Barnes & Noble, Microsoft ink $300M deal on e-reading | Microsoft - CNET News

First, Microsoft made a big investment in a failing Nokia in order to create a hardware platform for its new Windows mobile operating system. Now, $300 Million invested in the Nook business of a shaky Barnes and Noble, while its book business flounders in the wake of ebooks and digital content. All this to fuel an ecosystem for Windows 8. This new operating system/content consumption platform is Microsoft's big bet to counter Apple, Google and Amazon. Microsoft needs a hardware and content play in order to be competitive.

The next shoe to drop may well be some advanced hardware from Google via its recent purchase of Motorola. I presume that Microsoft has acquired or is obtaining the licensing it needs for video form Hollwood.

With these four titans rumbling in the digital forest, the battle will be huge and all the competition will be good for consumers. The days of dead-tree books are inevitably winding down

 "The companies announced today that Microsoft has invested $300 million into a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary, known as Newco until the company can come up with a name. The $300 million investment will give Microsoft a 17.6 percent equity stake in the firm. Barnes and Noble, which assumed a $1.7 billion valuation on the subsidiary, will retain 82.4 percent ownership."

Barnes & Noble, Taking On Amazon in the Fight of Its Life - NYTimes.com

I believe print books will become a niche market in just a few years. Why do I say that? Look at the music industry and realize that the CD is a dying breed. As young people have grown up with electronic devices, it's only natural for them to read on the devices as well as listen and view. Whether 'books' in the traditional long form survive as a popular format remains to be seen because attention spans are also notoriously shortened in this digital world.


The big music stores have long ago disappeared from my area.  Music is still sold at Best Buy and Walmart, but I see relatively few shoppers in that department. Instead, people buy and pirate music online. We have one large Barnes & Noble store, and it seems busy enough in a university town, but can it last?

I think I am a realistic example of why printed books will die rapidly. I'm an elderly voracious reader, but infrequently  long-form books, perhaps only a half dozen annually. I read news stories, columns and opinions mostly from my desktop PC, which means, the NY Times, WSJ, various technology and other news sites are my sources.

I am also a Google junkie and use about 20 of their cloud services. It's very difficult to beat 'free' with good apps that are always improving. So reading time on my PC means fewer traditional print books in the easy chair. That's reserved mostly for TV. At first I bought a few Google Books which I read mostly on my Android phone, but occasionally on my desktop PC, too. I like the great convenience of books I own available everywhere without having to lug them around and take up space storing them.

As a dedicated Amazon fan, I buy hundreds of dollars of stuff from them every year for reasons of selection, price and convenience using the Amazon Prime service providing the $79 unlimited 'free' shipping. I also bought myself a Kindle Fire for Christmas and really do like it for convenience and ease of use to read content, browse and buy. Amazon has a real winner here, because it is a gateway to all that Amazon offers, content as well as hard goods. I usually keep it on a table by my easy chair, using it during commercials or when dull TV content prevails. Barnes & Noble lacks this competitive advantage.


The Times story makes no mention of this massive Amazon competitive advantage. For me the choice is simple. Buy a device that provides me the the ability to buy nearly anything, rather than just reading material. It's the reason that I also bought a few shares of Amazon stock at the time I purchased my Kindle Fire. 

I bought a couple of Amazon books for the Fire and I really like the ability to send PDF files to it via email for reading or to take documents such as agendas and minutes to a meeting. However, I find that Google does not make it easy to convert documents in their Docs cloud to PDFs for sending via email. (Instead, you download it as a PDF, then attach it to an email to send it from a PC to the Kindle. It would be so much more convenient to to convert to PDF right in Google Docs and send immediately.) I suspect Google makes it a multi-step process for competitive reasons.


In summary, Amazon will win this battle and the traditional print publishers need a different business model. Smart authors will not restrict themselves to books in print, at least not if they want my business.

"...Without Barnes & Noble, the publishers’ marketing proposition crumbles. The idea that publishers can spot, mold and publicize new talent, then get someone to buy books at prices that actually makes economic sense, suddenly seems a reach. Marketing books via Twitter, and relying on reviews, advertising and perhaps an appearance on the “Today” show doesn’t sound like a winning plan.
What publishers count on from bookstores is the browsing effect. Surveys indicate that only a third of the people who step into a bookstore and walk out with a book actually arrived with the specific desire to buy one..."

Google throws down gauntlet with eBooks - MarketWatch

Google is in the electronic books game now. Easily, I have bought a Google eBook, downloaded the Google book reader app to my DROID2 and now have the ability to read it in my Android phone and/or my browser. This device-independent capability is a winner for me. Thanks, Google.

"The main feature of the Google initiative is that it uses a cloud-hosting environment that allows customers to buy and store their books with Google, as opposed to downloading and storing books on traditional electronic reading devices.

This will allow books to be read using a Web browser on any computer or mobile devices, the company says. including smartphones and tablet computers running on Google’s Android operating system."

Review of Mark's Book

My son Mark's new book for children, Diogenes, is reviewed on page 87 in the Nov/Dec issue of Bark magazine. Diogenes follows his first book, Wise Guy, both published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.

Global Warming - Books - New York Times

I have just ordered Lomborg's book. According to Revkin, normally an alarmist environmental writer at the NYTimes, the extremist on climate change are coming closer to some middle position on how to spend limited resources to deal with climate change.

 

In this same centrist camp sits Bjorn Lomborg. A Danish statistician, Mr. Lomborg has made a career out of challenging the scariest scenarios of environmentalists and argues for a practical calculus weighing problems like poverty, disease and climate against one another to determine how to invest limited resources.

His first book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” put him on Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in 2004 and made him a star among conservative politicians and editorial boards.

In his short new book, “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming,” Mr. Lomborg reprises his earlier argument with a tighter focus. He tries to puncture more of what he says are environmental myths, like the imminent demise of polar bears. (Most bear biologists have never said the species is doomed but do see populations shrinking significantly in a melting Arctic.)

Like almost everyone these days, Mr. Lomborg says rich countries should spend far more on basic energy research.

Global Warming - Books - New York Times

Life at the Bottom - Worldview that Makes an Underclass

Theodore Dalrymple believes that poverty as demonstrated in the 'underclass' is caused in great part by the world view and policies of uninformed liberal thinking and actions. He ably describes poverty in spiritual, emotional, rational and financial terms as seen through the lens of his profession. As a doctor who has worked for many years in hospitals serving the underclass and in prisons in a large English city and, earlier in life, in Africa, he describes what he has observed in a series of essays comprising this book.

Many readers will not agree with his conclusions because they (erroneously) believe that having too little money is the root cause of poverty. Dalrymple thinks that the modern liberal thinking is the root cause of the mess that poor people experience. He makes a strong case against the common belief that lack of money is the root cause of poverty.

Dalrymple believes that 'values neutrality,' and multi-culturalism, among other beliefs and ideologies espoused by liberal academics and policy makers, have created a kind of nihilism in people. He posits this thinking has resulted in the general debasement of culture. This replacement of more positive values such as education, family, hard work, sacrifice, deferred gratification, etc., in the culture, he believes, is the prime cause of poverty in all its forms. It produces bad choices and actions by people and fosters their continued poverty.

Worth a read for those who care about culture, and the gradual erosion of positive values.