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Sideways titles awarded QED Seal – Quality, Excellence and Design

Peter Rabbit, Appley Dapply, and David Roberts Egypt were each award the QED seal by PIA. “New to the Publishing Innovation Awards this year is the QED Seal, which stands for Quality, Excellence, Design. The QED is the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval™” for ebooks – it signals to an ebook reader that the title will render well in whatever their preferred reading format and that they can buy with confidence.”  Each of Sideways’ titles met a rigorous 14 point quality checklist.

We are proud to have received these awards and we promise that our readers can look forward to an ever-increasing level of quality and innovation in our publications.

Charles Stack

The First Animated EPUB now available.

It took almost 2 weeks for Apple to approve it, but Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes, the first ever animated read-aloud epub is now available in iTunes.  You know you are on to something when Apple takes 2 weeks to approve your ebook.  Generally, they take a couple of days.  But we created an epub that had the new read-aloud feature, and also animated images.  You can just see Apple bumping approval up through their hierarchy until it reached someone who said (I hope) this is cool, why wouldn’t we approve it?

The book is read brilliantly by award winning actress Emma Fielding. The original Beatrix Potter illustrations were gently animated by Ashley Gerst.

So, if you have young children, or your relatives have kids, or your neighbors have kids, or you know kids, or you see kids on the street, please show them Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes, get their feedback and pass it along to us.

Thanks

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Mark Twain

Calvin Reid from Publishers’ Weekly called recently to inquire whether Sideways was shutting down.  Short answer: We are not.  Wordier answer: Article link . We are in the midst of a reboot with our new focus on creative storytelling using the EPUB 3.0 platform.   More soon.

Harper Collins says ebooks are killing mass paperback sales

Paidcontent.org reported on a presentation given by Harper Collins international ceo Victoria Barnsley: “The paperback fiction market this year is down seven percent in trade value – I put this almost entirely down to ebook sales … the mass-market paperback is the thing we’re going to cannibalise most.”

Well, yes…. as the blog Pimp My Novel points out the parallels between mass paperbacks and ebooks are obvious:

They are both portable, cheap, disposable and widely available.

But pardon us… cannibalize? Not to dismiss the current importance of a publishing house’s sales and distribution chain (oh, ok we will) — in the end doesn’t the epub provide a much higher sales margin? Therefore, wouldn’t a forward thinking publisher be more likely to embrace the sales trends and drop the mass paperback as a format as soon as it reasonably could?

iPad Usage Impacting Other Devices

Neilsen’s latest report on tablet usage, underscores the dominance of the iPad. According to this Spring 2011 study, 82% of tablet users own iPads. Interestingly, while the device was shared in the beginning (here at Sideways, LLC we remember fondly the good old days of  fighting with spouses or children for iPad time) the iPad seems to be a single user device more often than not.

What devices are people using less of? Most everything it seems: “35 percent of tablet owners who also owned a desktop computer reported using their desktop less often or not at all, while 32 percent of those who also owned laptops, said they used their laptop less often or never since acquiring a tablet.”

The iPad is even taking over the ereader population:

“Twenty-seven percent of those who also own eReaders said they use their eReader less often or not at all – the same percentage as those who also own portable media players.”

A New Way to Sell Music

Sideways, Inc built the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s very first app. The app presents the Rockhall’s Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll and contains great text from the curatorial and educational staff about each song. We embedded iTunes samples of each song as well, so users can listen and then buy the songs.

As the music industry struggles with new ways to distribute and sell music, Sideways and the Rockhall have uncovered an opportunity. Their was a 31% conversion rate among users of the app in the first two weeks.

As evolver.fm so nicely put it…”In its first two weeks, the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame app for iPhone and iPad has done something remarkable in an industry where most news about music buying is about how people don’t do it anymore: It convinced people to pay for music.”

We’re currently hard at work on another app that will display one of the all-time greats. Stay tuned (so to speak.)

eBooks will displace paperbacks and other print formats

Paid Content published an interesting piece summarizing Enders Analysis of the ebook market. It includes a chart that the author labels “terrifying” showing the steep decline in hardcover and paperback sales. He makes the point that publishers should not be rushing to apps as a new product simply because the technology exists (as not every book should be a coffee table book). Sideways Inc agrees… this is why we have taken the time to create an enhanced ebook that does display multi-media beautifully in the ibook store (See: David Roberts’ Egypt in the ibook store) AND also continue to develop apps with the appropriate titles.

Sideways, Inc releases enhanced ebook

We recently released our very first enhanced ebook, David Roberts’ Egypt is available in the ibook store now. Our decision to focus on the enhanced ebook as a form comes as we work to push the boundaries of what is possible within the epub format. The David Roberts book tells, through journal entries, over 100 lithographs and 80 minutes of audio (by award-winning narrator Simon Prebble), the story of the journey Roberts took in the 1800s up the Nile. Along the way, he sketched and drew incredibly lovely, detailed works of art, which are now collected worldwide. This ebook demonstrates just how tightly images, sound and text can be designed and interwoven.  Be watching for the app version of this book, which will arrive in the App Store shortly.

At the same time, we have released our newest app, The Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This app is among the best-selling apps in the music section of the App Store and is such tremendous fun…. users can scroll through images, text and listen to samples of the hundreds of songs that the Rockhall’s curatorial and educational staff have deemed part of our rock and roll cultural heritage. Sorry to say neither Abba nor Ted Nugent made the cut….

The Android Tablet Landscape Just Got More Interesting.

With RIM’s announcement that their Playbook will support Android, we may have a strong contender. Anyone who is a Blackberry user will probably take a serious look at this tablet.   There’s certainly  been plenty of speculation about this tablet. We’ll see if it lives up to the hype. One thing RIM has managed to do is keep the price to a reasonable $399, despite predictions that it would be coming anywhere from $500 – $1000.  We’re looking forward to the April 19th release date.

Best-selling author chooses to self-publish

Check out this excellent conversation between Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath. In it, they lay out all the reasons why authors should be considering alternatives to using publishers — including the slim royalties that publishers are offering authors.

Just as interesting is their point about publishers being so very slow to take advantage of the digital surge. Eisler quotes Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Yet another aspect going against publishers’ favor is their adherence to a traditional publishing cycle. In Eisler’s case, his book is written, but the suggested pub date was spring 2012. From Eisler’s perspective, he has, by agreeing to be published by a traditional publisher just lost a year’s worth of sales. If he goes the self-publishing route he gets 70% of the royalties and starts selling immediately.