Oprah Endorses Kindle

Earlier this week, I visited the Amazon site for what I don't recall and on their front page was a video with Oprah's smiling face. In my ignorance, I thought she had already endorsed the Kindle and I had somehow missed it. Silly me. On her show today she announced the gadget has changed her life. Will the endorsement change the sales curve for the product? Probably.

Here is the blurb from the show: (Link)

This summer, Oprah received a gift that she says changed her life. "I'm telling you, it is absolutely my new favorite thing in the world," she says.Meet the Amazon Kindle™, a wireless portable reading device with instant access to more than 190,000 books, blogs, newspapers and magazines. Whether you're in bed or on the train, Kindle lets you think of a book and get it in less than a minute.As a special offer for Oprah viewers, Amazon.com is giving $50 off the price of Kindle. Enter the promotional code OPRAHWINFREY during the checkout process at Amazon.com to receive the discount. This offer is valid through November 1, 2008.Code for $50 off the price of Kindle: OPRAHWINFREY

Go to Amazon.com to learn more and order your Kindle today! Plus, you will receive an additional 10% off the price of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (regularly $9.99 Kindle/$17.63 Hardcover.) No promotional code is necessary. Come back later today for more from this show.

And in shameless merchandising you can visit my bookstore to make your purchase: HERE.

Rolling Stone Revamps

I recently subscribed to a free year of Rolling Stone magazine and this is the first time I have really looked at it since a girl friend bought me a sub when I was 18. They just revamped the format of the print edition and I must say I really like it. Gone is the newprint larger format version and in comes a more refined, mature dare I say 'professional' version.

Here is Wenner on the change:

The large format was one of Rolling Stone's trademarks — and it became a physical reminder of our roots in San Francisco and of a vital time in our cultural history. That's a lot of history, and it is not without a wistful feeling of sweet memories of those days that we make this change.

It was not a decision we made lightly. We felt this was the right move but remained a little uncertain, knowing this was not just up to us but also in the hands of the large number of passionate and longtime Rolling Stone readers (there are nearly 13 million of you, when you count the number of people who share their copy).

Thus, a few months ago, while putting together our annual summer double issue, we produced a version of that edition in the size and style of the one you now hold and mailed it to 3,000 subscribers to get their thoughts. The response was a major surprise: Readers loved it. We realized that the only reason to resist change was nostalgia.

Listen to Authors

The BBC is reporting the release by the British library of a trove of recorded interviews with authors. They discuss their work and issues pertinent to the times in which they are interviewed. It's good stuff. BBC.

Raymond Chandler is interviewed by James Bond author Ian Fleming, John Steinbeck discusses his reasons for writing The Grapes of Wrath, and Arthur Miller talks about his marriage to actress Marilyn Monroe.

Mr Fairman said: "These two new British Library audio collections form the largest survey of historic recordings by English-language authors and playwrights ever published.

"With many previously unpublished BBC recordings selected from the extensive collections of the British Library Sound Archive, these compilations will offer a fascinating insight into the lives and work of these great authors".

Amazon.com Shares Pummeled

Amazon reported their quarterly numbers yesterday and while those results just about met expectations it was their forecast that has thrown everyone into a tizzy. The company has brought their full year forecast (made in July) down from $20.10billion to between $18.46 - $19.46 billion. (This in itself is a ridiculously wide spread).

According to Bloomberg, over 40% of Amazon's operating profit comes in the Christmas quarter and they like other retailers are expecting a lackluster season.

Shares after trading are down 15%. Shares closed at $49.99 but are expected to open around $42.

Google Chart.

As an aside, Barnes & Noble has slipped below a market cap of $1billion.

Here is the transcript from Seeking Alpha. Those curious about why those supposed hundreds of thousands of Kindle units sold aren't impacting the numbers will remain frustrated.

Kindle selection continues to grow. Since inception, we have more than doubled the number of books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs available to be delivered wirelessly in less than one minute. Kindle titles already account for more than 10% of unit sales for books that are available in both digital and print formats. We’ve ramped up manufacturing capacity over the past 10 months and Kindles are in stock and available for immediate shipment. Kindle sales since launch have significantly exceeded our expectations. We will not introduce the new version of the Kindle until next year at the earliest.

And this: They plan to make it up in volume:

And then on the Kindle? How do you see that affecting your long-term profitability in the book segment?

Jeffrey P. Bezos Well, one thing that I think you could imagine happening over the long-term there is that the prices of books will be cheaper, so most of the books that we are offering on Kindle today are $9.99, even if they are $20 or $25 in print form. And so you can see that -- I think that probably the best way to answer your question is we would hope to sell many more units and make less money per unit but all in, have a very strong business.

So, as we are coming to believe Amazon controls pricing in the e-book world! Consumers will expect an e-Book to cost $9.99 and publishers will not be able to do any thing about it.

Reed Business Sale and Choicepoint

The Financial Times reports that the price Reed may get for the sale of RBI will be far below their original expectation of £1.25Bill. In the article they quote someone suggesting a sale price of £750mm with the expectation that a sale would go ahead regardless.

The deal's financing is now in place but the sticking point is the deterioration in trading at RBI into 2009 as the economy weakens. Reed would not comment on a lowest acceptable price.

One analyst said: "I think it is worth Reed's while to sell low. If RBI went for £750m rather than £1bn, all they lose is £250m of cash. While it is helpful to have that on the balance sheet, at the end of the day it is only £10m of extra interest.

"The alternative is that . . . the market automatically values RBI in the sum of parts at £750m-£800m anyway and you get left with a cyclical business that will see downgrades and will be under pressure for a couple of years."

There are three groups with a serious interest but the article does not indicate when a sale will be announced. Reed will be pressing for a resolution as soon as possible.

In other related news, the Federal Trade Commission is requiring that Reed divest some part of Choicepoint in order for approval of the acquisition to proceed. The FTC believes that the combination of the Reed and Choicepoint public record business would diminish competition significantly and as a result Reed is being required to sell a part of this business to Thomson West. (Link: From September press release)

To eliminate the anticompetitive effects of the proposed acquisition, the FTC will require Reed Elsevier to divest assets related to ChoicePoint’s AutoTrackXP and Consolidated Lead Evaluation and Reporting (CLEAR) electronic public records services to Thomson Reuters Legal Inc., within 15 days after the proposed acquisition is consummated.

Through its LexisNexis division, Reed Elsevier provides electronic public records services to law enforcement customers in direct competition with ChoicePoint’s AutoTrackXP and recently, ChoicePoint’s CLEAR, a new and advanced electronic public records service. Together, the two firms account for over 80 percent of the approximately $60 million U.S. market for the sale of electronic public records services to law enforcement customers.

“The proposed acquisition would have eliminated the intense head-to-head competition between LexisNexis and ChoicePoint that has lowered prices and led to product innovations for a critical law enforcement tool,” said David P. Wales, Acting Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. “The action announced today ensures that law enforcement customers will continue to benefit from this competition as they attempt to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated criminal activity.”

Thoughts on Orphans

Peter Brantley has a thoughtful piece on digitization and orphan works. The essay is a prelude to a series of articles he edited for the journal Library Trends (Link).

Here is a sample from his introductory essay:

Like many, I’ve recently been thinking a lot about the availability of books in online searchable repositories, and the likely outcomes for publishers, libraries, and the public. I have even been considering the impact of a rapprochement between publishers, authors, and Google over books whose availability is most savagely contested, largely because their legal status has been brought into a hazy dawn of uncertainty by the startling recent shifts in availability that catch them stranded between public goods and private property.

A significant portion of these implicated works are likely to be out-of-print, of uncertain copyright status, and no longer present in any publisher’s archive—available only in the less-visited shelves of the largest research libraries. This substantial category, numbering in the millions of books, would undoubtedly incorporate a large number of what are called “orphan works,” where the presence of any identifiable copyright owner in the work, or its constituent parts, is not known, and resilient to easy resolution as a result of poorly recorded mergers and acquisitions, lost archival contracts, publisher insolvency, and myriad other reasons. In turn, some of this orphan material is almost certainly public domain; the original copyright never renewed, and long since expired.

Crisis What Crisis

John Bird and John Fortune on the banking and subprime crisis broadcast a year ago.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzJmTCYmo9g