Monday, August 23, 2010
Kindle v/ iBooks
This wouldn’t surprise me in the least:
Despite Steve Jobs’ recent claim that the iBookstore has taken 22 percent of the US e-book market, some authors still report significantly higher sales volume on the Kindle. Author J. A. Konrath has published more than three dozen books on both platforms, with Kindle sales averaging 200 e-books every day. On the iBookstore, however, sales have only reached approximately 100 each month.
First, understand that this encompasses not only theWhile I really enjoy the iBook in-app purchase process, I like the interface better, and I like the store. That said, Amazon’s Kindle--the application--has a lot of advantages. First and foremost: the Kindle app runs on multiple platforms--its reach is far greater than iBooks. It also had a good head start in the war for peoples’ ebook dollars along with some nifty features. The Kindle also has a far better selection.
Apple’s iBooks might or might not catch up in the sales department and, honestly, I don’t really care. As long as competition gives me better prices and wider selection along, I’ll be a happy boy.
Unfortunately, neither of them has many of the books that I look for and I continue to spend most of my book dollars at Barnes and Noble and Borders. Similarly, I would happily push nearly all of my magazine purchases to the iPad if the magazines I want were available, but the grand majority of the publications I read simply aren’t available.
I am becoming convinced that the biggest thing standing in the way of wider adoption electronic publications is this: availability. I am a heavy reader with a monthly habit of between $150 and $250 spent on magazines and books and I would prefer to move that to electronic delivery if I could. I wonder when the publishers will catch up with me?
Comments & Trackbacks
One of the reasons I chose the Kindle DX is its native support for PDF files. Many of the ebooks I buy are PDFs from third party sources and I download a ton of free PDFs, too. Unfortunately the Kindle apps for my Droid and iPod Touch don’t support PDFs, only Amazon.com purchases. FWIW
I’m pretty sure that iBooks can be loaded onto your Touch. It supports pdfs. Stanza does, too, and it has a nice interface for downloading those free pdfs in-app.
If you download pdfs outside of iBooks, you have to use iTunes to synch them up, though--which is awkward. Here are some instructions:
http://www.ipadinsider.com/how-to-open-syn-pdf-files-on-ibooks-for-ipad/
I haven’t used iBooks on anything other than the iPad, so I’m not sure how well it works in the smaller form. I have used Stanza, though, and I think that’s a pretty good product.
For PDFs (and Word docs and lots of other formats) I use the Goodreader app on iPad. Works pretty well and helps me keep files organized a bit.
I’m a fan of Goodreader--I use it on the iPad, too. I don’t quite view it in the same way as a dedicated e-reading application like Kindle, though.
And while we’re at it, Dropbox is, to me, an essential tool for getting the most out of the iPad.
I’m also testing DocsToGo and Office2HD--both of which have some very nice features. I was disappointed in Pages, though, and think that it needs a significant amount of work before it is entirely useful. I’m evaluating them for our office--we’re considering buying iPads for our sales staff for use in their presentations. While I actually cautioned against it--I still think the iPad has some significant shortcomings for a general office use--I have to admit that I am looking forward to rolling it out to the sales guys. One of my biggest struggles is getting them all to use consistent material.
With the iPad and Dropbox, I will be able to push updates stuff to them pretty easily and I can expect them to be using the most up-to-date stuff. The drawback with that on a laptop is that there is a tendency to move, update, or delete those files no matter how often I explain that what you do to one is done to all of the people sharing the Dropbox. With the iPad, you have to go out of your way to muck things up.
Oh, and another app that I’m really liking is Taska (not to mention Adobe Ideas, iMockups, and Evernote).
http://www.ubersoft.net/comic/hd/2010/07/and-i-feel-fine
http://www.ubersoft.net/comic/hd/2010/08/we-now-return-our-story-already-progress
Hater.
Hey, Robin, how the heck are you?
Hater? There is a global catastrophy in the offing and you call me a hater? That extradimensional prison existed for a reason, ya know.
How are we doing? Well, you know that parasites suffer when their hosts run low on blood ...
Eight stages to the incursion of Steve Jobs’ ego ...
http://www.videos.onion.com/video/new-apple-friend-bar-gives-customers-someone-to-ta,17693/