Media Joint Venture To Challenge Amazon Kindle
Five major publishers of newspapers and magazines announced a joint venture on Tuesday to challenge Amazon’s Kindle electronic-book reader with their own digital format that would include a color display and would work on several different devices.
Time Inc., News Corp., Conde Nast, Hearst Corp., and Meredith Corp., which are all equal partners in the venture, said the new format would place more of an emphasis on visuals and on retaining the unique look of each publication than does Kindle’s text-centric, gray "electronic ink."
The media companies, whose magazines include Cosmopolitan, Time and Better Homes and Gardens, said the format would also incorporate videos, games and social networking, and would provide a classic magazine layout that can browsed with the touch of a finger.
"The genesis of this idea is to build a fully featured kind of immersive e-reading application that can render our content beautifully on those devices that come to market," John Squires, the venture’s interim managing director and an executive vice president at Time Warner Inc.’s magazine unit, told the Associated Press.
The publishers aim to begin selling content in the new format next year. The publications would target tablet computers, portable electronic readers and smart phones that depict color images, Squires added.
The joint venture would allow partners to set their own prices for content.
Some manufacturers are developing devices that will be specifically suited to these tasks. Those devices are expected to come to market sometime next year, he said. By contrast, electronic books, newspapers and other publications that Amazon sells for the Kindle will only work with that particular device.
Publishers outside the joint venture would also be able to use the new format, something that might be embraced by media moguls such as News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who has made no secret of his dissatisfaction with the Kindle.
News Corp. receives slightly more than one-third of the $14.99 monthly subscription fee Amazon.com charges users for The Wall Street Journal. However, Murdoch said his company receives limited access to subscriber data, and calls the relationship with Amazon “not a great deal."
"Kindle is a fantastic invention for reading books. It is not much of an experience for newspapers," the AP quoted Murdoch as saying.
The joint venture also plans to create new interactive advertising formats that would target users in a more engaging way.
Altogether, the media companies participating in the new venture reach some 145 million people, they said.
Although other online stores for digital magazines exist, such as Zinio.com and Maghound.com, Squires said the new venture seeks to improve upon that experience.
Separately, Amazon announced on Monday that it will add two new features to its Kindle e-book reader to make the device more accessible to blind and vision-impaired users.
The announcement comes one month after Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison said they would not consider a broad deployment of the device as an alternative to paper textbooks until Amazon made it easier for blind students to use.
The Kindle includes a “read-aloud” feature that could help blind students and those with other disabilities. However, activating the feature requires navigating through screens of text menus.
Amazon said it is working to develop audible menus, which would let the Kindle speak menu options out loud to the user.
The company is also working on an extra-large font for those with vision impairments ““ enhancements that should reach the Kindle next summer, Amazon said.
Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind, told the Associated Press on Monday that the organization does not yet know enough about the Kindle’s new features to say whether they adequately address concerns of the blind community. However, it’s a good sign that Amazon is expressing a commitment to develop such improvements, he said.
Amazon released its large-screen Kindle-DX earlier this year, which sells for $489 and is aimed at textbook and newspaper readers. Several colleges, including Arizona State University, are testing the device this academic year and providing feedback to Amazon.
The Baltimore, MD-based federation of the blind has partnered with another advocacy group, the American Council of the Blind, to sue Arizona State in an attempt to block the school from using the Kindle to distribute electronic textbooks because blind students are unable to use the device.
The organizations also filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice against five other schools participating in the Kindle trial — Case Western Reserve University, the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, Pace University, Princeton University and Reed College.
Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin were not among the schools conducting the tests.
In parallel to the advocacy groups’ push for better read-aloud capabilities on the Kindle, the Authors Guild expressed concern that the feature could harm sales of audio books. Amazon has given publishers and authors the option to silence the “text-to-speech” capability for their books.
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