| Bookselling Data has been one of the biggest buzzwords over the course of the last few years. Some of the leading digital and traditional publishing companies have been speaking about some of the measures they employ at BEA, Digital Minds, CES, and Digital Book World. In essence, book data is the sales metrics, relaying who is buying your book, how many copies are being sold, and where they are buying it from. Indie authors enjoy unfettered access to most of this information via Kindle Direct Publishing, Kobo Writing Life, and Nook Press. Traditional publishers and authors find that even finding out how many books you have sold can often be an exercise in futility. Traditional publishing companies often do not share metrics with the author and in many cases don’t have real time information to this sort of data themselves. Due to the pipeline of distribution companies, such as Ingram and the retail stores themselves, it is hard to get a sense of how many copies were sold. We have spoken with many authors who have had bestselling books, listed in the New York Times. When asked how many copies they have sold, or how much money they have made, they shrug their shoulders. Sure, you can gain access to Nielsen sales data on stores that participate in their reporting scheme, but the access costs a ton of money. It is not even a true indication on how many books are being sold at smaller retailers and internationally. Indie authors on the other hand have way more access to their sales information. Kobo Writing Life is the most advanced self-publishing platform that gives authors the ability to see how many copies of your book has been sold and what cities/countries are buying them. This is useful when you are on a book tour and want to find out what cities are performing and what ones aren’t buying your book online. The data on sales is compiled every 24 hours, which is solid to gain insight on your overall metrics. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing also gives you metrics on book sales, but does not give as much information as Kobo does. Nook Press only allows American authors to market their books, so is limited in scope. Really, Self-Publishing dashboards give you a ton of book selling information that really keeps you informed on what is going on with your book. Traditional authors do not receive this kind of information due to many extenuating factors. Agents, distribution, retail, international, and many other factors make compiling this information take quite awhile and is a far cry from the immediate satisfaction of the self-publishing crowd. As much data that is available to digital publishers and self-published authors, it is very general. Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Apple, and Google do not share their big data with anybody. No one really knows how many page views a book entry has had, the ratio of viewers and buyers, and how many people are clicking, even how many people type your book name into the search field. The big companies hoard all of this information for themselves and use it to play a game of one-upping each other for better search and a more intuitive buying experience and newsletters based on your searching habits. When you visit any major online bookstore your privacy is wide open for whatever company your buying from to glean everything about you via cookies. They monitor every aspect of your experience while visiting the website and you basically sign your privacy away. Publishing companies need the real-time intelligence and data that these companies squirrel away. Every major company we talked to is deadlocked on what exactly they should do to negotiate terms or even approach Apple or Amazon. These two companies represent fortunes that eclipse most countries total GDP, bargaining with them over anything is hard. When major publishers came together to fix the prices of ebooks to develop a standard of pricing, the European Commission and Justice Department smote them for collusion. The only thing the big six can do to have more bargaining power is to merge themselves and seriously takes years for the entire process to conclude. Penguin and Random House will form a super publishing company sometime this year and will account for 1/4 of all books printed. There are rumors of the other big six companies also merging, in order to compete. Absolute Big Data and Sales Metrics on the whole, is simply not available to anyone. No matter who you are, how big you are, or how dynamic and savvy you are, you aren’t getting the information from the major online and offline retailers. In the rare instance you get some data, it is often very general and does not paint the entire picture. In the end, self-published authors have an easier time scoping out their sales data and analytics than the traditional ones. Stay tuned for the next part of our feature that looks at some new digital start-ups that are seeking to bridge the gulf of big data and provide the metrics to publishers and authors alike for online and offline sales. Feature: Indie Authors Enjoy More Access to Sales Metrics Than Traditional Ones is a post from: E-Reader News |
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Feature: Indie Authors Enjoy More Access to Sales Metrics Than Traditional Ones
How to Load eBooks on the Kobo Aura HD
| Welcome to another Good e-Reader Video Tutorial! Today we are going to show you three different programs that facilitate the transfer of ebooks on your Kobo Aura HD. We are, of course, talking about Calibre, Adobe Digital Editions, and Dropbox. Calibre is a free program that gives users a tremendous amount of flexibility in augmenting your ebook experience. Not only does it allow you to simply copy ebooks to your Aura HD, but provides some very cool features. For example, you can change the title, author name, and cover art. This is very useful for books that came from the internet and may have details you want to change. You can also convert ebooks from one format to another. In this part of the tutorial, we overview the program and the basic features you can employ. We also show you two different methods to copy books directly to your e-reader. Adobe Digital Editions is one of THE best tools for copying both library books and books you have purchased from other websites. The Kobo Aura HD’s primary book format is EPUB. This is the most common book type that is sold on many of the leading online stores, such as Barnes and Noble. ADE is the best program you can use to copy purchased books and books you borrowed from your local library via Overdrive, Axis 360, or 3M. We will show you exactly how to transfer books over to your Aura. One tip of note with the latest version of Digital Editions 2.0 in a Windows 8 environment. We have heard that if you click on the app, it will load and then crash. You want to right click on the icon and then choose ‘Run As Admin.’ Finally, Dropbox is the primer cloud storage locker that gives you a few GB of space for free. This is a useful tool because you can use the Aura HD’s internet browser to access your collection and then save each title directly to your library. How to Load eBooks on the Kobo Aura HD is a post from: E-Reader News |
Bolivia Removes VAT Tax from Book Sales
| The president of Bolivia Evo Morales has signed a new law today that removes the 16% tax levied on digital book and physical book sales. The new law also calls for improvements in the country’s libraries. A number of publishers will benefit from this new law and are likely see more book sales, due to the reduced prices in their physical and digital counterparts. Scholastic is one of the largest companies that has a presence in Bolivia. Perhaps the company that will benefit from this law the most is Bolivian publishing house MartÃnez-Acchini, in association with McGraw-Hill. Together, these two companies have been actively selling 310 digital textbooks exclusively through a network of brick-and-mortar bookstores. The titles often sell for less than 40 % of their print counterparts and are available immediately. Bolivia has the dubious distinction of being one of the most pirated book countries in the world. Many major publishers actually stopped selling books and textbooks to that country due to the black market. Fortunately, organized networks of irregular printers established during the '90s, both in the country and in Peru, have the power and the tools to all but instantly reproduce any paper book that reaches the market, thus undermining the industry. This has driven up the price for the legitimate textbooks, which most often have students paying a deposit and waiting three weeks for the title to be mailed out to them. In the most ironic twist to this new law, the president of Bolivia simply hates to read. During a recent press event he said “I have that problem, I don’t like to read.” Here is hoping that his fellow Bolivians do not echo his sentiment. Bolivia Removes VAT Tax from Book Sales is a post from: E-Reader News |
HarperCollins to Launch Mystery Imprint ‘Witness’ This October
| HarperCollins intends on launching a new digital imprint entitled “Witness” this October. The publishing giant already has close to 100 titles ready to be published, but will start with 10 in the first month. One of the most exciting elements is the royalty payment structure; the company has announced it will pay its writers monthly, to better compete with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. Witness will feature the same royalty structure as William Morrow/Avon's other digital-first imprints. Authors receive a 50% royalty once their book sells 10,000 copies (initial royalties start at 25%). Digital first imprints often do not give advances on the titles, such as Karina Press by Harlequin. Digital first publishing houses often take gambles on unknown writers in the hopes they will sell enough copies to warrant a print edition. Since HarperCollins has an established distribution pipeline with thousands of bookstores, and the company hopes to sway over aspiring writers to their imprint, away from Amazon. Witness will feature digital versions of Agatha Christie's short stories. In the fall, Witness will release all the "Hercule Poirot" short stories as digital singles, and then together in a single omnibus edition with a foreword by Charles Todd. HarperCollins to Launch Mystery Imprint ‘Witness’ This October is a post from: E-Reader News |
Trekstor Announces the Pyrus Maxi e-Reader – Lawsuit May Prevent Its Release
| Trekstor has seen a little bit of success with its Pyrus Mini e-Reader in Europe, but is virtually unknown in North America. Today, the company announced a new device that should resonate a little bit better, mainly due to its eight inch screen. It should fill the gap in the market with the severe lack of larger screen e-readers currently being offered. The Pyrus Maxi features an 8 inch display screen with a resolution of 1024×768 with 160dpi. It has 4 GB of internal memory and the ability to enhance it further with a Micro SD card up to 32 GB. It will be able to read ePUB, PDF (including Adobe DRM), TXT, FB2, RTF, and PDB ebook file types. It also has a solid amount of language support with the ability to read English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, and Ukrainian This device is fairly basic with no audio functionality, no touchscreen, and no WiFi wireless connection. Instead, you will navigate around the e-reader with physical buttons, like the older e-readers of yesteryear. Considering the entry level price of €149, when it comes out May 14th in Italy, it will be quite expensive if you consider what you get. It is also currently available via pre-order via Amazon.de for 160 euros. Trekstor might see some difficulty in the global e-reader market mainly due to a lawsuit filed in November from E Ink Holdings. The company has been sued over two patents that have to do with electronic screens. This lawsuit basically made the Pyrus Mini e-Reader unsellable until the trial, which is set to formally launch within the next four months. The Chairman of E Ink Holding commented: “We have filed suit because E Ink intellectual property is unfairly exploited. E Ink is the market leader in the manufacture of high-quality intellectual property in the field of electronic screens and strives together with customers, suppliers and industry partners to build a sustainable eco-system. Our intellectual property is one of our major capital investments, which we have built with the hard work by hundreds of scientists and engineers for many years and spending hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development. ” Trekstor is not using E Ink screens. Instead, it is using display screen technology from Technologies Co. Ltd. Guangzhou OED, which is made in China. It could be considered a knock off, and E Ink is going after any company selling similar screens with extreme vigor. It remains to be seen if E Ink will seek an injunction against this new device. Trekstor Announces the Pyrus Maxi e-Reader – Lawsuit May Prevent Its Release is a post from: E-Reader News |
Monday, April 29, 2013
Raspberry Pi, for all your 50s diner needs
| Have you ever been to a cafe or restaurant with 1950s jukebox wallboxes in each booth? Wallboxes were an extension for a jukebox, making it more convenient to select music right from your table. You’d drop a coin in, choose a song from the flipbook behind the glass, chrome and plastics, and the machine would send pulses down a wire to the restaurant’s jukebox, where a stepper would decode the pulses and queue up the song you’d picked. Refurbished wallboxes occasionally pop up in mock-50s diners; you’ll also see them for sale on eBay for anything up to a few hundred quid, and people buy them to add to their jukeboxes, or just as home decoration (I’ve seen one being used as a particularly cumbersome phonebook).  Wallbox in situ Steve Devlin bought himself a couple of wallboxes a few years ago, meaning to hook them up to an MP3 player. He then switched over to a SONOS wireless media system in his house, and forgot about the wallboxes for a couple of years. Enter the Pi. On looking at a Raspberry Pi and a wallbox, Steve had an idea. Why not hook the two up together to make a controller for the SONOS system? The Pi decodes the pulses from the box, and sends the information to the SONOS system. (This approach will work with any UPnP protocol, so you’re not limited to using SONOS.) Steve’s thinking about further customisation: a strip in the box with Radio 4 on it; some dynamic strips like “songs of the week”, which will play a selection of the week’s most-played tunes; some LEDs to show a binary index of common faults, like the wifi being down, or a song not being found. There are full instructions and much more information on Steve’s website. We think there’s something really compelling about this mix of old and new; thanks for sharing, Steve! |
Sunday, April 28, 2013
EVE Online to Publish Digital Comics via Dark Horse
| Eve is celebrating its ten year anniversary as being one of the longest lived Space based MMORPG’s. Today at the annual EVE Online Fanfest, it was announced that a free 54 page digital comic will be made available and published via Dark Horse. The content for Eve: True Stories, will stem from the players themselves, that drive the story and politics for the game. Over the course of the next eight days, players are encouraged to submit their favorite memories of the game from the last ten years. The EVE population will then vote on the best ones and the free comic will be born. Dark Horse will also be producing a giant 184-page glossy graphic novel that will cover all of the story driven lore behind EVE Online and DUST 514. Titled EVE Source, it will include a bunch of never seen before concept art and high-resolution images. There is no word yet if Dark Horse will also publish a digital variant. EVE has derived most of its success through players crafting their own stories. I remember one in particular from 2005 that had The Guiding Hand Social Club mercenary outfit accepting a contract on the life of Ubiqua Seraph, CEO Mirial. Over the course of several months, Guiding Hand spies infiltrated Ubiqua Seraph and worked their way up the ladder to become Mirial’s closest companions. They proceeded to bring the corporation to its knees in one fell swoop, destroying Mirial’s most prized ship and raiding the corporate hangars for untold billions of ISK in valuable blueprints. In recent times, a massive fleet battle of 2800 ships resulted in the largest PVP session in the games history.
EVE Online to Publish Digital Comics via Dark Horse is a post from: E-Reader News |
MAKE and MCM Raspberry Pi Design Competition: the winners!
| MAKE held a Raspberry Pi Design competition with MCM Electronics for US-based Pi owners, and have just released the results. I’m not sure what’s more impressive: the outstanding quality of the entries, or the fact that even though we spend much of the day furiously googling for new Pi projects, many of the submissions were new to us here at the Foundation. It’s great for us to watch other organisations running contests like this: not least because it’s a real relief not to have to judge them ourselves! The Grand Prize went to Intonarumori, a collection of magic sound boxes made by a hacker/art collective called urbanSTEW. The STEW-folk say:
The Sunlight Foundation’s Lobbyist Meter won the Artistic category: we tweeted about this a while back (and it’s been in my “things to blog” folder for a while) because we thought it was a clever, snarky, funny way to bring attention to a very serious issue. You can read more about the Lobbyist Meter on the Sunlight Foundation’s website. Here it is, doing its transparent, democratic thing. The Education category award went to a project you’ll all have seen before, if you’re regular readers: Emma Bennett’s beautiful school State Board project (which we have been using in talks as a demonstration of some of the very cool stuff we see kids doing with the Pi) won the prize. Read more about it in the post we wrote when we first saw Emma’s work, and see some video of the board in action below. Everybody in our offices secretly wants a wooden case for their Pi, because we are all impractical, and we have all read Idoru. The Enclosures category was won by Chris Crumpacker for this beautiful piece of hand-tooled walnut. Chris, if you’re reading, please get in touch. We absolutely, positively need one of these to hold one of the Pis at Raspberry Towers. Chris told MAKE:
The final category, Utility, was won by another project we’ve featured here: David Bryan’s cat feeder, which I enjoyed blogging about because it gave me the opportunity to use the phrase “liver-flavoured kibbles”. Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks to MAKE and MCM for running the competition. You can see the other entries on MAKE’s website – enjoy! |
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Google Play Store Bars External App Updates
| Google has introduced some changes to its Play Store regulations that now make is mandatory for all applications to update after having gone through Google's specified methods. This comes in the wake of Facebook attempting to offer users of its Facebook Home app an update bypassing Google Play Store. The change has been brought about by a seemingly small but significant update that now stands at version 4.0.27. Most apps already comply with that, except for one, Facebook, which prompted Google to promptly bring about the change. Google Play Program Policies have been updated. See “Content Policies” section, which clarifies that “An app downloaded from Google Play may not modify, replace, or update its own APK binary code using any method other than Google Play’s update mechanism.” Google Play is a trusted source for Android application downloads, and we are committed to providing a secure and consistent experience, revealed Google's new policy towards app updates.
Google Play Store Bars External App Updates is a post from: E-Reader News |
HP Slate 7 Now Available in the US
| The Slate 7, HP's offering in the budget tablet segment, is now ready to be picked up for a comfortable $170. The tablet is all about mediocrity, which matches the selling price rather well, though the unit has moments of brilliance as well. Take, for instance, the Beats Audio software, which should allow for one of the best audible experience on a budget tablet. Together with the price point and a decent performance, this makes for a really appealing tablet proposition. The rest of the specification story is already well known: a 1.6 GHz dual core chip, 1 GB of RAM, and a 8 GB internal storage. The tablet comes with support for a micro SD card that maxes out at 32 GB. The tablet runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, but comes with a rather sedate 1024 x 600 pixel display. That's not terrible, but there are better options available. Case in point, the Nexus 7 or the Kindle Fire HD, both of which offer 1280 x 800 pixel display and 16 GB of storage for just $199. However, the Slate 7 comes in an all metal body. Nevertheless, the HP Slate 7 is worth checking out, more so since it has made its retail debut in the US. Earlier, it was caught in a misprint imbroglio that led many to believe it has been delayed to June. Good to see it is sticking to its schedule.
HP Slate 7 Now Available in the US is a post from: E-Reader News |
Protect your online accounts after major hack
Dark Horse Announces Halo: Initiation Digital Comic
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"After Halo 4 and Spartan Ops, fans wanted to know more about the origins of the Spartan-IV program and Sarah Palmer in particular. So it's great fun to be able to grant those wishes with a partner like Dark Horse," Reed said in a statement issued by Dark Horse. The Halo series of comics originally started at Marvel, before finding a new home with Dark Horse.The first issue is poised to drop August 14th and will be available via the Dark Horse iOS and Android apps. Dark Horse Announces Halo: Initiation Digital Comic is a post from: E-Reader News |
A Simple Trick to Fix a Buggy or Broken Kobo eBook Reader
| Remember last week when I posted about how my Kobo Glo had become too buggy to function? It kept freezing up and not responding, the covers all disappeared from the homescreen, and it kept giving a network connection error whenever I tried to sync to upgrade to the new 2.5.1 software. Well, I eventually figured [...] |
Metro: Last Light eBook to be Bundled with Steam Purchase
| If you are a fan of post apocalyptic games and eBooks, there is a new deal to be had. Users who purchase the new PC game Metro: Last Light will be offered a free digital copy of the novel Metro 2033, when authenticating on Steam. The digital book itself, is available as a standalone purchase and will be made available via major retailers on May 14 2013. The plot of Metro: Last Light was written by Dmitry Glukhovsky, acclaimed author of the novel Metro 2033 which inspired the creation of both video games. Glukhovsky’s novels Metro 2033 and Metro 2034 have sold more than 2.000.000 copies worldwide. In 2013, his latest book Metro 2035 will also be available outside of Russia. Really, the new game gives publisher Deep Silver a marketing opportunity it never took advantage of in the first games release. There is a tremendously loyal following to the video game franchise and the game is getting tons of publicity via major gaming sites. The inclusion of a free eBook will likely sway a few people over to the PC. There is no word yet on what format the eBook will be in, but likely PDF and ePUB. Metro: Last Light eBook to be Bundled with Steam Purchase is a post from: E-Reader News |
Good e-Reader Radio – Week in Review
| Welcome to another edition of the Good e-Reader Radio Show! Today we talk about the Blackberry Q10 and what to expect on its Canadian launch early next week. We will be reviewing this in our labs and comparing it against the Z10! We also have some Skype news! The official App has been launched and is now exclusively available via the Good e-Reader APP Store for both the Z10 and Q10, its on the front page right now! In the news, we talk about Amazon hitting 300,000 eBooks in its Kindle Library, the top 20 most well read cities in the US and their Q1 financial results. Also, txtr has launched new eBook stores in many different countries, but some of their prices are out of control. IDPF has announced its main sessions speakers, authors and industry heroes that will be at Digital Book! You ever heard of Deluxe eBooks before? Me neither, hear me rant and rave at what funny business Harper Collins is up too, of course music and more! A fun show as always, so check it out. Good e-Reader Radio – Week in Review is a post from: E-Reader News |
Friday, April 26, 2013
Amazon Redesigns their Android App
| Amazon has pushed out a massive update for the Kindle Reading application for Android today. It has basically been totally redesigned to mirror the UI of the Kindle Fire Tablet. Your main library gives you a carousel view of all the eBooks you have in it and are swiped for easy access. At the bottom of your main screen you now see a Bestsellers/Recommended mini carousel that will allow you to purchase the books right from main shelf. Finally, there is a main menu that will give you access to popular samples, newsstand, and many more! This is the largest update Amazon has ever given their Android app, and is worth it to download. You can get it right now from the Good e-Reader APP Store. Amazon Redesigns their Android App is a post from: E-Reader News |
![Screenshot_2013-04-26-16-20-12[1]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uOZX9mxlC4cCCv3FGsjCIZ-lvIvV5mjIIaHTbTQcyG5FwY0Xv7o3Q-UWrcsac_WstLNJzMEDjAXPZqGF87bgwA73vhDEHHhV52zF8tr1VPlgszzRYcucKb6xUBVwaiU9WjLicKr8C7ADNrN3xLR2i60Pala9uQ3_WGx1EnG0uRf-40filk-3U=s0-d)
OverDrive Media Console compatibility for Linux Users
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Maybe you have dreaded telling the users who come into your library and are wanting help with Linux that OverDrive Media Console was not compatible with their chosen platform. Due to a recent discovery, we have found a way to get OMC on a Linux computer. Things are about to get nerdy, so stick with me.
Many Linux users are familiar with a program called Wine – not the popular libation, but a "translator" that allows Windows native applications to run in the Linux environment. Wine takes a Windows Application's calls, and translates them to the corresponding Linux calls. The result is an environment where Windows applications run in the Linux environment as if they were written for Linux. Let me be clear and note that it's not perfect – some results may vary, giving you the ability to use the core features of an application, while also preventing other features from working.
When OverDrive Media Console is installed on a Linux PC using Wine, you will gain the capability of playing OverDrive MP3 Audiobooks, and even returning them through the software. On the other hand, some features are not available, including support for WMA Audiobooks and WMV Videos, and the ability to transfer to MP3 players. The reason some features are not supported in Linux is the inability to install the latest version of the Windows Media Player security upgrade required for use with Windows Media formats.
In addition to this recent discovery, Open EPUB books should work as long as you have an eReader program installed, OverDrive Read titles will also work on Linux since the format is browser-based, and not tied to external programs like Adobe Digital Editions. Kindle Titles are also available to Linux users using the Kindle Cloud Reader. And you can also use Adobe Digital Editions 1.7 with Wine. To all Linux users out there, let's hope this is the beginning of more things to come!
To download and install ADE with Wine, please see the Wine project’s App Database (appDB) entry for Adobe Digital Editions.
If you would like to download and install OMC with Wine, please see the Wine project's App Database (appDB) entry for OMC. If you don’t have Wine or you aren’t sure how Wine works, try these links:
Justin Noszek is a Support Specialist for OverDrive.
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Txtr eBooks Cost 60% more than Amazon in New Zealand
| Txtr made a big announcement a few days ago on the expansion of their online bookstores in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many other countries. The eBooks they sell on average are close to 60% more then they sell for on Amazon and other leading digital websites. Deadly Seas just published on 13 April is NZ$32.99 on txtr and only NZ$17.43 on Amazon. Secret History of our Streets:London is NZ$39.95 on txtr and only NZ$21.53 on Amazon. Finally, the The Religion of Technology costs $32.99 on txtr and $11.72 on Amazon. Finally, Amazon allows users to get a sample preview to evaluate the book before purchase, while txtr does not provide this service. Obviously with the high price point, many customers who want to hunt around for deals might do better then dealing with txtr in New Zealand. Txtr eBooks Cost 60% more than Amazon in New Zealand is a post from: E-Reader News |
Amazon Kindle Lending Library Surpasses 300,000 titles
| The Amazon Kindle Lending Library has just surpassed 300,000 titles, according to the company’s Q1 Financial Report. The service is an integral part of Amazon Prime, which allows users to borrow one ebook a month for free. The Amazon Lending Library burst onto the scene in early 2011 and launched with a paltry 5,000 titles. Since then, it has grown as many self-published authors and mainstream publishers have contributed their works. You can find the entire Hunger Games and Harry Potter books available on this platform. One of the benefits that the Lending Library provides is the extra revenue authors receive when their books are borrowed out for free. Unlike traditional libraries, Amazon has a pool of money that it distributes to authors every month. Whenever a book is borrowed, authors receive royalties. We have heard in many cases that authors make more money giving their book away for free, than they do selling it for .99. It also hooks readers on a series of books, and customers are more likely to purchase the next books in a trilogy than wait a whole month to borrow the next book for free. Amazon Kindle Lending Library Surpasses 300,000 titles is a post from: E-Reader News |
IDPF Digital Book 2013 Is Just a Month Away!
| The schedule for IDPF Digital Book Conference is set for May 29th to the 30th at the Javits Center in New York. This event transpires every year right before the start of Book Expo America. It is the most definitive gathering of stalwart digital heroes and focuses on the trends in ebooks, self-publishing, e-readers, and what companies are doing. The incredibly rich 2013 speaker list ranges from bestselling authors like Malcolm Gladwell, Sylvia Day, and Jennifer Armentrout; media masters like Brad Stone of Bloomberg Businessweek, Laura Hazard Owen of paidContent, Jeremy Greenfield of Digital Book World, and Phil Sexton of F+W Media; top executives from the Big 6 houses; the Author's Guild and the US Department of Justice; top children's and educational publishers like Scholastic, Cengage, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; industry visionaries, such as Matt McInnis of Inkling, Allen Lau of Wattpad, Kristen McLean of Bookigee, Richard Nash of Small Demons, Corey Pressman of Exprima Media, Mark Ury of Storybird, Hugh McGuire of PressBooks, Craig Mod, John Ossenmacher of ReDigi, Anne Kubek of InScribe Digital, Josh Schanker of BookBub, and more; and finally, industry giants Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Google. There are just too many speakers to mention, but the complete list can be seen here: http://idpf.org/digital-book-2013/speakers. Paid admission to IDPF Digital Book 2013 includes free admission to the BookExpo America trade show and exhibit hall, including the Digital Discovery Zone by IDPF. Early bird rates are in effect through May 1, 2013. Registration is available at an incredible rate: $389 ($259 for IDPF members / $329 non-profits). To register, please visit: http://idpf.org/db13. Follow event updates on Twitter @digitalbook13. IDPF Digital Book 2013 Is Just a Month Away! is a post from: E-Reader News |
Rob, Bacon
| Our very own Justin Bieber, Rob Bishop, was at the world’s best-named conference last week. Bacon (www.devslovebacon.com) is a London conference on things developers love, like Raspberry Pi, Go, rockets, close-up magic…and preserved meats. The video of his talk was just released yesterday. Rob says, on watching it: “Man, I need a haircut.” Rob’s good at this stuff, isn’t he? |
Amazon Announces America’s Top “Reading” Cities
| Amazon has recently begun sharing information on book sales by US region, and for the third year in a row has created its “best dressed” list of cities who purchase the most books, magazines, and newspapers in print and digital editions. While the February list focused specifically on the romance category to coincide with Valentine’s Day, the news this week is compiled over every category of book sales. For the second year in a row, Alexandria, Virginia topped the list as the most well-read city in the US based on book buying habits of its residents. The number two spot was held by Knoxville, Tennessee, who also was the city with the biggest jump up the list from the previous year–number twelve to number two–and was the most “romantic” city in the country based on the February romance category list. What should come as no surprise is that Cambridge, Massachusetts is the city whose readers bought the most books in the business and investing category, which can safely be assumed is the result of also being the home of Harvard University. The top twenty list includes: 1. Alexandria, Va. "The results of our annual Most Well-Read Cities list is proof that people across the country are reading, and also that we're still seeing the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey," said Sara Nelson, Editorial Director of Books and Kindle, in a press release. "It's fun for us to see facts like the citizens of Cambridge are buying the most books in the business category or that one of our favorite novels of 2012, Gone Girl, is the best-selling book in the Most Well-Read City, Alexandria."
Amazon Announces America’s Top “Reading” Cities is a post from: E-Reader News |
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Adobe Releases Report on Viability of Digital Magazines
| A report from Adobe, the State of Mobile Benchmark, demonstrated some interesting information about how consumers are utilizing mobile devices for magazine reading and subscriptions. The information specifically relates to readership of magazines produced using the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, but the news gives insight into how the market as a whole is consuming magazines. The data shows that the number of people reading on tablet computers is up nearly 200% during the last seven months, and digital magazine growth has increased from 300,000 issues per week to close to 2 million downloads per week. Some of the important information from this report is aimed at the publishers, as Adobe found that interactive ads in digital magazines stand to have a tremendous impact on consumer spending. While interactive ads are twice as likely to influence consumers as static magazine ads, ad revenue at one point increased by 200%. “What is the big take away?” asks Adobe in its post about this news. “Consumers are buying digital magazines at an ever-increasing pace. We're at the point where digital magazines are moving from early adopters to the mainstream, print-reading audience and they have the potential to deliver a massive amount of ad dollars. People who consume digital magazines are proving to be very high value customers given their propensity to pay for content.” While digital magazines–either as stand-alone issues or subscriptions–were once for the forward thinking consumers, they’re becoming so much a part of the digital publishing landscape that publishers are able to recognize their viability as a necessary marketing tool. As tablets drop in price and tablet ownership becomes more widespread, digital magazine consumption can only be expected to increase.
Adobe Releases Report on Viability of Digital Magazines is a post from: E-Reader News |
Outreach Training: Spring and Summer eBook Marketing Ideas
| April showers bring May… Community Outreach trainings? I know that's not how that expression usually goes but it's true for us here at OverDrive. We're gearing up for our next open Community Outreach marketing training on Thursday May 2nd at 12:00 PM EST. (Click here to convert it to your time zone, if you're not in Eastern Time.)
Register now to come and review some promotional tips and tricks with a special focus on new ways to highlight your digital titles over the next few months. Why not encourage patrons to listen to audiobooks while doing spring cleaning? Your digital collection can also be incorporated into your summer reading programs or book clubs. For your patrons heading on holidays, they can bring a stack of eBooks on vacation without taking up extra room in their suitcase. Plus, you won't need to worry about the library’s physical copies of books getting dropped in the ocean or lost and never returned!
If you can't make it next week, we'll miss you but don't worry. You can sign up for the next session in June or at your convenience, you can view a recording of the Community Outreach webinar on demand in our Learning Center.
Hope to see you there!
Melissa Marin is a Marketing Specialist at OverDrive.
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Instapaper Sold to Betaworks
| Betaworks garnered some attention in the tech world when they purchased social media site DIGG. Today, it was announced that the company has absorbed read it later service Instapaper. Instapaper originally launched in 2008 and quickly became one of the most beloved apps for the read it later crowd. It is available for PC, MAC, iOS, Android, and a myriad of other platforms. Registering with the PC service only involves choosing a login name and password, no other information is needed. This software basically prompts you enter a slew of links to websites such as http://goodereader.com/blog/ and imports our entire website into Kindle friendly format or ePub. Once these ebooks are saved on your PC, you can load them onto your e-Reader or tablet via Windows Explorer or Calibre. They also have a bevy of dedicated apps that you can read on too. Some cool options that this gives is being able to save an entire website to text and then change the font, font size, margins, and more. Once you got it looking the way you want, you can save it as an ebook. The mobile apps for iOS and Android both cost money, but is a worthy investment. There is no word yet on the direction or future of Instapaper and how it will look in a years time. The main developer has promised to stay on as a consultant, and likely will see further integration with Digg. Instapaper Sold to Betaworks is a post from: E-Reader News |
Dark Horse Celebrates Two years of Digital with 50 Free Comics
| It has been two years since Dark Horse, the publisher of Hellboy, Buffy, and the Star Wars comics, launched its digital service, and they are celebrating this week with a giveaway of 50 #1 issues on their website. Readers can download all 50 with a single click if they have a Dark Horse account. The list includes some fan favorites such as Hellboy and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the two I would start with are Matt Kindt’s Mind MGMT, a freaky story about psychic spies; Francesco Francavilla’s Black Beetle, a retro superhero title with more than a whiff of noir to it; and Mike Richardson and Stan Sakai’s 47 Ronin, a retelling of the traditional Japanese legend. But act fast: The freebies will vanish at 9 a.m. PST on Friday, April 26. After that, though, they will have a 10% off sale on all digital bundles from April 26 through April 28. Dark Horse also announced that they will begin selling comics published by Dynamite via their digital service, which includes a web store, an iOS app, and an Android app. This is a logical partnership as both publishers specialize in licensed and creator-owned comics with a strong genre feel; Dark Horse publishes the Star Wars comics, while Dynamite has Battlestar Galactica; Dark Horse has Francesco Francavilla’s Black Beetle, Dynamite has The Shadow. It’s also an interesting shift in Dark Horse’s role, from publisher to retailer. That matches their strategy in the print world, where they have close ties with the online retailer Things From Another World (TFAW). While Dynamite has a period of exclusivity, publisher Nick Barrucci said he is encouraging creators with creator-owned comics to reach out to Dark Horse Digital. Dark Horse Celebrates Two years of Digital with 50 Free Comics is a post from: E-Reader News |
Kobo Launches New Interactive Detective Mystery – The Descent
| Kobo is launching its first interactive contest entitled ‘The Descent.” The essence of the game is having players solving a maze of hidden clues and visiting websites, and like any mystery, the path leads to a great reward — a $5,000 cash prize. As part of the game, players will be required to find clues and decipher symbols located within each story and online through Kobo's dedicated contest site and social media channels. Solving codes and ciphers will be the main aspect of this contest, which runs in parallel with the new book by Dan Brown that comes out on May 14th. The majority of clues will be available in three original short stories authored by J.F. Penn, that are free in the Kobo eBook Store. Penn is currently a featured Kobo Writing Life author. She is based in London and has a panache for all things thriller and mystery. Her studies provide the foundation for her historically based, yet modern thrillers, including the free eBooks on which 'The Descent' contest is based. 'The Descent' contest is open to residents of the U.S, UK and Canada and runs from April 25 to May 14, 2013. You can visit the full contest website HERE! It is time to channel your inner codebreaker and earn a cool five g’s. Kobo Launches New Interactive Detective Mystery – The Descent is a post from: E-Reader News |
OverDrive and III announce plans for deep API integration
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This week, OverDrive and Innovative Interfaces, Inc. ("III") agreed on plans for deep API integration of OverDrive services into III products, including Sierra and Encore Discovery Services Platform. Building on the success of the first round of OverDrive APIs, the coming API updates will include the ability to check out and place a hold on eBooks from a library's online catalog.
The plans with III also include an option to take the integration beyond digital and into the physical collection. In addition to providing an enhanced user experience through a library's online catalog, OverDrive and III will enable a seamless experience for OverDrive library partners in our collection portal, Content Reserve. Libraries will be able to see their physical and digital holdings side-by-side within Content Reserve so that collection development decisions can be based on physical holdings, circulation, and other criteria.
At the 2013 ALA Conference this summer, OverDrive and III plan to demonstrate III's integration of OverDrive's much anticipated 'Content API' which supports placing holds and checkouts on titles from a library's digital catalog. To support this, our companies will also collaborate on a 'Patron Authentication API' to ensure secure access to user accounts. The Content API release will follow soon after with a pilot available for partner libraries and approved vendors.
Included in the Content API will be direct access to both downloadable and browser-based (OverDrive Read) eBooks, as well as eBook samples in the OverDrive Read format. These will work the same way as the current Read and Download buttons do on OverDrive-powered Next Generation digital library collection websites, allowing users to directly read or download titles with integrated API calls.
OverDrive's partnership with III is an exciting one, and it builds on the success we're already seeing with our existing API partners, currently serving hundreds of libraries.
We also have a booth (#18) set up at IUG 2013, meeting with III's many customers and users in San Francisco this week.
As we make progress on the new APIs, we'll be sure to keep you in the loop right here on the blog. In the meantime, you can read more about our APIs on our developer portal.  |
Square Enix To Shut Down Digital Manga Stores in U.S. and France
| The Japanese site AnimeAnime is reporting that Square Enix will shut down its U.S. and French digital manga websites; although this news has yet to appear on the U.S. site, the news sites Crunchyroll and Anime News Network have picked up on it and there is a notice on the French site. The news comes as no surprise, as Square Enix has been having a bad year. They were projecting a net loss at the end of last fiscal year, their president is stepping down, and they laid off a large portion of their staff earlier this month. Square Enix is the Japanese publisher for a number of popular properties, but they don’t publish them in the U.S. under their own name; their line includes Fullmetal Alchemist (published by Viz) and Black Butler (Yen Press’s top-selling Japanese manga). Yen Press publishing director Kurt Hassler announced at New York Comic Con that Yen would be partnering with Square Enix to release their manga digitally on a variety of platforms worldwide. Unlike JManga, which despite its myriad faults was user-friendly and relatively easy to use, the Square Enix North American digital manga store was poorly designed and embodied many of the worst aspects of digital comics distribution. It was a streaming website, so you couldn’t download the comics, but it also required the reader to download a special manga reader, so that the comics were locked to a single computer, taking away the portability that is the saving grace of streaming manga. The special software was buggy and, to put it bluntly, just didn’t work. Tech assistance was nonexistent. But not too many people even got that far, because the site required users to go through five separate registrations—not steps, registrations—in order to sign up. And the DRM on the site was the worst, most obnoxious DRM ever. You can read all about it in my review at MTV Geek and Melinda Beasi’s review at Manga Bookshelf. How bad was the web store? So bad that when Square Enix did a free manga promotion at San Diego a few years ago, it backfired when people couldn’t claim their manga—just read the comments to Melinda’s post. So while the JManga announcement caused a lot of angst among readers who will lose access to manga they had “bought” from the streaming service, the Square Enix shutdown doesn’t seem to be causing widespread panic, perhaps because so few people have used the site. It’s worth spending a few minutes discussing why the site was so bad. A fundamental problem was that Square Enix seemed to think of it as a site to be used chiefly by people who were already engaged with the company as gamers, assuming that people who were already members of the site would welcome the opportunity to have manga added to its other offerings. They don’t seem to have realized that manga readers are a separate group, and that having to become a site member before signing up for the manga service is an unnecessary (and annoying) step. The site could have been streamlined quite a bit by either eliminating the membership requirement or combining it with the registration for the manga site. Furthermore, they used a fairly obscure payment service, so everyone had to sign up with that separately; if they had gone with a universally used service such as PayPal they could have saved their customers a lot of aggravation. Finally, the DRM was ridiculous. Requiring readers to download a separate reader that only ties in to one device is already a failing strategy; nobody has just one device any more. The fact that the damn thing didn’t work is a separate issue. Not only was it buggy, it was only designed to work with the Explorer browser, effectively cutting out all Mac users and everybody else who doesn’t use Explorer. But that’s not the worst of it. As Melinda Beasi explains in her review of the site, it actually was quite easy to defeat the DRM and download the manga directly to the user’s computer as a PDF. On the other hand, Viz and eManga, which don’t have burdensome DRM, do a much better job of protecting their files. So the DRM is not only annoying, it’s ineffective. And finally, when the competition is a free, easy-to-use pirate site, requiring your readers to jump through hoops to read an overpriced comic is a losing strategy. Yen Press has a nice iPad app, and their deal with Square Enix means the comics will be available digitally worldwide, not region-locked. The Square Enix site was old technology, poorly done, and it’s doubtful anyone will miss it. Square Enix To Shut Down Digital Manga Stores in U.S. and France is a post from: E-Reader News |
How to Remove the Background from Pictures with Word and PowerPoint 2010
Did you know you can use Word and PowerPoint to remove the background from photos? We'll show you how. |
Kindle Paperwhite Update 5.3.5 Brings Dictionary and Search Enhancements
| Amazon has issued another firmware update for the Kindle Paperwhite. This new version goes by the number 5.3.5. It includes the usual “general improvements” as well as a couple of new features. The first feature enhancement improves dictionary usage by showing the full definition of a looked-up word in the dictionary window instead of just [...] |
The Raspberry Pi in scientific research
| The cost implications that come with finding yourself able to buy a computer for $25 are significant for all of us, but they can make a real difference to the way cash-strapped researchers do things. We’re seeing a surprising number of university departments around the world using the Pi for the sort of tasks you’d previously have pointed a PC at, with very gratifying results. I had email from Lorna, who manages some of our social media, about a video she’d been sent yesterday. “It’s about crabs,” she said. “The seaside kind.” (Just as well, or I wouldn’t have been able to publish it.) David Soriano, who is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh-Bradford, has been using a webcam controlled by a Pi to monitor fiddler crabs which are being offered thermal polypeptides, rich in the amino acid tyrosine. Tyrosine starts the pathway to melanin pigment production in the crab, and David’s watching for colour changes that result from it. This is a long video, at 15 minutes, but it’s very interesting, as David describes the setup and some of the crabs’ behaviour. David is also studying the effects of certain chemical agents on the American Cockroach with the help of a Pi. Cockroaches are much less cute than fiddler crabs, so I won’t embed the video here, but you can watch it on YouTube. Meanwhile, over in France at Aix-Marseille Université, Sebastiaan Mathôt, a post-doc at the Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, has been running his graphical experiment builder, OpenSesame, on the Pi.  Eben took part in a university psychology experiment once. The results, somewhat surprisingly, demonstrated that he had a closer relationship with Superman than he did with God. Sebastiaan is testing the Pi for use in psychological experiments, and has found it very suitable. He found a few milliseconds’ inaccuracy in some measurements, but says:
You can find out more about his setup on his blog; it’s well worth a read. The biologists are in on it too: click the picture below to visit the University of St Andrews in Scotland, whose Centre for Biological Diversity have written a Raspberry Pi phylogeny reconstruction program, so students can look at the relationship between phylogeny and evolution on a Pi. Daniel Barker, from St Andrews, said:
If you’d like to learn more (undergrad-level biology is a whole new world to a lot of us), Daniel came and posted some more explanation on our forums last year. Come and take a look. Of course, you don’t need to be at a university to use a Pi to research something. Yesterday I spotted a brand new Twitter feed, fully automated with a Pi, dedicated to capturing an image of the Beijing sky every 15 minutes. Zhe Wu, who works at delicious.com, is collecting the visual data and will be using it to analyse changes in the condition of the city’s air. There’s not a lot of data to process yet; the images only started being collected yesterday. But we’re looking forward to seeing what he does with them. You can view the stream of pictures on Twitter.  Pictures of the Beijing sky today. It’s looking a bit less smoggy today than it did on my last trip! Back in the UK, we’re seeing some pretty extraordinary research work coming out of schools too. The winners of the 16-18 section of the recent PA Consulting Awards competition, challenging schoolchildren to “make the world a better place” with a Pi, were Alyssa Dayan and Tom Hartley from Westminster School, whose Air Pi we’ve mentioned here before briefly; it’s a very sophisticated, very well implemented project we thought we should talk about some more. Air Pi is, say Alyssa and Tom, “an automatic air quality & weather monitoring device powered by a Raspberry Pi, capable of displaying, recording and uploading information about temperature, humidity, air pressure, light levels, UV levels, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and smoke level to the internet.” It’s cheap, it’s modular, it’s open: we love it. Here are Alyssa and Tom, who will explain a bit more about the project and what’s being done with it. There’s a lot more information on the AirPi website – head over and have a look. You can set one up yourself for as little as £50 (including the Pi), and AirPis are already being used to monitor air quality as far away as India. Are you using a Pi for research? Let us know in the comments. |
A Little Competition for Smashwords?
| When the free ebook distribution platform Smashwords was created, critics claimed that it was nothing more than a portal for lousy ebooks to flood the market while supporters countered that it was the first genuine concept in stripping away the artificial barriers to publication. The founder, Mark Coker, stated quite freely that if a horrible ebook–horrible in terms of the writing, the formatting, or both–was published, the readers would be the ones to decide not to buy it. But for Coker’s vision, book publishing was for everyone who wanted to invest their time and talent in the process. A few million ebooks later, Smashwords is a widely-respected and highly-profitable company that has launched a number of authors and has had a surprising number of titles distributed through their platform reach the bestseller lists. It has developed partnerships with the major online retailers to distribute vetted books to those retail marketplaces with the click of a button, and its model continues to be popular with authors, both indie and traditionally published. Now, a new company has arrived a little late on the digital publishing scene and claims to be the solution to the problems created by Smashwords. Draft2Digital, who issued a press release stating that it was the “long-awaited alternative to Smashwords,” offers… exactly the same service. Without indicating what was so frustrating about Smashwords that its company is the “long-awaited alternative,” Draft2Digital does provide a little healthy competition in the free ebook uploading marketplace, while still distributing the book to the typical retailers. Draft2Digital does claim to be working on allowing authors to choose CreateSpace as one of its distribution options, which is alarming; by its own FAQ admission, “e-books and print books are fundamentally different media,” yet the site also states that a Word document can be formatted as an ePub within minutes, and that same uploaded file can be formatted for CreateSpace exactly the same way. However, Draft2Digital admits that the paperback edition of a one-click upload is “a one-size-fits-all format for CreateSpace” will not contain things like headers or footers, or the options to select the page size. As for the sticky ePub-vs-MOBI issue of uploading an ebook to both Barnes and Noble and Amazon, Draft2Digital states that it allows authors to upload a Word document without having to use that pesky “style guide” found on Smashwords and that their people will convert it to an ePub within minutes, regardless of the formatting used in the Word document. According to Draft2Digital, “Our conversion process creates a high-quality epub for us to distribute to the sales channels you choose. But that’s only the beginning of D2D’s service. Once you’ve uploaded your document, you’ll be able to download it as a .mobi file for Kindle reading.” That doesn’t entirely explain how the ebook is distributed and sold to Kindle customers, but the site states that Amazon is one of the vendors authors can select. Without having been able to locate specific titles created and distributed by Draft2Digital for comparison purposes, the major concern with the model is how “easy” they claim this process to be. eBook formatting is by no means an easy process, at least not if the author wants a professional-quality, non-frustrating-to-read edition. Formatting a Word document for professional-quality print-on-demand is equally time consuming and requires some know-how. And openly stating the authors no longer need to stick to the technical conventions of Smashwords’ style guide creates dangerous ground for ebook quality. Overall, competition is generally a good thing because it causes all of the companies involved to up their games and ensure that they are providing the best possible service to their customers. But that only works in everyone’s favor if the end result is actually a superior product and experience.
A Little Competition for Smashwords? is a post from: E-Reader News |
