Readers read books (I know, it’s obvious, but bear with me) and I believe the acceptance of audiobooks stumbles over the need to switch modes between dealing with a physical product to dealing with discs or abstract digital files. It is the same stumbling block podcasting has had: the technology gets in the way of the user experience.

Playaway Digital have come up with a commercial distribution device that fits precisely the model I described. Pop over to my personal blog for more on how audiobook distribution may be about to change for the better.

Ingram Digital, an Ingram Content company focused on solutions for digital content management, hosting, distribution and promotion, today announced it has acquired the iofy digital audiobook platform from Audiofy Corporation.

This move further enhances Ingram Digital’s audio services across all sectors and adds additional experience to its expanding team of industry experts.

This comes after Ingram have spent the past year or more working with the platform’s originators in what they describe as “various digital initiatives”. Sounds to me like they took the system for a test-drive for a year!

According to Sol Young on his blog (he heads up the iofy development team), things are looking rosy for iofy. Sol is looking forward to the deal’s potential for the platform:

I’m confident our acquisition will bring incredible value and additional ingenuity. We’ll now be building something amazing, which iofy wouldn’t have had the resources for on its own.

Publishers have for some time been crying about the cost and logistics of developing audiobooks in the various formats required for both physical and digital distribution. With Ingram securing a solid offering in solving those problems, perhaps we will see even more audiobooks flooding the market.

Personally, I think the more options we have for consuming what an author has created, the better.

Read the full Ingram press release here.

Companies such as Audible, through their alliances with iTunes, are able to control audiobook distribution via DRM (Digital Rights Management), a legacy of the protection work done by the music industry to combat online piracy and encourage responsible online purchase of music. Ebook distribution has similar schemes in place to lock-down the title to the original purchaser - something even the printed copy is unable to achieve.

Given the sometimes apparent obsession by all arms of the publishing industry to protect distribution - because it is far more about distribution than it is about rights, despite their cries to the contrary - audiobooks are primarily distributed on CD, which can be very easily copied onto electronic formats, such as mp3, and distributed. Or even simply duplicated to other CDs. CD audio protection is available, but in nearly all cases can be circumvented with a little research and effort.

What we need for audio is a method of distribution identical to that of the printed book version, at which time the audio distribution becomes a direct purchase option for the material.

Cheap mp3 players

Mp3 players are flooding out of manufacturing countries such as China. Low in capabilities compared to the models costing multiple hundreds, they are, nevertheless, quite capable of delivering CD quality sound from the stored audio files.  They are also frighteningly cheap to produce, as is suggested by the number of giveaways and dirt-cheap units available in supermarkets.

Produce an audiobook, burn it into the memory of a cheap mp3 player, remove the ability to that player to do anything other than play the pre-installed audio, and you have a printed book-like distribution device with the only option to replicate and redistribute being connecting the audio output to an audio recording device (no different to the equivalent passing of a printed book through a scanner or photocopier).

I am convinced this is a model that will both appease the publishers while providing a viable, stand-alone means of acquiring audiobooks for the consumer.

Industries begin to disintegrate in their perceived value once just about anyone can get their hands on the tools of the trade. I have personally seen this within the design industry as what were once useful tools for the creative and graphic artist are now so commonplace that anyone can claim to be a professional based on software knowledge despite an often clear lack of core design or creative knowledge. Even back in the mid 90s I remember reacting in horror to working with a top level packaging designer who would selected a visual effect based not on the requirements of the creative brief, but the latest Photoshop plugin. Over the years this increased and has diluted the perceived skill in creative design.

We are seeing a similar effect in the audio and visual media spaces with independent producers lowering the audience expectation bar every day. Once the professionals start lowering their own sights, the industry is doomed.

Will publishing follow the same path?

I am not sure it will.
I have no doubt it is in for a revolution - nothing sudden, but it is coming nevertheless. The online world allows anyone to now market their self-published book to a global audience. No longer are budding authors spending months driving around bookstores to broaden their outlets, they are doing it online with virtual book signings, virtual interviews, and good old social networking.

None of this, however, will overcome a poorly written book. I do not feel that readers will have their quality sights lowered to the extent that inferior works will cause anything more than a brief blip on the radar.

The reason is simple: readers have to buy books. In whatever form, a financial transaction takes place and disappointment therefore becomes far more personally focused than, say, having wasted half an hour watching a terrible television program. Once bitten in their purse, a reader might find author loyalty failing to encourage another risky transaction at the next release.

On the heels of the recent WGA writer’s strike, book publishers are already showing authors their empty pocket linings stating that the swing to digital publishing and distribution is a long term, low-profit investment for them.

It will be years before we are even close to making money from this and I think we should see a little bit of latitude from authors.

Large publishing houses are stating that although there are lower physical production costs for an electronic distribution, titles still require editorial, sales, marketing, promotion and publicity. Add to this list the new costs of converting files into multiple formats [eh?],  digital warehousing, anti-piracy protection,  and content and metadata tracking.  Random House have suggested this additional investment will mean they will not turn a profit until beyond 2013.

The argument about royalties centres around a proposed 15% royalty on net receipts from digital sales. It is higher than the standard 10% for hardback sales, but significantly lower than the current 25% rate for ebook sales in the US.

Ebook makeup is still extremely low, however with less than 1% of the entire US book market. At such a rate, it is not surprising that the costs per unit sold seem pretty high right now.

The question for me is whether the publishers are not forward thinking enough to appreciate that aggregate costs will drop significantly as the market grows, or whether they are merely looking to engineer inflated profits when that time comes.

It is a difficult space to predict, but I feel that publishers need to break away from seeing the digital market as simply a non-paper version of the printed market. As the music industry has been forced to learn over the past year or two, the it is the millions of digital consumers who will ultimately dictate how the digital space is exploited.

We currently see top name artists pushing their content out for free (Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead), and new artists doing the same to build reputation and audience. I suspect we will see the same for the publishing world. Who might be the first big-name author to distribute a brand new book in electronic form, completely free of charge?

With author royalty rates low enough to force many a ’successful’ author to maintain their writing as a part-time sideline to their day-job, the need is has never been more urgent to ensure they are being paid every penny they are owed in a timely fashion.

I have to say, as someone who will likely one day have a deal in place with a publisher, this is very worrying, and smacks of little respect for the author as a business partner in the creation and selling of books.

Some additional stats from that survey:

• 79% believed they should sell directly to the consumer (as opposed to through bookstores)
• 56% said they already did
• 89% believe there is still a place for the high street bookstore (I like this one the most!)
• 83% believe consumers would soon completely accept ebooks as a valid way to consume books (despite only 35% of the respondents admitting to have used an ebook themselves)

The plan is to include a new item near the barcode on the back of children’s books stating the recommended age range: 5+, 7+, 9+, 11+ and 13+/teen. These are to start appearing on reprints around now, with new  publications including them from the autumn.

Elaine McQuade (MD, Scholastic Children’s Books):

Potential book buyers were putting books down because they didn’t know where they stood.

It has taken almost three years of debate to make what seems a very obvious move to become reality and once more demonstrates how slow the huge publishing powers can be. I’ll bet the debates were more about power, control, and influence than doing what is best for their readers.

But the meetings and discussions are not as yet over, with the ‘pioneers’ reaching out to any and all bookselling businesses, and libraries, in the hope everyone will understand their motivation and the potential bonus of this move.

Is it really that tough to understand that people these days need a little help in determining what is best for their children’s edication and entertainment?

In a bookstore, I would suggest this was less of an issue. Trained and knowledgeable staff on hand to help guide potential purchases mean wrong choices are minimised. But this should be a boost for booksales in places such as supermarkets.

The piece covers the story of Catherine O’Flynn, and author who had her book, What Was Lost, rejected by fourteen literary agents, yet won the increasingly prominent Costa First Novel Award. In response, the Independent’s Literary Editor, Boyd Tonkin, offered his input on the expectations of new authors.

“Many illusions about the wealth of up-and-coming authors arise because the media publish wildly exaggerated estimates of the sums involved. Next time you read about a £1m advance, try dividing that by ten – at least.”

He goes on to say that the hope of giving up the day job is less than realistic:

Plenty of acclaimed writers of fiction never give up their previous occupation, or else acquire a new on (in teaching or journalism, for example)”

That last statement troubles me as it is far too black and white to offer a complete picture, and one should note the use of ‘acclaimed writers’, which, as O’Flynn’s experience with literary agents demonstrates, can be entirely disconnected with successful or popular writers.

Many writers may not give up the day job more out of choice than financial necessity. They may simply not be the kinds of authors who have a whole stream of novels queuing to get out, or, and with the level of effort required to produce a novel, not wish to be a novelist full-time. Being a successful, or acclaimed writer, surely does not exclude the possibility of doing it part-time.

I just came across this while desperately trying not to start work this morning, thanks to Stumbleupon.

The complete text of Neil Gaiman’s bestselling novel American Gods is available to read online thanks to Harper Collins’ Browse Inside service. This service provides online access to a total of 500 books, enabling you to read any part of them prior to purchasing.

There is no download option, of course, simply online reading in your browser. I guess this is no different to being sat in the comfy sofa of a bookshop perusing your potential purchases as the online reading experience is going to make it a challenge to get through the entire book - but by no means impossible.

This is an interesting move for a major publisher and I’ll bet there are armies of suits in the halls of Harper Collins suffering sleepless nights over the idea of making stuff available for free on the internet. They know full well, however, that th enumer of people who will use this service for anything more than a pre-sale taster is extremely low, so it acts as a promotional piece rather than an alternative to buying.

Once again, great to see the big publishers testing the online world.

Just go and take a look at the Readius.

• Let’s laugh at Kindle’s expense and have a look at what the Readius has to offer:
• e-book reader - of course, that’s what it is all about in the first place. A revolutionary flexible screen technology, with the good old mono screen of electronic book readers.
• Audio player - listen to music or podcasts as you read. Nice touch
• RSS - access news, information, blogs, via RSS feeds
• E-mail - both POP and IMAP e-mail support for multiple accounts
• Telephone - that’s right, it’s a mobile phone, too!

True Portability

This is the world’s first consumer device to be released with a flexible, rollable display. These displays appeared last year to some significant excitement, but it has taken a little while for manufacturers to find a proper use for them.As you can see from the Readius site (link above, the screen folds over the main body of the device, resulting in a pocket-sized gadget that, as it’s a phone, too, means less to carry around.

The Kindle is much less portable. About the only time I ever have to sit and read properly is the two-hour commute to the office (not daily, thankfully). I can picture myself popping the Readius in and out of a pocket between trains very easily.

Is there a but?

One area the Readius may fail, and fail big, is the user interface. There’s no point having all this lovelyness without the user experience of both getting your stuff onto the device - Kindle does have that sorted with its wifi access - and navigating and using it once it is there. Remains to be seen whether they have got it right.

2008 looks like it might finally be the year of the electronic book reader, which is truly going to make the publishing industry sit up and listen to the changing winds of readers. Equally important is seeing viable competition to the Kindle likely encouraging Kindle2.0 to become a significantly better product for th user. The space is hotting up nicely!