e-books

I'm not sure why, but some analysts seemed a little surprised about Amazon's Wednesday announcement that it would begin offering Amazon e-books on the iPhone and iPod Touch and move beyond the confines of the Kindle.

First off, the company had effectively confirmed off-Kindle reading access in February, so it shouldn't have surprised anyone. Second, anybody who knows anything knows it's all about the razor blades (the e-books) and not the razor (the Kindle).

Like the game console world, the real profits aren't in the hardware but the software. Yes, the Kindle 2's hot … Read more

I'm not sure why, but some analysts seemed a little surprised about Amazon.com's announcement on Wednesday that it would begin offering Amazon e-books on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and move beyond the confines of the Kindle.

First of all, the company had effectively confirmed off-Kindle reading access in February, so it shouldn't have surprised anyone. Second, anybody who knows anything knows that it's all about the razor blades (the e-books) and not the razor (the Kindle).

Like the game console world, the real profits aren't in the hardware but rather the software. Yes, the Kindle 2's hot now, but to reach a larger audience, Amazon will eventually have to reduce the price for the reader and shrink its margins.

By contrast, the margins on e-books should remain pretty beefy, and you can imagine all the cost savings involved when you don't have to deal with warehousing and shipping physical books. It's a great business model.

But there's just one problem. While Amazon might be able to find a market for $9.99 books on the Kindle, the iPhone-iPod Touch world is a very different place. Very few people are willing to pay that kind of money for any sort of application, let alone an e-book.

In the Apple application world, the sweet spot for selling anything seems to be less than $4.99--and more like $.99 or $1.99. Sure, you're going to get some bestselling series with almost cult-like followings (read: "Harry Potter" and "Twilight"), but the vast majority of books being "sold" on the iPhone are very cheap--and rightly so because the overall iPhone-reading experience doesn't justify you spending $10 (or even $5) on an e-book. (See Nicole Lee's in-depth piece on comparing the Kindle 2 reading experience to that of the iPhone's).

Of course, the Kindle app isn't the first way to read e-books on the iPhone--there are already dozens of paid and free reader applications (and books-as-apps) available on the App Store. And taking a look at the list of top paid (nonfree) book or reader apps will give you an idea of how pricing works.

Books in the "Twilight" series, and one app called "50 Great Books for 10 Bucks," are the only ones in the top 20 that have a $9.99 price tag. Arguably, the perfect book for Apple's smartphone, "iPhone: The Missing Manual" (written by The New York Times' David Pogue), sells for $4.99. But it took a big hit in sales when the publisher tested a $9.99 price point.

… Read more

Last week, Tim O'Reilly called for Amazon.com to open up its Kindle e-reader, or "Amazon will wind up another online pioneer who ends up a belated guest at the party it planned to host."

On Wednesday, Amazon demonstrated that it understands the value of openness, even if it's not yet prepared to embrace open standards for the Kindle, by providing an iPhone application that enables users to read their Kindle content on Apple's iPhone, as CNET reports.

This is a shrewd move. It's unlikely that many will want to trade the Kindle reading experience for the iPhone's, … Read more

Hoping to gain traction on a device with a much larger installed base than that of its own eBook hardware, Amazon has offered up a free application for the iPhone bearing the Kindle name. The new program instantly becomes the iPhone book reader with the broadest title selection--the entire selection of books available for reading on Amazon Kindle can also be read on Kindle for iPhone.

Amazon, in a bid to keep its own hardware relevant, allows books purchased with the iPhone Kindle app to be transferred to the proprietary Kindle and Kindle 2 devices. Current owners of either Kindle … Read more

Updated 5:25 a.m. PST Wednesday to note the official release of the Kindle application.

Amazon on Wednesday unveiled a free application that will allow the same electronic books available on the e-tailer's Kindle to be read on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch.

The program will be available for download for Apple's App Store and give users access to the more than 240,000 e-books that Kindle users can buy on Amazon. The program's Whisper Sync service promises to keep track of a reader's place in their chosen book, allowing users to pick up … Read more

Kindle users know they can e-mail documents as attachments to their Kindle account and Amazon will convert and upload them to the e-book reader for a 10-cent fee. Windows users aren't tied to the e-mail option, though, thanks to the Auto Kindle eBook Converter.

Compatible with PDF, HTML, LIT, PDB, and CHM files, the program opens to a Windows file browser. Choose the file you want to convert, hit Open, and then choose your destination folder. The converter goes to work, generally converting files quickly--although this depends on the length of your document.

When it's done, connect your … Read more

Lacking a fancy name and a fancy interface, and still in beta, Auto Kindle eBook Converter nevertheless quickly converts some of the most-used desktop formats to a Kindle-friendly MOBI for free.

Compatible with PDF, HTML, LIT, PDB, and CHM files, the program opens to a Windows file browser. Choose the file you want to convert, hit Open, and then choose your destination folder. The converter goes to work, generally converting files quickly--although this depends on the length of your document. When it's done, connect your Kindle to your computer and move the file into the Documents folder. Safely disconnect … Read more

The Kindle 2 could generate revenue of $305 million and gross profit of up to $70 million for Amazon this year, according to estimates made by investment bank Collins Stewart.

The estimates are just the latest heady Wall Street predictions for the Kindle 2, Amazon's digital book reader. Last month, a Citigroup analyst published a report that predicted the Kindle 2 would generate $1.2 billion in revenue by 2010.

Amazon hasn't broken out financial numbers for the Kindle 2, which made its debut last month.

Collins Stewart estimates that the device will see sales of $1.6 … Read more

When avid reader Oprah Winfrey raved about the digital reading device called Kindle, it shot to the top of the holiday must-have list.

As an updated device from Amazon.com, called Kindle 2, hit the market Tuesday, CNET TV Senior Editor Natali del Conte visited the "CBS Early Show" to give viewers a look at the new e-book reader and compare it to the latest versions of similar devices.

The Kindle "has lived up to the hype," del Conte says. "It's one of those things you don't absolutely need, but once you get it, you can't live without it."

Among Kindle 2's improvements over the first one:

• It's thinner. • The original held 150 books; the new one holds 10 times as many. • 3G downloading means you'll get books downloaded on the fastest mobile network available in the United States; download a book in fewer than 2 minutes. • It has text-to-speech reading of books. • It plays MP3 music files.

The Kindle 2 is still pretty pricey, at $359. But del Conte says it's worth the bucks "if you're an avid reader. If you average it out, you're going to be saving money on books, because buying the books online is less expensive (than doing so conventionally), and you purchase the device only once. There are a lot of ways to read books online, if money is an issue."… Read more