I sent it to them nearly three and half months ago, so I’m fairly certain they’re not going to respond at this point. To me, it’s a perfect example of how a local bookstore can fail at building a relationship with local customers who want to shop locally but prefer ebooks over print.

Here’s what I wrote:

I briefly stepped into McNally Jackson this past Saturday, and although it was too crowded for my tastes, before I left I glanced over a couple of tables at the front of the store. I found a trade paperback of science essays titled Future Science that I wanted.

But here’s where the problem comes in, and why I’m writing to you: I wanted it in ebook format, because if I bought books in print these days I’d essentially turn into a third Collier brother. But I couldn’t figure out a way to buy it in ebook format while in your store.

I looked up at the register to see if I could ask about this option there, but there was a line of about five customers waiting to buy printed books. That’s great news for you, but not so much for me since I already wanted badly to get out of there.

I thought about asking the woman at the Espresso Book Machine, but she seemed busy, and not at a register.

I looked around for some sort of signage or instruction about how to buy a Google Books digital edition from within the store, and I couldn’t find it (maybe I overlooked it?)

So here’s what I did. I left the store, and literally before I crossed Mulberry Street I’d used my phone to buy the Kindle edition from Amazon.

Now to be clear, I didn’t buy the Kindle version because of price, or because I hate bookstores, or because I’m naive about the financially precarious state of indie booksellers. I’m pro-McNally Jackson, just not to the point where I’d buy a format I don’t actually want or need just to help a business I don’t own.

I wanted to share some thoughts about this with you:

• I wanted to buy the book right then, while it was fresh on my mind, not later (for instance not from your website when I finally got home hours later).
• I’m not a Kindle fanatic. I know how to strip DRM and I can easily adapt most of my ebook purchases to suit my needs.
• I’m price conscious but, unless there was a price difference of 50% or more on the Google Books edition over the Kindle edition, I would have bought the Google Books edition as a show of support for your store. (It turns out, the price for both digital editions was the same.)
• It was the physical, face-to-face encounter with the trade paperback that prompted me to make the purchase, so I feel that you should have received that sale.

So I’m at a loss as to how I can help support you. I’m a frequent book buyer, and I want to support McNally Jackson, but there’s no real place for me as a customer in your store right now so far as I can tell.

I realize I’m probably still in the tiny minority of your current customers, and this isn’t meant to be a rant. But if you can figure out a way to let people like me browser [sic] the merchandise and then leave your physical store with a digital edition instead of print, you’d be my first and pretty much only bookstore in Manhattan from now on.

Here’s what I got in response:

And that’s why I don’t feel bad for buying my ebooks from online retailers that aren’t connected to this bookstore.

If you use a Kindle, Kobo or Nook app on your iOS device, you probably already noticed this, but otherwise you might have no idea what’s going on. So here’s a quick explanation and a list of reasons why you should avoid giving any business to Apple’s iBookstore until the company stops being a jerk, not just to competitors but to regular customers.

The really quick summary: Apple has implemented new rules for third party apps that sell content similar to what Apple sells (music, movies, ebooks, newspaper and magazine subscriptions). If you are an Apple competitor, you can no longer use your iOS app to sell content to customers unless you give Apple a 30% cut.

On the surface this might seem fair-ish, although apologists for Apple seem to overlook the fact that a lot of the value of the iOS platform comes from the high quality of these third-party apps.

But regardless of whether it’s “fair” or not for some categories of content, Apple is using it as a weapon against ebooksellers and their customers. In order to maintain a presence on iOS, those competitors have had to remove their stores and any links to their websites from their apps, and take out any instructions that tell new customers how to buy ebooks.

To be clear, this is not a sad side-effect of an otherwise reasonable guideline. It was in fact a deliberate attack on the usability of ebook apps that aren’t iBooks, because there’s no realistic way any ebookseller could have followed Apple’s demands and remained in business. First, the 30% cut Apple demands is too high for other ebooksellers to meet, especially since both Apple’s rules and big publishing’s agency pricing policy forbids them from raising prices. Second, Apple doesn’t even offer an In-App-Purchase (IAP) system that can support the millions of titles that these competitors offer.

So while Apple’s IAP rules may be legit for magazine and newspapers, when it comes to ebooksellers, they’re designed to do only one thing: force competitors to offer less capable apps in an attempt to annoy their customers, who will then presumably come to iBooks for its ease-of use.

But it gets worse. Apple went a step further and rejected any updated apps where the ebookseller tried to explain, in the notes about the update, just why such important functionality was being taken away. I’ve seen grumblings around the web before about how Apple doesn’t like developers to say anything negative about iOS in their update notes, but in this case it’s more than just responsible brand stewardship. Apple wants customers to blame these ebooksellers for their suddenly craptastic app updates, because again this will help drive them to buy from iBooks instead.

And finally, in a market where all the current ebook platforms are closed off from each other, iBooks stands tall as the worst offender. There’s still no way to read iBook files on your computer, and Apple doesn’t sell a cheap EInk device like the Kindle, Kobo or Nook. If you buy an iBook, the only way you can read it is on an iOS device—an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. This makes the iBooks platform the most expensive and least convenient platform you can choose, especially compared to the Kindle, Nook and Kobo platforms.

The only good news I can find in this is that it’s forced competitors like the Financial Times and Kobo to start developing HTML5 web apps that Apple can’t control. Well, unless Apple decides to deliberately break Mobile Safari to reject HTML5 web apps in the future, but that’s just another reason why you shouldn’t give iBooks any of your business so long as Apple is playing so ruthlessly.

(Photo: mikecollar)

Four publishers in the last week have confirmed that Amazon has indeed told them they now have an option to submit eBooks to be listed in the Amazon store in ePub format. Two of the companies we spoke with are very big in the publishing world and spoke to us regarding this new development during an interview in the last few days on a totally different subject. With many companies all telling us the same thing off the record it is confirmed that the Amazon is moving in this direction.

If true, then I suspect this means that whatever Barnes & Noble plans on announcing next week, it’s got Amazon a little worried. This past December I speculated that Amazon has been sitting on EPUB compatibility until it feels a competitive need to enable it, so I find it interesting that this news (assuming it’s true) is being leaked right before B&N’s May 24th Nook announcement. My guess is that Amazon has seen the new Nook, and either it’s dirt cheap—cheaper than the $114 ad-supported Kindle—or it’s got enough cool extra features that Amazon thinks it could really steal market share.

Because it’s just a rumor, there’s no info on what sort of DRM Amazon might slap onto any EPUB files it sells. If it goes with Adobe Digital Editions, that would open the Kindle up to both library ebooks and ebooks from Kobo and Barnes & Noble. If instead it follows Apple’s lead and goes with a private DRM solution, that would help stave off competition a while longer but prevent Amazon from offering library ebook compatibility (at least until it launches its own Kindle library program later this year).

Either way, the real winner if this proves true may be the publishers, as they would finally be able to submit the same format to all the major ebook stores.

We’ll see what happens. The blog also says the Kindle has been around for more than six years (!), when really it’s only been on the market for three and a half, so I wouldn’t give it too much credit until the story is corroborated by a legit news organization.

“Amazon to allow ePub ebooks on the Kindle e-Reader” [Good E-Reader Blog]

(Photo: wnstn)

Amazon teased that it would soon allow ebook lending a few days before Barnes & Noble held its heavily promoted Nook Color press event; I imagine the preemptive strike was intended to give pundits an extra talking point when they compared the new Nook to the Kindle.

And now, apparently caught up short by the U.S. launch of Google Books, Amazon will today preview its own web-based ebook reader to the press. Google’s web interface for ebooks is one of its biggest selling points over the Kindle ecosystem, so it makes sense for Amazon to finally lift the lid on this long-missing feature.

Here’s my only partly tongue-in-cheek idea of how things work with Amazon, based on this pattern of announcements:

• The company has a spreadsheet of possible features and product changes, but won’t roll out anything new unless it identifies a specific threat from a narrow list of enemies. The current enemies list is just B&N and Google.
• These potential announcements range from huge game-changers–aka a steep price drop or new model announcement–to what are essentially PR blitzes designed to steal focus from competitors or counter negative PR.
• What doesn’t trigger a response: anything tablet related. This is yet more evidence (if any is needed) that dedicated ereaders and multi-purpose tablets aren’t in the same product category, at least according to Amazon’s business strategy, no matter how many times the media tries to force this connection.
• With the exception of gifting–which really was just a customized gift card feature and probably required almost no added expense to turn on–most of the new features are works in progress and not fully baked when announced. Kindle ebook lending, extended periodical subscription access, and today’s forthcoming web interface all have yet to be seen in reality, even though they’re getting press coverage.

It seems clear that if you really want to see what Amazon has up its sleeve, your best strategy as a competitor is to engineer a massive prank on Amazon, by creating a fake super-ereader and announcing it to the press during an expensive media event. If you get crazy enough with your fake device, you could probably trigger Amazon’s team to dump its entire secret feature matrix on the press!

…Okay, that’s probably not very plausible. But based on Amazon’s behavior to increased competition in 2010–the fact that its current strategy is mostly defensive, and mostly relegated to very minor works-in-progress features–I’m making the following guesses about what’s going on. (Sure, I’m no smartypants analyst, but I accurately predicted the Kindle 3 lineup and pricing back in June.)

On the touch screen issue, the fact that Amazon didn’t already do this to compete with Sony means one or both of the following: that the technology is too expensive for Amazon’s current profit model, and that it doesn’t see Sony as a real competitor right now. Considering how everyone who uses one of Sony’s new touchscreen readers (the ones with the cool infrared sensors) raves about them, and considering how natural a fit touch technology is with this product category, I imagine Amazon is going to have to do something about this very soon. I expect a higher-priced touchscreen Kindle next year–something priced in the Sony Daily Reader/Nook Color range, and probably with a slightly larger Pearl screen to further differentiate it from the Kindle 6″ and the DX, but sans stylus. I’ve possibly missed some acquisition but it seems like one path Amazon is looking into is IFSR sensor technology from Touchco, which it acquired earlier this year. Unfortunately, that solution requires messing with the actual display, so it may never be practical for E-Ink.

On the color screen issue, I think the reason Amazon hasn’t gone this route yet is due entirely to its limited options for an operating system. The only solution I can think of that would be both affordable and consumer-friendly would be a customized version of Android, and that would cede too much control so it’s probably off the table. If Mirasol can actually deliver a quality full color electronic ink screen like it’s been promising, and it can be produced affordably, then this might still be considered as a last minute tease. But it doesn’t make sense to try to get into Apple’s space unless you can at minimum compete with the Nook Color, which is an excellent device for its price. I don’t expect to see this in a Kindle product any time soon, then.

Finally, on the question of the EPUB format, I think it could happen any day now, but probably won’t as long as Amazon remains on top. I’d bet money that this feature is on Amazon’s threat-response matrix as an option of last resort. It’s likely very easy to implement but will come at a huge cost, which is that it will gives Kindle owners tacit permission to buy ebooks elsewhere or check them out from the library. (I don’t think most would, considering the prices and customer service Amazon offers isn’t replicated elsewhere at the moment, but I’m sure Amazon would prefer not to take the risk.) I think if Amazon starts to feel too threatened by B&N or Google, this is the biggest add-on it can toss out to the public that doesn’t require the expense of new hardware or OSes. But that also means that as long as Amazon maintains a healthy lead in the market, we won’t see EPUB support.

(Photo: kodomut)

It’s probably safe to assume there will be a touchscreen Kindle some day, but it’s been hard to make any educated guess as to when. Adding touchscreen capability is a matter of finding technology that’s affordable, that can work with the current screen/display technology, and that isn’t locked down by a competitor via patents. Amazon has possibly found a way to meet all three requirements with its acquisition of Touchco, a startup that began as a project at New York University.

Nick Bilton at the New York Times wrote a feature on Touchco in January, before anyone knew about Amazon’s acquisition. He describes demos he saw at their offices, including the one in the video below where a Touchco employee manipulates a desktop interface using a touchscreen prototype.

If you’re not a gearhead you might not know what the big deal is. Here’s how Touchco described their tech before they pulled everything off their website:

Unlike traditional capacitive sensors, our patent-pending system can detect any object — not just a finger — and can determine how much pressure is being applied to every point on a sensor simultaneously. IFSR sensors are natively multitouch, use less power than capacitive sensors, and are much less expensive to produce, making them a highly disruptive technology with widespread market applications.

So to recap, Touchco’s solution can:

• register multiple touches at once;
• register pressure for each individual touchpoint simultaneously;
• register any contact, not just fingertips; and
• is much cheaper than current touchscreen technologies.

Whether this ever makes it into a future Kindle is anyone’s guess. Amazon may just be buying the company to prevent it from being licensed to competitors, or it may use it to replace the keyboard, or it may decide it just doesn’t fit with future Kindle plans and put it out to pasture. At any rate, Amazon now seems to have access to a touchscreen solution in-house should it decide to somehow add it to future Kindle models.

RELATED
“Could this display lead to a full color Kindle in the future?”

“Amazon Said to Buy Touch Start-Up” [New York Times] “Is Amazon Building a Superkindle?” [NYT Bits Blog]

(.Larry Page)

If you’ve read reviews about the nook, the new Kindle competitor from Barnes & Noble, you may have heard that you can lend ebooks to friends. But don’t get suckered in by this claim. Barnes & Noble is conveniently leaving out some crucial information about how the process works, and it turns out the “loan your book” feature is a lot less useful than most bloggers and journalists are making it sound.

So how does the lending feature work? Barnes & Noble doesn’t provide a lot of detail on it–the Nook promo page on barnesandnoble.com simply says the device “lets you loan eBooks to friends, free of charge.” Naturally your friends will also all have to have registered nooks to participate, but I’ll assume that’s evident to most consumers.

But here’s the trickier part. Some readers over at the MobileRead forums asked Barnes & Noble to clarify how lending would work, and they found out the following details:

• You can only lend an ebook if the publisher allows it; this can be turned off exactly like how publishers can turn off the text-to-speech feature on Kindle titles.
• You can only lend an ebook out for 14 days maximum.
• You can only lend an ebook once; after that, lending is permanently disabled on the title.

The first condition is ridiculous, but I don’t want to hijack my own post just to rail some more about stupid/greedy publishers. Some people won’t have a problem with the other two conditions, either because their friends are fast readers or because they rarely lend physical copies of books more than once. But for the rest of us, watch out. For example, say you loan your mom your copy of The Road and she doesn’t finish it within that 2 week window; she’ll have to go buy her own copy to get through the last few chapters. You won’t be able to lend it to her for a second 14-day period, and you’ll never be able to lend it to anyone else ever again, either.

Barnes & Noble could make this feature actually usable with just a couple of small changes. They could expand the lending window to 30 days, plenty of time for most people to get through an average book. More useful, they could expand the number of times you can loan out a book, say to five instances. That would provide enough flexibility so that you and your friend can decide how long the loan should last.

But it’s unlikely Barnes & Noble will bother. You see, the real point of this feature isn’t for customers at all–it’s for Barnes & Noble, because it gives the company a ton of positive, free press: “Wow, the nook lets you lend books! The Kindle doesn’t do that!”

So take all the hype with a grain of salt, and remember that if you want to really find out the details of a new device these days, look on forums and message boards. That’s where actual target customers are likely to come together and ask the hard questions, even if the media doesn’t.

This post originally appeared on Kindlerama.com.

If you’ve read reviews about the nook, the new Kindle competitor from Barnes & Noble, you may have heard that you can lend ebooks to friends. But don’t get suckered in by this claim. Barnes & Noble is conveniently leaving out some crucial information about how the process works, and it turns out the “loan your book” feature is a lot less useful than most bloggers and journalists are making it sound.

So how does the lending feature work? Barnes & Noble doesn’t provide a lot of detail on it–the Nook promo page on barnesandnoble.com simply says the device “lets you loan eBooks to friends, free of charge.” Naturally your friends will also all have to have registered nooks to participate, but I’ll assume that’s evident to most consumers.

But here’s the trickier part. Some readers over at the MobileRead forums asked Barnes & Noble to clarify how lending would work, and they found out the following details:

• You can only lend an ebook if the publisher allows it; this can be turned off exactly like how publishers can turn off the text-to-speech feature on Kindle titles.
• You can only lend an ebook out for 14 days maximum.
• You can only lend an ebookonce; after that, lending is permanently disabled on the title.

The first condition is ridiculous, but I don’t want to hijack my own post just to rail some more about stupid/greedy publishers. Some people won’t have a problem with the other two conditions, either because their friends are fast readers or because they rarely lend physical copies of books more than once. But for the rest of us, watch out. For example, say you loan your mom your copy of The Road and she doesn’t finish it within that 2 week window; she’ll have to go buy her own copy to get through the last few chapters. You won’t be able to lend it to her for a second 14-day period, and you’ll never be able to lend it to anyone else ever again, either.

Barnes & Noble could make this feature actually usable with just a couple of small changes. They could expand the lending window to 30 days, plenty of time for most people to get through an average book. More useful, they could expand the number of times you can loan out a book, say to five instances. That would provide enough flexibility so that you and your friend can decide how long the loan should last.

But it’s unlikely Barnes & Noble will bother. You see, the real point of this feature isn’t for customers at all–it’s for Barnes & Noble, because it gives the company a ton of positive, free press: “Wow, the nook lets you lend books! The Kindle doesn’t do that!”

So take all the hype with a grain of salt, and remember that if you want to really find out the details of a new device these days, look on forums and message boards. That’s where actual target customers are likely to come together and ask the hard questions, even if the media doesn’t.

Penguin publishers Chief Executive John Makinson told Reuters: “They have become mainstream in the sense that they are a genuine consumer product for which there is real appetite, so this is not the province of geeks any longer.”

Makinson said Penguin was now publishing all new titles both as printed books and e-books and was digitalizing its backlist.

But that new embrace comes with some caveats. Publishers spoke about the largely specialized markets they see for e-readers (mostly academia, like scientists and students) and they worried that the high price of the current crop of devices will stifle growth during tough economic times.

In fact, the dominant theme both there and elsewhere in the past few weeks has been the idea of mobile phones taking the place of dedicated e-readers. After all, more copies of an e-book reading app have been downloaded for the Apple iPhone than all the Kindle devices sold so far.