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Inkwell, who had taken almost two years to pen his debut novel, turned to self-publishing. “Just because the industry was tired of selling vampires didn’t mean the readers were tired of them!” he explained. That’s the premise behind the hybrid model of crowdfunding in which companies like Inkshares–whose platform is currently hosting the book campaign for Gary Whitta’s first self-published novel–allow the public to fund a book’s production through pre-orders before sending it on to a traditional publishing house. Typically, book crowdfunding has worked like any other type of project funding in which the public is involved. Whether through a multi-dimensional site like Kickstarter or the book-specific platform Pubslush, the readers are able to throw their support towards the creation of a book through what essentially amounts to a pre-order process. But with hybrid models, the function of the pre-publishing support isn’t so much to provide the author with the funds to develop the book, but to demonstrate the interest of a readership to a traditional publisher. There can easily be support and criticism for this type of concept. On the one hand, a major criticism of the traditional publishing industry is that a small pool of tunnel-visioned editors get to decide what the public will read. At the same time, this model gives voice to readers who then have the power to say to that small group of gatekeepers, “I’ve decided that this book is worth it.” Inkshares will serve as a traditional publisher with regards to providing the editorial and publishing services that self-published authors typically have to secure on their own. But in addition to a 50-50 split on the print and the more standard self-publishing royalty of 70% of ebook sales, authors enjoy knowing they have a built-in audience for their work, if they manage to get the backing they need to go to press in the first place.
Hybrid Crowdfunding Blends Two Publishing Paths is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Hybrid Crowdfunding Blends Two Publishing Paths
Are e-Book and Print Sales Cycles Different?
| We are living in a digital world where major publishers have firmly embraced the e-book format into their distribution cycle. When a new title is released in hardcover it is immediately available as an e-book. Print books depend on the lucrative holiday season to drive sales, as people tend to buy them as gifts and most big budget novels normally come out in the last three months of the year. Gifting an e-book is difficult, so people tend to buy them just for themselves. Knowing this, is the sales cycle for digital and print really different? Nielsen BookScan is likely the best source for garnering meaningful data on the traditional publishing industry and e-books. The company gleans its e-books data from companies such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books-a-Million. Their print numbers normally stem from bookstores and a myriad of non-traditional book selling outlets such as big department stores or supermarkets. Nielsen condenses the information and then distributes it to major newspapers such as the New York Times. Finally, once all of the hard data crunching is done, they redistribute it back to the same outlets that provided them with the initial data. Everyone in the publishing world knows that print books tend to peak in the last three months of the year and this is where bookstores all over the world tend to see the greatest volume of sales. E-Books, however, seem to peak in the first two quarters of the year, presumably as consumers load up on content to enjoy on the tablet, smartphone or e-reader that they received as a Christmas present. This trend has important implications for how commentators view the book market. Until now, the tradition has been to monitor the health of the book market in January following Christmas sales. This latest data from Nielsen though will prompt publishers and online retailers to compare these two peak quarters more easily, and avoid direct (and possibly unfair) comparison between physical and digital book sales in the final quarter of the year. Hopefully bloggers and industry analysts will cut booksellers like Barnes and Noble a little bit of slack when the company reports their fiscal earnings. Many journalists get all up in arms when they hear that e-book sales have fallen in the holiday quarter and project doom and gloom. e-books and print do a different sales cycle from one another and its important to understand that. Are e-Book and Print Sales Cycles Different? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Amazon Fire Tablet Sales are Abysmal
| Amazon is experiencing decreased sales for the latest generation line of Fire Tablets. IDC has reported that Amazon Fire devices have fallen by as much as 70% compared to the holiday 2013 period. The declines come at a time when worldwide shipments in the fourth quarter fell for the first time since the tablet market's inception in 2010. When Amazon refreshes their tablet product line, they rarely release one or two models. In 2014 the company issued a 6 inch, 7 inch, 8.9 inch and kids tablet. They only sold 1.7 million units, which shows that the new devices did not resonate with customers and most are likely quite happy with an older model. The IDC report omits the six inch version of the Fire tablet because of its six-inch screen size. Amazon says that the device was one of its best sellers over the holiday season, although it’s unclear whether that would have a sizable impact on the statistics published by IDC. Aside from tablets, Amazon also experienced massive woes with their ill-fated Fire Phone, which was Amazon’s first foray into the smartphone market. Third-party sales figures published in 2014 suggested that Amazon had only sold 35,000 Fire phones. Since then, Amazon has repeatedly dropped the price of the phone, eventually bringing it to just 99 cents. I think the euphoria of Amazon products is severely waning. Everyone who wanted one already has one. There simply is no need to update your hardware every generation, because there isn’t a compelling reason to do it. Its not like the overall design and hardware specs are undergoing a paradigm shift, its all about small, incremental updates. Amazon Fire Tablet Sales are Abysmal is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Corning Unveils New Super Scratch-Resistant Glass
| Corning Gorilla Glass has taken over the smartphone world. The scratch resistant display has been in every Apple iPhone since 2007, and counts Amazon, HP, Dell, Google HTC and Samsung has loyal clients. Gorilla Glass accounts for 39% of Corning’s revenue and last quarter they generated over 2.40 billion dollars. Gorilla Glass is in its 4th generation and the company has just dropped a bombshell. The company has developed new technology called Project Phire, which combines the strength of its existing Gorilla Glass with ultra scratch-resistance like that of sapphire. Corning Glass president James Clappin who announced the product at an investors conference said “We told you last year that sapphire was great for scratch performance but didn’t fare well when dropped. So, we created a product that offers the same superior damage resistance and drop performance of Gorilla Glass 4 with scratch resistance that approaches sapphire.” Apple is one of Corning’s biggest companies and the company planned to move away from Gorilla Glass with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, switching instead to sapphire produced by GT Advanced. The deal wasn’t able to get done due to production issues and the two sides dissolved their partnership soon thereafter. Corning blending the scratch resistant nature of Sapphire with the sturdiness of Gorilla Glass should be a boon to the smartphone industry. It will allow the next generation of phones to be more durable but also employ an improved viewing experience. Corning Unveils New Super Scratch-Resistant Glass is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Friday, February 6, 2015
Amazon India Releases New Kindle Videos
| Amazon India is trying to draw attention to the Kindle Paperwhite by having authors Ashwin Sanghi and Amish Tripathi hyping the product. Each of the short films captures the respective author sharing his experiences of using the Amazon Kindle and describing the various features which he finds useful for his daily reading. Amazon is really trying to hype their digital bookstore and Kindle e-readers with the new social campaign #crazyforreading.
Amazon India Releases New Kindle Videos is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Kobo H2O e-Reader Now Available in Australia and New Zealand
| The Kobo H2O e-reader is now available to purchase in Australia and New Zealand. Angus & Robertson, Bookworld, JB Hi-Fi, and Myer all have it in stock. The Kobo Aura H2O features a 6.8 inch e-ink Carta touchscreen display with a resolution of 1430×1080. Carta Imaging Film offers a 50% improvement in contrast ratio over previous generation of e-Paper displays. This allows for faster page turns and the ability to turn pages in a digital book, without the need of constant screen refreshes. One of the main benefits of the H2O e-Reader is the ability to enjoy eBooks, graphic novels or newspapers in lowlight conditions or complete darkness. Unlike a smartphone or tablet that has an LCD screen that emits light from behind a layer of film, the H2O has five LED lights on the bottom of the bezel. It shines upwards, insuring even light distribution and makes it easier to devour books without eye strain. Kobo has managed to attain the prestigious IP67 certification for their first waterproof device. It will basically allow users to have the e-Reader completely submerged in five meters of water for an thirty minutes, with the MicroUSB and MiscroSD ports closed. This makes the H2O the most complete, well-rounded device the market and eliminates the need to send off your reader to a third party and pay over $60 for them to waterproof it for you. During underwater tests I found that even completely submerged in water, you can still turn pages and access the core functionality. The Kobo H2O is likely the most complete e-reader the Canadian based company has ever released. It is available all over Australia and New Zealand for $229.
Kobo H2O e-Reader Now Available in Australia and New Zealand is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Business Traveler Gives Homeless Man a Kindle
| An unidentified man, who travels to Las Vegas often for business, gave a homeless man a Kindle e-reader so that he could read more books. On his most recent visit, the samaritan spoke with the homeless man, named Paul, about his book. Through this conversation, the man found out that Paul loved to read, but he only read the same book repeatedly. “I just asked him if he liked to read,” the man tells The Huffington Post. “He said he loved to but that he had been reading that one book over and over for a while now.” In order to share the love of reading the man dove into his bag and pulled out his trusty Kindle e-reader and gave it to Paul. The anonymous donor mentioned on Reddit that the Kindle has more than 200 books by William Falkner, Ernest Hemmingway, Cormac McCarthy and George R.R. Martin. What is the rational for giving a homeless man an e-reader full of books? In a Reddit post, the man using the username 'mjuad' said he had also been down on his luck in the past, “I make really good money and I have been at the bottom. I try to help out the homeless whenever I can with non-monetary means. Business Traveler Gives Homeless Man a Kindle is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Line Manga Hits 10 Million Downloads
| Line is a popular messaging app in Japan where users can enjoy games, fortune telling and even enjoy discount coupons! Since 2012, Line has accumulated over 120 million users! In 2013 Line Corporation added a brand new service to it’s list: Line Manga. Yes, the company entered the mobile e-book business for IOS and Android devices, being backed up by some of the biggest publishers such as Shueish, Shogakukan and Kodansha, to name a few. With already 30,000 manga readily available, Line users can buy manga using virtual coins that can be earned in a variety of different ways, the most common being to simply share the manga you are reading to your Time Line which can earn you up to 10 coins per share, once per day. The first ten pages could also be read for free for many of the manga on the app. As of February 6th, 2015, Line has just hit it’s 10 million manga downloads and have garnered sales of 4.9 billion yen or $41,186,852 US. The most popular genres are romantic comedies at 33%, action, 12% and Horror-mystery at 9% of popularity. In addition to commemorate the record breaking 10 million manga downloads, a list of manga such as "Saint Young Men", "Space Brothers" and "Chihayafuru" to name a few, has become free in the app store! Many people in the manga and e-comics industry are going to be surprised that Line has quietly become a juggernaut. The company rarely gets mentioned when the subject of digital distribution comes up, with most of the industries attention focused on Amazon and Kobo. Line Manga Hits 10 Million Downloads is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Great Expectations is Free Kindle eBook, Audiobook Combo for February
| Every month since last June when Amazon added audiobook support and syncing to Kindle apps, aka Whispersync for Voice, they’ve been giving away a free ebook and audiobook combination each month to help promote this exclusive feature. The free title for February is Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. Make sure to check the box under […] |
Charlotte’s Web e-Book Finally Available March 7th
| Charlotte's Web is a seminal book in most peoples lives and so far has been unavailable as an e-book. This is poised to change March 7th 2015 when Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan will be available to purchase at all online bookstores. E.B White died in 1985, well before the e-book revolution swept the globe and disrupted traditional bookstores. His granddaughter Martha White has been overseeing his estate ever since. She told the Associated Press that family members had worried electronic sales would hurt business for their preferred format, paper. “After discussing this with our agent (Amanda Urban), it’s become apparent to us that e-books complement sales of paper books, instead of replacing sales,” White said. “The print books of ‘Stuart Little’ and ‘Charlotte’s Web’ have been selling strongly, and we felt like it was time to allow the books into the market in other formats.” Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo have been going crazy on social media the last few days promoting Charlotte's Web and the sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird that will be released as an e-book July 2015. Charlotte's Web e-Book Finally Available March 7th is a post from: Good e-Reader |
To Kill a Mockingbird Read-Alikes
| Here at OverDrive, we're fangirling hard over the announcement of a sequel to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. We're guessing that you and your library patrons are, too. Seriously, who isn't?! Sadly, July 14th (the sequel's expected date) is still months away. To help tide you over until then, our staff librarians have curated a list of To Kill a Mockingbird read-alikes. Check out the highlights below and then view the entire list in Marketplace. A Time to Kill by John Grisham | Random House Jake Brigance, a young lawyer, struggles to save his client's life and his own when he defends a black man who killed the white men that brutally attacked his daughter. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt When a fisherman in the Puget Sound area of Washington is found dead in his own nets, a Japanese WWII vet is accused of murder. Wolf Whistle by Lewis Nordan | Algonquin Books An ALA notable book based on the Emmett Till murder, one of the most notorious racial killings of our time.
Click here to view the full Marketplace list.
*Title availability may vary based on platform or region. Michelle Ross is a Collection Development Analyst at OverDrive. |
What Can Super Bowl Ads Tell Digital Magazine Publishers?
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But an article by Erik J Martin for EContentMag.com explains why this may not translate into the return that advertisers and businesses hope for, as well as offers a mathematical look at how digital advertising in magazines, newspapers, even websites can offer higher returns. First, the bad news: “Results of a recent consumer poll by Genesis Media reveal that 90% of respondents aren’t likely to buy something they saw in a Super Bowl ad, and 75% indicate they don’t recall many Super Bowl spots from last year. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that, currently, about 1 in 3 consumers are probably browsing the web via their tablet/smartphone during the big game, the survey shows. Thirty-five percent of those polled say they prefer online ads to TV commercials, and 32% are more likely to watch an online commercial if it’s relevant to them.” Those ads may be hilarious or heart-warming or even downright confusing, but data is showing that consumers aren’t responding to them, at least not in the immediate purchasing actions. There’s more brand recognition, especially as consumers take to social media outlets like Twitter to discuss, them, but that’s not really the goal. In an interesting note, this year’s highly-ridiculed Nationwide insurance Super Bowl ad became a meme on social media before the game had even ended. Which brings up another of Martin’s points: the high volume of internet use during the live game, indicating that consumers are surfing the web on their mobile devices rather than paying attention to the advertisements. That can be frustrating considering the $4.5 million price tag of a 30-second slot, over and above the typical $1.5 million companies spend to produce a single commercial for the Super Bowl. The article highlights the dollar-by-dollar math involved in opting for digital ad space over a one-time push like the Super Bowl, indicating that there are far better opportunities in things like digital magazines, which have a farther reach over time and can be tailored to a specific audience rather than just to the general population.
What Can Super Bowl Ads Tell Digital Magazine Publishers? is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Clippett News App Takes on Murdoch’s Empire
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So why should Murdoch be worried about a little digital news app? Because his grandson is the CEO. James MacLeod, whose mother Prudence is Murdoch’s daughter, co-founded the company with his business partner Grace Regan specifically because he had little attraction to the typical print news model. The elder Murdoch has been criticized for a number of practices within his corporation, specifically his belief in the purpose of subscription-only and paywall features surrounding the content of his major papers. While Murdoch supports for-pay access to information, MacLeod’s news app works much the same way that other platforms like Newsbeat do, with small bursts of audio advertising spaced periodically between news segments. One of the other key areas where Murdoch has been criticized but MacLeod seems to have surpassed him is in the ability to reach the newest generation of news consumers. While other Murdoch holdings haven’t yet garnered the ever-savvy millennial market (remember, this is the man who paid $580 million for MySpace, Clippet seems to be taking root and reaching listeners in much the same way that those who prefer visual news have taken to digital magazines and newspapers on their smartphones or tablets, even going so far as to subscribe to unlimited access to content through apps like PressReader. In an article for The Independent, Clippet editor-in-chief Regan commented on how the app stands to overturn what Murdoch’s empire is still struggling to provide: "We've spent a year developing how we produce editorial content. A lot of what we listened to on broadcast hadn't changed for 40 years. There's a set way of presenting news in audio and it's time for it to be updated. It's why our generation isn't connecting with the news."
Clippett News App Takes on Murdoch’s Empire is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Emulation on Raspberry Pi 2
| People have been emulating classic computers and games consoles on Raspberry Pi since we launched back in 2012. For those of us who bough our first hardware in the 1980s, this is a fun way to take a trip down memory lane, but our relatively modest CPU performance restricted us to third- and fourth-generation platforms. Anything with 3d graphics hardware was pretty much out of the question. Since we launched Raspberry Pi 2 at the start of the week, people have started posting videos of emulators for fifth-generation consoles running at full speed. Check these out: I know what I’ll be doing this weekend… (This image is taken from the excellent MGC 2011 demo by retroactive) |
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Plastic Logic Splits Into Two Different Companies
| Plastic Logic is a company in flux, they have yet to secure a meaningful contract to utilize their e-paper and are stuck in an endless loop of research and development. In order to better position themselves for the future, the company has split itself into two autonomous companies. Plastic Logic will remain as an EPD developer and producer and will mainly their factories in Dresden, Germany. Their United Kingdom arm will be now known as FlexEnable and will primarily focus their efforts on licensing out their technology to display makers. Indro Mukerjee Chairman of Plastic Logic said “I believe that the full potential of plastic electronics is now emerging as transformational developments in flexible transistor performance and bold, new concepts drive more and more applications. This, combined with the proven manufacturability and scalability of our transistor technology platform, makes this a defining moment for the industry. I look forward to working with our many partners and colleagues to fulfill the tremendous promise of plastic electronics in this exciting new era.” Recently the e-paper and display industry has been collapsing, which is indicative to tech companies being risk adverse. Pixel QI recently announced bankruptcy and their IP is currently in flux. GT Advanced Technologies went bankrupt after Apple pulled out of the deal that would have seen sapphire displays being employed on their next generation of phones and tablets. Liquavista which Amazon purchased from Samsung has never had a single commercially viable product and Mirasol color e-paper has been a massive disappointment. Plastic Logic Splits Into Two Different Companies is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Fall in love with February’s romance sale
| Just in time for the month of love, OverDrive is offering 30-50% off over 2,000 titles from our Romance collection. The sale, on now, continues through February 28, 2015.
The latest from Robyn Carr's popular Thunder Point series, The Homecoming follows Seth Sileski, a former town athlete and scholar. It's been a long time since Seth was the high school star everyone knows him to be, but he has to try to convince the people he cares about, including former flame Iris McKinley, that he's changed for the better. For Fifty Shades of Grey fans, pick up the first book of the Alpha series, Alpha by Jasinda Wilder. The heroine of this story is struggling to pay the bills and make ends meet when suddenly, a check for $10,000 shows up in the mail from an unknown sender. The next month, another check comes and another, for a year. But when a limo arrives at her home with a man claiming it's time to "pay your debt," she realizes that nothing is free.
Don't miss out on this amazing opportunity to expand your digital collection with popular titles from Sourcebooks, Baker Publishing Group, Random House, Hachette, Harlequin, Dreamspinner, NLA Digital, HarperCollins and more! See more content on sale at http://partners.overdrive.com/content-sales. *Some titles in lists may have limited regional or platform availability. Emma Kanagaki is a Collection Development Analyst with OverDrive. |
Kobo Set to Inherit 100,000 Blinkbox Books Customer Accounts
| Once again Kobo is going to be the beneficiary of another failed ebook business like they were last year when Sony decided to close their ebook stores in North America, Europe, and Australia. Tesco’s blinkbox Books will be closing for good on February 28th, 2015. This comes after an anticipated agreement with Waterstones to purchase […] |
Benchmarking Raspberry Pi 2
| If you follow us on Twitter, you’ll notice that I put a call out earlier today for people who’d benchmarked their Raspberry Pi 2 – I wanted to be able to share some benchmarking results with you this afternoon.
(Get well soon, Martin!) Our old friend Dave Hunt (click on that link – it’ll take you to some of Dave’s projects, which are among the most beautiful we’ve seen made with a Raspberry Pi) has done some thorough benchmarking against a range of other devices. Click on the table to learn more and to see some very illuminating graphs. The good folks at Adafruit have also been busy benchmarking, this time against the B+, and they also found themselves coming up with some really impressive results (a 7x improvement in some cases); click on the image to learn more. Finally, here’s a really nice side-by-side comparison of the browser experience of the old B+ and a shiny new Pi 2. I recognise that second website Marco Barisione visits. |
Magazine Media in the Digital Publishing Era
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One particular panel at the conference included executives from Rodale, Conde Nast, Time, Meredith, and Hearst Publishing, and the question was posed to those industry leaders. "You don't define yourself by your distribution vehicle and the magazine industry did that for too long,” answered Joe Ripp, CEO of Time, Inc. Caysey Welton, in an article on the conference for FolioMag.com, made a poignant observation on Ripp’s response: “He makes a compelling point, but it doesn't really answer the question. It's true that most magazine brands are doing a lot more than producing a print or digital magazine. But, at the end of the day, magazines are still the core product for most brands. What's more, how does adding the word ‘media’ redefine the industry? By definition magazines are media; so adding the word is redundant and doesn't actually speak to what's happening, which is that brands and companies have more competition for eyeballs than ever before so they are building audiences across multiple platforms and extending themselves beyond content. In turn, that is disrupting the tried and true business model that magazines operated within for roughly a century.” The observation is especially interesting given the rise in popularity of digital magazines and their subscription apps. Zinio, for example, announced a new library partnership this morning that will bring nearly 300 magazine titles to library patrons with free access; leading all-you-can eat and library subscription app PressReader has upped that number to over 1,000 titles. With such a selection of content to choose from, is the magazine publishing sector keeping up, or is this a situation such as affects the book publishing space, in which a handful of major publishers control the content and therefore don’t feel the pressure to adapt and keep up? According to Welton, the answer is yes. “There seems to be an implicit need to stay connected to the core product that built these five major publishing companies, and the industry—magazines. That's where things get a little dicey. Magazines, while still the bread and butter for most, will continue to decline in terms of where they fit into the revenue pie. Ripp admitted that, but said, ‘We need to invest in new things that will offset that [decline].'”
Magazine Media in the Digital Publishing Era is a post from: Good e-Reader |
Backlash Against Mockingbird Sequel as Concerns for Author’s Status Come Out
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Reports from various news sources have noted the coincidental timing in the death of the author’s long-time attorney and older sister, Alice Lee, who by many accounts was the instrumental force behind guarding the author’s privacy and career. Alice Lee retired at the age of 100 and passed away only a few months ago, leaving another attorney in her practice to serve her place as the safeguard of Harper Lee’s interests and career. Now, attorney Tonja Carter reportedly advocates on behalf of the author, but that relationship has come under fire for a number of recent events, including one in which the author accidentally signed away her rights to her original work while the attorney was looking on. One Gawker article outlined in great detail some suspicious activity involving the author’s copyrights, lawsuits and letters that intended to represent the author but did not in fact represent her true feelings, and even visitation privileges from the author’s oldest friends being formally denied in writing. The article takes pains to point out a very strange relationship, as this attorney is a cousin of Truman Capote, Lee’s one-time best friend before the two became very publicly estranged. Essentially, critics of the pending release aren’t at issue with its content or its quality, but of the fact that they do not believe the author herself would ever have allowed its publication if she were in better health and had better care watching over her interests. Lee is reportedly nearly blind and deaf and has lived in a care facility since a stroke in 2007, and some people close to her have reported she suffers from dementia. Critics have argued that this book never would have become public if Alice were still alive to protect her sister, her status as the author’s former attorney notwithstanding. Despite official-looking statements that supposedly give the author’s blessing and cooperation on the publication, there are some differences this time around, one of the most noted being the instant access to formats that this title will offer. Lee was notoriously against an ebook edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, and only acquiesced to a digital publication last year–again, after her sister Alice retired from practicing law and Tonja Carter took over Lee’s affairs. There are already a number of conflicting reports surrounding the publication of this book, the author’s state of mind and health, and other aspects of this would-be controversy. Go Set a Watchmen is already available for pre-order in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook, and is currently the number one bestselling title on Amazon.
Backlash Against Mockingbird Sequel as Concerns for Author’s Status Come Out is a post from: Good e-Reader |
