“The publishing industry was drooling over the Apple iPad long before the product was actually announced. What it saw in the rumored device was the potential for a powerful delivery platform for a new generation of books, magazines, and newspapers,” Tim Bajarin writes for PC Magazine.. “Publishers hoped the color screen, speedy processor, and intuitive interface would help them innovate content and create new business models.”
“Now that the iPad is a reality, the publishing industry has begun to gear up to create publications that integrate images, video, and audio into text, dramatically enhancing the storytelling process,” Bajarin writes. “In this sense, the iPad is a blessing. It gives publishers a new palette to work with, and, if they’re smart, new methods for charging directly for that content. They could, for example, offer new subscription models or position individual publications as standalone apps.”
Bajarin writes, “But here lies the curse of the publishing industry. The iPad could give rise to a new creative self-publishing crowd that could, in turn, become competition for the established publishing industry. Today’s creative writers could bypass the industry altogether. The opportunity is already there to a degree, via a number of self-publishing programs, but Apple’s iBookstore would give them a power partner with a unique technology and powerful distribution.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We see nothing wrong with eliminating redundancy and inefficiency by replacing outmoded business constructs with new ones. We suspect the same sort of thing will happen for more and more musicians over time, too. Obviously, the authors and musicians who can effectively utilize technology to go straight to their audiences will reap the greatest rewards.
I wish you could break up the newspaper just like the album was broken into songs (for a lower cost): subscribe to just the sports section, or real estate, or classifieds, or local news or jobs or travel.
Or subscribe to the lot for a discount on the total.
@Holy Mackerel,
That’s what the N.Y. Times is talking about…you get a few stories but beyond a certain number you must pay or subscribe.
The format control that the iPad COULD introduce is likely the most important aspect to print publications. By that I mean..it’s NOT the web… so ads, instead of being pointless banners or these useless matchbook size ads…would be BETTER…containing video and text that really told you something about the product, service or company. By LIMITING the direct theft of the content it increases its value. If everyone can get it for nothing it is worth far less.
Think Napster.
Why the screen size of the iPad?
Oh, I don’t know, maybe because it’s a PAD, like in a pad of lined paper you slide into a vinyl cover only it does so much more than that pad of paper. Or maybe because hardly any websites need widescreen or hardly any books need widescreen. Or maybe it’s because very few people will use the iPad primarily to watch movies on, I for one will be watching my movies on my $1400 Flat screen TV that’s just a bit bigger than the iPad at 50 inches.
The ability to self publish m a y b e good and maybe not so great. Most of the comments here do not seem to give much credit to the editors, publishers, and professionals who help turn words into books – it is not all the author, they get some help. Remember that fiction only accounts for about 20% of the market in books. Be careful what you wish for.
It would be a sad thing if we end up with a whole lot of print that is poorly edited, poorly referenced, and in other ways garbage at the expense of professional publishing houses. More is not better…..
The iPad is all about another option for distribution of reading matter.
Will it become dominant? Who knows – probably successful but may not take over like in the music biz.
Will it eliminate publishers? I doubt it since they control a lot of content.
It may open another avenue for writers but along the same lines as the indie music scene.
More than likely it will speed up the demise of the printing industry.
No different than the horse and buggy. Used to be really valuable and has a respected place within human history.
Change is inevitable.
“Today’s creative writers could bypass the industry altogether. The opportunity is already there to a degree, via a number of self-publishing programs, but Apple’s iBookstore would give them a power partner with a unique technology and powerful distribution.”
Funny when I was reading the article and read this part about the self-publishing programs I thought of xlibris. Not your everyday name so I looked up the website to make sure I had the proper spelling and lo and behold, an ipad ad on the home page.
Very very nice.
http://www2.xlibris.com/
Maybe to avoid rubbish in self-publishing, the iBook store should have their team of editors to vet for quality of the books it sells. Or maybe the iPad would be instrumental in opening up a new industry for good editors.
The above is a great example of an on subject discussion.
It would be great if future discussions, at MDN, followed suit.
I agree with those who say rather than eliminating publishers, it may widen the publishing field by allowing independent and small-press publishers to bypass the distribution companies that control much of what goes into the standard general-interest bookstore. This could enable authors to get even more notice, especially in niche fields like science fiction or horror. The iBookstore could have a Genius feature, that would recommend books based on what’s in your library; so if you have a lot of Stephen King, and a new author in a similar vein pops up, you might get a recommendation for that author and might discover the next hot author.
Reader recommendation totals and reader reviews could substitute, in part, for marketing. Also helping self-published authors would be a money-back-if-dissatisfied guarantee.
If you had a good education or parents who taught you basic articulacy, or you just have a gift for writing, or all of the above (!); that is half the problem of dreck-free writing solved. Involving an editor to read drafts early and often is indispensable. That helps with the vital task of tracking readability, scope, relevance, pace, maintaining interest and many consistency issues, as you write. Spotting deviations from the ideal form early, avoids much re-writing and attendant irritations. For the remainder of the QC work, you would be surprised how useful a quiet second and third reading at decent intervals can be for spotting more errors. Finally, you need a few independent ‘typical’ readers and of course a good proofreader.
This said, there is huge scope for talented people to self-publish. There can be be new channels for marketing if good agencies or websites arise which provide a critical showcase for independent publishers. There is also scope for sites that offer word-of-web recommendations of quality work, and money to be made from click-through purchases therefrom. This kind of mechanism can often police its own standards because consistently poor recommendations would quickly impact visitor numbers. Good solutions will emerge. Bookshops and libraries can even provide a print-o-demand service if you want a hard copy. All manner of possibilities exist or are emerging.
Apple will likely offer limited previews of eBooks, rather as Amazon does now. On non-fiction works, the deal might be that as the book is updated over time, the buyer can pay an upgrade price only. There is no reason for the software pricing model to be excluded here.This alone would save me a fortune on computing and other technical books.
The huge, potential, positive in all this is the coming slow surge in multimedia enhanced books and magazines. This is the killer differentiator for ePublishing that print cannot incorporate.
I am taking the plunge and writing a multimedia book that I hope can be published by Apple around May or June. It’s a lot of work, and a huge risk of my time, but i cannot resist taking the chance to trial this new channel of opportunity.
…… and some publishers, like Pragmatic Programmers, are already invested in new-form publihing. Some of their titles are available in print or as eBooks. Some of their books are supplemented by video tutorials at a reasonable price.
I believe that big changes are underway. In choice, quality, variety and mostly in price.