TechTattle

ebooks - it's déjà vu all over again!

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 12:26:00 +0530

I recently came across an article in the New York Times about the wait times people have to experience to borrow ebooks from public libraries. At first I was astonished. Anyone reading this after 10 yrs would certainly laugh at the crazy thought of wait-listing ebooks!! As per the article, “many publishers have put restrictions on the availability of their digital books in public libraries or refuse to sell them at all. The result is that there are long waiting lists for digital versions of some of the more popular recent books that are available.” It is equivalent to the US Postal Service asking Gmail to ensure that the email is deliberately delayed to not affect USPS’ business. Isn’t that crazy?

If you scratch beneath the surface, you discover the messy state of affairs of the book publishing industry. Stagnating sales of pint books and lower income generated by ebooks (they are priced lower) has led to lower advances and debuts for authors. As per the Wall Street Journal, for instance, “independent publishers offer on an average around $1,000 to $5,000 for advances, a fraction of the $50,000 to $100,000 that established publishers paid in the past for debut literary fiction.” Moreover, from ebook sales, authors make only half of what they make from hardcover as you can see from the graphic below. (Source: Wall Street Journal)

Another major problem has been ebook pricing. Earlier, Amazon operated on the wholesale model wherein they would buy the books at wholesale price (which is typically 50% of the print book’s retail price) and sell the ebooks at $9.99. It sometimes cost them a few dollars per book but it was a ploy to sell more Amazon Kindles. When Apple brought out its iPad, it signed up several publishers to operate on the app store (“agency”) model. Publishers could set the price of the ebooks and Apple would take a 30% cut. Amazon too made the agency model an option. And now publishers price a book at around $12.99 to $16.99. This did cause an uproar with the regular book readers who had gotten used to the $9.99 price tag. To make matters worse, the Justice Department filed a civil antitrust action against major book publishers and Apple, accusing the companies of colluding to raise the prices of e-books. I guess businesses have still not learnt how to deal with digital disruption, be it the music industry, newspapers and now book publishing. Like they say: “it’s déjà vu, all over again”.

There’s no point dwelling in the past or worrying over the current. Let us look at the future. Currently ebooks constitute only 20% of the total copies sold but are growing at a rapid pace. Already, Amazon is selling more Kindle books than paperback books. Most of the titles in Top 50 (or Top 100) have higher ebook unit sales than print books. It is estimated that by 2015, ebooks will outsell print books. Even though, ebooks constitute 20% of total unit sales, they only make up for 8% to 10% of the total revenue. This means the pie is getting smaller and profits too. While lower advances for authors is here to stay for a while, if ebooks can increase the total volume of books by encouraging more reading, it can solve a part of the problem. The current tablet penetration is around 10% and smartphone penetration is over 30%. Imagine the market when tablet penetration is 50%. It looks promising but ebooks will have to compete with games and other forms of entertainment on tablets and smart phones to really change the game. Meanwhile, publishers trying to cross the bridge to ebooks will have to deal with disappointing numbers until there see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Productivity tools to get stuff done

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:17:00 +0530

We get a tons of stuff done via the Internet every day - right from planning a holiday to pursuing our hobbies and interests. Most of us use a disorganized approach towards getting stuff done. Even at work, we sift through so much information each day that it’s hard to keep track of it all. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. There are plenty of tools available that save your time and make you more efficient - without costing you any money.

Here’s a look at some of the best tools available and some alternatives as well. With a smartphone in every pocket, these tools have their sidekick phone apps that make them even more worthwhile. While most of the tools work right off the web, their offline (desktop) applications add great value too.

Most of these tools work best with Chrome or Firefox and some might not work best with Internet Explorer. The reason is that the real power of these tools is via their Bookmarklets and Extensions. These are small programs or scripts which attach themselves to your browser. Bookmarklets are bookmark-like buttons on the browser’s bookmark toolbar. To install, you just need to drag and drop them to the browser’s bookmark toolbar (You may need to set the browser’s bookmark toolbar to visible in order to use it). Extensions are programs that you need to install from within your browser. Some new buttons appear on your browser to get the job done. You’ll see how it all works in greater detail. Alright lets get started!

1. Easy Reading with Pocket
Everyday we come across links to articles, videos or news items. Even if you find them interesting you just don’t have the time to go through them all. And there are times you are commuting in the train or waiting for someone and you get bored . Pocket (formerly Read It Later) lets you view these links at a later point in time on your PC, tablet or mobile. Once you register yourself on their website, you need to install the browser extension. The next time you come across an interesting article that you’d like to read later, just click the Read Later button on the browser. You can access and manage all of your saved links from the browser itself. Another advantage is that you can view them in “text-only” format without the annoying banner ads and weird fonts. You can install the mobile and tablet apps to view articles across devices. You can even view them offline. Alternatives to Pocket are Instapaper, Readability and Evernote.

2. Keeping Notes with Evernote
Evernote allows you clip sections of web pages, maintain notes and to-dos so that you can manage your everyday life better. It stores it on the cloud so that you can access it via your mobile or tablet. Moreover, it can search through those notes so that you can find them easily. You can use it to take classroom notes or just take web clippings of articles or screenshot of transaction confirmations etc. There are many other mini-apps too from Evernote like Clearly (browser extension) that allows you to view a web page’s text-only version for easy reading. Alternative to Evernote is Microsoft OneNote that comes bundled with Microsoft Office. It may not have all the browser extensions but it gets the job done. Microsoft OneNote + SkyDrive is a formidable combination.

3. Cloud storage with SkyDrive and Dropbox
As we spend more and more time on our PCs, laptops, tablets and mobile phones, a big part of our lives in the form of pictures, investment work sheets, important documents etc is stored across these devices and is liable to loss. With cloud storage you can move these things over to the cloud and access it from any device now or the ones you will buy in future. It makes sharing, maintaining and finding them easy. There are a lot of options for cloud storage but I find the SkyDrive and Dropbox the best.

With SkyDrive you can create and store Microsoft Office documents on the web. Even if you don’t have Microsoft Office installed you can create and share Office files easily. You can organize them in folders like on a PC or laptop. Once you install the SkyDrive app on your laptop or PC, you can even sync all the files so that if you change or add new files it will automatically get updated on SkyDrive in the cloud and vice-versa.

If you are more comfortable with creating Google Docs, you may opt for Google Drive. If you are working with people across platforms, Dropbox is a great way to collaborate and share files and folders.

4. Sharing interests with Pinterest
As social networks mature, niche networks will attract a lot of existing users so that they can have a more meaningful conversations about their interests. Pinterest is one such network where you can pin pictures, articles, tips (basically any link with an image) on to boards that you have created. These boards can be a special interest category like infographics or web design or food. A majority of users of Pinterest are women so if you are into fashion and latest trends, it’s the place to be. Otherwise too, if you want to curate content for your hobbies and interact with people with similar interests, Pinterest is a cool place to do that.

5. Managing tasks with Wunderlist and Trello
Not a single day goes by when I don’t make a To-Do list. If you’re like me then you certainly need to manage tasks. Here’s where Wunderlist comes in to make it easier for you. Tasks can be managed with categories and priorities. Wunderlist keeps it all very simple and elegant. It has applications for all major platforms and devices so the lists are synced - whether you are using it on your mobile phone or a laptop.

Trello is a different ballgame. It is more a team task manager. Trello is also very simple and elegant. It uses a list of boards where you can pin tasks and track progress. These boards can be used as different stages of a workflow. Trello is based on the kanban way to manage tasks - using kanban boards. Check out their video you’ll understand how it works.

Alright that’s a good list to get you to maximize your day. Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Happy productivity!

Not taking any risk is the biggest risk of all - Mark...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:58:00 +0530

Not taking any risk is the biggest risk of all - Mark Zuckerberg