Watching Kindle, iPad and e-Readers? Openness is Key

Though I own a Kindle and have also read its books on my iPod Touch, the last three or four e-books I’ve bought were from Barnes & Noble and O’Reilly publishing.

The reason? It’s not that I own B&N’s Nook or some other e-reader (yet); rather, those e-books come in formats that enable me to consume them on many devices, share them with friends and even grab portions to send to the world. The lessons, I think, are instructive for publishers and others who make their content available on digital devices.

I predict we’ll start to see market share of non-Kindle e-readers increasing, and not only because those manufacturers are working to cut deals with publishers that are more favorable than the what one analyst calls Amazon’s “wolfish” shares of revenues and restrictive terms.

As consumers discover the flexibility they have to consume e-books on a PC, a Mac, a BlackBerry, and an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, as well as other devices that can read PDF, .mobi, Android or ePub files, I predict they’ll gravitate toward the more open formats.

Because the open formats also allow cutting and pasting with ease, e-books published that way also have a better chance of catching on via in social media and blogs. And links in books, magazines, newspapers or other media can easily take users to relevant Web pages. Even when the function does work on the Kindle, the Web surfing experience is less than optimal.

Some open publishing formats allow the purchaser to share a book with one or more people at a time. Some allow customization of colors, background, fonts and other visual elements that a) allow a consumer to read the way her or she likes rather than one that’s imposed or b) appreciate the e-book’s artwork, coloring and typeface. This morning, publishers are saying they look forward to getting their art books on the iPad.

Again, I’m not saying that publishers should eschew the Kindle. I negotiated a deal to get a blog network on the device because there was no exclusive arrangement, and any additional revenue from subscribers was essentially free, with no additional work required once we created an appropriate feed. Plus, the Kindle now has a large embedded base, and publishers who want as large a readership as possible should publish their works in the Kindle format for years to come. Kindles have also proven a decent way to promote unheralded authors.

Looking at it from Amazon’s side, I can understand the business model to milk its first-mover advantage after building the first device that seamlessly integrated a readable screen, portability, long battery life, easy navigation and, perhaps most important, a big library of books (and other material) purchased easily and accessed wirelessly. Amazon was able to create a closed device, and a constrictive business model, because it provided so much that others hadn’t matched.

But, as I’ve written before, there are a lot of other features the Kindle doesn’t have: the ability to look at the books on multiple screens (it was manna from heaven when its e-books were made available on the iPhone/iPod), share and blog, and more. (OK, the uber-geeks in the room might raise their hands and say you can do most or all of these things with a Kindle. Indeed, I have unscrewed the back of the device, installed an SD card, transferred material to the card, plugged it into a reader, manually converted the text into a manipulable format, and then sent it along. But how many people will go through that workaround?)

We’ll see if the iPad takes hold and how much it is able to cut into the Kindle’s base. The device can reportedly use the iPhone/iPod app that enables users to read Kindle books, and if it can also display other formats, it may instantly make all the other e-readers obsolete. The iPad also can play video and music, which gives it and publishers a powerful competitive weapon. Apple has a store that can compete with Amazon’s, too.

If users can also cut and paste, blog and otherwise manipulate their media, the iPad will have yet more ways of knocking pure e-readers to second-tier status.

Whatever happens with the iPad, though, publishers need to pay attention and provide material on any popular digital platform, and customize that content when possible to make the experience on each platform as positive as it can be. Amazon is apparently courting developers to help it stave off the iPad threat, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see others follow suit. All of that will benefit consumers, and perhaps publishers. Note how much better smartphones have gotten as makers rush to seize momentum created by the iPhone.

As I wrote in another recent column, digital media is not and never will be a one-platform or one-device game for long. Openness to multiple platforms will ultimately win the game.