Used Books Blog

Oprah endorses Kindle. OMG! Stop the presses. OMG! This is huge. OMG!

Once again, Amazon is trying to create buzz around Kindle and show that Kindle can do for books what the iPod did for music.

Yet, what does Oprah’s endorsement say about the success of Kindle? To me it means current marketing efforts have been less than satisfactory. (Hey, I’m trying to be kind.)

It tells me that Amazon couldn’t leverage their massive base of loyal customers. They couldn’t drum up enough demand by marketing it on their home page continuously for six months. Amazon couldn’t do it by using the largest affiliate marketing program on the Internet.

So Amazon, needing a good holiday season for Kindle, resorts to Oprah. For good or for bad, Oprah is perhaps the largest influencer in books, particularly now that J. K. Rowling closed out the Harry Potter series.

Aside from the Oprah stamp of approval, the endorsement came with a $50 off coupon code. What does that tell you about the price point of Kindle? It’s too expensive!

Remember, Amazon hasn’t released any sales numbers for Kindle. One could argue that Kindle isn’t contributing enough to be reported as material. Yet Amazon’s third quarter results do include references to Kindle title breadth (still a puny 185,000) and Kindle title sales as a percentage of total format sales (more than 10%). So is Kindle material or not? Or is it only material when the numbers look good?

If Kindle were selling like hotcakes Amazon would be beating their chest about it, wouldn’t be crawling to Oprah and wouldn’t be providing a $50 coupon code.

The Internati want Kindle to succeed in the worst way, building projections that Amazon finally had to come out and refute as being extremely high. On the flip side, University publishers and the New York Times have both made less than stellar comments and references about volume.

Kindle 2.0 won’t be out until some time in 2009 and there is still no indication that a textbook Kindle is in the works. Again, if Kindle was a clear success, new versions would have been fast tracked. Now Amazon has to deal with Stanza for iPhone and potential for competition from Google.

Can Oprah save Kindle?

Textbook Torrents Permanently Offline

(updates below or see Rapidshare Textbooks or Free Textbooks)

Textbook Torrents is using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol, to let students download textbooks for free. The site not only allows Torrents for those open textbooks but allows users to scan and upload other textbooks.

Scan as many of your other textbooks as you can, and put them up here for others to benefit from. There aren’t very many scanned texts out there, so let’s change that.

A basic rule of thumb to determine if something is acceptable: if you can find it in the courses section of your local university bookstore, it’s fair game.

Sites like Textbook Torrents are reacting to the increasingly high cost of textbooks. According to a 2004 CALPIRG study, the average textbook costs $102 and students spent almost $900 a school year on textbooks. Many believe these prices are artificially high, creating windfall profit centers for publishers on the backs of students who essentially must purchase these textbooks.

The used textbook marketplace has flourished because of these high prices, though the shelf life of a textbook seems to be decreasing as publishers crank out updates and editions on a more regular basis. The Amazon Kindle is also delivering textbooks via digital download.

It’s no surprise that students are using new technology to defray the cost of their education. Obviously the textbook landscape would collapse if the majority of students sourced their textbooks via Torrents - authors need to be compensated, publishers need to run a business.

But publishers shouldn’t squawk too much about these developments. High textbook prices were the accelerant to the flux in the textbook market. Now they’re scrambling to protect their cash cow in the encroaching digital age.

Textbook Torrents Update (July 14, 2008 - 2:00pm)

As noted by readers, the textbooktorrents.com website is currently offline. The error data (”not found on this server”) makes me believe that the owner took it down or that the host (DreamHost) took it down. Please note that Google still has pages from textbooktorrents.com in their index. Google hasn’t banned the site, it’s simply not ranking high because there’s no longer any relevant content on these pages.

I’m guessing this disappearing act is due to legal pressure brought by publishers. The domain doesn’t expire until January 2011. Perhaps textbooktorrents.com will come back when a new host is secured … or not if the publisher pressure was simply too much to handle.

Textbook Torrents Update (July 14, 2008 - 2:57pm)

I emailed DreamHost in what I thought would be a vain attempt to gain some information on the Textbook Torrents situation. To my pleasant surprise, DreamHost responded to my inquiry within the hour. Below is the text of that email:

We received very long DMCA takedown notices from publishers of the content in question. The site was further closed down due to violations of our Terms of Service due to it’s illegal facilitation of the distribution of copyrighted content without the copyright owners consent.

While I sympathize with students and the cost of textbooks, you can’t fault DreamHost for pulling the plug. Based on the information provided above, I’d be surprised if any major US host would touch Textbook Torrents at this point.

Textbook Torrents Update (July 30, 2008 - 8:22am)

Textbooktorrents.com is still down as we hit the height of textbook season. I’ll continue to look for signs of life and encourage anyone with information to comment or contact me directly. In the interim, students can check out my list of other free textbook sites.

Textbook Torrent Update (July 30, 2008 - 9:02am)

Thank you to xGeNeSisx who tipped us off that Textbook Torrents is up and running but at a different address: http://85.17.226.223/

Textbook Torrent Update (October 13, 2008 - 5:31pm)

Textbook Torrents is now permanently offline. Following is the farewell text:

Textbook Torrents is now permanently offline.

There are a number of reasons for this, but I would be lying if I claimed that the concern of legal action wasn’t a major factor in the decision. However, it was by no means the only reason. Upkeep of a site this size is a lot of work, increasingly so as time progressed. What’s more, two years is a long time to be running a site of this nature.

I am at heart an activist, a crusader for the underdog. When I see something that I believe is wrong, I do what I can to fix it, if only in some small way. I believe this is what Textbook Torrents has stood for, and what we have done. The amount of attention that we have garnered would not have been possible by simply running around with a sandwich board and shouting slogans. We have opened people’s eyes, and gotten them talking. At its true purpose, the site has been successful beyond my wildest dreams.

What we have started here does not stop with one site. It is real, and it is now up to you to continue. Take what you have learned and experienced here and go forth. If you’re able, start new sites. Find new ways to open new eyes. Keep the revolution going. It is not a revolution of one, not even of eight staff members: it is a revolution of 100,000. We have done nothing here but provide you with a venue to voice your discontent, and the ideological sentiment that we all share need not end with Textbook Torrents. Indeed, it must live on.

For my part, I have other causes that need fighting for. There are all kinds of ways to fight all kinds of battles, and it is unlikely that I will find myself running a BitTorrent tracker again. I will step back from this and hope that you will carry on in our place.

Thanks for everything, folks. Thanks for making Textbook Torrents everything that it was, and for adding your voices to mine. Now it’s your turn.

Geekman
(Former) Textbook Torrents administrator

Litquake 2008 is underway! This is the best literary festival in the city, or perhaps any city. If you’re not familiar with Litquake here’s a quick explanation.

Litquake is a San Francisco literary festival with heart, guts and a taste for the wilder side of the literary world.

It all started in January 2002, when a group of San Francisco writers and media folks met up and started working on the idea of a festival that would be a literary version of the city’s music, film, and cultural festivals. We wanted it to be diverse and inclusive - a mix of readings, panel discussions, themed events, and general literary mayhem - from a wide range of Bay Area authors. And we definitely didn’t want it to be boring.

This 9 day event will feature authors such as Tobias Wolff, Ann Packer, Tom Perrotta, Daniel Handler and Neil Gaiman. Better yet, more than 80% of all Litquake events are free! If you’re in the Bay Area please go out and attend a Litquake event.

If you’re really feeling adventurous, join the Lit Crawl. The literary equivalent to the traditional pub crawl, this three-hour trek takes listeners through the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District. Oh and all Lit Crawl events are free. (Drinks, however, are not.) Download a Lit Crawl map (PDF).

I’ve worked with the Litquake folks and they are great people. Don’t miss out on this extraordinary event.

Kindle 2.0 photos have been leaked by The Boy Genius Report and reported in BoingBoing. The new photos show a rounder, sleeker model that is a bit larger than the first generation Kindle. The Boy Genius Report does a very good job breaking down the gadgetry and new user interface. The biggest shocker seems to be the removal of the SD slot, yet another way to ensure users are firmly locked into the Amazon sales channel.

Recent reports indicated that Kindle 2.0 wasn’t going to be available until early 2009. Does this mean Amazon has moved up the scheduled release in hopes of a holiday season push? Or is this a Kindle 1.5? Or perhaps it’ll simply take that much time to get production up and running on the new version? As with all things Amazon, we don’t know because they don’t say much.

I’d be surprised if Amazon did follow through on a holiday launch. The economy isn’t going to kind to retailers and a pricey gadget may not get the traction it did in prior years. It is notable that this is not the Textbook Kindle. I’m guessing that Amazon is trying to persuade publishers to play ball with them for a July 2009 release just prior to the back-to-school rush.

Initial reaction from innovators and early adopters seems mixed at best. This is bad news if Amazon was hoping for a substantial number of upgrade purchases, and saps the momentum it’s had among this group.

In the end I still believe this is much ado about nothing. The Kindle is a solution without a problem. Sure there are niches which would substantially benefit from the Kindle: researchers, travelers and students. However, the first two are small markets and the third, while large and lucrative, is intrinsically tied to publishers who have little love or trust of Amazon.

Conclusion: gadgetry gone wild.

Google has launched a set of Book Search APIs (aka tools) that allow any site to access and integrate Google Book Search functionality.

We’re launching a set of free tools that allow retailers, publishers, and anyone with a web site to embed books from the Google Book Search index. We are also providing new ways for these sites to display full-text search results from Book Search, and even integrate with social features such as ratings, reviews, and readers’ book collections. By providing tools that help sites connect readers with books in new and interesting ways, we hope publishers and authors will find even wider audiences for their works.

Google is featuring partnerships like Books-A-Million that are using the Google Preview functionality.

I have mixed feelings about this initiative. The tools do help expose more people to more books. Yet, I have misgivings about Google being in the middle of so many book interactions. It feels to me like Google is trying to figure out whether it should make a larger investment into the book vertical. Trust me, they’re interested and no retailer should be running to Google with open arms in my opinion.

Google Base and Google Checkout together let nearly any seller (publisher, author, dealer) upload and sell books on the single largest distribution network on the Internet. The Google Book Search tools simply make it a more robust platform. You can cobble together Google Apps, Google Sites, Google Base, Google Checkout and Google Book Search and completely cut out middlemen like say … Amazon.com.

Perhaps this is a good thing though. If Google were to enter the market (for real) they might help increase sales and do so at slightly lower prices. However, this would likely be at the expense of aggregators like Amazon, Alibris, Abebooks and Biblio.

For now it seems like Google is satisfied to watch the game of double dutch, rocking back and forth poised to jump in at just the right time.

As an avid reader I am shocked at the prospect of banning books and truly saddened at the history of book burning. Robert Scoble recently returned from Germany with a photo of the Bebelplatz memorial.

The memorial represents the 25,000 books burnt by the Nazis in 1933. The image has been sitting in one of my Firefox tabs for nearly two weeks as a reminder of what can happen when we don’t speak up.

On the memorial is a plaque that reads “this is just the beginning. Wherever books are burnt, people are burnt too” from the poet Heinrich Heine whose books were among those incinerated.

Let’s make sure this never happens again.

Amazon spokesperson Craig Berman tells the New York Times that the rumors about a new Kindle are just that … rumors.

“Don’t believe everything you read,” Mr. Berman said. “There’s a lot of rumor and speculation about the Kindle. One thing I can tell you for sure is that there will be no new version of the Kindle this year. A new version is possible sometime next year at the earliest.”

At the earliest? Boy, if that isn’t a whole lot of wiggle room.

Berman went on to say that he could not confirm that a new version of Kindle would target the lucrative textbook market. Nor would he confirm that a new version would have a color screen. Essentially, all Berman did was put the kibosh on any idea that a new Kindle would arrive for the holiday season.

Scott Morrison of Dow Jones spoke to the Association of American Publishers Director of Higher Education, Stacy Skelly.

(She) acknowledged that e-textbook sales accounted for a tiny fraction of overall sales.

“If the Kindle can make things happen, that would be a welcome change,” she said.

However, other AAP sources said they were not aware of any current talks between Amazon and top textbook publishers concerning a new Kindle device.

The textbook market is perfect for Kindle, but it’s clearly not an easy sell to publishers or students. Publishers don’t want to disrupt a very lucrative market and students need a cheaper solution. The device is still expensive and the digital price doesn’t match up well against a used textbook which you might be able to sell back at the end of the semester.

Not to mention that it could be an all or nothing proposition. Will students want Kindle textbooks if only 3 of the 7 required texts can purchased and downloaded?

The drumbeat from Amazon lately is to downplay the Kindle. Kindle might not be a bust, but Amazon seems hell bent on lowering the bar for success.

Amazon is buying Shelfari according to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and confirmed by a Shelfari blog post. The purchase comes approximately three weeks after Amazon acquired Abebooks.

The two purchases are interesting for a couple of reasons. First is the continuing attention Amazon is putting into books. For many years Amazon pursued a ‘mall of America’ approach to eTailing. I believe this was a decent strategy during the days of dial-up connections, single tab browsing and high barriers of entry for eTailing.

But the Internet changed.

It’s a whole lot easier to check other sites with high-speed connections and tabbed browsing. The number of competitors has also increased with easier site creation and eCommerce capability. Don’t get me wrong, Amazon is still a juggernaut but these acquisitions (coupled with the Kindle) seem to indicate that Amazon is returning to its bread-and-butter category. Even without these acquisitions they would be leaders in the space, but with Abebooks and Shelfari they’ve made it clear the 900 pound gorilla isn’t sleeping on the job or resting on its laurels.

The Shelfari acquisition is also interesting since Amazon acquired a 40% stake in LibraryThing with the purchase of Abebooks. The two social reading sites don’t exactly play nice together. LibraryThing CEO Tim Spalding has been critical of Shelfari’s marketing tactics and had the following to say after Amazon acquired Abebooks.

I just wish it were closer to April fools. We could blog the launch of Libraryfari. (Don’t worry, that particular turn of events would happen over my dead body.)

Did Amazon want LibraryThing, but couldn’t convince Spalding to sell? Does Amazon divest itself of LibraryThing or simply retain its stake while running its own direct competitor? It’s an interesting and messy situation.

Shelfari could use the help in my opinion. Of the three social reading site, they are the laggards in both traffic and usability. The former is incontrovertible based on statistics from a number of sources including Quantcast.

The latter is obviously subjective. I’ve used all three sites to essentially syndicate my book reviews. For me Shelfari has a very confusing and non-intuitive UI. It’s sizzle over substance.

LibraryThing on the other hand is more substance over sizzle - perhaps too far in the other direction. It has incredible functionality in an almost Craigslist-like style. They’re light on encouraging viral adoption. The principle seems to be, build it and they will come.

Goodreads, the traffic leader, is an interesting hybrid. They have decent UI, encourage viral adoption and allow users to link out from their reviews. The latter makes Goodreads very attractive from an SEO perspective. Authors, publishers and bloggers can develop very relevant links from Goodreads. Even better, they allow you to control the anchor text, another SEO plus.

Why does SEO matter? First, it attracts bloggers and others who are looking for these types of links. These same people come back often and actually want the site to succeed so that the links become even more powerful, thus helping their blog or specific post gain more traction on search engines. The Goodreads open linking policy is a winner.

In the end, what’s most exciting about this news is that we’re talking about books and reading.

The Kindle sales numbers reported by TechCrunch on August 1st have been refuted by Amazon officials says Tim Beuneman, analyst from McAdams Wright Ragen. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports the news came from Beuneman via “an e-mailed note based on meetings with management.”

Amazon officials gave McAdams Wright Ragen analysts the impression that high-end estimates on Kindle sales reported by TechCrunch and a Citigroup analyst are not reasonable.

Amazon managers “told us that the Kindle is definitely selling very well, but they also said the analysts and reporters giving out these extremely high estimates ‘did not run them by company,” Bueneman wrote.

Extremely high? Interesting choice of words.

I was suspect of the numbers when they were reported but took them at face value. Now, it seems I should have listened to the nagging voice in my head that said the numbers were too high. If Kindle sales were that good, Amazon would be on the roof crowing about the news to anyone who would listen.

My post on those first numbers was restrained. Let’s face it, TechCrunch had a number from a source while I simply had a gut feeling, back of the envelope calculations and socio-economic theories. I won’t make that same mistake twice.

Kindle sales aren’t anywhere near this figure based on Beuneman’s statement, coupled with the ’small amount’ of New York Times subscriptions sold on the Kindle, and the fact that Kindle has only been available for sale (by my calculations) just shy of 5 months.

Amazon also reiterated that it would have a student Kindle in the near future. I’ve advocated for a textbook Kindle. The focus on the textbook market is smart, but also an admission of sorts that the Kindle is not finding a mainstream market.

Textbook publishers might not be willing to change their pricing structures, and secondary market players both online and offline, will not want to give up the lucrative used textbook market. I’d feel more confident if Amazon had a positive relationship with publishers, but they don’t.

Finally, will the iPhone 3G problems make consumers more hesitant to try Kindle? I’d surmised that Kindle would benefit from positive experiences with the iPod, but they could face similar negative effects from the latest iPhone launch. Not to mention that little thing called the economy.

It’s all conjecture until Amazon decides to be a bit more transparent.

The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed people familiar with the situation, is reporting that Barnes and Noble will not be making a bid to buy Borders Books.

Barnes and Noble’s decision is partly due to some of Borders’ long store leases as well as tight credit markets, which would make it tough to put together enough financing to complete such a deal.

In March, Borders put itself up for sale and disclosed potential liquidity problems. It accepted a more than $42 million loan from one of its largest shareholders. A couple of months later, Barnes & Noble confirmed that it had assembled a senior team to consider a possible acquisition of Borders.

“The process continues and we continue to evaluate alternatives,” Borders spokeswoman Anne Roman said this morning. She declined to comment further.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Borders wants to have any sale of the company done by the end of September.

I’m not particularly surprised by the news even though I thought this might come to fruition. One industry insider told me that Barnes and Noble simply doesn’t pull the trigger on purchases that often. And while that is true, I still thought this represented a clear and simple way to consolidate the brick-and-mortar market and compete against retailers like WalMart and Target.

It seems like Barnes and Noble was interested and considering a purchase. Yet, in the end Barnes and Noble wasn’t willing to take on the additional debt run up by Borders nor be constrained by their long leases. If the economic climate were better, Barnes and Noble may have been more bold, but the economy continues to struggle and inflation looms. Discretionary income is going down and books faces an uphill battle in that type of environment.

Borders is now in a strange position. Their most favored suitor has spurned them and no one else seems a likely candidate. Very few competitors are big enough to take on Borders. And no, Amazon is not a possibility. Not a chance. That leaves a financial suitor, someone who believes they can turn Borders around and turn it into a profit center. This seems like a long shot.

Perhaps Barnes and Noble is waiting for a more catastrophic demise of Borders. One in which Barnes and Noble can simply cherry-pick the stores they want, sticking a proverbial thumbnail in the bottom of the chocolate looking for caramel.