Category Archives: Writing

How does iThoughtsHD have this and Apple doesn’t?

Posted on July 12, 2010 | 4 Comments

One of my biggest complaints with the iPad is it’s complete lack of usefulness for content creators. I understand, creators are not Apple’s biggest market, or even a group the ever seem to care about, Shoot, they make “Consumer electronics” LOL.

Still there’s so little that would have to be done to make the iPad SO incredibly awesome for creators, and open doors left and right. I know it’s possible, iThoughtsHD (iTunes Link), a great mind mapping app has already done it!

When building a mind map, like many tools on the iPad, you can save off to the cloud somewhere, box.net, dropbox,etc. Unlike many apps, and all Apple apps. You can load from cloud.

It’s that easy. They did why didn’t/hasn’t Apple?

I caved, and paid $10 for Pages. Complete waste of money. I edit a lot of pages files. Sponsor packets,etc. All the time. I’d love to pull one up on my iPad, edit, and without having to think about plugging into iTunes, copying the files out of iTunes back to my iDisk where they live, overwriting the old one.

Pages, and most apps, come kinda close, you can access the file, pull it in locally, make edits, but then you’re stuck, the document is trapped in the iPad and iTunes.

Why not make the iPad apps (at least the Apple ones) more connected to Oh I dunno, say Apple’s own cloud services. iWork.com and mobileMe. Some of us (still) pay for mobileMe hoping it’ll mature and actually be useful. I have no idea what iWork.com is for, but it seems like it’d make perfect sense to tie the iWork iPad apps (maybe the new iLife ones too) to Apple’s own (though dropbox, et. al. would be nice too) services to extend their usefulness.

Please Apple here my plea! The iPad is great for games and consumer shit, hook those of us who create up! It can’t be hard, a third party did it! You can too!

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Posted in Business, I am a Creator, Mac, Random, Technology, Travel, Work, Writing

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Amazon and Publishing are killing eBooks with 1000 cuts.

Posted on May 5, 2010 | 4 Comments

My Kindle, which I love and carry with me everywhere I’m likely to be reading, is dying. It’s dying a slow death from a thousand cuts. I used to buy a new eBook from Amazon almost weekly. Sometimes I’d buy 3-4 at a time to have at the ready. Now I look thru the $0.00 section, and the $.99 self publish section (Shout out to Christian Cantrell. Go read his stuff. Yes, that Christian Cantrell from Adobe, LOL. He writes awesome Sci Fi Short stories)

Looking at these screen shots, what incentive is there for me to buy the eBook version. Bear in mind, I have free shipping with Amazon prime. Though even with shipping, if I wasn’t in a hurry, regular shipping doesn’t cost much, and is often free if I’m in no hurry.

So really where’s the benefit of buying an eBook? Less than $3 dollars savings? Really? Over a paperback in two cases?! The middle book isn’t released yet, should we guess how it’s paperback price will look compared to the Kindle price?

This is such a huge fail, and it’s Amazon, and the Publishing Industries’ to share. They’ve both taken what was IMO a promising start to revolutionizing publishing, and forced it back into 1980.

I know Amazon lost (way to stick to your guns and fight for your customers) and caved to the publishers, but now rather than use their new found power (i’m talking about the publishing companies) to find a reasonable balance in price and deliverable, they’ve run the price right back up to where it makes no sense at all for the consumer.

It feels like they’re trying to kill ebooks, by making them not worth the price. Way to be green publishers.

Green? Yeah green. By making eBooks so unattractively priced, the Publishing industry in encouraging our continued attack on the environment. Maybe they hope earth will choke on green house gasses before they have to come to terms with technology and the changing landscape of publishing? If we’re all too busy gasping for air, we won’t notice that books are to blame. (Yes that’s over the top, but illustrated my point)

On top of this completely retarded pricing, that more or less incentivizes me to purchase a dead tree copy of all three books, each eBook is DRM’ed. Each of these are listed with Text-Speach disabled. So not only am I paying an outrageous price for my eBook, but the publishers are telling me to fuck off, I get no actual features that make an eBook great. And of course, I can’t use the eVersion outside the kindle.

So I pay pretty much the same price for paper or eBook. Yet with paper I can sell the book to a used book store, loan it to n number of friends, give it away, keep it for the next 30 years, etc. Where as with the Kindle version (this is aimed at you completely Amazon) I can’t loan it out, I can’t sell it, I can’t gift it, I can’t have my Kindle read it to me while I fold clothes, and should the Kindle platform die, I can’t even re-read it. Where’s the incentive in buying the eBook version?

Amazon, you came so close to crushing it. Really, you were right there. the Nook, sucks, IMO. Most of the other craptastic devices being crapped out every other day, by mostly no name vendors stand no chance at ever being anything more than Marginal. You were the market leader. Now… my Kindle is full of things I’ve downloaded off the web. Not pirated content, tho that’s an option, but content i can get from free from sites like instapaper, the Calibre desktop app, etc.

Sorry Amazon, I’m not giving you or these lame ass publishers money. It only encourages this terrible anti-consumer behavior. One of both of you will learn, and it appears it’s gonna have to be the hard way, for you and consumers. Way to go.

Authors; Tery Brooks, John Scalzi, George RR Martin, Jessica Livingston, John Birmingham, et. al. Stand up, you’re impacted just as much as consumers. It’s not 1980 any more, times change, help your publishers figure that out. If I could pay you all directly, for an open, DRM-free eBook file, I’d do it in a heartbeat!

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Posted in Business, eBooks, I am a Consumer, Kindle, Mac, Technology, Writing

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Why I won’t be buying ebooks for a while

Posted on February 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

When I finished my last ebook the other day, i went to my bookshelf. Mainly it was to save a little money, I read fast when I read fiction, so I was consuming about 2-3 books a month, not a cheap hobby.

So I picked up a trusty paperback I’ve read 3 times previous but not recently (the last 4 years or s0).

I had forgotten how nice a book feels. No I’m not suddenly an anti paper luddite, but real books are nice, the feel of paper (in this books case) the degrading spine (mass market paperbacks sadly aren’t designed to last) requiring kid gloves to read it, etc.

But that nostalgia aside, i’m still a big proponent of eBooks, but I’m reconsidering my opinion that they’ve ‘arrived’

Not only does Amazon cow towing to McMillan bother me, but in general the trend of Amazon and the publishers.

I had hoped after what? 2 years of Kindle sales, stats like every Kindle owner on average buys 2.7 or something more books than non Kindle owning Amazon users, etc. That the publishers would get onboard the clue train.

But that doesn’t seem to have happened.

Rather than figure out how to make money in the marketplace as it exists, they’ve bitched and moaned for 2 years, without fixing a broken system.

I had hoped, and have said often, that the change in publishing, will have to be forced, and that I hoped Amazon was strong enough to “Apple” the publishing industry into the 21st Century.

I appear to have misplaced my hope. Sure it would suck to not be able to buy Tor titles from Amazon, I love Sci Fi. But it was a game of chicken, and Amazon jumped out of the car first.

Unfortunately rather than support the modern age, most authors seem to be on the attack of eReader owners, and crying foul on Amazon. Rather than lobbying for change from within most just sit back and bitch about how truly powerless they are. WTF guys come on, you’re the content creator, the power IS yours.

So for now, I’ve established a book buying moratorium. As much as it pains me, I can’t support an industry that staunchly refuses to adapt to the world around them. If the Music industry and figure it out, publishing should be able to as well.

I’ll get books at used book stores, I’ll use Paper back swap, and I’ll get free books for my Kindle when I can.

There’s always bittorrent too, sorry publishers, but forcing paying customers away, is your own doing*

I hope other Kindle owners will stop buying books as well. There’s plenty of other sources, and plenty of free content as well. My Kindle won’t be collecting dust by any means.

I’d love to hear what you think.

*Not an admission of piracy, if I WERE to download a book off a torrent and like it, I’d buy the paper version.

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Posted in Business, eBooks, I am a Consumer, Kindle, Random, Technology, Writing

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eBooks unprofitable at 9.99? I call Shenanigans

Posted on November 19, 2009 | 7 Comments

I came across this on Tele-Read, and had to voice my irritation.

Not only do I think it’s BS that a $9.99 eBook isn’t profitable I think it’s outrageous that Steve Haber sucks for thinking consumers are a bunch of idiots that don’t understand profit margins.

Perhaps $9.99 isn’t profitable for Sony (Why is sony profiting at all on eBook sales?) because Sony is a huge bloated company with (I’d guess) more middle management than it needs. Profit margins have to be high for bloated inefficient companies to survive. That’s not the consumers fault, or the competition.

It’s an ebook, very little work goes into it’s creation, distribution, etc beyond the initial writing/editing process. Unless publishers are so backwards they’re still mailing manuscripts around in big envelopes, the work is already digital. Translate to ePub, and that’s it.

WTF, you can’t make money on $9.99 when you’re doing nothing more than taking the finished digital work, and converting to ePub? Really?  eBook sales should be icing. You’re already marketing the book (or should be), already pitching it to brick and mortors, etc. the eBook is the “Oh yeah it’s also available on your eReader”

As a side note, i found this quote hilarious.

On Sony’s embrace of ePub, the open format for reading digital books across multiple devices (which Amazon has not adopted):

“My analogy is if you walk into a mall and you’re with a bunch of your friends to go shopping and you can only go in one store and they can go into many stores. It probably makes more sense to shop many stores. That’s our thinking … It frankly makes it more fun for us because we can work with so many different companies. We’re not here trying to put a wall up to block our customers. We don’t get emails complaining about ‘Why did you lock me in?’

My translation is this.

“We tried being pricks and forcing people to use our own proprietary format, much like we did with digital music, (ATRAC) and memory cards for digital cameras, that didn’t work with any other devices or services on the planet. It didn’t work, so we’re doing what we should have done in the first place, but spinning it like we’re cool, and hip, and all about consumer rights.”

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Posted in Business, eBooks, I am a Consumer, Kindle, Technology, Writing

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