| The French parliament has passed a law that makes it illegal for online stores to deliver books for free while also offering a 5 percent discount on the price of the book. The move is being seen as a means of protecting the interests of independent booksellers as much as it is to limit Amazon's monopoly in the segment. As Christian Kert, the conservative MP who tabled the bill puts it, the bill is aimed at ensuring "that the price of a book sold online is higher than one sold by an independent bookshop.” The government stated they look forward to “restricting predatory behaviour” with the new bill. This marks the first amendment to the Lang law that has been in place since 1981 and had set fixed prices for books. Retailers, both online and real, will now have the maximum leveraging margin of 5 percent but can't include free shipping on top of that, something that Amazon has offered. What remains to be seen is how Amazon, which controls more than 70 percent of the market, is affected by the ruling. In any case, the world's largest online retailer has already been at the receiving end of French tax system, who accuses Amazon of evading most taxes by basing its operations in France in neighboring Luxembourg. Online bookstores now form the third biggest trading segment in France, though it is left to the independent booksellers to maintain their own individual web presence. The brick and mortar bookstores may all owe their allegiance to a single body, the French Booksellers Association or SLF, but there is no unified website for all the booksellers, the reason being that the last time they attempted such a venture, it resulted in a huge financial loss. It’s left to the individual booksellers to maintain a web presence of their own. "All bookshops are losing money at present, even if they have an internet outlet, but at the same time they cannot afford not to be represented online,” says Guillaume Husson. Meanwhile, the new ruling also runs the risk of attracting the ire of other European nations who accuse France of breaching the European Union's common market policies and practices by enforcing a fixed price structure for books.
New French Law Bars Online Booksellers to Offer Discounts With Free Shipping is a post from: E-Reader News |
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
New French Law Bars Online Booksellers to Offer Discounts With Free Shipping
Email of the month: worshipping Pis in Kathmandu
| I just received an email from Nepal. Sakar is a member of Karkhana, a Kathmandu makerspace, and their Raspberry Pis have just experienced a day quite unlike that of any other Raspberry Pis in the world. It’s important to remember before you read Sakar’s mail that the religious and cultural experience in Kathmandu can be extraordinarily involved, and is much more central to daily life than it is in, say, Cambridge. I’m not sure we in Cambridge get the best end of the deal here. Sakar says: Hi Liz, This might tickle your fancy. I’m writing from Karkhana, a makerspace in Kathmandu. We are just about getting done with our biggest festival, Dasai, which celebrates the story of one of the two big Hindu epics, Ramayana. It’s a 10 day festival that pretty much brings the country to a complete halt as attention shifts to home, family, playing cards and chowing down on goat. On the 9th day of festival is a special puja called the “Astra” puja, i.e a worship of implements. The army worships their guns and helicopters. The taxi drivers worship their engines. And we got a Brahmin priest to conduct the ceremony for our 3d printer, our tables saws, our soldering irons, and, of course, our Raspberry Pi’s. Some photos are attached. Enjoy! |
Singapore Digitizing 50 Years of Tamil Literature
| Singapore has initiated the Tamil Digital Heritage Project which aims to digitize all works of local Tamil authors. The project will cover all the literary works from 1965 till 2015 and is being targeted for completion before the nation gets to celebrate its 50th Independence Day on August 4. The project will involve the active participation of the National Library Board, National Heritage Board, National Art Council, National Book Development Council of Singapore along with of course the Tamil authors organizations. Speaking of the project, S Iswaran, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office said, "The main aspect of this project is that it brings Tamil literature that’s been conceived and developed in Singapore; it’s digitising it and therefore bringing it to a new platform, to the broader community in Singapore and around the world.” The National Library Board plays hosts to more than 500 titles including those of noted Tamil authors from the regions such as K T M Iqbal, M Elangkannan and Singai Mukilan. Arun Mahizhnan, chief coordinator of the Tamil Digital Heritage Group rued the lack of accessibility to Tamil literary works even they have been published in the island nation since 1800. He applauded the recent initiative citing the obvious benefit of opening up Tamil literature to the new generation anywhere in the world. Worth mentioning here, the National Library Board is currently engaged in another digitization project in collaboration with the British Library to make digital copies of rare Malay manuscripts.
Singapore Digitizing 50 Years of Tamil Literature is a post from: E-Reader News |
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Why Kobo, Amazon and Barnes and Noble Need Dedicated Self-Publishing Sections
| Many of the leading digital book stores all offer self-publishing programs. Kindle Direct Publishing, Nook Press and Kobo Writing Life all are viable platforms for indie authors to submit and sell their eBooks on a worldwide scale. Even Apple has got into the game by pulling curated content directly from Smashwords. All of these stores have a single thing in common, they list self-published titles side by side with traditionally published books. This is not a viable long-term strategy and these stores need to revise their approach. A recent firestorm has erupted due to hundreds of adult eBooks with topics ranging from threesomes to incest are being listed in the same category as kids books. This has resulted in UK bookstore WH Smith shuttering their entire online bookstore. Kobo is has deleting close to a thousand titles on their platform and giving a scolding to the vanity presses who are responsible. Amazon and Barnes and Noble are addressing this issue in their own way, but are not publicly divulging anything. Why hasn’t the industry embraced a dedicated self-publishing section and instead are listing the books right beside traditional published content? We have asked this very question to all of these companies at Book Expo America, Future Book and the Frankfurt Book Fair. Most have said their is no distinction between a self-published title and one done with a major publisher. A self-published section by its very nature might have a negative condentation. The bookstores basically have a vested interest in selling indie titles intermixed with everything else, because they make their commissions either way. I think its very important for all major bookstores to have an indie section because small publishers and indie authors are abusing the system. I have seen many duplicate content with different titles and cover art listed in different categories in order to be visible. You might have an hardcore erotic book listed in Romance, Paranormal, Mystery and Thriller. Indies know that the more categories you are in, the more likely you will sell more titles. In other cases indie authors are stuffing their description and meta data with specific keywords to try and get their book to show up amidst popular searches. You even now have authors changing their pen name and book title to be very similar to popular authors. E.B James is one example of an author who capitalized on the whole 50 Shades of Grey gravy-train. Major Publishers such as Penguin and S&S have seen their digital revenue increase to 24% within the last year. eBooks are doing nothing but generating more money and self-publishing is on the rise. With more titles being added every day by anyone with a word-processor the old way of listing the titles in the bookstore are not cutting it anymore. The firestorm about Kobo, WHSmith and adult content is nothing new, these books have been there for a longtime. If digital bookstores continue to maintain the status quo this can be an even bigger problem within a few years. eBook discovery will suffer and parents who buy innocently sounding books like “Daddy’s Playtime” might scar their kids for life. Why Kobo, Amazon and Barnes and Noble Need Dedicated Self-Publishing Sections is a post from: E-Reader News |
Publishers Begin to Abandon Apple Newsstand
| Publishing companies are beginning to abandon Apple Newsstand as a singular vehicle to promote their digital magazines. This is primarily due to the revised nature of the app itself with the advent of iOS 7. Companies such as Maggio noticed the magazines are being squirreled away within the newsstand and forgotten about by the majority of subscribers. Newsstand is a section of the App Store intended for periodicals. You need to publish at least quarterly to qualify. Newsstand apps are "real" apps just like their non-Newsstand counterparts. The difference is that the publisher has decided to list them within the Newsstand section of the store. There are a few problems with the existing newsstand structure that is alienating publishers. All Apps and Games are represented by an icon when you are browsing the app store. Digital magazines listed on the newsstand don’t have an icon and instead have smaller version of the cover art. This simply does not work on mobile phones because it is too small to accurately decipher the small print. One annoying bug is that you can release your magazine as an app outside of the newsstand, but if you do it on the newsstand first you can’t. In 2012, John Gruber said that Newsstand is a place where apps go to be forgotten. Today the Newsstand app is much worse. The folder-like design in iOS 5 and iOS 6 has been replaced with an opaque app icon. The end result is so horrible that it's hard to avoid thinking it was done maliciously: if someone was tasked with hiding away a set of unwanted apps, they would be likely to come back with a design that was something very much like the iOS 7 Newsstand. Some companies are doing very well on the Newsstand but the future of publishing is done via the web and not apps. It simply takes too much time and money to use Adobe Creative Suite or buy into proprietary software to make a magazine. Considering Newsstand, Google, Zinio, Nextissue, PressReader all offer magazines, publishers are shooting themselves in the foot by customizing apps for all of these platforms. It is scalable in the long-run to invest in a HTML5 infrastructure that can be accessed on phones and tablets. You only have to update one thing, instead of a bunch of little things, which saves time and energy. Publishers Begin to Abandon Apple Newsstand is a post from: E-Reader News |
Penguin: Hidden Gems
| On September 25th we proudly announced the addition of more than 17,000 Penguin eBooks to our catalog purchasable by U.S. libraries and colleges. This exciting supplement brought the works of blockbuster authors such as Stephen King, Nora Roberts, Tom Clancy, Ken Follett, Maeve Binchy and many more to OverDrive's collection of over one million digital titles.
With so many great titles to sort through, it can be difficult to discover and select the titles your readers want most. To help with your selections, we will be offering up some "Hidden Gem" collections over the next few weeks to help you take advantage of all that our newly-available Penguin catalog has to offer. To kick off our "Hidden Gem" collections, we have some recommendations for absolutely-must-have titles that your digital collection cannot be without:
John Green – The Fault in Our Stars
Jack Kerouac – On the Road
Michael Pollan – The Omnivore's Dilemma
Mario Puzo – The Godfather
Khaled Hosseini – The Kite Runner
Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged
John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, and others
Jim Trelease – The Read-Aloud Handbook
Tracy Chevalier – Girl with a Pearl Earring
Kim Edwards – The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Sue Monk Kidd – The Secret Life of Bees
As a reminder, these Penguin titles are available to public and college libraries, including consortiums, on a one copy/one user lending model for a one-year period. For collection assistance, please contact OverDrive's Collection Development team at collectionteam@overdrive.com or your designated Collection Specialist.
Rob Mooney is a Collection Development Specialist at OverDrive.
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Scholastic Book Fairs Go Mobile with New App
| Many readers have fond memories of Scholastic Book Fair time when they were in school, getting the chance to browse new books and discover a new character, series, or author. But the world’s largest publisher of children’s books and content is bringing the book fair to mobile devices, thanks to its free app that lets young readers find out even more information about the books. “We’ve been striving for a way to extend the book fair,” explained Deborah Forte, President at Scholastic Media, Executive VP at Scholastic, Inc., in an interview with Good e-Reader, “and this is a great compliment to the physical experience. Society is mobile, and it’s really great to be able to offer our customers a mobile extension of the book fair.” Through the app, parents and students can scan the cover of books that are available on site and learn more about the book, the author, get recommendations for other books that might be of interest, get important information about the reading level and Accelerated Reading status of the books, and more. The app also lets schools offer their students even more selection beyond the books that are physically displayed during the event. One very helpful feature that this app can offer readers and their families is students who attend schools that are taking advantage of digital learning can scan the covers of titles they are interested in within the app, then share that information at home with their parents in order to make purchasing choices about books. “The application is a great way to connect the physical with the digital,” continued Forte, “and what we can do with this application is when a pair downloads the app it geolocates the fair and they simply press the location of their fair, and they go in and take the application and connects with the physical product in the fair. It offers far more information at the touch of a finger.” One of the best features of this app is to help parents and teachers grow a curated collection of content that is age- and grade level-appropriate, and it also lifts the limitations of the physical fair to let readers find more content through the online fair extension. This also affords the hosting schools to benefit from the online purchasing in order to add to their fundraising book event. Scholastic’s Storia ebook platform is also connected to the book fairs and the same information is provided through the app, allowing parents to choose the digital edition of books for their children during the excitement of the book fair. “We really look at these fairs as a literacy event,” explained Forte, “we really believe that strongly that this is a way to create a lot of excitement around reading, and it works. Getting kids and families excited about reading and books is what it does, but it does benefit the school as well. The primary focus is that they want the kids to read more, and this is one very effective way to motivate kids and to allow them to be a part of the process of selecting books. The research says that when kids have a role in selecting their own books, they tend to read more.”
Scholastic Book Fairs Go Mobile with New App is a post from: E-Reader News |
Ratsberry Pi – scampering Halloween rats
| A quicky today – I’ve been running from meeting to meeting all day and have only just managed to get some time at my desk now, at half past four in the afternoon. Great meetings, though, and I discovered that Ben “Pi Weekly” Nuttall not only rescues the drowning in his kayak, but also does parkour. Anyway. This Adafruit project, putting good use to servo motors, red LEDs and a bushel of rubber rodents, is just the ticket for freaking out your mother this Halloween. Instructions and a parts list are at Adafruit, where I’m pretty sure Mosfet the cat (Mooncake’s favourite Skype buddy) is having a fantastic time with the rubber corpses. Got a Halloween project you think we might like to feature here? Mail me! |
Podcast: New and featured content for October
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Do you want in on the newest and hottest titles available in OverDrive Marketplace? Tune in to the October edition of Collection Highlights, where you'll hear all about popular new content, recently added publishers, and big news from members of the Big Five.
In this month's podcast, we tell you about two new curated lists you'll be seeing in Marketplace from now on—Top Picks and LibraryReads—which are designed to highlight top titles and help make collection development easier than ever. We also recap big news about Penguin and Macmillan availability, and clue you in to lots of other newly available content, including niche titles for dog lovers from Dogwise, Chinese-language eBooks from Heibei Guanlin Digital Publishing Co., and the latest thrillers from UK-based Quercus.
Stay tuned through the end of the short podcast to hear about which other publishers are scheduled to join us soon, as well as additional tips and resources for placing orders in Marketplace. October's podcast is available until the end of the month on OverDrive’s Learning Center.
Carrie Smith is a Technical Writer at OverDrive.
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Book Distribution in Russia Enhanced via Ingram
| Ingram has expanded their Global Connect Group into Russia with a new deal with EE Media. This will allow publishers to print new books on demand in less then 48 hours and then them through a domestic distribution network. EE Media is the largest print distribution company in Russia. They have 2,343,321 titles in their catalog and ship books to over 3,000 bookstores. This new agreement with Ingram will ensure that local and international publishers can print and distribute books in Russian, English and a myriad of other languages. The English book market is said to be worth around $100 million a year and should grow. CEO Denis Kotov of Bookvoed, one of the largest traditional book chains in Russia said, “Currently, English language books are poorly represented in Russia, but even despite this, there is healthy demand. Through the work between EE Media and Ingram, we look forward to having access to a greater number of quality English books for the consumers we serve.” "Our Global Connect network provides publishers with a comprehensive option to expand the reach of content to new global markets,” said David Taylor, Senior Vice President, Content Acquisition International, Ingram Content Group Inc. “In today’s immediate all-access world, publishers need solutions that ensure books are immediately available to people who want to buy them, and through Ingram’s proven Global Connect offer, they have a single, integrated solution to do that globally.” Book Distribution in Russia Enhanced via Ingram is a post from: E-Reader News |
Monday, October 14, 2013
Kobo Speaks Out on the Removal of Self-Published Titles from its Store
 Photo courtesy of ebookbotics.com As angry accusations sailed across the cybersphere about the deletion of self-published titles from Kobo’s, Amazon’s, and even Barnes and Noble’s websites amid an atrocious crisis of judgment that caused WHSmith to remove content and close its e-store, more than one indie author took to social media to hurl insults about the censorship involved. Kobo’s head of the Writing Life self-publishing platform issued this statement to its authors only moments ago: “To our Kobo Writing Life and self-publishing partners: As you may be aware, there has been a significant amount of negative media attention in the UK regarding offensive material that became available across a number of eBook platforms. Kobo was included in the reports from media and we are taking immediate action to resolve an issue that is the direct result of a select few authors and publishers violating Kobo's content policies. In order to address the situation Kobo is taking the following steps: 1. We are removing titles in question from the Kobo platform. 2. We are quarantining and reviewing titles to ensure that compliance to our policies is met by all authors and publishers. We will ensure that content meeting the policy is made available online as soon as possible. 3. We are reviewing our policies and procedures to implement safeguards that will ensure this situation does not happen in the future. We are working hard to get back to business as usual, as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter. Our goal at Kobo is not to censor material; we support freedom of expression. Further, we want to protect the reputation of self-publishing as a whole. You have our promise that we will do all we can to ensure the exceptions that have caused this current situation will not have a lasting effect on what is an exciting new channel that connects Readers to a wealth of books. Sincerely, Mark Lefebvre Hopefully this statement will be enough to assure authors that their contributions are valid and appreciated, but that the protection of young readers has to take precedence over freedom of expression. According to the statement, Kobo is at work even now to replace the titles that have been removed.
Kobo Speaks Out on the Removal of Self-Published Titles from its Store is a post from: E-Reader News |
Kobo Takes Action to Quell Self-Published Erotica Titles
| Self-published authors and small presses have had a number of their titles pulled from the Kobo, Barnes and Noble and Amazon bookstores due to an erotic firestorm. This was attributed to hardcore material being listed side by side with kids material on most major bookstores. Kobo has taken action by deleting erotic content and just published an update to authors participating in Kobo Writing Life. The Director of Kobo Writing Life Mark Lefebvre released the following statement to all self-published authors. “As you may be aware, there has been a significant amount of negative media attention in the UK regarding offensive material that became available across a number of eBook platforms. Kobo was included in the reports from media and we are taking immediate action to resolve an issue that is the direct result of a select few authors and publishers violating Kobo's content policies. In order to address the situation Kobo is taking the following steps, We are removing titles in question from the Kobo platform. We are quarantining and reviewing titles to ensure that compliance to our policies is met by all authors and publishers. We will ensure that content meeting the policy is made available online as soon as possible. We are reviewing our policies and procedures to implement safeguards that will ensure this situation does not happen in the future.” Mark went on to mention “Our goal at Kobo is not to censor material; we support freedom of expression. Further, we want to protect the reputation of self-publishing as a whole. You have our promise that we will do all we can to ensure the exceptions that have caused this current situation will not have a lasting effect on what is an exciting new channel that connects Readers to a wealth of books.” Kobo Takes Action to Quell Self-Published Erotica Titles is a post from: E-Reader News |
Breaking Audio Update: Self-Published Erotica Titles Being Pulled from Major Ebook Stores
| Welcome to a breaking audio update edition of the Good e-Reader Radio Show. Today Michael Kozlowski and Jeremy Greenfield talk about the hottest topic in self-publishing right now, the bulk deleting of erotica content from major eBook stores. Over the weekend WH Smith has shut down their online bookstore and Waterstones have released statements on the removal of content. They all basically blame indie authors for putting their erotica titles side by side with children’s books, hampering eBook discovery and raising a firestorm. Kobo has been cleaning up their bookstore by removing titles from publishers such as Draft2Digital and indie authors. All of these eBooks feature questionable covers and subject matter such as incest. Amazon and Barnes and Noble have yet to release official statements but they have also been cleaning up their catalog of digital books. Are these major digital publishing companies just trying to mend the situation with deleting a few titles and getting their PR departments to deal with it? Erotica is big business and its highly dubious if they will start policing the genre. What can be done to stem the tide of highly provocative titles being listed side by side with genres that have nothing to do with it? Michael and Jeremy break it all down. Breaking Audio Update: Self-Published Erotica Titles Being Pulled from Major Ebook Stores is a post from: E-Reader News |
Marmot goes live with OverDrive’s library Circulation APIs
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Marmot is a consortium of Colorado public and academic libraries that uses VuFind, an open source OPAC on top of a Millennium system. Marmot had already been using OverDrive's Discovery APIs that were released last year, enabling patrons to search and discover eBooks and determine availability. The new Circulation APIs allow users to check out, hold or return eBooks and audiobooks all in one place, without leaving the Marmot website. Patron authentication and account integration are also available through the new APIs.
"Working with (OverDrive) developers was very gratifying because they were responsive, conscientious and fun to work with," said Jimmy Thomas, Executive Director of Marmot Library Network. "(With the implementation of the APIs,) you can find your physical books and your eBooks all in one handy place, and you don't have to learn two or 12 user interfaces."
The full complement of OverDrive APIs simplifies the user experience and promotes the discovery of digital media content on library and school websites, meeting the ReadersFirst guidelines. Find out more about how to incorporate OverDrive APIs with your OPAC at developer.overdrive.com.
Heather Tunstall is Public Relations Specialist at OverDrive.
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Frankfurt Book Fair Opens to the Public
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For the past few years, however, Frankfurt has opened its doors to the public towards the end of the event itself, which is typically a time when business meetings are concluded and executives have headed back home, leaving their exhibits staffed by company representatives or hired exhibitors, per Fair regulations. Not only do public attendees get to see some of the wide varieties of publishing industry businesses who make the books happen in some way, they can also get a glimpse at some of the titles and technology that are on the horizon. Of course, the opportunity to network with other authors drives self-published authors to the event, as does the chance to meet with some of their favorite bestselling authors in attendance. A guide put out prior to the event by Publishing Perspectives’ Hannah Johnson gave authors nearly forty pages of valuable advice for attending the event, and a recent Twitter chat put on by BiblioCrunch and featuring Porter Anderson let indie authors discuss the merits of this type of effort. For others though, the Fair has turned into a general spirit of book partying and cosplay fandom, with an outdoor stage and festival area focused on reading, live music, and more. For whatever reason people choose to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair, an event that practically overtakes the entire city for a week each fall, rest assured that there is no more book-centric spot on Earth at that time than the city of Frankfurt.
Frankfurt Book Fair Opens to the Public is a post from: E-Reader News |
Turn your Pi into a low-cost HD surveillance cam
| Local government CCTV is awful, and it’s everywhere in the UK. But I’m much happier about surveillance in the hands of private people – it’s a matter of quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchmen?), and I’m pleased to see the Raspberry Pi bring the price of networked motion-sensitive HD surveillance cameras down to be affordable by consumers. Off the shelf, you’re looking at prices in the hundreds of pounds. Use a Pi to make your own HD system, and your setup should come in at under £50, with a bit of shopping around. This is a great use case for the value bundle our distributors are offering at the moment, where a camera board and a Model A Raspberry Pi with an SD card is coming in at $40. Christoph Buenger has used a Pi and a camera board as the guts of his project, and, in a stroke of sheer genius, has waterproofed the kit by housing it in one of those fake CCTV shells you can buy to fool burglars. The fakes are head-scratchingly cheap – I just found one that looks pretty convincing on Amazon for £6.24.  Christoph’s camera, snug inside its housing Christoph has made build instructions and code available so you can set your own camera up. It does more than just film what’s in front of it: he’s added some motion-detection capability to run in the background, so if the camera spots something moving, it’ll start recording for a set period. At the moment, Christoph saves video to a Windows shared folder (you can, of course, save it wherever you like if you’re not a Windows person). The live stream is also available to be viewed online if you configure your local network.  A live (and topical) frame from the camera’s video feed Christoph’s looking at adding more functionality to the setup. He says: There are a thousand things you can do with such a surveillance cam basic setup now. How about sending Growl notifications when some motion was detected? This guide explains how to add this functionality easily. Or you could easily add a temperature-sensor to the cam. It’s only a few bucks and can be integrated very easily. We’re currently working on integrating the live stream into MediaPortal server so that we can switch to a TV channel to see the live stream from the cam in our office. If you want extra security, you could also add a battery pack to the camera. Be sure to buy one that is able to charge simultaneously while powering the Raspberry. This would enable you to detect if some bad guy cuts the power strips of your camera and send some alert messages to you (i.e. SMS or email) including the video of the disturber. Let us know if you set up your own security camera with the Pi. We’d love to see what adaptations you come up with! |
‘Like’ Your Facebook Page
| Many libraries do a great job engaging with their community through Facebook. Take it to the next level by leveraging the valuable space on your Facebook page to promote your OverDrive service. If your library is new to Facebook, you can reference the last section of our Best Practices Handbook for some social media tips.
Facebook Tabs At the top of your page, you can directly link to your digital collection with Facebook Tabs. We've added some Facebook Tab images to the Social Media section of the Partner Portal to make it easy to get started.
It is always great to remind users of your digital collection, whether it is a reminder that titles are available 24/7 or that new titles were added, don't be afraid to promote! We've created some Social Media Images that are optimal size for Facebook posts to jazz up your message.
Facebook Cover Photos Lastly, don't forget about that GIANT REAL ESTATE at the top of your page! That space is a great spot to promote your digital collection with our ready-to-use Facebook Cover Photos. We've added various options for every season, as well as some that can be used all year around! When you post a promotional photo to your Facebook page, don't forget to add a description that includes your digital collection URL so users know where to find the eBooks!
For more great marketing ideas, take a look at our Partner Portal.
Cassie is a Marketing Specialist with OverDrive  |
What Does the Future Look Like for eBooks?
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But on the other hand, is this excitement because we still aren’t there yet, because the industry keeps talking about innovation but is slow to follow through? Good e-Reader sat down with book futurist Kristen McLean, founder and CEO of Bookigee, on the very first day of the Frankfurt Book Fair to gauge whether or not her predictions for a frustrating industry would be prevalent at the event. “I really want to rethink what we do when we come together. I don’t feel like we’re progressing. I asked a question to a panel [at a recent publishing conference] that I probably would have asked three years ago. I have a joint venture going on right now with what I think is going to turn out to be a super disruptive partner who’s building a very large ebook reading and purchasing environment that’s going to be global, going out through the wireless providers and doesn’t require anything from the publishers. Publishers can play on it, but it’s not publisher controlled and there are no pinch points with the retailers because he’s just building this big retail platform. Because he’s coming from wireless, the things that we’re so used to fighting for he’s just like, ‘You want the data? It’s no problem.’ He’s building a large fluid, frictionless platform with many installs and versions of his app feeding data and pushing it back out again. It’s going to roll out this fall, is techinically super competitive with Kindle, and it’s got pricing that’s competitive because he’s doing direct deals. It’s going to become the Verizon ebook app that ships out on every phone, same thing with AT&T, T-Mobile, Cricket wireless. It’s built for 153 countries. I’m starting to mention it because direct to consumers is such a big deal.” “There’s all kinds of interesting opportunities. My big thing is I’m really going after three things, that I’m measuring against: bigger profitability for anybody, direct ownership of and authentic communication with your end user to own your consumer relationship, and real-time data so that you can make real-time business decisions and move at the speed of this business environment. And mobile has the ability to provide all three of these things.” “I went with this company, Page Foundry, because his vision for what he’s trying to do and his approach to the market is so disruptive.”
What Does the Future Look Like for eBooks? is a post from: E-Reader News |
Nook Touch on Sale for $59, Nook Glow for $79
| Barnes and Noble is offering a sale on their E Ink Nook ebook readers for what feels like the hundredth time. This is about as low as the prices have gotten, though, so they are definitely worth considering. Both Nooks are marked down by $20 at B&N.com and in Barnes and Noble retail stores until […] |
WHSmith Pulls Site Down After Accused of Selling Immoral Content Alongside Kid’s eBooks
| In what can be termed as a shocking revelation, a retailer as respected as WHSmith has been found promoting pornographic content among children by listing them alongside children's titles on their official website. The problem could well be deeply imbibed in the software as searching a terms as innocent as 'daddy' has been found to reveal some hardcore sexual content dealing with incest or violent sexual behavior along with the usual bed time stories for children. The retailer responded immediately to the allegations by bringing down the site altogether while also promising enough changes in its systems and processes to avoid a re-run of the same anytime in the future. WHSmith has been found to have on its lists more than 60 such titles dealing with immoral subjects, with most of them being self-published. The retailer has entered into a deal with Kobo and has stated they are working with the ebook company to deal with the issue. "We were made aware last week that a number of unacceptable titles were appearing on the Kobo website that has an automated feed to ours. “This is totally unacceptable and we in no way whatsoever condone them. “We are urgently working with our ebook partner, Kobo, to remove them from our websites as soon as possible,” the retailer revealed in a statement. WHSmith though blamed the recent spurt in self-publishing that led to the illegal content having slipped through their screening process. “This is an industry wide issue impacting retailers that sell self-published ebooks due to the explosion of self-publishing, which in the main is good as it gives new authors the opportunity to get their content published. “However, we are disgusted by these particular titles, find this unacceptable and we in no way whatsoever condone them. It is our policy not to feature titles like those highlighted and we have processes in place to screen them out,” said WHSmith sources. What should be equally disturbing is that several other big name ebook retailers such as Amazon, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble have also been found selling ebooks dealing with hardcore porn the majority of which are again found to be self-published. Barnes & Noble though assured users they have in place a robust system to tackle such issues. “When there are violations to the content policy that are brought to our attention, either through our internal process or from a customer or external source, we have a rapid response team in place to appropriately categorise or remove the content in accordance with our policy,” revealed B&N sources. Waterstones sources revealed in a statement: “As with other bookselling websites, Waterstones takes a feed from central databases of book publications, notably Nielsen. Any of these titles can then be ordered by a customer. We do not stock in our shops or in our warehouses for internet supply any of these titles and we have never had any ordered from us in the past. Now that we are aware of the theoretical ability of a customer to order such titles by fact of their listing by Nielsen, we will investigate with them how this might be avoided.” Meanwhile, there have been widespread protest from all quarters condemning the revelation.
WHSmith Pulls Site Down After Accused of Selling Immoral Content Alongside Kid’s eBooks is a post from: E-Reader News |
