Kindle vs. Ipad

via Creativity Online

Comparison straight up! This in-house web film from Amazon takes it up a notch.

Opportunity Marketing

Is it a coincidence that the home page of Amazon.com is promoting the Kindle as "easy to read in sunlight" and "thin and lightweight" when the recent nytimes review of the iPad says "You can’t read well in direct sunlight. At 1.5 pounds, the iPad gets heavy in your hand after awhile"?

Branding Brown

We all know the kind of hype generated by Dan Brown and his books revolving around Harvard professor Robert Langdon. Recently, the character was brought to life by Tom Hanks as summer blockblusters. But apart from being adapted to the big screen effortlessly, Brown's books have a certain brand of their own.

His contemporary J.K. Rowling has claimed her place in fiction fantasy with the Harry Potter series. Her USP being magic and her audience young. Although Brown's latest offering, "The Lost Symbol" has not been able to overtake the sales figure of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, his books does have a heady mix of mysticism and skepticism, young and old, good and evil. His canvas is larger and his audience older.

But the branding of his protagonist is impeccable. Notice how he describes Langdon's Harris Tweed jacket and collegiate cordovan loafers right at the beginning. What his character wears is part of who he or she is. The BlackBerry and iPhone users in the story are different in their profession, their attitude and their personality. So are the coffee and tea drinkers.

Then comes the branding of the books in general. Described as "brain candy" by the Chicago Tribune, Brown's books can be categorized as a masstige brand. Though accessible and understood by the masses in general, they have a certain prestige associated with them. After all, we are following a "Harvard Professor" in his quest to unlock the mysteries of the world and save a life or two in the process.

Also, the deliberate mismatch in the characterization where academicians form the core of a thrilling plot fit for the Jason Stathams of the world is an obvious play at consumer(reader) aspirations. The actual readers of his books will be likely to be a bookworm whose idea of a Sunday is not chasing fanatics around the globe. So when Brown picks up a Professor from a mundane weekend and places him right in the middle of a chaotic international disturbance, his readers are already hooked. Aspiration as a brand attribute is pretty common in the world of advertising.

Brand Involvement is another key feature in his stories. The codes need to be unraveled, the symbols understood and the mystery solved. He keeps the reader two steps ahead of the protagonist making him or her feel smart.

The marketing of the book is another story altogether. Every form of media is tapped resulting in Doubleday announcing that Brown's "The Lost Symbol" has already sold more than 1 million copies after being on sale for one day in the United States, Canada and Britain. That total includes preorders for the book, which has been at or near the top of Amazon.com for months. The eBook version has been in the news too though the actual sales figure have not been released by Doubleday. The publishing industry is evolving as I write. Not so much the branding. The book, the author and his main character is and will remain a study in passive branding.

Make Way for eBooks and Book Ads

Last month, Barnes & Noble launched an online store for digital books with 700,000 titles. Moreover, they intend to stock more than a million eBooks in the coming 12 months. To read them, you can download the free eReader from their website which is compatible with iPhone, iTouch, BlackBerry, PC and Mac. It is interesting to note here that it is not compatible with either Kindle from Amazon or the Sony Reader. To get ahead in the battle of eBooks, Amazon recently released a free software to turn our iPhones and iTouch into Kindles.

If all this wasn't enough, now there are talks of placing ads in e-books! Imagine scrolling down Pride and Prejudice to find an ad for a toothpaste. Thankfully, the ads will try and be contextual or be based on the customer's user profile. As if that is any relief.

Don't get me wrong here. Though I love the smell of a brand new book and lose track of time in a bookstore, I am not really averse to the idea of eBooks. I am all for technology and moving on...and of course, marketing.

I see the bright side like how ads in eBooks will bring down the cost of both the books and the reading devices.

The ad revenue will positively impact the author, the publisher, the e-book store, the device manufacturers.

The competition between Amazon and Barnes & Noble will result in more and more eBooks and also a better reading experience.

The printing world is anyway trying to revamp itself through this digital revolution. One more change wouldn't hurt.

But what if this trend trickles down to print? According to Austin Modine in The Register, it is a possibility for anybody who wants to avail of a lower price in an on-demand book from Amazon.

Now that may be taking things too far. Or is it the future of reading?