Archive for the ‘eBook Stores’ Category
Google adapts to Apple’s rules no comments
Tonight Google sent out an email pertaining to Google Books on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. While purchasing ebooks from the Google eBookstore from within the Google Books iOS app is no longer possible thanks to Apple’s current rules (which would require Google to pay Apple 30 percent of all in-app sales), by following the instructions in the email you can install an icon on your homescreen that will take you directly to the Google bookstore via Safari:
- Open your Safari web browser
- Go to the address: books.google.com/ebooks
- Tap the bookmark symbol at the top (box with an outgoing arrow)
- Tap "Add to Home Screen"
- Tap "Add"
- To shop at the Google eBookstore, simply tap the bookstore icon. Any ebooks you purchase or download will automatically appear in your Google Books app for you to read.
Any ebooks you purchase will show up in your Google Books library on your iOS device or any Android devices you might have. Of course there is nothing groundbreaking here — you can add a bookmark to any Web page to the homescreen of your iPad or iPhone in the same manner.
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Sony to launch European Reader Stores no comments
Sony announced today that it will be expanding its ebookstore to Europe. The first new store will launch in the UK with over 100,000 titles by the end of October, 2011. This will be followed by a Reader Store serving German and Austrian customers by the end of this year. Next year Reader Stores will be coming to France, Italy and Spain.
Here’s hoping that Sony does a better job with its European ebookstores than it has with the US version.
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Diesel eBook Store forms partnership with Macmillan no comments
The Diesel eBook Store has formed a direct partnership with Macmillan that will enable the ebook merchant to sell the publisher’s titles directly through
its online store, rather than use third-party distributers for encryption and fulfillment as it has done in the past.
From the press release:
Under the terms of the agreement, Diesel will store the digital titles of Macmillan on its own servers and provide fulfillment and encryption on orders through Adobe Content Server 4 (ACS4). A new proprietary PubDesk interface, through which the publisher can access its inventory, run reports and modify its metadata, has been created and will launch shortly.
"We are so thrilled to be working with the prestigious publisher Macmillan directly since they represent many top-notch authors that our customers love to read – authors such as Lora Leigh, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Lisa Kleypas, Robert Jordan, Orson Scott Card, Robert A. Heinlein and Jonathan Franzen, just to name a few.”
The Diesel eBook Store launched its new eBook retailing platform in December 2010 and is unique in the marketplace for their expanded categories and their ability to host customer created bundles. Their new site also boosts a suite of new features such as the “Deal of the Day”, social networking , video integration, access to over two million free eBooks via partnerships with Google and Smashwords and a new and improved search engine.
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Kindle Singles arrive no comments
Just over three months ago Amazon announced a new section coming to the Kindle Store – Kindle Singles – that would take advantage of one of the unique benefits of digital publishing.
Traditional publishing requires a work to be of at least a certain length to be financially viable to print as a book. This means that in many cases where an idea could be succinctly conveyed in a shorter piece it instead gets bloated with repetition and endless examples in order to create a work that is long enough to be financially viable to be printed as a paper book (did The Long Tail seem a tad too long to you too?).
The alternative to this is to print a shorter piece as part of a collection or in a periodical, which may not reach as large an audience as it would if the piece were presented independently in a book. With ebooks, of course, there are no such restraints.
Today Amazon announced that the new Kindle Singles section of the Kindle Store is now open. The shorts in the new section will be priced between $0.99 and $4.99. They can be read on a Kindle ereader or with one of the Kindle apps.
From the press release:
Before the advent of digital reading, writers often had to choose between making their work short enough for a magazine article or long enough to deliver the "heft" required for book marketing and distribution. Three months ago, Amazon made a call to serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Kindle in making a new kind of content available to readers–Kindle Singles. Typically between 5,000 and 30,000 words, each Kindle Single is intended to allow a single killer idea — well researched, well argued and well illustrated — to be expressed at its natural length.
"The response to our announcement of Singles has been great," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. "This first set of Singles was selected by our team of editors, and includes works by Rich Cohen, Darin Strauss, Ian Ayres, and the first-ever books published by TED. We think customers will be riveted by these stories that can take them to a Swedish bank heist or to the Mexican border town of Juarez, or to consider a new way to think about happiness."
Kindle Singles launches with 22 titles, including the following, with more to be added over time:
- Lifted by Evan Ratliff (34 pages, $1.99): The thieves had a handpicked crew, a stolen helicopter, a cache of explosives, and a plan to rob a $150 million cash repository. The Stockholm police had a tip-off. Wired and New Yorker writer Evan Ratliff recounts the inside story of an audacious 2009 bank heist, and the race to solve it. This is an inaugural title from publisher The Atavist.
- The Happiness Manifesto by Nic Marks (40 pages, $2.99): Modern research proves the ancient wisdom that "money can’t buy you happiness." But then why do our governments see their main task as simply growing GDP? Marks, founder of the London-based Centre for Well-Being, sets out an ingenious new way of defining national goals–and in the process reveals five ways people can nurture their own happiness. One of the inaugural TEDBooks.
- Piano Demon by Brendan I. Koerner (37 pages, $1.99): At age six, Teddy Weatherford was working in a Virginia coal mine. Two decades later, he was the jazz king of Asia. Koerner, a Wired contributing editor and author of "Now The Hell Will Start," tells how a piano legend in a sharkskin suit lived the American Dream by leaving it behind.
- Leaving Home by Jodi Picoult (43 pages, $2.99): The deep pains and powerful pleasures of parenting: those are the extremes explored here by the extraordinary novelist Jodi Picoult. In three short pieces that display her wide emotional range, Picoult weaves together stories of love and loss with heartbreaking simplicity.
- The Dead Women of Juarez by Robert Andrew Powell (31 pages, $1.99): It sounded like one of the great murder mysteries of our time: who was killing the women of Juarez? Journalist Robert Andrew Powell went to the Mexican border town to investigate, and separates fact from myth in a saga that eerily echoes the plot of Roberto Bolaño’s epic novel "2666".
- Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks by Sebastian Rotella/ProPublica (38 pages, $.99): The U.S. investigation of the 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai provides a detailed picture of the ties between Pakistan’s intelligence service and a leading militant group. The latest reporting from ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
- The $500 Diet by Ian Ayres (39 pages, $2.99): When Yale law professor Ayres vowed to drop his weight from 205 pounds to 180 pounds, he put his money where his mouth was — literally. It was either lose the weight, or pay the price. A look into Ayres’ weight-loss method through simple financial incentive.
- Darkstar by Christopher R. Howard (44 pages, $2.99): A pre-apocalyptic love story. Sailor, a homeless Irish teenager who’s haunted by a diabolical voice, seeks to reunite with a soulmate he hasn’t seen since boyhood, as a cosmic event threatens to extinguish life on Earth. Howard’s fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, and his first novel, "Tea of Ulaanbaatar," comes out this May.
- Homo Evolutis by Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans (58 pages, $2.99): Enriquez and Gullans–two eminent authors, researchers, and entrepreneurs–explore a world where humans increasingly shape their environment, their own selves and other species. They envision a future in which humankind becomes a new species — one which directly and deliberately controls its own evolution and that of many other species. One of the inaugural TEDBooks.
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eBook lending websites no comments
Kindle ereaders may not be able to borrow ebooks from public libraries, but from shortly after Amazon enabled ebook lending there have been a few websites started that facilitate the lending and borrowing of Kindle books.
I doubt this is what publishers had in mind when they agreed to allow ebook lending, and I imagine there are a few more grey hairs in the publishing industry over this latest development. If ebook sales are seen to be impacted I would not be surprised if fewer ebooks have lending enabled. Of course, each ebook can only be loaned once ever, so publishers do have some protection.
On the Nook forums there are already complaints that some publishers, most notably Penguin, dropped out of the Nook LendMe program shortly after Amazon enabled the feature.
But for now this service is available if you wish. This may, in fact, be a better solution than being able to borrow library ebooks. With the explosion of new ereader owners I expect waiting lists to check out ebooks from the library to become longer and longer. Public libraries, like everybody else, are financially strapped and have limited copies of each ebook.
Here are a few websites I’ve found that bring ebook lenders and borrowers together:
- Kindle Lending Club.com
- eBook Exchange – serves both Kindle and Nook owners.
- KindleLend (Reddit)
- The Nook Users Book Club (Facebook)
- I have a Nook and I’m willing to share books (Facebook)
- Goodreads has several groups that facilitate lending. One group for Kindlers is Kindle Lending. Another for Nook users is Nook Lending.
I’ll list these on the eBook Sources page, where I’ll also list new lending websites as I find them.
Below are some of the major publishers that I’ve found that do and do not allow lending of the Kindle versions of their books. This list is not exhaustive and there may be exceptions – it is just what I’ve found by searching briefly through the Kindle Store.
Do allow lending:
- Disney
- Macmillan
- Wiley
- AmazonCrossing & Amazon DTP
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Open Road
- Grove Atlantic & Atlantic Monthly Press
- Scholastic
Do not allow lending:
- Random House
- Penguin
- Harper Collins
- Simon Schuster
- Hachette
- Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- Thomas Nelson
- W.W. Norton
- Zondervan
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Copia to be featured on various mobile devices no comments
Copia has announced that its social reading platform will be featured on multiple tablets and mobile devices which should be on display at CES next week. You may recall that once upon a time Copia was going to launch up to 6 ereaders of its own. Perhaps life as a reading app is more viable.
By combining social networking and eBooks sales, Copia expands the parameters of the book as we know it. Readers can purchase books, highlight passages, take notes and share them, as well as comment on other users’ entries. A book can exist both in its original published form and become a mutating work as comments are added and different views are expressed.
Powered by its unique patent-pending collaborative annotation tool, Copia is redefining how the world interacts with books, allowing readers – regardless of location and on multiple devices – to instantly share thoughts and create discussions in the margins of their open eBooks.
"As the eReading trend continues to grow, top tier OEMs are looking for the best way to attract readers to their devices, and they recognize that only a Copia eBook lets people have a fully interactive experience with the book, their friends and literary community at large," said Ben Lowinger, Executive Vice President of Copia Interactive, LLC. "And we are pleased that top tier OEMs are featuring Copia on their upcoming tablets and mobile devices."
For students, the note-sharing functionality coupled with Copia’s accessibility across multiple digital touch points is nothing short of a revolution in studying. Professors can highlight books for their class, students can share notes, and authors can release special annotated editions.
"It doesn’t matter what type of device you have. Copia’s device agnostic platform lets students study efficiently with others, anytime, anywhere," Lowinger added.
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A Merry Christmas for ebook and ereader sellers – Somewhat less merry for their customers 1 comment
By all accounts this was a very jolly holiday for ebook and ereader makers and sellers, and not just at Amazon where the Kindle 3 became the company’s bestselling product ever.
Kobo had a very good Christmas. Its new customers who were trying to download ebooks from its overloaded servers or activate their new ereaders on Christmas day less so.
Kobo says that it saw a 50X increase in purchases from last years holiday weekend.
“Earlier this month we predicted that Christmas would be a record breaker for Kobo, and we have exceeded our expectations driving several ebook downloads per second since Christmas Eve, or an equivalent number hardcover books stacked as high as 50 Empire State Buildings,” said Michael Serbinis, CEO of Kobo. “I would like to thank our customers for choosing Kobo to start building their digital library this Christmas. Our success this holiday season is a pre-cursor to a New Year with people reading more than ever thanks to eBooks and Kobo.”
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Barnes & Noble also saw its servers crash and burn again this Christmas. You would think that after dealing with the same issues last year B&N might want to get it right this time. I downloaded an ebook to my Nook Color early afternoon on Christmas Day with no noticeable delay, although the website was very slow. On Sunday I could not even get through to the website. Many new Nook owners could not activate their new ereaders and ebook purchases were not showing up in their libraries. Of course B&N’s CS department was totally overwhelmed as well.
This is really inexcusable, especially after B&N’s big fail last Christmas. The company is struggling and you would think that it would want to be able to capture every dollar of revenue possible rather than loosing sales and creating more disgruntled customers.
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Random House says that Dec. 25 and 26 were its two biggest ebook sales days ever. The publishing house saw its ebook sales increase by 300 percent over last year.
Of Course, it doesn’t hurt that Random house does have a number of bestselling titles. The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson, The Confession by John Grisham, Decision Points by George Bush, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak all did very well. Random House also saw a significant increase in ebook versions of children’s picture books.
"We are delighted by the volume of consumers flocking to Random House books across all our e-retailers, and not just to our best-selling titles which are clearly as popular in e as they are in print. Consumers are also using their e-reading devices to discover titles deeper in our list, including David Nicholls’s ONE DAY, George R. R. Martin’s A GAME OF THRONES and Max Brooks’ WORLD WAR Z." says Madeline McIntosh, President of Sales, Digital and Operations, Random House, Inc.
Currently Random House has more than 17,000 of its front and backlist titles available in ebook format.
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Diesel eBook Store gets an upgrade no comments
Diesel has revamped its eBook Store and it definitely 
looks better than the last time I visited. Besides a better look and feel, there are more upgrades under the hood:
- Improved search, including a much better Advanced Search page.
- Expanded inventory: Diesel now claims to offer more than 2.4 million titles (includes 2 million Google public domain titles).
- User reviews and ratings with social networking capability.
- Publishers can now easily upload book trailer videos.
- Deal of the Day: Every day a specially priced ebook featured on the Diesel homepage.
- Expanded free ebook section.
- Bundles: Customers can now build their own ebook bundles around specific themes they create.
Diesel has a reward program that offers on average 3.5 cents for every $1.00 spent. Of course this is probably not going to fly with publishers using the agency model, but Diesel says that it does apply to over 400,000 titles. There is also a $0.50 credit for every approved ebook review customers write.
Most titles are available in Adobe ePub, with many also in PDF and other formats, including Mobi and Microsoft Reader.
“We have a lot of customers that are eReader agnostic. They all choose to read content differently. They’ve told us they don’t want to be shackled to any one specific reading device. This feedback has led to a robust, state of the art eBook website that will also serve as a flexible foundation upon which we’ll be rolling out many new applications and services all designed to facilitate the downloading of digital content,” said L. Scott Redford, founder and president of Diesel.
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New Kindle Exclusive: Warren Adler no comments
Bestselling author Warren Adler is the latest author to make work available in digital format exclusively (for two years) through the Kindle Store. Five of Adler’s books, which have not been published in any format, are available now for the Kindle as well as in paper editions from CreateSpace:
- The David Embrace
In this fast paced erotic thriller a professional hitman, John Champion and Angela Ford, the wife of the man who orders the hit, engage in a passionate overpowering and memorable love affair. Played out against the exotic locales of Florence, the Riviera, the French Alps and Manhattan, the two lovers endure impossible odds as their relationship deepens and matures. Figuring importantly in the story is Michelangelo’s David, a majestic artistic masterpiece that stands in all its naked glory in the Galleria dell’ Accademia in Florence and the epiphany experienced by Angela in its presence. In viewing this magnificent masterpiece Angela discovers the core of her female identity, one of the few illustrations of this phenomenon ever found in a novel which deals with the deeper implications of sexuality and how it can shed light on the eternal mystery of love and attraction between men and women. - Flanagan’s Dolls
Josh and Emily Flanagan return to their hometown
in upper Michigan where they open a funky antique shop which they hope will provide a sane and comfortable retirement. Both have pursued successful careers in Manhattan, she as an appraiser of antiques for an auction house and he as an insurance adjuster in the field of art and antiques. A man seeking to purchase an antique doll for his ailing grandchild opens up a Pandora’s Box of hidden family secrets and intrigue that results in bitter hostility and murder. Josh and Emily, through brilliant deduction and imaginative enterprise discover the clues that lead to the solution that lies at the heart of this mystery. As characters they are similar in conception to the witty bantering loving couple, Nick and Nora Charles of the famed Thin Man series created by the mystery writer Dashiell Hammett. - The Womanizer
Allen Harris is a pillar of the community, a married lawyer of spotless reputation who is asked to assume the presidency of a conservative university after its last president has been fired for engaging in a sexual affair with a student. He is to be vetted by the Board of Directors who want to be certain that there is nothing in Harris’ past that will cause another scandal that has badly damaged the image of the institution. He asserts to the board that his married life is without blemish and he has never engaged in adulterous or clandestine affairs. His assertion is an outright lie since he, cunningly and secretly, engaged in a series of sexual liaisons in other cities in the course of his practice. To assure that these relationships remain secret, he decides to surreptitiously set about finding these former lovers to be certain that they will not reveal his double life and spoil his chances for the presidency. Of the four women with whom he had entered into these relationships he finds three but cannot find the fourth. What he discovers is the startling truth about these affairs and a bizarre twist of fate that reveals what happened to his fourth mistress. - Residue
A firebombing of a black church in Brooklyn that was once a synagogue sets off a chain reaction of international intrigue and bloody violence. The fire bombers are young men of Arab extraction who mistakenly believe that this church, whose stain glass windows illustrate the Stars of David, is still a synagogue. In the wake of the bombing a prominent “white shoe” Wall Street firm sends its young token Jewish lawyer to help the church pro bono in their insurance claim. In a walled off area exposed by the fire in the basement of the Church the pastor has found three huge trunks filled with gold and precious jewels worth multi-millions. The bizarre journey of this treasure, where it has come from and how it got in the basement of a black church is the heart of this tantalizing story which deals with both the origin and the aftermath of the discovery, and the impact it has on the lives of the young lawyer, his family, the pastor of the Church and numerous other interlocking characters who suddenly surface with claims to its provenance. It makes for a compelling and suspenseful story of terror and greed and illustrates how the long tail of the past can reach into the present with life altering results. - Empty Treasures
The corruptive power of money and ambition in American politics begins in Venice where a Washington woman reporter trying to repair a bad marriage suddenly spots a professional jeweler, a key figure in the world of Washington’s powerful social and political elite. When she returns to Washington she is shocked to discover that the jeweler has not returned and has, in effect, disappeared. This piques her curiosity and what she uncovers goes to the heart of political corruption on a grand scale; deals with diamonds smuggled into the country to finance a Presidential political campaign and how money and politics impacts on family, children, friends and lovers. This tantalizing and complex thriller deals with the dark side of ambition and the lengths people will go in an effort to attain political power.
Additionally, Adler is also making available a collection of Warren Adler Short Story Contest Winners, which features winning pieces from the short story contest he sponsors. This title is also exclusive to the Kindle Store.
Warren Adler is the bestselling author of more than 30 books, including The War of the Roses and Random Hearts, which were made into films. His work has been translated into 25 languages.
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New Kindle exclusive: 5 new ebook collections from The Onion no comments
The Onion has created five new ebook collections that will be exclusive to the Kindle Store for one year. The five new collections are $2.99 each:
- America’s Finest Tech News
- Chronicles of the Area Man
- The Finest Reporting on Literature, Media, and Other Dying Art Forms
- The Best of Jim Anchower
- The Best of Herbert Kornfield
“Our customers are fans of books by the Onion in print format, and the Onion is one of our most popular Kindle Periodicals,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content. “We hope Kindle readers will enjoy these five exclusive titles, which are the perfect way to add even more levity to your holiday season.”
The Onion is a national publication and website that delivers award-winning satirical news. Every week, the Onion misinforms more than 1.8 million weekly readers of the print edition and about 10 million unique visitors online each month. In recent years, the Onion expanded into radio and video, winning a Peabody Award in 2009 for its online video series, Onion News Network. This January, the Onion will launch two television shows, premiering on IFC and Comedy Central, respectively.
