E-Books do WHAT?

Books are becoming much more digital. The following three pod casts address different aspects about these new e-readers that we might not have noticed in the past.

E-Books that read you

      - E-books now collect data about how you read your e-book. This is shaping how books are being written.
     - This data allows Amazon and Barnes and Noble (creators of the Kindle and the Nook, respectively) to see what people are reading within each book. It also allows the companies to know what to offer certain readers based on their preferred genre.
     - Authors are starting to release digital copies of their books so they can receive feedback from their readers before the book is even published. The feedback allows the authors to make changes based on what the audience wants.
     - Despite the data taking over, editors will still always be needed. However, now they have to take the data into account.
     - A risk of the data is that we can lose the author’s “voice” in genre authors or fiction authors. It will make reading less personal.
     - The Reader Privacy Act allows privacy of what people are reading on e-books, but it can be pulled if you are under investigation already. They can’t just pull it for no reason and would be a waste of their time.

Books are no longer an Ad-free zone

     - Books are becoming advertising tools and that can make the reader pay nothing for the book.
     - If ads are done in an aesthetically pleasing way and don’t interrupt the flow of reading, then ads in a book shouldn’t be such a big deal.
     - Brian Altounian, CEO and Chairman of WOWIO, uses ads at the beginning that would be personalized for the reader and could navigate them to a different page if they click on it.
     - Ads at the beginning of a book can make a reader worried that the ad will show up again.
     - E-books can offer ads with no fees, or you can buy an e-book for a fee to have no ads.
     - The ads are very broad so that they can sponsor and support ads from companies like DirectTV.
     - There is more opportunity for other e-book companies in the past year and a half than there was when Amazon first started with e-books.

Book It
     - Most common complaint: there are too many books.
     - People still love books but it’s hard for people to find them.
     - The people’s reviews are starting to narrow choices for other people.
     - E-books and scanning of old books can produce more books in bulk and make them available to more people. This is raising the number of choices in the world.
     - There’s a lot of format competition in buying books. People are still buying books, but they are buying more electronic books than print books.
     - It’s hard to gather numbers on how many books are sold. Even the company called Neilsen, which scans books at registers and collects data doesn’t get data from everywhere books are sold.
     - E-books are going up by 3-4%.
     - Young adults are now buying more books and adults are reading more books online than ever before.
     - Publishers are starting to publish less books and selling them directly to the consumers rather than through a book store.
     - Authors can be pirated so they should start doing books tours.

Sources:
E-books that read you
Books are no longer an Ad-free zone
Book It