| Every few weeks Good e-Reader Research conducts statistical analysis of the digital publishing industry. Over the course of the last three weeks we wanted to find out how readers discovered their next great read. Over 388 people responded and we are pleased to present our findings. When you think of book discovery in the past, it normally involved going to your local bookstore and seeing what they were promoting, in other cases you may consult a newspaper such as the New York Times. With the advent of digital books, there are many options that simply weren’t available in the past. GoodReads is a book discovery website and has a vibrant social community. It captured the crown in our report, garnering 14.63% of the vote. One of the advantages of this service is that it connects up with your Facebook account and you can see what books your friends are reading. It also serves as an avenue to meet new friends with the same taste in books as you and thousands of big name authors also share their reading lists. In second place with 13.41% of the overall voting population are book blogs. This could be anything from a small one man operation to a large scale site with many different reporters. I think blogs are important because most sites are written by one person and you can trust in reading their reviews over the long haul. People are fairly loyal once they find a few sites they really like and put heavy stock in their opinions about a great new title. Third place capturing 11.59% of the overall vote, was friends. Often books will inevitably come up in conversation and its far easier to loan out physical titles. You trust your friends and are unlikely to discount their opinion if they are raving about a new book they just finished. I was very surprised that bestseller lists, newsletters, the library and podcasts did not resonate with readers as much as I thought they should. Instead, people tend to make buying decisions based on what Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Kobo are hyping in their online bookstores. Where do You Hear about New e-Books? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Where do You Hear about New e-Books?
Pre-Register for Final Fantasy: Record Keeper
| The Final Fantasy games have been entrancing game audiences since 1987. With over thirteen games to it’s name, four films, and even a television series to it’s name, the Japanese gaming series has become recognizable among gaming and anime fans alike. Recently, a free-to-play smartphone game was released in Japan, called Final Fantasy: Record Keeper. A social game, Record Keeper allows players to re-enact memorable battles from past games. The game is already wildly popular in Japan, with over five million downloads. And Square Enix has announced the game for a North American release this spring. While the game isn’t available for download just yet, you can pre-register for free on the official website. Not only will you be notified when the game is released, but signing up boosts the points meter, unlocking bonuses, including Tidus from Final Fantasy X and an 8-Bit Creator that allows some players to see themselves in 8-bit. Below, see the teaser for the 8-Bit Creator, and don’t forget to pre-register here to be notified when the app becomes available on the App Store and Google Play. Pre-Register for Final Fantasy: Record Keeper is a post from: Good e-Reader |
George R.R. Martin Donates First Edition Hobbit to Texas A&M
| The Texas A&M Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection is one of the most extensive and best regarded libraries of its type in the world. The library currently has five million books available and is George R.R Martins institution of choice for all of his titles since 1993. For the first time ever George donated a book not written by him to the library, a first edition copy of the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. The first edition of the Hobbit is an expensive book with the average title fetching £60,000 at auction. There was only 1,500 original copies were ever made and collectors go wild when one becomes available. When George donated the book on Febuary 29th he made it a point to say that the highbrow stuff shouldn’t be the only thing preserved “All of it should be preserved. Not just the stuff that we deem high culture, but popular culture and ordinary culture and ephemera and juvenilia, preserve all of it because we don't know what we'll want 50 years from now, what's going to be important 100 years from now, or whether indeed 1,000 years from now, Stan Lee will stand next to Shakespeare. George R.R. Martin Donates First Edition Hobbit to Texas A&M is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Clean Reader Removes the Profanity from e-Books
| Contemporary e-books are normally full of profanity and some of the classics use verbiage that upset the delicate sensibilities of readers. In order to solve this issue, a new app has been developed called Clean Reader. Clean Reader has settings that users can employ to customize how clean they want their books to appear.To preserve the context of the book, an alternative word with the same general meaning is available for each instance where a word is blocked from being displayed. In order for users to read a book with Clean Reader it must be purchased through the in-app bookstore. With more than 1 million titles, including all the latest books from top authors and publishers, the Clean Reader bookstore offers the same books as any other online retailer and with comparable pricing. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the app may not be to everyone's taste. As pointed out by Ron Charles of the Washington Post, there was an uproar after a revised edition of "Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain was published in 2011. The edition removed instances of the n-word from the text, but Salon writer Elon James White wrote at the time, "The book, which deals directly with racism, is not better served by erasing the racial slur," while The Washington Post's Alexandra Petri wrote, "The word is terrible. But it's a linchpin of this book." If you have young children and don’t want to expose them to young adult fiction with swear words or just want to check this app out, you can download it for Android or iOS. Clean Reader Removes the Profanity from e-Books is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Good e-Reader Radio Show – March 6 2015
| Welcome back to a full sized edition of the Good e-Reader Radio Show! Today Michael Kozlowski is flying solo and giving you a sense on the latest happenings in the e-reader industry. On the show today Michael talks all the latest Kobo news and some of their devices that have recently been discontinued. Amazon is also on the news, with their new venture into eCommerce with an arch-rival and Kindle Japan now offering free previews on manga and comics. Whats happening at Good e-Reader these days? Michael launches into a pure state of exuberance about the new App Store for e-Ink, new developers system for paid apps and why Amazon/Google is bad for your privacy. Have you noticed lately that Good e-Reader has the odd story on anime and digital manga? This is by design, Michael wraps up the show talking about falling in love with anime at an early age, tape trading, BBS days and eyelashes freezing in the cold. Good e-Reader Radio Show – March 6 2015 is a post from: Good e-Reader |
