There are two money shots in Brad Stone’s report on a new Kindle coming this week with a larger screen designed specifically for reading newspapers and magazines. Here they are:
But it is Amazon, maker of the Kindle, that appears to be first in line to try throwing an electronic life preserver to old-media companies. As early as this week, according to people briefed on the online retailer’s plans, Amazon will introduce a larger version of its Kindle wireless device tailored for displaying newspapers, magazines and perhaps textbooks.
An Amazon spokesman would not comment, but some news organizations, including The New York Times, are expected to be involved in the introduction of the device, according to people briefed on the plans. A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine J. Mathis, said she could not comment on the company’s relationship with Amazon.
First, we already knew that a larger Kindle was coming, so this news simply buttresses our original information with a modicum of fact. Then Stone notes that he talked to his own employer – the NYT – and they didn’t comment. As Joel at BBG writes, “HINT HINT!”
So we know it’s coming, but what does it mean? Using the Kindle for newspaper and magazine reading is an exciting proposition. Circulation numbers are down and the most expensive fixed cost of making a magazine is pretty much all the paper you have to buy. Writers come and go, but you still have to run the presses daily. Cut that out and you have a fascinating industry.
However, will people pay for the Kindle version of the NYT? In my limited experience with Kindle distribution – I know that CG and TC are available on the Kindle, for example – it seems that smaller publishers won’t find a savior here. However, the NYT and magazines like Wired and the New Yorker, stalwarts aimed at techies and people who read, if not both at once, will win.
This is a brave new world, friends, that has such ebooks in’t. We’re coming up to a revolution – all they need to do is convince a quorum of dead tree readers to switch.
Horrible timing to release this product. Why would they release a device whose target audience is students, only days before they are off for summer vacation.
Great product idea, but why launch now?
No, it is not just about students anymore. When you are focusing on newspapers, you are hunting down the Techies and the people who read also (as the article says already). So, Amazon may have thought this is not that bad a time to release larger version of Kindle.
Textbook industry isn’t going to give up its hold easily. If a book is chosen for a course you’re in, that’s what you have to use, generally there isn’t much room in there to go with anything else. You can go to the library and use one there or get an older edition and try to figure out proper usage.
As for the timing of it, it’s going to take time to get them produced, convince people to use it, etc. I don’t think the timing matters as much as the execution on this, because if it happens any time in the next few years, that’ll be great.
I haven’t really seen a downside to using it for textbooks for either the student or the publisher. The publisher has a major cost involved with the hardcover books and the 700 large size paper those books command. They could easily slice the production cost out of the book and sell it in an e-format.
The only downside I DID find is an upside for the publication companies, and that is the ability to sell back the book and buy it used. Schools, and production companies, both lose a lot of money when students use the internet to sell their books back at little loss. I believe each quarter I only lose about $20-30 from the book when I buy and sell using half.com.
Now with an kindle version of the book you couldn’t do that so there would be increased sales for the publication company.. now I don’t see where they lose at all.
Can you re-sell a Kindle textbook? Probably half of students buy textbooks on the expected net price (purchase price, less what they can sell the book back for at the end of the year), not just the list price.
Would you share your Kindle if someone needed to borrow a textbook? Not if it had ALL your textbooks on it.
The best argument for the Kindle as textook reader is the overloaded fellow on this page.
While the Kindle will clearly allow the Newspapers to monetize their content, the driver of consumer adoption is STUDENTS. If you want to bring a product to market, you have to focus on the early adopters. Who better to popularize something than collage students? Sure there’s an industry who is desperately awaiting a lifeline, but when it comes down to it, they are not the consumer.
As one other commenter noted, textbook manufacturers should love this device. They are a very vulnerable industry and they’re running out of time.
Its a terrific idea and the best time to launch this brother… the publishers who fail to accept the on-coming change in print industry will be wiped out. Just like it happened to Cassettes when CDs came in…
We done a study on prototype using e-paper for such a book already about two years back and found tonnes of reasons for such a product to be successful. Visit http://e-ink.com if you don’t believe me….
~ Marvin
http://yousuggest.us
Why launch now? Because Hearst Corporation is building one.
The shortest response is the one with the most compelling answer. I think Amazon knows that Apple or another dominant player is right on their heals.
Hearst is a paper company, but they very likely could be partnering with a company with the know-how.
NYT is definitely going to bet on this. The question is if this larger kindle is an instant hit and if people like it, what will be the fate of newspapers (offline)? Will the newspaper distribution industry suffer a dreary death? Again, what is the proposed price of this larger Kindle? That would also be a major deciding factor.
Now this is something I really look forward to (besides CrunchPad of course :)), a big screen kindle to read my newspapers and to save the forests :)
Amazon is really going places. If this Kindle becomes a hit, it will be another great achievement for the company. Only thing is the product has Apple leanings (in look and feel).
Will standard sized Kindle content also be available on this version as well, or will it be a complement to the Kindle 2?
Will this save the newspapers? gee lett me think, no! newspaper readership is in the tank because of content.
I can’t help thinking it’ll be priced too high for most students and aimed instead at executives and their employers who are willing to pay over the odds for ease of access. It’ll be interesting to see whether the NYT and others will offer subscription bundles. And from a personal point of view I wonder when any Kindles will go on sale in Europe as that’s where I live.
Nick Clayton, I would argue that, if all textbooks are made available as Kindle content, then even a “full priced” Kindle would be quite reasonably priced for students.
As of now, students often pay over $150 per book for textbooks. If publishers make textbooks available for $40, that will pay for the Kindle in the first semester.
Publishers would actually have significant incentive to make this model work, since DRM precludes the students from reselling their books (and a significantly lower price removes much of the need to “recoup your loss” on the textbook, setting aside, for the moment, that knowledge isn’t a “loss.”)
In addition, for publishers, they will not have to come out with new editions every 2 years, since much of that is driven by the need to generate artificial demand for books to compete against the used book market.
Students I have talked to would welcome the opportunity for significantly lower prices, and a much lighter back-pack load. The ability to highlight and take notes in the Kindle (and save it as a text file) removes other objections and enhances their ability to directly include quotes in papers they write.
As a technology-loving professor I have given this much thought and had many discussion, and I would love to see the publishers embrace this new model.
Steve I wish you were right and publishers would adopt a lower pricing model. Unfortunately I’d be amazed if they did.
Okay, I know that removing the costs of distribution, production and retail from the cost of a $150 textbook would probably give the publisher the same income from the product. Unfortunately it’s been shown time and time again that DRM doesn’t work even with content which is far more complex than text.
At least with a printed book I can see whether it’s a copy or the genuine article (except if it’s a pirated best seller, but that’s another argument). It’s certainly less likely that a student will go to the trouble of scanning every page of a physical book than using a piece of software to remove the DRM from a friend’s e-book.
If publishers do start releasing text books in Kindle format I’m sure they’ll use that piracy risk as one justification for charging a premium. The reality, though, is that they’ll set the price as high as they think the market will bear knowing that students have little option but to buy the set text. Equally, if they lower the price to reflect changing methods of production it’s unlikely many more copies of a text book will be sold.
I haven’t noticed Amazon’s e-book versions of novels being much cheaper then paperbacks. And I’m sure far more readers would choose a bargain John Grisham over a full-price Dan Brown than would switch between, say, an astrophysics textbook and a guide to linguistics.
Great post, but I disagree on one point. You wrote, “…it seems that smaller publishers won’t find a savior here.” I think just the opposite. It could possibly be THE savior. These devices will come down in price and they could become as ubiquitous an appliance in the home as answering machines once were or a DVD player is today. A small press can upload their content and Amazon can pass along the daily/weekly paper or monthly magazine for a smaller cut of multitudes more content providers. (Profit from volume.) The possibilities are endless.
I found it interesting how Bill Gates poured on the praise for Jeff Bezos recently saying he may prove to be the individual from the tech world whose name is remembered hundreds of years from now. Gates thought the Kindle, and what was to come, might very well be on par with the change brought about by Johannes Gutenberg. Heady times for Bezos and Amazon.
As with mobile phone hardware, maybe the newspapers could sell subscriptions/contracts, which would give more access to the folk who could not buy it.
Bonus would be of course targeted mareting to each pad, per profile of individual, but hey nothing for nothing in this world we live in .
Julius Sowu virtually-Linked London
This is ridiculous. No one is going to carry around the mobile equivalent of a whiteboard. Mobile = small. This includes other coming readers that newspapers will be pushing. The only thing that works is a 6×9 netbookish device that also unfolds to a 9×12 tablet, preferably no more than a pound. Virtually no one is going to carry more than that. What about plastic e-paper? Rolled up is no better, are we going back to scrolls? All the fault of newspapers. At no point during the last 5 years did the Providence Journal query me, their former subscriber, what content did I find valuable in their paper, and offer to send a 10 or so page PDF to my email box daily for the same price as the subscription. Now they have a poll to divine how they should proceed in the digital age, and the questions are so inflexible (with no essay) that it is impossible to communicate the off-the-beaten path interesting things they do and the problems they have. For a high IQ activity with smart employees and perhaps management, newspapers seem to actually have the brains of dinosaurs and I say be done with the lot of them. Or at least most of them.
Not completely true, Yacko. There are many newspapers which ask you what you like about them – which column or article interests you and so on and so forth. Probably your Providence Journal is one of those ancient type of newspaper which gives what it wants to give instead of asking its readers what it wants.
If the display is so large the device is not pocket sized, then it must include more functions, replacing something else one must carry nowadays. A tablet computer on which a variety of “newspapers” and periodicals could run as apps would fit the bill. Still, that alone would not solve the problem that audience fragmentation tends to undermine the viability of general circulation newspapers and broadcast media. Nor does Old Media seem to fully grasp the two-way and social nature of new media.
The young professionals won’t buy it, because one they no longer need college textbooks and two the read everything else online or get all their news updates from their mobile device. Good luck teaching the elderly to use it. And to you really think blue collar Joe give a crap about reading a magazine on a fancy digital notebook? I don’t think so. So, basically you’re limiting your audience to the few college kids that can afford it and middle aged housewives that have nothing better to do than read a book on a tablet.
It might make some money, but it certainly won’t replace the newspapers declining revenue. Fail!
I’ve spoken to 10 adults (age 39-51) this morning and showed them a picture of the larger kindle. I know it is not a large panel, but all of them said they would love such a device as an alternative to the newspaper, several commented about the “green” nature of such device, saves paper, recycling, etc. They liked it larger for newspaper reading over the small book format which I showed them. They even suggested they wanted to have the option of buying on a day by day basis like buying at a newspaper stand. Interesting group reaction to this potential for an older demographic.
My 2 cents: An e-reader for newspapers will not be able to become successful until you can do the crossword puzzle, by hand, on them too…
My mother has been doing the crossword puzzle in the NY Times every day for 15 years (she has even met Will Shortz on a number of occasions), and would never stop buying the hard copy of the Times unless she could do her puzzle on an e-reader, too.
Dont forget the fish and chips requirement. Fish and chips are traditionally served inside a newspaper. So we should be able to serve fish and chips on top of this device.
Otherwise the fish and chip vendors will not buy this.
LOL :) Nice one.
This is a really unusual time to launch this product. Lots of students are leaving college soon, also many student have little requirment (or budget) for heavy text, especially as they do most of their research online or with their mobiles. Sir Alan wouldn’t go for this one. Rgds Vince
SP* Failed… what is a “Newsapers”
I hope that Kindle is easily linkable (cable, bluetooth, or wifi) to a computer, to make it easy to cut and paste from sources to quote in papers!! Also, I should know this, but is it easy to take notes w/ a “pen” on the page w/ kindle?
Good point. I hope developers of the planned new devices read your post. Also, for purposes of citing quotes, e-readers should retain, somehow, the pagination scheme of the printed item. Currently, not all e-readers do.
The Kindle 2 is not a touch screen. Putting a touch screen on a front lit display is actually a very difficult technical issue. The touch screen flim blocks some light, and since the display is front lit, it blocks some going in, and some coming out. The only company currently making a “touchscreen” e-reader is http://www.irextechnologies.com. I put touchscreen in quotes because it’s a Wacom tablet stylus system. It’s more expensive, but avoids the film issue. It is great for taking notes on the reader though.
does it do anal?
Thanks!
yes it does!
cool !
Thanks!
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Where was this 2 years ago when I was starting my MBA. I had to lug 6 extra pounds on my back for 2 years back and forth on a plane to Chicago from TX. I had hoped that Plastic Logic would save me given that my notes were already being published in PDF but the text books were the heaviest items.
Why is Barry Soetoro aka/Barack Obama not put in jail for the biggest scam in the history of the United States? His position that he is a natural born citizen is absolutely indefensible. Just the fact his “Certification of Live BIrth” was forged, even if it is a facsimile, is a crime. What is becoming of our country? More than 50% of the people in the U.S. don’t pay taxes. This country is turning into shit. Shit and corruption.
The more interesting text book problem arrises from the Kindle’s tie to the individual owner, not the institution. Many, even most maybe, undergraduate students pay for textbooks on financial aid and scholarships which are disbursed through the institutions including pre-payed accounts at the bookstores; not alway in cash. I’m assuming the participating colleges are looking at this. Otherwise, this is only good for grad school, the smallest part of the textbook realm