Eoin Purcell's Blog

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It's that simple — and that hard. And that inescapable.

February 8, 2010 • 1:31 pm 0

New Post On The Green Lamp Media Blog

Things Publishers Fear: No. 1 ~ Amazon

No 1 ~ AMAZON

Despite the seeming victory of Macmillan in its battle to force Amazon to accept the new “agency model” publishers have a sensible fear of Amazon. Like all businesses that sell their goods to consumers through intermediaries, publishers are forced to subject themselves and their products to the requests and “suggestions” of the retailer.

Amazon controls a large portion of the online consumer connection to books. They may not be the best at this, but they are surely the biggest. They have been on top of pretty much every trend in publishing for some time:

Filed under: Books, Bookselling, Digital, Future of Books, Future of Publishing, Publishing, , , , , , ,

January 16, 2010 • 1:01 pm 0

The End of Amazon

Empires, by definition, begin their decline at their peak. Today Amazon bestrides the publishing world like Caesar, and it may seem far-fetched to think of this company slipping from its dominant position. There is some doubt, however, that Amazon can continue to augment its control over so many facets of the industry. Although there may be more growth ahead, the environment Amazon operates in is evolving and rivals may force their way through cracks in the fortress.

Joe Esposito has a great essay over on Publishing Frontier. You should go read it!

Eoin

Filed under: Books, Business, Digital, Future of Publishing, Publishing, , , , , , , ,

December 12, 2009 • 3:48 pm 0

Links of Interest (At Least to Me) 12/12/2009

Colm & The LaZarus Key

I like the structure of that date, it has a good look to it.

Here is a link to JA Konrath’s rather interesting list of ebook predicitions from the start of the month. I missed it then and only read it today.

A brace of great posts from Booksquare; here & here.

Great post about what gamers can teach publishers, really fascinating:

the tabletop role-playing gaming industry started out by trying to model the methods of traditional publishing, found out the hard way that that really didn’t work for them (in the long run, it’s not working for big publishers either, but they’re BIG, so they didn’t notice as soon), and had to find new solutions. They were the first to adopt electronic publishing, shame-free POD printing, electronic-only publishing, podcasting-modules, mixed media releases, and every other experimental method anyone could think of, good or bad. That’s fine: they’re small, and experimenting is something small groups of people can DO that big groups can’t.

By the way is anyone getting the feeling that Seth Godin was SO far ahead of the curve with Small is the New Big? Coz I am!

Last but by far not least, the Irish Times has a list of fabulous books for kids this Christmas, including one of an un-mentioned (on this list) favourites (I thought another self commissioned title was pushing it!): Colm & The Lazarus Key by Kieran Mark Crowley who will be one of Ireland’s best known writers for children soon, of that I am certain. The smartly excellent cover is the work of the wonderful Emma over @ Snowbooks, if you need cover work, she’s your girl.

Reading like a demon, but only just keeping up!
Eoin

Filed under: Authors, Books, Bookselling, Business, Digital, Future of Books, Future of Publishing, Innovation, Irish Publishing, Links of Interest, Publishing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 7, 2009 • 12:15 pm 4

4 Reasons To Think That The Kindle International Was Released Early

UPDATE: A bonus #5: No content on the Amazon Kindle Global Blog!
Update: Making it #6: UK Kindle buyers (and by extension Irish Kindles readers) pay 40% more for ebooks

This is just a short list but here are some reasons I suspect this is a rush release by Amazon:

    1) It’s not shipping till 19th October! Did they need the news before Frankfurt and not have the device ready?
    2) No country specific sites, you need to order the device from Amazon.com
    3) The iphone/itunes app is not yet live in Ireland, I doubt it is live in the UK yet either (Twitpic)
    4) No word on the extension of the Digital Text Platform to other countries (that would extend the device to independents and authors outside of the US, currently you need a US Bank Account)

I’m sure there are more, but this feels like something of a rushed and to my mind fluffed launch, despite the massive space given on four site home-pages to the product!

More on Kindle International here too,
Eoin

Filed under: Books, Bookselling, Digital, Future of Books, Future of Media, Future of Publishing, , , , , , ,

October 7, 2009 • 8:15 am 8

Kindle goes worldwide

Amazon announce the international kindle

Amazon announce the international kindle

IT WILL SHIP TO IRELAND (SEE BELOW FOR MORE)

So Amazon announced that they are now allowing pre-orders of the Kindle worldwide. They launched no country specific sites for this, just a letter on the homepage of Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr and Amazon.co.jp. You MUST order from Amazon.com

Kindle Germany

Kindle Germany


Kindle France

Kindle France


Kindle Japan

Kindle Japan

The NYT has a story on the release:

International users of the new Kindle will have a slightly smaller collection of around 200,000 English-language books to choose from, and their catalogs will be tailored to the country they purchased the device in. Amazon said it would sell books from a range of publishers including Bloomsbury, Hachette, HarperCollins, Lonely Planet and Simon & Schuster.

Among the apparent holdouts: Random House, which is owned by Bertelsmann, the German media conglomerate. Stuart Applebaum, a Random House spokesman, said the company’s “discussions with Amazon about this opportunity are ongoing, productive and private.”

As does our own Irish Times (though, to be frank, it’s basically a rewrite of the NYT piece).

I’ve checked and Amazon will allow preorders for Ireland, but the full cost is

    Items: $279.00 ($20 more than the US version for no apparent reason)
    Shipping & Handling: $20.98
    Total Before Tax: $299.98
    Estimated Tax:* $0.00
    Import Fees Deposit $64.50 (Customs will make us pay this anyway so that’s free money for Amazon as far as I can tell)
    Order Total: $364.48 (For an ereader, you must be joking!)

But think on this
Amazon devoted the front page of FOUR of their international sites to this product. It must be making them money in large amounts or else why would they do that. Two posts I read yesterday pointed to royalty statemenst reflecting good sales for ebooks, this one by Andrew Savikas (from an author perspective, well an author who is a publisher) and this one from kirstin Nelson (so from an gents perspective). I wonder what the kindle element of that is? Perhaps we really have passed the point of no return.

Interesting times as they say,
Eoin

Filed under: Authors, Books, Bookselling, Business, Future of Books, Future of Media, Future of Publishing, Irish Publishing, , , , ,



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