Thursday, January 24, 2013

What is the Perfect e-Reader Screen Size? From @Goodereader

During the last few years we have seen a number of e-readers hit the market in various sizes. Many companies tend to offer different devices to boost their portfolio and cater to a wider market. With so many different sized screens out there, providing unique experiences, what size is the best?

Read on and vote here....http://wtr.mn/10O2pAb

Monday, January 21, 2013

Considering Self-Publishing? Don't Bother, Unless You Follow Guy Kawasaki's Advice. From @kathycaprino and @forbes

Recently, I had the enormous pleasure of chatting with Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop.com, founding partner of Garage Technology Ventures, and former Chief Evangelist for Apple.  Guy is the author of ten books, including Enchantment, Reality Check, and Rules for Revolutionaries.  If you haven’t followed Guy’s writing and blog, you’re truly missing out.  He’s utterly brilliant, wise, iconoclastic, brutally frank, and downright hilarious.

And if you’re considering self-publishing a book, make the first resource you read Guy’s new book APE: Author- Publisher – Entrepreneur – How to Publish a Book co-written by Shawn Welch.

I don’t recommend resources lightly, but as one who worked in traditional publishing for years and had my own book Breakdown, Breakthrough published traditionally, I believe Guy’s new book is a true winner, full of practical, realistic solutions, strategies and tips for self-publishers.

In 2011 the publisher of Guy’s New York Times bestseller, Enchantment, could not fill an order for 500 ebook copies of the book. Because of this experience, Guy self-published his next book, What the Plus!: Google+ For the Rest of Us and learned first-hand that self-publishing is a complex, confusing, and idiosyncratic process.  He decided to learn as much as he could about successful self-publishing, and share his knowledge with all those who want to venture into the self-publishing arena.

I asked Guy about the process of self-publishing, what he’s learned from it, and also what makes it worthwhile to write a book in the first place.

1)   Why write a book in the first place?

2)  Your karmic scoreboard 

3) Artisanal publishing  (vs. self-publishing) – the new trend in publishing

4)  How to know if your book is worthwhile?

5)  Are you ready to engage in artisanal publishing?

Find the answers here.....http://wtr.mn/V1Y3yu 
 


Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Why Printed Books Will Never Die. From @catone and @mashable

Measured en masse, the stack of "books I want to read" that sits precariously on the edge of a built-in bookshelf in my dining room just about eclipses 5,000 pages. The shelf is full to bursting with titles I hope to consume at some indeterminate point in the future.

It would be a lot easier to manage if I just downloaded all those books to an iPad or Kindle. None are hard to find editions that would be unavailable in a digital format, and a few are recent hardcover releases, heavy and unwieldy.

But there's something about print that I can't give up. There's something about holding a book in your hand and the visceral act of physically turning a page that, for me at least, can't be matched with pixels on a screen.

Yet the writing appears to be on the wall: E-books are slowly subsuming the printed format as the preferred vehicle on which people read books. E-books topped print sales for the first time in 2011, a trend that continued into 2012. Just this month, Bexar County, Texas announced plans for the nation's first electronic-only library. A recent study from Scholastic found that the percentage of children who have read an e-book has nearly doubled since 2010 to almost half of all kids aged 9 to 17, while the number who say they'll continue to read books in print instead of electronically declined from 66% to 58%.

The hits keep coming.

For those who prefer their books printed in ink on paper, that sounds depressing. But perhaps there is reason to hope that e-books and print books could have a bright future together, because for all the great things e-books accomplish — convenience, selection, portability, multimedia — there are still some fundamental qualities they will simply never possess.

Books have physical beauty.

Books have provenance.

Printed books are collectible.

Books are nostalgic.

Read on here.....http://wtr.mn/X8w8wg

 

 

 

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Norman Jean Roy Thinks Digital Ruined Fashion Photography. From @TheCut

Photographer Norman Jean Roy shoots for two of the world’s most high-profile clients, Vogue and Vanity Fair. And whether on set with Hilary Swank and Joan Smalls or producing more personal, socially conscious work with the Somaly Mam Foundation, Jean Roy captures engaging, highly memorable shots of his subjects.

Though primarily identified as a fashion photographer, Jean Roy describes his work as portraiture. "A great portrait needs to first grab you and then let you sit in there and continue to draw you in. [Whereas] with a lot of fashion photography, it really hits you hard and then it slowly fades away," he told the Cut. "To me, that's the fundamental difference between a great photograph and a great picture." When we stopped by Jean Roy's West Village studio to speak about sixteen of his most iconic works, he added, "It's a real wrestling match always [having to] work and make a living in one of, quite possibly, the most self-absorbed industries in the world." In the slideshow ahead, Jean Roy talks about making portraits of George W. Bush, Cate Blanchett, Florence Welch, and others.

What has been the result of a more democratized world of photography?
If you look back even fifteen years ago, fashion photography was fun, lively, and full of humanity. I'm hoping to God the younger generation coming out now is going to be able to recapture that. It's where creativity lives. It's certainly not in the digital process, and it's certainly not in the team effort. The team effort works when all of the people come together in assembling an image.

And you usually shoot on film.
When you shoot film, you don't have the luxury of seeing every single image coming out. And because of that, you stay very focused. Everything [becomes] hyperreal, so when you get it, you get it another time, and another time after that just to make sure you got it. As a result, you have a much better version of, I think, the moment. That's much more real, honest, and broken, too.

Broken?
Part of a perfect image is that it is imperfect. With digital photography, it's very easy to perfect the image. You kill the image when you perfect it. You basically suck the life out of it. An image, to me, lives when you can look at it and it's just slightly off. Like, when you put a primary red and primary green together, you have that vibrancy between the two. A great photograph, not a great picture, needs to have that vibration. It would be very easy to take any one of my photographs and I can tell you where I could have fixed this and fixed that.

Read the entire interview with James Lim here http://wtr.mn/W46yKi

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Why do e-books cost so much? Here's the answer, and why e-book prices may be falling in the future. From @CSMonitor

Here’s a question I got on our Facebook page. Maybe you’ve wondered about it too.

Why do your Kindle books cost more than a paperback copy? The Kindle version of Life or Debt on Amazon costs $9.73, but they’re selling the paperback for as little as $6.00. Since e-books should cost much less to produce, why do they cost more to buy? This seems unfair, especially when you’re writing about how to save money to pay off debt.
- Ted

The first time I attempted to answer this question, I quoted an article called "Why Do eBooks Cost So Much? (A Publisher’s Perspective)" by Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. Here’s how he justified the high cost of e-books…

…physical manufacturing and distribution expenses cost less than you think. Some people assume that these two items represent the bulk of a book’s costs. They don’t. Together, they account for about 12 percent of a physical book’s retail price. So eliminating these costs doesn’t do much to reduce the overall cost structure.

Even if this is accurate, shouldn’t the price of e-books be 12 percent lower than physical copies? No, he insists, because there are other costs associated exclusively with e-books, like formatting them to fit e-readers. He goes on to say…

“The elimination of manufacturing and distribution costs are being offset by retail price reductions and the additional costs I have outlined. The good news is that we are making about the same margins, regardless of whether we sell the book in physical form or digital.”

Despite this publisher’s claim, the reason e-books are as expensive, or even more expensive, than traditional books isn’t because they cost as much to produce and distribute. Anyone who produces anything digital that was formerly physical knows digital is cheaper. A website is cheaper than a newspaper. A digital version of a video costs less to deliver than a tape. An e-book costs less than a physical book. Anyone suggesting otherwise, like this publishing executive, probably has a dog in the fight.

If you want a single answer to why e-books are more expensive, it’s in the last few words of this publishing CEO’s explanation: ”The good news is, we are making about the same margins, regardless of whether we sell the book in physical form or digital.”

The lion’s share of the retail price of a book, whether in digital or physical form, is going to the publisher. And what’s good news for him is bad news for you. Want cheaper books? Eliminate the fattest fingers in the pie – the publisher’s.

Read on here....http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2013/0112/Why-do-e-books-cost-so-much



Tuesday, January 8, 2013

They prefer print: E-books yet to rack up big sales at college bookstores. From @jconline

The start of the Purdue University spring semester brings with it the ringing and beeps from cash registers tallying up a major expense for students — textbooks.

Though some students could slash their bills — possibly in half — if they opted for e-books, which are basically downloadable texts viewable on a computer or handheld device, the majority still chose the traditional paper tome.


Chemistry major Megan Moore said Tuesday while shopping at University Bookstore in West Lafayette that even in this digital age, she likes using highlighter pens, bending pages and writing notes in heavy, hardcover texts. Moore bought a digital text last semester and is certain it was also her last.


“I like to be able to flip through it,” she said. “And I want to keep the book. For some of these classes, especially if it’s your major, you are going to want the books so you can go back and check something. You might need it next year. It costs more but it’s worth it.”

Read on here.....http://wtr.mn/WwQdvZ



Friday, January 4, 2013

The e-book had its moment, but sales are slowing. Readers still want to turn those crisp, bound pages. From @WSJ

A 2012 survey revealed that just 16% of Americans have actually purchased an e-book.

Lovers of ink and paper, take heart. Reports of the death of the printed book may be exaggerated.

Ever since Amazon introduced its popular Kindle e-reader five years ago, pundits have assumed that the future of book publishing is digital. Opinions about the speed of the shift from page to screen have varied. But the consensus has been that digitization, having had its way with music and photographs and maps, would in due course have its way with books as well. By 2015, one media maven predicted a few years back, traditional books would be gone.

Half a decade into the e-book revolution, though, the prognosis for traditional books is suddenly looking brighter. Hardcover books are displaying surprising resiliency. The growth in e-book sales is slowing markedly. And purchases of e-readers are actually shrinking, as consumers opt instead for multipurpose tablets. It may be that e-books, rather than replacing printed books, will ultimately serve a role more like that of audio books—a complement to traditional reading, not a substitute.

How attached are Americans to old-fashioned books? Just look at the results of a Pew Research Center survey released last month. The report showed that the percentage of adults who have read an e-book rose modestly over the past year, from 16% to 23%. But it also revealed that fully 89% of regular book readers said that they had read at least one printed book during the preceding 12 months. Only 30% reported reading even a single e-book in the past year.

What's more, the Association of American Publishers reported that the annual growth rate for e-book sales fell abruptly during 2012, to about 34%. That's still a healthy clip, but it is a sharp decline from the triple-digit growth rates of the preceding four years.

The initial e-book explosion is starting to look like an aberration. The technology's early adopters, a small but enthusiastic bunch, made the move to e-books quickly and in a concentrated period. Further converts will be harder to come by. A 2012 survey by Bowker Market Research revealed that just 16% of Americans have actually purchased an e-book and that a whopping 59% say they have "no interest" in buying one.

Meanwhile, the shift from e-readers to tablets may also be dampening e-book purchases. Sales of e-readers plunged 36% in 2012, according to estimates from IHS iSuppli, while tablet sales exploded. When forced to compete with the easy pleasures of games, videos and Facebook on devices like the iPad and the Kindle Fire, e-books lose a lot of their allure. The fact that an e-book can't be sold or given away after it's read also reduces the perceived value of the product.

Beyond the practical reasons for the decline in e-book growth, something deeper may be going on. We may have misjudged the nature of the electronic book.

From the start, e-book purchases have skewed disproportionately toward fiction, with novels representing close to two-thirds of sales. Digital best-seller lists are dominated in particular by genre novels, like thrillers and romances. Screen reading seems particularly well-suited to the kind of light entertainments that have traditionally been sold in supermarkets and airports as mass-market paperbacks.

These are, by design, the most disposable of books. We read them quickly and have no desire to hang onto them after we've turned the last page. We may even be a little embarrassed to be seen reading them, which makes anonymous digital versions all the more appealing. The "Fifty Shades of Grey" phenomenon probably wouldn't have happened if e-books didn't exist.

Readers of weightier fare, including literary fiction and narrative nonfiction, have been less inclined to go digital. They seem to prefer the heft and durability, the tactile pleasures, of what we still call "real books"—the kind you can set on a shelf.

E-books, in other words, may turn out to be just another format—an even lighter-weight, more disposable paperback. That would fit with the discovery that once people start buying digital books, they don't necessarily stop buying printed ones. In fact, according to Pew, nearly 90% of e-book readers continue to read physical volumes. The two forms seem to serve different purposes.

Having survived 500 years of technological upheaval, Gutenberg's invention may withstand the digital onslaught as well. There's something about a crisply printed, tightly bound book that we don't seem eager to let go of.

—Mr. Carr is the author of "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains."

Original article can be found here......http://wtr.mn/138YBYo

"In the end, who holds the content that you value?” B&N's Strategy Is Questioned as Holiday Nook Sales Decline. From @NYTimes

 

For Barnes & Noble, the digital future is not what it used to be.
After a year spent signaling its commitment to build its business through its Nook division, Barnes & Noble on Thursday announced disappointing holiday sales figures, with steep declines that underscored the challenge it faces in transforming from its traditional retail format.
Retail sales from the company’s bookstores and its Web site, BN.com, decreased 10.9 percent from the comparable nine-week holiday period a year earlier, to $1.2 billion, the company reported. More worrisome for the long-term future of the company, sales in the Nook unit that includes e-readers, tablets, digital content and accessories decreased 12.6 percent over the same period, to $311 million.
“They are not selling the devices, they are not selling books and traffic is down,” said Mike Shatzkin, the founder and chief executive of Idea Logical, a consultant to publishers. “I’m looking for an optimistic sign and not seeing one. It is concerning.”
The results, covering a period that ended Dec. 29, are a sobering development for the nation’s largest bookstore chain. The declines occurred during what is supposed to be peak buying season. And the Nook unit’s sagging fortunes came despite a 13 percent increase in sales of digital content, suggesting that it is the tepid demand for Nook devices that is dragging down the unit’s performance.
Read on here....http://wtr.mn/UoTjYG


Thursday, January 3, 2013

Over 1 Billion Cameras Shipped in Smartphones and Tablets during 2012

London, United Kingdom - 03 Jan 2013

Almost every smartphone shipped today has an embedded rear camera and one in three smartphones have a front-facing camera. The number of media tablets with two cameras is even greater. Purchasers expect to be able to take photos with their devices and the popularity of video calling is driving the integration of front-facing cameras. ABI Research projects one billion cameras were shipped in smartphones and tablets in 2012.

Apart from Nokia’s PureView 808, the majority of smartphone releases this year have kept camera resolution around 8 megapixel. Instead, mobile OEMs have looked into new features such as autofocus, rapid capture mode, best picture, and better image captures for low light environments. “Advancements in imaging technology are opening new doors for smartphones and media tablets,” says senior analyst Josh Flood. “Mobile device cameras are becoming more than just a digital camera for taking snapshots of your kids and pet. New services like augmented reality and gesture recognition are now easily conceivable in mobile devices.” Furthermore, these new features in imaging technologies are driving new services for mobile device users. Additionally, the general advancements of imaging technologies or more specifically image processors are now enabling mobile devices to interpret gestures.

According to ABI Research’s latest study on imaging technology in mobile devices, 2.7 billion cameras in mobile devices are predicted to ship in 2018. Smartphones account for the majority of camera shipments, at 80% of the volume. More smartphones are anticipated to include front-facing cameras as video calling becomes more commonplace and the implementation of LTE network infrastructure in countries will further strengthen the demand of smartphones with these front-facing cameras. “Two hundred and thirty million smartphones are projected to be shipped with gesture recognition in 2015,” adds Flood.

The new study “More Than a Digital Camera” analyzes imaging technology and new services enabled by cameras in mobile devices. It forms part of ABI Research’s Mobile Device Technologies Research Service.

ABI Research provides in-depth analysis and quantitative forecasting of trends in global connectivity and other emerging technologies. From offices in North America, Europe and Asia, ABI Research’s worldwide team of experts advises thousands of decision makers through 70+ research and advisory services. Est. 1990. For more information visit www.abiresearch.com , or call +1.516.624.2500 .

Photo Finishing Your Memories Old and New. From @RWW

The New Year often reminds us of things we have meant to do all year. Many New Year's resolutions often fail, but setting one revolving around a digital solution can sometimes work its way into your routine with less pain than a daily trip to the health club. Organizing our family's photos is one of the things that became part of my routine after making a resolution a few years ago.
If your parents are still alive, you could be faced with shoe boxes full of old photos to add to your own collections. Such pictures might be important peeks into your family's history and are worth preserving. If you add to those boxes your own collection of pictures and the digital photos that are scattered over your various devices, you can be looking at a huge challenge.
The best solution is a routine that takes care of the present and starts nibbling away at the past. With a history of storing photos in the cloud for years, I have put a lot of thought into organizing and protecting our photos. Others might have different ideas, but this is what works for me.

Read on here.....http://wtr.mn/UqT5MS