Windows 8 pt2 - second guessing the future

As developers and publishers we have to make regular bets on where different platforms and devices are going to be in the next year or two. I don't look further out than that, as I mostly think things are too volatile, and if I can't turn our little ship around in that time frame, I'm not doing my job.

So I was interested to see some new Forrester research into predicted market shares in 2016.

For Windows 8, Microsoft are talking a lot about a unified experience across tablet, desktop and phone. With the phone piece, I think they have a way to go, but I can see the tablet/desktop differentiation blurring.

For the Win8 app we just built, we made a bet. We'd rather be a big fish in a small pond that's growing fast than a small fish in an enormous pond. This used to be called first mover advantage. Our app will be published in the Windows Store in the Books and Reference category. I expect around 250 apps to be there on Friday, so we should get some attention. Discoverability won't be a problem, even if overall numbers might be. Contrast that with the Apple App Store, where there are currently 28,255 book apps. We'd be buried.

Now the bet wouldn't make any sense if the Windows Store doesn't grow, but we know that Microsoft will sell 350m Win8 licenses a year if they track the progress of Win7. If you combine that, with the increased relevance in the tablet sector that Forrester highlight, and mix in people's habituation with buying from online stores and I think it will grow.

Which isn't to say we aren't building an iOS app as well, of course...

Windows 8 - Brilliant and/or Flawed?

I've been spending the last month or so working on a Windows Store app, and, as a result have installed the OS on a tablet and desktops. I'll come to telling about the app in a week or so when it's live, but the experience of using Windows 8 in anger has been interesting. And it's a tale of two halves.

On tablets, Win8 is a gamechanger. iOS is a slick OS and an iPad works great for the tasks we've grown accustomed to using a tablet for like web browsing, mail, gaming and some note-taking maybe. But how many people do you know who've ditched their MacBook and run only on an iPad? Pretty tough to do that, what with missing or hobbled key apps, small HD, no USB etc

The Win8 experience has made it possible or even likely to run a slate as your only computer. USB and HDMI out means you can plug in your monitor and keyboard, SD card slot means you can drop in another 64Gb of storage at low cost, and you have a full fat work PC. But then you come to the OS experience on a desktop. And I have to say there's a learning curve. In an attempt to develop one OS to rule them all, the erstwhile Metro UI elements mean you'll be scratching around for a while even trying to find things like Power Off and Control Panels (or maybe that was just me). Navigating the UI with a mouse is perfectly possible, but it feels like eating grains of rice with chopsticks.

In a touch environment, the whole thing makes sense. The UI makes iOS look dated, the UX elements that aggregate feeds into the Start page make life easier, and the fluid touch interactions that take some learning (from within any app, just swipe from the top of the screen to the bottom to close it) soon become intuitive. Shifting back, iOS felt clumsy, jabbing at buttons the whole time. Snap View even works well, running an app just in part of the screen while you get on with something else.

So I think Microsoft is to be applauded in trying to bridge this divide - one OS for all you do. There will be a vocal minority (majority?) who will not learn how to get the best from the OS and hate it because it's not Win7 (or even XP). But for those who give it a couple of days and realise they can run everything from one device, it's a gamechanger. Apple showed us how to build a tablet. And maybe Microsoft have shown us how it grows up.

Giants in the Room

When Gregory the Great sent Augustine to Christianise the inhabitants of this dank isle in 597 ("Thank you Holy Father. What exactly did I do to annoy you so much?") he settled at Canterbury as being a nice spot. I imagine him choosing it rather as I choose a place to lay out the picnic rug - largely random, but with some logic (like less molehills).

Seven years later the diocese of Rochester was founded, a fact of which they are very proud, and I was there this week to look at the Textus Roffensis, one of the earliest extant books of law, and the one which apparently sets out the concept of financial compensation for injury rather than corporal retribution. A fact for which ambulance-chasing lawyers the world over must be very thankful.

In the meeting I was sitting next to an elderly conservator, who spoke slowly and with some difficulty, and occasionally seemed to veer somewhat off-topic. At the end of the meeting I knew more about limp vellum binding and alum-tawed hide than I thought likely to be useful, but not much about the conservator.

Talking to Claire Breay and Alixe Bovey afterwards and then googling him, I discovered Chris Clarkson is the godfather of modern conservation.

Summoned dramatically to Florence in 1966 he rescued thousands of books from the devastation of the flood, working in a temporary conservation studio in the power station.

From there he was recruited by the Library of Congress to set up their first conservation studio with a budget of $6m "And in 1971", as Christopher told me  "$6m meant something". He went on to work in many places, eventually coming back to the UK and now consults for a select group that includes my friends of the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage.

It's often my privilege to sit in meetings with learned and erudite people, many of whom wear their learning and reputations on their sleeves. It's a delight then, to stumble into someone who has genuinely changed the face of a profession and who's main concern was making sure his sat-nav could get him out of the Rochester one-way system.

When Developers Become Publishers

For almost 20 years now, we've been building websites and applications for libraries and museums. Fairly heavy code too, some of it. We won the British Computer Society, Best Web Technology Award a couple of years back for some 3D C# craziness.

So, when ebooks emerged we took a look and jumped in, leveraging our clients existing assets to generate a little revenue for them and us. At the same time, I started reading lots of blogs and articles, as I knew nothing about publishing, either the industry or best practice. I found myself in a very alien world. Undoubtedly lots of very smart people battling with sudden tectonic shifts. But some things that I took for granted seemed to complete blindside or outrage publishers and authors. So here are some of the glaring differences I've seen as we've tried to straddle what are (for now) two industries.

1. Change is normal. The practice of publishing doesn't seem to have changed much from Wynkyn de Worde to the present day. From the outside, change (until recently) seems slow. Even meetings are scheduled months ahead. In software development, change is very rapid. A year ago Flash was the default choice for rich internet applications. Now it's being shunned by all and sundry. The iPad turns up and everyone needs an app. As an industry, you need flexibility built in, as well as good antennae telling you what's coming next. As publishing and software development merge, publishers need to be able to react fast.


2. Expect conflict. Right back from when Netscape was battling with IE, we've had to deal with conflict. Code something for one browser, and it won't necessarily look good in another. Build a Flash version, and you'll likely need an HTML version for disability-compliance. Build a regular site, and you'll need a mobile version too (although these are now conflating). I hear regular cries of "when will there be one ebook standard?". I can guess at "never", and I know that developers accept this as just the way it is. Those late nights in the studio with take-out pizza? Testing and bug-fixing on all those platforms.


3. The code isn't hard. The codebase that makes up ebooks is not hard. Javascript, CSS, XHTML etc are pretty basic tools. Finding developers who are competent is a whole lot easier than finding good Objective-C people to code your next app.


4. International Rights. Coming from software, international rights variations for ebooks seem like a piece of legacy nonsense. I can release an app into the wild, why not an ebook? If someone can strip the DRM and mail an ebook to their friend on another continent, why can't I just sell them a book?


5. It's the beginning of the end, or maybe the end of the beginning. Either way, it's early days. Publishers are still finding out whether apps work, what the best price points are for ebooks, how to market them, what sort of sales volumes to expect from each platform and are still defining workflows. Me, I'm still waiting on epub3 adoption, the Kindle Fire, Nook and KF8 formats to arrive in Europe (we're over here, turn right at New York and keep going till you hit Ireland...), Apple to fix discoverability and the secret of a really good flat white. At this stage in proceedings, I expect things to be messy. And they are. In web terms we're at about 1995.


6. Disintermediation happens.There are still lots of web design agencies out there, but since the advent of Blogger and Wordpress, many individuals and companies have cut them out of the loop and just built their own web presence. Wordpress now powers 22% of all new domain registrations. It may not be as good as a bespoke site, but it isn't £30,000 either. As the tools emerge to create and market ebooks, writers of all sorts will seek to cut out middlemen. iBooks Author is the beginning of this, but expect something similar from the Microsoft/Nook deal.


7. Users decide. If a website or blog or Facebook page goes up, there's no quality control or screening from a third party. It's success or failure is determined by the community, and it's all there in black and white in the log files. Traditional publishing moves the gatekeeping upstream ("We really liked the manuscript, but..."). eBooks are undoubtedly going the way of the web. People will publish books because they can, and the world will decide. There's an interesting piece in the Harvard Business Review stating that Amazon reader reviews are likely as good as professional reviews. If that's the case, then they're probably, in aggregate, as good as publisher's opinions.


So, after 9 months or so, I still don't know much about traditional publishing. But the interesting thing is, I may not need to.

42 - Don't Panic

In the latest, and very excellent Pew study on e-readers habits, published here, one fact jumped out at me amongst the data.


42% of people consume ebooks on a computer.


Almost half of all reading of ebooks is done not on Kindles, iPads, iPhones, Android phones, Android tablets or Kindle Fires, but on the humble and ignored PC. It's like there are legions of ebook contrarians going "You know what - the old PC suits me just fine."


But what's really going on here. Maybe 5 things.


1. Tablets/e-readers are expensive. People love free and many of the ebooks read are free, not least the Project Gutenberg collection. If you're in to classic literature, this trove is a godsend and has the benefit of being free. Download the Kindle for PC (or Mac) app and you're good to go. For the thrifty or cautious this route is perfect and good enough.


2. Notebook computers are pretty small too. An 11" MacBook Air is a pretty small device with a great battery life. For the sofa-use that the iPad/K Fire fits in to so well, a tiny notebook PC is a close second in terms of form factor, and you may either have one lying around, or figure picking up a cheap one makes more sense than a dedicated device. And you may well be right.


3. Reading at work. I think Mike Shatzkin picked up on this. In those dog-day afternoons before the bell goes, why not download the Kindle app and sneak a few books on to your work PC, fingers hovering over ALT-TAB in case the boss shows up? 


4. Try before you buy. Downloading an e-reading app is a nice way to try before you buy. If it works for you, you might then take the plunge and get a dedicated device. This is as much about behavioural change as cash. Any books you bought can then just be synced over.


5. Reading wherever you are (ie outdoors or on the train) isn't such a huge deal.


What are the implications of all this though?


The first is that I think there is big pent-up demand for e-readers. Using a PC is definitely a sub-optimal way to read ebooks, but people are putting up with it. The try before you buy brigade will soon start buying, and the price points and choice of devices is falling, which will encourage that.


Screen quality is not such a big deal. Most PC screen are pretty lame, yet people put up with them for reading eBooks.


Apple have nothing to offer for this constituency with iBooks. They can only therefore address a little over half the market. The same survey says only 23% read on tablets (in early 2012 tablets = iPads).


I'd seen Kindle for Windows as a sideshow. It's not.


Consumer behaviour is malleable, but not as plastic as we thought. Print=>PC=>Tablet looks like the progression (assuming dedicated e-readers are not long for this world).


So all the noise over devices has been masking the stories about behaviour. I think we need a "marketing noise" filter in this industry.

The Very Personal Business of Publishing

For almost 20 years now I've been developing applications and websites for mainly libraries, museums and galleries. Gun for hire, the usual agency thing - client needs a project done, puts out an invitation to tender, we win the tender, build the app, walk away with a cheque. This is still a big part of our business, and I love this kind of deal: it's a partnership whereby we help our clients to solve problems, and money changes hands to make it happen.


When we started our digital facsimile imprint, eBookTreasures, I knew it would be different, but not like this. It's got very personal.


Because we sell these facsimiles online, we have a slew of data every day, every hour even. Here are the ones I look at most days:
- sales in iTunes Connect (daily and historic, including territories and taking into account present and past promotions)
- chart positions in iTunes (both overall charts and specialty charts)
- Facebook likes and reach
- Twitter follows and retweets
- Google alerts
- email enquiries
- Google analytics for our site


On one hand it's terrific. We can do a promotion and monitor it's effect in near real-time, reach out and tell people what's coming next and see what channels work best for us, what price points and what sorts of books.

But on the other hand it's all suddenly got very personal. 


Books I love don't sell. A new title launches and no-one tweets about it. For no reason, we put on 50 Facebook followers over a weekend. Sales tank or boom. It's all there in hard numbers, the various meters oscillating up and down hour by hour. My mood rising or falling with the numbers ("They like it - how wonderful!", "Facebook's a waste of time...").


The etymology of "publish" is "to make public". Perhaps I should have thought about that before getting in to publishing.

Slightly sNOOKered

To the Nook developer event yesterday in London, full of anticipation. The Nook team were coming to London to address developers - they must have something to say, right? Wrong.

The Nook is a US-only device (you need to have a US-registered credit card to buy one and then buy content), so has zero appeal outside of North America. Barnes and Noble and Nook as brands also have no resonance outside of the US. So the team gave us their best marketing spiel, with lots of slides of smiling Americans, without understanding that this is an insanely long bet for UK developers or publishers.

I'd guess that most UK developers/publishers have a strong UK constituency they need to keep happy, even if it's just in the boardroom. Developing just for the US requires a deep breath and deeper pockets.

But it's the same story with the Kindle. You could develop for the Fire, but it's not available outside the US, and the Kindle apps haven't been updated to support KF8 titles, so enhanced ebooks and apps are out. Effectively there's been no progress on the platform for years, unless you live in the US.

Apple, meanwhile has been charging ahead with iBooks 2 and the App Store and a nice authoring tool, but doesn't have the market share to make it viable as your only channel, so, if you love iOS, it's the app store for you.

It feels like an epublishing log-jam right now in Europe if you want to do enhanced or fixed-layout titles. The market-leaders haven't made it to Europe and Apple are neglecting to promote their platform.

All we can do is wait and see, assets to hand, ready to jump when we can.

The model we use to do this a repository system. Build an asset repository and re-purpose when the metrics make sense.