Via oreillyradar:

I imagine more and more authors will start seeing things as Terrill Lee Lankford does:

While this deal would have given us a quick infusion of cash, by the time that book “earned out” at a rate of three to one in the publisher’s favor in e-book sales, the publisher would have reaped a small fortune, far more than the time and money it would have invested in the project. From that point on, the split would have seemed even more ridiculous. I see it as a permanent 75% tax on a piece of work that generates income with almost no expense after the initial development and setup charges. This deal could haunt my family long after I was gone.

Well put:

No Book Gets Left Behind. Hop from an iPhone to a Blackberry to a Sony Reader to a Nook to a Kobo eReader to an Android tablet to an iPad to a garage-sale netbook… You get the idea.

Two points here:

First, I’ll put forth my obligatory “this thing needs to be $99” argument. Until it actually is $99, I’ll continue to make that point. The $139 price point for Wi-Fi only is a good start, but it’s still just a little too high for a device that only does one thing.

Second, I was struck by this revelation:

The dual nature of Amazon’s Kindle brand, both e-book reader and e-bookstore, is underscored by the way Amazon runs those businesses, with separate teams focused on each. “Internally, we view them as two stand-alone businesses that have to succeed on their own merits,” said Mr. Bezos.

I guess that makes sense — one team focuses on hardware, the other on digital book sales — but it’s still a little jarring to learn there are two Kindle groups. (Incidentally, the digital book team is doing a fantastic job … making the Kindle platform available across devices is exactly what Amazon should be doing.)

I long for the day when this finally happens for ebooks, audiobooks, movies, music … EVERYTHING.

I won’t be surprised if we start seeing serious, robust ebook rental schemes. I’d already been thinking about them when I had two completely unrelated conversations about the idea. By serious, I mean a true Netflix-type model where ongoing revenue to the publisher and author is part of the program. Again, everyone knows the rules, and there is potential for purchases galore.

I worked with Brian O’Leary on this report for nearly a year, so it’s gratifying to see it finally out in the wild. But I agree with Teleread’s Paul Biba — we need much more data and analysis to make this truly useful:

My own view of the presentation: piracy data is from O’Reilly so it is limited to technical books and a small market segment - a segment where you would expect to find piracy because of the technical expertise of the readers, thus it is unclear to me how this data translates to a mainstream publisher, if at all. It is an excellent effort and more participants are needed to make the limited data set meaningful.

More info on the report is available here.

Fundamentally, I agree with the following …

True e-book value is created by friendly and extensive navigation and search capabilities, graphics, tables, references and notes, indexing and appendices. Even greater value will be created when the reader can manipulate content and share it easily with others.

… but the whole idea of stand-alone e-books is flawed. Digital content is not defined by its container. The values noted in this passage are inherent in Web material, yet you never see the e-book discussion transform into a Web content discussion. I would much rather create a Web package, with all the built-in sharing and multimedia features, then create a static book (digital or otherwise).

I’m not much of an ebook consumer, but there’s no denying this market is heating up. Discovery Communications is apparently banking on the same thing, because its recent patent suit against Amazon doesn’t seek to stop sales of the Kindle e-reader:

The Discovery patent covers not only electronic book security but also the infrastructure needed to buy and download the content from a device. It is notable that Discovery did not seek a temporary injunction to shut down soaring Kindle sales because it wants them to flourish.[Emphasis added.]