A while ago, news broke out about Amazon reaching a deal with Wylie Agency to distribute the work of its clients through Kindle store. Random House was not too happy about the exclusive deal, nor were some of Amazon’s competitors. Unfortunately for Amazon, the deal seems to have fallen through. It seems Random House was able to convince Wylie Agency to back out of the deal. After all, the company was ready to boycott future works by the agency:

The Wylie Agency’s decision to sell e-books exclusively to Amazon for titles which are subject to active Random House agreements undermines our longstanding commitments to and investments in our authors, and it establishes this agency as our direct competitor

Amazon has removed the titles in discussion from Kindle store. They are expected to make their way back to Amazon Kindle store in the near future (according to a statement delivered by Random House):

E-books are the present and the future. Paper books may be still in demand today, but that is about to change with heavyweight authors taking their work digital. We can now count Seth Godin among those who won’t be spending all their efforts to publish their books the good old way. He recently announced that “Linchpin” will be the last book he publishes the traditional way. Seth Godin is a very smart man. We he says things people listen. Besides, there is a very good reason he is moving on:

Traditional book publishers use techniques perfected a hundred years ago to help authors reach unknown readers, using a stable technology (books) and an antique and expensive distribution system. The thing is–now I know who my readers are. Adding layers or faux scarcity doesn’t help me or you. As the medium changes, publishers are on the defensive…. I honestly can’t think of a single traditional book publisher who has led the development of a successful marketplace/marketing innovation in the last decade.

The traditional way of doing things is not the best way to move forward. Not in the age of social media, and certainly not when everybody seems to be connected to everyone else in the world.

My audience does things like buy five or ten copies at a time and distribute them to friends and co-workers. They (you) forward blog posts and PDFs. They join online discussion forums. None of these things are supported by the core of the current corporate publishing model,

Trying to get any information out of Amazon or Apple on the number of e-books they are selling can be difficult at times. There is always a lot of guesswork involved (one would not want to go with Steve Job’s or Jeff Bezos’ guesstimates). But could it be that iBooks is not as successful as some have portrayed it to be? According to J. A. Konrath, that could very well be the case:

Publishers might be looking at enriched or enhanced ebooks as their new big-ticket items to replace hardcovers. But the major ebook retailer, Amazon, isn’t set up for video. Kindle isn’t even able to do color yet. That leaves Apple, and according to my numbers Apple is a very small part of the ebook market. I sell 200 ebooks a day on Kindle. On iPad, I sell 100 a month

In 2008, we predicted that in-book ads were inevitable for companies such as Amazon. At the time, there were discussions about Amazon charging for the wireless service it offered for free on Kindle. Things have changed since then, but we still keep hearing about e-book advertising platforms that are supposedly in the works. With what Google has accomplished with its advertising platforms, it is no wonder other companies are interested in getting their piece of the pie. The e-book industry is exploding. Apple is getting ready to release a 7 inch iPad. iPad 2 is not that much behind. B&N may have not been as successful as it was hoping with Nook, but it is going to release Nook 2 in a couple of months regardless. Kindle 3 is going to start shipping very soon. This all means that a ton of people will be holding e-book readers in their hands or consuming e-books using their computers.

The inclusion of ads in e-books is going to be a tricky proposition. e-book fans are not big fans of intrusive ads. Google has done a decent job of making its ads relevant for its visitors. e-book publishers should aim for relevance with their ads too. I agree with WSJ that sample e-books will most likely get those ads first. Will you pay $9.99 for an e-book that is full of ads (product placements and other types)?

When Amazon announced Kindle Development Kit a while ago, it did promise us some exciting new applications. It has been a while, but Amazon has finally released a couple of games for Kindle. Shuffled Row and Every Word are two free games that Kindle owners can install on their devices right now. Both of these games are word games. The graphics are nothing to write home about, but Kindle is not a gaming device, remember?

I first wrote about the need for Amazon to introduce an app store in 2008. At the time, we were all hoping for a color-screen and somewhat more sophisticated next generation Kindle. Unfortunately, KDK does look a bit limited at this point. Kindle’s App Store (if we can call it that) won’t be beating iTunes anytime soon. Jeff Bezos does not consider Kindle to be anything more than an e-book reader, so trying to out-Apple Apple is not a part of Amazon’s agenda at this point.