Kindle API - meet me half way

My last post reminded me of something I'd been thinking about.

The kindle is already uploading lots of stats to Amazon via the cell phone connection - it's how their whole 'whispersync' technology works. That's the name for uploading statistics from one device and then using those statistics to place a bookmark when you start reading from another device - but 'digital bookmarks' don't sound like a cool selling feature.

Anyway - most of what I would want in a kindle api is the data sent from whispersync.

So meet us developers half way - let us access the data you're collecting anyway (with the user's permission of course). It won't cost you any extra access fees and won't leave you dealing with hacked kindle problems.

You're concerned about the extra cost of making that data available? I know a company that has a whole computing cloud available - maybe they could help you out.

Making developers tell you how to get synergies out of your own products - kindle fail!

'Kindle' for the PC

I am starting to believe that Amazon has no one driving their flagship product.

The latest post on the Kindle blog:

The Kindle team is excited to announce that soon, you'll be able to read more than 360,000 (and counting!) Kindle books on your computer. Our free application for your Windows PC is coming--no Kindle required. Even when you don't have your Kindle with you, you can access your Kindle books, and Whispersync automatically synchronizes your last page read and annotations between devices. Find out more at: http://www.amazon.com/kindleforpc. Stay tuned.

Sigh.

Amazon created a document format. It worked on the PC long before the first Kindle was complete. Why is it coming to the PC now? Uhm, I'm guessing Amazon finally realized that people who are going to pirate books aren't going to wait for Amazon to make content available.

I've mentioned this before - maybe it's a case of publishers getting less stupid, but not offering books on the PC is just giving away revenue.

It's the internet, if it's not for sale, it's free. You'd think Amazon.com would have been a .com long enough to learn something about how the internet works.

Also, it's not 'Kindle' coming to the PC, it's a digital book format. A Kindle is a physical device, a book is a piece of software. That's why Amazon insists on selling kindles and licensing books.

Again, you'd think a .com would know enough about computers to tell the difference between hardware and software.

For being annoyingly stupid - kindle fail!

Google to Amazon: B&N E-reader for checkmate

It seems like just yesterday that I was talking about e-readers based on Google Android competing with the Kindle. Now we have one using the same e-ink technology coming out from Amazon's main competitor in the book work, Barnes and Noble.

The 'nook' has lots of new features going for it, but very little I don't expect to see in the next version of the kindle.

What will make or break the nook will be how B&N uses Google Android.

I may have mentioned before, but my day job is as a computer programmer (I know, I know, many of you thought I lived off the revenue from this blog with no ads on it). When I got my Kindle I was very excited about it's social networking potential.

What social network potential you might be asking yourself?

Why having Kindle upload my reading activity to Goodreads so that all of my friends can see what I'm reading.

Or being able to tweet passages from books via twitter.

Or just asking about the meaning of some Victorian slang from an O. Henry story.

I can do all of these things very easily with a computer hooked up to the internet, but I can't do it with the kindle.

I was going to fix this! I was going to implement a Kindle API and unlock the device's true potential. Then I remembered 2 things:

1) Kindle has DRM
2) I am more willing to be lazy and do nothing than I am to talk with a lawyer about how much trouble I could get in for helping Amazon for free.

So I did nothing.

I am reading 10 Days That Shook the World by John Reed (which you would know if I could enable the non-existent Goodreads app) and there is a great quote about how the bi-partisan political groups lost their power and standing during the revolution. It was very fitting for our current situation in which the bi-partisan center is falling to the right and left (though without the revolutionary overtones). It was a great quote and I wanted to tweet it. But I couldn't, because there is no twitter app for the Kindle.

e-readers need app stores. Kindle, Nooky, and Sony must all develop and deploy them.

Except that B&N doesn't have to develop and deploy an app store for the Nook - it already exists, all they have to do is allow it onto the Nook.

Amazon is bragging that they now have:
"a new electronic publishing program that we hope will help you solve some of the issues that you find yourself worrying about...Elements are short bursts--nuggets--of stand alone, targeted information and inspiration on a discrete topic, of 1--2,000 words...at only 1 dollar and 59 cents."

How about a wikipedia app that lets me download the 10,000 highest rated articles? Make it Encyclopedia Britannica if you want to charge money.

While Amazon is wasting resources trying to nickle and dime their users, the first e-reader with an app store is going to blow the kindle out of the water. And that's before some genius thinks of a killer app for ereaders that isn't obvious like the ones I've pointed out.

Programmers will PAY for the privilege of being able to sell software that Amazon is writing for itself. This isn't a crazy idea - it's Apple's app store - it's why Apple is announcing record revenue. It's even risk free - you don't have to pay development costs for apps that don't work out.

No app store, $1.59 for an encyclopedia article, and a Google based rival offering from their biggest competitor? Kindle fail! - big time

Google to Amazon: Check

Google has announced that they will be opening their own online book store with all of those books they've been scanning. Worse for Amazon, Google is starting their store with pre-set rates for selling their books themselves, OR THROUGH OTHER ONLINE BOOK STORES.

So day one Google will be selling books for all e-readers on all storefronts. No extra work required to sell to Kindles on Amazon, or Sony Ereaders through Barnes and Noble.

All that work Amazon has been going through to lock down the ebook market - throw it in the trash and hand all the money over to Google.

By locking themselves down to the kindle, Amazon locked themselves out of the future of ebook retail. There are e-readers based on Google's Android platform so Google has just as much skin in the hardware game, they're just smart enough to realize that hardware is just a way of creating a market for books. The money is in digital sales, not hardware.

Not understanding that they are a .com and not a factory - kindle fail!

How to charge for free things

I've got an upbeat post after the last few downers - Amazon has found a way to charge for free content in a manner I find acceptable.

Shocking!

As detailed here, Amazon is offering classic texts (IE texts that can be legally downloaded for free) with built in commentary and analysis. Personally, I hate built in commentary and analysis, but I also have a memory that lets me make associations from books years after I read them (It's not as cool as it sounds, you end up making strange references at parties and looking awkward.)

Now, MacBeth is free, it belongs to all of us now, but $2.39 for MacBeth and Commentary seems like a decent deal.

Certainly a better deal than this version for $0.99 - you ran the text through an auto-formatter, for that you think you deserve a dollar?

Or this version where for $1.75 you can get less than the entire play, which is free.

It seems that Amazon's Kindle store is still a goldrush for people who want to get paid for stealing from the public domain. At least Shmoop is giving you something in return.

For profiting by stealing from the public domain - kindle fail!

The ownership debacle

Amazon's Fahrenheit 451 debacle has really turned me off from posting.

Remember, I am generally supportive of Amazon and the Kindle, I'm just one of the self selected critics who has decided he has the chops to snipe from the margins.

Amazon's Fahrenheit 451 actions are a failure on a whole different level.

The skimmed down basics are:
*Someone who didn't own the copyright submitted a digital copy of the book to Amazon.
*The true copyright owners contacted Amazon and had the unauthorized version removed.
*Amazon deleted the unauthorized copies from all Kindles, and returned the customer's money.

Ironies about deleting Fahrenheit 451 aside this exposes just how different digital books are from real books. Namely: you can't own digital books. This has always been obvious to some extent since you can't resell your kindle books, but not being able to keep the books you've bought is something else entirely.

If this had played out with physical books Amazon would have stopped selling the unauthorized version and the copyright owners would have sued the unauthorized publisher. Any suggestion that Amazon would turn over its customer list so that the copyright holder could contact and confiscate the copies that were already sold would have been laughed at. If the publisher did try and go to this extreme step they would have had to take Amazon to court, followed by suing each and every customer to compel them to turn over their copies.

It would never happen.

But it can happen in digital land.

Do we get the same benefits in reverse? When a publisher issues corrections to a book, will Amazon correct the kindle versions? If a revised edition comes out, there's no reason we can't have the corrections.

Now that Amazon is setting itself up as the guardian of book correctness, I think we have the right to demand that they provide us with the positive as well as the negative.

In which I get my comeuppance

That was fast.

In my last post, I suggested that by making books free and offering to store them for me forever, Amazon was creating weird incentives that almost require me to "buy" every temporarily free book.

It took all of a week for me to learn how wrong I was.

Here is the description of this week's free book:

He watches her from across the crowded dance club, a sensual black-haired stranger who stirs Gabrielle Maxwell’s deepest fantasies. But nothing about this night—or this man—is what it seems. For when Gabrielle witnesses a murder outside the club, reality shifts into something dark and deadly. In that shattering instant she is thrust into a realm she never knew existed—a realm where vampires stalk the shadows and a blood war is set to ignite.

Lucan Thorne despises the violence carried out by his lawless brethren. A vampire himself, Lucan is a Breed warrior, sworn to protect his kind—and the unwitting humans existing alongside them—from the mounting threat of the Rogues. Lucan cannot risk binding himself to a mortal woman, but when Gabrielle is targeted by his enemies, he has no choice but to bring her into the dark underworld he commands.

Here, in the arms of the Breed’s formidable leader, Gabrielle will confront an extraordinary destiny of danger, seduction, and the darkest pleasures of all. . . .

Well done Amazon! I never considered the social aspect of free books.

Before the Kindle when I wanted to read trash, I would simply make sure not to leave the book lying around, and quickly dispose of it when I was finished. Basically, treat it like porn.

Now, if I ever give in to your free offer for "the darkest pleasures of all" I will never be able to hide it. They will be my dark pleasures forever. Forever lurking in my kindle's content manager. Forever noted whenever I visit Amazon.com.

Oh sure you can explain that "it was free" and that "I got it as a joke", just like porn, but people will still look at you funny. Don't even think of adding "some blogger suggested I try it", you'll only make things worse for yourself.

Tying people to their porn forever, and offering a gateway book for free - kindle fail!

PS: I was being theatrical about amazon.com, you can tell the website to forget all about books you've bought...just like porn.

DX?

I'm sure you've heard that Amazon announced a new text book sized Kindle, the Kindle DX. I've been giving the matter some thought, and want to expand on some of the other commentary about the new Kindle.

I think there's a lot of potential in having variable sized Kindles. Larger screens, smaller screens, it all depends on your preferences.

But textbooks? The technology is no where close to being usable for flipping back and forth to reference something you half understood in the last chapter.

There's a bigger problem though - textbook piracy. College students are the biggest group of pirates around. They're also cheap. If faced with a choice of a $40 textbook, or a free textbook and $40 in beer, you'll find that not many textbooks will be sold.

There's not a lot Amazon or the textbook publishers can do about this either. There's no requirement that students buy the textbook for a class so there's not going to be much evidence to support a piracy claim. Yes, Amazon can have Kindles start calling home (they do have a cellphone chip after all) to report on pirated books, but the wireless can be turned off.

So what then? When I was graduating many of the intro classes were adding lab books that you had to purchase. They were only 100 pages long and you had to rip pages out in order to turn them in, so they weren't available used. They also cost as much as the main textbook new. Students were pretty angry about it.

The only real alternative to combating piracy is to force students to purchase something for the sake of making sure they spend money. It's not good and it won't work.

The digital book market is no where near ready to face the consequences that wholesale piracy will bring. Far from being the springboard to wider acceptance, the college market may well be the anchor that sinks the whole ebook economy.

kindle fail

How to scan cheaply and annoy people

I recently purchased Dale Carnegie's How to win friends and influence people for the kindle.

Of course when I made my purchase I only saw the $4.80 version, not the copies for $5.99, $0.80, or $0.96.

So my commentary really only applies to the "How to Win Friends and Influence People (With easy click Table of Contents)", and unlike most of my posts I'm not really harping on the fact that Amazon is selling the same book for $0.80, $0.96, $4.80, and $5.99 (although it is bullshit).

I got an easy click table of contents with my extra $4.00 after all (you know, the kind that come with every digital book). It was like the scene in Arthur 2 when the apartment came with AOL - automatic on lighting. My joy could only be contained by drink.

No, today's post is about the really lousy job they did converting the book to digital format. Who is this famous 'dark Gable' Mr. Carnegie keeps referring too? Oh, maybe it's Clark Gable.

How does Clark Gable become dark Gable?

My guess is it starts with a cheap blurry reference text and a scanner. But even a blurry 'Cl' doesn't look much like a 'd'. It does look like an O, but Oark isn't a word. So they must have spell checked the text after scanning. So Olark became Dark. Of course Dark shouldn't be capitalized in the middle of a sentence. So through a scanner, spell checker, and grammar checker 'Clark Gable' becomes 'dark Gable'.

You know what we don't have in this scenario? A proof reader.

There's also a half dozen sentences with that make sense if you replace 'tune' with 'time'.

Selling books without reading them first - kindle fail!

Pricing protest

Wired is covering a protest over kindle book pricing.

It takes a lot more effort to get people back on your side than it does to keep them there in the first place.

Amazon needs to stop looking at the kindle as a lock-in device and remember that they are a book store.

Having to police Amazon.com against a self organizing protest? - kindle fail!

Curiously bad idea

Curious George has come to the kindle.

I'm curiously unable to decide which is worse - looking at colorful drawings in 4 scale gray or the idea of handing my kindle to a child.




The images don't look too bad (and I have the original kindle, not the new 16 colors of gray, super shinny kindle). Enough to evoke the monkey of my childhood, but probably not enough to enchant a new generation.

I once let my nephew play with my cell phone for a minute. He managed to get his finger into the case, pull it apart and dislodge the keypad. Cell phones are a lot more rugged than the flimsy buttons on the side of the kindle.

He's 3 now, so maybe the kindle would last a whole minute before the sides come off.

By coincidence, I sent my nephew a complete Curious George book set for his birthday, I highly recommend it.

Putting kindle's in the hands of toddlers - kindle fail!

Thundergod

I've been working on a post about how some books are available in multiple kindle editions for different prices.

The time machine is available in 16 versions with 9 prices, from $0.80 to $3.95. Of course it's also available for free from feedbooks. Pretty silly, maybe kinda sad that so many of Amazon's books are duplicates. Especially as the title count war kicks off.

But it's not really funny, and no one is going to read it if it's not funny.

But today's kindle post found the funny.

All I can think is - Thunderdome! Two bibles enter, one god leaves!

Igniting translation wars - kindle fail!

Title BUZZards

As this article from wired points out Sony has signed a deal with Google to put the Google Books catalog onto the Sony e-Reader. Giving the e-Reader a 600,000 to 245,000 advantage over the Kindle.

From a practical standpoint the number of books available is pretty meaningless. I'm not going to read 245,000 books in my lifetime let alone 600,000. I've been keeping a fairly steady pace of 30-40 books a year; so I probably won't get a chance to read my 3000th book. Whether I read 1.2% or 0.5% of the books available makes little difference. Both systems have the 5000 or so books I'd like to read, and another 5000 that I would read if I got bored. I'm good on either system without any more books being published.

Of course humans don't make rational decisions. It's why we have sports cars, gambling and kindles in the first place (do not combine - you cannot drive your Corvette with a kindle no matter what the odds). So Sony's title count will convince some people to go Sony over Amazon.

That's not really a bad thing though.

The main difference between the two is size (e-reader) vs. convenience (kindle) - no one is hurt by buying one over the other. Both benefit when anyone starts reading digitally as it helps push publishers into publishing digitally. Neither system is anywhere close to being ready for academic use (page turning is too slow) so making 200,000 academic works available is nothing but pressure.

It's pressure on Amazon to embrace books with expired or open copyrights. It's pressure on both companies to open their platforms with 3rd party book stores (which I predicted in my last post. It's like I'm building an argument by successive use of a theme).

It's all slow, invisible hand of the markets stuff. With a little luck Sony and Amazon will engage in a price war until digital book readers are for sale in 7-11s and books cost $5 a piece (maybe more if the invisible hand shakes us down for more AIG bonus money).

To summarize:

Letting Sony get more books available then Kindle: kindle fail!
Forcing Sony to embrace open formats: success!
Forcing Sony to cut their prices to compete: success!

As meatloaf said - don't feel bad, cause 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

Kindle RSS

Ah, the kindle daily post I mentioned earlier is available as an RSS feed.

It's all part of Amazon's Kindle Blog, which is the same as the kindle daily post.

The blog so nice, they had to name it twice. But whatever you call it:



You can't search for it.

kindle fail!

kindle's daily fail

I'm always looking for a deal, so imagine my surprise when a friend told me about all the great deals available on the 'kindle daily post'.

So I searched:




But, no 'kindle daily post'.

Its right there my friend insisted, just off the main screen.

Screen?

That's right, the 'kindle daily post' is only available through wireless. First you go to the home screen, then hit menu, then shop in kindle store, and it's right there.

Simple.


Like many kindle users, I generally leave the wireless on my kindle off.

In fact here is how I use my kindle:

1. purchase a book from amazon.com
2. turn on wireless, wait for book to download
   
3. turn off wireless
4. read

I don't purchase stuff through the kindle. I'm in front of a computer all day, and if I think "I should get this book", I go to amazon.com and get it. If I ran out of books on the road I would have loaded the store, but I usually have 3 books I want to read, and another 4 that I should be reading. That is to say, I would not have found it.

To make this even more frustrating, the deals from the daily kindle post are available on the website



But you loose the context of the offer - in this case that Random House is making the book free until May 31st as a promotion. You just see that it's free. Since it's not advertised as free on the website, you'll only notice if you look up the book to purchase it.

In other words, if you use kindle's wireless you might download the book because of the promotion, if you use amazon.com you get a book you were going to pay for for free, and you won't know why.

All in all, not well thought out.

kindle fail!

Breaking out of story

I was reading a scifi book on my kindle today, and I had the thought: "My dad would really like this book."

My dad and I have been sharing scifi books for about 20 years now.

But the kindle won't let me do that.

Can't give my copy of the book to my dad.
Which means I can't discuss the book with my dad.
Which means he won't recommend it to his friends, etc, etc.

It made me so angry, I put down the book. I don't know if I will finish reading it, since now it makes me think about copyright instead of far off galactic empires. When I want to read about copyright, I read Lessig.

Thanks for killing my entertainment.

Now I have to stop and think 'would my dad like this book?' before I spend money to read it on the kindle. Guess what - if I think the answer is yes, I won't buy it on the kindle. I probably won't buy it at all. Why risk getting annoyed?

The upshot is that if your business model depends on making sure that fathers and sons can't share books, your business model is fucking wrong.

kindle fail!

Renting vs. Owning - Looking at cars

So, if I'm going to come up with a price for renting books, I need something to compare it with.
How about cars?

Not the most obvious choice, but if you want to think about renting something with lots of restrictions, car rents might be the ticket:

Restriction	Rental Car	Kindle	Conclusion
Sharing restrictions	Only "Authorized Drivers" are allowed to drive a rental car.	Only a single "Authorized Kindle" is allowed to show a book at a time	Rental cars are less restrictive
Usage restrictions	You can do whatever you want with the car, so long as you don't damage it.	You can read the book, but apparently you can't use software to read the book out loud to you without permission.	Rental cars are less restrictive
Cost	Cars cost about $20,000 and rent for about $30/day (before insurance).	Books cost about $8 and rent for about $8. Insurance isn't offered.	Rental cars are a lot cheaper

Conclusion -

While renting a car can be a great value, renting a book is a much less consumer friendly opportunity.

Kindle - FAIL

A basic example

The Last Colony is a great example of illogical kindle pricing. When the kindle version and the paperback version cost the same amount, something is wrong.

It is hard to imagine a legitimate scenario where the cost of creating the kindle version would equal the cost of printing, shipping and storing physical books. If there really was such a scenario I feel confident that Amazon would publicize it in order to get people like me to shut up.

Without any rational reasons for the pricing I'm left to speculate. Are the publishers being greedy and pocketing the savings?

Is Amazon using the extra money to subsidize the price of Kindle hardware (This is the model used by video game consoles, printers, Polaroid, etc)? If so I wish they would let us know, it would add tons of validation to their pricing as well as making the kindle hardware seem more reasonable (sure it's $360, but maybe it costs $400 to make). Sadly, I think Amazon would say something if this were the case.

Without an explanation, all I can say is kindle fail!

time to fail!

I'm actually reading The Time Machine on my kindle right now.

Since the copyright is expired I paid $0.00 to feedbooks for my copy. (Get your own copy here).

I read War of the Worlds years ago, but if you want a copy it's also available for free.

Charging over list price for a book available for free
kindle fail!

Scifi Fail

I'm a big science fiction fan, so I was pretty surprised when I got to the kindle store and saw my listings for these science fiction classics



Journey to the center of the Earth:
List price 1.29
Kindle price 2.19

Slaughterhouse Five
List price 1.95
Kindle Price 7.19

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
List price 0.75
Kindle Price 7.65

The Lost World
List price 4.99
Kindle Price 6.39

i, Robot
List price 0.35
Kindle Price 6.39

Displaying kindle prices that are 18 times over list price?
kindle fail!