| The Publishing industry has firmly embraced making the vast majority of their titles in the United States. The big 5 have either initiated a major pilot project or have committed themselves to a broad rollout. With all of the news primarily focused on the US, what does the landscape look like for the rest of the world? A new research report by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions seeks to address some of these queries. Australia and New Zealand Canada In Quebec, 71 public libraries belong to BIBLIOPRESTO.CA. Library users downloaded 661,598 eBooks in 2012/13 and it is projected that downloads will double in the next 12 months. Individual library data is indicative of strong growth in eBook availability and use Montreal Public Library downloads grew from 9,559 in 2012 to 31,708 in 2013 (+232%) Quebec City Public Library downloads grew from 27,417 in 2012 to 69,951 in 2013 (+155%). Europe As is the case with the publishing sector, libraries in the European Union have been slower to adopt eBooks, especially in non-English speaking countries. eBook availability in EU libraries varies significantly from country to country depending upon factors such as the funding available for library purchasing, indigenous publishing practice, library governance structure and preferred licensing regimes. Africa The International Publishers Association estimates that 90% of overall publishing revenue in Africa is derived from education markets. It is not a surprise that the availability of eBooks from African libraries is limited largely to university collections with an emphasis on streamed scholarly publishing content originating outside the continent. The 2013 South African Book Fair had as its focus "The future of eBooks: the impact of the digital eBook phenomenon" and the comments from publishing executives solely dealt with the education market and the potential for acceptance of digital textbooks. Asia eBook data reported from Asian countries indicates wide variations in library availability and use. Apabi Chinese eBooks are published in Mainland China and its content emphasises more scholarly rather than leisure reading content. Hong Kong public libraries report 186,497 eBook titles in their collections, 72,500 which are Apabi eBooks. The balance is made up of streamed bundle services including ebrary Academic Complete and EBSCOhost. The relatively low use of eBook collections (annual use of 1.1 per title) is attributed by library staff to the lack of leisure reading titles available and the confusing access requirements for the different databases. A large majority of Japanese public libraries do not provide eBooks at this time. Korean public libraries report over 3 million eBook titles available and annual expenditure of 3.6 million US dollars (2012). United States According to Library Journal's "2013 Report on E-Books in Public Libraries", where 89% of US public libraries offer eBooks, collection size and circulation have increased: 45% increase in median number of e-books between 2012 (5,080) and 2013 (7,380) 145% circulation increase from 2011 to 2012 (with anticipated 2013 increase of +38.9%) These numbers reflect all points of access, including those directly licensed or purchased by an individual library and those available through a consortium. 91% of library eBooks are accessed one user at a time comprising: 70% downloaded copies, 21% web based access copies 9% are unlimited, simultaneous access.Public demand for eBooks in the US public libraries has held steady at 6:1 holds to copy eBook ratio (unchanged from 2011 and 2013). The State of eBook Library Lending is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Friday, August 1, 2014
The State of eBook Library Lending
Udon Entertainment Announces New Macross Art Books
| Udon Entertainment has finally been able to reach out to readers outside of North American with a distribution deal with Comixology. They signed it back in early 2013 and the Canadian manga company has garnered tremendous success with their Street Fighter, Makeshift Miracle and Dark Stalkers comics. At the San Diego Comic con Harmony Gold and Udon have both announced a new licensing deal for a series of Art Books. Robotech is one of the most successful mecha franchises of all time. The 85 episode series first launched in 1985 and seamlessly crossed over into North America from Japan. The premise of the series involves a fallen battlecruiser landing on earth and sparks major scientific advances. With this technology, Earth developed robotic technologies, such as transformable mecha, to fight three successive extraterrestrial invasions against the likes of the Zentradi and Invid. The franchise has been going strong with different movies, OVA, manga, comics and television series. The more notable ones are Macross Frontier, Macross 7, Macross Plus, Macross Zero, The Shadow Chronicles. Overarching themes normally involve love, music and mecha based combat. The new licensing deal will see a number of new art books developed. They will have concept art, model sheets, early developmental designs and sketches covering Robotech and the original Japanese Macross, Southern Cross and Mospeada series. Udon will also be the publisher for the Kickstarter-exclusive Art of Robotech Academy book. Although an exact page count is not finalized, the target is for 96 pages and will feature the character and mecha designs for Robotech Academy. Udon does have past experience working on the Robotech franchise which likely helped them secure the exclusive contract for the art books. They helped produce the five issue comic series Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles. Most people in art book circles hold Udon in very high regard, so likely they will do very good work with the IP. Right now details are sparse on whether or not these will be books exclusively in print and sold via Amazon or will include digital editions sold on Comixology. Most of their prior art books were in paperback format exclusively, so it is unlikely that they will digitize it. Harmony Gold and Udon both would not comment for this story, but did say more news would surface towards the end of the year. Tommy Yune, Creative Director, Harmony Gold told Good e-Reader ” We've uncovered in our archives the original production model sheets for the Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospaeda, television series'. We have a ton of model sheets, and even early developmental designs that have never been seen or published anywhere. We're going to be working with UDON to collect this all, to have one of the most unique artwork collections ever made from Robotech. I'm extremely grateful for the energy that UDON has put into Robotech.” Meanwhile Erik Ko, Chief of Operations, UDON Entertainment told us ” I grew up watching Robotech, it was a big part of my childhood. We're thrilled to be involved in this project. In fact, since the founding of UDON we've been involved with Robotech through various comics and design projects. We're honoured and very thankful to have been chosen to work on this new art book project.”
Udon Entertainment Announces New Macross Art Books is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Sony Confirms There Won’t be a PRS-T4 or any New Sony Readers
| After Sony decided to close down their ebook stores in North America, Europe and Australia, the writing was on the wall that the Sony Reader line of ebook readers would be coming to an end as well. Personally I always figured that was a no-brainer—of course Sony isn’t going to spend time developing a new […] |
Mathematica 10 – now available for your Pi!
| Liz: If you use Raspbian, you’ll have noticed that Mathematica and the Wolfram Language come bundled for free with your Raspberry Pi. (A little boast here: we were only the second computer ever on which Mathematica has been included for free use as standard. The first? Steve Jobs's NeXT, back in 1988.) Earlier in July, Wolfram Research announced a big update to Mathematica, with the introduction of Mathematica 10. Here’s a guest post announcement from Arnoud Buzing at Wolfram about what the new Mathematica will offer those of you who use it on your Raspberry Pi. Over to you, Arnoud! In July, we released Mathematica 10, a major update to Wolfram’s flagship desktop product. It contains over 700 new functions, and improvements to just about every part of the system. Today I am happy to announce an update for Mathematica and the Wolfram Language for the Raspberry Pi, which bring many of those features to the Raspberry Pi. To get this new version of the Wolfram Language, simply run this command in a terminal on your Raspberry Pi:
This new version will also come pre-installed in the next release of NOOBS, the easy set-up system for the Raspberry Pi. If you have never used the Wolfram Language on the Raspberry Pi, then you should try our new fast introduction for programmers, which is a quick and easy way to learn to program in this language. This introduction covers everything from using the interactive user interface, basic evaluations and expressions, to more advanced topics such as natural language processing and cloud computation. You'll also find a great introduction to the Wolfram Language in the Raspberry Pi Learning Resources. This release of the Wolfram Language also includes integration with the newly released Wolfram Cloud. This technology allows you to do sophisticated computations on a remote server, using all of the knowledge from Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Knowledgebase. It lets you define custom computations and deploy them as a “instant API” on the cloud. The Wolfram Cloud is available with a free starter account, and has additional non-free accounts which enable additional functionality. Check the Wolfram Community in the next couple of weeks for new examples which show you how to use the Wolfram Language with your Raspberry Pi. |
Amazon Reveals Interesting Kindle eBook Sales Statistics
| Amazon and Hachette have been having an ongoing dispute for several months over terms of a new contract. Negotiations haven’t gone well, and both companies have resorted to calling each other out publicly—to the point where the whole thing has turned into a huge spectacle. Amazon has stopped taking pre-orders for books published by Hachette, […] |
Kindle for iOS Software Updated to 4.4
| Earlier in the week Amazon issued a software update for their iPad and iPhone Kindle reading apps. The update adds some new features, and takes the software version up to 4.4. Amazon took several customer-requested features and made them a reality with this new update to improve syncing and navigation, along with the usual performance […] |
Weekly eHighlights: Best of the backlist
 We all naturally get excited by the brand new hot titles published every week, but I thought we might take a look at some of the newly available backlist titles that it's easy to overlook. Since these are all very well known books, we'll skip the annotations this time, but you'll be surprised at some of the GREAT content just recently made available digitally. Click to View the Marketplace cart of Best of the Backlist ADULT FICTION Click to View the Marketplace cart of Best of the Backlist ADULT NONFICTION Click to View the Marketplace cart of Best of the Backlist ADULT NONFICTION for KIDS & TEENS
Adult Fiction Backlist Selections Gwen Bristow – Calico Palace (Open Road) Rita Mae Brown – Rubyfruit Jungle (Random House) Michael Chabon – The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Open Road) Pat Conroy – The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, and The Prince of Tides (Open Road) Dorothy Gilman – A Nun in the Closet (Random House) Arthur Hailey – Wheels (Open Road) Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises (Simon & Schuster) John Jakes – North and South trilogy (Open Road) Stephen King – Pet Sematary (Simon & Schuster) Judith Rossner – Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Simon & Schuster) Wilbur Smith – The Seventh Scroll (Macmillan)
Adult Nonfiction Backlist Selections Thomas Bulfinch – Bulfinch's Mythology (Penguin) Roger Angell – The Summer Game (Open Road) Mark Bowden – Black Hawk Down (Grove/Atlantic) Dee Brown – Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Open Road) Ron Chernow – The House of Morgan (Grove/Atlantic) George Crile – Charlie Wilson's War (Grove/Atlantic) P. J. O'Rourke – Parliament of Whores (Grove/Atlantic) J. B. West – Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies (Open Road) Tobias Wolff – This Boy's Life (Grove/Atlantic)
Kids & Teens Backlist Selections David A. Adler – Young Cam Jansen and the Goldfish Mystery (Penguin) Richard Atwater – Mr. Popper's Penguins (Open Road) Roald Dahl – Dirty Beasts (Penguin) Paula Danziger – Amber Brown Goes Fourth (Penguin) Lois Duncan – The Twisted Window (Open Road) Betty Green – Summer of My German Soldier (Open Road) and Morning Is a Long Time Coming Gary Paulsen – Family Ties (Random House) Patricia Polacco – Mrs. Katz and Tush (Random House) Mildred D. Taylor – The Road to Memphis (Penguin) Jeanette Winter – Follow the Drinking Gourd (Random House) Jane Yolen – The Wizard of Washington Square(Open Road)
Click to View the Marketplace cart of Best of the Backlist ADULT FICTION Click to View the Marketplace cart of Best of the Backlist ADULT NONFICTION Click to View the Marketplace cart of Best of the Backlist ADULT NONFICTION for KIDS & TEENS *Geographical rights may vary by title.
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