Kalpanik - A pioneer of the eBook revolution

(An excerpt from Kalpanik's biography - Artificial Imagination)

In November 2007, three years after I had left Amazon, Newsweek featured Jeff Bezos on its cover, holding Amazon's eBook in his hand. The cover story described a revolution in the book industry - the Kindle eBook. It claimed that, “Amazon’s Jeff Bezos already built a better bookstore. Now he believes he can improve upon one of humankind’s most divine creations: the book itself by creating an electronic Book, or an eBook in short.”

Build an ebook? So Amazon was getting into hardware and taking on a media form—the printed book—which has refused to become obsolete for over 4,000 years?

In the article, Bezos was quoted as saying, “The book just turns out to be an incredible device. Books are the last bastion of analog. Music and video have been digital for a long time, and short-form reading has been digitized, beginning with the early Web. But long-form reading really hasn’t.” At least, not so far. The Kindle eBook was dubbed Book 2.0, mimicking the Web 2.0 terminology, and was not only expected to change the way readers read Books, but also how writers write and publishers publish. Bezos was about to force the publishing world to take a quantum leap into the world of digitalized creativity into eBooks.

To make the Kindle, Amazon had to get into designing and manufacturing a product rather than simply selling it. Lab 126 in Cupertino, California—the home of Apple— was set up to develop the new product. Apple Inc. veteran, Greg Zehr, was hired as one of Kindle’s main engineers. Other hires came from Palm, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, and Microsoft. Bezos, who is an avid reader, understood that to make Kindle successful, a new technology would be needed that addressed the current disadvantages of reading a book on a portable electronic device, so he hired engineers with experience in all of the major forms of portable computers.

It was already possible to read an electronic book on handheld computers, but ease of reading for long periods of time, especially outdoors, was a major reason why readers refused to adopt electronic books. The other major issue was that handheld computers had no book-like capabilities such as easily flipping through the pages and adding a bookmark.  When compared to reading an electronic book, a hardcopy book was a vastly superior experience. The development team at Lab 126 had to create a device that made the experience of reading a book electronically superior to that of the traditional book experience. And once that was achieved, publishers would naturally begin to provide books in digital formats.

Initially, I had mixed feelings about Amazon’s venture into the design and manufacture of hardware.  While there have been some nice examples of companies being able to cross the hardware/software divide—for example, Microsoft with its Xbox—I considered these examples to be exceptions to the rule. In most cases, companies that tried to foray across the hardware/software divide have failed. But my experience with the first Kindle was very encouraging. Though it had been widely referred to as the iPod of the book, I found Kindle to be far superior to an iPod. Kindle had solved a major problem with iPod and portable MP3 players—it eliminated the requirement of hooking up, or synchronizing with, a computer. Yes, no computer required! And the wireless subscription was free.

Amazon had done a great job of lining up content. In addition to books, most of the popular newspapers and magazines were available on the Kindle, including The New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Forbes, Fortune, and Time; and blogs such as TechCrunch, Motley Fool, Huffington Post, and BoingBoing. Those of you who are reading this book on a Kindle know that none of the content, not even the blogs, is free (at least not yet). However, you must admit that the smaller form of Kindle, combined with the fact that you can read a book or a blog without being connected to the Internet, does make it easier to read while on a plane or the subway.

The Kindle became the cool high-tech Christmas gift for 2007 and it has continued to be the most popular and gifted product on Amazon year after year. But the biggest benefit Kindle brought to me was not in reading books. By simplifying the publishing process and bringing it within my reach, Kindle kindled a creative flame in me. I had been informally writing about my experiences for the last twenty-three years, since I came to the United States on a scholarship to study computer engineering at the University of California. I had been sharing those pieces with friends—initially, believe it or not, using snail mail, then via e-mail, and then on the Web. I had been too busy to follow the traditional publishing path and had instinctively known that the market for a book about the experiences of a foreign-born technologist was rather limited.

But suddenly, publishing a book was easily within my reach. All I needed to do was combine those various pieces, fill in the gaps, polish the material, and hire an editor. Amazon has made it easy for authors to self-publish their work by accepting a wide variety of file formats, including those from Microsoft Word. Also, the process of releasing a book was similar to releasing software—with frequent updates, based on the feedback from readers and the availability of time. A writer can upload a new master every month or, if he or she really wanted to, every week or even every two to three days.

My first book, Artificial Imagination, was about my experiences while living in various places in the United States beginning with my arrival as a student. It was published on January 7, 2008. Two years later I published a book about my experiences at Amazon, and the first edition of Inside the Giant Machine: An Amazon.com Story was published in March 2010. The tremendous success of the first edition surprised me, though a frequent feedback from readers was that they wanted to see more details, and so I decided on a second edition.

No discussion of Kindle in 2010 would be complete without mentioning Apple’s iPad, as well as Google’s foray into digital book distribution through the Google Editions program. After Kindle’s successful adoption by the public, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs was quoted in The New York Times in January 2008 saying, “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore.” However, Jobs did a 360-degree turn around and countered the Kindle with the iPad, though he claimed that development of the iPad was begun before the Kindle came out and its launch was delayed only in order to release the very successful iPhone first.

In addition to functioning as an e-book reader, the iPad offers applications and color graphics. While the major publishers want sales on any platform, many deliberately waited to invest in order to see what additional capabilities the iPad would offer for their books. In an interview with The New York Times on September 9, 2009, Steve Jobs said, “I’m sure there will always be dedicated devices, and they may have a few advantages in doing just one thing. But I think the general-purpose devices will win the day. Because I think people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device.”

Google also joined the foray into the digital distribution of books with the launch of Google Editions, which includes digital books in both PDF and EPUB format. While the Amazon Kindle has taken a proprietary approach to digital book formats similar to Apple’s approach on the iPod, Google has adopted the EPUB standard, which is an open format. The EPUB format for books is analogous to the MP3 format for music. Google launched its online digital bookstore with 500,000 books—an impressive number by any measure, but still less than the 750,000 titles available for Kindle. Nonetheless, Google is a serious threat to Amazon. With Google Editions, people can easily access the contents of electronic books on a variety of platforms.

Google used the divide-and-conquer strategy to establish its place in the world of electronic books, which was, at that time, largely dominated by Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad. Google trumped Amazon with its strategy to make the ecosystem of electronic books more open by making them available through Google or any other online retailer. Google books are also accessible through many web-based services on PDA phones, PCs, and tablets. This starkly contrasts with the Amazon’s Kindle ecosystem, where people can order their books only through Amazon’s store. In addition, Google avoids  the use of intermediaries, giving people direct access to their web library. In contrast, people have to download the Kindle application to be able to read Kindle books on their computers or Smart phones.

There are reports that Google has already inked deals with some of the major publishers in the industry and plans to sell millions of books at prices that match or beat Amazon’s. If this is true, Google’s strategy will place it right beside Amazon. Obviously, with the majority of searches being done on Google, the search engine company can use that to its advantage; putting Google Editions books at the top of the search results.

Google planned to scan all of the 150 million books that have been published in the world for their searchable library, but authors and publishers responded with a class action suit alleging that Google’s plan was a colossal case of copyright infringement. In 2008, Google reached a settlement with authors and publishers, paying $125 million to copyright owners, publishers and attorneys. In addition, some of the settlement money was used to create the Books Rights Registry, which provides the copyright owners with a share of book sales, revenues, and subscriptions. Problems with the joint venture in the initial agreement surfaced quickly and in 2009, the parties in the lawsuit amended the agreement to include policies on foreign works, orphan works and licenses for public libraries, as well as adjusting the revenue model to allow the copyright owners to renegotiate their revenue shares.  Google is also developing an affiliate program that will provide online retailers with revenue-sharing opportunities by recommending e-books included on Google Editions.

The terms of the settlement have generated a lot of criticism throughout the publishing industry and it remains to be seen whether Google has won the war to obtain the right to control virtually every book on earth.  However, it is clear that Google has successfully identified the weaknesses in Amazon’s model for Kindle and is boldly exploiting them in the competition for the electronic book market.

Kalpanik S. was born in India. Kalpanik studied Computer Science at the Indian Institute of Technology, one of the most prominent technical universities in India. He came to the USA on a fellowship from the University of California to study and do research in Computer Science in the late eighties.

After completing his graduates studies, Kalpanik worked at both large technology companies and small startups in Silicon Valley, Seattle, Nashville and Southern California. He has been writing a journal about his "journey'" though US, and he finally decided to get it published.

 Kalpanik (pronounced as Kaalp-Nik) means “imaginary” in Hindi. Author decided to use a pen name to allow him to separate his literary identity from his professional identity.  

Kalpanik  is also a great observer, not only he is able to point to the uniqueness, oddity and eccentricity of places, people and culture, he cleverly stretches it for a comic effect, making us crack up page after page.

even though his writing has great splashes of humor, it is also very thoughtful. Also, many of the plots, incidents and characters have a layer of a second meaning, delighting his readers when they figure out the cleverly hidden message, or the unexpected punchline, making his books cater to needs of both the readers who are looking for something light and refreshing, and those who want something more sophisticated. 

Kalpanik uses lot of photographs in his stories, using stunning imagery to enhance his stunning leaps of imagination and make the reader feel he is there with the author sharing his journey of adventure through space, time, life and love.