| This past week Barnes and Noble announced that their CEO, William Lynch, has resigned. It’s no secret that B&N has been struggling financially for some time now, and this is just one of many dominos to fall over the past few months. An interesting detail to note, B&N didn’t replace their CEO. Instead they basically [...] |
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Amazon Didn’t Kill the Nook, Barnes and Noble’s Inept Leadership Did
New York Times: Digital Catch-Up Means New Content, Lower Prices
| One of the major institutions among news outlets has invariably been The New York Times, a respected position they’ve held for a long time. But as newspapers around the country shutter their doors and throw in the towel to the online and mobile digital news, the NYT isn’t going down without a fight. Part of their efforts have been an in-depth understanding that their customer base is changing, as is the needs of those customers for news and information. From the initial paywall program that allowed readers to access a pre-determined amount of free content per day, to its soon-to-be implemented new digital offerings, the paper’s leadership has done a fairly effective job of analyzing the industry and following right along. Two new digital programs, one officially called “Need to Know” and the other only casually referred to as “Need to Read” in a corporate memo, will offer readers a lower cost, higher value set of information. For a smaller subscription fee, digital readers can access the top highlights of the day on their mobile devices through the “Need to Know” subscription. Alongside that, what executive editor Jill Abramson only lightly called “Need to Read” will be more of a digital magazine with enhanced features, but without quite the depth of reading the Times’ existing The New York Times Magazine. While the NYT has already rolled out features like additional digital content over and above the price of a subscription in a value-added move to encourage subscribers, the paper will also be offering stand-alone digital content that won’t require a paper or online subscription the main content. How much the readers respond to the increased amount of content at a lower price, and the convenience of reading material created specifically for mobile devices, remains to be seen once the programs launch throughout the remainder of the year.
New York Times: Digital Catch-Up Means New Content, Lower Prices is a post from: E-Reader News |
Friday, July 12, 2013
Latest Rumor: iPad Mini 2 Won’t Have a Retina Display
| The million dollar question right now is whether the iPad Mini 2 will feature a retina display. The latest on this seems to indicate the next iPad Mini 2 will miss its date with the Retina displays, due to unsteady supply. Whether or not the above is true remains to be seen, but whether the absence of a Retina Display will have an adverse an effect on the prospects of the iPad Mini 2 is also debatable considering the first gen was successful without the high pixelated displays. The new iPad Mini version is scheduled to hit streets this fall, and given Apple's obsession with Retina, it was a safe bet for many to expect it in the upcoming iPad Mini. The latest report from Taiwan's Economic News Report claims Apple is forced to delay launching the retina display equipped iPad Mini 2 this fall, and instead release it in the first quarter of 2014. Some analysts are also claiming there will be two iPad Mini versions, both with and without the retina displays. However, these seem to be wild guesses and the next rumor might already be cooking somewhere. What can be said with a fair degree of surety is that the iPad Mini will indeed go retina, though the question is when. It is unlikely that Apple would a new retina equipped iPad Mini ready for launch soon after a standard screen version is launched this fall. The best we can do under the present circumstances is to wait until things begin to settle down before we can determine if there is any method in this madness.
Latest Rumor: iPad Mini 2 Won’t Have a Retina Display is a post from: E-Reader News |
Digital Comics Bargains: Slim Pickings
| Tis the week before Comic-Con, and comics publishers are busy churning out press releases and finalizing last-minute plans. Maybe that’s why there don’t seem to be a lot of digital comics bargains this week. ComiXology, which usually has a couple of good 99-cent sales, has just one up on their header right now: Vampirella. (That’s not quite true—if you act fast, you can get a limited run of Fantastic Four comics for 99 cents, but that sale ends Friday night.) All their other featured comics are full price. Dark Horse comes through, though, with a sale on their creator-owned comics. The lineup includes Jennifer Blood and Garth Ennis’s The Boys, which are published by Dynamite but sold through the Dark Horse storefront, as well as The Goon, Hellboy: The Storm, The Massive, and Mind MGMT. There’s plenty of good reading there, and in the case of Mind MGMT, the single-issue comics (priced at 99 cents for this sale) include short stories that aren’t in the collected editions. Viz Manga continues their weekly specials—every Monday they mark down two volumes of three different series. This week they are D.Gray-Man, From Far Away, and Jiu Jiu. I loved Jiu Jiu, the story of a demon-fighting girl and her two wolf familiars, one black and one white, who can transform into teenage boys when they want to complicate her life. Viz is also offering a pretty good discount on its digital magazine, Shonen Jump: $19.99 rather than $25.99 for a one-year subscription, through July 14. That’s it for this week, but hopefully the Comic-Con announcements will bring plenty of tie-in sales. Digital Comics Bargains: Slim Pickings is a post from: E-Reader News |
Audible for Android Receives Massive New Update
| Amazon owned Audible is the largest audiobook website in the world and its official Android app received a massive update today. The interface is totally revised, which makes managing your collections a bit easier. When you listen to an audiobook, it plays it by each chapter instead of the whole thing at once. One of the great aspects of this app is the inclusion of WhisperSync for Voice. If you buy the ebook and audiobook, you can pick up in the audiobook where you left off in the ebook. Let’s say you end the book on page 92 when you are in bed for the night, so the next morning when you are in your car, the audio edition will pick off on the same page. When you are reading again in the evening time, you can start reading the book where the audiobook left off. Features like this tend to be unique to Amazon and no other company matches Amazon with this kind of innovation. It sometimes feels that Android is the most neglected operating system for Amazon. The company tends to update its e-reading and Audiobook apps on iOS fairly often. Still, if you are a fan of Android, you might want to check out this new update. You can download it from the Good e-Reader App Store. Audible for Android Receives Massive New Update is a post from: E-Reader News |
Barnes and Noble PubIt! Accounts Migrated over to Nook Press
| Barnes and Noble officially announced its second generation self-publishing platform Nook Press back in April. The company sought to develop a new system that was easily scalable and could push new updates very quickly. In retrospect, its first foray into publishing never received a single update since it launched a few years ago. Today, all ebooks and account data has been migrated from PubIt to Nook Press. All of your titles, account information, and sales history have been transferred over to the new system. Nook Press provides an all-in-one solution that allows authors to upload existing Microsoft Word documents and instantly see how they look in EPUB, or create EPUB documents from scratch using the online tools. One of the barriers to ebook creation is being able to constantly refine your work; many self-publishing platforms do not allow you to make changes in the web-interface and demand you make the changes locally and then re-upload the finished result. Nook Press allows authors to make any changes on the fly and even create an interactive table of contents, something that makes everyone's life a little bit easier. Many authors love to know how their sales and metrics are doing for a title they have just released. Nook Press has new analytical functions that can give you an immediate report on every single purchase made. It is on a 3 hour delay for sales reports, as the company has to verify credit card data and other purchasing information. You can see the raw numbers, or juggle the graph data to show how it is performing over time. Right now Nook Press is only available for self-published authors in the US and you can market your books across the country and also in the UK. This is the biggest limitation of the system, that you shoot yourself in the foot by only appealing to two different markets. Kobo and Amazon both have a huge international footprint and may give you more viable sales channels. Barnes and Noble PubIt! Accounts Migrated over to Nook Press is a post from: E-Reader News |
Rockstand eBook Reading App
| RockASAP.com has come up with an ebook reading app, Rockstand, which the company claims is the result of over an year of thorough research of the ebook segment not only in India but throughout the entire world. Indians might have been late in waking up to the ebook boom, but the segment is already experiencing exponential growth, which, combined with the huge increase in demand for smartphones and tablets, has proved to be a strong motivator for RockASAP to launch a suitable app to make the most of this trend. The app right now is only available for Android, although iOS, BlackBerry, and Symbian versions are also in the works for a launch soon. Available ebooks number around 2 million right now, though the figure is ever growing. The company has also tied up with 150 publishers to have more ebooks on board, and not just English language books, but also a large number of books in regional Indian languages. Hosting ebooks in regional languages will make RockASAP a challenger to any other company who wishes to be seen as the premier seller of ebooks in India and the company has done its homework on this. “We have foreseen the same and thats the reason we have content in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Gujrati, and we are very focused on regional content. Also, tech wise, we have developed reflow for regional language font books which we have been the pioneers in India. Even Google provides pdf of regional content,” said Mr. Rishi Mohan Jha, CEO at RockASAP Retail Pvt. Ltd. Mr. Rishi also stated the company has its teams stationed all across India and is forging relationships with new publishers to ensure there are enough ebook at hand to satisfy an ever increasing demand for both English and other regional content. In fact, what makes the Indian ebook market unique is that 60 percent of it is based on a variety of regional languages. Also, a unique aspect of the Rockstand ebook reading app is that apart from a dynamic user interface, the app allows users to download both ebooks and magazines at the same place. Also, magazine subscription offers the most hassle free experience, as the next issue gets downloaded on a paying customer’s device automatically. Rockstand also boasts of one of the biggest collection of e-comics as well. Other features of the app includes the ability to convert a text into night reading mode, bookmarking, and voice and pitch modulation, along with audio books which will be introduced soon. The app also allows for the books and magazines to be read in offline mode. That’s not all as the books have been priced competitively with some costing as low as just INR. 2, while many books and magazines are made available for free for a limited period of time.
Rockstand eBook Reading App is a post from: E-Reader News |
Second Generation Nexus 7 Sales Expected to Be Less Than 8 Million Units in 2013
| The second generation Nexus 7 is one of the most anticipated tablet devices launching in the second half of 2013. Naturally, the curiosity is centered around how much Google can better the overall Nexus 7 experience. Towards this, wild rumors are claiming the new Nexus 7 will come with an even better display featuring 1980 x 1200 pixels, along with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chip at its core. Further, the new Nexus tablet is also rumored to have a 5 megapixel camera at the rear, along with a 1.2 megapixel unit at the front to allow for video chats. Above all, the new Nexus 7 is also expected to be slotted in the same US$199 and $249 price bracket as the present generation Wi-Fi only models. Several Taiwan based vendors have estimated the new Nexus 7 will push out 8 million units this year. However, that figure is being refuted by the upstream supplier chain network that claims a far more robust competition this year could limit Nexus 7 2 sales figures to well below the projected 8 million. The biggest competitor of the Nexus 7 2 will be the Apple iPad Mini 2, which is likely to be released this fall. This apart, similar tablet offerings from Acer, Asus, Lenovo, and others are also expected to make things difficult for the Nexus 7 2. The first gen Nexus 7 had gone on to record a sales figure of 6 million units last year. Meanwhile, rumors claim the tablet will be launched towards the end of July.
Second Generation Nexus 7 Sales Expected to Be Less Than 8 Million Units in 2013 is a post from: E-Reader News |
Wattpad as a Launching Pad for Author Brittany Geragotelis
| The publishing industry is filled with Cinderella stories of authors who have made it big thanks to less-than-traditional methods. From Amanda Hocking who sold over one million copies of her self-published ebooks through Kindle Direct Publishing before being offered a traditional publishing deal, to Bella Andre and Hugh Howey who are sparking the creation of unheard of, twisting publishing deals in which the publisher has very limited rights to their works, there is no doubt that what once constituted book creation is changing. This week, author Brittany Geragotelis spoke to GoodEReader about the launch of her book, Life’s A Witch, a title she originally posted in installments on the popular content sharing site Wattpad. “I had experienced about nine years of rejection in various forms trying to get my book published traditionally before I heard of Wattpad. I had an agent who tried to sell my books but couldn’t, and then ultimately dropped me as a client. I had a period of thinking, ‘Is this really what I’m supposed to be doing? I took some time off and re-evaluated things and realized I needed to change the reasons I was writing. I thought before that I needed to get published and that my writing needed to look and feel a certain way.What it really came down to is I write because I love it and because I feel compelled to do it, and hopefully people will want to read it. “I had been trying to go about things the traditional way, and it just wasn’t happening.” Geragotelis was invited to try the then-newly launched Wattpad platform, based on her experience of working for a magazine. The founders reached out to readers and writers and asked them to try it. Despite the popular belief among writers that authors should not give their content away for free, Geragotelis looked at her new goal of just being a writer and putting her work in front of readers, and decided to post stories to the site. “It’s a huge platform of people who are my direct audience. they are people who just love to read. It’s also a community of people who inspire writers.” Geragotelis spoke to the positivity and support that she found among Wattpad’s readers, those who understand that authors are genuinely opening themselves up to criticism when they publish. She posted something original that she specifically wrote for Wattpad’s readers–in this case, a paranormal romance–due to the popularity of the genre on the platform. She crafted her series, which is a reimagining of the Salem witch trials had they taken place in modern day. After posting around one chapter per week on the platform, a fan base developed in which she had had six million reads of the first book in her series. Nearly a year later, Geragotelis had over 18 million reads of her book. As fans began to clamor for the book edition, wanting it to be available for purchase, the author had a revelation about readers that rings true across a number of issues facing the publishing industry: readers are willing to pay for great content. Despite the availability of the book for free on Wattpad, readers wanted to purchase the title, offering the author genuine compensation for her quality effort. Now, that title will be available. Geragotelis was offered a contract for the series by Simon & Schuster, and book one, still titled Life’s A Witch, launched this week. It is available now from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo, and more. Book two, What the Spell?, is also available, with the third title in the series set for release in January.
Wattpad as a Launching Pad for Author Brittany Geragotelis is a post from: E-Reader News |
eBook Discounting Slowly Happening Following Settlements
| Like everything else about the traditional publishing industry that moves at a glacial crawl, the newly merged Penguin Random House is finally starting to lower the prices on the ebooks of its titles, despite having settled with the Department of Justice several months ago. In the terms of the settlement, the publishers had to abandon the agency model that it had formed in agreement with Apple, which made the publishers in charge of the price of the book instead of the retailer. What did not happen is a full-fledged return to the wholesale model; this model, employed by Amazon in which the retailer actually took a potential loss on some book titles in order to encourage sales of the Kindle e-readers, allowed Amazon to price NYT bestsellers as low as $9.99. Under the terms of the settlement, retailers can only offer a steep discount on publishers’ titles. But what’s taking so long for consumers to see some of these discounts? With Apple supposedly owing pay-outs to consumers who were squeezed on their alleged price fixing, surely some measure of compensation–at least in terms of new, discounted book purchases–is to be expected, but those discounts are not quite so widespread just yet. In an article on the pricing for paidContent, Laura Hazard Owen demonstrated some of the popular Penguin Random House titles that are only now beginning to demonstrate some level of price relief to consumers. Of the nine Penguin titles listed, the steepest discounts were on ebooks that had originally been selling for $14.99 and were now only $9.99 from both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Other discounts were less dramatic, saving consumers only a dollar or two from those retailers, while Google, Kobo, and Apple were hardly noticeable. In truth, some of the delay on price relief for readers may have stemmed from the merger between Penguin and Random House. Although Random House was not part of the DOJ investigation and had no apparent wrongdoing in the price fixing, it will now have to align itself to the settlement terms that Penguin ultimately agreed to and those issues invariably took some time to smooth out during the merger.
eBook Discounting Slowly Happening Following Settlements is a post from: E-Reader News |
Presented without comment
| Thank you to Marius Krabset, who made this using Blender. It’s given us all kinds of ideas for experimenting on Rob when he gets back from holiday. |
Microsoft Surface RT Price Slashed
| The Surface RT has never been able to light up the sales chart, let alone set it on fire. If you needed further proof of that, here it is, Microsoft is now believed to be considering offering a steep price cut on the tablet to make it more palatable to its prospective customers. The discount will be to the tune of $150 and will come into effect from this Sunday, July 14. The latest move comes close on the heels of Microsoft having made available the Surface RT devices at school and universities at a discounted rate of $199 at the Tech-Ed and Worldwide Partner conferences. Clearly, these latest move are all aimed at clearing existing stocks of the tablet which, as per an earlier estimate in March has found just 1.1 million buyers since its launch back in October 2012. The Surface Pro story is even more dismal, with just 400,000 of these sold since the Windows 8 running tablets went on sale in February 2013. As things stand right now, the new prices that the Surface RT will be sold for is mentioned below: > Surface RT 32GB: $349.99 Meanwhile, Microsoft has also dropped enough hints at its Worldwide Partner Conference to make us believe the next gen versions of both the tablets are well on the way, which includes an 8 inch version as well. While all of it has been kept under wraps, a change of heart in favor of a Snapdragon 800 and Intel Haswell chip is believed to be in the scheme of things for the newest derivates of Surface RT and Surface Pro respectively. Also on the anvil is a new line of accessories for the new Surface devices, including a keypad cover with a battery inside. Microsoft had embarked on a vigorous marketing campaign to push sales of its Surface devices. That all of it has come to a naught is all too evident. Both the Surface tablets had impressed with their build quality though proved a dud on the software front. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft plan their campaign in the tablet segment with the new Surface successors. Also, the above development comes on the back of Microsoft having just launched a bigger 256 GB enabled Surface Pro in the US recently, one that is priced at $1,200.
Microsoft Surface RT Price Slashed is a post from: E-Reader News |
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Aquafadas Releases New Version of Its Digital Comics Publishing System
| Today Aquafadas announced a new suite of digital comics publishing programs, the Aquafadas Digital Publishing System 3.0, which is designed to make it even easier to publish comics digitally across a variety of platforms. Aquafadas makes software that allows users to export their comics to a number of digital platforms. With version 3.0, those platforms include the web, iOs, Android (including Kindle Fire), and Kobo products. The web export option, which allows users to publish their comics directly to a web reader, and the Kindle Fire export are new with this release. Not surprisingly, given that Kobo owns Aquafadas, users can now export to the Kobo e-reader platform as well. Also new with this release is the AVE AppFactory for Android, which allows users with little app development experience to create custom apps by simply dragging and dropping content. Aquafadas already has a similar product for iOS. I spoke to Aquafadas general manager Rainer Heckmann at Book Expo America last month, before the new release was out, but it was clearly on his mind. “We will soon also have support for the Amazon format KF8,” he told me then, “which means publishers can start from a single source file and design and publish into any channel—into Apple apps, Android apps, Amazon apps. They can publish into ePub and they can even publish into a web reader.” At BEA, Heckmann demonstrated the Aquafadas Comic Composer, which allows the user to split up a comic into panels for a panel-by-panel reading experience and either choose the types of transitions they want (slide, fade, etc.) or go with the default settings. “What you do in Comic Composer is draw rectangles, creating scenes, over the page image of a comic book,” Heckmann explained. “There is always a transition by default, and you can modify that. You can do it very quickly if you simply go with the default transitions; you only draw the rectangles and say ‘I want to move from this panel to this panel,’ but you can also modify the transition manually. It’s also possible to add video an audio to the comic. When the comic is complete, the user then exports it to the AppFactory to make it into an Android or iOS app.” Making the process complete, Aquafadas also has its own digital comics store, AveComics, which is both a webstore and a app. It carries a wide variety of digital comics and has a strong European focus, although there are plenty of American comics in it as well. Aquafadas Releases New Version of Its Digital Comics Publishing System is a post from: E-Reader News |
Good e-Reader Radio – B&N CEO Departure, New Amazon Tablets and Apple DOJ News
| Welcome to another jaw dropping edition of the Good e-Reader Radio Show! Today Michael Kozlowski of Good e-Reader and Jeremy Greenfield of Digital Book World give you a sense of the biggest news items of the week! Today, we talk about the executive shakeup at Barnes and Noble and what it all means to the Nook Media division of the company. Many people are agreeing with us that Nook Media LLC may spin off into its own entity. Apple has lost its case against the Justice Department and already many people are talking about damages. Really, Apple will appeal this decision and it will be heard by the Second Circuit and will drag on for another year. Finally, Amazon is rumored to be working on a refreshed tablet lineup and the big seller is a huge boost in resolution. Good e-Reader Radio – B&N CEO Departure, New Amazon Tablets and Apple DOJ News is a post from: E-Reader News |
African Publishers Make Digital Content Accessible
| As publishers across the US spring up to meet the needs of digital readers, and as even more existing publishers shift their focus to ebook opportunities, readers have responded with an increase in ebook sales. On an international scale, however, some of the choices for readers and authors are far more limited. Thanks to Africa-based ebook distribution platform Snapplify, independent publishers across the continent are more easily able to place their content in front of readers, no small task in an area where illiteracy rates still soar due to a lack of access to books, even for educational purposes. “African publishers have successfully taken advantage of digital distribution to combat this problem; however there are still some that are lagging behind the curve,” the company stated today. “Very little African content ever makes it to the international market via traditional publishing, but digital publishing renders all size publishers equal, allowing them to compete in the digital sphere amongst some of the largest publishing houses internationally.” This centralization of content, titles that should rightfully be shared globally, is an issue that publishers and authors have faced in a variety of countries. eBook-first companies, such as LeFrench Book and Spanish Publishers, have come on publishing scene to make content available to audiences who would have never even found their titles under a traditional publishing model, let alone bought and read them. “Not only will the rest of the world now have access to genuine African content; but with the introduction of more and more affordable e-reading devices, including tablets with e-reader apps, we will see more Africans reading local content. Already the increase in digital sales of this content is encouraging. More affordable e-Readers and tablets in Africa should encourage the uptake of local ebooks, which will have a positive effect on the continents’ reading habits.”
African Publishers Make Digital Content Accessible is a post from: E-Reader News |
Baker & Taylor Works with Bookmasters, Offers New Services
| In a wildly changing industry like publishing, companies–even those whose names go back decades and who are considered some of the mainstays of books–have to be able to evolve and adapt, or risk falling by the wayside. With both confirmed and rumored mergers among some of the largest publishers in business, other companies are looking to form alliances that will strengthen their standing in the market. Baker & Taylor, the world’s largest book distributor, announced today that it has bought publishers services provider Bookmasters. this acquisition will help place B&T in a stronger position to reach out to publishers as a one-stop option for their titles. “Baker & Taylor is excited to offer our publishing partners the unique benefits and value of Bookmasters’ suite of services. The book industry is going through periods of unprecedented change with the migration to digital. We see remarkable opportunities for the entire publishing supply chain to reduce costs while improving service levels to customers,” said David Cully, President of Retail Markets and Executive Vice President of Merchandising for Baker & Taylor. Cully, whose role will be to reach out to clients on behalf of Bookmasters, told Publisher’s Weekly that this is a great opportunity for both companies. "This partnership enables us to go from zero to 60. Baker & Taylor is excited to offer our publishing partners the unique benefits and value of Bookmasters's suite of services. This is a real complement. We've offered so many services to our retail, education, and library partners. We thought it was time to offer a complete suite of services to our publishers as well." Both Baker & Taylor and Bookmasters are both owned by investors through the private equity firm Castle Harman, Inc., based in New York. As such, a partnership to increase their brand while offering a new suite of services is only one way to stay afloat in an industry undergoing so much progression.
Baker & Taylor Works with Bookmasters, Offers New Services is a post from: E-Reader News |
Tribune to Split Company and Form a Dedicated Newspaper Publishing Division
| Tribune Co. is mostly known for its newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, Sun Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant, The Morning Call, and Daily Press. The company is splitting in two, with one segment focusing exclusively on publishing and the other on the television properties. The main company will be drafting separation plans over the next nine to twelve months. After the split, each company will have its own board of directors and senior management team. The publishing division will have a dedicated revenue stream of around $1 billion dollars. With the recent announcement of wanting to spin off its publishing division, Tribune is following in the footsteps of News Corp., which just completed its move into forming two separate entities. The prevailing belief within media circles is that—at least for the foreseeable future—broadcast and movie companies have a much rosier, more profitable future than does the print business, which is trying to develop a new template for the rapidly-evolving digital news age. Tribune CEO Peter Liguori said, “Moving to separate our publishing and broadcasting assets into two distinct companies will bring single-minded attention to the journalistic standards, advertising partnerships, and digital prospects of our iconic newspapers, while also enabling us to take advantage of the operational and strategic opportunities created by the significant scale we are building in broadcasting.” The main reason Tribune is spinning off its newspaper division is because it could not find a buyer for it. Last December, the company tried to sell its business to other companies, but no suitors had met its price point. The hope is when the publishing division is a separate entity, it will be easier to sell. Tribune to Split Company and Form a Dedicated Newspaper Publishing Division is a post from: E-Reader News |
Simultaneous Use titles- training both staff and users
| Here's the situation: you have a roomful of users, and you want to teach them how to use their eReader devices or the OverDrive app on a tablet or smartphone. Perhaps your first instinct is to search your collection for the latest bestseller, only to find that there's a mile-long waiting list for that book. What can you do?
As the graphic says, these titles do not count against checkout limits, meaning no waiting list is created. If you use these titles for training purposes, your users can still get the books because they are always available. Anyone can grab one of these titles if they need something else to read, while they keep a checkout open on their card in case that mile-long waiting list shifts in their favor.
If the Gutenberg titles aren’t quite enough for you, there are many publishers offering Simultaneous Access titles for your collection. Some of these include Duke Classics, Blackstone, Tantor, Disney Digital, and many more (visit Marketplace, or contact your Collection Development representative for a complete list). Please note that titles in these collections will count as checkouts for your users, however there will be no waiting list for those titles since they are also always available. Now, when you stand in front of your students, you’ll have more options at your fingertips, and demonstrating how easy it is to enjoy OverDrive media should be a breeze.
Also, don't forget about the new resources we have in our Partner Portal. You can integrate what you’ve learned from this post into information from our Marketing & Outreach section, or add it to the "Just the Basics" presentation we offer in the Learning Center. You can also get information about Front Line Tech Support from our Service Enhancements page, if you're looking to connect your users to our professional staff of support specialists.
Justin Noszek is a Support Specialist with OverDrive  |
Your best bet is to check your library's OverDrive-powered site for the "Additional eBooks Always Available" graphic shown here. Clicking this graphic will take you to the library site's collection of Project Gutenberg titles – a collection of thousands of titles offered in Open EPUB format, which are DRM free.Has the Kobo Aura HD Already Been Discontinued?
| When Kobo surprised everyone by unveiling the Kobo Aura HD back in April, we knew from the beginning that it was unlikely to stay around as long as Kobo’s other ereaders because it was labeled as “limited edition”, with no real explanation of what that meant exactly. Well, just three months after launch, signs are [...] |
PyPy 2.1 beta released
| Back in May, we mentioned that we’d been sponsoring the development of the ARM port of PyPy, the high-performance Python interpreter. Earlier today the team released a first beta of the upcoming 2.1 release, which for the first time adds ARM as an officially supported architecture. You can see the announcement here, and download binaries for Raspbian here. Give it a spin and let us know what you think. |
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