1. Is Amazon employing predatory tactics to wrest market share from competitors?
2. Is Barnes & Noble the only thing standing between the publishers and oblivion?
3. Is Amazon becoming a monopoly?
4. What will the affect be on authors?
5. What will the affect be on consumers?
6. How can the publishing ecosystem (authors through book stores) do to react?

By this point you can probably guess what I think about this question.  Amazon is no more in danger of becoming the only seller of books or the only publisher of books then Apple being the only seller of music or Netflix being the only way people watch movies at home.  Strauss agrees with Barry C. Lynn’s assessment in his Harper’s Magazine article that Amazon, already acting like a monopoly, kills competition (Killing the Competition: How the New Monopolies Are Destroying Open Markets).  In the chicken distributor analogy the chicken farmer only has one buyer for his chickens and has to take the price quoted rather than set his own price.  This analogy breaks down, however, because the publishing industry is, in fact, as if the transportation costs were virtually zero and the chicken farmer could sell his chickens to any distributor or grocery store in the country – not just his local one.  The local one might be the biggest, but it’s not the only one.  Consumers could go to the store or buy directly from the distributor.  Oh, and because he has “echickens”, he can sell an infinite amount to any distributor or grocery store.  I agree that a monopoly can destroy open markets.  The Harper’s article, however, seems to be more concerned with a cartel – a group of companies colluding to set prices and/or reduce competition (e.g. for rock star engineers in Silicon Valley).  Those situations should be dealt with swiftly by the Department of Justice.  Amazon, however, can’t join a cartel or become a monopoly and even if it did, it couldn’t maintain such a status.  Just suppose, Amazon did drive all book sellers out of business.  In such a world Amazon would either leave money on the table or they would leave demand on the table.  Imagine a world where the only place to buy a book was at Amazon.com or from one of their retail outlets plus maybe a Walmart or something.  As I mentioned at the end of the last part, even if they didn’t already exist such a situation would cause other ebook online retailers to pop up.  It would even open the doors for new local book stores.  If Amazon charged more, had customer service like that of AT&T, or didn’t offer enough supply of physical books, then consumers would be clamoring for a choice, any choice.  The new scrappy start-up would enter the market ripe for change.

Let me put it this way as to costs. The price of the gas (for the 60 mile one way drive north to the binderies and back in 1990) for the van we used IS MORE than what WMG Publishing pays right now to put a collection of mine or Kris’s into electronic and trade paper edition.

I’ll admit that when the iPad first came out last year I was sorely disappointed. I wanted a tablet Mac similar to the tablet PCs struggling to gain in popularity. I wanted a full computer with USB ports, a physical keyboard, a large touch-screen display, and a large hard drive. I still want USB ports, but that’s another story. I did seriously look at the Xoom and set out to test one as soon as they came out. While the iPad gets a huge end cap display at the local Best Buy, the Xoom is hidden around GPS devices and printers. But, given the price, the fact that every benefit the Xoom has over the iPad is TBD (to be delivered), that the iPad just works easier… well, it was no contest. So, here I am, using the iPad to consume various content items for reading and here’s what I found:

• Comics: While not a huge comic book fan, I do enjoy the occasional comic book or graphic novel – but I didn’t want to read them on my iPhone, it’s just too small to see the images and read the dialog bubbles. My assumption that the iPad would be the perfect for reading comics turned out to be correct. It’s absolutely beautiful. My only complaint is that I need so many different comic book apps to read the limited numbers of titles I enjoy. Most of them have overlapping catalogs, but some titles are only available with certain readers. I currently use Dark Horse, Comics+, DC Comics, and Comics (by Comixology). I would use the Digital Comics app, which looks like it has the best interface, but it crashes every time I load it. The prices for individual books are very reasonable (free to $3, with $1 being a popular price). As a comic book reader, the iPad excels. I don’t see buying many physical comic books in the future.
• Newspapers: I subscribe to the physical versions of The Wall Street Journal, its sister publication Barron’s, The Economist, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Working from home, I also have the ability to read these publications – usually at lunch or a few minutes before starting my day. However, since getting the iPad and the various apps for WSJ, The Economist, Barron’s, The Financial Times, and aggregators like Flipboard I find myself picking up the physical versions less and less. Being a slow riser, I now read a bit of the Journal or other news sources before I even get out of bed. This is powerful, and marks a paradigm shift for print publications like never before. Local newspaper organizations simply must embrace the iPad, Android, Playbook, and the eventual Windows tablets or face extinction.  For instance, the FW Star-Telegram does not have an iPad app, while its competitor the Dallas Morning News does.  I hope they rectify that soon because I will be changing my print subscriptions to digital or weekend only.  For short-form reading the iPad is fast, responsive, immersive, and beautiful.
• Magazines: In my experience, magazines are ironically not as good on the iPad as newspapers – at least so far.  I found the Wired Magazine app, for instance, to be cumbersome and confusing and decidedly not worth the price of each issues or the crazy amount of space each issue takes up (over 300 MB).  They did have some features like video, which contributes greatly to that download size, but mostly the app is linear and does not fully embrace the platform.  Since the issue is completely downloaded you can read it offline, but in the end I deleted this app.  The National Geographic app is beautiful, but again too linear.  For instance, the table of contents does not link to the stories – the user needs to essentially page through the issue, though you can use thumbnails.  Both of these apps lack a annual subscription or the ability to link a physical subscription to the digital version.  For that, I blame Apple.  In comparison, the Kindle has gotten better at magazines and other books with pictures, but it still has the limitations of the e-ink display which essentially means no color and relatively slow paging.  For instance, I subscribe to Fortune Magazine for $2.29/month on the Kindle and the images are really food for monochrome, but they’re not great.
• Documents:While the Kindle can handle PDF documents and a few other formats by sending them through Amazon, the Kindle clearly lacks in this area. PDF documents are not resized correctly when loaded directly and the requirement to e-mail documents to Amazon for converting to their format is simply ridiculous. The iPad, however, excels in this area. Apps like Documents to Go, File Browser, Bookman, PDFReader, and Quickoffice make the transferring and reading of documents – even the creation of Microsoft Office documents a snap.  For my course work this allows me to read the provided PDF files very easily – even pulling them from my Windows computer over the Wi-Fi. This now frees me to read these documents just about anywhere, without needing to squint while reading them on my iPhone, which is good when I need to reference something quickly, but not for studying material for the first time. Likewise, navigating around documents, while not as efficient as using a PC or Mac, is a lot simpler and faster on the iPad over my Kindle.
• Books: What is an e-reader without books?  As previously mentioned, I love my Kindle but find it lacking for magazines, textbooks, and other books which rely on images or diagrams.  I’ve owned a Kindle since the day they were announced (and had it in my hand the day after).  My wife also owns one and we share books between our Kindles, Kindle apps on our computers, iPhones, and now my iPad.  I also have iBooks, Google Books, and Safari To Go apps.  The iPad opens up my book choices to books which are not yet available on the Kindle, although this is a small subset of the total ebooks out there.  For subscription based books like those I read through Safari the iPad is great, particular for series like the Head First books which rely heavily on graphics.  However, when it comes to long form reading of pure text, the iPad can strain my eyes.  Staring into a flash light is simply not as relaxing as reading a physical book or the Kindle.  Using my Kindle I read faster than a physical book, yet on the iPad I read slower.  I also discovered a disturbing disadvantage for using the iPad to read books: insomnia.  Most of my reading occurs in bed as I settle in for sleep, barring the occasional great story I can’t put down, reading helps me go to sleep almost every night.  In my tests with using the iPad rather than the Kindle for this purpose I found myself laying awake until 3 AM, hours after I put the device down and turned off all my lights.  It turns out, I’m not alone because bright LCD displays can trick your brain into thinking its daytime. Not to mention the traits Amazon highlights, such as reading in daylight itself. Reading a Kindle is as close to reading an actual paper book as electronics can get, and for that I will always be a fan and evangelist (well that, and the unlimited sharing of books between Kindles attached to the same account, as opposed to the limits imposed by other e-readers).

Before I conclude, a discussion of the iPad as an e-reader is not complete without a discussion of Apple’s unreasonable 30% rake of content sellers.  Just this week BeamItDown has closed down its iFlow book reader.  The books they sold cost them 70% and Apple took the remaining 30%, leaving no money for iFlow to pay its employees or bills.  My feeling is that iFlow won’t be the last victim of this practice and anti-trust action may follow if Apple does not voluntarily change the policy.  Apparently, they are already handing out exemptions to favored companies, which actually makes the practice seem even more underhanded.  For the iPad to remain a serious e-reader contender I believe the 30% take of subscriptions and purchases needs to change.

Overall, the iPad is a great platform for reading and consuming content.  I find it particular great for comics, newspapers, and graphic heavy books like textbooks and Head First books.  I love the flexibility of the device and just how simply gorgeous the display shines with bright and crisp colors.  I will continue to rely on my Kindle for long-form reading of most books and never see myself switching to any LCD based e-reader for that purpose (even a future Kindle).  Just like I eagerly awaited a good e-ink device to read books I now eagerly await a device using Mirasol or some other color display which does not shine  a light in my face.  For video and highly interactive reading I will now rely on my iPad.

Update 2012-01-27: Magazines now rock on the iPad.  I use Newsstand to keep track of several magazines I formerly read in physical form.  They aren’t as huge as the Wired issues, and are easy to use.  For PDFs I know use GoodNotes for reading, annotating, and highlight PDFs.  This is very useful when combined with a Dropbox account.

30 years ago a package shipped from the heart of China would take several weeks to arrive in suburban Dallas-Fort Worth – not to mention the fact that we wouldn’t even conceive of wanting a high tech item from the heart of China.   We would only ever think of such items coming from American manufacturers.

Five years ago e-books were a novelty.  I bought a copy of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt from Amazon e-books several years ago.  As it turns out, a PC is not a great device for “long form” reading.  It’s easy to get distracted because sitting at a keyboard is not a passive activity.  The PC does not “disappear” – a key feature of traditional books according to Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos.  I certainly found this to be true and I never finished reading the book on the PC, though I loved it.  I followed e-ink news as soon as the black & white easy reading display was demonstrated, though the Sony Reader didn’t draw me in.  The day Amazon announced the Kindle I ordered one (overnight) and have used a Kindle almost every day since.  My wife now has one too and we share books (we also have much lighter luggage when we travel to Houston to visit my family every month or so).

I love my Kindle.  It is the reading mode of choice in our home.  We each download tons of samples and share books (both Kindles are on the same account).  I also do occasional reading of my books via the app on the iPhone or PC.  I must admit that in a book store I check to see if the book is available for the Kindle first.  Price is a secondary, though nice, consideration.  I used to only buy Kindle books if they were cheaper than the physical book, but now I would pay the same price.  I do seek physical books for certain types of text, such as diagram heavy books or books where the physical size or shape is an important feature.  For my son, physical books are very important.

Both the manufacture of the iPad (and likely the Kindle) as well as the e-book revolution really get under the skin of Representative Jesse Jackson Jr.: http://bit.ly/hj9uP4 and http://bit.ly/f6Wkck.  Jackson sees American jobs lost in both manufacturing and publishing (at least the physical paper side)  and believes this ruins the American economy.

I’m guessing he’s never read Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat or Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class.  Both of the works lift up the creative and innovation sides of the American economy – areas we continue to excel in compared with the rest of the world.  The time when Americans could sit back and stop learning and stop innovating themselves is over.  It’s harsh to say, but no business and no industry has a right to success or even survival (looking at you, General Motors).  Printing books in mass, as opposed to on-demand, may go the way of medieval scribes or horse buggy manufacturers.  Holding on the industries who were successful in the past holds back the rest of the economy (Joseph Schumpeter’s creative destruction).

And jobs lost to foreign manufacturers?  If the iPad were built in the U.S. it would cost considerably more.  Fewer sold.  Fewer people employed in Cupertino, California or your local Apple Store (or Best Buy, or Wal-mart, etc…).  Price savings on one item allow other items to be bought.  If an iPad cost $300 more, but was made in the U.S. then I would have $300 less money or spend on other items and services.  Buying e-books means more authors get exposure and again, I have more money with which the purchase their books.

This is why I believe in retraining programs and teaching innovating and critical thinking.  The benefits of globalization can be shared if approached logically. Unfortunately, No Child Left Behind actually causes schools to deemphasize these things in favor of rote memorization of facts, but that’s another story.  We need to focus on meeting the labor demands of the market we have rather than trying to shape the market in a less productive direction.

APA

Normally, using APA style, you would make an in-text citation for a book with this format:

(Author’s last name, Publication year, page number), e.g. (Smith, 1981, p. 56).

As previously mentioned, a Kindle does not give us page numbers.  So, what does APA say about such circumstances?  For electronic works without page numbers, APA actually allows for using the paragraph after some heading or using chapters and sections.

For a citation in my paper on virtual teams from Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin I used the following in-text citation:

(Covin, 2008, Ch. 2 ¶2)

The text is found after the Chapter 2 heading in the second paragraph.  This method is preferrable to using the location indicator given by the Kindle itself for the following reasons:

1. Kindle location is inprecise, unless you’re only looking at the citation on the screen.
2. This is more precise than merely saying “Chapter 2″.
3. “Chapter 2, Paragraph 2″ can be used to find the text in question no matter what format or edition of the book is used.

The bibliography entry for the book looks like:

Colvin, Geoff. (2008).  Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else.  New York, NY: Portfolio. Kindle Ed.

It is important to indicate that the work is a Kindle edition.  While the in-text citation is actually more portable than the normal in-text citation, academic readers will not assume you a referring to an electronic text and may just think you don’t know what you’re doing.

Update: Here’s a blog entry at APA from September 3, 2009 which agrees with my suggestion quite a bit, with slight differences.

MLA

MLA advises mentioning the author and title of the work in the sentence rather than using a parenthetical citation for Internet and electronic works.  If you do use a parenthetical citation, MLA only requires the name of the author.  However, this will likely cause some frustration on the part of the paper’s reviewer.  I would suggest:

(Author’s last name, section-paragraph), e.g. (Colvin, Ch. 2 ¶2).

The paragraph number is optional, but I always prefer to error on the side of verbosity.

For your bibliography, use this format:

Colvin, Geoff. Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. New York: Portfolio, 2008. Kindle.

Turabian

Turabian actually allows either parenthetical in-text citation or footnotes or endnotes.  If you use a footnote or endnote, simply insert the appropriate superscript number (MS Word and other word processors do this automatically when you insert a footnote/endnote).  In the footnote/endnote section use this format (continuing with our previous example):

1. Geoff Colvin, Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else (New York: Portfolio, 2008), Chapter 2 ¶2.

In this case, the paragraph is optional, as in MLA, but again – more information is better.  This is especially true when dealing with a new medium.

The bibliography entry would look like:

Colvin, Geoff. Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. New York: Portfolio, 2008.

When using parenthetical in-text references the format is similar to APA, except for the lack of punctuation between the author and year:

(Colvin 2008, Ch. 2 ¶2)

When using this format, the bibliography entry actaully changes to this:

Colvin, Geoff. 2008. Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. New York: Portfolio.

Warning

I am not an official source.  I am merely an indepedent scholar dealing with a situation and sharing my solution.  Please check with the body governing your research paper and be sure to continue to check for updates from APA, MLA, or Turabian.  Certainly, you’ll need to look at how they deal with multiple authors, journals, etc… and adapt my suggestions as needed.

UPDATE: On the latest generation Kindle and software for other devices some books now have page numbers corresponding to the physical version of the book.  This is huge and will negate the need for using locations on citations as this feature becomes more widespread.  It’s about time!

Time was you could import these classes:

import mx.services.WebService;
import mx.services.SOAPCall;
import mx.services.PendingCall;

And you still can, if you change your ActionScript version to 2.0 in the Publish Settings for your project.  However, if you’re like me and your project relies on new components only available in ActionScript 3, then that is not an option.  You’ll get an error, “1172: Definition mx.services:WebService could not be found.”  You may also be able to get past that and still get “1046: Type was not found or was not a compile-time constant: WebService.”  These classes are avialble to you if you’re developing in Flex or AIR with AS3.  Apparently, Adobe only wants you creating rich internet applications with Flex or AIR.  Of course, this also means that you cannot take any Flash app which uses these classes and upgrade them to AS3.

When I finally discovered this cause of this problem (BTW: I have only found it mentioned on other blogs, not from Adobe) I have to admit I paniced for a minute.  Then, I got creative…  I thought about moving the forms to individual Flex projects and embedding the resulting SWFs, I thought about calling out HTML popup windows, and I thought about trying to redevelop the application in Flex – big problem with that being that the Flash developer had already created a beautiful interface full of graphics.

Then, I disovered two workarounds which do not require opening up my Flex Builder.  One option is to include a custom component specifically developed to get around this problem.  You can find it here.  This method is particular useful if you were used to dropping in the WebServiceConnector from the Componets panel.

The other method, and the one I chose because I prefer to use ActionScript, is to make use of the URLRequest, URLLoader, and URLVariables classes available in AS3.  I grabbed the open source AS3 CoreLib off of Google Code and used its JSON serialization method.  I did end up dropping the strict WSDL, but you could still use one if you needed to.  The tutorials I found on this method centered on retrieving data from a web service, but I was submitting information with a form.

Here’s my JSONService class I created to help:

package {
	import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.net.URLRequest;
	import flash.net.URLLoader;
	import flash.net.URLVariables;
	import flash.net.URLRequestMethod;

	/* JSON
   	used for communicating data with PHP tier
   	grab AS3 CoreLib from http://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/downloads/list
   	and make sure the "src" folder from the extracted zip is in your class path
	*/
	import com.adobe.serialization.json.JSON;

	public class JSONService {
		private var serviceAddress	:String;

		public function JSONService ( address:String ) {
			serviceAddress = address;
		}

		public function sendRequest (func:String, container:String, packet:Object) {
			/* encode and prepare the data for transfer */
			var jsonString:String		= JSON.encode(packet);
			var urlVars:URLVariables	= new URLVariables();
			urlVars[container]		= jsonString;

			var urlReq:URLRequest		= new URLRequest(serviceAddress + "?request=" + func);
			urlReq.method 			= URLRequestMethod.POST;
			urlReq.data			= urlVars;

			/* make the actual call */
			var urlLoader:URLLoader		= new URLLoader();
			urlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, this.sendCompleteEvent);
			urlLoader.load(urlReq);
		}

		public function sendCompleteEvent(evt:Event) {
			// trace(evt.target.data);
			if(evt.target.data != 1) {
				/* error reported by backend */
				var error:Object = JSON.decode(evt.target.data) as Object;
				trace(error.message);
			} else {
				/* send successful */
				trace('success');
			}
		}
	}
}

When I use this class, I call it with:

service = new JSONService(config.getLoadVar("wsdl"));

service.sendRequest("add_contact", "contact", contactObject);

Which reminds me, they also got rid of LoadVars.  I combined the information in this post and with my JSONService class to create a configData singleton.  At any rate, contactObject contains all the properties I am sending to the “add_contact” method in my RESTful controller (a PHP file in this case).  The contents of contactObject are JSON encoded and placed in the contact container URL variable as part of the request.

Behind the scenes, a PHP MVC (model-view-controller) application stores the data.  The PHP file which handles the request looks like:

$request = @$_GET['request'];

switch ( $request ) {
    // lots of other request handlers...
    // handler for add_contact
    case 'add_contact':
        if ( !isset( $_POST['contact'] ) ) {
            echo jsonFault( -1000, 'Improperly Formatted Request' );
        } else {
            $response = $controller->addContact($_POST['contact']);
            if ( $response == 1) {
                echo json_encode( 1 );
            } else {
                echo jsonFault( -2000, model::getErrorMessage( $response ) );
            }
        }
        break;
}

function jsonFault( $code, $message ) {
    $fault = new stdClass();
    $fault->isFault = true;
    $fault->code = $code;
    $fault->message = $message;
    return json_encode( $fault );
}

The $controller object decodes the JSON packets and performs some action, such as validation and handing them off to the model class for storage.

I should also note that I have since found this article, which provides a nice AS3 object to download and use.

Like I said, I might be wrong – but after a lot of trial and error, and error, and error I settled upon this fix.  The error comes from the fact that the .ascx.cs file is compiled before the .ascx page.  So, if could could compile them separately it will actually work (I know, I managed to accomplish this by accident).

What does not work is to declare the form controls as protected variables in the code behind.  If you set them in place in the .ascx file, then they have already been declared and initialized.  However, if you did not place them in .ascx page, you could add them programatically at run time from the code behind and that would work – it’s not pretty, and to be avoided if you can, but it will work (assuming you know when you’re developing this control that the layout of the form controls is static, if its dynamic then please add them programatically).  I also tried data binding, which is likely the official solution – but I ran into problems along that route as well.

If you’re altering an .aspx page, make sure to change to <%@ Page directive to a <%@ Control directive, such as:

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="myControl.ascx.cs" Inheirits="myControl" %>

What I then did was to add string fields to hold my values as protected members in the code behind:

#region form strings
protected String firstName = "";
protected String lastName = "";
protected String phoneNumber = "";
protected String emailAddress = "";
#endregion

The function that did pull the contents from the form variables, formerly called btnSubmit_Click(),  instead uses the holder variables and is now called processForm().  The submit event handler is then created in the .ascx file directly:

<script language="cs" runat="server">
    protected void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        this.firstName = txtfName.Text;
        this.lastName = txtLname.Text;
        this.phoneNumber = txtPhone.Text;
        this.emailAddress = txtEmail.Text;

        this.processForm();
    }
</script>

There you have it.  Maybe not the most elegant, but when you’re hitting your head on the wall, this will save you.

Books cited in this paper: