Comments on: To fight Amazon’s “black box,” iPad publisher Inkling opens its 400 ebooks up to Google

By: Keith

Keith — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 16:37:52 +0000

I think it’s so cute when people think there are other companies out there who can challenge Amazon. Not even Google has the power to take them down. This “war” was lost a long time ago.

By: Laura Hazard Owen

Laura Hazard Owen — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 21:30:05 +0000

How about the link to Inkling in the first paragraph, second line?

By: James

James — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:42:05 +0000

Why is there not even one link to Inkling in this article?

Stop linking to your own posts and forget about the self-reinforcing SEO benefits of linking to your own web properties.

It would be in the readers best interest.

By: jbnemeth

jbnemeth — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:25:01 +0000

Inkling’s Content Discovery Platform (ICDP) should raise red flags for anyone concerned with the finer points of online discovery. Both Google Books and Scribd (among other services) will fully index your books to aid in serendipitous and targeted discovery. Unlike Inkling, Google Books will offer a multitude of purchasing options on their book detail pages. How many people are actually look for Inkling editions? If Inkling attains first-level rankings for long-tail search phrases, this could hurt sales because customers will find themselves on Inkling book pages instead of the detail pages of other, more popular and relevant channels/platforms.

Exact title searches are another thing. Those customers are looking for a specific book. More often than not an Amazon page will show up first for a title search because that’s where most people want to buy their books online. Publishers are generally okay with this as long as a sale is made (and for McInnis to demonize Amazon over this is unfair–it’s about relevancy for the customer). It’s unlikely Inkling will ever best Amazon in book title searches, but they’re already jumping in ahead of B&N and other high-volume retailers (try searching “Alaska Day by Day”). Do publishers actually want to hurt B&N’s chances of making a sale just to help out Inkling’s search rankings? And how long will it be before Amazon bites back by opening their own indexed content or limiting this kind of thing contractually?

My advice to publishers: get your books indexed by Google, focus on your metadata, and forget about Inkling until, and if, they gain market relevancy.

By: ricdesan

ricdesan — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 16:51:53 +0000

Hey publishers, through your greed and hubris you built the Amazon “black box,” So now that you have decided to play nice after the DOJ spanked you, you think consumers will conveniently forget about all that!

By: Michael W. Perry

Michael W. Perry — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 23:56:23 +0000

Authors who’re looking for ways to make their ebooks visible in Google can distribute some versions though Smashwords. Its ebooks are visible to Google’s roving robots.

By: kayarkay

kayarkay — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 21:17:00 +0000

Such initiatives to “disintermediate” Amazon are slowly emerging. One of them recently written up in Forbes is Publit out of Sweden. Finally authors and publishers are pulling their collective heads out of the sand of denial to shake off the stranglehold Amazon has over the industry.
Why bother with agency model, wholesale model etc. when all that is needed is a platform to host the content, manage DRM, process payment and advertise/promote etc. and receive realtime market intelligence as gravy. Besides Publit-like platforms, the publishers and authors could establish their own collaborative eBook portal and simply pay commissions to sales coming from affiliate’s referral links from specialist book review sites similar to movie review sites Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes. And if only the industry promotes the development of generic, commodity e-reader devices using an open format like ePub and figure out a way to subsidize or pretty much give it away, it will liberate themselves and the readers from the walled gardens of Kindle and iBooks and shift the paradigm to “Content is King” rather that the yoke of “Platform is King” they squirm under. Hope the day will come soon when eBook distribution is done on a “Marketplace” model sponsored by neutral, non-competing platforms like Ebay, Facebook, Publit etc.
eBay and Facebook would be good, familiar, agnostic platforms that publishers and authors can embrace as an alternative to conflicted platforms like Amazon, Google and iTunes. And a partnership with sites like GoodReads for reviews and discovery would dovetail with such a Direct-to-Customer platform. Ebay is doing something similar with general merchandise with its acquisition of GSI Commerce and their “Stores” platform for Brands and Retailers.

By: David Thomas

David Thomas — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:17:16 +0000

Yes! Bravo Inkling! This is the choice path — and for all the right reasons: the market data publisher’s need to get every published book reach its maximum audience size.

Btw, that Ginger Cranberry Fig Chutney looks really good.