Apple is tempting authors with an easy-to-publish book platform. But as an author I would be stupid to take their offer.

I have for the last couple of years worked on a book about Cambodia. As a former Asia correspondent for the largest Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten, I have had a particular interest in the Far East. Among all the Asia countries Cambodia has intrigued me the most, especially how extremely friendly people are despite the brutal and violent political history of the country.

I have almost finished a manuscript describing how the brutal political history of the South East Asia country has influenced the life of even young Khmers born after the Pol Pot year. Now I face the question of how I should publish the book after the last few pages have been written.

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As a paper book primarily?  I could. And that is also what I planned.  But the highly regulated – and very small – Norwegian book market  make my income on this option marginal. I may get some recognition, of course, but with such a niche topic as contemporary Cambodia there is no way I will make even close to my normal salary in royalties for selling the book.

Should I forget about being published in the print format – and instead focus only on the ebook market, then?  I may not get more income, but format and its possibilities are exciting and the book might end up getting a bigger audience. It sounds like a good idea, except that ebooks have not really taken off in the small Norwegian market, one reason being that the big publishing houses pretty much have cooperated in making sure ebooks have not been a big success so far.

Now Apple offers its iBooks Author App – promising that everyone can make amazing multi-touch ebooks for iPad.

It sounds exciting!  I would love to take my manuscript, mix it with some of my best photographs from Cambodia and design an amazing book, hopefully both giving a great reading and visual experience at the same time. And the iPad is a great platform to read books (except in daylight, that is).

But I will not do it.

Because there is a catch.

It is hidden in the terms of use:

 If your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or
service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

It stinks!

So Apple wants me to spend months writing a manuscript, taking photographs and putting it all into a coherent story. Then I will spend a few hours (remember it is SO EASY!), maybe days if I am really getting into it, creating a great ebook using their tool. In return they want more or less full ownership of my work!

I can accept that I will give Apple 30 % of my income selling the ebook through their iBooks app. Afterall I only get to keep about 15 % when I publish a paperbook through a Norwegian publishing house.

But give me even one reason why I should accept that Apple limits my chances of distributing my work on other platforms than the ones controlled by them?

For me it is the opposite way around: If I choose the ebook route I want my work to be published on all available platforms there is. There are three reasons for that:

• It maximizes my profit. People use different platforms and I want as wide distribution as possible.
• Many people today use several devices during the day to access the same content. That’s why I love the Kindle platform for books. Many times I have found myself starting reading the book on the Kindle ereader, then continuing on the Kindle app on iPad before I read on in a bar at night on my Android-powered smartphone. It all syncronizes perferctly across devices and platforms.
• I want to learn as much as possible about how people use my content. There is little learning in only publishing on one device

For more on the license agreement I recommend you to read Ed Bott in ZD Net:  Apple’s mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement.  For a wider perspective I recommmend Thomas Baekdal: Lies, Damned Lies and Ebooks.

As I look at it Apple is basically providing me with two things:

• An easy-to-use production tool for iBook.
• A distribution platform for selling the book through iPad and iBook.

The production tool is supposedly free (provided that I have a Mac, which I do not have). But in fact they are charging me an extremely high price by trying to take full ownership of my work.  I don’t know of any other seller of a production tool using this business model.  Do you?

For the distribution platform I am asked to pay 30 % of the revenue.  This is a fairly common business model for selling goods and services.

So what do I do?

For sure: Although I would love to, I don’t dare to use the new Author App from Apple. I have spent so much time struggling over my manuscript – and I have still weeks to go. There is no way I will risk the right to do whatever I want with my own content just for the right to use a convenient – and I am sure also very elegant – production tool.

So I will look for other ways to make elegant ebooks. It may take me some more hours, and the end-result may not be as perfect. But I will be in control myself. And I will hopefully reach more readers, not only on Apple’s devices.

In the meantime I will not be surprised if Apple provides a “broader” and more author-friendly interpretation of the terms of use.

I think they have to. I am not the only author around.

What is your opinion?

Screenshot of VG+, the iPad app from Norwegian news company VG

Apple’s ‘Jesus tablet’ seemed to be the news industry’s best hope of salvation but few publishers are finding apps to be the moneyspinners they so desperately want.

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This article titled “iPad apps – still more dash than cash” was written by Jemima Kiss, for The Guardian on Monday 10th January 2011 06.59 UTC

The news industry embraced the launch of Apple’s iPad in April 2010 with something that felt like true love: feverish anticipation at that first meeting, lengthy sentimental eulogies and whispers of hope that this must finally be The One.

In an industry largely uninterested in gadgets, the iPad offered optimised reading and viewing, portability – and a built-in payment system wired to the credit cards of 280 million iTunes customers. Editorials began asking if the iPad might be the saviour of an industry in a seemingly terminal decline.

But less than a year on there are already signs that the romance is fading, along with those first flushes of novelty. The latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations in the US show average monthly downloads slumping by the end of 2010. Only two publishers were brave enough to share their figures.

In for a long wait

Condé Nast’s Wired US iPad magazine sold 73,000 copies through the app in its first nine days in May 2010 but that fell to 23,000 in November – a bad month all round. Vanity Fair sold 10,500 in October but 8,700 in November, and GQ’s average fell from 13,000 in October to 11,000 in November. And Men’s Health, published by Rodale in the US, fell from 2,800 monthly shortly after the iPad launch to 2,000 by November.

These baby steps need to grow up fast if they are to compare to the sales and profits enjoyed by print. Last year’s census by the Association of Online Publishers showed nearly two-thirds of publishers pinning their hopes on in-app content as the best chance of making money through mobile – but they might be in for a long wait. The tablet userbase is small and the potential app userbase outside the US smaller still – and Apple takes 30% on every app sold.

Analysts Research2Guidance estimate that 100,000 app sales at 79p would make the publishers £40,000 – not exactly a moneyspinner, when they will have to wait three years to see a return. By then, Apple’s domination of the tablet market could be at an end, bringing a new problem of developing for multiple devices – though Screen Digest senior analyst Dan Cryan expects 6.5 million people will use an iPad by 2014.

If there is any business model to be found for innovative publishing on the iPad, Condé Nast is determined to find it. Albert Read, general manager of Condé Nast UK, acknowledged it is an “undoubtedly expensive” commitment. “It’s a punt,” he said. “A long-term hope is that we create something exciting for readers and advertisers – and that brings its own returns over time. In five years we will have reaped those benefits.”

Read would not comment on how much Condé Nast has invested or when it expects to see a return. But he described the projects as “resource intensive”, with Wired’s app needing up to five dedicated staff. Print pages have to be redesigned and copy resubbed, and advertisers – who are keen to experiment, Read said – have to submit horizontal and vertical formats.

“Though we are ambitious, we are also relatively cautious. We haven’t launched apps for every magazine and have only done one experimental edition for Vogue.

“Rather like the dotcom era, there was a period of hype and excitement over the iPad and then things calmed down. In two, three, perhaps five years, that excitement will be justified.”

Rupert Murdoch seized on “the Jesus tablet” as part of his crusade to elevate his news business from free web content. With a reported investment of m (£19m), he has a team of 100 in New York furiously putting the finishing touches to The Daily, News Corp’s dedicated iPad newspaper, which is due to roll out next Monday. The Daily is expected to include a new push subscription feature that automatically delivers and charges for weekly or monthly editions.

Murdoch will be hoping to outshine Virgin boss Richard Branson, whose own New York-based iPad magazine, Project, launched in November, charging .99 per month. But whether Murdoch can turn around his dubious track record in digital projects, from Iguide to MySpace, remains to be seen.

The Daily could become a mass-market phenomenon – a next-generation Sun – but at 99c (62p) a day, it will be some time before the experiment sees a return.

The Financial Times took advantage of the traditionally lucrative financial news sector to launch an extensive app in May. Download numbers have reached 487,000 in total, the FT said, with iPad generating more than 10% of new digital subscribers. Deputy chief executive Ben Hughes has said that iPad ad revenues reached £1m in the first six months, and ad inventory has been sold out since launch. The app is free and users are encouraged to register to read 10 free stories per month. Subscription models

Common complaints among readers include huge file sizes, and, with more than 300,000 apps in the app store, visibility is also a problem. But by far the biggest issue is that of offering a subscription model within an app. Apple does not share names and addresses of iTunes App Store customers, meaning publishers cannot build that valuable subscriber database. Reports have persisted since September that Apple is working on a subscription service for news and magazine apps; that could launch alongside the second version of the iPad rumoured for April – if it doesn’t debut in Murdoch’s Daily first.

“Apple needs a better balance between its own desire to have visibility of all the data, and the needs of publishers to get data about their readers that is crucial to their businesses,” said Edward Roussel, Telegraph Media Group’s digital editor.

Both the Telegraph and Guardian used big-name advertisers to launch free iPad apps. The Guardian’s Canon-sponsored photography app, Eyewitness, had had 404,559 downloads at last count, with a separate news iPad app under development. Audi has extended its initial 12-week sponsorship of the Telegraph’s iPad app, of which about 100,000 have been downloaded since launch, and version 2 is due out by the end of March.

Roussel said the Telegraph’s in-app registration system shows the iPad is attracting new readers, with most aged between 30 and 50. “We’re making reasonable sponsorship but at this stage apps are more a beta product than a substantial revenue earner.”

Those in the industry express optimism but a lack of confidence in how best to exploit the tablet explosion. Roussel says apps offer the best of the old world and the new. “There’s no question, , it’s a highly significant development of the media industry and the potential is massive. But it will take years, not months, to work out how to make apps better than both the web and newspapers, which they have the potential to be.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Gartner and IDC data shows slower growth in sales of PCs than expected – with Apple tablet reckoned to account for shortfall.

This article titled “iPad chokes netbook sales” was written by Charles Arthur, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 14th October 2010 07.31 UTC

Netbook sales are slowing as people consider buying tablet computers – particularly Apple’s iPad – instead, according to data released separately by research companies Gartner and IDC with their analysis of third-quarter computer sales worldwide.

Overall, sales of PCs grew slower than had been expected. Gartner said 88.3m were sold in the third quarter, up 7.6% compared with the same period a year ago when 82m were sold, but below its earlier forecast of 12.7% growth (which would have meant 92.5m sold).

IDC, which uses a different method to measure sales, said there were 89.7m sold, up 11% (80.8m) but nearly 3% below its expectations (which would have seen 92m sold).

The data exclude the millions of sales of Apple’s iPad, which Gartner and IDC do not classify as a “PC” for the purposes of their data.

Horace Dedlu, who runs the Asymco consultancy, estimates that if the iPad were included in the figures, it would add 4m to the PC sales figures – neatly closing the gap between Gartner’s sales forecasts and the observed outcome.

Excluding the iPad, PC sales growth in the US was just 3.8% year on year, much slower than second-quarter growth, which was 11.7% – and a long way short of IDC’s expectations of 11% growth.

IDC said that the slower sales were due to the influence of Apple’s iPad on consumers’ intentions on buying PCs, and that it had had a notable negative effect in the US on the netbook market.

Gartner said that sales of “consumer mobile” PCs – netbooks and laptops – were the weakest in years in the US. “The third quarter historically is a strong consumer quarter, led by back-to-school sales,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. “Consumer mobile PC demand, driven by low-priced notebooks, including mini-notebooks, slowed after very strong growth the past two years.”

She added: “Media tablet hype around devices such as the iPad has also affected consumer notebook growth by delaying some PC purchases, especially in the US consumer market. Media tablets don’t replace primary PCs, but they affect PC purchases in many ways. At this stage, hype around media tablets has led consumers and the channels to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to buying a new device.”

Gartner said HP remained in the top slot for worldwide sales, with 15.4m, followed by Acer (11.5m), Dell (10.8m) and Lenovo (9.1m).

In Europe, Gartner said there were 27.3m PC sales, up 7.3% from the same period in 2009 (25.4m). “The western Europe PC market slowed as professional buyers and consumers held back on PC purchases,” the company noted.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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What could Apple do if it really wanted to revolutionize the media market? Here is one option.

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Apple is negotiating with big publishers about how to create a digital newsstand, according to Bloomberg. We are not only talking about how Apple could grab a bigger share of publishers’ subscription revenue, but about plans to establish a “News store” separate from the “App store”.

If the rumors are true, Apple is investing its own prestige in the success of media companies. A separate “News store” would give more income to Apple, but also involve Steve Jobs and his colleagues in making sure media publishers have a viable business model.

As I read about the “News store”, I started thinking about how Apple really could revolutionize the content market – if it wanted to, that is.

How is that?

Here is a suggestion:

Imagine for a second that Apple decided that it wanted to do the same with the media content market as it did with the music market.

What is that? Yes, you are right! Splitting up the “edited package” and selling the content in individual pieces/tracks.

How could that be done?

Here are some thoughts:

News media content today is normally sold as part of a bundled package. The printed newspaper is the most typical example, but most digital product versions are built on the same assumption.

You might ask: Why are the articles not sold individually?

There are a number of reasons:

• The market has always asked for “edited packages” – and that is the product that media companies traditionally are interested in offering.
• It is very hard for a single media company to build an efficient micro-payment solution and a market for individual articles.

So here is what Apple could do – and that would revolutionize the media industry:

Make a huge market based on single-piece content – and then allow for efficient repackaging into new products.

Have we seen this model before? Yes, we have. In the music industry. Apple created a market for single tunes, and not only the record as a bundle. And Spotify is in many ways a repackaging service, offering a very large package of music for one price and with people’s play lists as an alternative packaging.

Imagine the same being done with news. What could it mean?

• Apple would introduce a “Content store” consisting of millions of articles in predefined formats, including the possibility of including photos and videos and templates for presentation. The predefined format would fit perfect for iPad and iPhone.
• All articles would be tagged and categorized and put into a well organized structure making them easy to find. Apple would probably offer and enforce a set of quality standards to avoid the worst crap.
• The articles would be sold through Apple’s easy one-click payment system at a very low price per piece ( a few cents). Apple would of course take a cut of the income.
• Apple would put up a good system for user rating helping users find the high quality content of their interest and to ban content producers that do not offer sufficient quality.
• As a next step Apple could develop a product for repackaging the articles into new media products, allowing users to pick pieces from the huge database and sell them as edited topical packages. The business model would be a revenue share between the “content packager”, Apple and the individual content producers. The more your articles are being used by other editors, the more money you make.

What could be the consequences of such a launch from Apple, provided it was successful?

• Hundred thousands of bloggers and experts of all sorts would try to offer their writing up for sale at the “Content store”
• Some content types would soon emerge as the types people would be more willing to pay for. News articles would not necessarily be on the top of the list, while sophisticated guides and how-to’s probably would.
• There would soon be some big success stories of writers that make lots of money selling their content
• The possibility to make money repackaging other people’s content on a revenue share basis would release an enormous amount of creative energy in the content business
• And of course there would be plenty of failures. As always, most of the content providers would not really make that much money, but they would still continue to produce hoping that luck might change.

What could something like this mean for the media industry?

• It could potentially be a revolution as a mass market of single-piece content and repackaged content developed. The value of media’s edited packages would diminish – just like the music industry experienced. Such a market would also probably force prices of content down and make it difficult for media companies to sell their edited packages at the premium prices their cost structures need.
• New players would compete with the media companies in numerous niche areas and probably in main content areas as well. Yes, they compete already, but a successful content market by Apple would put a whole new dynamics into the playing field.

This is only a thought spin, of course. Whether such a scenario is indeed realistic I could not say. But as an editor I find it intriguing to speculate in whether the market for media content could be revolutionized in the same way as we have seen in the music industry. What type of business models could be game changers for the media?  An iTunes for articles, like described here? Or maybe a Spotify for media content – where users pay one price for access to thousands of sources? Something else?

So far media companies have based their value proposition on the concept of “edited packages”, just like the music industry did. But will this model be sustainable in the long term as content becomes disaggregated in the digital world? Could a big global player like Apple or maybe Google completely change the rules of the game also in our industry?

I certainly hope  the media’s authority to select and edit will survive, as I personally value the quality of editorial selection done by brands I respect.

But unfortunately I am not sure.  We could be in for a revolution at some stage.

What do you think? Is this just speculation? Or could it happen?

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For a few weeks I have used iPad for news consumption, daily tasks and fun. It is wonderful. And terrible. Here is why.

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iPad is my first Apple product. As my laptop I have used PCs, while my smartphones have been Nokia at first and now the Android-based HTC Desire. Kindle has been my e-reading device of choice for books. And I have had a strong interest in all the new mobile platforms, especially when it comes to media content.

This summer I became the proud owner of an iPad.  Working with digital strategy for Norway’s largest newspaper, Aftenposten, I had of course tested out iPad for a long time. But testing a device used by many colleagues is nothing near the experience of customizing it for your own personal use. Finally I had my own device that I could set up in exactly the way I wanted it for myself.

And my first discovery was just this: iPad is a personal device – and NOT a family device. Once you start purchasing many apps and customize the tablet with your accounts for mail, Facebook and Twitter it becomes very personal. Not that I have many secrets, but I soon found myself hesitating to let my family members use my iPad. The reason is very simple: Mail and an number of apps are very personal in nature.

+++ What do I love about iPad?

Convenient user situations. I just love how the iPad offers me convenience in consuming media and browsing the web.  Yes, I can bring my laptop with me to the sofa if I like. But I just don’t want to. The laptop is too bulky and too much associated with work. The iPad, however, gives completely different associations.  It is like reading a magazine: Comfortable, relaxing and efficient. Suddenly I find myself doing a lot of my web stuff in the sofa rather than at my desk. I love it.

Efficient cloud services. I love services in the cloud. They help me not to worry about where I store my stuff – and it is always available when I need it. A number of cloud services apps have made iPad a very convenient tool for me. Most important is Box.net. I syncronize all my work documents as well as important private files with Box.net – and now I have very easy access on my iPad. Need to read a report? Before I would print it out at work and bring it home to the sofa. Now I just pick it up on my Box.net app. Another very good cloud app is Kindle. I can now read my book four places: On my Kindle e-reader, on my PC, on my HTC Desire and on my iPad. And they all syncronize smoothly! For this reason alone I haven’t even considered using Apples iBooks app for reading books.

Touching the news. I love not having to use the mouse when navigating. Touching the news is a wonderful experience and a very easy way to move around. In many ways I feel it brings me closer to the content.

Rich media experiences. I love how iPad offers much richer media experiences than any other platform I use. In my opinion using iPad to consume news works just great. Unfortunately most media apps are still first generation, but I am convinced that is about to change very quickly. Already I find it a much nicer way to read news that the typical web experience.  The display of photo and videos is just great!

Efficient and portable. I love how iPad gets started in a couple of seconds after you push the on-button. Compare that to my one-minute-to-start laptop and it becomes amazingly convenient. Suddenly I can check stuff in a few seconds without having to wait for ages. That the iPad is small enough to be truly portable adds to this experience.

Extremely useful.  I love how iPad can be used to solve so many problems. There is always an app for what I need done and there seems to be no limitations of creativity among the thousands of app developers out there. Sure, many of the apps are crap. But there are also numerous apps that are really useful and which help me do my stuff in an extremely easy way. And since it is so easy to pay, I keep buying new apps.

— What do I hate about iPad?

Lack of multitasking. I keep getting irritated of all the times I am being thrown out of a task and have to backtrack through the start page. Take downloading apps, for instance. The procedure itself is simple, but once I click download I am being sent back to the start screen and I have to click on the app store tab once more to get another app. Back and forth. Back and forth. Why? I just don’t get it.  The same goes if I read my mail and click on a link to an interesting article. Safari (an inferior browser) opens – and I have to go via the home screen to get back to my mail. I guess I have been spoiled by my Android smartphone which is so much more user friendly in this regard. Why not make it simple, Apple?

Wrong display of Powerpoint. I use iPad a lot for work. As for millions of users out there, most of my work documents are in Microsoft formats. Not only do I want to read them, but I also need to make changes. But I keep getting into trouble doing this. Graphs in my Powerpoint files frequently get distorted and even working on the Word documents takes some effort to figure out how.  Given the popularity of Powerpoint this is quite a surprise. Why not make it simple, Apple?

No Flash. iPad is great for browsing. I enjoy sitting in the sofa and flip through web pages. But one big hurdle restraints my use: The lack of Flash support. I keep visiting web pages where I cannot do what I want to do. My 14 year son put it very clearly when I asked why he was not more eager to user my iPad: “Isn’t that obvious, dad? It has no Flash! I cannot watch the videos on my skate sites”.  Again: Why not make it simple, Apple?

Useless in the sunshine. I have tried to bring my iPad out in the garden. It is just not a pleasant experience. It becomes very difficult to read at all and if there is any sunshine at all the iPad only works as a mirror. Reading books on the beach? Forget iPad! Use Kindle instead!

Too heavy.  The weight takes away a number of user situations. One typical example: I like to read holding my book in one hand and a coffee cup in another. But holding the iPad in one hand only soon turns into a weighlifting exercise.

Cannot syncronize.  Yes, I know most people have no trouble syncronizing their iPad with iTunes. Yet I am among the users who have been unable to syncronize my iPad to my PC. Each time I try I am being asked to authorize the computer. I do so and iTunes responds that the computer is already authorized. Yet when i continue, I am being asked to authorize again. And so it goes in an eternal loop. Many have described the problem in support forums, yet there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer from Apple. And I keep wondering why I have to syncronize in this way. Why not do it in the cloud as with services like Box.net and Dropbox.com? Why not make it simple, Apple?

Here are some thoughts about iPad and media companies that I gave in an interview with INMA‘s media blog forum4editors.

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I am one of the presenters at INMA’s Oxford Tablet Summit on May 18th, when 150 media experts gather to discuss the impact of iPad and other tablets. Preparing for the conference I was asked a few questions by INMA’s media blog forum4editors.

With their permission I am reposting the article here:

Just before the INMA Oxford Tablet Summit Forum4Editor talks to John Einar Sandvand, digital media strategist at the Norwegian news company Aftenposten, about tablets. Sandvand also writes the digital media blog BetaTales.

Forum4Editors: Do you think iPad could be overrated – In the topic of tablets, the only brand we hear about is Apple?

I think iPad will have a profound effect on media consumption, just like iPhone completely changed the game for mobile phones. It is a spearhead for new media habits and in that respect it is not overrated. However, whether Apple as hardware and platform will be the big winner in the long run is too early to say. So far they have taken a very clear lead.

Is iPad the only future? Due to great marketing of iPad, do you think there is any room for other tablets? If so, will publishers have to adjust to every single tablet platform that will hit the market?

I am quite sure there will be room for other tablets and even e-ink based devices. The reason is that there are so many different user situations, and a single device cannot serve all of these needs perfectly. iPad, for instance, is too heavy for many types of use and works better as a mirror than an e-reader if you try to use it in your garden. But I agree with Roger Fidler that only a few platforms or app standards will survive, most probably Apple and Android. Hopefully we will also have tools that make it much easier to develop for the different platforms simultaneously.

Do you think tablets could really be called “the future for newspapers”? It is just another medium to read information from.

It is too early to say. But newspapers definitely should explore the possibilities offered by tablets. I think it is too limiting to just stay that it is another medium to read information from. Rather we should look at the new user situations and possibilities to interact with content in compelling ways that is being opened up for us. I believe we will see completely new media products which over time will offer less and less resemblance with the printed newspapers as we know them today. In that respect maybe even talking about “the future of newspapers” on digital platforms is misleading. Maybe we should talk about “the future of storytelling” instead?

Why would someone need a tablet if he/she can read the same information from their cell phones?

It is not just a question of reading information. Rather we should focus on different user situations and what are people’s needs in each one of them. Tablets are able to offer richer and more compelling experiences in specific user situations than other platforms, and that is why many will decide to buy such a device.

Would you call iPad a new space for designers to develop and show their skills?

For sure. Some of the reasons: The bigger and high-quality screen, how readers will use their fingers to navigate the content, integration of video and other forms of multimedia, how simple the device is and how it is perfect to use in a number of situations where you would not automatically bring your laptop.

We live in times when publishers need to cut costs. iPad seems to be the cost generator for publishers: the device itself, plus app developers, whereas producing information is still publishers’ core business. Where is the money in iPads? Can it make selling content easier for publishers? Where are the advertising possibilities?

We are all on unknown territory here. What we do know, though, is that financing quality journalism on digital platforms solely with display ads is not sufficient. That means we should put a lot of effort into experimenting with new business models. Personally I think iPad has the potential of being a very interesting platform for selling content. But I don’t believe in just copying what we are already doing in the newspaper. Instead we should try to create new content products utilizing the unique properties of this particular platform and new storytelling techniques. Advertising possibilities are many and will only be limited by creativity. However, to make full use of the potential, including personalized ads, publishers should think about how they can stay in control of the customer relationship, and not leave it all to Apple.

Do you think iPad / tablets era will further weaken print newspapers/magazines? Or likewise, will they help prolongue their life?

In my opinion one of the biggest challenges for newspapers is that their near monopoly over specific user situations is becoming weaker by the day. Take the breakfast situation as an example. A major advantage for the newspaper has been that it is so convenient to use while enjoying your breakfast. Now this “situational dominance” is becoming weaker: Less people actually eat breakfast, many have TV in their kitchen, they bring the laptop to the table or check the news on smart phones. Tablets will be one more platform moving into the breakfast table challenging newspapers advantage of “unique convenience”. The same happens in other user situations. So yes, tablets will further weaken the position of print newspapers.

Is Aftenposten experimenting with iPads already? How advanced is this stage?

Aftenposten has for more than a year studied closely the development of e-reading, including tablets. We expect to offer products both for iPad and other digital platforms.

For journalists Apple’s iPad is great news. Just imagine how you can tell your stories in new, creative, multimedial and colorful ways.

For the business people in media companies, however, life gets even tougher. How to make money on this new device?

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I was a journalist for many years. From 1997 to 2000 I was correspondent in Asia for Norway’s leading newspaper Aftenposten. Later I covered the Middle East, and I have kept travelling extensively to Asia, at the moment to write about Cambodia. And let me tell you: I would just love to tell my stories on Apple’s iPad! Imagine the situation: My readers (God bless them!) comfortably placed in their sofas, enjoying a glass of red wine on a Friday night, putting on soft music and then digging into the latest trends and thoughts on their iPad. And I would meet them with my stories from the world, adding smell and visuals, video and audio, graphics and the opportunity to dig deeper and deeper, making them understand and feel. They would listen to the wonderful people I met, see their faces, almost touch their agony and hopes and hopefully even enjoy the quality and color of my writing. What better situation could I wish for? What better tool? It beats the newspaper many times!

In short: Apple’s iPad is an amazing tool for storytelling. How great to be a journalist!

Yet these days I no longer work as a journalist. My title is Digital media strategist and I am well placed in the commercial part of Aftenposten‘s operation. One of my tasks is to find new ways to make money on our content.

And Apple’s iPad just made my life even tougher. You see, while it offers great journalistic opportunities, it just got even harder to make money on content online.

Don’t misunderstand me: iPad seems to be a fantastic device. Actually I think I might buy one myself – my 13 year old son already has pointed out that it should be great for watching videos (no, my son, you can still not have a TV in your room!). But as my job is to find digital income sources for a news company, reality is a little tougher.

Many media experts had hoped that Apple somewhat would revolutionize the business model for newspapers and all of a sudden present us with some hypnotic magic telling how we would trick people into paying for our content online. But they did not. In fact iPad was not much as a revolution even as a device. It provided no more than what we all had expected from Apple’s tablet weeks ahead. The only magic was the Steve Jobs’ magic, making anything he would present a wonder to the world. That guy would even be able to sell a newspaper as the glory of the future!

So what are we left with? A wonderful device, for sure. I think it will catch on and be tremendously popular. But for sure it did not give us any better way to make money. Users are thrilled. Developers are excited to use their creativity to make apps for iPad, hoping that they will be among the very few to strike it rich. But content owners are frustrated.

What are we facing?

On one hand a great web surfing tool. Users can flip through our web site with their fingers touching the screens like magic. I must admit there is a small problem: The device doesn’t understand Flash, the most common tool for video and interactivity on many web sites. But who cares? When Steve Jobs says “no Flash”, we just remove the Flash! We owe the greatest hero of our times that obedience. Why make a problem of a detail?

So they get to see our web site for free. Great! It is like a laptop PC. But now: How to make money?

Make an iPad app!, Apple says. Use the power of our platform to create an outstanding application! People will love it!  Also take advantage of the extremely easy payment system included in iTunes.

And they are right! But making an original and creative app for iPad is so hard. We are forced to reflect: What are the true elements creating Unique Value?  How can we give users an experience which goes far beyond what you will get at our free web site?

Is it impossible? Of course not! But it can prove to be very hard to make apps where users are willing to pay for content on a recurring basis.

That’s why I am so ambivalent. The journalist in me loves iPad while the business developer still got his grey hair.

But there is no reason to pity those of us who are in the news business. For so many years we enjoyed what for all practical reasons constituted a monopoly. We could do whatever we wanted – and still make money. So we deserve some true competition, don’t we?

The key question is of course: How do we create Unique Value in this new world?  Or put in another way: How do we produce scarcity in a content world of abundance?

One sure answer is: Do not copy your past! Just presenting the newspaper content in an iPad app, as New York Times seemed to do in the demo, will not be sufficient. Readers will expect more. If they are to pay, you must provide something that sticks out from the rest.

Many compare iPad to Amazon’s Kindle. As I have written before, I think that is missing the point.  However, for business developers there is a significant difference: On Kindle most of the content is paid for, while the vast majority of the content on iPad will be free. In fact that makes it much tougher to make money on the iPad platform than on Kindle.

Yet, what matters is which platform the users choose in the end. And it does not take an expect to predict that iPad will be one of the major platforms to take into account in the next couple of years. I am also confident that it will set a new standard for multimedia journalism and story telling.

So what should media companies do to prepare for the iPad launch?

My answer: Put together your best creative minds and challenge them to design the future of story telling! Give them freedom to think and work. But also ask them to make sure that what they come up with is truly unique, serving specific user needs and distinguishing itself from what you can expect your competitors to come up with. Especially it must be differentiated from what is freely available on the web or in other apps, not only in content, but also in functionality and experience.

Content is abundant – and so is probably most of your articles. So the question is really about the experience you create in your iPad app: Is it truly scarce?

It is tough, I know. But it is the competitive reality we are up against. As media companies we better prove that we are still able to create unique content experiences for our users. And I am sure some of us will succeed!

Numerous technology writers have called Apple’s iPad launch a Kindle killer. That may not automatically be so.

Here are some reasons why.

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Bye, bye, Kindle! Apple fans are laughing and lining up big lists of reasons why iPad will kill Amazon’s Kindle.  In my opinion that is premature. I think Amazon has a good chance of still doing very well with its Kindle platform. For books, that is!

Kindle and iPad are completely different devices. Basically they are not in the same market at all. Comparing them as if they are trying to do the same is missing the point.  Kindle is a specific book reading device designed to display text in the best possible way. iPad on the other hand is a multimedia entertainment tool to be used for a wide range of media consumption, entertainment and personal tools. Buyers of Kindle will never expect their device to do all the stuff Steve Jobs promises. They want to read books. Period. And for doing that many of them will still appreciate the e-ink screen and long battery life. My guess is that many still will find it a strain on the eyes to read a long book on iPad.

Kindle will stay much cheaper than iPad. The small Kindle is now selling at about half the price of the cheapest iPad version. I would be surprised if Amazon does not lower the price even more soon. In addition using iPad will typically involve a monthly charge for 3G connection, a cost which is included in the book purchase on Kindle.  For book lovers the much lower price will be attractive if all they want to do is to read books.

Amazon has a long and close relationship with book buyers.  For Apple books is a new business, while Amazon for a long time has been running the biggest online book shop in the world. A huge number of people are used to searching for books on Amazon and appreciate their intelligent recommendation engine and service. This relationship will not disappear overnight.

Kindle is a platform, not a device. This is the most important point, but often forgotten by experts comparing the two. Yes, Kindle is also a device, but more than anything Amazon has been building a platform for digital books. As customers you can read your books on many different devices, even the iPhone. And you will be able to read them on iPad. Steve Jobs has promised that all iPhone applications can be used also on iPad – and that will include Amazon’s nice Kindle app. Be sure that Amazon now will put every effort into making the best book reading app for iPad. And to be honest: Apple’s iBook app looked nice, but did not seem to revolutionize book reading in any way compared to the Kindle app.

I am sure Amazon will introduce new devices to the market in the next year, but probably they will not try to compete with Apple’s full range of functionalities. Likewise I don’t think the iPad use will be driven primarily by book reading, but rather by gaming, video, entertainment, personal tools and media consumption.

And even if the sales of Kindle devices drop dramatically, Amazon’s Kindle platform as such might do quite well.

Amazon does have two big challenges, though. The first is their relationship to publishers, which are not happy with the terms they have been offered. The second is the proprietory format Amazon is using. While Apple smartly has chosen the open standard format epub for its books, Amazon keeps its own format.

However, both of these challenges can be taken care of very quickly by Amazon if the company so decides. In fact I would expect both publishers’ terms to improve and Kindle opening up for epub within the next months.

That’s for books. I think Amazon has the potential of being a huge player in the e-book market for a long time still – even though I am sure they worry like hell (and should) about Apple’s launch.

For newspapers and magazines it is a different ball game, which I will write more about later.  Obviously iPad offers a superior experience for news consumption. I don’t think Kindle has a chance to be a huge platform for news. For sure many newspapers will offer their content on Kindle as well (it is quite effortless for them to do so), but iPad stands a much bigger chance to define how we will consume news in the future.

Don’t outrule e-readers with e-ink or similar technology quite yet, though. New technology is being developed fast and I am pretty sure we will see numerous of exciting devices in the next couple of years.

But so far Steve Jobs scored 1-0 for the news business. And I am incredibly curious as to how this will all play out!

———-

Not sure what to think? New York Times had its bloggers argue for both sides:

• Three reasons why the iPad WILL kill Amazon’s Kindle
  
• Three reasons why the iPad WON’T kill Amazon’s Kindle

With all the speculation about the coming Apple Tablet:  What Apple really is looking for is a new revenue stream from the publishing industry. That is the claim of Ben Kunz in this interesting video.

Apple Tablet Saves the World from Ben Kunz on Vimeo.

Ben Kunz is an expert on internet advertising trends and director of strategic planning at Mediassociates.  (Twitter: @benkunz).

I came across this interesting video on the advertising blog Thought Gadgets. It is worth looking through – and he makes some valid points about possible consequences for both the publishing and advertising industry.

For publishers the most interesting aspect of the tablet will not be the technological possibilities built into the tablet, but what type of business model Apple will present for media content. Will it be subscription based or will the products be disaggregated with the single piece of article being the core unit for sale?  How much of the revenue stream will be given to the publishers?

Ben Kunz’ thinks a major interest of Apple in launching the tablet will be to tap into the revenue streams of publishers, just like Apple did in the music industry with iPod and iPhone.

But he also points out how mobile advertising never has taken off. Every year experts have lowered their predictions for mobile advertising revenues. The reason, according to Kunz, is that mobile advertising is not working, one of the reasons being the small screens. He thinks Apple’s Tablet will create a new opportunity for mobile advertising to take off.

What do you think?