| Flipboard has updated their iOS app today and it helps you share compelling stories with your friends. When you are reading a story you can click with the share with friends function and that post is automatically shown on their Flipboards. They will also get a link to the content via email. Sharing stories with your friends is a fairly interesting feature. I dig the fact that people who read articles on a daily basis can share stories among kindred spirits. Keep in mind, this update is only available on the iPhone or iPad version of Flipboard. Flipboard iOS Update sends Stories to your Friends is a post from: E-Reader News |
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Flipboard iOS Update sends Stories to your Friends
Amazon Indie Authors Now Get Paid in Full Every Month with No Minimum
| Amazon has changed the terms of their author payout system for Kindle Direct Publishing. Indie authors that self-publish eBooks and receive their royalty payments electronically will now be paid in full every month for all their sales without any minimum thresholds for payout. This gives authors greater access to their earnings and a more reliable payment schedule, 60 days after the month royalties are earned. This is exciting news for authors who want access to their funds as quick as possible. Many legacy publishers only give authors money once or twice per year. Learn more here about royalty payment thresholds and available currencies. Amazon Indie Authors Now Get Paid in Full Every Month with No Minimum is a post from: E-Reader News |
Apple iBooks Now Allows for eBook Gifting
| Apple has just released a new feature for the iOS and MAC version of iBooks that allows customers to gift an eBook to a friend or loved one. This new service only works domestically, so if you live in Canada and want to gift someone also in Canada, you are good to go. Gifting an eBook does not work internationally. Gifting in the iBookstore works identically to Apple’s iTunes and App Store counterparts: Just choose the book you’d like to gift, then tap either the dropdown arrow next to the price (on a Mac) or the Share button (on an iOS device). On a Mac, select “Gift This Book”; on iOS, choose “Gift”–then add the recipient’s email, the sender’s name, a brief message, and the date you want it sent (now, or later). One note: On iOS, it looks like you have to tap the “Today” field under “Send Gift” in order to change to a different date. Apple iBooks Now Allows for eBook Gifting is a post from: E-Reader News |
Kindle Worlds Releases Work by Howey Based on Slaughterhouse Five
| When Amazon Publishing announced the creation of its fan fiction publishing site Kindle Worlds, one of its first and most vocal supporters was bestselling author Hugh Howey. The author of the Silo Saga has been an active proponent of the idea that fan fiction–when readers take authors’ story lines or characters and craft their own unique tales with those elements–is both a testament to how powerfully an author’s work reaches his fans, as well as a viable agreement that can stand to benefit both the writer fan and the original author. Now, Kindle Worlds has announced that Howey’s own work of fan fiction, Peace in Amber, will be released on January 14, 2014. His work, which is based on the world of Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonegut, is a re-envisioning of Howey’s memories of the events of September 11, 2001. “Slaughterhouse-Five moved me as few works of fiction ever have," says Hugh Howey. "It was the autobiographical nature of the work, this exploration of Dresden’s bombing through the eyes of a survivor. I don’t think I would have found the courage to write about my 9/11 experience without Vonnegut’s work as an example.” In the licensed fan fiction model established by Kindle Worlds, rights holders for licensed books, movies, or television shows allow their content to be used for the inspiration for works that can later be published on the platform for royalties. Howey has supported authors who have already published works based on his Wool, Shift, and Dust titles; Howey’s graphic novel of the first book in his Silo Saga titles will be released in February.
Kindle Worlds Releases Work by Howey Based on Slaughterhouse Five is a post from: E-Reader News |
“Recommend” feature comes to schools
|
Well now you can! This month OverDrive added the "Recommend" feature to the school digital library website allowing students to see additional school-appropriate content from the OverDrive catalog and recommend it for your collection. And don't worry, you won't be barraged by emails from students recommending title after title in their favorite series. The whole process is streamlined through OverDrive Marketplace where you can easily chart the Recommendations report by format, subject, or title. Even better, you can use the RTL (Recommend to Library) Manager to automatically build a cart of student-recommend titles for your review and purchase. We recommend that you invite your students to help shape your school's digital collection. Let them know they have a voice and that you want to hear it! Invite them to make recommendations, and reward their engagement by fulfilling their requests. For more, visit the Learning Center and watch the "Recommend Feature" training module, and download the PDF version of the presentation, or click on the tout on your school digital library website.  Anders Brooks is a Training Specialist on the Knowledge Services Team at OverDrive.  |
“Recommend” feature comes to schools
|
Well now you can! This month OverDrive added the "Recommend" feature to the school digital library website allowing students to see additional school-appropriate content from the OverDrive catalog and recommend it for your collection.
And don't worry, you won't be barraged by emails from students recommending title after title in their favorite series. The whole process is streamlined through OverDrive Marketplace where you can easily chart the Recommendations report by format, subject, or title. Even better, you can use the RTL (Recommend to Library) Manager to automatically build a cart of student-recommend titles for your review and purchase.
We recommend that you invite your students to help shape your school's digital collection. Let them know they have a voice and that you want to hear it! Invite them to make recommendations, and reward their engagement by fulfilling their requests.
For more, visit the Learning Center and watch the "Recommend Feature" training module, and download the PDF version of the presentation, or click on the tout on your school digital library website.
Anders Brooks is a Training Specialist on the Knowledge Services Team at OverDrive.
 |
170 years of A Christmas Carol
|
“Marley was dead, to begin with.” And so begins the Charles Dickens Classic, “A Christmas Carol.” Today is the 170th anniversary of the novella that has been read endlessly in front of fire places and with warm cups of hot chocolate every year as we near Christmas Day. The story of bitter old Ebenezer Scrooge, first published by Chapman & Hall in 1843, instills in readers the belief that the spirit of giving can change the lives not only of those who receive, but of the giver as well. Countless versions of this holiday classic have been created throughout the years. It's been on stage, on television and repeatedly on the big screen as well. A favorite version of Team OverDrive features Michael Cane and everyone's favorite amphibian. Perhaps you've heard of it…
I, much like many others, read this story every year when the snow starts to fall and I need a small reminder about what the holiday season is all about. Scrooge, The Cratchit's, Mr. Fezziwig and all the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future teach us that the holidays are best spent surrounded by family and friends as well as giving to those less fortunate. Charles Dickens was not the first author to celebrate the holiday season in literature but he may just be the most cherished. The next few weeks will surely be hectic as the holidays come and the New Year arrives, but what I am looking forward to the most are those few hours when I'll sit down by our fire, cocoa in tow, and open up this timeless tale on my iPad to usher in another Christmas Day. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is available in Marketplace in both eBook and Audiobook versions.
Adam Sockel is a Marketing Communications Specialist with OverDrive.
 |
Basic Kindle on Sale for $49 Today Only
| Amazon is continuing to offer discounts on Kindles as Christmas draws near. Today only Amazon has marked their entry-level Kindle down to $49. That’s $20 less than what it normally sells for, and is the lowest it has gone this holiday shopping season, matching Best Buy’s Black Friday price. The $20 discount only applies to […] |
Raspberry Pi karaoke machine
| True story: when we were in Tokyo for the Big Tokyo Raspberry Jam back in May, surrounded by engineers from NEC dressed as techno-maids and men wearing CD-ROM drives as hats, we suggested an evening of private karaoke. Everybody blenched with horror at the idea and suggested we just went out for beers instead. So we did. And it was great.  I know you’ve seen this picture before, but it’s my favourite picture of 2013, so I’m using it again. That was a *brilliant* evening. But I’ve got to admit: much as I love Japanese craft beer and nibbling at unidentified things on sticks, I was still dying to go out and do some singing. So, this Christmas, what could be better for breaking the ice with the in-laws under the tree than a rousing family chorus of Bohemian Rhapsody? This is a Raspberry Pi-powered karaoke machine from Dextrus at Pi-Fun. You’ll need a USB microphone and a wireless dongle, and a powered hub is a good idea if you don’t want to run out of USB slots for mouse and keyboard (but you can get around this by using SSH – which is what Dextrus is doing in the video, using a tablet as his display). The machine uses a stripped-down version of YouTube (Whitey, running under OMXPlayer) to find a songs database. You’ve got time to find a microphone and hack this together before Christmas: there are detailed installation instructions at Pi-Fun. Thanks Dextrus – and everybody else, let us know if you use or adapt Dextrus’s solution for your parties this season. |
Amazon’s List of Bestselling Titles of 2013
| While retailers around the world–both in the book industry and out of it–tend to carefully guard their actual sales numbers, bestseller lists are a different idea altogether. Amazon has released the lists of books by category and by overall sales rank that have sold the most so far this year. While most of the top twenty titles came as no surprise, there were some newcomers this year, as well as a handful of self-published authors who ousted some of the most well-known names in publishing to take high positions. There were some interesting facts about the list, many pertaining to the number three. This is Dan Brown’s third year to hold the number one spot, James Patterson holds three of the top twenty positions for three different books, and it is author John Grisham’s third consecutive year to appear in the top twenty. The top twenty adult titles were: 1.Inferno by Dan Brown Once the list is split up by genre or reading age, the names and titles shift somewhat but still continue the phenomenon of three. Self-published author Abbi Glines and Morgan Rice each have three books in the top twenty for Kids & Teens, but even stranger, the same three authors–Rick Riordan, Veronica Roth, and Jeff Kinney–held the top three spots on last year’s list for their titles published in 2012. For a complete list of the top selling books on Amazon this year, click HERE.
Amazon’s List of Bestselling Titles of 2013 is a post from: E-Reader News |
Is the Publishing Industry Wasting Its Time on Tablets?
 Photo courtesy of todayszaman.com One of the anticipated major trends of 2013, at least according to the companies showcasing their platforms at last January’s Digital Book World event, was supposed to be online retail stores branded specifically to publishers and authors, essentially letting publishers cut out the retailer altogether when it can to ebooks, audiobooks, and other downloadable content. The move was targeted specifically to bring customers to the publishers’ websites to make their purchases, instead of relying on retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble, costing the rights’ holders a percentage of their sales. But new data on how tablet owners actually consume content on their tablets may help publishers realize this isn’t the right venture to channel their resources into. StatCounter has released information showing that tablet owners make up for less than five percent of total internet usage globally, falling behind even smartphones for internet activity. Desktop computers still hold the top position, and by an unbelievably wide margin. While that information had little impact on reading activity on tablets, what it does demonstrate is that reading consumers may be reading within their e-reader apps, but they’re simply not browsing the internet long enough to discover publisher-branded apps. They appear to be hopping over to their favorite book retailers’ websites, making their purchases, and having them sent directly to their devices or tablet apps. This should tell publishers that there might be some potential in developing their own e-reading apps, especially if they were able to offer incentives for in-app purchasing, but by and large, that would require readers to not only know the title and possibly author of the book they want to purchase, but even to know the publisher in order to search in the correct app. Unless publishers come together to create their own universally accessible ebookstore app, consumers most likely will not download and use different apps for each publisher.
Is the Publishing Industry Wasting Its Time on Tablets? is a post from: E-Reader News |
Latest Nielsen Survey Reveals Growing Consumer Reliance on Mobile Apps
| With usage of mobile connected devices such a smartphones and tablet devices growing at a feverish pace, it is but only natural for mobile apps to witness a faster rate of adoption than their web counterparts. The latest Nielsen finding corroborates the above with some hard facts showing global brands loosing grip with their web based services, only to be compensated more than enough with their mobile versions. The findings also present an interesting scenario. For instance, Facebook, which has emerged as the most used smartphone app of 2013, witnessed a growth of 27 percent and has been listed as the number 2 web brand in the US with the number of unique visitors dropping by 16 percent. Similarly, while Google Search has been listed as the second most used smartphone app with its average unique visitors growing by 37 percent, Google tops the list of the best US web brands for 2013 even though its average unique visitors has shown a decline of 6 percent. However, Google dominates the compilation of the top 10 apps with five of its services–Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, Google Maps, and Gmail–making it to the list. Instagram and Apple Maps has emerged as the fastest growing apps, witnessing their average unique visitors grow by 66 and 64 percent respectively. Twitter makes up the 10th slot with a 36 percent increase in its visitors. The above data has been compiled based on smartphone usage trend from January to October 2013. More details can be found on the Neilsen page.
Latest Nielsen Survey Reveals Growing Consumer Reliance on Mobile Apps is a post from: E-Reader News |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)