Streaming or Buying Books: Will Readers Choose a Subscription Model for E-Books?

When Amazon launched its new Cloud Drive a few weeks ago, it prompted a debate in the ReadWriteWeb editorial room about whether or not the future of music involved downloads and ownership - as supported by Amazon's cloud stage - or streaming and subscription - as provided by any number of music startups, like Rdio and Spotify. The ReadWriteWeb writers kept our discussion focused on music, but the debate could easily extend to any number of digital media now in Amazon's catalogue: movies, magazines, books.
We're familiar with these streaming and subscription services when it comes to music and movies (Netflix, Hulu for example). But books? Will we (can we) rent books?
Lit Subscriptions and Banner-Ad Books?
A Spanish startup called 24symbols is launching this summer with the promise to do just that: provide a subscription service and become the "Spotify for e-books." (Much like Spotify, 24symbols won't be available at launch in the U.S.)
24symbols will offer an ad-supported and a subscription-based access to e-books, the latter running about 10€ per month. The books are all DRM-free, but 24symbols is entirely cloud-based. In other words, books are streamed, not downloaded for reading.
While we can probably wrap our reads around a Netflix or Spotify for e-books, that bit about ads in our literature might be anethema to many. I mean, how dare they! I poked around on the 24symbols website, but I don't see examples of how those ads will appear. Flashing banners in the margins just won't do, and it will be interesting to see how 24symbols - now in beta - will actually look.

What's on the 24symbols Bookshelf?
As Bookspring notes in its review of the new service, one of the most interesting things about 24symbols isn't simply that it's offering books by subscription. It's how it's splitting the revenue. On some levels, it's actually adopting the funding model that fuels much of the Internet: pageviews: "The company says it will create a standard page measurement as a specific number of words, and apply that to all texts equally when splitting up ad and subscription revenue."
As the reading is all done online, 24symbols will have some fascinating data about readership -- like, at what point in a novel do people just chuck it aside. It's not clear that all of that information will be shared with authors and publishers, but data about page views will serve in part to determine revenue share.
Will this ad-supported, pageview oriented model help keep content farms out of e-books? After all, it would be difficult to make much money with your spammy, scammy e-books if people don't get past the opening paragraph.
The content farms may steer clear of 24symbols, then, but will book publishers join? That may be the thing to watch, for as GigaOm's Michael Wolf suggests, publishers may be better served by a Hulu for e-books, where they set the terms of the publications.
Book Buyer or Book Subscriber? What About Loans? (What About Libraries?)
E-book subscriptions may sound like a new and exciting model for readers, authors, and the publishing industry. But there's already an "all-you-can-eat" model for books: libraries. That library card gets you access to all the books you want, for free.
Libraries are already finding themselves at odds with some publishers when it comes to e-books - not notably HarperCollins with its 26 checkout limit. If a new model for the publishing industry becomes a subscription-based one, how will library loans fit in?
It will be interesting to watch the launch of 24symbols this summer and to see which publishers and authors play along and how many customers are interested. As my ReadWriteWeb colleagues and I debated with the launch of the Amazon Cloud Drive - we may be moving away from the idea of "owning" our digital content. Will e-books be the next content that we subscribe to and stream?



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Steve Jobs Official Biography Arrives in Early 2012

It’s official: the first official biography of Steve Jobs will be making its debut sometime in early 2012.
The book, iSteve: The Book of Jobs, is being penned by Walter Isaacson, famed biographer and the former CEO of CNN and managing editor of Time. While very little is known about the contents of the book, Isaacson did manage to obtain unprecedented access to Apple, Steve Jobs and even Jobs’ family. Simon & Schuster will publish and distribute the book.
This will be Isaacson’s fourth biography, following Kissinger: A Biography, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Einstein: His Life and Universe.
“This is the perfect match of subject and author, and it is certain to be a landmark book about one of the world’s greatest innovators. Just as he did with Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson is telling a unique story of revolutionary genius,” Simon & Schuster Publisher Jonathan Karp said in a statement.
Apple’s CEO is famously secretive about his personal life. Some of the details of his past have been unraveled in unauthorized biographies such as iCon: Steve Jobs and The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, but none of them paint a complete picture. Isaacson’s book should hopefully provide some concrete answers to unresolved questions about Jobs’s life, along with some new insights into how Jobs runs the world’s most valuable technology company.

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No One Needs Permission to Be Awesome

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there.
And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.
And that is as it should be. Because death is very likely the single best invention of life.
It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new.
[…]
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

None of us should ever have to face death to accept the inflexible and, too-often, novel sense of scarcity that it introduces.
In fact, it'd be great if we could each skip needing outside permission to be awesome by not waiting until the universe starts tapping its watch.
A simple start would involve each of us learning to care just a little more about a handful of things that simply aren't allowed to leave with us--whether today, tomorrow, or whenever. Because, I really believe a lot of nice things would start to happen if we also stopped waiting to care. A whole lot of nice things.
If that sounds like fancy incense for hippies and children, perhaps in a way that seems frankly un-doable for someone as practical and important and immortal as yourself, then go face death.
Go get cancer. Or, go get crushed by a horse Or, go get hit by a van. Or, go get separated from everything you ever loved forever.
Then, wonder no longer whether caring about the modest bit of time you have here is only for fancy people and the terminally-ill.
Because, the sooner you care, the better you'll make. The better you'll do. And the better you'll live.
Please don't wait. The universe won't.
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Turn your home into a billboard in exchange for your mortgage payment?

Turn your home into a billboard in exchange for your mortgage payment?David Pescovitz at 3:32 PM Friday, Apr 8, 2011 

 Imaginary Foundation's Nick Philip just IM'd me: "Would you turn your house into a billboard to be free of mortgage payments for a year?" He's referring to the marketing gimmick/PR stunt of Ad firm Adzookie, who are looking to pay people's mortgages in exchange for turning their homes into giant advertisements for the company. (Mock-up seen here.) They haven't painted a single home yet, but the campaign seems to be working anyway. (Ahem.) According to CNN, the company only has $100,000 budgeted for the whole thing, so I'd imagine chances of getting chosen are slim. Anyway, to answer Nick's question... No. I would not. "Turn your house into a billboard, get free mortgage"
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Toronto's Silver Snail to leave Queen Street West

Toronto's Silver Snail to leave Queen Street WestCory Doctorow at 7:25 AM Sunday, Apr 10, 2011 
The Silver Snail, Toronto's iconic Queen Street West comic shop, has sold up and is moving to new digs. The owner is selling to the wonderful George Zotti, who's been manager there for for years and years. The Snail was practically the last shop left on that stretch of Queen Street from its glory days, before it became, essentially, a megabrand mall selling the same junk you could buy at the Eaton Centre. Things are still interesting as you push further west on Queen Street, but the whole road is fast turning into a blighted corporate wasteland -- a kind of extended strip mall.
No word yet on where the Silver Snail is moving to, but I'm betting they end up in the Annex, nearby the great new digs that Bakka Books (the old science fiction bookstore that used to be situated across from the Snail) has ended up in on Harbord Street.

 The vibrant, cavernous store will remain on Queen St. W. until at least February 2012. But it will move to a new neighbourhood, says Zotti.
"Queen Street is not the book-friendly place it used to be," he says. "If you want shoes or $300 jeans, it's a good place to go. It's lost that browsing, literary feel it used to have."
The store is legendary for hosting indie artists as well as comic book royalty -- including Simpsons creator Matt Groening and Sandman writer Neil Gaiman -- at store events. With its proximity to Much Music, it's also had drop-ins from a litany of celebrities with comic fetishes, including KISS's Gene Simmons, actor Robin Williams, Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics and Burton Cummings of the Guess Who.
"We've opened the store early so Harrison Ford and his kids could shop," says Zotti, who has worked at the store on and off since he was 15. "Mark Hamill came in when I was 18."
Then there was the Friday afternoon Bob Dylan strolled in.

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StumbleUpon Hits 1 Billion Stumbles Per Month

StumbleUpon is hot. The discovery and recommendation engine that makes web browsing a lot like channel surfing just announced it’s now handling 1 billion stumbles per month.
On top of that impressive number, StumbleUpon just closed a second round of funding in March, wrapping up $17 million of series B financing.
That 1 million stumbles-per-month statistic represents explosive growth, especially when you consider that since just a month ago, that number has grown by 200 million, judging from the fact that StumbleUpon publicized 800 million stumbles just last month, according to Business Insider.
Why is StumbleUpon growing so fast? In my opinion, because it’s fun. Moments of serendipity run rampant as you click the Stumble button to go to the next selected site, and every site you see is picked because of the detailed preferences you indicate in your profile. It gets even smarter about your preferences as you vote for sites by clicking either a thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon. And, because I’ve been using the service for the past six years, it’s gotten to know my preferences quite well, and its ability to predict what sites I’ll like has become positively uncanny.
In addition, it’s hard to tell you’re being advertised to, because StumbleUpon uses your same preferences to determine which paid sites to show you. I think any business model that can figure out how to advertise to people without them being aware of it has a great chance of survival.
How about you, readers? Tell us about your experiences with StumbleUpon.

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Charlie Sheen Wants Mila Kunis Now

Apparently Charlie Sheen watched Black Swan recently because now he can’t shut up about making Mila Kunis one of his goddesses. Also, cocaine makes you a delusional egomaniac. Probably should point that out, too. RadarOnline reports:

“Here’s the good news – my goddesses have already f**king approved her. She’s pre-approved!” Sheen said. “I would have great tolerance for many missing items provided it involves Mila f**king Kunis: If Mila Kunis is stealing your s**t , trust me, you’re still f**king winning, you’re still winning at that moment.
“I’m going to go on her Facebook page and discover her likes… I’m going to buy them all and then she can come steal them. A super f**king hot thief named Mila Kunis. Mila, please, we we have a warehouse full of your favorite s**t to steal.”

It really says a lot about Charlie’s relationship with his goddesses that his first reaction to bringing Mila onboard is he won’t care if she steals his shit. Clearly these chicks are robbing him blind and there’s nothing he can do about it because how else is he going to get laid? Go on dates? AHAHAHAHA! You can’t pull a knife at Olive Garden. He’s tried.
Photos: Getty, Splash News
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