| So your new Pi NoIR has plopped through the letterbox, and you’ve unpacked it. There’s a little square of blue gel in there. What’s it for?  Thanks to Andrew Back for the picture! Click to read more about his adventures with Pi NoIR on the Designspark blog. If you’ve been reading our posts about why we developed an infrared camera board keenly, you’ll have noticed that we mentioned a lot of interest from botanists, who use infrared photography to work on the health of trees. We started to read up about the work, found it absolutely fascinating, and thought you’d like to get in on it too. A short biology lesson follows. Photosynthesis involves chlorophyll absorbing light and using the energy to drive a charge separation process which ultimately (via a vast range of hacked together bits and pieces – if you believe in intelligent design, you won’t after you’ve read the Wikipedia page on chlorophyll) generates oxygen and carbohydrate. Here’s a nice picture of the absorption spectrum of two sorts of chlorophyll, swiped from Wikipedia: Notice that both kinds of chlorophyll absorb blue and red light, but not green or infrared. So: why are trees green? The graph above shows you that it’s because green is what’s left once the chlorophyll has grabbed all the long wavelength (red) and short wavelength (blue) light. Let’s say you’re a biologist, and you want to measure how much photosynthesis is going on. One way to do this would be to look for greenness, but it turns out an even better method is to look for infrared and not blue – this is what the filter lets us do. Bright areas in a picture filtered like this mean that lots of photosynthesis is happening in those spots. There’s a long history of doing this stuff from space (the Landsat vehicles, for example, look at the Earth across a very broad spectrum), and Public Lab have done loads of research as part of their Infragram project (and associated Kickstarter) to find ways of modifying cameras, and to find cheap alternatives to expensive optical bandgap filters. Our friend Roscolux #2007 Storaro Blue (that’s the blue thing’s full name) turns out to be a great example – we buy it on giant reels and the guys at the factory in Wales where we make the Raspberry Pi and both kinds of camera board cut it up into little squares for you to use. It’s not very expensive at all for us to provide you with a little square of blue, and it adds a lot of extra functionality to the camera that we hope you’ll enjoy playing with. The work of the folk at Public Lab has been absolutely vital in helping us understand all this, and we’re very grateful to them for their work on finding suitable filters at low prices, and especially on image processing. We strongly recommend that you visit Public Lab’s Infragram to process your own images. We’re talking to Public Lab at the moment about working together on developing some educational activities around Pi NoIR. We’ll let you know what we come up with right here. We sent Matthew Lippincott from Public Lab an early Pi NoIR (and a blue thing), and he sent it up on a quadcopter to take some shots of the tree canopy, which he’s processed using Infragram, to show you what’s possible.  Click to visit a Flickr set with many more Pi NoIR + Infragram images. We still have some to do in getting images taken with the filter absolutely perfect (notably in white balance calibration), but we hope that what you can do with the filter already gives you a feel for the potential of an infrared camera. In a way, it’s a shame we’re launching this in the autumn: there’s less photosynthesising going on out there that there might be. But you’ll still get some really interesting results if you go outside today and start snapping. |
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
What’s that blue thing doing here?
Lloyd’s List, World’s Oldest Newspaper, To Be Digital Only From Dec 20
| Lloyd's List has been carrying authentic shipping information since the 18th century, and is the latest to embrace digital technology. The newspaper, which is to be the world's oldest as it has continuously been in print since 1734, stated the paper will be entirely digital from December 20th. A survey conducted in June showed that only 2 percent of readership still relied on the print version of the newspaper while an overwhelming 97 percent said they preferred to seen an online version. “We are very proud to take this next step in the evolution of Lloyd's List,” said editor Richard Meade. ”Lloyd's List first started in 1734 as a notice pinned to the wall of a coffee shop in London offering customers trusted shipping news and information. That aim has not changed, but the technology has and our customers are now accessing the industry's most sophisticated intelligence source in any coffee shop, anywhere in the world 24 hours a day.” “The digital approach offers new avenues and opportunities to innovate an up-to-the-minute service that offers in-depth news and information on every aspect of shipping as well as unrivaled market intelligence and data provision which can be tailored to suit our readers' needs,” further explained Meade. ”The overwhelming majority of our customers choose the capabilities of digital over print.” Lloyd’s List is not alone in charting a digital route, as almost every major newspaper has already made the transition to digital or are in the process of doing so. However, some have adopted a hybrid approach, continuing with the print version and co-existing with the digital edition of the newspaper. However, company sources have made it clear that their commitment towards providing authentic information on all things pertaining to shipping, including energy and insurance, remains paramount. “The digital migration process has been very carefully planned and we have undertaken significant investment in our digital platforms, enabling us to provide our readers with a much enhanced and very popular service online,” said the group’s managing director, Phil Smith. “This success has resulted in huge growth in digital usage, with ever-increasing numbers of customers opting for digital over print.”
Lloyd’s List, World’s Oldest Newspaper, To Be Digital Only From Dec 20 is a post from: E-Reader News |
Librarian’s Share: Video Killed the Printed Handout Star
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In August, we announced the winners of this year's Digital Library Champions contest. Each winner has agreed to share their success story through a series of Librarian's Share blog posts. This week, we feature the winner of the “Online” category, Jackson County Library Services (member of the Oregon Digital Library Consortium):
We began by deciding on the direction the video would take and chose to go more in the "infotainment" direction than just providing a straight rundown of facts, figuring that more people would watch something that was fun and (slightly) hip with key information included, instead of possibly being bored by and not absorbing an information-only approach. The silent-film to modern-era theme was created by our videographer to highlight the updates that were going to take place and generate excitement, since people can be very resistant to change and especially so when that change involves a technology that they have become comfortable with. The statistics we collected and the general reaction of our local Library2Go (our OverDrive site) patrons suggest that we were correct.
The video went live on February 28, posted on our www.jcls.org home page and You Tube channel, as well as promoted on our Facebook and Twitter pages, and received almost 400 views in the first week. (Click here to watch the video on YouTube!) Checkouts from our virtual branch increased by almost 800 in March, increased again slightly in April, and have more or less maintained that level since that time. We had very little negative reaction to the changeover, with many people seeking further help but with an overwhelmingly positive reaction to the redesign.
Based on this success, we have continued to create promotional and informational videos, which have had a positive effect on various aspects of library service, from the benefits of traveling with eBooks as opposed to print, to librarians actually having a sense of humor (who knew?), to how the library benefits the community. For us, it has been a marketing tool that is extremely effective in that it only requires an initial outlay of funding for equipment and software, which is not prohibitively expensive, plus the time involved in learning its use. In many cases, the end result can reach far more people than would otherwise be the case. With the ever-increasing number of mobile devices across all age groups, we can reach out and inform the entire community we serve.
Eric Molinsky handles Patron Technical Support at Jackson County Library Services, member of the Oregon Digital Library Consortium and winner of the Online category in this year's Digital Library Champions contest.
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Half of All Book Sales are Now eBook Sales
| Bloomsbury Publishing is reporting that half of their total sales now stem from eBook sales in some markets. Overall, digital sales accounted for 17% of Bloomsbury's total revenue in the first half of 2013 compared to 11% in the 2012 six month period. “Our Adult division enjoyed a very good interim result, reflecting an impressive new book programme including And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (author of The Kite Runner) and The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon, as well as a flourishing cookery list,” said Nigel Newton, chief executive. One of their strongest earners right now are cook books such as Masterchef: the Finalists and the Paul Hollywood’s Pies and Puds. Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things, the follow up to the bestselling Eat, Pray, Love, is expected to generate strong sales over the Christmas period. One of the avenues of growth for Bloomsbury is the recent acquisition of law publisher, Hart, in September for £6.4m in cash. Their intent is to market the eBooks to academic libraries, online re-sellers and schools. Half of All Book Sales are Now eBook Sales is a post from: E-Reader News |
Monday, October 28, 2013
Popular UK Newspapers Increase Digital Subscriptions by 20%
| Digital newspapers are doing quite fine in the UK as the Times and Sunday Times have seen their digital circulation increase by over 20%. Currently over 150,000 readers subscribe to the digital editions only of the two publications and their print side accounts for 350,000. “The Times and Sunday Times pioneered digital subscriptions and today we can see a solid customer base across every platform, including print,” said Mike Darcey, the News UK chief executive. “Charging for our journalism allows us to invest in our journalism, creating an even better experience for our readers and helping to secure a sustainable future for our titles.” Emma Tucker, the recently-appointed Times deputy editor, described the figures as “incredibly exciting” for the future of the title. “The paywall was a real challenge for everybody in the paper to get it to fly so this shows a great belief in paid-for content,” she said. “We had detractors [when the Times launched its paywall in 2010] but these figures show you can make a success of it.” Many newspaper companies are adopting to the paywall landscape due to the runaway success of the New York Times. Thousands of international papers are trying to emulate them to varying amounts of success. The UK has enough people willing to pay for online news that the Times is remaining profitable and increasing their digital subscribers. Popular UK Newspapers Increase Digital Subscriptions by 20% is a post from: E-Reader News |
Crunchyroll Manga Platform Launches Oct 30th
| Crunchyroll is one of the premier anime and drama services and offers hundreds of streaming videos via their fleet of apps. The company is experimenting with a new vertical with Japanese publisher Kodansha to launch Crunchyroll Manga on October 30th 2013. Crunchyroll Manga will launch on a subscription model, which will be different from other platforms that just sell singular issues. Crunchyroll Manga membership will only cost $4.95/month you will be able to read all the current and archived volumes of all of the manga series posted. If you don’t feel like paying for it you can use the platform for free, but you can only access the latest chapters with ad support in 170 countries. Here’s the full list of titles that will be available: Coppelion, Attack on Titan, Space Brothers, Fairy Tail, UQ Holder!, Mysterious Girlfriend X, A Town Where You Live, As the Gods Will – Second Series, Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, Fort of Apocalypse, My Wife is Wagatsuma-san, and The Seven Deadly Sins. Manga publishers are trying to come up with new ways to deliver content in a legal manner and to stem the tide of piracy. Manga sales in America have dropped 43% since 2007 and it is hopped that existing services that have a strong track record can be the savior. It will be interesting to see what type of reading app they introduce and how it will be accessible to a North American audience. Crunchyroll Manga Platform Launches Oct 30th is a post from: E-Reader News |
AudioGO Faces Challenges in the Audiobook Market
| The audiobook industry is starting to undergo dramatic shifts in their content delivery methods and major publishing companies are now investing millions of dollars into expensive productions. The entire audiobook industry is currently worth around 1.6 billion dollars and that figure should climb further. The main reason? Audiobook producers have been increasing their output. 13,255 titles came out in 2012, up from 4,602 in 2009. Things aren’t rosy for everyone involved in this sector as audiobook publisher AudioGO has faced insurmountable challenges over the last year. AudioGO announced last week that the company had suspended trading because of financial problems. It was later confirmed managing director Mike Bowen had been suspended and financial director Bradley Whittock had left the business. Some shadiness might be going on as the companies cash situation was sharply reduced, with cash in the bank falling to £346,142, compared with £1.9 million a year earlier. AudioGO was set up in July 2010, when private investors bought out BBC Audiobooks. BBC Worldwide continues to own a minority stake, and it remains to been seen if the news organization will help save their old pet project. AudioGO Faces Challenges in the Audiobook Market is a post from: E-Reader News |
Good e-Reader Radio – Amazon Publishing, Oyster Royalties, Enhanced eBooks and Lots More
| Welcome to another edition of the Good e-Reader Radio Show with Michael Kozlowski and Jeremy Greenfield. Today the two lads talk about Amazon Publishing and what the future may hold with a major executive leaving the fold. Smashwords has announced the royalty structure that Oyster is employing and sheds light on similar agreements with major publishers. Enhanced eBooks, are they a flash in the pan or do they have staying power? 50 Shades of Grey are costing some libraries over $25,000 to keep in stock so people can borrow them digitally, is this a viable long term strategy? Digital Book World is holding their annual event in New York City this January and YOU can attend for free! Find out more about their Sweepstakes HERE. Good e-Reader Radio – Amazon Publishing, Oyster Royalties, Enhanced eBooks and Lots More is a post from: E-Reader News |
DIY Haunted Mansion portrait
| Welcome, foolish mortals. I’m with Cory Doctorow on this one: the Haunted Mansion is the best thing at the Disney parks. It’s a close-run fight with the Tower of Terror, but for me, the Haunted Mansion comes out on top every time. (So much so that I own a gargoyle candlestick.) The queue is one of the best parts of the ride. I shan’t spoil it for you apart from one tiny detail: the portrait of Master Gracey which does a Dorian Gray in front of your eyes, aging from insouciant youth to horrible decrepitude over the course of a minute or so. Why travel, though, when Brandon Netto has demonstrated that you can have your very own Master Gracey portrait in your own
The build itself is self-explanatory (spray-paint frame, stick mirror plastic inside frame, mount over screen, hang on wall) but Brandon has a useful parts list in PDF form, where he also links to some video looping software, and the source video itself. |
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 2 Now at Big W and Dick Smith
| The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 2 is making its way over to Australia courtesy of Big W and Dick Smith. The Wi-Fi only model retails for $159, while a Wi-Fi + 3G will retail for $229. Currently stock is fairly light at these two retailers, it should populate more after the holiday season. BIG W is always looking for ways to bring the very latest in cutting edge technology to its customers at the lowest price and that’s why we are so excited to be ranging the new Kindle Paperwhite,” said Big W’s Head Technology Buyer, Scott White. When it comes to digital reading in Australia, Big W is trying to cater to the local market in a big way. They have developed their own eBook store and have launched with a sizable volume of 300,000 titles, sigh more titles being added every month. Also, in tune with their overall business theme, Big W is working on low prices to drive their business, with several of the titles to be made available each month for 99 cents or completely free. Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 2 Now at Big W and Dick Smith is a post from: E-Reader News |
1/4 of Europeans Prefer Buying Books Online
| A survey carried out by Eurostat to determine the extent that information or communication technologies has permeated in the lives of the average European has revealed the online buying pattern that the Europeans have engaged in in 2012. For instance, what has come to the fore is that it's about a quarter of them that prefer online means to source their requirement of digital reading material. Quite predictably, this marks an increase over what it was a few years ago as more and more wake up to the benefits that ebooks, emagazines or other digital publications presents over their printed counterparts. Country wise, it is Luxembourg that tops the list of European countries that prefer buying online with 47 percent claiming it to be their preferred means of procuring their reading material. Germany comes at the second slot at 41 percent, followed by Sweden and the UK where 38 and 36 percent claim to have bought books online last year. Similarly, its countries like Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania where citizens have shown least inclination to buy books online in 2012. The survey covered those households where respondents fall within the age group of 16 to 64, with those having used the internet for at least a year before the commencement of the survey.
1/4 of Europeans Prefer Buying Books Online is a post from: E-Reader News |
When Did B&N Remove Nook for PC and Nook for Mac Again?
| Back in June B&N caused quite a commotion when they abruptly removed the Nook for PC and Nook for Mac programs from their website, making it so that people could not easily download and read their purchased Nook books and periodicals on a computer. In fact B&N received so much negative attention about it that […] |
Pi NoIR infrared camera: now available!
| Pi NoIR, the infrared version of our camera board, is available to purchase for $25 ex tax from today. You’ll find it at all the usual suspects: RS, Farnell and their subsidiaries; and at Adafruit. Other stores will be getting stock soon.  Pictures courtesy of Adafruit, who, unlike us, actually have a studio for doing this stuff in – thanks guys!  Back view What’s that mysterious square of stuff, you ask? I’ll let you know tomorrow.
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Sunday, October 27, 2013
Are you excited for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special?
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"You want weapons? We’re in a library. Books! The best weapons in the world!" - The Tenth Doctor
On November 23rd, 2013, the BBC will air the 50th Anniversary special of the popular British science fiction television program. Titled The Day of the Doctor, this highly anticipated episode will be broadcast simultaneously in over 75 countries spanning six continents.
If you're as big of a Whovian as I am, I'm sure you've been planning your parties and getting your costumes ready for months now. But to help you prepare and build up some excitement for this historical event in popular culture, here is a selection of eBooks and Audiobooks, available for purchase in Marketplace, that feature each incarnation of The Doctor.
First Doctor (William Hartnell)
Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton)
Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee)
Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) Doctor Who: Demon Quest, The Complete Series
Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) Tales from the Tardis: Volume 1
Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker)
Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy)
Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) Tales from the Tardis: Volume 2
Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston)
Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) Doctor Who: The Price of Paradise
Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) Doctor Who: Plague of the Cybermen
I hope you have as much fun reading and listening to these titles as I had putting the list together. Feel free to share some of your other favorite Doctor Who titles or favorite memories from the last 50 years in the comments section. Allons-y!
Rachel Somerville is an Account Specialist with OverDrive.
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Digital Comics Best-Sellers for October 27, 2013
| Here’s my weekly look at the best-selling digital comics of the week, as of Sunday evening. 1. Wolverine and the X-Men #37 Marvel takes the week with five titles in the top ten, while DC has only three. The other two are new series debuts from Image. Pretty Deadly was the subject of a bit of controversy this week, when a reviewer mentioned his retailer disliked it so much he ripped up a copy. Writer Kelly Sue DeConnick’s response was measured and professional: She didn’t care about the ripping up of the comic, but it sold 57,000 copies in print, far beyond her expectations, and she was disappointed that the retailer’s stunt took attention away from that. It looks like plenty of people liked it in digital, too—and you can’t rip up a digital copy. 1. Stephen King’s N This week’s Kindle best-seller list is very similar to last week’s. The Spider-Man and Astonishing X-Men books are still on sale, and the Walking Dead is still a monstrously popular franchise. Both The Hedge Knight and The Sandman: Overture #1 are pre-orders, so I expect we’ll continue to see them on the chart for several weeks to come. It’s interesting to note that although Amazon sells single-issue comics, every title on this list except The Sandman: Overture is a graphic novel. That’s what people seem to prefer on their Kindles, at least now that Injustice: Gods Among Us is on hiatus. 1. Ghostopolis There’s a new top seller in the Nook store: Doug TenNapel’s Ghostopolis, a full-length graphic novel for children, marked down to $1.99 at the moment, which probably explains its popularity. It’s also very good, and well worth a read at any price. Aside from that, it’s the same ol’ same ol’, with Peanuts, Injustice, and The Walking Dead dominating the lineup. iBooks 1. Blue Is the Warmest Color Finally, we get a bit of variety in the iBookstore as Blue Is the Warmest Color tops the charts. This is another book with a bit of controversy behind it. It was the basis for the film of the same name that won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and had its U.S. premiere this past weekend, but the actresses, director, and writer have all had sharp words for one another. Clearly the film and the gossip have folks reaching for the original graphic novel, and digital is the quickest and easiest way to get it. (It’s also available on Kindle, but apparently not on Nook or comiXology.) Digital Comics Best-Sellers for October 27, 2013 is a post from: E-Reader News |
eBook Review: Allegiant by Veronica Roth
| Verdict: 2 Stars Just when you think you’ve endured as many pages of suffering and hurting as is possible to squeeze between the covers of a book, it gets worse. Allegiant is the long-awaited final book in the Divergent trilogy, a young adult series by author Veronica Roth. Without having to write the dreaded words “spoiler alert,” let’s just say that Roth spent a great deal of time torturing many of the characters that readers already suffered alongside in the first two books. Interestingly, part of the problem with this final installment was the amount of time it took to come to readers’ bookshelves, a by-product of the spoiling nature of digital- and self-publishing. Where readers are growing more and more accustomed to the rapid release dates afforded by ebooks, having to wait for a traditionally published sequel–especially one whose title wasn’t even released by the publisher until this fall, as if titles are now top secret–was not exactly agonizing, but more like irritating. In the time I’ve waited since first falling in love with Tris and Four and rooting for the factions and factionless alike, I’ve found twenty other authors that I like better, and just as many story lines and compelling characters to keep me entertained. Okay, fine…spoiler alert: I feel ripped off by the publishing industry over this book. I became a fan and a believer, only to spend two years of my life waiting for THIS ending to the series. Read at your own risk. Allegiant is available now from ebook and print distributors everywhere.
eBook Review: Allegiant by Veronica Roth is a post from: E-Reader News |
Leadership Change at Amazon Publishing
| When online book retailer Amazon decided to venture into traditional publishing more than two years ago, it staged a coup of sorts by winning over long-time industry professional Larry Kirshbaum to head up their operations. Now, with eleven distinct imprints and a staff of editors nearly thirty-strong, Kirshbaum is leaving Amazon Publishing and returning to his former role as a literary agent. In an official statement, Amazon wrote, “Larry joined us two and a half years ago and has been instrumental in launching our New York office, including our New Harvest partnership, and establishing our children's book business. We're sorry to see him go, and wish him the best of luck as he returns to life as a literary agent.” Some sources don’t see this as a cause for alarm where Amazon’s different imprints, each based on a specific genre or market, are concerned, as the established market for niche-specific titles continues to flourish. What remains to be seen will be Amazon Publishing’s success with a still-elusive market, brick-and-mortar bookstores. To fill Kirshbaum’s esteemed shoes, Amazon will pass a large portion of the responsibilities to Daphne Durham, who began with Amazon Publishing in 1999 and has already taken some of the responsibilities within the company from Kirshbaum.
Leadership Change at Amazon Publishing is a post from: E-Reader News |
Kobo Arc 7 and Kobo Arc 7 HD Comparison Video
| Welcome to another Good e-Reader Comparison Video! Today we look at both of Kobo’s latest generation seven inch tablets that are available right now. I am of course talking about the Kobo Arc 7 and Kobo Arc 7 HD. We put these two devices head to head reading eBooks, watching videos and a whole lot more! You can think of these two new gadgets as looking aesthetically the same but having very different internals and overall resolution. You can put both of these in front of your average customer and they would be hard pressed to tell you the differences, other than the price. The Kobo Arc 7 features a seven-inch capacitive LCD touchscreen with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels. Kobo had to sacrifice screen quality to drive down the price, but if you are buying this just to read eBooks, magazines, and newspapers, it should be more than sufficient. Underneath the hood is a Quad-Core, 1.2 GHz. processor. There are also 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of internal memory, you can enhance the memory up to 32 GB via the Micro SD. The Kobo Arc HD features a seven inch capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 1920×1200 pixels. It currently has over 323 PPI and will play back videos in pure 1080p. This is quite an upgrade in screen technology over the original Arc, which only had 1280 x 800 HD resolution and 215 PPI. Kobo Arc 7 and Kobo Arc 7 HD Comparison Video is a post from: E-Reader News |
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Japanese Publishers Demand Foreign Companies Be Levied Consumption Tax
| The digital publishing industry in Japan is eager for a change in the current tax structure that imposes consumption tax on the domestic providers while foreign content producers are left free. The consumption tax, which can be considered the equivalent of value added tax now in place in Europe and some other parts of the world, is applicable if anyone in Japan buys an ebook from an online retailer based within the country. The same tax will not be applicable if bought from any ebook retailer based overseas, such as Barnes & Noble or Amazon, as the latter is earmarked as an overseas transaction and the ebook considered located on an overseas server; consumption tax is only levied for domestic transactions. The discrepancy is expected to pitch Japanese publishing and Internet industries to an even more disadvantageous situation as the ebook industry alone is projected to grow to ¥240 billion by fiscal 2017, which will mark a threefold jump from what it was in 2012. The tax is set to increase to 8 percent next April and a further 10 percent by October of 2015 from the current 5 percent. As things stand now, the Tax Commission is examining the prospect of including ebooks procured online from overseas retailers within the consumptions tax, something that is estimated to add tens of billions of Yen to the system. However, there are a few challenges that remain as Japanese authorities will still have to devise a method of ascertaining the online distribution prices adopted by companies such as Amazon, which is based in the US but has a considerable presence in the Japanese ebook market.
Japanese Publishers Demand Foreign Companies Be Levied Consumption Tax is a post from: E-Reader News |
Who Uses ComiXology? Part II
 The ComiXology office, with its giant comics mural. The day before New York Comic Con, the comiXology folks invited the press to their office for a presentation about their user groups and a chance to hear some actual comiXology users talk about their comics reading habits. We covered the statistics in Part I of this story, and now here are some of the comments we heard from users. The group consisted of three men and two women, and their ages matched those of typical comiXology users; Aaron is 28, Christian and Benjamin are both 40, and Suzanne and Marlene are both 23. As the statistics show, men outnumber women among comiXology users (by a ratio of 4 to 1) and the women tend to be considerably younger, in the 17 to 26 age group. Another aspect that correlated with statistics was the length of time they had been reading comics: Aaron and Benjamin have been reading comics since they were kids; Christian was a longtime comics reader who had taken a break for two or three years because he had run out of space. The women, on the other hand, were more recent converts: They both started reading comics in college, and Suzanne actually began reading them when she got an iPad—so she was reading digital comics before print. ComiXology CEO David Steinberger pitched some questions to the group, and their answers were varied and sometimes surprising. First, he asked if they had discovered anything new via comiXology. “There are a lot of independent comics that are pretty interesting, like Power Play, that are using Guided View technology,” said Marlene. “I heard about it on Twitter because the artist on that book is one of my favorite artists, Reilly Brown.” Suzanne said she knew nothing about DC comics until she went digital. “I started with The Dark Night Returns,” she said, “and after that I sort of picked and chose, and a couple of friends recommended a few things to me.” “Watson and Holmes,” said Benjamin, noting that this is a comiXology Submit title he heard about via Twitter and Instagram. “I’d say comiXology brought me back to Marvel,” said Christian. “I was strictly a DC guy for many, many years. I read Marvel in the 80s, with [Chris] Claremont’s great X-Men run, but it got so convoluted, and there’s only so much time in the day and money in the bank, so I strictly went DC and was very happy with it. But because you guys run your amazing Marvel Monday 99-cent sales, I read the amazing run on X-Factor, by Rick Remender. It’s amazing stuff, and I wouldn’t have gotten that if it wasn’t for what you guys do.” Aaron said he picked up on new series when they went on sale, and he singled out Invincible as one he had recently read. “It starts off like a play on a lot of superhero tropes but then it takes a fantastically dark turn,” he said. “It becomes a really gripping story.” The discussion then turned to the shopping experience and single issues versus trades (collected editions). Aaron said he preferred trades, and Steinberger pointed out that comiXology is about content—”What digital can’t do is prop up the revenue of the market by doing variant covers,” he said. “We get readers. We don’t get collectors.” “I really do runs of stories,” said Christian. “If a writer I love has a book, I’ll just buy it all in bulk or wait for sales.” Steinberger pointed out that The Walking Dead runs in six-issue arcs that are easily collected into trades. “Every six issues he cliffhangs, gives you a conclusion, wraps up the storyline, and gets you prepared for the next one,” he said. “Reading in that form, it’s an easier form for new people to get into. We have both. We have an enormous back issue bin… and we also have collected editions, which allow people to say ‘I know this is going to be a good story, I’m going to get to some sort of conclusion.’” “I still go to the comics shop and buy certain trades,” said Benjamin. “I just don’t have room to buy single issues any more. The companies were starting to produce stories that weren't particularly engaging and turned me off to single issues. We were talking about Infinity, that you need the Avengers crossover, I just didn’t want to start buying single issues of these various books so I’m just going to wait until it becomes a trade and buy it then.” Suzanne said she buys independent comics in print, because she likes owning the single issues, but she buys all her Marvel and DC comics digitally. “I enjoy being able to go to the comics store and talk to people,” she said, “but I also love having everything in one place on the app. It’s really easy to keep it organized; I don’t have to worry about losing anything.” Marlene loves her little hole-in-the-wall comic shop, but, she said, “I have switched to digital now because I like sharing a lot. I like writing about comics, and it’s really easy to just put in a link and people can buy it if they are interested. It’s instant gratification.” The panelists were unanimous in their praise for comiXology’s panel-by-panel viewing system, Guided View. “For me it is absolutely preferred,” said Aaron, who reads most of his comics on an iPhone. “I have tried reading on iBooks and it just is not a good experience the way that they present it… Even if you have a trade paperback version, Guided View gives an entirely new experience.” “Cinematic is the only way I can express it,” said Christian. “I like to listen to music while I’m reading, and I would love to shake the hand of a few people Here. They obviously didn’t know me, and they didn’t know what I would be listening to, but when I flipped on my [Kindle] Fire, the best director in the world couldn’t have done it better.” “It’s a clean, user-friendly interface,” said Benjamin, who owns an iPad but does most of his comics reading on an iPhone, partly because he reads outside his home. “The phone is just comfortable to me,” he said. “I love how it fits to your screen.” “I like Guided View a lot, especially for books like Power Play, where it’s integrated,” said Marlene, who reads comics on an Android tablet. “But I prefer the full page.” There was more variety in the panel’s attitudes to print comics. “There are a lot of things I will get single issues of digitally, and then when the trade comes out, I will buy it in print,” said Suzanne, citing Kelly Sue DeConnick’s run on Avengers Assemble. On the other hand, Christian said, “No offense to print authors, but print is dead to me.” The final question the panelists addressed is one that has vexed digital comics readers from the beginning: Do they have faith that comiXology, and their digital comics, will still be around in five or ten years? “I take advantage of the storage space you guys are nice enough to allow us to have, but you can download the book onto a non internet based storage device and the device will still read that content,” said Christian. “At some point I’m sure things will change—that’s the nature of things—but do I have faith that five years from now, yeah. Ten years from now I know it will be different.” “In ten years we won’t even know what the reading devices will be,” said Steinberger. “We don’t know what the actual hardware will be, but I think digital comics are obviously going to be around,” said Suzanne. “I work in a print publishing company, and all we are doing right now is figuring out how to convert things to digital, how to make things more easily accessible. I think it’s what the future is, and I think it with comics it makes even more sense because it is such a visual medium.” “I think that with any company, particularly companies that deal largely in the cloud or with digital media, your commitment to a great customer experience is what’s going to determine how long you are around,” said Benjamin. “If what’s happening with comiXology today is any indication, I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be around. So I have faith that in five or ten years the content will still be up there on the cloud somewhere.” “When I downloaded the comiXology app, I also downloaded the Marvel, DC, and Image apps,” said Aaron, “and they all just used comiXology—they were all tied into it. That gave me faith that they obviously have an infrastructure, they are established, they are tied in with everyone.” Who Uses ComiXology? Part II is a post from: E-Reader News |