By Edward Nawotka
Today’s feature story looks at the importance of developing an API as part of an effective digital distribution strategy. An API allows a publisher to efficiently deliver a multitude of devices. That said, if you talk to many publishers, when it comes to devices, their focus is largely on two: Kindle and iPad, Amazon and Apple. At present, these two devices easily dominate the market in the US and are growing in market share across Europe. What’s interesting to note is how diametrically opposed the two devices are, with Kindle’s single-minded functionality and iPad’s all-purpose POV. In between these devices are a plethora of others — from PCs to Android tablets to hand-held game players — all of which offer readers numerous options.
Recently, I have heard several digital publishers across Latin America and South East Asia argue that the ongoing obsession with Kindle and iPad is shortsighted at best, and elitist at worst. These publishers (whom we will discuss at length in a forthcoming issue of Publishing Perspectives) feel that the readers in their nations, be it Colombia, India, or Indonesia, are just as avid consumers of digital reading materials as those in richer nations, but the high cost of the Kindle and iPad make them inaccessible to most consumers. This, as well as an outright lack of content, means coming up with an alternative distribution strategy. Typically, this means the focusing on devices that the vast majority people already own or are likely to continue owning on into the future: the simple feature phone. The phone is cheap and nearly ubiquitous all over the globe. Could focusing on developing for feature phones — or at least channeling content through an appropriate API — offer a greater number of people, not all of them in rich nations, greater access to the world’s intellectual wealth?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
5 Comments
I have heard this comment about elitism expressed in a multiple of ways even concerning how content is consumed in the US. That poorer and minority communities are being left out of the digital distribution of content. I agree and disagree.
I agree that it is harder to reach a minority community with the good news of what is available and I also disagree that once they are aware, they too become consumers and are engaged.
With smart phones as well as the still useful PDF file, it is possible to send out lots of information about what is available and how to retrieve it on a large number of devices.
To me as an e-book only publisher the real task is still letting people see that it is not the devices or the marketing that are changing how we all consume content but that the ways in which all of this is discussed in the general news sections, among readers and in non-publishing circles has a great deal of bias and mis-information.
Not to make too strong a point here about my own work, but the Itinerant Book Show has proven to be a viable way to transmit lots of information to a very interested audience about how the digital revolution is changing the world of books. In small groups with avid readers, we are able to discuss and learn what it is the readers we meet with both understand and need when it comes to the new era we are entering. It is quite an exciting time to be a publisher, I must say.
Sullivan Street Press is small and climbing out of its own cocoon but we are sure this new revolutionary time will be more than just a profit center for lots of publishers but for writers as well.
I don’t think you can say focusing on the Kindle store is elitist. One reason– a big reason– Amazon’s Kindle store is so successful is that you don’t need a Kindle to read Kindle books. Amazon makes a free Kindle app for just about any device you can name. Apple is much less platform agnostic; you can only use iBooks on the iPad and the iPhone/iPod Touch. You could make a case for those being elitist, but quite frankly, iBooks is not catching on all that well; Apple won’t even say how many books they have sold, which is unusual for them. I think when publishers talk about books for the iPad, they often mean enhanced ebooks, where each book is a standalone app. I don’t think those are that popular anymore, either, because they’re too expensive to produce for anything that’s not already a a best seller.
If you want to talk about people who can’t afford computers with internet access and smart phones, then you could make a case for digital publishing itself being elitist in the sense that when it becomes dominant, those folks will be left behind. But it sounds like you’re saying that poorer countries are ready to go digital, but not to buy iPads and Kindles. I don’t see anyone making them buy either.
The concern in India is more from the point of view that this entire technology will develop and the inflections that will be debated and discussed won’t be based on our reality. We are receiving it as passive consumers, glorifying it simply because it appears in the news coming in from the West. Neither Apple nor Kindle, or the devices in between, are looking to produce an Indian or Indonesian or Columbian edition by taking into account readership patterns and reader behaviour. The indigenous devices are at best imitative and don’t make a significant dent in that regard either. Quality of homegrown devices and availability of digital books remains a challenge in India. Things are changing, but only to keep up with the changes taking place far removed from us.
But this has been true of most things digital, so as consumers we are resigned to it. What is of more concern is that there is very little understanding of DRM among publishers (even less so among technologists who are trying to drive this migration). So, while everyone would like to get on with being seen on digital platforms, it is likely to cause much pain in the near future.
Please note that the correct spelling of our Latin American neighbor is Colombia, not Columbia.
The reason for the perception that publishers prefer Kindle and iPad over other ereaders is that to date Sony and Palm have not been advertising. When you have two competing devices on the open market dominate the advertising world, the others look invisible. The Kindle app is available on many devices which will host it, so it only seems “elitist” for a device maker to load it. It is also not “elitist” for small publishers to flock to an open market for distribution of their econtent wherever they can find it. As a self-publisher, I have to go where the readers are. So when SA publishers feel like they are being “snubbed” maybe they should make a bigger effort to make their books available in eformats which are affordable on the prevailing devices. My two cents.