The true cost of publishing on the Amazon Kindle

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Ever wondered why newspapers and magazines published on the Amazon Kindle rarely contain photos? I’ve downloaded several copies of The Times and The Telegraph on my Kindle, and you’re lucky if you get more than one photo in the entire newspaper. The only periodical that appears to include photos or diagrams with each article as a matter of course is the magnificent Economist.

True, the 16-level grayscale screen hardly lends itself to stunning photography, but newspapers prospered for a century or two with black-and-white photos, so it’s hardly a problem unique to the Kindle.

The answer lies buried in the terms and conditions for Kindle periodical publishers. Scroll down to the section where it reveals how the revenue for publishers is calculated and you’ll find the devil is most definitely lurking in the detail.

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Newspapers vs iPad apps: a week-long test

Saturday, November 13th, 2010

I love newspapers. Frequently my desk is piled so high with yellowing copies of The Times and The Guardian I simply cannot see Tim Danton sitting next to me (this, neither of us would dispute, is a good thing). In the interests of full disclosure, I even worked on newspapers for more than five years. So giving up my daily fix of newsprint-smudged fingers is a big deal for me.

Yet, for the past week I’ve done just that. I’ve stopped handing over my £1 every morning to Mr Govani in the shop next to the station, and downloaded the latest copy of The Times and The Daily Telegraph on the iPad before setting off to work, to test whether it’s really possible – desirable, even – to switch from print to screen. Here’s what I found.

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Kindle newspapers: slower than print

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

I’m not a great eBook advocate, but the one thing that might tempt me to splash out on the new UK-friendly Kindle is newspapers. If I could download the latest issue before I jumped on my train every morning, saving me the dirty look from my newsagent when I try and pay for The Times with a £20 note (why do I never have change in the mornings?) then all power to Amazon’s elbow.

So when Amazon opened the doors on its UK Kindle Store earlier today, the first section I headed for was the newspapers.

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Twitter: saving democracy from the newspapers

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

It was allegedly “The Sun wot won it” in 1992, after the Tories pulled off a victory the day after the tabloid ran a front page proclaiming: “If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights”.  (Although I faintly recall from my degree studies that more than half of The Sun readers surveyed after that infamous headline thought the newspaper supported Labour.)

The newspapers’ influence over elections has always been debatable, but what’s indisputable is that they’ve lost all control over this one. Not a single newspaper has thrown its weight behind the Liberal Democrats or Nick Clegg since his strong showing in last week’s leadership debate, but the party has seen an enormous swing in support.

The Liberal Democrats have dragged themselves level with the Conservatives and ahead of Labour in several polls, and the newspaper editors are incandescent. People are using their own minds, instead of doing as they’re told. Something has to be done.

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Newspapers find a common enemy: Google

Monday, April 6th, 2009

Having fought tooth-and-nail against each other for years, the world’s embattled newspaper groups appear suddenly to be brothers-in-arms against a common enemy: Google.

Last week The Guardian led the way with a submission to the Government’s Digital Britain report, claiming that the search giant was effectively pick-pocketing its content.  “The argument has traditionally been that search engines and aggregators provide players like guardian.co.uk with traffic in return for the use of our content, and this is enough to make the relationship symbiotic and equal,” the submission stated. “However, there is a vast over-supply in the market of advertising inventory, and yields have come under severe downward pressure. As a result, the value of the traffic generated by search engines and aggregators has reduced significantly.”

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E Ink: the future of newspapers?

Monday, September 8th, 2008

A video has gone up of Esquire’s lovely new E Ink cover, which you can see here. The promise of these things is immense. Imagine a newspaper with content that can be updated over the course of the day, so that the lead changes, stories are amended and breaking news is delivered to your morning newspaper.

Instead of buying a static newspaper for 60p, you buy 12 hours worth of news for £2. Then you go out and do it again tomorrow. It’s quite a cool idea, especially for folk like my dad, who buy their paper in the morning, read it at lunch and then probably won’t look at the news again until they get home from work and flick ITV on.

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