricing to the platform availability may change by the time I publish this post. (However, based on current U.S. business practices, I have no reason to believe the fine print will get any better.) Still, as a former magazine addict who has been consistently disappointed by the digital magazine space, I think this is exciting news.

The real test, however, will be whether or not Next Media can reach all those iPad owners. If Apple okays the Next Media app later this year, it could prove to be a far better alternative to magazines than either Apple’s own Newsstand or the fairly expensive Zinio service.

The Potter brand is so powerful that Rowling’s team was able to push through some important changes in how the books will be sold. These changes are very friendly to both consumers and public libraries, so I hope Pottermore succeeds and becomes the model for best practices in ebook retailing.

The first big change is where the ebooks will be sold. You can only buy them through Pottermore, so for example if you go to Amazon and search for them, you’ll be redirected back to Pottermore. Futurebook, which is where I got most of this news, notes that Apple refused Pottermore’s terms, so you won’t see Harry Potter on the Apple iBooks Store. (Fortunately iBooks syncs unlocked EPUB files–see below–so your bookmarks and notes will still work if you read a Pottermore edition in iBooks.)

The second big change–and the one that I hope publishers everywhere seriously consider–is how DRM will work. Instead of locking consumers down with single-platform editions that can’t be transferred to another platform in the future (e.g. from Nook to iBooks), Pottermore will provide an unlocked EPUB file as well as let you directly push the book to your specific device, whether it’s a Kindle or a Nook or a Sony Reader. More important, at least when it comes to future-proofing your purchases, Pottermore will only use social DRM, meaning it will add a unique identifier to each copy so that it can track it back to the original buyer should it show up on a pirate sight. Futurebook says if you push the file to your Kindle or Nook, then Amazon or B&N will add their own encryption DRM to the file, which is something I haven’t tested yet but it doesn’t sound reasonable. (To my knowledge, Amazon doesn’t force DRM on any ebooks it sells; publishers have to specifically add it. In general, Amazon relies on its proprietary AZW format to keep consumers locked in.)

In plain language, this means you can read your Harry Potter ebooks on a wide range of devices without having to worry about DRM encryption errors.

If you’ve been following the awfulness that is the library ebook saga–where most of the major publishers have either implemented restrictive lending limits or stopped selling libraries ebook editions altogether–there’s some good news here, too. Pottermore is offering ebook editions to libraries under a five-year unlimited lending license.

The reason Pottermore can switch to social DRM and set fairer terms for public libraries is simple: because it’s selling the files directly, it can establish policies that are better for consumers while still great for the author/publisher. If Pottermore had to sell directly through retailers like Amazon or Apple, it would be forced to submit to those companies’ self-serving policies, many of which (like platform lock-in and DRM encryption) aren’t good for publishers or consumers.

To me, that’s the most important aspect to this story: that Pottermore is testing the viability of a real alternative to the current sales model. It’s too bad that the big publishers (excepting Random House) foolishly pushed an agency model–and exposed themselves to charges of collusion in the process–instead of trying something more innovative like this. Maybe, if Pottermore’s strategy proves successful, it will give all publishers hard evidence that there are better ways to approach ebookselling.

Via INFOdocket

(Harry Potter Cutout: Tess Milligan)

• Murasaki ← this one has the comparison chart
• BookReader
• Bookle

I’m happy to see some new EPUB solutions hitting the marketplace. If you use a Mac, you probably already know that EPUB readers have been scarce around these parts. Sure, there’s the EPUBReader plugin if you use Firefox, but Chrome and Safari don’t have anything as good. There’s also the built-in reader from Calibre, but it is only a reader of last resort. Otherwise you’re stuck with overbuilt solutions like Adobe Digital Editions or B&N’s Nook app (which requires a B&N account even if you’re just using it for personal EPUB files).

I’ve tried two of these new apps, and in my opinion they’re not bringing enough quality to warrant a purchase price just yet. But at least they’re trying! The first app that can offer deep customization, broad EPUB compatibility, and sophisticated annotation tools will find itself at the head of a pretty empty market segment, so there’s still plenty of room for improvement in the coming months. For now, this is a great start.

The big change is that the primary display area on the home screen will be dedicated to your books, instead of sample excerpts the Kobobot thinks you might enjoy.

All in all, I like it, and not simply because Kobo played a nice PR game by contacting me after reading my critique. It actually does resolve my biggest criticism by restoring some primary functionality. What do you think?

I’ve been trying to come up with a good way to describe the newly released Longform app for iPad. It’s a digital magazine on steroids. It’s an infinite magazine, a magazine multiplex. It’s a portable reading room where new issues arrive daily. It’s an evolving anthology of nonfiction journalism.

The point is, it’s awesome. If you have an iPad and you prefer longer, more substantial articles over 350-word pieces, you’ll love it.

Longform has been around a while and is one of several good reading services, but it’s never been part of my weekly routine. I’ve always got a backlist of things to read that I save through Readability and shoot to my Kindle each morning, and that keeps me occupied on the subway.

But when it comes to the iPad, which I tend to use mostly at home, I’m frequently left wanting for high quality reading material. I haven’t encountered a digital magazine yet that isn’t a waste of my time and my device’s onboard memory. All the RSS and social media aggregators–apps like Pulse, Flipboard, Feedly, and Zite–can be a lot of fun, but aside from focusing on shallower content they all suffer from the Filter Bubble. Even Google News hides potentially interesting articles if I’m logged into my Google account when I visit.

Bypassing your filter bubble is one of the things Longform excels at. Like the better general interest print magazines, when you browse Longform’s selection of articles you’re positioning yourself for serendipitous discovery. Longform’s co-founder Max Linsky points out another way the filter bubble can fail you:

“One of the things I realized after spending two years reading a really insane amount of this stuff is that after you read an incredible 5,000-word story about warlords in Afghanistan, you don’t really want to dive into another 5,000-word story about warlords in Afghanistan.”

The second thing Longform excels at is reach: along with offline access to your Readability list (Readability still lacks its own native iOS app), Longform provides a well-designed, clutter-free access point to around two dozen sources, both print and online, that are known for producing high quality writing, like The Atlantic, NY Review of Books, The Awl, and n+1.

You can switch from web view to a customizable reading view that removes distractions.

The drawbacks? It’s not free. It’s iPad only. That list of two dozen sources starts to look pretty small once you get past the honeymoon phase.

But these are small complaints. There’s no way around the $5 cost, but it’s about what you’d pay for one issue of one magazine from a newsstand, and Longform will provide far more hours of quality reading. The Readability integration means you can add articles from all over the web, so you’re not restricted to Longform’s suggested sources. As for the iPad limitation, I just hope there are Android and smartphone versions in the works, so that everyone with a tablet device can soon enjoy it.

(Note: If you don’t want to spend the $5, or you need something that works with an iPhone or iPod Touch, or you want blog and social network feeds mixed in with the longform writing, try the free Flipboard app instead.)

Apple No Longer Claims to Own Your Content on iBooks

I no longer enjoy launching the Kobo app on my iPhone or iPad. I stopped looking forward to interacting with it a few updates ago, and now I actually avoid it.

This has been building for a while. A year ago, I praised Kobo for being ahead of the curve when it came to adding entertaining new features to its iPad app (the features were later extended to other platforms). “Best app,” I wrote then, and I meant it. But over the past six months—well, ever since Apple crippled all the competing ebook retailers’ apps for strategic reasons in the summer of 2011—Kobo has been adding new features to make its app more and more “social” and “networked” and “fun”, with the consequence that the app has started to become less and less enjoyable to use. The latest upgrade (version 5.3) has simply made it not worth bothering with anymore.

All upsell, all the time

The new home screen for the Kobo app

(I don’t even want to talk about the fact that, because the last book I’d opened in the app before this update was erotica, now Kobo thinks that ALL I WANT TO SEE are self-published Smashwords-style M/M book covers with titles like “Marked Men” and “Temptation Castle”. That’s my fault for opening books in an app that clearly intends to track everything I do for all time. It’s embarrassing, I guess, but it’s not even what I’m upset about.)

There is a time and place for book ads, and it is: WHEN I HAVE CHOSEN TO SHOP FOR A NEW BOOK. Guess when I haven’t chosen to do that? When I launch the Kobo app for the sole purpose of reading a book I already own.

Again, my complaint put in even simpler terms: The Kobo app is was designed to let me read my ebooks. It is was not a catalog I launch to browse for new purchases.

One more time, in visual form, in case someone at Kobo sees this rant but is pretending to be too busy to read it:

Look at the screencap above again. Jeez. The new recommendations section takes up HALF of the display area now. Your own books–the ones you’ve added to the Kobo app so that you can read them (in many cases, you even paid good money for them)–are swept aside into a secondary section, reduced to one cover image (unless that slot is filled by a sample you recently opened, sigh) and a four-pane mini-thumbnail collage that together take up only one-third of the display area.

Imagine if the next time Apple updated its iOS for your iPhone it replaced half of your home screen with “trial apps” that you didn’t ask for. You’d think Apple was insane, or maybe had turned into a U.S. cellular carrier circa 2007. In fact, Apple does look at your past purchases (if you give permission) and offers up recommendations. But it does this within its App Store, so that you, the customer, have to deliberately choose to look at the list when you’re good and ready–the digital equivalent of walking into a store to browse the merchandise.

Try to buy this book, we dare ya

So that’s the first problem, and it’s a big enough “screw you” to customers to make me worry that Kobo now suffers from what I call Tivo-itis, which is when all the smart people who made a company visionary leave and are replaced by second- and third-stringers.

But the second problem with the new Kobo update is that this new “recommendation” advertising doesn’t even work. Here’s what it’s like to reach the end of a sample book.

Remember when I mentioned that Apple had zombified all competing ebook apps? Those competitors, including Kobo, have to hand over 30% of their profits if they want to include crazy cutting-edge things like links to their own websites. This means Kobo, Nook, and Kindle have all been forced to offer dumbed down apps that can display files, but that can’t enable any sort of shopping experience.

Kobo still has to follow this rule, even with “free sample” books. The result is what you see above: If you do tap on one of their recommended titles, what you’ll end up with is a “free sample” that just stops at the end of the sample. There’s no message. Nothing. Not a quick “End of sample!”, and certainly not a “Buy this book on Kobo’s website!” because Apple would reject that functionality in a microsecond. Just a blank screen, and an error message if you try to turn the page. It’s true you can “share” the name of the book via email or social media, but let’s look at how you can do this.

So technically, if you really want to sell yourself the ebook sample, by emailing it to yourself you can then get an email with a link to the book on the Kobo website, and from your email message click through to buy the book. Wow. It looks as stupid illustrated here as it felt doing it.

[Update: A Kobo representative has told me that if your Kobo account is set up to permit email communication, you actually receive this email automatically the first time you open a sample within the app. It turns out I had this option unchecked, which is why I ended up having to figure out the manual way to do it.]

The other ebook retailers have similar problems with samples–for example, Kindle samples offer “buy this book” links that simply don’t work. The difference is, because the customer has pre-selected a Kindle sample, the non-functioning link serves as a reminder that the title can be purchased from Amazon. On Kobo’s app, the experience is more like, “Here’s a bunch of context-free excerpts from books you probably don’t care about. Good luck with that.”

Part of me wonders if this is the first sign of the New Face of Kobo, now that it’s been bought up by Rakuten. Software updates don’t happen overnight, so this was likely something Kobo had in the works for a while. Rakuten surely had enough time to kill this update but chose to release it anyway, which is a good sign that this is the way things will work with Kobo from now on. Who knows? By the time summer comes around the Kobo iOS app may be nothing but an impenetrable billboard of book samples, Facebook alerts, infographics, help screens, pop-up windows, slide-out sheets, and “share this” badges. (I haven’t even discussed the increasingly overstuffed social sharing features, but if you haven’t experienced them for yourself, just imagine how cool it would be to combine an ebook app with the slot floor of a casino.) Good times.

What Kobo should have been working on the past six months was a decent web app alternative so that it could escape Apple’s ridiculous iron fist. Then it could reinstate the original web catalog that it used to have, which was both useful and non-intrusive.

What Kobo has been doing instead is steadily ruining the customer experience for some of its best customers–the ones it already has.

(Photo: jot.punkt)

Too many restrictions

About a week ago, a study about ebook buying and reading habits reported that teens find current ebook platforms too limited when it comes to social sharing:

The E-Book Market for 13- to 17-Year-Olds

• Teens lag behind all other age groups in e-book adoption. Sixty-six percent of 13- to 17-year olds say they prefer print books to e-books, 26 percent say they have no preference and only 8 percent prefer e-books.
• One reason for this resistance: Teens like using social technology to discuss and share things with their friends, and e-books at this point are not a social technology. An increasing number of teens surveyed says there are too many restrictions on using e-books: 14 percent said so in 2011, compared to 6 percent in 2010.

That’s been my overall takeaway, too, while test-driving these various social reading apps recently. There are just too many restrictions to make the experience enjoyable.

But “too many restrictions” is a pretty general complaint. What about some details? Okay, here are two fatal flaws I see in the social reading experience right now:

1. The ebook landscape is too fragmented.

From retailers to technology companies to publishers, every company involved in ebooks today is spending a massive amount of resources trying to simultaneously lock in customers, block competition, and thwart piracy. None of these goals serves the needs of the customer. In fact, progress in any of them makes it increasingly harder for an individual to use his ebooks freely.

2. DRM ruins everything.

I know, it’s always so easy to bash DRM, and how else will you prevent customers from making copies etc? But when it comes to social media, DRM truly is a lethal additive. Social sharing requires a frictionless environment to work–think Instagram or Pinterest–and DRM is almost pure friction.

Imagine the ghostland that Instagram would have become if you had to authorize and unlock each photo, then sideload it into the Instagram app before uploading.

See the restrictions in action

My favorite social reading app of the moment is Subtext, and yet unless those two issues are resolved soon, I fear Subtext is a non-starter, along with every other social reading attempt currently being tested or developed.

Why? Because right now, to use Subtext you have to:

1. Own an iPad.
2. Buy your ebooks from an exclusive subset of retailers such as Kobo and Google Books.

Let’s look at the fragmentation problem: You can’t use Subtext on your smartphone or on an Android tablet. You can’t use Kindle or iBooks or Nook or library ebooks with it. You can’t even review your notes and highlights on the web, for instance from a regular computer or laptop. And about that pesky DRM: If you do buy ebooks that work with Subtext, they won’t work on any Kindle devices or apps, and your notes won’t carry over to Kobo or Nook or Overdrive.

Why would a teenager go through so many hoops, and deal with such an unnecessarily hamstrung “solution” just to talk to her friends about a book? For that matter, why would an adult? Why would anyone? Life’s too short for that sort of nonsense.

I still think social reading apps point out an interesting future for, say, book clubs and classrooms, but until the industry kills DRM for good and stops trying to carve up exclusive little corporate fiefdoms, it’s going to be too much trouble to bother with.

(Photo: niallkennedy)