March 8 -14 is Read an E-Book Week. In keeping with the spirit of the event, I thought I’d try to summarize what an author should know about Kindle, the e-reader from Amazon.

I’m going to assume that you’ve heard about the Kindle but you don’t really know too much about it. My aim with this post is to provide enough information for you to evaluate the market and figure out if it’s worth pursuing. So let’s get started.

What Is the Kindle?

• The Kindle is a dedicated e-book reading device, meaning it reads e-books, along with some newspapers and magazines, but not much else. Version 2 of the Kindle was released in February of this year.
• It uses E ink technology for the display. E ink is very different from a computer screen or the screen on, say, an iPhone. It is not backlit and so the experience of reading on a Kindle is very much like that of reading off paper. There’s no eye strain and it can be comfortably used for long periods of reading.
• The Kindle is relatively small and lightweight. It weighs just 10.2 ounces and has a 6″ screen on the diagonal. It’s very convenient for carrying, and many users appreciate its portability over heavy books.
• The Kindle 2 can hold about 1,500 books at a time.
• The device currently sells for $359 USD.

There are many video reviews online that will give you a more detailed look at the Kindle and its features. Here are a few good videos I have found:

• Kindle 2 first impressions from Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers
  
• CNET Kindle 2 review
• Kindle 2 user feedback video from Amazon

Who Uses a Kindle?

• Amazon will not release any sales data about the Kindle devices so no one really knows how many they have sold or who is buying them. Guesses from industry watchers range from 300,000 units sold to as high as 500,000.
• Contrary to what you might intuitively guess — that the biggest users are kids of the ‘Net generation — anecdotal evidence points to users 40 years of age and up as the primary market. This older audience appreciates the resizable type, the light weight and portability, and the convenience of instant access to content. Typically, they also have more money and are able to afford the $359 ticket price.
• Oprah Winfrey endorsed the Kindle on her show in October 2008, raising the device’s profile with the public in a big way. Demi Moore twitters about how much she loves her Kindle.
• Right now, the Kindle is only available in the United States. There is some speculation that version 3 will be available in other countries, but Amazon has yet to confirm that this is true.

What About the Content?

• There are about 245,000 book titles currently available in the Kindle format, including 102 of 111 current New York Times bestsellers.
• Amazon reports that Kindle books have been selling briskly, now accounting for about 10% of sales for titles where both print and Kindle editions are available.
• Kindle books are proprietary files. The files are wrapped in DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology, meaning they are encrypted. They can only be read on a Kindle or on the Kindle app for the iPhone. There is a great deal of debate and criticism in the publishing industry over Amazon’s choice to encrypt its files. Many publishers are pushing to standardize e-books around an open file format called ePub. (More on that in a later post.)
• The typical price for a Kindle book is about $9.95. Amazon keeps a 65% commission on each sale. This is higher than the 55% commission they keep on print book sales.

What’s the Upshot?
While Amazon has taken its share of criticism over the Kindle for a variety of reasons — some of it well deserved — it can’t be denied that the device is helping bring e-books to the mainstream and creating new opportunities for book sales.

If you are an author with an existing print book, or one in production, publishing a companion Kindle version is pretty easy and inexpensive. For a small additional investment, you can make your book available to an audience that craves new content and wants it quickly. This audience is relatively small right now but will continue to grow over time. It’s almost certainly a good investment to make.

The e-books are coming, the e-books are coming! I know, I know, you’ve heard this before. About 10 years ago, e-books tried to fight their way into the marketplace. Some e-readers, like the Rocket eBook, came to market…and then quietly disappeared.

If any single e-book format could be considered popular or well-used in the 1990s, it was PDF. In fact, as recently as 5 years ago, I was still advising would-be e-book authors to publish in PDF. These PDF files were read primarily on a PC screen or downloaded and printed out.

But e-books are coming back with a vengeance, and this time it’s different. No longer the domain of early adopters, and no longer confined to PDF editions, e-books are easing their way into the everyday life of everyday folks. Perhaps nothing has helped push them there more than Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of the Kindle, the e-reader from Amazon. In an instant, e-books went from minor curiosity to major cause.

If you’re a self-published author and you’re still focused on print books, it’s time to get your electrons stirring. E-books are becoming an increasingly larger piece of the book market.

At the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in New York earlier this month, Russell Wilcox, president and CEO of E Ink Corporation, made some predictions. Wilcox believes:

• Within the next 18 months, 2 – 3 % of Americans will own a dedicated e-reading device, such as a Kindle or Sony Reader. This will be the tipping point into widescale and mainstream use.
• E-book devices priced under $200 will begin to emerge from China within the next year. Right now, a relatively high price point is one barrier to adoption. The more the price comes down, the more people will be able to buy one.
• In 2009, a variety of e-reader sizes will emerge, some small, some large, each one suited to a different need.
• 2009 will also see the commercial launch of flexible screens that can roll up or bend like plastic film. Touch and stylus interfaces will also proliferate.
• In 2010, there will be more flexible screens on the market and colour will be introduced. (Right now, E Ink devices are black and white only.) Colour will continue to improve over the next decade until e-readers will be able to deliver a reading experience similar to that of today’s glossy magazines.

E Ink Corporation is the technology used by many of the big e-readers on the market today, so it’s in Wilcox’s best interest to be bullish on the market. But even if his sales predictions are aggressive, it’s clear that e-books are a technology whose day has come. They aren’t going to fade away like they did last time, and they aren’t going to be a nice little sideline to the main business of publishing, either.

Seven or eight years ago, the big publishers would look at their print list and choose a small number of titles to also bring out as a digital edition. Today, many publishers produce both print and e-book versions of every title as a matter of course. Someday, and maybe not a day too far off, the default will be to publish digitally, and only select titles will be printed on paper.

In future posts, I’ll take a look at different e-readers and some of the practical issues around publishing e-books.

Part of being a self-published author is figuring out ways to get as much mileage as you can out of everything you create. Producing your book is a time-consuming effort. It pays to look for ways you can repackage, tweak, pare down, extend, translate, or extend the content for greater reach and greater revenue.

One repackaging tactic is to sell downloads of individual chapters, on top of making the full book available. The thinking behind the strategy is to appeal to people who might want to explore only one or two specific tactics in a book, or who might want information immediately through downloading.

This past year, Random House began selling individual chapters of Made To Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath for $2.99 a pop. Made to Stick had already sold 220,000 hard cover copies before the single chapters were made available. It’s hard to say whether sales of the printed book would have been cannibalized by offering the single chapters earlier. My guess, however, would be that selling single chapters would only boost sales. The low price encourages readers to take a nibble with minimal risk. As more and more people download a chapter and share the content with others (yes, it will happen — so embrace it), the more your book buzz is spread.

Selling by the chapter is not quite the same thing as serialization. Publishing a book as a serial implies that readers will eventually read the whole book through installments that are delivered in sequential order. By-the-chapter sales allow a reader to buy one chapter, with no commitment to buy any others.

Selling single chapters works best for non-fiction since each piece has to more or less stand on its own. Travel publishers, for example, can benefit from selling sections on specific cities or areas from within full country guides. Lonely Planet is already doing this through what they call their Pick & Mix menu. Other topics that lend themselves to single-chapter sales include business (one strategy, idea, or tip explained), essay or story anthologies, cooking, and fitness.

Parallels have naturally been drawn between publishing and the music industry. In music, we have seen a shift from full album sales, purchased on recorded media such as a CD, to individual song downloads. In publishing, while I doubt that piecemeal downloads will eclipse sales of the full product, I do think it likely that individual chapter downloads will increase in popularity.

Chapter pricing is still very much up in the air due to its relative newness. Random House charges $2.99 per chapter for Made to Stick. Lonely Planet charges $2 to $5 per chapter, basing the price on the length of the chapter and the price of the book from which it was excerpted. If the music industry can again be looked to as a sign of things to come in publishing, we may see chapters eventually priced at $.99 each.

Are you an author or publisher who has tried single chapter sales? As a reader, what are your thoughts on buying one or two chapters from a full book?

Just for fun on this sunny Wednesday, click over to someecards.com for a couple of bookish e-cards with a dry twist.

There’s a new e-book reader on the market … and it will wrap itself around your little finger. Literally.

The new Readius is made with a screen that folds up into a tidy package for carrying and is flexible enough to wrap around your finger.

The resolution and screen quality are comparable to the Amazon Kindle since both devices use E Ink technology. The Readius display is a little smaller than the Kindle — 5″ diagonal versus the Kindle’s 6″ — but the Kindle doesn’t fold up to the size of a cell phone. The Readius also lets you download email, which the Kindle doesn’t do.

Many e-book readers have launched and failed. Can the Readius put a dent in the growing Kindle market? While the Readius has a “cool” factor with the bendy screen, the Kindle has a big headstart and the Amazon infrastructure behind it.

The big downside of the Kindle and the new Readius is that they are essentially single-purpose devices. They read e-books. OK, they can both read newspapers too.

But where is the flexible screen that can do it all and won’t tie us down to proprietary file formats?

Years ago I read a prediction that said one day we would all carry a single, rollable screen that served as newspaper, book, web browser, e-mail reader and computer desktop. That’s the device I’d like to see.

So to the Readius, I say, “Good start.” Let’s see what you do next.

A new article in Publisher’s Weekly points out yet another potential casualty of the high price of gas: author readings. Bookstore owners are concerned that crowds won’t come out to hear authors speak if the price of gas goes much higher.

Already the publishing industry has been feeling pinches over gasoline shortages. Most notably, the price of paper has shot up this year, and the cost to ship books from printer to warehouse to customer is climbing also.

Yet a solution does exist, and smart authors are using it already: technology. A whole universe of media — from podcasts and viral video to live chats, blogs and Twitter — can be used to promote books and interact with readers far and wide. It’s low-cost and easy on the environment, too.

For marketing, virtual seems like a no-brainer. But how about on the production side?

The New York Times reports that among publishers at Book Expo America a couple of weeks ago, the feeling about e-books was “unease.” Seth Godin points out that publishers are missing the forest for the trees:

“The fastest-growing, lowest cost segment of the business, the one that offers the most promise, the best possible outcome and has the best results… is causing unease!”

Sales of electronic books are rising, thanks in part to the emerging popularity of Amazon’s Kindle reader. After just 8 months on the market, Kindle sales account for 6% of Amazon’s volume in books where electronic and print versions are both available.

So are we seeing the final days of print books? Not quite yet.

Many people still say they far prefer reading a print book over an e-book. Even among kids under 17 — the one group who you think would embrace a digital book — nearly two-thirds still prefer print versions.

So what’s a publisher to do? Know your market and what they want. Be open to changing tactics where it makes sense and can save you money. And keep your eye on the oil. Maybe the decline in fossil fuels will be the tipping point that pushes reading into the digital realm.