Meanwhile, it seems to me that Amazon just keeps pushing its eBook envelope and selling more eBooks through its Kindle Store. Including to people who don’t even own a Kindle, thanks to Amazon’s many Kindle apps — for the PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, etc.

This past week, Amazon announced that, over the past three months, sales of Kindle books outsold sales of hardcover books. Everybody’s trying to dissect that information to figure out what it really means. The Wall Street Journal posted a short online article that begins:

Now we know why Amazon.com Inc. announced a few days ago that sales of e-books now exceed sales of print volumes. The e-tailer didn’t want the news to be overshadowed by its earnings miss.

Of course, the WSJ misstated the Amazon announcement, which dealt only with hardcover not all “print volumes.” It would be interesting to know how many trade and mass market paperbacks were sold in comparison during that same period.

I currently have five eBook apps on my iPad — Apple’s own iBooks, Amazon’s Kindle for iPad, B&N’s reader, Kobo’s reader, and the Ibis Reader.

Which one do I prefer? Usually, the Kindle app.

Why? Because the selection is so much better in the Amazon Kindle Store, and I see little real reading difference among those five reading apps. The iBooks interface is nice but much of it is little more than bells and whistles that are cool…but only for a while. The B&N and Kobo readers are OK but not a major improvement over anything else.

Any well-formed Kindle book will look great on the Kindle for iPad app. And if you want to find a new book to preview or buy, you’re far more likely to find it via the Amazon Kindle Store than any of the other outlets.

The other eReader apps all support ePub, which does allow more latitude in design and layout than Kindle’s rather limited MOBI format. Of course Amazon has already begun expanding the capabilities of that format (such as allowing video and audio and accepting higher resolution images), and I see no reason to assume they do not have many more possibilities lurking just around the next eCorner.

The iPad is great for reading eBooks and works just as well for Kindle books as for any of the ePub possibilities.

So, does that make the iPad a Kindle killer?

Depends on what exactly you mean.

Will it seriously cut into sales of the Kindle devices? Maybe…unless Amazon continues to improve that device’s capabilities and continues to release new, more capable devices (maybe even color eInk displays).

Will the iPad result in fewer eBooks being sold by Amazon? I sincerely doubt it. Amazon has such a head start with its digital catalog, sales platform, and brand loyalty that I’d be surprised if Apple can overtake them. Oh sure, iPad sales will almost certainly continue to accelerate and saturate the tablet computer market (with some much-needed improvements, I hope), but the iPad is really only peripherally an eBook reader.

I expect Amazon to continue dominating the eBook market by selling them for any device that crops up. Maybe even in ePub format eventually (after all, you can now read PDF documents on your Kindle 2/DX and pan and zoom them).

I think it is more likely that Amazon’s own apps will do more to reduce Kindle device sales than anything any other company comes up with. But, at the same time, sales of Kindle books will continue to increase.

And then there is the upcoming (I hate to have to type this word) Google Editions. I only hope that does not prove to be the future of ePublishing, as that would greatly sadden me.

What do you think?

However, and this is important, IT IS NOT AUTOMATIC! You must take action to make it happen.

Here’s how:

1. Log in to your DTP account.
2. You should be taken to the Bookshelf (if not, click on that option at the top of the screen).
3. For each of your titles, you need to click on the “Edit book details” option on the Actions drop-down menu.
   
   
4. On the next screen, be sure to check “This is not public domain” (which, depending on how recently you uploaded your book, may already be checked) — assuming that is a true statement, of course.
5. Click the Save and Continue button at the bottom of the page.
6. On the next page, you can set the 70% royalty option, but it will only work if your selling price is set to at least $2.99 (be sure to read the revised terms and conditions before completing the process, as they have changed) — you can also set or change your DRM option on this page.

On your Bookshelf, the book will now show an “in review” status, which means that it might take 48 hours for the new settings and new royalty rate to take effect.

By the way, Amazon also changed the options on the Reports page.

You probably can’t read the text above, so here’s what it says:

• There are three report options:
  • Transactions from 06/27/2010 to 06/30/2010 (the current week)
  • View weekly sales report
  • View Previous Months’ and Year to Date (YTD) Report
• A note has been added: “Books selected to be sold as 70% royalty may see 35% royalty for sales made in territories where the 70% royalty option is not offered. Please see  terms & conditions for more details on how royalty payments are made.”

The publishing Twitterverse and blogarama has been buzzing as though Amazon had announced it would no longer even sell print books.

Relax, folks. I don’t blame Amazon for publicizing the interesting statistic. And it is no surprise that publishing types would react with an almost ridiculous “OH WOW!” attitude. Particularly those who have been trying to convince the world that the days of printed books are numbered and the domination of e-books is inevitable (maybe they watched too much of Star Trek: TNG with the Borg).

Actually, it’s almost more surprising that nobody forecast that this would happen (the upside-down sales, that is, not the visceral reactions). After all, Amazon had let it be known in the weeks leading up to Christmas that the Kindle device was their biggest seller of the season.

What is the first thing all those new Kindle owners were going to do after opening the box and turning it on? Go grab some books, of course.

On the other hand, how many people on Christmas day — before or after opening their Christmas gifts — jump to the computer and start ordering print books? Probably very, very few.

Before we make grandiose forecasts and get all weak-kneed over this single-day statistic, how about we sit back and wait to see if this is an impending full-scale attack or just an interesting blip on the publishing radar?

So far, I have not seen a follow-up Amazon statement about the trend continuing over the ensuing five days.

Much also has been made of the fact that the bestselling Kindle books tend to be…well, free. And that may, in fact, be the larger issue by far, at least for publishers and authors. Have you actually looked at many of those free e-books? They are predominantly a real pain in the brain to read. After all, if you’re going to give it away, you can’t spend a lot of time or money making it look as good as possible.

Despite all the hoopla around the idea that “free” is the best marketing tactic of the new millennium, I would hate to see advertising become that only way for writers and publishers to make actual money from the craft. That almost certainly would just accelerate the publication of the pabulum that already dominates the offerings from most publishers. We already give away a great deal of what we write these days, by way of blogs, discussion groups, and Twitter. If people gravitate only to what is given away, why bother trying to perfect your craft? If the masses want junk, that’s what they’ll get.

So, does the one-day sales statistic from a single online retailer signal a major sea change in publishing? I doubt it. If the trend (e-books outselling p-books) continues, and maybe accelerates, over the course of months, I might have to change my mind.

What’s your take on this Christmas Day Event?

If they hadn’t had their collective heads firmly up-and-locked for so long, they could have seen this coming and taken a proactive stand. But no, most of them just drifted along trying to ride out the tide and then stay afloat when the stormy e-seas sent e-breakers crashing against the rock-strewn market shores.

It certainly seems to me that those publishers should have the upper hand when dealing with Amazon and all the other online retailers of e-books. After all, those retailers need the latest books by the big-name authors. And those bigger publishers control that content. Right at the outset, they, collectively (maybe through AAP?), should have said, “Whoa! Hold on there, Amazon. We’re not going to let you dictate the price at which we sell those e-books to you. You want our content? Here’s our retail price and the discount we’re willing to give you.”

After all, most of us truly small publishers (and self-publishers) have little choice but to make our Kindle editions available to Amazon via the Digital Text Platform, which means we get only 35% of whatever retail price we set. And few of us can sell many e-books at prices above $6 or so (certainly not above $10). There are exceptions, but not really very many. And the less well-known the author, the lower that retail price probably needs to be.

So, what would happen if the bigger publishers refused to sell e-books to the online retailers at arbitrarily low prices (assuming you believe that e-books should be priced at more than 50% of the print edition price, which I don’t)? Those retailers would have only three choices:

• Relent and accept the higher prices, discounting the actual selling price to whatever they think the market dictates and absorb the losses
• Relent and accept the higher prices, selling them to customers at prices that allow a reasonable profit
• Ignore the bigger publishers and only sell e-books of public domain, self-published, and small, indie publisher books

So, if the situation is now untenable for the bigger publishers, it’s their own damn fault, not the fault of Amazon or any other online retailer.

I have but one message to all those mid-size and larger publishers whining about how unfair the marketplace is to them and their e-books — man up, folks, and figure out how to adapt to the realities of the world. Or wither away. The choice is yours.

That’s my take on the situation. So, what’s your opinion?

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Addendum: Here’s an interesting article by Diane Mehta on BNet.com — Book Publishers Make Their First Move Against Amazon

If only Barnes & Noble and the Sony E-BookStore could come close to the same attitude, at least in more than a superficial and, in Sony’s case, condescending manner.

We at Slipdown Mountain Publications LLC have been trying since January of this year to find out how to get our books listed in the Sony E-BookStore. Finally, yesterday, Sony responded with this in an email to me:

Thank you for your interest in selling your titles through The eBook Store from Sony.

In order to facilitate and expedite the addition of your titles to our store, please visit one of our self-publishing partners, Smashwords or Author Solutions.

Both offer a quick and easy way to upload a small list of titles such as yours. Please click on the links to the right for more information.

Thank you once again for your interest.

And they didn’t even provide an email address for contacting them (although they did provide a snail mail address…how quaint).

We are quite ready to provide our books in whatever format Sony wants — ePub, BeBook, LRF, whatever. True, we have a small catalog and would certainly not generate a lot of sales. However, we care very much what our e-books actually look like on the reader’s chosen platform. I refuse to use Smashwords, despite their recent agreements with major retailers to get Smashwords-generated e-books listed on their sites. (I’m not even going to contemplate using Author Solutions, as I have many concerns with dealing with them for anything at all.)

Why? Because I have zero control over what the final product actually looks like. The books I have downloaded from Smashwords look OK in PDF, HTML, and RTF, but generally look dreadful in ePub and other formats. This is due to the Meatgrinder (their term, not mine) software that takes a Microsoft Word file and tries to make it all things to all e-book formats. Every software product I have seen to date that claims to create a high-quality ePub or Kindle or whatever e-book format…fails and requires manual tweaking to make it look its best.

If our books were all-text with no graphics and no need for any special formatting, I might accept the Smashwords output. And I actually intend to do a trial run of a text-only book soon. I also might consider uploading some e-books to Smashwords for distribution on their own site only — under the assumption that folks who buy books there know what to expect. But I don’t want those Meatgrinder products to be distributed alongside nicely done books from larger publishers. That’s just dumb, in my opinion.

So what about B&N? We signed up with them back in August. They bugged me for weeks until I finally got our ePub books uploaded to their site. Then…nothing. Those e-books never appeared on their website, despite repeated queries.

Last week, they sent me an amendment to the original agreement, this time to allow their newly announced lending and browsing functionality. I signed and returned it. After three and a half months, not one of our uploaded e-books shows up in the B&N e-book store online.

If anybody wants to know why Amazon sells so many more e-books than B&N or Sony, just consider the above, which I’m sure is only the tip of the iceberg that represents their approaches. Doubtless e-books by the bigger publishers are readily available. But why claim to want to work with us little guys in the biz and then just completely fumble the play?

Oh well, at least Amazon keeps making things better for us with new capabilities for the Kindle (although they appear to have forgotten about their Kindle 1 owners) and the very nicely integrated Kindle for PC application. We can get along without B&N and Sony.