This post is my attempt to distill together many different threads into a common tapestry. There is a lot of turbidity in the publishing, podcasting, music, film, television worlds right now. I have these feeling that every bit of this is all part of a larger whole and I'm going to take a stab at defining it. This post will either be awesome because it succeeds or a miserable failure. There is no middle ground. Off in to it. This will be long, you have been warned.

First, let me inventory the raw materials that got me thinking this way. Recently JC Hutchins posted that he had been dropped as an author by St. Martins Press and that they would not be publishing the 7th Son sequels. The post lives between a gut-check and a crisis of faith from one of the pioneering new media creator/ novelist hybrid guys. He also posted about monetary realities of writers pubishing via ebooks. Not that long before this, I had listened to JC's Hey Everybody interview with Pablo Defendini and Ami Greko from The New Sleekness blog. It's a really interesting discussion about the future of book publishing by industry professionals young enough in their careers to be less invested in the status quo and more willing to help a new future emerge. (Side note 1: I met Pablo and Ami at last year's Dragon*Con in the classic SF con fashion I wanted to meet them, saw them in a hotel bar, asked if I could sit with them, introduced myself and hung out for an hour. Try it, it works! ) Much in my thinking was informed over the last month by the Amazon/Macmillan ebook pricing wars of far too large a trail to link to anything. In that debate I did first run across Joe Konrath, his fiction and some of his posts with amazingly open and detailed statistics of what he sells and what he makes from digital publishing. (Side note 2: I bought, read and enjoyed his book Whiskey Sour as fallout from the debate).

There are many other bits of thought in the mix, such as my feelings about beginning my own novel during NaNoWriMo and thinking about hiring my friends at Sterling Editing to work on it and what I might choose to do with such a book when)it is finished. That's enough of a prelude, though. Time to hit it.

JC Hutchins struck a nerve when he basically waved the white flag on his current way of working.

Creating podcast fiction does does not generate direct revenue for me. Based on anecdotal and statistical data, very few people are willing to pay for general podcast content, much less podcast fiction. Since my goal is to make a living wage with my words, the current monetization models including in-show advertisements will not deliver this. Dedicating time and effort to my non-fiction podcast projects will deliver equally underwhelming monetary results.

It is also apparent to me that using the Free model to promote a tangible product, such as I did with 7th Son: Descent and Personal Effects: Dark Art, does not deliver sustainable sales results. I have friends some of whom are my best friends, the most talented people I've had the privilege to know and work with who have absolute faith in this model. I treasure their trailblazing efforts and enthusiasm. My faith, however, has been fundamentally rattled.

Put simply: The new media model viably supports only the most blessed and talented of authors. The time, effort and money I invest in entertaining you for free pulls my attention and talent away from projects that can generate revenue. While podcasting, podcast fiction, and most importantly your support and evangelism has positively impacted my life and career in ways I'll never be able to fully express, I cannot continue to release free audiofiction if I wish to make a living wage with my words.

This is pretty big stuff in the world of podcast fiction. Hutch was one of the pioneers of the form and his getting picked up by St. Martins was considered a watershed and a validation for the medium. So if he can't make it in this world, what does that say about all the other podcast novelists who are less engaged, have less of a fan base, less sheer horsepower? Does it mean this medium is screwed?

I am positing that Hutch had a terrible misfortune of timing, that he arose as a viable author at exactly the wrong moment in publishing history. As he started down his path it seemed like the end game was to get a book deal with a major publisher. For writers of the last 100 years, this was the reasonable career success path for authors, and practically the only one. In the last few years though a sea change has happened so rapidly and thoroughly to flip that Hutch got his boat capsized in the process and he will be far from the only one. As crazy as it may sound, for a certain kind of author at this point I think a major publishing contract may seem like winning the game but is in fact losing it.

The red flags I got from the JC Hutchins post started here:

Examining the lead up to, and release of, the novel, I cannot see how I could have promoted it any better than I did. I literally went broke promoting this book and Personal Effects: Dark Art (another novel that will not have a sequel; it also underperformed). I conceived numerous brand-new online marketing campaigns that dazzled you and others. I asked you to purchase the novel, and many of you did.

If JC is literally going broke promoting 7th Son and Personal Effects book, I think a reasonable question to ask is What is St. Martins Press' role in this? If JC is willing and able to put so much of his own time and money into the promotion of the books, what value is he getting from the big publisher that is worth giving away 90% of the sale of the book to them? 50 years ago, and 20 years ago and 2 years ago, this made sense. It was pretty much impossible to get a book published and into the hands of the world in any significant way especially in a way that a writer could make a full-time living without a major publisher contract, especially one paying advances at a level to be a livable wage. Nowadays, especially due to the markeplace enabled by the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader et al, that's a different equation.

Joe Konrath's post about the money he makes from the Kindle store shows a really clear pattern that he summarizes with:

My five Hyperion ebooks (the sixth one came out in July so no royalties yet) each earn an average of $803 per year on Kindle.

My four self-pubbed Kindle novels each earn an average of $3430 per year.

If I had the rights to all six of my Hyperion books, and sold them on Kindle for $1.99, I'd be making $20,580 per year off of them, total, rather than $4818 a year off of them, total.

So, in other words, because Hyperion has my ebook rights, I'm losing $15,762 per year.

For a writer with an engaged audience, like JA Konrath has and like JC Hutchins has, there may well be more money in their books self-published primarily through the Kindle and other ebook stores. An interesting bit from the Konrath numbers above, that's from making 35% of the sales price for his direct books. When it changes to 70%, he'll be making twice as much per book as he posted above for the self-published ones.

Let me say it again: for a writer who is engaged with their audience and reasonably prolific (because you need new books to keep this engine turning), we may be at the turning point where a better living is available through self-publishing than a big New York publisher book deal.

There are certainly authors that this model will not work for. During my preparation for last year's Podcasting for Working Writers panel at Dragon*Con I talked to both James Patrick Kelly and Kelley Eskridge on this topic and they both raised the point that for a number of old school writers, the idea of engaging at the level of podcasting and doing large parts of their own publicity is anathema. A reasonable chunk of authors don't want to get out in the limelight and picked this career specifically so they don't have to engage. They write their books, maybe do a few conventions a year, do some bookstore events and that's it. Back to the keyboard where the serious work happens. That's fair enough and those writers will always need a publisher to do the parts of this business that would make them unhappy to pursue.

I think of the classic big publisher and big record label model as basically serving the function of the bank or maybe as VC. The manufacturing and distribution of the creative work was too capital intensive for an individual so this company would lend that money to the process, make the books or records show up in the store, do some publicity and keep most of the money. They insulate the creator from the process and from the retailers and fans. What publicity efforts exist, the big media company acts as a semi-permeable membrane to let a little of the public through, but not a lot. Ultimately in this model, the relationship with the fans of the buying public is owned mostly by the retailer and the publisher or label, very little by the writer or musician. For the author that doesn't want to feed and water that relationship, that's perfect.

For the other kind of author, a JC Hutchins or Mur Lafferty or Scott Sigler, going with a major publisher outsources to a third party a relationship with their fans that these writers are really really good at maintaining. When Hutch is paying his own money to publicize his books and his his own direct line into his own fanbase, what can the big publishers do for him? They could give him large enough advances to keep his bills paid while future books are written, but obviously they aren't willing to do that because sales aren't high enough. JC's books earn money, but not enough money to keep him in that system. For me, the real question is Did St. Martins Press do 9 times the work than JC did to get the work promoted? If not, what did they do to deserve a 90/10 split?

Last November for NaNoWriMo I began a novel that I have literally been thinking about since 1991 when I was 23. While I came nowhere near finishing it that month and am nowhere near finished now, I have a goal to finish this novel in 2010. I've already been thinking about what happens when I finish the book. Do I try to find an agent and then try to have them place it with a major publisher? Since I don't have any plans beyond that one book and thus don't necessarily have a writing career in mind, how does that affect my decision making? At the moment I'm leaning towards not bothering to place the book with any publisher at all. I'll pay Nicola and Kelley at Sterling Editing to work with me to get it publishable and hire a book designer and/or artist to hone the final product and then publish it to the Kindle store, Smashwords, the Nook store and whatever else seems reasonable at the time. I'll probably release it via Podiobooks.com at the the same time, do my publicity via that and the other usual online suspects and let it ride. The key point to me is that the energy I could spend in placing my book at a big publisher could be spent selling the book to readers and I'll probably make more money that way in the long run. This isn't the way things worked for the 19th and 20th century and it may not be the way it works in the future, but March 2010 it is the way it looks to me now. The validation of having a major publisher decide I'm their sort of writer doesn't do anything for me. I don't need the book contract to pay my living, I'd end up doing mostly my own publicity anyway so what the hell does the publisher have to offer me anymore? Rather than have them put out a $15 Kindle book that I see a buck or two from and no one buys with a print version that is on and off the shelves in head-swimming time on a death march to the warehouse remainder store, I'd rather put out a $5.99 ebook version that I see $4 from each one and more people buy. I have a whole rant on how the true function of ebook platforms is to enable impulse buys, but this current post is already too long. That must come later.

When I interviewed Cory Doctorow in 2006, one of the things he said is that the generation coming of age now is the first one to arise without a stigma attached to self-publication. Since I've been paying attention to the world of science fiction and writers in general, a giant shift has happened. When I joined GEnie in 1992, the notion of self-publishing your work meant that it was unreadable tripe and the very thought of it was risible to any serious author. Nowadays, it might well be the most rational economic choice available. If you aren't already in the system and earning livable wages from advances on your books, and you are the sort of writer and person with that drive a JC Hutchins, a Scott Sigler, a Tee Morris, a Mur Lafferty, an Alec Longstreth, someone willing to do more than thrown the manuscript over the wall and wait for finished copies to return it might be time to take the reins yourself and just do this. The costs are low which means the cost of failing is low. The traditional publishers aren't paying that much anyway so the opportunity costs are low. Just do it. Lynne Abbey, CJ Cherryh and Jane Fancher did. The writers at Book View Cafe did. I will. Don't pin your hopes on a big publisher with economic drivers that are different than yours. Just do it yourself, work the people yourself and keep as much of the money as you can.

Tags: akismet, amazon, ebooks, jakonrath, jchutchins, kindle, macmillan, publishing, sterlingediting, stmartinspress

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app, ipad application, ipad app, apple app, kindle app

Apple Stacks The Deck Against Amazon's Kindle App

Jay Yarow | Feb. 26, 2010, 11:00 AM | 5,634 | 34

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Tags: Gadgets, Amazon, Kindle, Apple, iPad, eBooks, Big Tech, Media

AAPL Feb 26 2010, 05:20 PM EST

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When Apple's iPad goes on sale in a few weeks, its iBookstore will have a distinct user-experience advantage over e-book competitors like Amazon's Kindle App.

That is, the iBookstore will let you seamlessly buy books from within the iBooks reader app, with the iTunes account it's already aware of.

Meanwhile, rivals like the Kindle app and Barnes & Noble e-reader will require you to boot up their apps, then click a button to boot up the iPad's Web browser, shop for e-books in a Web store, sign in and pay with a non-iTunes account, relaunch the e-reader app, and sync up your new e-book. Not as elegant.

It's not a huge difference, but it's the kind of small simplicity advantage that has helped Apple's iTunes music store maintain a lead over its rivals, including Amazon.

People who use the Kindle app on their iPhones today will know that this isn't a new thing: Since the Kindle iPhone app launched last March, users have had to leave the app to buy e-books.

Amazon didn't built the app this way from the beginning. We have learned that when Amazon first submitted its Kindle application for the iPhone to Apple, Amazon included its own payment system within the app, so customers could just pay for e-books and download them right in the app.

When Apple spotted the payment system, it told Amazon to get rid of it, according to a source familiar with Amazon's operations.

Why? It's a rule Apple smartly instituted at the App Store's beginning, forbidding third-party e-commerce of digital goods within apps.

That is, it's okay to use an iPhone app to buy physical goods -- as you can in Amazon's main iPhone app, or the Fandango app, etc. And developers are welcome to use Apple's in-app purchasing system -- and give a 30% cut of revenue to Apple -- to sell digital goods within apps.

But Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other vendors are prohibited from using their own e-commerce systems within apps for virtual goods. Thus the trip to the Safari browser to buy books.

It's obviously a rule Apple itself is allowed to break -- it's Apple's iPhone, and it can do whatever it wants, as we've seen recently with Apple's recent raids on thousands of sexy apps. But it does put competitors like Amazon on uneven footing.

Obviously, Amazon is never going to want to give Apple a 30% cut of e-book sales, so it's not going to implement Apple's in-app purchasing system. So it's indefinitely stuck sending its customers into the browser to make purchases. (Meanwhile, on the new BlackBerry Kindle app, you can buy e-books directly within the app.)

Assuming the iBooks app and the iBookstore have similar selection, pricing, and e-reader features, this one simple step could give Apple a substantial advantage over Amazon.

See Also: 10 Burning Questions About Apple's iPad

Did you really think book publishing would go the way of the music industry and publish eBooks without DRM? Amazon already wraps their eBooks in DRM for the Kindle and now, Apple will do the same for publishers in its iBookstore.

According to the Los Angeles Times, sources in the book publishing industry have indicated that Apple's FairPlay DRM the same DRM used for its apps and its audio and video content will be made available to any book publisher who'd like to use it.

While there hasn't been an official announcement on its use, it's unlikely that many publishers will decline to use it except for maybe O'Reilly who is outspokenly against DRM.

Has DRM stopped you from buying eBooks?

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

[Los Angeles Times]

Related articles by Zemanta

• Amazon Allows Some Publishers and Authors to Opt Out of E-Book DRM (readwriteweb.com)
• O'Reilly drops ebook DRM, sees 104% increase in sales (boingboing.net)
• Amazon Forgot to Mention That Publishers Can Skip DRM on Kindle Books [Amazon] (gizmodo.com)
• Amazon At War With Publisher(s) (mydigitallife.co.za)
• The Ebook Maze Today (rudyrucker.com)

Apple iBooks To Be Wrapped in FairPlay DRM is a post from: The Magical Tablet

Kindle dev kit now rolling out in limited beta originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If the acquisition of Touchco wasn't enough of an indication that Amazon is preparing for a skirmish with the Apple iPad, this should make it perfectly clear. Mike Nash, a man who has quite a history of accomplishments at Microsoft for the past two decades, is leaving the company to work on the Kindle business for Amazon.

Before leaving Microsoft, Mike was the Corporate Vice President of Windows Platform Strategy and was responsible for pieces of Windows business strategy, ecosystem engagement, consumer security, Internet Explorer, and emerging markets, according to his bio on Microsoft's Web site.

In addition to his most recent role, Nash has had a string of historic positions at Big M including a role as the first product manager on the original Windows NT marketing team; the Corporate Vice President of the Security Technology Unit; and a driver of a number of Microsoft acquisitions in the security space.

There's been no official announcement yet from Amazon so we're unsure of Nash's focus within the Amazon team.

[Mary Jo Foley, ZDNet] [Amazon Kindle]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclszr.us/5

Related articles by Zemanta

• Amazon acquires Touchco and a Microsoft exec (macworld.com)
• Another Windows exec Mike Nash is leaving Microsoft (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Amazon Hires Mike Nash from Microsoft to Work on Kindle is a post from: Magical Tablet

We're not going to see the iPad hit stores for another two months, but it is already changing the ebook game and forcing publishers and consumers to pick sides.

Last night, several blogs including Venturebeat and NYT's Bits Blog noticed something was amiss on the website of the world's largest retailer: Amazon suddenly stopped selling books from Macmillan, one of the world's largest book publishers.

Not every Macmillan book is gone, but popular ones such as The Gathering Storm are no longer sold by Amazon, either in physical or Kindle form. You can still find the Amazon pages for Macmillan's books you just can't order the actual books.

According to the New York Times, the reason the books were pulled was the iPad. Macmillan told Amazon that it wanted to change its pricing and compensation agreement, upping the price of some books from $9.99 to $15 and splitting sales 70/30, the same model Apple uses for the iPhone app store and its upcoming iBooks store. Amazon's apparent response was to flex its muscle and pull countless Macmillan books off the virtual shelves.

The Dynamics of the New Ebook War

Ever since we got word of the iPad's existence, we've known that Amazon and Apple were on a collision course. Apple saw an opportunity to not only create a new category of device, but to get its hands into the publishing market. In the same way Apple has transformed music, the computing giant would reshape books and become the primary distributor of ebooks worldwide.

Back in September, we wrote a lengthy piece explaining why we believed Apple's tablet would eat the Kindle's lunch, displacing Amazon's lordship over ebooks. We argued that its multipurpose functionality, color screen, and sexier interface and look would put it over the top. Now that we know the iPad's starting price, ($499), our opinion hasn't changed. While the Kindle will survive, its sales will likely never be the same.

Publishers like Macmillan apparently agree with us as well, otherwise they wouldn't so boldly demand price changes from Amazon. Before the iPad was revealed, Amazon was the only player in the game. You played by its rules or you could take a hike. Now with a viable alternative only months away, publishers can run to Apple, where it will have more freedom over its ebook prices.

Amazon's clearly worried, which is why it's launching an app store and used its earnings report to remind us that the Kindle is far from dead. But if publishers decide to abandon the Kindle, then Apple will have won the war by default.

That's why Amazon decided to use its biggest weapon, Amazon.com itself, against Macmillan to send a message to every publisher: If you don't play by its rules, then you can't be in its store. While a publisher can likely survive without the Kindle, the same cannot be said for Amazon.com. Publishers simply cannot afford to leave the world's largest online retailer.

The Kindle and the iPad offer different experiences. The Kindle's battery life and e-ink are strong selling points for the device as a reader, but the iPad offers so much more. Apple's banking on those extra features and its undeniable reach to turn the Kindle into an endangered species.

Publishers now have to either choose a side or walk the tightrope between the two companies. The end result will be a long, drawn out war that will both help and hurt consumers. How it will end is anybody's guess.

Tags: amazon, apple, Apple iPad, Apple Tablet, ebooks, iBooks, ipad, Kindle, Macmillan, Tablet, trending

We're not going to see the iPad hit stores for another two months, but it is already changing the e-book game and forcing publishers and consumers to pick sides.

Last night, several blogs including Venturebeat and NYT's Bits Blog noticed something was amiss on the website of the world's largest retailer: Amazon suddenly stopped selling books from Macmillan, one of the world's largest book publishers.

Not every Macmillan book is gone, but popular ones such as The Gathering Storm are no longer sold by Amazon, either in physical or Kindle form. You can still find the Amazon pages for Macmillan's books you just can't order the actual books.

According to The New York Times, the reason the books were pulled was the iPad. Macmillan told Amazon that it wanted to change its pricing and compensation agreement, upping the price of some books from $9.99 to $15 and splitting sales 70/30, the same model Apple uses for the iPhone app store and its upcoming iBooks store. Amazon's apparent response was to flex its muscle and pull countless Macmillan books off the virtual shelves.

The Dynamics of the New E-book War

Ever since we got word of the iPad's existence, we've known that Amazon and Apple were on a collision course. Apple saw an opportunity to not only create a new category of device, but to get its hands into the publishing market. In the same way Apple has transformed music, the computing giant would reshape books and become the primary distributor of e-books worldwide.

Back in September, we wrote a lengthy piece explaining why we believed Apple's tablet would eat the Kindle's lunch, displacing Amazon's lordship over e-books. We argued that its multipurpose functionality, color screen, and sexier interface and look would put it over the top. Now that we know the iPad's starting price ($499), our opinion hasn't changed. While the Kindle will survive, its sales will likely never be the same.

Publishers like Macmillan apparently agree with us as well, otherwise it wouldn't so boldly demand price changes from Amazon. Before the iPad was revealed, Amazon was the only player in the game. You played by its rules or you could take a hike. Now with a viable alternative only months away, publishers can run to Apple, where they will have more freedom over its e-book prices.

Amazon's clearly worried, which is why it's launching an app store and used its earnings report to remind us that the Kindle is far from dead. But if publishers decide to abandon the Kindle, then Apple will have won the war by default.

That's why Amazon decided to use its biggest weapon, Amazon.com itself, against Macmillan to send a message to every publisher: If you don't play by its rules, then you can't be in its store. While a publisher can likely survive without the Kindle, the same cannot be said for Amazon.com. Publishers simply cannot afford to leave the world's largest online retailer.

The Kindle and the iPad offer different experiences. The Kindle's battery life and e-ink are strong selling points for the device as a reader, but the iPad offers so much more. Apple's banking on those extra features and its undeniable reach to turn the Kindle into an endangered species.

Publishers now have to either choose a side or walk the tightrope between the two companies. The end result will be a long, drawn-out war that will both help and hurt consumers. How it will end is anybody's guess.

Tags: amazon, apple, Apple iPad, Apple Tablet, ebooks, iBooks, ipad, Kindle, Macmillan, Tablet, trending

The real question about Apple's new multitouch pseudo-computer, dubbed the iPad, is not whether it sucks or rocks. What all of us really want to know is whether it will change the future. The answer? Yes, but badly.

The iPad And The World Of Tomorrow

For those who spent yesterday glued to the State of the Union address instead of tech news feeds, Gizmodo has a terrific summary of Apple's new device. To break it down: The iPad looks basically like an iPhone, but with a 9.7 inch screen. It runs the same software as the iPhone, can connect to the internet, and seems to work nicely for reading books, newspapers and magazines, watching video, checking Google maps, reading your email, surfing the web, and casual gaming. Like the iPhone, it has no keyboard - you can touch-type on the screen. (It also has a keyboard attachment that you can buy separately.)

Why is this outsize version of the iPhone so important that the internet basically exploded over it yesterday? Mostly because Apple's last two new mobile devices - the iPod and the iPhone - changed the way people think about computers. They really did change the future, by making it glaringly obvious that computing devices are not all desktop PCs - they can be specialized music players, or telephone/internet toys that put the web in your pocket. They are the beautiful, cool poster gadgets for the mobile computer generation; they are what we imagine when we think of tomorrow's machines.

The Mythical Convergence Device

The iPad promises to be just as revolutionary as its predecessors, for one reason. It embodies, as much as possible, the mythical convergence device that technophiles have been craving for almost two decades. The convergence device, which people began to discuss seriously in the 1990s, would be a unified gadget where you could consume many kinds of media, especially TV and the web, with the same gadget.

This is exactly what the iPad does, helped along by the fact that so much television is available online already. And you can add books to this convergence, too (possibly even with a Kindle app). The iPad is also the perfect shape for a convergence box. Its screen is about the size of a quality paperback or small television set. There's none of that scrunching your forehead as you peer into the teeny screen of the iPhone to read a book or watch YouTube.

What I'm saying is that the iPad appeals to a very deep and longlived fantasy in the consumer electronics world: A device that does it all. At least, if all you want to do is consume media.

And there's the problem.

Reinventing The Television

Apple is marketing the iPad as a computer, when really it's nothing more than a media-consumption device - a convergence television, if you will. Think of it this way: One of the fundamental attributes of computers is that they are interactive and reconfigurable. You can change the way a computer behaves at a very deep level. Interactivity on the iPad consists of touching icons on the screen to change which application you're using. Hardly more interactive than changing channels on a TV. Sure, you can compose a short email or text message; you can use the Brushes app to draw a sketch. But those activities are not the same thing as programming the device to do something new. Unlike a computer, the iPad is simply not reconfigurable.

The iPad emulates television in another way, too: You can channel surf through the Apps Store, but you can't change what's playing. Every single app that's available for the iPad has to be approved by Apple first, just like apps for iPhones. That means censorship of "offensive" apps, no apps that compete with Apple (i.e., no Google Voice), and no random app somebody wrote to do whatever obscure shit you want to do. So you've got thousands of channels and nothing on. You can only keep flipping through the channels, hoping in vain to see something other than reruns of Cheaters and Alf.

If you want something new, there are very limited ways of getting it. You can write an app, and it might be accepted to the Apps Store. Or you can write your own (unacceptable) app and hand it out to a few friends, if you and they are technically savvy enough. But most users won't be in that position.

As futurist Jamais Cascio told io9:

This is Apple's big push of its top-down control over applications into the general-purpose computing world. The only applications that will work with the iPad are those approved by Apple, under very opaque conditions. On a phone, that's borderline acceptable, but it's not for something that is positioned to overlap with regular computers.

The iPad has all the problems of television, with none of the benefits of computers.

Back To The Shopping Mall

So if it's not a computer, what exactly is the iPad? It could be just a really tarted-up ebook reader, which would make sense if you consider that the iPad is competing with Amazon's Kindle. So it's a reinvention of the book, a fairly old technology, but in a gleaming new package. Except that package isn't even very new, as futurist and science fiction author Karl Schroeder pointed out. He told io9 that the iPad isn't about brilliant hardware innovation, and that in fact the device doesn't even use state-of-the-art ebook tech like e-ink.

Speaking to us via email, Schroeder said:

What Apple has done (again) is seize the moment with a combination of a device and a business model . . . even if e-ink provides a better reading experience for books (reading on an iPad will continue to literally mean staring into a lamp, just like reading on a computer screen), it doesn't matter because it's the total package of iTunes, iBookstore, 3G, games, apps etc. that will pull ebook readers along with it. Consider that the iPad is a closed platform that doesn't even multitask; if the technology mattered, those would be major considerations for the buyer. But they won't be, because when you buy an iPad, you buy access to the whole Apple business ecology.

Looked at from this angle, the iPad isn't so much new technology as it is a shiny, pretty doorway to a mall where you can buy everything from books to movies.

The iPad hasn't brought us forward into the future. It's taken us backward to a world of strip malls and televisions.

Another Vision Of The Future

So the iPad takes us back to the 1980s, or maybe even the 1950s. It's likely to be a device that changes our future, but what that means is we're facing a tomorrow where true innovation is sidelined by a device that represents a convergence of old media and shopping.

But as John Connor would say, we can change the future. That might be as simple as pushing Apple to change its App Store policies to make iPads less like TVs and more like computers. As Lifehacker's Adam Pash put it, "The App Store isn't exactly the problem-it's the way Apple runs and limits the App Store." He suggests that Apple could create a special "Restricted section" for its App Store. He continues:

Rather than reject applications that it feels may confuse the user (like they claimed Google Voice or Google Latitude might), or applications that allow users to access naughty pictures, or even applications that it hasn't had time to vet for the App Store proper, [Apple] put those applications in the Restricted section. Before a user is able to install applications from the Restricted section, that user has to agree that the application may confuse their feeble minds, offend their delicate sensibilities, or even slow down their device. Is this such a problem? . . . Even better, [the iPad] could work like the package manager it actually is and allow users to add their own trusted repositories as sources for other applications . . . The point is, users should at least be allowed to flip some switch, somewhere on the machine, that says, "Hey computer, I'm an adult, and I take responsibility over how I use this machine."

A convergence device that can also be reprogrammed the way computers can? Now we're in the twenty-first century.

Another possibility would be for developers and investors to focus on hardware that truly is innovative and futuristic. Schroeder says:

There's really nothing in the iPad that's new; if you want truly new, disruptive tech that would be at a similar price point if commercialized, look at Pranav Mistry's SixthSense and related projects.

SixthSense is a gesture-controlled mobile device with a projector - you can see its telephone app at work above. You project the phone onto your hand and press the buttons. You can also use gestures to take pictures. This is truly the next step in mobile computing, and will likely revolutionize computer networks in ways we can't yet imagine.

What Is To Be Done?

I know a lot of otherwise-savvy consumers and hackers who are already drooling over the iPad and putting in their orders. They hate the idea of a restricted device, but they love the shiny-shiny. I'm not saying that they should deprive themselves of this pretty new toy. What I am saying is that this toy represents a crappy, pathetic future. It is no more revolutionary than those expensive, hot boots I bought at Fluevog, and only slightly more useful.

The only way iPads can truly become futuristic devices is if we hack them so that we can pour whatever operating system we want inside. We need to jailbreak these media boxes so we can install the apps we want, not the ones provided by the Apple shopping mall.

Do not be content with a television when you can have a computer.

Do not be content with yesterday's machines, because the future is before you. Ready to be hacked.