The Barnes & Noble NOOKcolor, that’s how. The new e-reader from the book seller does away with the black and white e-ink display of the original NOOK, instead giving it a 7-inch IPS touchscreen with a resolution of 1024×600. It also supposedly works indoors and out, and has 8GB of built-in memory, with expansion of up to 32GB possible via microSD. It plays MP4 video, MP3 and AAC audio, and has a speaker (mono) and a 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack.

At $249, it’s not really so much an expensive e-reader as it is a cheap tablet. Sure, there’s no app marketplace yet, but it does boast NOOK extras, which include games and Pandora internet radio, and there’s always the possibility of an app store down the road if the device becomes popular. It is, after all, Android-based.

The device has tremendous potential in terms of being able to compete with other Android tablets coming to market, even without apps. The big reason being that it’s less than half the price, and there’s no contract you need to sign. There’s also a large category of buyers for whom apps might not be a priority, especially if the built-in browser works well.

But can the NOOKcolor play in the same arena as the iPad? I think it can, especially with the type of consumer for whom many think the iPad is perfect. Casual users who just want a device that lets them carry their media with them and access the web without worrying too much about using and managing apps won’t hesitate to take advantage of the steep price advantage the NOOKcolor has over the iPad.

Now, I’m not saying this Barnes & Noble e-reader will unseat the iPad from its place of tablet dominance. But I do think it’ll cut into its potential market share significantly, especially among older buyers, where the iPad is popular. I’m already considering getting one of these for my mother, because all she wants in a portable computer is the ability to look at photos, watch movies, listen to music and visit a news site or two once in a while.

The casual user is the ideal candidate for iPad ownership. Kudos to Barnes & Noble for identifying what it is that a user like that wants out of a tablet-type device, excising anything else, and keeping the price incredibly low. If apps really do come to this thing, as Barnes & Noble is promising, Apple will really have to sit up and take note.

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The Beginning of the Digital Revolution

When Apple launched the iTunes Store in 2003, Steve Jobs made the case for why digital downloads would be the future. At the time, it was fairly easy to illegally download music through services like Napster or Kazaa. However, Jobs felt that people would pay a price, very reasonably set at 99 cents, to download music that was great quality and featured intact metadata and gorgeous album artwork. But does the same argument extend to digital books? The current offerings on the iBookstore seem to disagree.

Limitations of the ePub Format

There’s a few considerations to keep in mind, such as selection and format. When the iTunes Store first launched, its catalog only contained 200,000 titles. Seven years later, the catalog features over 11 million titles. While Apple hasn’t released a specific number, its website says the iBookstore features tens of thousands of titles with more arriving daily. Still for most, the selection feels a bit limited. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to replace your entire library with e-books soon.

Another consideration is formatting. A lot of digital content like books and documents are in PDF format. This is great as this format can maintain the exact structure, graphics, typeface and colors from the original source material. However, there are some trade offs. For example, zooming on a PDF document, especially on an iPad, will require you to scroll up and down, or even worse left and right, just to view everything on one page. This doesn’t make for a natural reading experience.

Content on the iBookstore is delivered in ePub format, which is essentially an XML-based web page. By using a standards-compliant format (and we all know how Apple loves open standards), the ePub format supports benefits like being able to resize text or switch typefaces. This works because the iBooks app can simply modify the stylesheet applied to the document. When you make these changes, it’s easy for the iPad to reflow the content onto additional pages if needed. But sometimes this can get a bit wonky (yes, that’s a technical term).

First, custom typefaces are not supported in iBooks. While Safari on the iPad itself will support font embedding, iBooks misses out on this feature.

Another issue is images which are displayed in-line with the text content. What this means is in an original book, you might have a few photos out to the side of a paragraph but on the iPad, they’ll just be displayed one right after the other, mixed in with the narrative. For some types of content, this may be a non-issue, but for others where the page structure is essential to the reading experience, this can be problematic.

Both of these are the top reasons why you don’t see periodicals available through the iBookstore. Imagine the implications this causes for technical books or textbooks. Isn’t the education market supposed to be a big market for this device?

Some Potential Solutions

There are some potential solutions to this. Publishers could simply display some pages as single images, as this would maintain formatting, but accessibility features and the ability to bookmark and change text sizes would be lost.

Another solution would be that authors could release specific apps for these titles. Some have followed this route, but managing more than a handful of these apps really begins to clutter up the device and suddenly, the simplicity of the iBooks app for managing your content is gone.

Since ePub is an open e-book standard, there is hope that future versions will be able to address these issues. Likewise, the iBooks app itself can also be updated to add additional functionality, however, once you’ve bought a book, you own it. Unlike how Apple offered users to upgrade to iTunes Plus to get higher bit-rate versions of their songs, its unlikely that Apple will go back and update older titles or offer “plus” versions of some of these books.

Instead, Apple is being more selective about which titles are showing up on the iBookstore. Obviously, there are no periodicals. You could argue that the iBookstore is intended for books only, but I really think that’s just the beginning, similar to how the iTunes Store began with music videos before adding TV shows and then movies. But could Apple release a different app to manage periodicals and newspapers? Perhaps and so there is yet another solution.

Regardless, the feasibility of converting your entire book collection to e-books is unlikely in the short-term, either because of a lack of content or simply because e-books are not worthy replacements of the books on your shelves. The ePub format itself still has a number of issues to address before printed books become a proverbial page from the past.

Have you used the iBooks app or the iBookstore? What are your thoughts on the ePub format? Is it sufficient enough to replace your library? Share your thoughts in the comments and tell us what you think.

So its clear that while Amazon wants to capitalize on the iPad’s hype and pre-release popularity, it also doesn’t want to go as far as helping Apple convey the impression that it’s the only tablet game in town. To me, the “Including the iPad” sounds like a begrudging admission of the “I was wrong and you were right” variety.

Of course, it might just be that Amazon would like to appeal to the widest group of potential customers possible, while at the same time acknowledging that Apple is likely to win the brand recognition fight in that particular category. Whatever the marketing logic, the actual software Amazon is previewing looks to be pretty fantastic, especially for those (like me) who are already hardware Kindle owners.

First, the Kindle tablet app will offer Whispersync services, which means you can pick up where you last left off reading, no matter which device you happened to be using. I can’t count how many times I’ve used this between my Kindle 2 and my iPhone, so I can’t imagine it being any less useful with my iPad when it finally graces these Canadian shores.

The app will also synch your notes and highlights and bookmarks across all compatible devices, including the recently released Kindle for Mac software, which can read notes and bookmarks, but not make new ones of its own as of yet.

Visually, the Kindle app looks like what you’d expect. Page turn animations are included, or you can turn them off if you’re not so crazy about mimicking a paper reading experience on your digital devices, which I most definitely am not. You can also change font size and color, and background color in order to make the reading experience more comfortable.

Kindle for tablets also supports full color images and graphics, which is great news not only for fans of comics and graphic novels, which haven’t really been a great option on the Kindle thus far, but also for textbooks, recipe books, and some more adventurous fiction that uses in text images and font color changes as narrative devices.

Finally, you’ll be able to shop in the Kindle store via a built-in web view, so you can indulge all those buying impulses on the fly instead of having to wait till you have access to a full computer. All-in-all, it sounds like it’ll give my Kindle 2 a run for its money, even with potentially eye-straining backlighting.

Amazon was not one of the select few companies that got access to pre-launch hardware with regards to iPad development. Neither was Barnes & Noble. That honor was reserved for others, like Major League Baseball, the New York Time and the Wall Street Journal. None of which, you’ll note, directly compete for dollars with anything Apple will be offering on the platform.

Since Amazon and Barnes & Noble won’t be able to test their e-reader apps on actual iPads prior to its launch, neither will be offering the software for download on launch day. Sure, they could use the virtual iPad development tool now included with the iPad SDK, but a smooth virtual experience doesn’t necessarily guarantee the effectiveness of the real thing. Accordingly, the booksellers will wait until they can check final versions on iPads, which will only happen after the street date, before submitting iPad-specific apps to Apple.

This will give Apple a valuable head-start when it comes to selling books on the iPad. There’s almost no question that its own iBookstore will be ready for the launch, though it will only be available as a download, and not pre-loaded on devices. The B&N and Amazon iPhone apps will be available, of course, and compatible with the iPad, but they probably won’t be that appealing running in the iPad software’s shoehorned compatibility modes.

Apple needs the time it will gain as the sole iPad-specific bookseller thanks to this shrewd move. The e-book market is one of the few where it will actually be playing catch-up. Amazon in particular will have a built-in user base at launch, as owners of its Kindle devices and those who’ve already built up a library on the iPhone and computer versions of its software could well be reluctant to start again with another seller, in the same way that Canon DSLR owners generally won’t switch to Nikon camera bodies since they lose the use of all their lenses.

My guess is that since Apple is launching iBooks in the U.S. only so far, its main concern isn’t really a customer-grab from Amazon and others already in the business. I’d say Cupertino is more interested in the extremely large potential marketshare that remains in the form of people who haven’t yet gotten on the e-book bandwagon. Just like with gaming, Apple will be looking to convert casuals who adopt its platform for other reasons, and I’d be surprised if we didn’t see them become an industry leading force overnight all over again in this new arena.

This is what’s called the new “agency model” of pricing, which allows the company serving the content to take a cut. Apple’s own system calls for a 30 percent take of the revenue on all apps (and now books) sold through its online store. Amazon recently introduced a similar pricing structure for certain books and apps. It looks like major publishers are unwilling to absorb the cost of the seller’s cut, preferring instead to pass it along to consumers.

Hachette CEO David Young, however, in a letter sent out detailing the new pricing plans, claims that book publishers will not make more money using the agency model, claiming the opposite, in fact:

[W]e make less on each e-book sale under the new model; the author will continue to be fairly compensated and our e-book agents will make money on every digital sale. We’re willing to accept lower return for e-book sales as we control the value of our product–books, and content in general. We’re taking the long view on e-book pricing, and this new model helps protect the long term viability of the book marketplace.

Call me skeptical, but I can’t help but feel that these publishers are acting more out of self-interest than anything else. It may be true that they actually make less on every book sold using the agency model for electronic distribution, but it’s probably also true that the books cost much less for them to create than print versions, too. I’d be willing to bet that they end up profiting more on a per copy sold basis in the end. Hachette makes other claims in his letter about how the deal is actually beneficial to consumers, despite the upfront price hike:

There are many advantages to the agency model, for our authors, retailers, consumers, and publishers. It allows Hachette to make pricing decisions that are rational and reflect the value of our authors’ works. In the long run this will enable Hachette to continue to invest in and nurture authors’ careers–from major blockbusters to new voices. Without this investment in our authors, the diversity of books available to consumers will contract, as will the diversity of retailers, and our literary culture will suffer.

It’s good spin, but it’s spin nonetheless. The bottom line, no matter how Hachette, Macmillan, or HarperCollins try to spin it, is that rather than introducing competition that will result in lower prices for book-buying customers, Apple’s iPad has in fact spelled the end of the $9.99 bestseller, for both Kindle and iPad users. Apple had to offer publishers an incentive to come over to its side, but the cost of that bargain is unfortunately one we as the buying public will be paying for.

At least in the short term. A longer view reveals a different picture. Apple needed to gain access to the ebook market, and so was willing to make concessions regarding price. Publishers jumped at the chance to get out from under the tyranny of what amounted to Amazon’s ability to set prices unilaterally. But is it a case of “out of the frying pay, into the fire?”

If Apple’s power play succeeds, Amazon could conceivably be forced to close up shop (though I still don’t think I’ll ever stop reading on my Kindle in favor of the iPad). If and when that happens, Apple will occupy the spot that Amazon once did, and will be able to dictate prices to publishers, much like they did and still continue to do with record labels. It’s a rare case where a monopoly could actually benefit the buying public, but only if you’re willing to pay more than paperback prices in the meantime. I’m not sure I’m willing to do that.

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Amazon announced today that it will now be offering a much more financially attractive deal for publishers providing content for its Kindle platform. Maybe it has just reached a profitability milestone in terms of the cost of Kindle unit construction that allows it to shift the burden away from content providers, but I’d hazard a guess the move has more to do with Apple’s impending announcement next week.

Why would I think that? Let’s look at the numbers. Up until now, Amazon’s profit-sharing model has been, shall we say, less than kind to the people who provide its digital books. The new model gives content providers 70 percent of the total revenue derived from sales, while Amazon would keep only 30 percent. Sound familiar? That’s exactly Apple’s formula for App Store revenue sharing. Under Amazon’s previous model, providers received just about half the cut they’ll now be getting. Pretty aggressive, if you ask me.

The deal isn’t automatic for every book sold through Amazon’s Kindle store, though. There are a few criteria providers have to meet. Here’s how it breaks down, according to AppleInsider:

• The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99
• This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book
• The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights
• The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.
• Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

Whether or not a war really is coming, Amazon clearly doesn’t want to be left behind. And the bottom line is that’s great news for us consumers. Amazon’s revenue-sharing model has been one of the major barriers to getting more content available for the platform, and now that they’re feeling the heat from Apple, be it real or imagined, the floodgates are open.

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Presumably, the iSlate would also offer iPod and media playback functionality, but Hans’ post makes no mention of these features:

Our sources have told us that the rumor about Apple launching a product with the iSlate name is true, but the product won’t be an Apple tablet, it will be an eBook reader. The iSlate will be a competitor to the Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook and other e-readers that are out there. Our sources have also told us that the iSlate eBook reader will run on Apple’s upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 software and will include a seperate App Store for eBooks. Apple will be announcing the iSlate eBook reader at WWDC 2010, which our sources says is being held on June 7.

Note also that if Quick PWN’s sources are correct, we won’t be seeing the iSlate or hear mention of it until WWDC, which is being held much earlier than previous rumors suggested, if the unidentified informant is to be believed. Moscone Center booking information suggests WWDC will begin on June 28, not the 7th.

I’m suspicious of this latest rumor for a number of reasons. First, the discrepancy between the WWDC dates previously reported and this one doesn’t really make any sense. Then again, maybe that actually adds credence to this rumor, since the source didn’t just go with the accepted date. I suppose the date change just strikes me as odd, but it doesn’t really preclude the validity of this report.

What I’m more wary of is the nature of the device described and the timing of its launch. Even though the e-book market is beginning to take off (if you believe Amazon’s own hype), it’s still nowhere near as strong as the netbook market was and is, and Apple was wary of jumping into that. I doubt it would create an e-reader at this point without making that a secondary feature, rather than the primary focus of the device. And if it isn’t coming until WWDC, then what’s the event next month going to be about? Why do rumors stemming from suppliers and other more reliable sources point to a different production timeline?

The iSlate, if that’s what it really will be called, will most likely have e-reader function and it will probably threaten Amazon’s market dominance in that area. But is that Apple’s aim with this device? I doubt it. Is e-reading the only or primary purpose of the new gadget? Not a chance.

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Actually, a beta version of the PC software is already available, but the Mac version is still very much under wraps. Writing in the Fast Company blog, Chris Dannen reports, “An Amazon spokesperson told me late Thursday: ‘Yes, we are working on a Kindle app for Mac.’”

The software will work in a similar fashion to the existing Kindle iPhone app (which is currently available only in America). A Kindle owner will be able to read and automatically sync their books across devices. So for example, a user can read a few chapters on their computer screen before heading out of the house. In their doctor’s waiting room they reach for their Kindle, the Whispersync network would have automatically synced the Kindle with their desktop computer, allowing them to pick up reading right where they left off that morning.

Will customers be excited about reading on their desktop? I don’t think so. The form factor of most desktop machines doesn’t make for a very comfortable book-reading experience. But the upcoming touch-enabled netbooks that take advantage of the touch functionality in Windows 7 offer a far more compelling form factor. A Mac-compatible version of the software is more exciting, however, if we imagine it running on Apple’s impending Tablet.

The tablet will most likely offer e-books and other “print” content via the iTunes store, but it’s also just as likely Apple’s e-books won’t use the same file format as Amazon’s proprietary AZW, which is the default format used by the Kindle today. Being able to run the Kindle software on the tablet means Kindle customers will potentially enjoy the best of both worlds on a single device. And even if they ultimately stop using their Kindle and the Kindle online store, their investment in Amazon’s platform will not be wasted… that’s assuming Apple will allow the Kindle software to be installed on its Tablet.

Sure, a Kindle reader app is already available on the iPhone, complete with the ability to purchase new titles. But the iPhone (well, more specifically, iTunes) doesn’t yet offer a serious selection of e-books and electronic publications like magazines, periodicals or comic books. But once Apple has taken its first significant steps in the e-book market, will it forbid third-party apps from offering similar functionality on the same device?

I’d like to say Apple wouldn’t be so silly or shortsighted. But then I think about the high drama surrounding the ill-fated Google Voice app for the iPhone …and suddenly I’m a lot less certain.

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Ihnatko describes how LongBox CEO Rant Hoseley dropped a very juicy hint at a recent convention:

Rantz spoke at the Long Beach Comic-Con last weekend, as part of an industry panel on the future of digital distribution. Referring to a future strategic partnership with an unnamed company, Rantz said “It seems like everything is going to go through as planned.” He identified the company only as one that “all of a sudden leaves us with a multinational launch with literally millions of installed users.”

That sounds a hell of a lot like access to the iTunes Store, either in the form of software in the App Store or readable content in a hypothetical “iTunes Newsstand.”

Ihnatko spoke with Rantz for an hour, relentlessly questioning him and expecting him to “stumble” over common issues that have kept the comic book industry from so far settling on a unified online sales and distribution platform. Apparently, Rantz didn’t stumble, but provided further tantalizing clues that something is afoot with our friends in Cupertino.

I’m pretty sure that Apple is entering into a formal alliance with LongBox. When I asked Hoseley about what kind of partnerships the company is forming, he spoke vaguely of what was taking up most of his time at the moment: a lengthy and complicated agreement with a seriously large company operating in the media space.

What follows is an explanation of further clues and detective work that convinced Ihnatko LongBox is working with Apple. It’s worth reading in full. However, he’s cautious, and warns against getting too excited too soon.

CEOs say a lot of things during these briefings and when you’re on the other end of the phone, you need to be cautious before passing along any speculation that makes the company look this good. Even on the record, a tissue-thin hint isn’t the same as an open confirmation.

So I’m wishing LongBox well. And I hope that this deal with Apple is, in fact, more than just a busload of wishful thinking from a comic book geek with a tech column. An alliance with Apple would benefit everybody in the comix [sic] industry. It would kickstart digital sales through a single, united storefront the same way that Apple’s alliance with record labels kicked off the digital music industry in 2003.

To be sure, LongBox will want to get its app onto as many platforms as possible. And there is no lack of choice. Amazon’s Kindle is in its second iteration and was recently made available outside America. Barnes & Noble’s brand spanking new Nook is making waves, too. And there are plenty more e-readers on the market, with more on the way.

Amazon's Kindle offers hundreds of thousands of titles, but ultimately, it's a one-trick pony

While devices like the Kindle have established online stores with hundreds of thousands of titles on offer, they remain single-purpose machines. Sure, most e-readers can store photos for viewing on their grayscale e-ink screens, and the Sony Reader even offers MP3 support to boot — but none of the readers on the market today can offer wider multimedia capabilities.

Apple’s fabled tablet is expected to ship with some flavor of the iPhone OS and feature a full color capacitive touch screen. But more importantly, it’s expected to make full use of the iTunes store and all that it makes available to its millions of active users. So add music, TV shows, movies, podcasts, games and apps to the yet-to-be-launched e-book category. That’s content that works across all your computers and your phone, too. None of the other e-readers on the market even come close to competing with that sort of functionality.

For that reason, I barely use my Sony Reader, and have bought only a handful of books for the thing and have resisted the (sometimes rather strong) temptation to buy a Kindle. And believe me, I’ve been tempted; I have long-harbored a quaint desire to sit in my conservatory on a sunny, peaceful weekend morning and enjoy a long, slow coffee while catching up on the news. But I want my reader to do much more that simple news feeds.

I haven’t made a serious effort to read comic books for a long time (years, in fact) but I used to love them. I don’t bother now because I don’t like reading them on my monitor and I don’t like buying the dead-tree editions (it’s a personal preference — I simply don’t like buying literature on pressed wood-pulp any more).

So I’m holding out for next year when the Tablet is released because I know that not only will I be able to fill it up with books, all my other content from iTunes will work on it, too. And when that happens, I might just start buying comic books again.

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The new device brings a lot of improvements over the previous model, including more battery life, an incredibly sleek, much thinner design, and better rendering of images. It also brings an experimental text-to-speech feature to the table that enables the device to read aloud, 2GB of internal storage, and a new sync feature that allows you to read on your original Kindle, and then switch to the Kindle 2 without losing your place. This feature is also supposed to support other devices in future.

All of this is interesting, but what does it have to do with Apple? If you ask Apple, they might coyly answer “Nothing.” But if you ask Amazon, I’ll bet that if they’re being honest, they’ll say they’re giving a lot of thought to Apple with the Kindle 2. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos even noted that the Kindle 2 was much thinner than the iPhone during the launch event.

Consider the recent success of the iPhone and iPod touch as e-book reading devices. In fact, the iPhone recently garnered press for surpassing Amazon’s original Kindle in popularity in that category. To me, that sounds an awful lot like competition. And what’s really frightening, from Amazon’s perspective, is that Apple isn’t even actively trying to lock up that market, yet they’re making significant headway.

I think that’s probably why the Kindle 2 has so many feature improvements over the original. Without the advent of the iPhone’s success via apps like Stanza, we might have seen a very different Kindle 2, one that improved on physical design and usability, but not necessarily one that includes features the iPhone lacks like text-to-speech and the new syncing feature.

Don’t think that Apple hasn’t noticed the success of their device as a book reader, even if they didn’t plan on marketing it that way. In fact, I suspect that if they are working on a larger format iPod touch, or a tablet-type device, it’s safe to say that they’ll play up that angle and even offer an official, integrated solution that will definitely give the Kindle a run for its money. An iTunes e-book category would then be a perfect tie-in.

It may seem like a far-fetched prediction, but there’s no way Apple can look at the success of Stanza on the iPhone and not imagine ways they might more directly capitalize. And if they’re already working on a larger-format device, there’s no good reason not to challenge Amazon.

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What I don’t think I will ever do, though, is buy an individual book application. To me, that would be like buying individual albums as independent applications instead of through iTunes. Why would I opt to have a thousand different icons on my desktop, one for each album, when it would be far easier, more organized, and more sensible to keep them all in one place, i.e., my iTunes library. The same applies for electronic books. How is it beneficial, to anyone besides publishers and developers, to have discrete applications for individual books?

The problem is that it does represent a significant benefit for those parties. iPhone users vary greatly in terms of their knowledge level and expertise. I still know someone who is, as of yet, not really sure how you get apps on to the device, and he owns one. Obviously, he’s an extreme case, but the point is that there’s still a large segment of the market that might not even be aware apps like Stanza even exist. Hence the need for books-as-apps, like the recently released ScrollMotion Iceberg Reader titles like Stephenie Meyer’s crazily successful Twilight.

Even beyond being impractical, books-as-apps prove annoying to end-users like myself who browse the app store regularly, and have to sift through a great many of them some days to find quality new releases. Might there be a way to satisfy both commercial interests and the interests of the consumer, without clogging up the app store and home screens with hundreds of unnecessary apps?

The answer is the iTunes store. Whether as a model for successful, centralized distribution, as with Stanza, or quite literally, meaning that they begin selling books through the iTunes store itself (not audio books, those don’t count). And yes, Stanza does already do this, but it needs the backing and promotional power of the iTunes store in order to convince publishers to use it instead of creating individual books-as-apps. Now if we could just get comics from major publishers distributed in a similar manner, the world would be a perfect place.

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When it comes to eBook reading on the iPhone, Stanza is our app of choice. Best of all? It’s free.

With access to 10′s of thousands of books, it has a ridiculous selection of reading material and now that selection just got bigger. A lot bigger.

Fellow GigaOm site, jkOnTheRun, broke the news this morning about eBook mammoth, eReader now licensing their eBook technology for use on Stanza. This pushes Stanza’s selection of books up in the 100,000+ range.

With that sort of selection of books, you really should give Stanza a try.

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