Archive for the ‘eBook Stores’ Category
Sony opens Reader Store in UK no comments
Sony has finally opened a UK branch of its Reader Store. Previously the Sony website directed its ereader users in the UK to Waterstones, WHSmith and Mills & Boon to purchase contemporary ebooks or Feedbooks, Gutenberg and ManyBooks for public domain and other free titles.
The ebooks at the Sony Reader Store UK are, of course, in ePub format with Adobe DRM. The free Reader desktop app will need to be downloaded and installed before downloading ebooks purchased at the Reader Store, unless one is using the Reader Wi-Fi (PRS-T1) or the Reader for Tablet app on one of the Sony tablets. The desktop app will enable sideloading of purchased ebooks onto your Sony ereader or other brands of ereader that are compatible with ePub and Adobe DRM.
(via International Business Times)
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DOJ files antitrust lawsuit over agency model ebook pricing scheme – Updated no comments
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the U.S. Department of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and the five publishers who started the agency model. Following a warning last month from the DOJ that it was preparing to sue there have been reports that at least some of the publishers were negotiating a settlement. The WSJ says that it expects a settlement with three of the publishers to be filed later today. Besides Apple, the holdouts appear to be Penguin and Macmillan. If Apple and the other two publishers decide to fight to the bitter end, it could take years before a final settlement is reached.
Apple and the ‘gang of five’ publishers entered an agreement to initiate the agency model of ebook pricing when Apple was nearing the launch of the first iPad. Prior to the this, ebookstores could set their own pricing for ebooks. Under the agency model, which Amazon and the other ebook resellers were forced to accept, the publishers gave themselves the sole right to fix the prices at which their ebooks were to be sold. No more sales, coupons or other discounting of ebooks from the group of publishers in the agency model cabal unless the publishers themselves initiated it.
Publishers were worried about Amazon selling bestsellers at what they consider to be a price that is too low. Apple wanted to level the playing field because its iBooks store could not hope to match Amazon’s pricing. Amazon reportedly often sold bestsellers as loss leaders before the agency model crawled out from under its rock.
For consumers, any settlements will probably mean a return to cheaper ebooks, at least in the near term. Longer term it may mean fewer ebookstores to buy from since Amazon has the ability to undersell everyone else. Lack of competition, whether it be from monopolistic practices or a dearth of sellers, usually leads to higher prices and is not good for consumers.
For publishers, a win by the DOJ will mean they will have to find other ways of thriving in an increasingly digital world without resorting to illegally fixing prices in an effort to prop up a creaky and outdated business model.
The traditional publishing industry seems to expect ebooks to subsidize the hardcover bestsellers that the old model is built around. From the consumer’s point of view there are many reasons why ebooks should be much cheaper: Everything from the much lower to practically nonexistent costs of production, warehousing, distribution and returns of unsold books when compared to paper books to the fact that when you ‘buy’ an ebook you are actually just buying a license to read it and cannot resell the ebook or give it away to someone else when you are done with it.
Of course ebooks do share some of the costs of pbooks – professional editing, for example. Something you have probably noted is missing from a lot of indie-published ebooks.
I suspect that factors such as the elimination of the used book market and the sales lost to shared books, when combined with the fact that readers who read digitally usually read more, may well lead eventually to more sales of popular titles than when they were only available in paper format.
Update: The WSJ has posted a couple more articles (here and here)concerning the settlement reached with three of the publishers – Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.
The three publishers who have settled must cancel the agreements they made with Apple and other sellers that include a ‘most favored nation’ clause disallowing other retailers from selling their ebooks at a lower price and desist from restricting any retailer’s ability to set prices on their ebooks for a period of two years. The settlement does allow the publishers to enter into agency model pricing agreements with retailers with restrictions that the amount of overall ebook discounts does not exceed the aggregate amount of commissions the seller earns from selling the publisher’s ebooks. This would prevent retailers from selling the ebooks at an overall loss.
The settlement with the DOJ does not provide for any restitution to be made to consumers who have purchased ebooks that were priced according to the agency model. But 16 states initiated a lawsuit against the publishers today and this, along with another class action suit that has been ongoing will probably result in some amount of financial restitution being made.
The settlement probably won’t take effect for about 60 days. I just glanced briefly through the Kindle Store and so far there seem to be no changes – ebooks from the publishers that have settled still bear the disclaimer about their prices having been set by the publisher.
You may remember that Random House was the one major publisher that didn’t join in the agreement with Apple at its inception – a decision that in hindsight looks very wise indeed. Instead, Random House waited until about a year later (right before the iPad 2 launch) to adopt agency model pricing.
The DOJ action is not about the five publishers and Apple using the agency model to set ebook pricing per se, but rather about the way in which they colluded together to do so. So when Amazon and other resellers begin discounting ebooks from the publishers who settle will it have any effect on Random House’s pricing? Random House may well find itself in a position where its bestselling titles are priced much higher than those of the competition.
You can read the proposed settlement here.
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Amazon launches eBooks Kindle en Español no comments
Amazon has launched a new Spanish-language ebookstore that is incorporated within the U.S. Kindle Store. eBooks Kindle en Español launches with over 30,000 titles and, in addition to ebooks from Latin American authors and translations of English-language titles includes Kindle Singles, 14 Latin American newspapers and over 1,000 free public domain titles.
Barnes & Noble set up a Spanish-language section of the Nook Store some time ago, but Amazon claims that the Kindle Store now contains the largest selection of Spanish-language bestsellers available in the U.S.
Amazon’s KDP publishing platform can be used by indie authors and publishers to create Spanish-language ebooks and make them available in the new eBooks Kindle en Español store as well as in over 100 other countries. Kindle owners in the U.S. can change the storefront language of their Kindle ereaders to Spanish by visiting the Manage Your Kindle page at Amazon (it’s at the bottom of the Manage Your Devices section).
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Audible’s new Series View feature no comments
Audible.com has improved the way in which audiobooks are displayed on its site to make following a series of books much easier. With the new Series View feature, information like the order of the books in the series, which ones are available as audiobooks and which ones are not, how many titles are in the series and much more can be easily seen at a glance.
Okay, so why am I writing about this? Because Audible is owned by Amazon and I’m hoping that this is a portent of things soon to come to the Kindle Store. Discovering which book comes next in a series is often so difficult at the Kindle Store that it is usually better to to do the research elsewhere (like at Barnes & Noble) first so you can forearm yourself with intel on the book sequence before shopping there.
This has always been perplexing to me, as Amazon is normally so very good at creating a user friendly shopping experience.
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Overstock selling Nook Books no comments
Thanks to a partnership with Barnes & Noble, Overstock is now selling Nook Books via a new ebookstore powered by B&N. Overstock claims to be the number one seller of refurbished Nook Color ereaders, which it has been selling for awhile.
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Google Books now accepting pre-orders no comments
One feature that was lacking in the Google eBookstore was the ability to pre-order an upcoming title. That has been remedied and you can now order titles before their release. Customer’s credit cards are not charged until the ebook is released and a notification is sent out letting purchasers know that their ebook is ready for download.
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A new $15 per month PD ebook and audiobook service no comments
AllYouCanBooks.com is a new subscription service that gives you unlimited access to a collection of 30,000 public domain ebooks and downloadable audiobooks. The charge for all this goodness is $14.99 per month.
There is no reason to pay someone $15 per month for access to these titles. They are widely available for free. It may be worthwhile to pay something for a PD title if the formatting has been cleaned up and a nice cover provided, but there is no mention of that being done here. I also have no problem with paying for an author’s complete collected works, as it is often more convenient than tracking down everything.
See the eBook Sources page for free sources for these books. If you want to pay something for them, donate $15 per month to Project Gutenberg. For audio versions, see LibriVox, which has a number of free audiobook versions of the classics that have been read by volunteers.
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Google ebooks now available in Australia no comments
Yesterday the Google eBookstore launched an Australian branch. Local brick and mortar bookstores that will also be offering the Google eBooks via their websites include Booktopia and Dymocks.
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Google eBooks now available to Canadian readers no comments
Google has launched a Canadian branch of the Google eBooks store. Google has partnered with both Canadian and international publishers and the Canadian store launches with hundreds of thousands of paid titles in addition to a couple million free public domain titles. Google eBooks will also be available through some Canadian booksellers such as Campus eBookstore and McNally Robinson.
Google eBooks should work on any device that can read ePub with Adobe DRM, including tablets and various dedicated ereaders.
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Google eBooks now available in UK no comments
The Google eBookstore has just opened its virtual doors to customers in the UK. Readers in the UK can now purchase Google eBooks and read them on any device that is compatible with Adobe Digital Editions. As in the US, brick and mortar bookstores will also be able to sell Google eBooks — Blackwell’s will be one of the Google eBookstore’s affiliate partners.
