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)

The Kindle, he writes in a forthcoming article for Locus magazine, “wins” over print in two areas. First, it’s easier to read than a printed book if you need larger sized text, because it can make any book a large-print edition without requiring any real knowledge of how the device works; this is both a crucial feature and usability requirement for the current 40-and-over set. Second, its “buy once, read anywhere” approach makes reading big books a pleasure instead of a task. (Gaiman writes that he still prefers paperbacks for smaller, pocketable books.)

That first achievement–ease of use–sounds like common sense, but it’s actually pretty hard for companies to pull off these days, which is why you should always try out an ereader in person before you buy it. In my opinion there are only a handful of truly easy-to-use consumer electronics in the world: the iPhone, the Tivo (with the original menu, not the unusable HD interface), the Keurig brewer, the Flip videocamera, and the Kindle. Although Amazon’s web interface for the Kindle is nothing to brag about, it’s possible to avoid it almost entirely and still get full use out of your Kindle.

This simplicity really hit home for me last week, when I took advantage of Borders’ “please give us some revenue” sale and bought the Kobo Wi-Fi for $100. I bought it for my mom, because I figured even though she’d miss out on cheap Kindle books, she’d be able to access library ebooks on a Kobo. But I wanted to give it a test run first to make sure it would be easy to use. I immediately fell in love with the hardware, but I kept running into problems with the usability. First, I hated how it was pre-set to connect only to the Borders ebook store and not to the general Kobobooks.com website (actually I hated that there were two shopping destinations at all–Kobo should just be Kobo). I also didn’t like how you had to navigate down through multiple screens just to toggle wireless access, when that’s the very first menu item on the Kindle. I hated that you have to install a desktop app if you want to wirelessly sync the Kobo with your library. And then there was the Adobe Digital Editions program requirement for authorizing library check-outs.

In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to send my mother an ereader that was looking suspiciously like it would require many hours of technical support. I took it back and spent the extra $40 for a Wi-Fi Kindle. She’ll never have to connect it to her aging iBook or think of it as a PC peripheral for as long as she uses it. She can buy a new book while she’s at work, or I can email her a file, and it will appear on her Kindle automatically when she gets home. Hooray for simplicity.*

The second achievement Gaiman describes–the ability to access a book across multiple devices–isn’t unique to Kindle, and I think it’s more of a general benefit of reading ebooks, at least if you’re a Nook, Kindle, Kobo or Google eBooks customer. In fact, it’s one of the innate benefits of storing your books in the “cloud”–they’re easy to access from multiple devices, no matter where you go.

But in theory, at least, cloud storage has a heavy potential cost you should be aware of, which is that it forces consumers to give up control over their purchases.

Publishers would love to see the cloud become the only way to sell ebook licenses to readers, because they could finally get rid of unprofitable consumer behavior like passing books along to friends or shifting formats–the kinds of privileges that consumers demand when they feel like they “own” something, but that are easier to kill off when a customer grows comfortable with simply paying for access to the cloud. Cloud access also makes it easier for publishers to enforce their interpretations of fair use, and to block any applications of technology that they haven’t yet monetized.

For that reason, even though I share Gaiman’s pleasure at being able to pick up my reading where I left off as I move among devices, I always download and save backup copies of my ebooks. That way I will have at least a fighting chance of preserving access to them in the future, no matter what the publisher or retailer decides.

The bad news is, the type of consumer who takes care to make backup copies of ebook purchases probably isn’t the same one who needs an easy-to-use device, so I fear the cloud approach will win out in the years to come. The good news is that the topic is moot right now, because today all the major ereader stores let you download copies of your purchases. But as long as we still have a choice, I suggest that you patronize retailers and publishers who offer file downloads as well as cloud storage.

This isn’t just a pro-Kindle post. I would have happily bought my mom a Nook Color instead of a Kindle had it been in my budget. I wouldn’t have bought an original Nook, though, because I find its interface too clunky. (Return to the post.)

(Neil Gaiman photo: Jutta @ flickr; cloud image: akakumo)

You can tell a lot about a person based on what he's reading... right?

Kevin Maney’s new article in The Atlantic, “The Kindle in Crisis,” doesn’t have a whole lot of new stuff to say on the topic of whether the Kindle is a good device or a bad device; if he wanted to talk about how the Kindle is inconvenient, there are plenty of usability and design issues to consider that he doesn’t.

I do think this quote is funny, though:

For example, the Kindle lets readers down with respect to one subtle but powerful element of the traditional book’s appeal: its role as an identity marker. Pulling out a particular book on an airline flight or in a doctor’s office can mean staking a claim to being a particular kind of person.

I’ve read a similar comment once before (see section III), and both times it made me smirk and lapse into my later teenage years, when everyone and everything ran the risk of making me seem “pretentious,” perhaps the worst fate that could befall me at that age. As a result, I lost pretty much all desire to use consumer products as cultural signifiers. Since a book is rarely handmade, isn’t it, too, a consumer product–the same as flashing a Nike logo on a shirt, or carrying a purse festooned with goofy YSL monograms?

My point, I guess, is that I don’t want other people to judge me based on what I’m reading, and I don’t read for other people. Or at least I strive not to (nobody’s perfect).

So that’s  a point for ereaders, as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately, I can’t go so far as to say that they make you look less pretentious, since you’re trading off book jackets for a “lifestyle device” that, like it or not, will generate a lot of opinions about you among strangers.  Just note the animosity many have toward people with tell-tale white iPod earbuds.

“The Kindle in Crisis” [The Atlantic]

(Photo: Ed Yourdon)