eReader News and Links– 6/30/2010 no comments
Color Kindle coming sooner rather than later? Pocket-lint, in a brief article covering a demonstration of Mirasol display tech and the coy comments of a Qualcomm spokesperson does absolutely nothing to dampen hopes that we may see a color Kindle with a Mirasol display by the end of the year. Some nice photos are included as well.
* * *
Copia, which will sell both ebooks and pbooks and will have a strong emphasis on social networking is set to launch in July. The company also has been planning to launch six different ereaders – four with 6-inch and two with 9-inch e-ink displays – with varying feature sets.
Publishers Weekly quotes Copia senior VP Anthony Antolino as saying that Copia has reconfigured its ereader lineup and will be selling a 5-inch color LCD model for $99 and a 10.1-inch touchscreen LCD model for $299. It is not clear from the article if Copia will be completely abandoning its e-ink based devices.
The new ereaders have not yet made an appearance at the Copia website. It really never made much sense to me that Copia would have so many different ereader models, and it makes even less sense now in the current market.
* * *
Baker & Taylor, Inc, which makes claim to being the world’s largest distributer of books both paper and digital, is also one of the powers behind the Blio reader. B & T recently announced that they have entered into an agreement with F+W Media to bring that company’s rich, highly formatted content to Blio.
F+W Media publishes full color, richly illustrated instructional titles for graphic designers, artists, craftsmen, woodworkers and others. Baker & Taylor has announced similar agreements to bring graphics-rich content to Blio from other publishers, including John Wiley & Sons and Elsevier. The latter is a leading publisher of medical, scientific and technical books.
I’m looking forward to having Blio on the iPad; I saw the Blio demo at CES and it was impressive.
* * *
Amazon’s previously announced 70 percent royalty option for its Digital Text Platform (DTP) goes live today. Amazon also announced some feature improvements to make DTP more convenient for authors and publishers: a more intuitive “Bookshelf” feature and a simplified two-step publishing process.
* * *
The New York Times is reporting that Google is close to reaching a deal with the American Booksellers Association which would make Google Editions the main source of ebooks on the websites of most independent booksellers.
* * *
Amazon’s Kindle will be sold at some airports around the US. HMSHost has signed an exclusive deal with Amazon to sell the 6-inch Kindle at its shops in the following airports:
-
Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International: Simply Books
-
Charlotte Douglas International: Simply Books
-
Dallas Ft. Worth International: Simply Books
-
George Bush Houston Intercontinental: Simply Books
-
Miami International: Simply Books
-
Minneapolis-St. Paul International: Simply Books, Authors Bookstore
-
LA/Ontario International: Authors Bookstore
-
Salt Lake City International: Simply Books
-
San Diego International: Authors Bookstore
-
Mineta San Jose International: Authors Bookstore
-
Tampa International: Authors Bookstore
