Barnes & Noble partners with Microsoft to go up against Amazon

Barnes & Noble seems to have gotten enough bloody noses in their battle with Amazon. They’ve decided to bring some extra firepower to the next fight. Microsoft has spent $300 million on Barnes & Noble to buy a 17.6 % stake in a new subsidiary. This gives Microsoft an instant stake in the e-book marketplace. Specifically the new subsidiary will do two things:

1. Build a Microsoft-based e-book platform, based on the Nook,  for the Windows 8 operating system (MS tablets are set to release this fall)

2. Give Microsoft a share in the $12 billion education market for course textbooks and materials

This is a strategy to allow Microsoft to compete with both Amazon and their Kindle, and Apple and their iPad in the e-book marketplace. Everyone else seems to think the same thing and I don’t have a problem with competition in a marketplace that is rapidly becoming a du-opoloy between Amazon and Apple. They are going to face some tough challenges though.

Amazon saw a 34% net increase in their sales in the first quarter of this year. That puts them up to $13.18 billion for their first quarter. Apple is also partnering with a number of textbook publishers and their sales numbers continue to be phenomenal. They both represent strong competition for the new Barnes & Noble/ Microsoft partnership.

It seems like a desperate move from Barnes & Noble, a company straddled with debt from its numerous big box locations that aren’t that profitable anymore, and Microsoft, a company that hasn’t succeed in the tablet market at all. To really judge if this is a good move I’ll take a look at the wisdom of the markets and so far there is a lot of confidence that this partnership can not only succeed but be profitable. Barnes & Noble stock increased 76% on Monday when the news was announced.

This confidence should be a welcome sight for investors but it should also be great news for publishers. If there is another strong player in the marketplace it will provide them with options for selling their books. If the recent government lawsuit against Apple for price-fixing on e-books didn’t concern them, it should have. It was a taste of the future where the owners of the devices dictated terms to the publishers and there wouldn’t be a lot they could do to fight it.

The idea of Amazon being giddy in reponse to this antitrust suit is more than a little sickening. Breaking up monopolies should be the priority of the Department of Justice, not protecting them. Amazon’s success is coming at the cost of the people who create their content in the first place. Without any viable alternatives, creators are forced to turn to a model that offers them whatever Amazon feels is appropriate, not what the market has decided. By discounting e-books Amazon creates cash flow and sales but little profit for the authors. I’m glad that the publishers have decided to take a stand with Apple though. If they had been more innovative and created or supported start-ups who were building tech companies that could have gone up against Amazon they wouldn’t be in this situation. Instead they sat around or were befuddled with confusion while Amazon grew and eventually owned the marketplace. They deserve to take a beating with this suit, it might make them grow into a modern industry. Read the whole story by Jacqui Cheng:

Apple has now publicly responded to accusations that it colluded with publishers to fix e-book prices. In a statement released late Thursday, the company says the launch of its iBookstore in 2010—along with the original iPad—not only brought competition to the market, it also broke “Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry.”

“The [Department of Justice]‘s accusation of collusion against Apple is simply not true,” Apple told several news outlets. “The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry. Since then customers have benefited from eBooks that are more interactive and engaging. Just as we’ve allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore.”

Full Article…

Some data on Apple's iTunes Newsstand Sales

Reblogged from Exact Editions | Blog:

AppleInsider reports that the average daily sale for iTunes Newsstand titles is $70,000.

A new study released on Tuesday reveals that Apple iPad users spend about $70,000 each day on tablet-centric newspapers and magazines purchased through Newsstand for iOS.

The study was conducted by Distimo a research analytics firm. So it can only be based on guesswork. My initial reaction was that this daily total sounds rather small; from our own experience with 50 apps in the market, I would have supposed that the total sales from over 2,000 apps now in the iTunes newsstand would be quite a bit higher.

Read more… 476 more words

Currently those successful newspapers and magazines are targeted at the right demographic, the people who buy iPads, it will be interesting to see how the media business outside of that demographic is going to achieve this kind of initial success.

BioShock to God of War: How Game Stories Are Made

We talk with video game storytellers about the challenges of writing for games

Writing for video games is a very particular sort of art – an under-appreciated one, if you ask some. It’s well known that games can be an exceptionally hard medium to write for, given the inherent options of player freedom and how that can affect a game’s narrative. Games, quite simply, face issues that linear media like TV and film don’t have to deal with.

GamesIndustry International caught up with several notable video game storytellers to gain some insight into the process behind creating compelling narrative in gaming and the challenges storytellers face.

Full Article…

Chronicle: Flying People in New York…”Awesome video, what’s Chronicle?”

The upcoming film, Chronicle, hired thinkmodo to come up with a viral video campaign that would capture some of the public’s attention. Thinkmodo has made a business out of creating viral videos, one of their most recent successes was iPad Head Girl, which got over a million hits on YouTube. This time, thinkmodo took one of the elements from the film, the main characters gain the ability to fly, and turned it into something real that people could actually witness. The video “Flying People in New York” is going to get a reaction, not only from the video but the people who witnessed the event and might share and upload their own version of the experience.

The video is also paired with a film hub based in Facebook that allows the various photos and videos to be brought together in a social space. Although the Facebook page provides a number of obvious clues about the nature of the film, the viral video on YouTube doesn’t provide a lot of context about why the Flying Peope event happened.

I went through the comments and there were a number of people commenting about how much they liked the video but they didn’t know what “Chronicle” was actually about. The same problem is going to be faced anybody who decided to take videos or photos of the event themselves and share it with their own network. There are going to be a lot of people who would have enjoyed the experience without ever knowing that it was tied to a creative property. It is a great example of one of the challenges faced by transmedia design. When you are creating an experience you don’t necessarily want to have to explain it. A lot of ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) use rabbit holes that come with very little explanation, they are designed to spark your curiousity and it is up to you to follow it down the hole.

Flying people over New York has definitely sparked a lot of curiousity but it is obvious that a lot of people don’t know how to take that curiousity down into the rabbit hole that will lead them to a more complete story (preferably to the point where they buy a ticket and see the film). Marketing companies are going to continue to face this challenge when they are trying to engage an audience with transmedia, they want to create an experience that weaves into the narrative of everyone experiencing that event. They also want that person to take the next step and get involved with the creative property that marketing company has been paid to promote. A lot of people don’t have the literacy needed to “read” a transmedia experience and know that there is something more to follow afterwards.

It means we’re in a really interesting place where there is a lot of tension between blantant advertising and what I would call a piece of art. Advertising is trying to persuade you to make a purchase decision. Art is something different, in this case it seems to be about creating a shared experience with an individual. Although I recognize that the execution of that experience was original and innovative, I think the next step is lowering the barrier to the next obvious question being posed by people “But what does it mean?”. I doubt there is an easy answer for that, the last thing I would have wanted to see was a flying person trailing a banner with a QRcode, it would have ruined the entire experience. The great thing about this space is that the solution to the problem is going to be pretty creative as well.

Transmedia gets provincial funding

The Ontario government has a Entertainment and Creative Cluster funding program that is now supporting transmedia development. There are a number of areas that are being supported, including 3D film, media portals and Transmedia.

Ryerson University is developing a Transmedia Production Acceleration Program that will help develop the digital media skills necessary to produce Transmedia.

You can read more in the press release.

CES: Tablets and Comics

I’ve been watching CES news and almost every presentation, including the latest Honeycomb operating system from Google, has a sequence on digital books. You can catch it in this video clip.

Honeycomb is designed for tablets and should be an experience that is as good as the iPad. The question why aren’t they selling as much as the Apple product?

Well, I think the answer has a lot to do with how those companies are being run. Android has focused on making some great tech, a goal that they have definitely achieved. What they haven’t been quite as good at is focusing on how Android technology is going to mean you have a better/ cooler/ more creative/ less stressful/ “add in adjective” life. Apple aggressively went out and got a lot of fantastic content and created a market for a lot of great apps. Both of those made their hardware a part of the productive and recreational lives of a lot of people. Android is going to start thinking the same way and comics should be part of that strategy.

From the previous blog post it is obvious that Sony has taken an aggressive stance towards getting the best content it can for its e-readers. Nintendo is going to need to do the same thing if they want their e-book store to succeed on their new gaming hardware. It isn’t just about aggregating large collections of books either. Google has Google Books hooked into their Android tablets. You would think that a free book collection of that size would have readers buying up Android tablets all the time. This isn’t happening and what has happened is that Google has a collection of millions of books that most people don’t want to read. It isn’t about the most content, it is about the best content.

Comics are going to play a part in that strategy for the best content. The tablet that can access the best quality comics and provide the best reading experience is going to have another check mark next to it when buyers compare their options for purchasing a new tablet. There are a lot of solutions out there for buying and viewing comics from Comixology, Graphic.ly and The Fabler. Comixology has the largest collection at the moment and arguably the best quality content. Although the content is there I don’t think is that any tablet can claim that they’ve created the best comic viewing experience. Something to consider when manufacturers look for ways to differentiate themselves in the market.

I’m always interested to see how new technology can facilitate an existing experience or even change it. I’ll be keeping an eye on CES releases over the next few days to see if any tablet announcements might be thinking about how they are going to do that for the comic book.

Nintendo to Offer eBook Store with the Wii U

By Michael Kozlowski

Nintendo is in the process of starting its new ebook store that will be part of its Wii U ecosystem. If you are unfamiliar with this, its basically Nintendo’s new video game console that will be released later this year. The hyping factor is that it comes with a touchscreen tablet that doubles as a controller to interact with your unit. One of the great things about the Wii U controller is that it will tap into the Nintendo store to download indie games and apps, and soon books.

It is said that Nintendo plans on rolling out the Wii U Digital Reading program that will stock not only ebooks but also magazines and newspapers. You will be able to read them right on the tablet that comes with the console or view them on your TV. The company also plans on rolling out a games section that will have official strategy guides in digital form.

Read More…

via Good E-Reader

A Good Time to be in Digital Comics

The cannibalization of sales in the paperback market has already happened. I don’t mean that paperback sales have been dropping. I’m talking about the drop in sales of printed paperback novels in favour of e-book sales. It looks like the same shift is just starting to happen in comics.

In the first week of September, three of the five most popular iPad apps in the Book category were comic apps. The ComiXology app came in second and was closely followed by the official Marvel and DC Comics apps.

This is more than a case of novelty and free comics driving downloads. The ComiXology app was also the second highest grossing iPad app in all categories. The reason for this seems to be convenience. DC Comics is simultaneously releasing print and digital comics on the same day. This allows readers to make a choice about how they want to read their favourite comic. The sales numbers seem to indicate that readers are leaning towards the digital.

These new apps are currently offering a single way to purchase comics, you need to find and purchase each comic. I think there is going to be a lot of demand for a variety of purchase options that are convenient for the reader. The readers are gonig to decide how they want to read digital comcis. It might be by subscription or based on a page model. The key is providing flexible purchase options for readers. Consumers are going to decide what is most convenient for them and app developers are going to need to listen carefully.

It is important to remember that Comixology is also working closely with Diamond distributors so there is a lot of financial support and industry pressure for the Comixology business model to dominate the marketplace. It keeps the status quo for publishers and distributors which is exactly what they want. They already know how to make money with existing business models and they are keenly interested in keeping it alive. This doesn’t mean that their model won’t continue to be successful but it does mean that there is a lot of room for innovation in the world of digital comics.

The Google/ Motorola acquisition: What this means for Transmedia and Social TV

There are a lot of reasons for Google to buy Motorola. Access to hardware and patents seem to topping the list on blogs this morning. Most of those conversations are about Google protecting themselves from Apple and Microsoft as both of those companies focus on generating income through patent lawsuits. Google needs more ammunition in those fights. Despite the obvious legal stuff, the acquisition could have a major impact on transmedia production and social TV.

Google has been trying to become a content broadcaster for awhile. Its acquisition of YouTube was just the beginning. Owning Motorola gives them a hardware division that will let them create the same kind of ecosystem that has made Apple so successful. They will be able manage both content distribution and the platform for delivery. Content and apps in the iTunes store have made Apple’s mobile hardware strategy extremely successful.

Transmedia

Transmedia becomes relevant when you realize that Google has also bought Motorola’s Medios software along with the company. Medios was designed as a white label product that could allow content providers to integrate all the walled content related to a creative property into a multi-screen experience for an audience. It fully embraced the belief that TV was going to become an internet-delivered form of entertainment. Motorola’s design decision would allow  creative properties to utilize any form of technology that was supported by the internet. Now Google has the ability to integrate distribution channels from the internet with apps, video, audio, interactive media and audience-created content. I realize that a collection of related media isn’t a transmedia experience, but what will it take to assemble those pieces into something that could be called a narrative? I’m sure someone at Google has thought about it but it is a complex problem. Breaking down walls between content is one challenge, giving that collection of media a meaning that resonates with an audience is just as big of a challenge. It will be exciting to see how that space begins to evolve.

Social TV

Google is also working on integrating your life through their new offering, Google+. They already own a lot of services, like Picasa, that are designed to integrate all aspects of personally created media in a single place and now you can share it with your “Circles”. Google’s integration into multi-screen hardware and software solutions are going to give them the opportunity to collect your favorite television shows, music, books and whatever else you enjoy into your social experience as well. Once you have your media integrated into a single vertical it isn’t difficult to envision how you’d be interacting with your friends on Google+ using your Google/ Motorola smartphone while you all watched the latest episode of your favourite television channel being broadcast by YouTube’s Professional Content channel on your smartTV.

The Future

It could be a really exciting time for the evolution of transmedia and social TV. A Google content channel that allows innovation from third party content providers would be ideal. It would provide the first real opportunity for content producers who get transmedia and social media to weave a narrative through all of those channels and give audiences a new kind of entertainment experience. It also wouldn’t hurt Google if audiences started finding the most meaningful and entertaining experiences using Google’s hardware and software. I’m sure someone at Google is already thinking about that too.