Why 2012 was the year of the e-single

paidcontent reporting:

E-singles — stories somewhere between 5,000 and 30,000 words, usually nonfiction, and sold as inexpensive ebooks — are the format for our time. Here’s why.

photo: Flickr / B_Zedan

In January 2012, Evan Ratliff, the CEO of Brooklyn publishing platform Atavist, semi-jokingly described e-singles as “[replicating] journalism’s extraordinary challenges in an entirely new place.” A little under a year later, publishers of all types are looking to e-singles to give them a boost in a digital era...
This weekend I sat on my in-laws’ living room couch and read “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” a longform story in the New York Times , on my iPad. “Snow Fall” marks the launch of a new publishing effort at the Times. The paper is partnering with Byliner, the e-singles startup run by former magazine folk and based in San Francisco, to publish around a dozen e-singles in 2013. (Working definition of e-single: A story somewhere between 5,000 and 30,000 words — shorter than most books, longer than most magazine articles — usually nonfiction, and sold as an inexpensive ebook.) Byliner is selling an expanded version of “Snow Fall,” for $2.99, at digital bookstores....
Amazon’s U.S. Kindle Singles store now contains 283 singles. In February, I reported that the company had sold two million Kindle Singles; as of September, that number was up to 3.5 million, and Amazon just expanded the program to the U.K., where it will include new entries by bestselling British authors as well as most of the American Kindle Singles. Many Byliner Originals are available through Kindle Singles, and they’ll be crossing the Atlantic for the first time with the program’s U.K. expansion.
How are e-singles actually selling? Several of them hit the New York Times ebook bestseller list this year. A few of Amazon’s Kindle Singles authors have done quite well. That’s a lot for an individual, but not so much for a company. E-singles are cheap, a couple bucks a pop, so they are not likely to drive major revenue for publishers: With most Kindle Singles priced at $1.99, that’s only $7 million or so — and Amazon only takes 30 percent of it, making the revenue basically a rounding error....
http://paidcontent.org/2012/12/24/why-2012-was-the-year-of-the-e-single/

Comparing The New Aggregators: Flipboard, Pulse, Zite, Float And More

paidcontent reporting:

From Flipboard and Aol Editions, to Ongo and LinkedIn. Today, the rise of tablets and apps is changing how we gather and consume content.  A couple of apps have grabbed the headlines in recent months. Flipboard has closed over $60 million in funding and has a $200 million valuation. More recently, Zite was snapped up by CNN. Even Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is jumping on this bandwagon, based on reports of Google Propeller designed so Android and iOS users can curate content.

But is there a business in new-style aggregation?

Probably not for all of these or many of the versions we have yet to see. But the blend of style with the right devices and the right business model offers a decent foundation. Flipboard CEO Mike McCue thinks his company can do it with advertising revenue and, for now, all within Apple’s operating system. The Washington Post ( Co.‘s Trove is banking on mixing advertising revenue with being completely cross platform. Others, like News.me and Ongo are counting on a blend of subscription fees and advertising. What they all have going for them: a plethora of information and sources and, thanks to HTML5 and other innovations, formats that are far more pleasing to use than the batches of linked headlines that keep some away from RSS. It also helps that they have consumer-friendly names, some more so than others, and an easy threshold for use.
For consumers, there are now so many of these next-generation RSS readers that it can be daunting to keep them straight. But they have distinct differences. Some curate content with an algorithm, while others use a team of editors. Some have made partnerships with publishers, while some are charging ahead without them. And there are other differences too, in areas like customization, sharing and price...
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-comparing-the-new-aggregators-flipboard-pulse-zite-float-and-more/

The New Faces of Digital Readers

Mondaynote reporting
First of all, note the evolving language: the term Online Readers is now passé as it morphed into Digital Readers. The shift reflects two trends: a broader range of device types and, in news consumption, the spectacular rise of mobility. Today, we’ll focus on a recent set of surveys that quantify these trends. And we’ll take a look at their impact on business models and strategies.
The first survey was released last week in Paris by Havas Media, a major European advertising player with a 25% market share in France. Last May, the polling company CSA surveyed a panel of 600 people reading 20 major French publications: national dailies and weeklies. Because the French rate of ownership for digital devices is comparable to what happens in other markets, the survey’s findings can be safely extrapolated outside of France.
Here are the key findings:
Respondents declare spending 37 minutes a day on digital publications as opposed to 22 minutes a day on print press. This number is astonishingly high. It shows the switch to digital has occurred – at least for readers of large national medias. It also confirms the segmentation of digital audiences. More broadly, when Nielsen finds that, on all mature markets, internet users spend no more than 30 minutes a month on digital newspapers, it also proves how important it is to go after the most loyal customers as opposed to collecting eyeballs – and flybys – for the sake of raw audience numbers that carry less and less economic meaning…)
How media consumption is distributed: according to the Havas Media survey, 51% of the respondents prefer web sites, 31% go for electronic editions, and 17% use applications. In these numbers, the web’s dominance reflects (a) the high volume of contents that are still free as many publications keep playing both sides of the fence, meaning both ad-supported and paid-for models, and (b) the importance of real time news.
In contrast, the lower score of digital editions stems from the fact most still use a basic PDF format. This doesn’t deliver the best reader experience, nor does it fit the needs of mobility: download speed and reading comfort on a smartphone screen. (I’ll come back to the future of digital editions in a next Monday Note by talking about the ePresse.fr kiosk we launched last week in France).
#1: Real Time information, mentioned by 48% of the respondents.
#2: Free access. Not really surprising, it will be difficult to get people to pay for news. But there is hope: 29% say they’d be willing  to buy a digital edition. Interestingly enough (and sweet to Havas’ ears): 72% of respondents would be ready to trade a digital subscription in exchange for advertising, and 54% would trade the ability to get free downloads of digital contents in exchange for more advertising.
#3: Availability. A notion that encompasses accessibility and ease of use.
#4: Selectiveness is seen as print’s privilege and a key factor of for liking it.
As for the tablets, 56% of their use involves reading the branded press; that’s behind internet usage (77%), email (66%), or watching videos (62%). Respondents are not apps freaks: they have downloaded only 7 free apps and a bit less that 4 paid-for apps in their devices. These surprisingly low figures appear to be specific to the French market...

24symbols starts, cloud based reading for free

goodereader reporting:
At BookExpo and the IDPF Digital Book Conference in May, we reported that 24symbols, a Spanish digital book subscription site, would be changing the way some people read ebooks. Using a Netflix-like subscription platform in which no books were actually downloaded to a computer or device, 24symbols would instead rely on Cloud-based content storage that allowed subscribers to access ebooks on any web browser-enabled device. Our video interview with Justo Hidalgo was posted here.
24symbols launched their service on June 30th, with levels of membership ranging from the basic, free-with-advertising model, up to a paid subscription that removed all ads from the display.
Now, however, 24symbols has seen the potential in their service and is developing an iPad app to be released within a week, as well as an iPhone and Android smartphone app down the road. By yesterday’s launch, the site had prepared some 1000+ titles in the catalog, admittedly mostly from smaller presses, but it’s a great starting point considering that the basic membership level is free. Another aspect to their membership that has been added is the ability to utilize off-line reading, though this is a premium feature only available to the paying subscribers.
According to an article by Laura Hazard Owen published on paidContent.org, “Publishers receive 70 percent of a book’s revenue, and 24symbols keeps 30 percent. Revenue is based on the number of page views—i.e., the number of times an actual page of a book is read compared to the overall number of pages read across all titles. Publishers can include their books in both the free ad-supported area of the site and in the paid area or can limit them to either one of those…24symbols leaves publishers responsible for paying their authors royalties based on income from the site, and recommends that that royalty be 30 percent.”
http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/24symbols-launches-subscript-ebook-reading

Three Ways Pottermore.com Could Change Book Publishing

Paidcontent repporting:
After a suspenseful buildup, J. K. Rowling has announced that Pottermore.com will be an e-bookstore, exclusively selling Harry Potter e-books and digital audiobooks. Pottermore could shake up digital publishing as much as the Harry Potter books first shook up print publishing over a decade ago. Here’s how.
Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) will be cut out as the middleman and could be forced to open up the Kindle to new book-publishing formats. Pottermore.com does not officially launch until October, and right now many details are still unclear. But we know that the site will be the only place to buy Harry Potter e-books and that they will be compatible with a range of devices. Rowling stressed that selling the books directly “means we can guarantee people everywhere are getting the same experience and at the same time,” and Pottermore CEO Rod Henwood told The Bookseller, “We want to make sure anyone who buys it can read it on any device. We are talking to the Kindles, the Apples, the Googles, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) to make sure they are compatible. We set the pricing, we maintain the policy of making them available to as many readers as possible.”
In fact, rumors that Amazon is going to start supporting EPUB have been floating around for awhile now, mainly in association with the news that the Kindle will support library lending this fall. Amazon should probably get on the EPUB train by July 31, when Pottermore.com is going to be opened up to a select million users.
Interesting experiments with pricing. Since Rowling is selling the e-books directly, she can do what she wants with pricing. Her UK publisher, Bloomsbury, and her U.S. publisher, Scholastic, are getting a cut, but these books are being published under the Pottermore Publishing imprint, not by Bloomsbury or Scholastic. So look out for bundling, limited-time sales, special editions, maybe even individual chapters for sale. Pottermore.com has a lot of freedom here to test various prices and respond quickly to what works or doesn’t. Other publishers can learn from what Pottermore.com does and may start to become more creative in their own pricing, although the big six publishers, which use the agency model for pricing, aren’t able to be nearly as nimble as an indie like Pottermore Publishing can.
Most importantly, this could be a major tipping point for e-books. http://paidcontent.org/article/419-three-ways-pottermore.com-could-change-book-publishing

Michael Skoler: Community, not audience, is a new business model

We are social beings. Three-quarters of all American adults belong to voluntary or organized groups, according to "The Social Side of the Internet," a study published this year by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. In fact, today's social media culture may be reversing the decline in social behavior that Robert D. Putnam documented in his book "Bowling Alone." While 56 percent of non-Internet users belong to a group, 80 percent of Internet users participate in groups, according to the study.
Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University who studies the effects of the Internet on society, writes eloquently of how technology is unleashing the greatest wave of social communication and collaboration in our history. The companies flourishing in today's digital, social culture provide more than valued content to people. They deliver valued connections. And they turn this community, the content it creates, and the trust it engenders into money.
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the icons of the social economy. Even Google, the organizer of digital information as opposed to people, upended the search business with its algorithms that tracked connections—the links people share with others. There are hundreds and thousands of lesser known, quickly rising businesses that are, at their core, built on community even when it isn't obvious. Here are just a few examples:
Angie's List has more than 1.5 million members in over 150 cities who pay about $10 to $60 a year to be part of a community in which members rate and review service providers (plumbers, doctors, etc.) to help each other. In the face of free alternatives, Angie's List has turned its community into annual membership fees in the $50 million range and an even larger income stream by allowing companies that are highly rated by members to pay Angie's List for the privilege of offering discounts to its members.
PatientsLikeMe, a seven-year-old company, helps 100,000 patients
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/102622/Community-A-New-Business-Model-for-News.aspx

Online Advertising Trends for 2011

As another year draws to a close, we can look forward to seeing numerous “best of” or compilations featuring the last year’s on-goings. From movies to sports, there’s definitely no shortage of lists.  Instead of adding to the category of what we already lived through, below are a few online advertising trends we can expect to live through next year.
• “Pay Per” Business Model will continue to dominate the online world – Thanks to Google, we’ll continue to see the “pay per” real-time bidding model continue to grow as advertisers embrace the ability to pay for only those eyes that see or click on an ad (no wasted money on uninterested audiences).  2010 saw Google launch their Pay Per Call service which allows users to select and call a phone number from within a browser. Advertisers are then charged for each incoming call generated from the banner or ad word served. Advertisers are handed leads and consumers no longer need to hunt for a pen.  Thanks Google! This advertising trend is sure to stay around.
• FCC will square off with online tracking advocates – We can also expect to see a strong stand against the FCC’s proposed “Do Not Track List” from various watchdog groups, creating a fierce battle with definite affects for advertisers.
• Availability and quantity of online content will continue to grow – If tasked with finding an online audience without behavioral or geographical targeting, advertisers will be forced to seek additional and different methods of delivery for their message.  The quantity of online branded entertainment will increase – allowing advertisers to create unique, interesting content with a message about their product woven in.  2010 saw  Youtube’s views per day increase from 1 billion to 2 billion illustrating people are increasingly turning to the internet for entertainment and content.
• Advertisers will seek new ways to online target/track consumers – Social media outlets will see a flurry of new companies looking to send their message via new opportunities such as promoted Tweets on Twitter. Especially if online tracking is no longer available. Best Buy, Red Bull, Sony and other influential brands have already signed on for the service. I’m fairly confident we’re not going to see Myspace rise up and grab some of the Social Media market share from Facebook, but then again I never would have predicted Farmville to be an internet phenom.
http://www.dontdrinkthekoolaidblog.com/online-advertising-trends-for-2011