If you’ve been to an airport or taken a train in the past few months, you’ve likely noticed the increasing popularity of the e-reader. The Kindle was Amazon.com’s best selling product across all categories this holiday season, dozens of so-called “Kindle cousins” took CES by storm earlier this month, and this week Apple unveiled its long-awaited iPad, leaving many organizations wondering whether content for these devices should be a part of their digital marketing and communications strategies.
At this point, there is no one way to distribute content across e-readers. Each product has different capabilities and ways of accessing content. So I’ve researched a few of the most popular e-readers and assessed them from a digital marketer’s perspective to give you an idea of what opportunities (and caveats) may exist for your company to reach your audience through these devices.
Amazon’s Kindle, currently the most popular e-reader, allows users to subscribe to blogs through the device. To make your company’s blog available on the Kindle, you must sign up with Kindle Publishing. Amazon prices blogs at either $.99 or $1.99 per month and kicks back 30% of the revenue to you (don’t expect to make much this way). Currently, there is no way to distribute your blog for free through the Kindle. If your blog’s audience travels for business or takes public transportation, it may be a good idea to become a Kindle publisher. However, if your blog readers aren’t traveling it’s unlikely they’ll pay to read something on the device that they can get for free (and in color, with video, etc.) on a computer.
The Sony Reader is the currently the Kindle’s biggest competition. This device does not allow for blog subscriptions or limited internet access, like the Kindle. However, if you distribute whitepapers, brochures, or other documents as PDFs, your audience may choose to download them to either the Reader or Kindle and read them on the devices. If your audience is likely to do this it’s a good idea to stick to high-contrast images and charts that don’t rely too much on color for understanding, as both the Reader and the Kindle display images in grayscale.
The iPad, set to hit the market in late March (can you hear the line forming at the Apple store now?) will allow users to access content and applications in many of the same ways they do on their iPhones and computers. It is anticipated that the iPad will most often be used for reading and accessing media while traveling. What does this mean for you? One possibility is that you’ll have a more captive audience. It’s usually recommend that online video be kept to a maximum of three minutes on most websites due to the short attention spans most of us have online. However, if your users are delayed at an airport or on a long train ride, they may be interested in watching a 20-minute feel-good documentary on the work your non-profit has done over the last year.
Here at BI, we approach everything from a user-centric point of view. That’s why we believe it’s important to understand how users are accessing your website, blog, and other reading materials and how they appear on different types of screens. If your audience is likely to read your latest whitepaper on a Kindle or view your website on an iPad, it’s important that the associated project team is aware of this. That way the medium is taken into consideration, providing a the best user experience possible for your audience.
I’ll keep you updated as the e-reader market evolves and presents new opportunities and challenges for businesses. My first prediction: sponsored reading… a la “read The Total Money Makeover free today courtesy of Fidelity Investments”… I can see it now.
The e-reader world is certainly getting interesting! With all of the new devices poised to hit the market, Kindle and Sony will undoubtedly have to lower their prices. The iPod is not a direct competitor in my opinion-more a pricey toy for Apple enthusiasts, although many of them are quite disappointed.
Another aspect of the iPad that may be interesting to marketing design firms is it’s supposed lack of Flash support, at least initially. This means that websites prominently using Flash for its user interface may have to redesign them for use on the iPad, just like certain websites require ‘smaller’ equivalents for use on smart phones and other portable devices. Depending on the success or failure of Apple’s new product, other companies may introduce competing tablet PC’s, including HP, Samsung, LG, and Sony.
Update: Penguin views iPad distribution in terms of applications rather than books. Very cool. http://gizmodo.com/5485150/penguins-incredible-vision-of-books-on-the-ipad-doesnt-look-anything-like-books