I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment.
Maybe one day there be a standard file format for chess e-books so that customers, having paid for a book, will know it will be compatible with their favourite reader app. After all, the profits are made from the book, not the app.
Does anybody else would like to comment?
I would guess that Chess publishers have a very small profit margin for their products. Chess books are for a very small niche of the public. So I would guess that to maintain profits they choose to have their own app.
I would guess that Chess publishers have a very small profit margin for their products. Chess books are for a very small niche of the public. So I would guess that to maintain profits they choose to have their own app.
Profit margin helps only if you sell. Despite all my love for Gambit books I am not going to buy anything for their Chess Studio in its current state.
Forward Chess books seem to be more expensive on average but I will gladly pay 30-50% extra for having Gambit on this app. Or may be they will improve theire own Studio but with last release one year ago I doubt any development is going on.
From recent Forward Chess Newsletter:
"Dear Friends
We’ll all geared up for another exciting release this month. It is a feature that many of you have asked for over the years. Forward Chess wasn’t quite complete without a desktop/laptop version. Most of our readers are players and coaches who use their desktop and laptop devices to prepare for their games.
Why wouldn’t it be possible for a chess e-book reader to be available on all devices? We put our minds to work on this question. Over the last many weeks we have worked hard to roll out our first beta desktop version (for both Windows and Mac users).
While we prepare this improvement for you, it’s our intention to make the application as best as possible. Rigorous testing, bug fixes, and reiterations are currently in progress and we wanted to ask your help in this process as beta testers! If you like testing new software and looking for sneaky bugs, then this is something we would love your help with. Send us a reply email and we will send you a download link for the desktop version. Please specify if you’d rather test a Windows or MacOS version."
Exciting news, isn't it?!
In 2017 they've already introduced a possibilty to share books between Android and iOS devices.
At same time Gambit can't make even basic stuff like configurable board size/colors.
The reader offering in-app purchases suggests that the other publishers would have to allow Forward Chess to sell their books (presumably taking a slice of the profit, not a good place to be for a publisher). You are probably thinking of something like Acrobat Reader, but Adobe makes money out of authoring and signing software, not out of PDFs. Coordinating release schedules across vendors is very difficult and somewhat expansive. Its easy to imagine something like:
"we want to make this change that might affect you"
"what? no, you have to wait six months, we're busy and can't afford to do the testing"
"we need it for Christmas, will you pay us to support both formats in the short term?"
"no, thats not what we signed up for, you have to wait for us"
I've seen more or less this exchange in real life.
The reader offering in-app purchases suggests that the other publishers would have to allow Forward Chess to sell their books (presumably taking a slice of the profit, not a good place to be for a publisher). You are probably thinking of something like Acrobat Reader, but Adobe makes money out of authoring and signing software, not out of PDFs. Coordinating release schedules across vendors is very difficult and somewhat expansive. Its easy to imagine something like:
"we want to make this change that might affect you"
"what? no, you have to wait six months, we're busy and can't afford to do the testing"
"we need it for Christmas, will you pay us to support both formats in the short term?"
"no, thats not what we signed up for, you have to wait for us"
I've seen more or less this exchange in real life.
Not sure I understand what you are trying to say - Forward Chess uses this business model of in-app purchases for few years already. Number of publishers on their list is growing (at this moment there are 11). New features appear every few months. Everybody seems to be happy.
At same time Gambit is stuck with their substandard Chess Studio app where virtually nothing happens in years. I've stopped buying from them.
The reader offering in-app purchases suggests that the other publishers would have to allow Forward Chess to sell their books (presumably taking a slice of the profit, not a good place to be for a publisher). You are probably thinking of something like Acrobat Reader, but Adobe makes money out of authoring and signing software, not out of PDFs. Coordinating release schedules across vendors is very difficult and somewhat expansive. Its easy to imagine something like:
"we want to make this change that might affect you"
"what? no, you have to wait six months, we're busy and can't afford to do the testing"
"we need it for Christmas, will you pay us to support both formats in the short term?"
"no, thats not what we signed up for, you have to wait for us"
I've seen more or less this exchange in real life.
Not sure I understand what you are trying to say - Forward Chess uses this business model of in-app purchases for few years already. Number of publishers on their list is growing (at this moment there are 11). New features appear every few months. Everybody seems to be happy.
At same time Gambit is stuck with their substandard Chess Studio app where virtually nothing happens in years. I've stopped buying from them.
Actually what greghunt wrote is pretty accurate. I have forward chess on my iPhone, my Android phones and my desktop and use it frequently... in fact i wouldn't have been able to go through 'forcing chess moves' at all if it wasn't for this app. However, forward chess uses propriety methods for converting the books to digital format. Which mean exactly what greghunt wrote: if you want your book sold at forward chess bookstore, you will have to pay them. I don't know why Gambit hasn't decided to do so, but I guess they thought they were better off making whatever they are making by selling their books through their own store.
As an aside, i'd much rather prefer a digital edition of a book (pgn format to be percise) than a propriety format. The pgn can be read on any good chess program... and most of all, it is what in ebook world we call 'drm fee'. So you are not stuck if suddenly one day you find out that forward chess has decided to shut their services down.
I have started using Forward Chess few weeks ago and I really love this app for working on my chess books. So far I've purchased 8 books (half of them I had on paper but electronic version is so much better!). I am really happy that my favourite publisher - New In Chess - releases books for this app. However 2 other publishers I like a lot - Gambit and Batsford - don't.
Gambit has his own app - Chess Studio - but for me it's unusabe - chess board too small, board colors too aggressive for my eyes. Their latest version was released almost 1 year ago. I tried to write to both Gambit and Batsford but 10 days later still no answer.
What do you think?