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Digital DC Comics Available for Kindle Users Only?
(first published on Technorati on 10/24/11)
Our superheroes forever trapped in Amazon...?
If you’ve been paying attention to certain commercials and ads you’ve seen on TV and in the newspapers, you may have noticed that certain department stores and discount stores promoting and selling specific lines of clothing established by celebrities and high-profile names from the fashion industry. Examples of these are Sarah Jessica Parker’s clothing line only sold at the now defunct Steve & Barry’s Clothing Store and Jennifer Lopez’s new clothing line only available at Kohl’s. With clothing lines, I suppose it’s okay for one specific retail store to have solo rights to promoting and selling them to the everyday consumer. Selling a certain series of books, however, published by specific high-profile publishers such as DC Comics to be promoted and sold by only one retail store is a whole different story.
When the huge announcement of Amazon Kindle’s newest model on its successful line, the Kindle Fire, another major announcement also came beside it. It was announced that Amazon will retain the exclusive rights to selling digital versions of a hundred titles from DC Comics’ high-end catalog. In short, if you are looking for the digital versions of your favorite, well-beloved superhero comics such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Watchmen, you can only purchase them at Amazon and nowhere else.
What does this mean for the average comic book fanatic and other enthusiasts? It means that eReading consumers would be out of luck that their favorite DC Comics superhero series would only be compatible with the Kindle readers and devices that support the Kindle app. Readers with Barnes & Noble’s Nook eReader tablet series are going to have some problems with this one, being a major competitor of the Kindle and not having support for the competitor’s reading app at the same time. This even includes planning to purchase the actual bound printed versions impossible as well.
Barnes & Noble (B&N), as well as Books-a-Million, the third largest retail bookseller in the nation, responded to the Amazon-DC Comics exclusive deal by pulling off all their DC Comics from their shelves. B&N stated in their policy that they do not carry published works if they don’t have the rights to sell the digital versions of these said works. Books-a-Million’s president Terry Finley stated that the chain will not promote any titles in which publishers chose to pursue these exclusionary deals that would create an unfair, limited marketplace in the readership industry.
If you’ve been paying attention to certain commercials and ads you’ve seen on TV and in the newspapers, you may have noticed that certain department stores and discount stores promoting and selling specific lines of clothing established by celebrities and high-profile names from the fashion industry. Examples of these are Sarah Jessica Parker’s clothing line only sold at the now defunct Steve & Barry’s Clothing Store and Jennifer Lopez’s new clothing line only available at Kohl’s. With clothing lines, I suppose it’s okay for one specific retail store to have solo rights to promoting and selling them to the everyday consumer. Selling a certain series of books, however, published by specific high-profile publishers such as DC Comics to be promoted and sold by only one retail store is a whole different story.
When the huge announcement of Amazon Kindle’s newest model on its successful line, the Kindle Fire, another major announcement also came beside it. It was announced that Amazon will retain the exclusive rights to selling digital versions of a hundred titles from DC Comics’ high-end catalog. In short, if you are looking for the digital versions of your favorite, well-beloved superhero comics such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Watchmen, you can only purchase them at Amazon and nowhere else.
What does this mean for the average comic book fanatic and other enthusiasts? It means that eReading consumers would be out of luck that their favorite DC Comics superhero series would only be compatible with the Kindle readers and devices that support the Kindle app. Readers with Barnes & Noble’s Nook eReader tablet series are going to have some problems with this one, being a major competitor of the Kindle and not having support for the competitor’s reading app at the same time. This even includes planning to purchase the actual bound printed versions impossible as well.
Barnes & Noble (B&N), as well as Books-a-Million, the third largest retail bookseller in the nation, responded to the Amazon-DC Comics exclusive deal by pulling off all their DC Comics from their shelves. B&N stated in their policy that they do not carry published works if they don’t have the rights to sell the digital versions of these said works. Books-a-Million’s president Terry Finley stated that the chain will not promote any titles in which publishers chose to pursue these exclusionary deals that would create an unfair, limited marketplace in the readership industry.
If we think about this in this perspective, this would also mean that the only places where we could buy the standard published editions of these comic books would be in specific comic book stores/hobby stores, online stores that sell comic books specifically, or if all else fails, at Amazon. Even if that was the case, if we have storage issues on where we will be storing these bulky editions, we still have to purchase their digital editions on Amazon, making sure that the devices we’ll be using has the Kindle app installed or we have a Kindle in our possession.
It looks like Amazon is mimicking what Apple has been doing when it comes to marketing of certain products. Apple has had a long history of selling certain products and media, such as the types of music sold through iTunes and nowhere else but iTunes. Both companies sought to do more of these types of exclusive arrangements, in which both companies would get at least 30% of the profits while the others go to the publishers, promoters, artists and writers. Though this exclusive sales method can boost up profit for both companies, it does provide some frustration towards the consumers themselves, rather than their competitors like B&N and other standard retail stores.
Products should always be available in all various forms and stores for all consumers, as we are all used to picking stores that would sell certain products at prices lower than the other stores. Today, stores are trying to monopolize certain brands and certain lines of products that are only available to that one particular store at flat prices. How do we know if Amazon is selling these digital DC Comics at a discounted price rather than the suggested retail price? (We’re talking about the digital editions, not the tangible print versions) What if we can’t afford it? If they were discounted prices, would they be at that price forever or would they eventually rise the prices up as time passes? As an avid reader who also uses an eReader, I’m more concerned with textbooks and reference books as I only use my eReader for the reference books alone. Textbooks and reference books, even in digital edition, are still expensive, sometimes even more expensive than their printed book versions, which are already expensive as it is. If Amazon succeeded in sealing the exclusive rights to sell all DC Comics to the masses, what would it be if Amazon starts to woo other publishing companies, especially textbook and reference book publishers like Peachpit and O’Reilly?
Now that I thought about it, this was probably the reason why the new Kindle Fire is being sold at only $199 a pop and is a worthy competitor towards the iPad and B&N’s Nook Color. With all these limitations on certain products, owning a Kindle Fire (and all other models of Kindle) would make sure that you stick with nothing else but with Amazon. In turn, you’ll end up paying more with those Amazon Kindle-available only material for the Kindle Fire to be worth the price.
Remember, as a kid, you used to just walk in to your local store with some spare change with you and just simply buy a volume of your favorite comic book series with cash? If each publishing company is successfully persuaded by (online) retail stores such as Amazon in to making exclusive contracts with each other, those cash-supported purchases of those comic books days will eventually be long gone.
We’ve already read several articles surveying avid readers on their preferences between reading from the printed bound book and reading from an eReader tablet. What Amazon is doing starting with DC Comics is serious bad news for those who don’t own eReaders or those who don’t like reading eBooks. They will have to save a lot of money to buy an eReader to purchase these Amazon-only exclusive DC Comics titles or any other store-specific publications that they want to get their hands on. I’m stating this because in the very near future, graphics-heavy publications such as comic books may no longer be printed on bound paper, but rather released digitally as an eBook and only available on certain stores exclusively, such as Amazon. We have no choice but to go to this route, unless someone out there comes up with a good plan that would benefit both the customers and these retail stores and not limit availability of digitally-published works to specific contracted stores only.
Writers of the Cloud, Come Forth!
(first published on Technorati on 10/15/2011)1
CLOUD is today’s word of the interwebs.
First, we’ve got cloud hosting for commercial-based websites and websites representing businesses. Next, we’ve got cloud storage and cloud players, such as the Amazon Cloud Player, where you can upload your most treasured files from your hard drive to the cloud, where you can access them anywhere and re-download them when your computer crashes. We now also have cloud note-taking services, such as the popular Evernote, where you can store all your most important notes as well as access them anywhere when you don’t have your laptop or access directly to your hard drive.
Today, for all the avid writers from all around the world from fiction writers, non-ficiton writers, to contemporary blogging, technology has served us once again, taking advantage of the internet as a means of discovering inspirations as well as getting discovered by publishers and online magazines all around.
We’ve got the awesome Technorati, which gives bloggers all around a chance to write and contribute their articles for the world’s largest blogging search engine.
We also got the yearly NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) that gives creative writers (and in some cases, bloggers) the chance to write and overcome the challenge of writing a 50,000 word count novel with no restrictions or boundaries. And of course, there are various writing communities all around from Fanfiction.net, FictionPress.net, to newer communities such as Wattpad, Scribophile and Protagonize, that are giving various options for writers to expand and improve their craft to a wider audience.
On top of that, we have Amazon‘s Createspace and Barnes & Noble‘s PubIt!, where writers have a chance to sell their creative writing through various tools, mainly publishing eBook versions of your writing.
The disadvantage though with the services I mentioned above was that you are required to save all your work in your hard drive, as those services are all database-powered. Events such as NaNoWriMo do not even save your 50,000+ word count novel in their servers as you only require to copy and paste your work to their word counter to be sure that you have reached your goal before the end of the month. Others have the vulnerability of having several technical problems from server crashes to even getting hacked. Not just that, you as a writer would also gaining technical problems from having your hard drive fried to even occasional screen freezes. And when that happens, you lose all your hard work, especially if you’re one of those users who do not frequently save your work from time to time.
This year, a brand-new service for writers just recently launched back in mid-summer as a brand-new writing tool for writers who will be participating this year’s upcoming NaNoWriMo called Yarny.
What sets this particular service from the other existing services around the web is that this particular service is a very simple writing tool that helps writers organize not just what they write, but to also take sidenotes and other research notes crucial to writing their pieces.
Best of all, Yarny uses the magical power of the cloud to power up their tool and of course, to save everything you have jotted down on the writing pad. In addition to that, like note-taking software and services such as Evernote and and the MS Office-bundled OneNote, the tool saves your work automatically without requiring you to press the Save button frequently.
In fact, you won’t find any Save button anywhere on the Yarny writing tool. The tool is so simple and so efficient that it helps the writer focus directly towards writing alone. Yarny records everything that you jot down and what the tool saves instantly, such as the version number, the date and time that you wrote your new material and the time the tool automatically saves it.
It also has an automatic word counter, which is also very helpful for writers who will be participating in NaNoWriMo this November. It also has a keyword tagging system with the same functions as the ones on blogging platforms such as WordPress for easier search of all your documents, snippets and notes through your account. It also has an export snippets function where you have the alternative to download all your written work to your hard drive if you still prefer working on your writing on another software, such as MS Word. All you have to do to get started is to sign up a free account and you’re ready to go.
I started using Yarny not too long ago to record down my introductory and supplementary research notes including character descriptions for my upcoming novel to be written during NaNoWriMo (which is every November of every year) and with its simple organization system, I was able to get everything organized easily without taking advantage of my personal OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) to get things organized manually.
I also plan on writing my entire 50,000+ word count novel using Yarny by the time November arrives. Though still in beta mode, I’m already loving this cloud service. Maybe later in the future when new features are released that there would also be a spelling and grammar check, just like word processing software, note-taking software and even blogging systems. I now admit that I have become a writer of the cloud, thanks to this new piece of service.
Frustrated with your current writing system with your computer freezing and your software crashing on you from out of the blue? Become a writer of the cloud and take advantage of Yarny. In the near future, there will be more cloud-based writing tools similar to Yarny that will definitely convert any computer-savvy writers in to becoming relieved writers of the cloud. I’m already guaranteed that I would never go back to using my current word processor to write my stories or even my other documents, such as my future Technorati articles. My current laptop is still stable but soon it will malfunction due to its rather old age.
Writers of the cloud, come forth!
Thank You and God Bless You, Mr. Jobs
Steve Jobs and His Apple
Rather than writing about a local (and worldwide) technology icon, Mr. Steve Jobs, and all of his accomplishments in his life that made innovative differences in our everyday lives, I will be writing more of Mr. Jobs’ impact in my life growing up as an immigrant kid and my new education in the new country. I was grateful and even had the privilege of becoming a resident in the San Francisco Bay Area— the place of innovations and the avant-garde— the original and true home to one of technology’s most familiar companies: Apple, Inc.
When I was 11-years-old in middle school (6th Grade), it was the first time that the school introduced me to the personal computer at my keyboarding class. My mom wanted me to learn how to type at an early age as she envisioned that when I grow up that the real world will be run by machines that has keyboards on them. She attempted to teach me how to type herself using an electronic typewriter but I was serious epic fail then. Luckily there was a keyboarding class in middle school and she enrolled me to take that class.
Apple’s Next Hoopla: iPhone 4S
Being a long-time immigrant resident in the SF Bay Area, local technology news have announced Apple’s next biggest thing since the unleashing of the iPad 2.1 In fact, everyone around the interwebs have been anticipating that after releasing the iPhone 4 last year that the 5th version of the iPhone would be releasing sometime fall of this year. Everyone thought that Apple was going to do the same marketing tactic as what they did with the iPad.2
Instead, we get the iPhone 4S, rather than the public-anticipated iPhone 5. I’ve actually seen some purported images of what the iPhone 5 may look like,3 but when people unleashed the *real* “iPhone5″, it looked exactly the same as the current iPhone 4. Right then I became skeptical that Apple was going to release another new design and functionality of the iPhone. Despite that it looks exactly like the current iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S does have new features and upgrades on some of their core features.
I am not an iPhone user, nor that I’m a huge fan of Apple in particular, but because I’ve got three members of my immediate family who own iPhones4 I decided to provide an inner look of the 4GS’s new and upgraded features.
- New processing chip, which makes the 4GS possess faster processing data time and rendering graphics than the current iPhone 4.
- Meet Siri, your new personal assistant who resides in the 4GS. It speaks to you when you speak to it, translates your spoken word in to text on screen, reminds you of your events in your calendar, you know, your personal assistant and your new friend.5
- For the first time, Sprint will be carrying iPhones in their lineup of phones, starting with the 4GS model. AT&T and Verizon would also be selling the 4GS along with the current iPhone models they’re selling.6
- Longer battery life. Users may talk on their iPhone for 8 hours before they have to be recharged again.
- It’s a World Phone. You can use your 4GS to call anyone using local wireless networks regardless of which country you’re standing on at th emoment.
- 8 MP camera. So much for my awesomeness 5 MP camera on my BB.
- The 4GS can shoot HD video and also has a stabilizer feature so your YouTube videos won’t be shaky.
Though the 4GS now has more and enhanced features than the current iPhone 4, the cost of the 4GS, again, depending on which internal MB size you’re looking for, has pretty much the same prize as the iPhone 4. In fairness, Apple also announced that an upgraded new OS system for the iPhone will be released sometime later this year and all models of iPhones (3GS to 4S) can upgrade their OS for free.
Now I ponder about the current iPhone 4 users if they’re going to have their phones upgraded to get the new 4S or stick to current model. As for me though, I’ve only had my BB since May this year and I don’t plan on changing it anytime soon. I’m pretty sure the current iPhone 4 users are pulling their hairs out for not being patient enough to wait for these unexpected new features and upgrades.
This is why I love you for strategies like these, Apple. Your products aren’t exactly the greatest, most perfect pieces of innovation around, plus the fact that they cost a lot of arms and legs, but your marketing strategy really amazes me.7
If you do decide to go for the 4GS, you can pre-order it starting at Oct. 7th8. The actual phone will be on sale on…. Oh my! Oct. 14th!9
- or was there another new Apple gadget released after the iPad 2 and before the iPhone 4S…? I’ve lost count… [↩]
- The first iPad was released sometime early April 2010. iPad 2 was released earlier this year in March. Barely even a year since its first version. Hmm… [↩]
- The one I saw was white and it had a physical QWERTY keyboard that could rival the BB. My current BB model, Torch 9800, in particular. [↩]
- Dad and iPhone 3GS, Sis and iPhone 4, Bro and iPhone 3GS…
[↩] - First we’ve got HAL back in the 60s. Next, we’ve got Watson. Today, we’ve got Siri. Go AIs!
[↩] - My god, Apple, you really are good with your marketing strategies… No wonder I applied for a few job positions with you guys a long time ago… Cupertino is so happy to have you. [↩]
- This isn’t sarcasm, by the way. [↩]
- I think this is for the U.S. only…? [↩]
- My birthday! Hinthint? Just kidding!
[↩]
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