I’m not going to comment on the software, as I’m still downloading it as I type this entry. And other sites are doing a great job of covering today’s Apple press conference, so I’m not going to give Apple more free PR if I can help it. I mean, unless they want to pay me.

But I would like to point out one important catch. The fancy new textbook authoring software that Apple is giving away, iBooks Author, comes with a big restriction in its license agreement, and it’s that you can only sell your textbook in Apple’s iBooks store. (Click image for full-size screenshot of the license from the App Store page.) If you want to give your new textbook away for free, Apple has no problem with that. But if you want to sell it yourself or use some other retailer, no dice. You go through iBooks, meaning through Apple, and you give Apple a cut of the profits. Or you don’t use iBooks Author to make your fancy new digital textbook.

That, of course, is why iBooks Author is free. It’s sort of like if the company started giving away Pages, but required that all novels typed with the app belonged to the Apple Store.

So download it, play with it, learn from it. But take a good look at the terms before you invest any real labor in using it, because whatever you end up producing is going to be under Apple’s control for a long, long time.

As some of you are aware, every November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. If you’re a NaNoWriMo DoRk–and I can use that term because I’ve been one myself in the past–then you know that it’s incredibly difficult to squirt out the minimum required number of words every day for 30 days straight. (I never made it past day 3.) Most likely, the last thing you need at this delicate point in your quest is to be interrupted by a bunch of writing advice. What you need is caffeine, snack items, and another big helping of willful idiocy self-abuse.

But these titles probably won’t be free much longer, so try to sneak over to Amazon and grab them before they go away. Then, come December, you can peruse them at your leisure over a snifter of brandy while you relax by your hearth; I’m pretty sure no writer worth his salt would sit by a regular fireplace.

Callaway Digital has published two “Miss Spider’s Tea Party” app books on Apple’s iOS platform, among other titles. Although his company started off in the ’80s publishing traditional books, it now focuses solely on iOS app versions. The interactive app version is the primary and only in-house instance of the work, with all other formats, even print editions, licensed out to other companies.

What’s cool about Callaway’s story is although he started out as a traditional publisher, that was due to the limits of technology. He seems to always have approached storytelling as something that is shaped, but never completely defined, by format. He tell Reuters:

“You can tell a story in a book. You can tell a story in a game, in a film. You can tell a story in a watering can… No one in publishing was doing this. People wondered, ‘What is he doing selling watering cans?’ In essence, we were building ownership of intellectual property across many different forms.”

That’s a philosophy entertainment giants like Disney (and maybe only Disney) figured out a long time ago, but I think it still doesn’t gain much traction for many publishers and authors, even now that digital publishing makes it relatively affordable to refract a story through multiple media.

But storytelling is about more than just merchandising, obviously, and this is probably where he really parts ways philosophically with most publishers. Callaway partnered with “Miss Spider” creator David Kirk, instead of just offering a royalty agreement in exchange for publishing rights. The two split profits, and they work together to create new forms of content around the popular kids’ book character. A lot of publishers talk about their “gatekeeper” role in culture, which seems to naturally assume a hierarchy of publisher over storyteller. Callaway’s partnership approach is more democratic.

I really like that Callaway is an optimistic geek at heart: he tells Egan that he’s been waiting since 1972 for the right tablet platform for ebook apps. That’s when computer scientist Alan Kay published his template for the DynaBook, which has informed much of the One Laptop Per Child program and seems to be the template for much of the iPad’s UX.

His advice for other publishers (check the bottom of page 4 of the profile) is to get out from under the costs of being in the distribution business, and instead focus on the triad of the author/reader/publisher.

The last half of the article expands to talk to other publishers and developers, and is dotted with one-off examples of success stories in digital publishing. But the Callaway story is enjoyable because it reminds me that, despite the grumblings of some, not every first mover in a new market is simply an opportunist who is deliberately hyping a new bubble. Sometimes they’ve been waiting all along for the marketplace to catch up with them.

Gerard Lagana interviewed Callaway last year about his iPad-only shift. Here’s the clip from that post.

“Dumping print, NY publisher bets the ranch on apps” [Reuters via The Mac Observer] “Miss Spider’s Tea Party for the iPad, and an interview with Nicholas Callaway.” [Macgasm] ]]> http://booksprung.com/miss-spiders-publisher-explains-how-hes-wanted-to-create-ebook-apps-since-1972/feed 0 http://booksprung.com/ebook-recap-for-february-2011 http://booksprung.com/ebook-recap-for-february-2011#comments Tue, 01 Mar 2011 20:35:05 +0000 Chris Walters http://booksprung.com/?p=5707 All things considered, February was a dismal month for ebook news. Apple dug a moat around its walled iOS garden, then filled that moat with lava; Rupert Murdoch launched a “daily paper” on the iPad but forgot to put decent content in it; Borders finally kicked the bucket; and HarperCollins punched libraries in the face with an expensive new licensing policy.

Here’s hoping March brings some rays of light; in the meantime, here’s a recap of last month:

• Apple and Sony start things off with a public PR fight about Sony’s ebook app, which Apple rejected over a proprietary in-app bookstore. This is the early tremor that leads to a major iOS earthquake for publishers a few weeks later.
• Murdoch launches The Daily, an iPad-only newspaper app that pushes out new content, from an in-house staff of journalists, around the clock. The only problem is, the interface is kind of glitchy, the content is (mostly) generic and shallow, and the ads are intrusive. (I deleted it after about five days.) Eventually The Daily will cost 99 cents a week, but for now the free trial period keeps getting extended.
• NPR shows off a video of an Espresso Book Machine, the print-on-demand copier/printer/computer set-up that Xerox is leasing to bookstores. I go check it out in person and report back with my own experience.
• The day after Valentine’s, Apple makes content publishers cringe when it announces that by mid-2011 all entertainment content — books, magazines, papers, movies, music — that passes through an iOS app will have to agree to new rules that allow Apple to take 30% of each sale. It now seems likely that most of the major ebook apps on the iOS platform will disappear by June.
• Borders U.S. files for bankruptcy. Thanks to the Internet, there’s plenty of behind-the-scenes reporting happening online.
• HarperCollins rolls out a new “self-destruct” licensing scheme for public libraries; after 26 check-outs, the license expires and the library must buy a new one.
• Random House finally embraces agency pricing; it was the sole holdout among the Big Six publishers. There’s speculation that the change was meant to give indie sellers on Google Books a fighting chance; what it means for consumers is that prices on Random House titles might go up at all ebook retailers in the coming weeks. (Update: this also means Random House titles will start appearing on Apple’s iBooks store soon.)

Mutter writes that since last December Borders has been buying new books “following procedures familiar to retailers on credit hold”:

The struggling retailer has been using wholesalers, buying books shortly before publication, and paying the usual 30-day wholesaler terms. Many national accounts managers have been working with Borders through wholesalers on book buys.

Still, the company currently has over US $1.2 billion in debt, and owes between $20-40 million each to Penguin, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Random House and Harper Collins. It owes key distributors another $15 million. Update: Here’s a more extensive list of unpaid publishers.

As for customers, things like Borders Rewards will continue to operate as normal; the company is keeping nearly 500 retail stores as well as the website open for business as usual. Borders says “customers will be notified of closing stores in their general area” in the coming days. You can check this map to see if your local Borders is on the kill list.

“Borders Files for Bankruptcy, to Close 200 Stores” [Shelf Awareness] www.bordersreorganization.com

(Photo: doortoriver)

I’ve wanted to see one of these machines up close for a while now, but I had no idea that a local indie bookstore had one. So I finished my coffee, hopped on the subway, and went to buy myself a print-on-demand book.

There’s not much I can write about the inner workings of the “big fancy robot,” as one of McNally Jackson’s employees calls it in the NPR video. It’s essentially three machines stacked together: a Xerox copier to handle the initial paper management; the custom plexiglass, steel, and blade contraption that handles the collating, binding and cutting; and a small color printer to handle the covers. (The interior pages are black and white only.)

Because this was an impulse trip, I hadn’t taken the time to scour Google Books for just the right awesome public domain title, so I had to settle for something I could find quickly that I knew wouldn’t otherwise be available in print. I chose “Jonestown Survivor,” a 2010 memoir self-published by a People’s Temple member who did not die in the mass suicide in 1978. It cost $16.95, the same as the online price at iUniverse. (The ebook edition was $9.99, grr.)

It took about fifteen minutes to print the book, although it appears that under ideal circumstances it would take less than ten: a minute to find the book through the EBM’s control panel, another minute to download the file, one more to adjust the paper, and then about five minutes to print, cut and glue the thing. You can hear and see the book coming together page by page through the plexiglass, and you can smell the glue as it’s heated up and applied to the spine. It’s sort of like a Build-A-Bear for grownups and/or nerds.

 

My copy came out with an off-centered spine. The operator, who after a month seemed to know the machine’s subtle inner workings the way a mechanic knows cars, said he’d realized that the alignment was off after the machine was too far in the process to stop it. He offered to toss it out and print a perfect version at no extra cost — in fact he encouraged me to demand this, which is one of those nice customer service touches that I think indie bookstores are good at providing — but I sort of like my book’s messed-up spine. It reminded me that this is a new application of technology, and customized sometimes means imperfect. (It also seemed too wasteful to reprint what was essentially an impulse purchase.)

He went on to say that the problem wasn’t with the file. Although the original manuscripts that customers bring in sometimes require lots of adjustments, the ones pre-formatted for the EBM by publishers are usually in good shape. In this case, the problem was that someone else had adjusted the machine since its last use, and he didn’t see this until after he’d started my book. To the person who prints the next book after mine and gets a perfect spine: you’re welcome!

I asked a bunch of questions about the size limits of the EBM, but rather than paraphrase them here I should just point you to the official FAQ, which has actual numbers. He said he’s printed stuff as short as 30 pages or so, or “essentially a pamphlet,” as well as incredibly thick books. He said Google Book scans in particular were all over the place in terms of size because of the wide range and age of the collection.

I’ll probably go back and do it again, simply because of how satisfying it is to have a print-on-demand book made in such an astonishingly short period of time. (If you called ahead, it would seem even more magical.) I think next time, however, I’ll print some old, public domain book that Google has scanned. I noticed all the sample Google Book editions had a generic text-only cover; the employee said it was possible to add your own cover (of something also in the public domain, of course) to your Google Book edition and bring it in for printing, but you’ll have to pay a $10 set-up fee.

If I ran a writing workshop in NYC, and especially if I ran one for kids, I think the workshop would end with me going to McNally Jackson and printing a very short run of an anthology of the stories created in the workshop. Aside from out-of-print and on-demand titles, that kind of personal customization seems just right for something like this.

• For our amusement, Electric Literature shoots bullets into books (and a Kindle) and films it.
• The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) happens. The Digital Reader blog goes to check out the five billion tablets that were on display, and reports back on two of the most promising “new” display techs that might finally reach the marketplace this year: the Pixel Qi screen and the Mirasol screen.
• Nora Roberts becomes the third author to sell more than a million ebooks on the Kindle store, after Stieg Larsson (#1) and James Patterson (#2). This is easier for her than for many other authors, because to date she has her name on at least 678,000 different books. Update: a new one was released as I typed that imaginary number.
• A website goes where other blogs (including this one) fear to tread: it provides a full tutorial on how to strip DRM from protected ebooks. Of course, every other blog (including this one) picks up the story and links to it.
• Mike Shatzkin sets the record straight, at least for himself and the executives and agents who answered his poll, about what DRM is really intended to prevent: casual sharing among legitimate readers.
• I try the Nook Wi-Fi and find that although the hardware is nice, when it comes to usability, it pales in comparison to the Kindle Wi-Fi. This makes me sad, because I don’t want to be a cheerleader for just one ereader platform. Honestly.
• Joanna (a frequent Teleread contributor) launches a curated website for well-reviewed independently published ebooks called the Indie eBook Hall of Fame. Although it launches with only a handful of titles, it looks like more are being added weekly.
• Someone releases an add-on for the Chrome web browser that lets you instantly clip websites and send the content to your Kindle’s free email address. For other browsers, there are other options.
• I freak out about the concept of cloud-based ebook selling licensing, after checking out the cloud-only implementation being offered by Australian bookseller Readings.
• Amazon renames its ebook self-publishing program to Kindle Direct Publishing, and extends its 70% royalty offer to Canada as well as the U.S. and U.K.
• Websites start popping up all over the place to help Kindle customers lend ebooks to each other. Here’s a list of lending sites.
• Amazon launches Kindle Singles, which are short stories, novellas, essays and longform journalism sold for $0.99-4.99. At least one other person agrees with me that the name sounds like processed cheese slices, not album tracks.
• Digital Book World happens. Teleread’s Paul Biba attends (except for the day he leaves early to escape an impending blizzard) and reports back with recaps of panel discussions.
• Amazon announces that it now sells 115 Kindle ebooks for every 100 paperbacks. Kindle titles already outsold hardcovers on the Amazon store.
• Borders buys a little more time to try to avoid bankruptcy.
• Feedbooks gives up on providing support for the Kindle, at least wrt its beloved (by me) Download Guide.
• The New York Times bypasses traditional print and publishes “Open Secrets,” an ebook about Wikileaks, for Kindle, Nook and iBooks.
• And finally, Granta launches a Kindle edition, which marks the first time the literary journal has ever published in another format.

The story I bought is essentially unreadable for now, because it’s been “dehydrated”: there are just uniform placeholder terms where proper nouns and unique descriptions should be. But I knew this when I bought it. I launch a simple, open source program built to handle complex search-and-replace functions, and it connects to a public domain website where various templates are stored. From that site it retrieves a “Harry Potter” template that a fan has made, and uses it to replace all the placeholders with names and places from Rowling’s saga, then produces a final .epub file.

Now I’ve got a new, unauthorized Harry Potter book.

Because lots of people use this system, the markup language is fairly uniform and growing more so, and it therefore produces a largely error-free final version. There are a couple of errors big enough to impact readability, and later when I have time I report them as bugs to the template website, so that someone else with more time or interest than I have can make adjustments to the template, or so the author can see them and correct her original text.

A wholly formed and unauthorized Harry Potter novel would clearly be a violation of U.S. copyright law, but the process is decentralized so that neither the author of the new work nor the template website is responsible for the final creation of the infringing work. In fact, other templates are available that would turn the story into a brand new work with original characters and places, or that would let a reader personalize it with friends and local places. If you’re feeling perverse, you can apply a Vampire Chronicles template and giggle at Lestat, Louis and Claudia as mystery solving young wizards vampires.

I’m not sure it could be done today. It might be too complicated to implement a markup language that would decisively erase any infringing content but allow accurate replacement from any number of third-party templates. It might demand a strict writing style or format that would prove too limiting artistically. It might simply be considered too deliberately infringing in intent to survive legal scrutiny, especially in countries like the U.S. where copyright power rests in the hands of large corporations who have an interest in locking away content forever. On the other hand, BitTorrent has legitimate uses and has managed to survive these many Internet years.

But my intent is to point out that there are existing and undiscovered applications of technology that will completely explode the existing copyright regime. It might come much sooner than we think, and make the ebook explosion look like a firecracker.

I’m a little surprised that original authors haven’t already started engaging directly with fanfic authors to extend their own fictional series, although I suppose the looming shadow of the Copyright Specter tends to sour most of those sorts of relationships before they can be developed. (Greg Bear and Neal Stephenson come the closest with The Mongoliad, but their terms of service force you to transfer away all rights for anything you contribute, which reduces the collaboration back to the zero sum game of the status quo.)

Am I really advocating for advances in copyright infringement? I think so; after growing up in a world where the majority of my shared public culture is under corporate lock and key, I’ve started to become a copyright punk.

I’m against the current implementation of copyright law for cultural reasons, because I think it’s reached a point where it’s become detrimental to our shared heritage. There are millions of humans who will be born, grow up, produce new creative works on the shoulders of past artists, and die, all while “Gone with the Wind” remains under copyright and locked out of the public domain.* In 2007 a filmmaker can create an original work that incorporates 80-year-old public domain blues recordings, then be unable to sell her film because of licensing issues for the underlying compositions. Other songs disappear entirely because copyright forbids distribution, even though the rights holders abandon those works and fail to properly preserve them. TV shows and movies don’t use the Happy Birthday song because of a (disputed) copyright claim on it, so a living artifact of our present culture regularly fails to be accurately represented or preserved in other works. And right now, a fanfic sequel to “The Catcher in the Rye” (set 60 years later but using the same character) can’t be published in the U.S. because J. D. Salinger successfully sued to prevent it.

If some person or group can manage to bypass copyright by pushing the actual act of infringement to the private citizen level, where no company (hopefully) has the right to witness or record it, then it could be truly disruptive. The next move in the copyright wars would be for corporations to buy legislation that makes the necessary software illegal, but in the end that might be a good thing: I remain hopeful that the more abusive copyright law becomes, the higher the likelihood that it will finally trigger some badly needed restructuring.

 
* Alice Randall’s “The Wind Done Gone,” published in 2001, retold the events of Mitchell’s novel from the point of view of a slave, but Randall had to remove all direct references to Mitchell’s world and still had to appeal an injunction before she could finally publish the book. It made it to print in part because the publisher incorrectly categorizes it as a parody. (Return to the text.)

(Photo: erichhh)