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Hearst Reveals Skiff E-Reader

By Steve Smith

The e-reader field is getting more crowded by the day. Hearst subsidiary Skiff offered up the specs and first images of its portable digital reading device before the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was set to launch this week in Las Vegas. The Skiff Reader will try to distinguish itself from the Kindle, nook, Sony eReader, QUE and other e-ink devices with size and portability. The 9 x 11-inch unit will hold an 11.5-inch (measured diagonally) display, which does out-size the large Kindle DX and the Plastic Logic QUE. (More images are below.) This display uses a special ‘metal foil’ technology that offers touch screen interaction but does not require a glass protective coating. The 1200 x 1600 resolution screen will run at 174 dots-per-inch, which should appeal to print newspaper and magazine publishers looking for greater detail. The screen is still black and white, however, and it remains to be seen how quickly an e-ink display at such high resolution can refresh itself as it changes pages. One of the chief frustrations of the e-ink devices is their very sluggish performance and muddy display of images.

The Skiff Reader is putting a premium on paper-like portability. It claims to weigh just above a pound. The battery is expected to last a week under standard usage. The device also sports 3G and WiFi wireless connectivity as well as a USB port for side-loading content from a PC.

The Hearst-owned company is putting print publishers front and center in this model. The company says the Skiff will access an online store of newspapers, magazines, books, blogs and other content from a range of publishers. The Skiff is promising to host print brands with unique design attributes, interactive elements, and dynamic content updating “that help publishers differentiate themselves and attract subscribers and advertisers,” the company said in its statement.

Sprint will provide the cellular network for downloading content almost anywhere, but the wireless carrier will also provide a distribution channel. Unlike the Amazon Kindle (available online only), the nook (available in Barnes & Noble) or the Sony eReader (in bookstores), the Skiff will leverage Sprint’s 1,000 phone retail outlets. Other distribution channels will be announced later, as will pricing and date of release.

Finding the right distribution mechanism for the Skiff could prove its toughest challenge. Obviously, the B&N venue would favor its own device, even if it did open itself to multiple vendors. Borders Books retail stores have been featuring the Sony devices for some time. And Skiff has no brand recognition of its own with which to build much of an online draw to an e-commerce site. Relying on a tech provider like Sprint is dubious, since wireless carriers do not have expertise in selling content-centric devices. In fact, content partners to the major carriers have long complained how poorly these tech-driven companies merchandize mobile content.

To make matters worse, all of the e-ink readers are about to be eclipsed by the relentless hype surrounding the rumored release of an Apple tablet, which many expect to be announced later this month.

Nevertheless, the march of the e-reader devices continues, with voice-recognition innovator Ray Kurzweil announcing a new color e-reader, the "Blio," today at CES.

Sit back and watch the fragmentation begin.

From paidcontent.org: IRex offering better deal to publishers than Kindle. (See related story a few entries down in this blog). The IRex e-reader is hoping to compete with Kindle, in part, based on its ability to attract periodicals. Sounds good, but will people buy the IRex?

"How does the iRex model for periodical publishers differ from Amazon? Hamilton’s pitch: “We’re saying, you promote your product, you price your product, you format and deliver your product in the way that you want to and you’ll enter into a 1-to-1 relationship with your customer. We’ll facilitate that and we’ll take a piece of the revenue. We don’t want to stand in between the customer and the publisher, if you want to cross sell or upsell or cross market or do other things with your customer, it’s your customer. We’re not going to try to dictate or control that. The Amazon approach is very different .. The publisher is cut out of the loop. Almost every publisher we’ve gone to has been very dissatisfied with that model and they’re very eager to be connected to their customers.”

Full story here

I have been arguing for a while that the e-reader could be the silver bullet for print products. I like the fact that the content is controlled and have always felt that it offered a compelling proposition to advertisers, if and when, advertising was made available on devices like the Kindle and the Sone E-Reader. I thought, the day would come when e-readers, rather than the web, would become the way newspaper and magazine content was dispersed. Maybe I was wong. 

Jack McKeown lays out a compelling argument that the e-reader adoption is likely to be much slower than the e-reader manufacturers would have us believe. In fairness, McKeown is the former CEO of a book company, so he may not be completely objective but his arguments are worth considering.

From paidcontent.org: full story here

Here is an excerpt:

"There is mounting evidence that screen-reading, even on reflective E-Ink devices, is not the same as reading print on a page. Recent articles in publications including Slate, The Washington Post and O Magazine, make the case that screen reading is more distracted and less immersive. Studies by Ken Pugh, president of Yale’s Haskins Laboratories, and Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University, point to the same conclusion. A piece in today’s New York Times (NYSE: NYT) also looks at how the reading experience differs between paper and screen."

 

According to a survey by AdMob and ComScore, IPhone users are 58% more likely to view news via web access on their phones than they are to read the newspaper. They are also 53% more likely to read magazines via their mobile device than read the print version. 

If you (being a person in the print industry) are still wondering whether or not free content via the web is a good idea this should show you once and for all that the future lies in protecting the content that you pay to create and delivering it via print and an e-reader format, like the Kindle or Sony Reader. As we have spoken about before in this blog, the beauty of the e-reader format is that the producer of content controls access.

Here is more information from the survey, so you can draw your own conclusions. Please tell us if you disagree.

From the 4-11 Wall Street Journal: 

...competition is increasing in the reader market, which has so far been dominated by Amazon's Kindle and Sony Corp.'s Reader. In recent weeks, both Hearst Corp. and News Corp. have indicated they're working on e-reader hardware.

Plastic Logic Ltd. said that it will come out with an electronic reader that is about the size of an 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper early next year. The company will conduct a trial launch of its reading device this summer with the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, daily papers that earlier this month stopped delivery of their print versions most days of the week.

No doubt, this could be a great way to deliver content for dailies.