The Medium Is The Message: ePublishing, Destroying The Competition & Making A Profit
February 1, 2008
Here is a picture of the new Panasonic Words Gear available in Japan. Notice anything about it? It has a color screen (1024×600 resolution) and sound (MP3) and video (MP4) capability along with the capability of presenting eBooks. Now why would I say this is the killer app when Sony and Amazon both have provided eBook readers within the past year? Well, one is the color capability, but that’s not all.
Panasonic is actually providing ePublishers here with the perfect platform to kill New York Traditional Publishing. See, people were sorta upset when I made the statement that eBooks should not be more expensive than a paperback. *sigh* They never ask me why.
My point is if you do not provide any more content than provided by a Traditional Publisher, which is basically words on a page, you have to follow their lead and their price according their pricing scales based solely on what content they can provide.
But… Notice on this Words Gear platform you have a color screen to present your fancy eBook cover? Notice you have sound to present an MP3? Notice you could easily provide even video to say present one of those new Book Trailers?
Can you say “content” children?
The point is unlike those black and white e-Ink devices this gizmo is made to provide a greater content. Just like eBooks can provide a greater content.
What if you added more than just a nice front cover but also let Anne Cain or April Martinez illustrate the inside of the eBook like a graphic novel? What if you added an MP3 file to provide a reading sound track? What if you started including Book Trailers to advertise other eBooks by the author? What if your eBook came with a read out loud function?
That is something a New York Traditional Publisher has either abandoned in the case of integrated illustrations or could never provide in the case of a sound file or a Book Trailer video. The medium is the message and in this case the medium has far greater bandwidth than a book could ever hold. We have seen the consumer adopt video games *with a sound track* and the home movie *with a sound track* and the Internet.
So what do you think a customer would pay for a more immersive, yet portable, reading experience? Let your imagination run wild $20.00 to maybe $30.00 bucks a download depending on artist, author and music maybe. There is far greater risk involved with a potential for blunders by incorporating multimedia but think of the potential for profit.
Those are just examples of the basis for what I was trying to say.
Tags: eAuthors, ePublishers, eReaders, pricing
TP — Sounds like the Panasonic has an LCD screen, which, for me, is a drawback. The Sony e-ink screen puts a lot less strain on my eyes, the battery life can’t be beat (for now), and it’s pretty light (this is important because I have dropped the reader on my head while lying in bed a couple of times).
Anyway, if I want something portable to watch videos and listen to music, I have a lovely thing called the iPod Touch.
Well I have one too the point here is a bigger screen.
I have to agree. This does not appeal to me as an ereader. I have an Ipod touch, A 12 inch apple lap top. I do not want or care for color in my ereader. I want a device that does one thing and on thing only: Gives me the ultimate comfortable mobile method on which to read my books for as long as I desire Love the eink. Love the bookstore in a book feature of the Kindle. The one thing that would make it perfect would be handwriting recognition so when I edit on it it would type back into my computer.
I have so many electronic devices in my purse it weighs as much as the average two year old. phone. palm t/x. reader. ipod. one do everything and anything item would be great, but I’ve spent all I am going to spend. and then some.
I got a flush of techno lust when I started reading this. Why, yes, I would love a multimedia-capable color touch screen eBook reader. But then I clicked over to the Slashgear article. 6 hour battery life? 2.5 oz heavier than the Sony?
I don’t care about the LCD screen, I’m used to them, they don’t bug me. The battery life, however, is a huge concern, as is weight. Weight has been the deciding factor for almost all of my portable electronics purchases.
Product weight is probably a bigger issue for women than for men because we don’t clip our portable electronics on our belts or keep them in our pockets. We carry them in our purses. I am fanatic about the weight of every item I put into my purse because I’d like to have some cartilage left in my shoulder when I’m 60.
Instead of offering their products in pink or paisley, or whatever the fuck color they think will appeal to women (looking at you, Sony), electronics makers need to concentrate on reducing the weight of their products. 2.5 ounces is a noticeable difference. I’ve sacrificed 3 extra hours of battery life to reduce the weight of my phone by 2 oz (regular vs extended life battery). If I had to buy an eReader right now, I’d buy the Sony purely on the basis of weight and battery life. Aesthetics do play a part, too. I wouldn’t buy the Kindle because it is butt-ugly.
Yup — I carry the Palm IIIxe rather than the Psion 5MX in my handbag, because the Palm weighs a lot less. (I had a Psion Revo on loan from a friend, and *that* was handbag size, but I didn’t like the keyboard.)
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I returned my Cingular PDA phone less than a week after I bought it because it was too heavy and too awkward to hold. I bought an HP iPAQ PDA to tide me over until UMPCs come down in price. Unless this new device is ultra-cheap AND allows mutiple formats (like LIT, dammit), I don’t think I would be interested in it.
My first reaction was– Are you bug-fucking NUTS?! Who the hell is gonna pay that for a book just because it has a few bells and whistles? Then I realized that I’m paying that now for audio books so… um… nevermind. *g*
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Bev, where do you think I got that price from?
See new/different content provides greater profit margin.