I am currently reading

I’ve seen some odd things in St Albans main library (in the Maltings shopping precinct) before but nothing as odd as what I’ve just witnessed.

I popped in briefly over lunch to find the main reading area had a new “installation”. Next to the microfiche readers, a middle aged couple had laid out a large tartan picnic blanket. On the blanket there sat a dog. The dog was clearly not a guide dog, being of a breed not associated with guiding and also being looked after by two people reading normal print books. They were reading normal print books whilst having what I can only describe as an impromptu picnic, complete with a couple of thermos flasks of tea/coffee/other hot beverage.

Now I realise like most of our other cultural assets, libraries are primed for closure in order to save money to pay expensive consultants to justify why it’s okay to close libraries, museums and anything else that might benefit society, but surely things aren’t so desperate that the head count of two (or three if they counted the dog) is necessary, despite plenty of signage to the contrary?

I know libraries have diversified into internet cafe and Blockbusters DVD rental territory in recent years, but I’m struggling to think of any vague justification of allowing pets and picnics to take place.

Still, I have emailed Herts Direct with a query and shall update this post with their reply. In case you’re wondering, all the staff were busy dealing with IT issues in the internet cafe section, and I didn’t fancy waiting until there was someone free.

One of my blogging buddies is undertaking a bit of an epic challenge in January.

It’s January, a new year and new starts all over the place. People are kicking off new year resolutions and a variety of challenges have sprung up on blogs around the blogosphere. Our family are doing something a little different. In the hope of raising money to build a library with Oxfam Unwrapped, we’re starting the year by reading (and reviewing) 100 books in a month. That’s 5 people (4 readers) and 31 days to read and report on 100 books. You can check out more about the challenge on its dedicated page or follow the reviews in their very own category. We’d love to hear what you think of what we’re up to!

Good luck Jax and I for one will keep my eye on your progress!

My Shipping email for Stephen Donaldson’s Against All Things Ending hit my inbox last night, a full 5 days before Jordan/Sanderson’s Towers of Midnight hits the shelves.

Torn between cramming the latest Thomas Covenant in before the penultimate Wheel of Time book and leaving it until afterwards to savour…

For those of you out there that don’t realise the difference between e-ink and conventional displays, some chap has put a Kindle and an iPad under a microscope. The results are interesting. By interesting I mean “freaky how e-ink mimics actual ink so well.”

You can see the results here

It didn’t take long then. Hot on the heels of the new £109 wifi Kindle from Amazon, Waterstones have cut the price of the Sony eReader Pocket Edition to a mouthwatering £99. Other retailers have cut the price but none as low as Waterstones. Get one while there is still stock!

As I was saying last week, one of the main issues to adoption of ereaders is the price. The device is seen as a gadget in it’s own right and not a facilitator/enabler for the reading of books. I was reading earlier on Techlogg that Sony has cut the prices of its ereaders substantially in response to a price war going on between Amazon and Barnes & Noble with their respective devices.

The device that I’d like to see as the universal format for an ereader, Sony’s 5 inch Reader Pocket Edition has had $20 lopped off the price, bringing it down to $150. This is the smallest price cut in the range- Sony has knocked a whopping $60 off the Reader Touch Edition, which has a larger screen, expandable memory via two different card slots and a touchscreen. Sony are now selling this for $170, which considering the extra features over the Reader Pocket Edition, suggests the price for the more basic device could go a lot lower. Sony selling for what they think the market can tolerate? Probably.

It’s interesting to note that converting in pounds and adding VAT would put the Reader Touch Edition at £132, and the Reader Pocket Edition at £117. These prices are £70 and £30 cheaper respectively than Amazon are currently selling them for.

It’s speculation whether these price cuts will make it to these shores as Sony are notorious for pricing what they think the territory will accept but who knows, we might be closer than we think to an affordable quality ereader over here in good old Blighty.

This year, like last year and the year before that should have been the year of the ereader and ebooks. But it isn’t and there are some fairly obvious reasons why not.

Firstly the sort of pricing hi-jinks that I’ve documented before don’t help. If you can buy a hardback over the internet and have them post it to you for four or five pounds less than the ebook equivalent, there is no incentive to buy the electronic version. The soution is simple and can be borrowed from other media.

Sell the ebook for a sensible price ( Victor Finch has done a survey of what people are willing to pay here), and more importantly do what film studios are doing with BD releases. For a couple of pounds more than the stand alone price, they give you a double disk set with the DVD and usually a digital download version for your iPod. That means you could have a hard back to keep at home and a digital version to read on your commute. Sensible.

I’ve read a lot of claptrap about the cost of making an ebook and how high it is. About how publishing a physical book isn’t much of the total end cost of production. That is true but its a little pointless in its selective truth.

Shipping and storage are two other major costs of physical book production. Most production is done in the far east now days and that means shipping on the high seas. If you’re not expecting to sell out your first print run immediately, you’ll need your own warehouse or distribution centre. And you’ll need to heat it, staff it or pay someone else to do it for you.

Yes, editing, proof reading and the rest are all intangible costs but how relevant are they to electronic editions? To my mind they’re only really relevant if there isn’t a tangible paper copy. At the moment ebooks, certainly for mainstream authors and publishers, are an extra, not the be all and end all. This means the sunk costs have already been sunk. Apportioning them to the electronic version doesn’t make sense. Of course this is different for new authors or those braving the new frontier of electronic publishing but lets face it, those seeking to justify the high RRP aren’t web 2.0 literate are they?

Secondly I like Seth Gordin’s idea of a Paperback Kindle- strip the ereader of all it’s superfluous functions, make it good at purely what its supposed to be good for and sell it cheap. Stupidly cheap. In fact give it away for free with ten ebook purchases, it’s the medium not the message, don’t look to make a pennies profit on it because you’ll slow adoption and lets face it its all about mass market really. Sell the Sony PRS 300 for £70 and be done with it.

Finally, get those back catalogues up there. Do I really want to buy book four in a series when books 1,2 and 3 are unavailable in electronic form? It’s all about the catalogue available. Google are working on something big, their first entry into online retail (barring the nexus 1) and the market needs shaking up. Books for the Kindle, iBooks and every other format are riddled with DRM and are still too expensive.

Well there you are. If I worked for a large consultancy firm, I would charge you a couple of hundred grand for telling you that. Aggressive pricing gets you penetration, and a large affordable catalogue gets you consumer buy in. Email me for payment terms chaps.

I tend to pop up to our local Waterstones about once a week just to have a rummage through the new releases. What stood out this week for me was the sheer amount of space devoted to Warmhammer tie in novels- the 3 shelves you can see in the image are entirely Warhammer. This could be forgiven if it wasn’t at the expense of more deserving titles but they’re missing A Game of Thrones, large chunks of the Wheel of Time, most of JV Jones back catalogue and they hardly have any Robert Rankin.

Shame on you Waterstones!