| The e-reader and consumer e-book industry has hit the proverbial glass ceiling in terms of sales. One of the segments that has been consistently on the upward trend has been libraries. A recent report by the Library Journal has stated that 95% of all US libraries have an e-book collection. That's up from 89% in both 2013 and 2012, when researchers thought that adoption had plateaued for good. The average number of e-books carried was 20,244 by each library, but that of course was skewed toward large libraries. Medium sized libraries statistically had around 10,434 titles. Over 10 different libraries in the US and Canada had over one million digital loans in 2014, with two libraries lending out two million e-Books. This number is poised to double in 2015 as Overdrive, 3M and Baker & Taylor gain more market share. One of the greatest success stories of 2015 has been the rise of Hoopla has being a serious contender in the library space. They started out the year with only 13,000 titles and only a few hundred libraries were dealing with them. Hoopla now has an extensive collection of over 350,000 titles from companies like Disney, DC Comics, Universal Music, and Starz. Over 800 library systems are doing business with Hoopla, which service over 1,000,000 registered users! Hoopla is signing up 15 – 30 library systems every month and service between 1,400 – 3,000 new users every day! The Hoopla business model is quite different from most other companies in the digital library space. They make their entire collection available and libraries only pay when a user borrows the title. Overdrive on the other hand sells each title individually. If you want 10 copies of an e-book, you better be prepared to pay the money in advance. 2015 has been very kind to Overdrive, the undisputed king of the digital library space. Back in March they were acquired by Rakuten, the owners of Kobo. They got a huge cash injection and will be expanding the empire into new markets. Overdrive has the largest footprint out of any company that markets digital content to libraries. They have a presence in almost all of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Hadie Bartholomew, Communications Manager at Overdrive said “Every month we add thousands and thousands of titles to our catalog and recently added hundreds of thousands of Smashwords titles” One of the keys to Overdrives success is that they are the only company to offer Kindle e-books. They have an exclusive agreement with Amazon to provide libraries with the ability to deliver books to Kindle e-readers and Fire tables. They also are very active in the international library scene and have a very active blog. Baker and Taylor has also been experiencing tremendous growth over the course of 2015. Michael Bills, the Sales Director, Digital Products said “We have well over 2000 Axis 360 customers now and this is up from about 1200 a year ago. Our growth, and our expansion into Canada in partnership with Whitehots, is gaining traction as more libraries begin to realize the advantages of ordering print and digital formats at the same time from a single vendor.” He went on to say “We continue to sign new supplier agreements, and broke the 1 million mark for e-Books available for library sale this year, along with an additional 50,000 digital audiobook titles. The number of users and circulation are growing year-over-year at existing accounts, and we also are seeing a surge of new patron activation since the release of the all-in-one Axis 360 app earlier this month.” The 3M Cloud Library has been dramatically improving their catalog of e-books. In 2015 the company now has 587,562 titles in their system, whereas in 2014 they only had 419,358. Heather McCormack is the Collection Development and Publisher Relations Manager at 3M. She told me “The most obvious signs of change for us in 2015 are overseas, in the UK and Australia, where we're signing publishers left and right, both Big Five subsidiaries and powerful indies (HarperCollins UK/AU, S. & S. UK/AU, Faber & Faber, Faber Factory, Canongate, Allen & Unwin). In the United States, W.W. Norton joined in August. That's the biggest news on our shores, really. When the American comics industry in the guise of DC and Marcel offers most of their catalogs to libraries in e, I think library patrons will have an excellent level of access. Not equal to print, but more than decent.” The High Cost of e-books The companies that are responsible for making sure digital content is available to all libraries are doing brisk business, but libraries budgets are being stretched thin. This is primarily because all of the major publishers have different revenue models, some e-books expire after a certain number of loans, whereas others cost dramatically more than the print edition. Michael Connelly novel Burning Room costs $14.99 on Amazon, but libraries are paying $106.00 per copy. John Grisham's Grey Mountain costs $15.99 for a retail edition but costs libraries $85.00. James Larue of the Douglas County Library system recently said "libraries and taxpayers who support libraries are being ripped off in ways that not only outrageously inflate the payment to publishers (surely their costs are not three times greater to provide the book to us than to the consumer), they also greatly reward distributors. The result? At a time when about half of our patrons use e-readers, we barely offer 10% of our collections to them in their preferred format. When does a vicious price become complicity between publisher and distributor, to the detriment of the public?" The Digital Content Working Group co-chair Carolyn Anthony told members ALA officials were “continuing to dialogue with representatives from the Big Five publishers,” and that e-book pricing remained a major issue. “We generally believe that the current pricing models are not sustainable, and that libraries cannot develop collections of critical size if they’re paying $90 per title or re-buying titles every year,” Anthony said. However, she added, a number of independent and smaller publishers are proving “much more flexible on terms,” and “much more eager” to work with libraries. “That’s a very good sign,” Anthony said. “Maybe this is an avenue that will help us develop richer and deeper digital collections.” Wrap Up Libraries are serving the needs of the community more than ever before. Every branch I have spoken with have told me that 2015 has been the most successful year ever, in terms of their growing collections and the number of checkouts. "Demand for e-books continues to grow – in fact, it's our fastest growing area of circulation at Toronto Public Library with 3.5 million checkouts last year alone and this figure will double at the end of 2015" said Vickery Bowles , City Librarian at Toronto Public Library. There are still major challenges facing libraries, such as the high cost of e-books and how to better showcase collections in apps and websites. Dispite all of this, 2015 has been the best year on record in terms of the companies that serve libraries and the number of checkouts for digital content. |
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Libraries Report 2015 Has Been the Best Year Ever for e-Books
Prediction: Kindle Paperwhite with 6.8″ Screen for $159
| Amazon will start shipping their new Fire tablets early next week, including the ultra cheap $49 Fire. But what about new Kindles? Amazon hasn’t officially announced any new Kindle models for 2015 yet, other than the Paperwhite 3 that was released back in July, but it just got an upgraded screen so that can hardly […] |
Issue #38 of The MagPi magazine has landed
| The October issue of the official Raspberry Pi magazine has arrived in more stores than ever. Grab it in print or as a digital download and take on the ultimate weekend project for £50 / $75! Click to see the latest issue on our new-look website Highlights from #38:
Take a closer look at exactly what’s inside the October issue BUY IN-STORE ORDER ONLINE UK & WORLDWIDE SUBSCRIPTIONS US SUBSCRIPTIONS CREATIVE COMMONS DOWNLOAD Once more the amazing Mike Cook has put together another cracking Pi Bakery project for you to enjoy. This month it’s a particularly spooky Halloween project you can use to scare your friends and neighbours. The post Issue #38 of The MagPi magazine has landed appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
The State of e-reader Industry in 2015
| e-Reader adoption on a worldwide scale is still fairly strong, despite the fact that e-book sales on trending downwards. In 2014 over 12 million dedicated e-ink devices were sold, which is a far cry from 20 million units in 2011. The e-Reader industry is in a holding pattern, as many of the key players are not investing in new technologies and simply issuing small incremental updates on a yearly basis. When it comes to the e-reader playing field, the sector as drastically diminished in the last few years. Sony, the most notable casualty was one of the first mainstream e-readers in the world and they operated one of the most successful digital bookstores. They had a good run, but abandoned selling digital content and scraped making new models because of Amazon being able to out price them. Smaller companies such as Cool-ER, Entourage, iRex, Spring Design, Kyobo have also went bottom up. One of the main reason the e-reader playing field is so small is because there is no competition anymore when it comes to e-paper innovation. There was some really promising technology that emulated the best aspects of e-ink, able to be viewed in direct sunlight and had a longer battery life. The companies in question were Pixel QI, LG and Bridgestone, but they all abandoned their e-paper ambitions a few years ago due the perceived lack of demand. Meanwhile, against all odds Plastic Logic is still in business, teetering on the edge of oblivion. The undisputed market leader when it comes to e-paper innovation is e Ink Holdings, whom is based in Taiwan. The company basically monopolizes the industry industry and counts Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo has their primary customers. Many smaller players such as Icarus, Onyx Boox and Pocketbook all deal with E-Ink in order to get advice on EPD displays and what type of processors they should go with, depending on their budgets. Lower end devices often have Texas Instruments processors, while higher end models employ Freescale. A few months ago E Ink and Netronix officially joined forces to become an all in one shop for e-reader design and manufacturing. If a company wants to have an e-reader made, they deal with E Ink the entire journey, instead of being passed off. This might be good for the industry, in terms of being able to do everything in one place, but at the same time could be considered anti-competitive. In 2015 the e-reader industry only has only two global players and a handful of regional ones. Amazon has the largest market share and 75% of all e-books sold in the US stem from the Kindle bookstore, while in the UK the figure is closer to 95%. When Amazon announces new e-readers it is normally a big event, with hundreds of journalists in attendance that are personally invited by Amazon. You can tell the Seattle company is trying to emulate Apple, by handpicking a few chosen ones and excluding all other media. The second major global player has to be Kobo. The company has been on an expanding rampage, trying to dominate markets before Amazon can swoop in. One of their biggest secrets to their success is getting their devices in bookstores, where their prospective customers are. Michael Tamblyn – President & Chief Content Officer of Kobo told me on a few occasions that they focus on bookstores because their product seems more organic and wholesome, instead of being sold at a big box retailer, where technology is often cold and impersonal. What is an e-reader discussion without the Barnes and Noble Nook? They only sell e-readers, tablets and e-books in the United States and the UK. The company used run a Windows 8 reading app all over Europe, but has since abandoned it. Barnes and Noble has lost money on the Nook aspect for the last four years straight. In total, they have lost over 1.2 billion dollars on having too much inventory and selling too few units. They thought they could solve this problem by contracting out the tablet design to Samsung. This partnership is destined to fail because there is no Nook branding on the tablets and there is no compelling reason to buy one. Barnes and Noble tablets used to be very distinctive and customers spoke with their wallets. The Nook Color, Nook Tablet, Nook HD and Nook HD+ were certainly not “me too” products when they first came out. The operating system ran a customized version of Android and the bookseller borrowed a page out of Amazons playbook by crafting a very unique hardware and software experience. Many former customers have told me on many occasions that Nook has lost their edge due to shoddy hardware and a broken website that simply does not function. There are only a handful of key regional players that have any sort of sales record and loyal customers. One of the most well known is Tolino, which comprises of an alliance of telecom and tech companies that wanted to develop e-readers and open a digital bookstore to prevent Amazon from dominating the German market. Netherlands based Icarus has a fond place in geeks hearts because they were one of the first ones to develop open Android based e-readers, that allow you to install apps just like you would on a smartphone and tablet. Pocketbook tends to dominate Eastern Europe and Russia and Onyx Boox is primarily focused on the Chinese market. Innovation?
There are only a few innovative things happening in the e-reader industry that might give people a reason to upgrade their old devices. One thing I am very bullish on is the new Freescale IMX 7 dual core processor. It was designed to improve upon existing technology and they worked in concert with e-Ink to power the next generation of e-paper. Freescale told me during the product announcement that one of the prolific changes will be page refresh rates. The rate in which page turn speeds occur heavily depend upon the waveform that the e-Reader uses. The update times can range between 125 mSec – 500 mSec. By integrating the REGAL waveform support in hardware, Freescale are taking away any additional time that would be added due to Algorithm processing on the Cortex-A core, hence a savings of up to 150 mSec. Solving the page turn program is a big step forward, but that's not the only thing that is being remedied with this new processor. Ghosting will also be solved with this framework, which is a huge deal. Normally with e-readers you will have a full page refresh every six pages or in some cases every chapter. The reason for this, is the longer the display goes without a full page refresh text gradually starts super imposing itself. I have never liked full page refreshes, as it breaks reading immersion. Now, this will also be fixed, which means less full page refreshes because again, its now hardware based, instead of software. Likely the largest innovation in the IMX product line is the support for hardware dithering. This will allow e-reader companies that work with the Linux or Android platforms to be able to include animated content. This will include truly animated page turns, interactive menus and video. Freescale showed me somethings I can’t write about, but needless to say I saw fully streaming video on an e-reader and it looked awesome. I am told that mass production on the new processors will begin in late October or November. This is likely why Amazon has not announced the Kindle Voyage 2 yet, nor Barnes and Noble Nook Glowlight 2. The other major innovation has to do with Amazon and their purchase of Liquavista from Samsung. Nobody really knows anything about the color e-paper yet, although Amazon has been on a hiring rampage over the course of the last year trying to develop it. This is one of the few things I have no timeline on, nor what they are cooking up. If you want to learn more about Liquavista I talked to the lead engineer on the program when it was owned by Samsung, check it out. Wrap Up You might think that e-reader sales are on a downward trend, and you are right. People are buying fewer devices now than they did in 2011, but there is a big reason for that. e-Readers are built with a singular purpose, to read digital books. The hardware is built to last, and I know plenty of people who are rocking 6 year old readers and are still very happy with them. If you have a first generation iPhone, good luck trying to get any modern app to work on it correctly, ditto if you have an old Samsung Galaxy S1. e-Readers only read books and don’t have a slew of complex apps. The reading experience on a first generation Kindle in 2007 is not very different from a top of the line Kindle Voyage. The reason why e-reader sales are down is because people aren’t upgrading them with the same feverish pace as they do smartphones and tablets. The old ones work great, and that’s OK! |
I have mentioned many times that the e-reader industry is stagnant and actively Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Rogers is Giving Away 2 Year Free Subscription to NextIssue
| Rogers is a major investor of the Netflix for magazine subscription service Nextissue. The Canadian telecom company has just unveiled a new promotion that gives users a two year free subscription to either Nextissue, Shomi or Spotify. In order to qualify for this promotion you need to have whats known as a Plus Plan, which includes data for your mobile phone and additional services such as voicemail and caller ID. If you already have this sort of plan with Rogers you can initiate an online conversation with a customer service agent and they will send you an email with detailed instructions on how to opt into getting the free digital content. Nextissue traditionally has two plans if you wanted to pay by the month. Basic which gives you 100 monthly magazines per month and costs $9.99 or Premium which gives you the monthlies in addition to weekly magazines such as Enterainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated for $14.99. I think two years of the Basic Nextissue plan has tremendous value for people who already do business with Rogers. It is basically the only way that Canadians can read unlimited magazines, other than Zinio. It is important to note that if you are changing your plan in the middle of the billing cycle you can opt into Nextissue right away, but if you are waiting until the next billing period you have to wait to get the subscription. |
Scribd Focuses on Audiobooks as an Avenue of Growth
| Scribd has been experiencing growing pains trying to make audiobooks financially viable. They company made the decision to scrap unlimited listening back in August and relegated their subscription base to onlyone title per month. If you want more, it will cost an extra $9.99 for every other audiobook you want. This decision to change their business model did not resonate well with their customers, but considering Entitle and Oyster are going out of business, there are few options left. Audiobooks are a relatively new product category for Scribd, who have been making a name for themselves with a low cost subscription fee to read as many e-books and comics as you want. They have only been involved in the audio sector since November of last year when they struck a deal with Findaway World. Almost immediately they distinguished themselves from the competition and brought in thousands of new users who wanted to listen to novels, instead of reading them. Today, Scribd has announced that they have established a working relationship with Hachette, Macmillan, HighBridge Audio, Tantor Audio, and Recorded Book to add 30,000 more audiobooks to their catalog. Listeners will be able to now get audio editions by authors such as James Patterson, David Baldacci, and Nicholas Sparks. Scribd has confirmed that when one of their subscribers listens to a single audio edition they are only making two dollars in profit. It is very likely that the revenue system they worked out with these new companies will allow them to make more money then the deal with Findaway. |
Good e-Reader APK to BAR Converter is Back Online
| The Good e-Reader APK to BAR converter was the worlds first online tool to easily convert Android apps over to the Blackberry format. It tremendously simplified the process for developers who wanted to take their Android apps and see how they functioned on Blackberry devices such as the Playbook, Z10 and Q10. The average person could also use this tool to download Android apps and convert them to see if they worked on their device. The Tool has been down the last two months, and is now back online! Not only is our APK to BAR converter tool back online, but we developed a companion app for it too. A few months ago we made an online tool that allows you to download any app you want from Google Play. We recognized that our own App Store might not have every app out there, so we introduced our Google Play App Downloader Tool. It basically allows you to input the name of the Android app you want to download and it will instantly generate a download link. You don’t need a Google or Good e-Reader account to even use it, the process takes about 10 seconds. Blackberry Playbook and Blackberry 10 users can now download apps from Google Play and then take the apps and convert them to the Blackberry format just by using our site. You don’t need complicated command line tools anymore or a Google device, you just need Good e-Reader. |
Sensly: an air quality monitoring HAT
| Altitude Technology have a very interesting Kickstarter campaign that’s just entering its final few days. It’s for an Internet of Things air quality monitoring device called Sensly, and one of the interesting things about it is that it’s available either as a consumer unit or, considerably more cheaply, as a Raspberry Pi HAT. Sensly will be able to detect benzene, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur oxide, ammonia and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; now that it has met its first stretch goal, it will also detect particulate matter such as pollen, smoke and mould spores, and backers will get this useful additional functionality for free. Temperature and humidity sensors are thrown in too. As with the Sensly consumer unit, the HAT version can communicate directly with your smartphone, giving you push notifications of high levels of pollutants, as well as uploading data for viewing (and, if you want, sharing) via a web browser. We really like the idea of making a device available as a Raspberry Pi HAT as well as a boxed appliance so that you can hack and customise your own system, and the possibilities of this one are pretty broad. You could connect a camera board, for example, and investigate whether anything in particular happens to nitrogen dioxide levels when lots of Volkswagens are in the vicinity. Several unpleasant constituents of cigarette smoke are detected by Sensly, so you could quantify the effect of cigarettes on your air quality. With the addition of pH sensors, a number of the devices could monitor sulphur oxide levels and rainwater acidity across geographically distant locations over long periods; what patterns might be found in those data? And if I still lived aboard the fine narrowboat I used to own, I could save myself a considerable amount of anxiety by properly logging carbon monoxide levels and finding out how they actually varied with the use of our three cooking and heating stoves. Converted 1959 British Waterways freight butty Roe moored on the Old West at sunset, and a heady quality of nostalgia. But there’s no point my hanging around here reminiscing; the past, as Elsa put it with memorable force, is in the past. The team behind Sensly might be onto something when they argue, as they did in their winning pitch to Pitch@Palace On Tour recently, that making air quality more personal and tangible with a low-cost sensor system could motivate people to take action, and all sorts of recent news stories suggest that there is scope for paying a bit more attention to what we’re breathing. As a single example, evidence to the UK government’s consultation on air quality plans, released a week and a half ago, revealed that nitrogen dioxide exposure alone is causing an estimated 23,500 early deaths in this country each year. Early-bird backers of Sensly’s Raspberry Pi HAT will get a device that shows them local levels of this and all kinds of other substances of interest for £25, but you’ll have to move quickly; the campaign closes this Saturday. The post Sensly: an air quality monitoring HAT appeared first on Raspberry Pi. |
ReadMe! eBook App Offers Unique Speed Reading Features (Videos)
| ReadMe! is an ebook app for Android and iOS tablets and phones. It supports ePub format, and what makes the app different is it offers two different speed reading tools. ReadMe! is the first app to incorporate BeeLine Reader, which uses colored text to help guide your eyes from one line to the next. BeeLine […] |
Narrated eBooks: perfect for your young students and readers
| By: Adam Sockel, OverDrive’s Social Media Specialist It’s hard to believe but the calendar has inched towards October, signifying both the end of summer and back to school time for students of all ages. You can take advantage of our Back to School sale to add content for your middle and high schoolers but it’s important that your early readers have something to access as well. Enter OverDrive’s Narrated eBooks. These titles are accessible through OverDrive Read, our browser-based eReader, so students don’t need to download any apps or software.
These titles combine the visual text of an eBook with a read along capability to help readers better understand sentence structure, language flow and syntax. The text is highlighted as the narrator reads with many titles enabling students to easily follow along. Narrated eBooks are a wonderful way to get your young students excited about reading and introduce them to technology and devices through interactive reading experiences.
Once you add some narrated eBook content be sure to feature them on your website by quickly creating a curated collection so they can be easily located. For a great example of how a narrated eBook curated collection will look check out Cuyahoga County Public Library’s Kid’s eReading Room. Click on one of the books below to sample some narrated eBooks and you’ll see why your young readers will love these great read along adventures!      |
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
German Publishers Accuse Amazon of Audiobook Monopoly
| The Association of German Publishers have filed a complaint with the European commission that Amazon has created an audiobook monopoly via their Audible unit. Each year, Germans buy more audiobooks than e-books, and the voice actors are as big as rock stars. This past summer, 20,000 Germans filled a Berlin stadium just to listen to the most popular audiobook series. In 2013 close to five million German customers have purchased an audiobook and this is a huge deal, considering this accounts for 7% of the overall population. Audiobooks is one of the hottest segments currently operating in Germany and ironically 90% of all sales stem from Audible. Alexander Skipis, the head of the German Book Trade body, said: "The business model of Amazon and Audible is aimed at destroying the excellent book trade structure in Germany. These companies are avowedly on the way to establish a monopoly." He went on to say that Audibles dominant market position to force publishers to accept "unreasonable conditions." I really doubt anything will come of the petition to the European Commission to look into Amazons audiobook practices in Germany. There is simply no homegrown companies that have built any sort of traction and the ones that do exist are fighting for less than 10% market share because they are short on cash to woo publishers to investing into their ecosystem. |
Top Manga Reading Apps for Android – 2015
| Manga e-reading apps have really grown up in the last few years as companies are starting to employ more features in order to standout in a crowded landscape. Some are trying to emulate the flat design principles that Google is hyping and others are just giving you an excellent user experience. Lets take a look at the best manga apps of 2015. Zingbox Manga – ZingBox is a free manga reader app for Android which provides the most amazing manga reading experience. You can read manga in a clean and easy-to-use interface. It supports paper-rolling, page-turning, landscape and portrait mode. What I like about this app is that they have a ton of original content. They make it easy for independent artists and self-publishers to submit their manga into their service. Manga Rock – Manga Rock is a brilliant app to read manga, not only has it one of the best reading UIs out there, but it's also extremely easy to get hold of manga as well. It can ever deliver manga in more than just English, which is great for those in other parts of Europe and even Latin America. I can't stress enough how good it is to see a developer take advantage of what Android 4.1 and above can bring to app design, the slide-out drawer and action bar are used to great effect and there's even smart use of gestures such as pinching and more. The vast variety of manga and fast speed of the app makes this a no-brainer for those already heavily invested in manga but, those just starting out will find a welcoming app to start something new. For those starting out I'd recommend just taking a look at the huge catalogue on offer and choosing something to get your teeth stuck into. Manga Rock will make your commutes quicker and your lazy Sundays more fulfilling. Don't forget to download which version you need, there's one for US residents and one for those outside of the US. Manga Box – This app was developed by DeNA who have an extensive track record of quality app development for Android. Manga Box is hosting manga from Kodansha, as well as Shogakukan and DeNA itself. The company also plans to add more publishers to the app in the future. Some of the manga featured on Manga Box are being published simultaneously in both English and Japanese, and the app is available on the iTunes Store and on Google Play in 140 countries and regions around the world. DeNA also plans to add more languages to the app in the future. Manga Box will allow users to read the 12 most recent issues of manga for free, and the users can also read the first 100 pages of the first volume of each series at all times. Shin Kibayashi (one of the many pennames of Tadashi Agi and the creator of The Drops of God, Kindaichi Case Files, and GetBackers), is serving as editor-in-chief of the app. DeNA is selling e-books and printed books of the manga published on Manga Box, and also plans “a variety of movie adaptations and merchandise based on the series in collaboration with Dentsu Inc.” Viz Manga – Viz is certainly a force to be reckoned with when it comes to manga production. They have lots of really great retro stuff such as Random 1/2, Berzerk and Bleach. The free VIZ Manga App continues to be the top application for reading digital manga and features a massive library of 2,000 volumes across nearly 200 different series. You can read manga in both portrait (where it appears as a single page) and landscape (where it appears as a two page spread) orientations. Portrait gives you a larger page, which is very nice, but landscape feels a bit more natural to me. They're both quality ways to read manga, and it's easy to adjust your reading experience to your preferred orientation. Viz's pricing is pretty good. It seems like it's divided up according to page count, with exceptions for certain titles. Most manga, such as the popular Shonen Jump or Shojo Beat titles, will run you $4.99. These books run in the neighborhood of two hundred pages, give or take a couple dozen pages. For $5.99, you can purchase longer works, from 200 to over 300 pages. This includes many of Viz's SIGIKKI books, several of which we've talked about before. These books tend to be aimed at a more mature audience than Naruto or other shonen titles. Crunchyroll Manga – Crunchyroll is best known for their television and streaming manga video app. They have dedicated apps basically for every single platform out there, including Android, Apple and Xbox. Last year they launched their impressive Android Manga Reader app and the big selling point is it has new manga chapters the same day they are released in Japan. Crunchyroll is different from almost all other manga services in one important respect: It is a streaming service. The user cannot download the manga. Given a choice between free streaming manga or download-to-own manga at a price, a substantial part of the manga audience has opted for the free service. There is no shortage of users that can use the service either, its available in almost 180 different countries. So how does the app actually perform? Crunchyroll Manga comes with a sleek, minimalistic interface and responsive swiping and zooming-in gestures, which make the reading quick and enjoyable. Also, the content, itself, looks great on a good screen. The guide mode shows you mangas, panel by panel, allowing you to focus on the drawings and observe even the smallest details. This is a great feature that no other manga apps we know of have. There is also a huge number of free chapters are available for sampling, making it easy for you to discover interesting titles. |
Amazon Kindle Basic Touch vs Kobo Touch 2.0
| Amazon and Kobo are heavily competing against each other when it comes to entry level e-Readers. The Kindle Basic came out at the tail end of 2014, whereas the new Kobo model was issued a few week ago. What device is better? Today, we evaluate the overall hardware and e-book experience. The Kobo Touch 2.0 and Kindle Basic are fairly similar when it comes to the specs. They both feature a six inch e-Ink Pearl display with a resolution of 800 x 600 at 167 ppi. It is important to note that these aren’t capacitive touch, like the Kindle Voyage or Kobo Aura, instead they are employing older Neonode Infrared technology. Underneath the hood is a 1 GHZ Freescale processor, 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal memory. The one advantage Kobo has is the ability to clone the SD card that is hidden underneath the removable back plate and boost the memory up to 32 GB. In the video we will document the design differences between these two devices and look at the main UI features. You will get a sense of what Amazon and Kobo are both doing to differentiate themselves from each other and the competition. Additionally, we will also look at the internet browser and checkout e-books.
|
1 Year of Amazon Prime Membership is $67 on September 25th
| Amazon is going to be discounting their Prime membership from $99 to $67 this Friday. This is a limited time offer that will start and end this Friday and they are doing it because of Amazon's five Emmy wins at this year's 67th PrimeTime Emmy Awards, the company says – and this is its way of celebrating. Many people are hearing about Amazons original content from their Instant Video service, due to the mainstream media attention. It is similar to Netflix, but the platform is only available in the US. Prime membership gives customers two-day, free shipping on tens of millions of items, as well as access to tens of thousands of free TV shows, movies, music, and books. It includes unlimited cloud storage for photos, too. |
A Thing Explainer word checker
| Want to try writing using only simple words? Here’s a writing checker you can use: xkcd.com/simplewriter. To help me write the words in my Up Goer Five picture, I taught my computer to watch my writing and tell me when one of the words I used wasn’t in the top ten hundred. After I put up my Up Goer picture, other people made things to check writing, too (like this one). When I decided to write Thing Explainer, I went back to the writing checker I had used and made it better. Now, I’m happy to be able to share it with everyone! To use it, just touch here and start writing. If you use a word that’s not in Thing Explainer’s set of the ten hundred, the word will turn red. (I usually count all forms of a word, like “kick” and “kicked,” together as one word, although there are a few special cases where I don’t.) Have fun explaining things! A note on the words: Some words are used more often in certain kinds of writing and talking than in others, which means different ways of counting words will give different answers for which ones we use the most. The set of ten hundred words in Thing Explainer comes from putting together many ways of counting how much people use a word to come up with a single set of ten hundred words that should sound familiar and simple to lots of people. Thank you to James Zetlen, who helped make the word checker work on other people’s computers and not just mine.  |
Fire OS 5 Adds New Accessibility Features to Fire Tablets
| Amazon’s new line of Fire tablets get released next week, and with their release comes a new operating system called Fire OS 5, aka “Bellini”. The updated software adds some new features like Kindle Word Runner, the new speed reading tool. Fire OS 5 also adds a few new accessibility features to Fire tablets for […] |
I’m going on a book trip!
| I made a book that explains things. It’s called Thing Explainer. It will be out soon! It’s a big flat book full of pictures of things with lots of parts. There are also little words that tell you what all the parts do. You can read more about it here! When my book comes out next month, I’m going to visit a lot of places with it! I’m going to New York, Seattle and Portland, San Francisco and Berkeley, Houston, Chicago and Naperville, and Toronto. If you live near one of those cities, maybe you can come see me! In each city I visit, I’ll be standing in a big room and talking to people. I’ll also be writing my name in people’s books, but only if they want me to.
Here’s how you can come see me in each city. (This part doesn’t use simple words, but that’s because I like the people whose buildings I’m visiting and don’t want to make problems by using different words from the ones on their signs and stuff.) TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24 MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30 TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3 MONDAY, DECEMBER 7 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11 Other places Can’t make any of these events, but still want a signed copy? A limited quantity of signed Thing Explainers are available to pre-order from Harvard Bookstore and Porter Square Books. Already pre-ordered your copy? Email your proof of pre-order for the print edition of Thing Explainer—either a copy of your e-receipt or photo of print receipt—and mailing address to trademarketing@hmhco.com by November 15, 2015 and you’ll be entered to win one of 300 signed bookplates, which look like this:
 |
Fire Tablets 2015 Comparison Tables
| Now that Amazon has unveiled their new lineup of Fire tablets for 2015, a lot of people are wondering how each model compares to the other new and previous Kindle Fire tablets. A few days back I updated the Kindle Comparison Table to add the new Fire tablets to the list. The table includes all […] |
Put on your pageant dresses because we’re reviewing Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy
| By Kristin Milks, a librarian and Collection Development Specialist with OverDrive Put on your Dolly records, get out your tiaras, and make sure your pageant smiles are plastered on your face because Julie Murphy's new book Dumplin' is here.
While reading this book, I told some friends that Willowdean is my new spirit animal. She is a great role model with her love of who she is even when the world (and her mother) tell her to change her body so she can be happy, even though she's already happy. She's fierce, not letting the school bully get in her way or make her or her friends feel bad. She calls people out on their baloney and when her friends do the same to her, she listens. The secondary characters were great as well. Her group of three other "misfits" who enter the pageant start becoming close and their relationships enhance the book. This book was exactly what I wanted! Its light hearted, yet tackles some issues that everybody deals with, namely the loss of a loved one, self-perception, body image, and bullying. What I really loved about this book is that it didn't over dramatize everything. It felt real because it wasn't over the top, full of angst, or melodramatic. I also enjoyed that this was a book about women sticking together for the most part. A beauty pageant invokes images of hair pulling and gossip, but Julie Murphy stayed away from that stereotype, instead showing these girls rallying behind each other. SISTERHOOD! If you're thinking you need a great YA read or you need to recommend a YA read, I HIGHLY suggest Dumplin'. It's a great read-alike to Eleanor and Park and The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things. Oh and just try NOT listening to 'Jolene' when reading this book. I dare you.  |
Oyster Closing eBook Subscription Service
| Yesterday Oyster announced on their blog that they will be closing the doors on their ebook subscription service after just 2 years of being in business. Oyster’s explanation is rather vague and ambiguous; the post reads more like a plug for reading on mobile phones than a business closure statement. Giving customers an honest explanation […] |