Jekyll and Hyde: the two faces of The New York Times.

A quick analysis why the $20/month pricetag on the iPad version of The New York Times is audacious. At a premium price, is it wrong to expect a premium product? As I suggested earlier, perhaps the Times should leave the innovative approaches to layout to those who are doing it best: iPad app developers.

(Screen grab from May 8, 2011 New York Times iPad edition. View full size version here)

(Scan from May 8, 2011 New York Times print edition. View full size version here)

Why the NYT should license content to app developers.

What if we could subscribe to The New York Times through popular iPad reading apps, like FlipBoard or Instapaper?

The New York Times iPad app is thoroughly disappointing — and even more so now that the paper charges a premium ($20/month) to access it. It contains no links, has little regard for readability and its interface is rigid and ill-conceived.

All too often, I find myself straying from the NYT app for better reading experiences on the iPad, which is a shame: For all the criticism we’ve heaped upon the paper since the introduction of its new paywall scheme, the breadth of its journalism is still largely unparalleled. 

So it got me thinking: why doesn’t the New York Times license its “raw” content — text, photos, videos, etc. — to other content wrappers (ie. popular iPad reading apps), much in the same way it currently works with Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook?

What if I preferred reading the paper through an app like FlipBoard, whose attention to layout, readability and interactivity was more closely aligned with my own sensibilities? Or maybe I’m more keen on the bare-bones approach of Marco Ament’s excellent reading app, Instapaper?

This approach could create an interesting marketplace for news reading, with the papers themselves acting as de facto wire services to app developers more adept at creating engaging reading experiences. The Times could charge a more reasonable subscription fee — granting users the right to access its raw content through as many participating apps as they’d like — and app developers could charge for the apps they develop to encase that content. 

Win-win, right?

Why ebooks should follow Instapaper’s lead.

What can ebooks learn from the popular reading app, Instapaper? As it turns out, a whole lot. Instapaper excels at bringing readers a beautifully designed and uncluttered reading experienced, with dynamic elements built into the fabric of the text.
 
Aside from its excellent implementation of typography, Instapaper makes it dead simple to share chunks of what you are reading with other people. The absence of a similar feature on the Kindle has frustrated me to no end over the years. Inevitably, I’m deep in the text of an interesting article or book, when I am suddenly overcome with the urge to share something with a friend or family member. But despite its ubiquitous connection to the web, this is not possible on the Kindle.

Instapaper makes this process very easy, using Apple’s built-in popovers, familiar to any user who’s made use of the cut/copy/paste functionality in iOS. Highlighting a word or chunk of text in Instapaper and choosing the “Share” button popover enables the reader to post that piece to Tumblr or Twitter — as well as the ability to send a simple email.

(It should also be noted that the same popover contains a “define” button for looking up words quickly. The Kindle already implements this, though it’s a clunky experience.)

As we move more and more of things we read from paper to screen, the impulse to share will only become more common. Adding this sort of functionality to our ebooks is a win-win for both readers and  ebooks resellers like Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Apple. The format of the quoted text could easily include a link back the web site where the book could be purchased or sampled.

I think it’s safe to say that while reading may be one of the last vestiges of solitary media consumption experiences, our reaction to thoughtful articles, essays, novels, etc. is to share what we have learned. Instapaper makes this process easy. It should be just as easy with ebooks.

This entry is part of a larger series called “e-books and the future.”