Nate Hoffelder

Editor’s Note: The following post was originally written on Twitter by @SuperWendy. I edited it and republished it here because I agree with the sentiment.

Over the past few years many blogs, both independent and run by Big Business, have shut down. This leaves many readers sad and wondering what they can do. Well, here’s an idea – how about the care and feeding of your favorite bloggers?

Here’s the thing – support comes in all shapes and sizes and doesn’t necessarily mean $$$$. Acknowledgment, a "well done you" every now and then – these are small things but deeply appreciated.

When was the last time you:

• Commented on a post?
• Signal-boosted a link on Twitter or Facebook?
• Bought something using the blog’s affiliate links?

You can’t be sad about bloggers disappearing and then do nothing about it; it would be like mourning the death of local retailers while shopping at Amazon.

O O O

I have always wanted to say this but have never found a tactful way to do so. In fact, I feel so strongly about this that I have tried to turn the post into a graphic for other bloggers to post on their site. (My efforts have not been successful.)

Alas, there aren’t that many bloggers left. Most of the really interesting people I follow are writing on either FB or Twitter. That is fine except if you don’t catch what they are writing  when they are writing it then you will probably never see it. And since both Twitter and FB now decide what you get to see, chances are you won’t see someone’s clever writing in the first place.

That shortcoming is a good reason to support writers who still keep up their own blog, wouldn’t you agree?

P.S. The above text was edited and shared with permission of the original author. Neither of would mind if you reshared the text so long as you give credit.

It has come to my attention that there is still some doubt as to whether a certain blog has a reputation for being less than reliable with its reporting of "exclusive" hardware rumors.

In the interest of settling the issue once and for all, this blog post will be used to document the many, many, many times that Good e-Reader reported a rumor that did not come true.

This post aspires to be comprehensive but it is a work in progress, and more examples will be added over time. I would appreciate any help you can provide.

O O O

In November 2015 that blog claimed Amazon would release the Kindle Voyage 2 that month. Fact check: No such device was launched.

In September 2015 that blog claimed Amazon would release the Kindle Voyage 2 that month. Fact check: No such device was launched.

In February 2018, that blog copied another blogger’s story lamenting the lack of a Kobo mini, and four hours later claimed that Kobo was seriously considering releasing a Kobo mini 2. Fact check: No such device was launched.

In August 2017 that blog claimed Amazon was teasing Alexa on the Kindle. Fact check: This claim is based on a statement that reads more like a "no comment" than a teasing yes, and no such device has been released.

In March 2014 that blog claimed the Paperwhite 3 would have a flexible screen. Fact check: Amazon didn’t mention it in the press release or on the product page.

In April 2018 that blog took a post where I asked readers whether they thought the Paperwhite 4 would have a color-changing "comfortlight" frontlight and spun it into a claim that the device would actually have one.  Fact check: The Paperwhite 4 did not have this frontlight when it launched in late 2018.

In September 2020 that blog claimed the Paperwhite 5 would have a color-changing "comfortlight" frontlight.  Fact check: Undetermined.

In 2016 that blog used my April Fools Day joke as the source for an exclusive story that Amazon was developing a Kindle with a Liquavista screen. Fact check: No such device was ever launched.

In April 2016 that blog claimed that Kobo would launch a new ereader by Mother’s Day. (This inspired a meme about that blog’s rumors over at MobileRead.) Fact check: It didn’t happen. Kobo’s new hardware didn’t even show up at the FCC that year until June, and they launched in August.

In April 2014 that blog claimed that Sony and Kobo were collaborating on a 6″ ereader with a flexible screen. Fact check: No such device was ever launched.

In May 2011 that blog claimed that Amazon would allow Epub on the Kindle. Fact check: This never happened.

Earlier today (24 December 2018) that blog copied another blogger’s speculation about whether Amazon will release another premium Kindle and reported that the Kindle Voyage 2 is going to be released in 2019. Fact check: No such device was launched.

In January 2019 that blog claimed Kobo would release an ereader with audiobook support on Mother’s Day. Fact check: It did not happen.

In October 2018 that blog declared that Sony was going to release a new 13.3″ Digital Paper in 2019. Fact check: No such device was launched.

On 19 February 2019 that blog claimed Amazon wold release a new basic Kindle and a new Kindle Voyage. Fact check: They guessed right 50% this time.

in November 2019 that claimed Sony would release a new 13.3″ Digital Paper in 2020. Fact check: This did not happen.

In August 2019 that blog claimed that Amazon would release a new Kindle Voyage in 2020. Fact check: This did not happen.

In February 2020 that blog claimed Kobo would launch a  device that is "half an e-reader and half something else". Fact check: No such device was launched.

In July 2020 that blog claimed that B&N had stopped selling Android tablets. Fact check: B&N has denied this report, saying that they are merely out of stock.

In November 2020 that blog claimed the Kindle Paperwhite 5 would ship in 2021. Fact check: Undetermined.

In December 2020 that blog claimed a new entry-level Kindle would ship soon. Fact check: Undetermined.

There may not be any honor among thieves, but there is certainly a collegial quid pro quo among tech companies.

The NYTimes published a story yesterday that explained just why Facebook was so good at knowing what you bought on Amazon and how Amazon knew all your FB friends. It turns out that Facebook has been illegally sharing your data with a whole bunch of companies.

For years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews.

The special arrangements are detailed in hundreds of pages of Facebook documents obtained by The New York Times. The records, generated in 2017 by the company’s internal system for tracking partnerships, provide the most complete picture yet of the social network’s data-sharing practices. They also underscore how personal data has become the most prized commodity of the digital age, traded on a vast scale by some of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley and beyond.

…

The social network allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.

The social network permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends’ posts as recently as this summer, despite public statements that it had stopped that type of sharing years earlier.

When countries do this, we call it spying, and there is at least some political oversight. But when tech companies do it, they try to keep it as secret as possible, claiming that it is completely legal and above board.

And yet for some reason they won’t tell users what is being shared, and it’s not even clear that regulators know exactly what data was passed or if Facebook’s conspirators (such as Hauwei, Yandex, and Amazon) used it legally.

Hell, there’s evidence that even Facebook doesn’t know how its partners used the data. Several say they were never audited by FB.

Furthermore, these partnerships were almost certainly illegal:

Data privacy experts disputed Facebook’s assertion that most partnerships were exempted from the regulatory requirements, expressing skepticism that businesses as varied as device makers, retailers and search companies would be viewed alike by the agency. “The only common theme is that they are partnerships that would benefit the company in terms of development or growth into an area that they otherwise could not get access to,” said Ashkan Soltani, former chief technologist at the F.T.C.

Mr. Soltani and three former employees of the F.T.C.’s consumer protection division, which brought the case that led to the consent decree, said in interviews that its data-sharing deals had probably violated the agreement.

“This is just giving third parties permission to harvest data without you being informed of it or giving consent to it,” said David Vladeck, who formerly ran the F.T.C.’s consumer protection bureau. “I don’t understand how this unconsented-to data harvesting can at all be justified under the consent decree.”

When I first read the headline I wondered what law Facebook had broken this time. By the time I got to the end of the piece I wondered if it might be easier to instead list the ones they hadn’t broken.

On the upside, this story did inspire me to invent a new party game. You play it by thinking up the worst possible thing for Facebook could have done and then try to guess how long we’ll have to wait before we find out that Facebook already did it last year.

My entry in this game is that some time in the next 6 months we’ll find out Facebook has a data-sharing agreement with the Saudi gov’t, and that the FB data was used to target Jamal Khashoggi for assassination.

I know I have a reputation for being inflammatory, but let’s not forget that data is Facebook’s stock in trade, and that FB has a record of sharing your data with just about everyone. Hell, Facebook even knew it was selling ads to the Russian government that influenced the 2016 election; what makes you think they didn’t pass data to the Saudis?

image by Book Catalog via Flickr

The internet has made many jobs redundant in much the same way that the word processor made the typing pool a thing of the past, and nowhere is that more true that in the book industry.

USA Today just published a list of industries that lost the most employees over the last decade, and the various parts of the book industry made the list no fewer than three times as positions go the way of the buggy whip.

24. Book and periodical merchant wholesalers

• Employment change 2008-17: -37.6%
• Employment total: 36,184
• Wage growth 2008-17: +7.9%
• Avg. annual wage: $44,372

Book and periodical merchant wholesalers is one of many industries that has been hit hard by the rise in the digital media industry. As people increasingly read their book, magazine, and newspaper content online, book and periodical wholesales are seeing reduced demand from retailers. With the industry in decline, employment has dropped 37.6% over the past decade.

…

13. Book stores and news dealers

• Employment change 2008-17: -43.3%
• Employment total: 81,003
• Wage growth 2008-17: +22.5%
• Avg. annual wage: $38,779

With the growing use of digital media, from newspapers to magazines to books, as well as growing competition from online retailers, the book retailing industry has taken a battering. Amazon has about 50% of the U.S. market book market share, while the largest brick-and-mortar book retailer, Barnes & Noble, has about 20%. One in eight Barnes & Noble locations have shuttered in the past seven years. Overall, employment in the book stores and news dealers industry has declined by 43.3% from 2008 to 2017

12. Support activities for printing

• Employment change 2008-17: -44.2%
• Employment total: 23,920
• Wage growth 2008-17: +126.6%
• Avg. annual wage: $52,346

Support activities for printing is yet another industry struggling due in part to increased digitization – employment decline in the industry over the past decade was one of the largest. Fewer than 24,000 Americans remain working in the support activities for printing industry, down from nearly 43,000 in 2008. The industry includes book binding, embossing, and engraving. But books, magazines, and stationary are quickly being replaced with online versions of the products.

Automation, outsourcing, and the changing technological landscape are expected to cost these industries even more jobs in the future. Martin Kohli, chief regional economist for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, said that in the next decade publishing jobs will likely continue to decline. “Our 10 year projections did show continued shrinkage in print publishing,” Kohli said.

That cold draft you just felt isn’t from the gaps around the door; it’s the Grim Reaper, coming for your job.

image by Sigfrid Lundberg via Flickr

A new FCC filing has brought my attention to a new ereader (and related tech) startup called Team UC.

This company just sent a Netronix ereader through the FCC, and for some strange reason they hid all of the interesting details. Luckily, the Netronix model number lead me to the listing on Netronix’s website which gave away all the interesting details.

The E60QR2 is a 6.8″ ereader that runs Android on a 1GHz CPU with 512MB RAM. The stock design comes equipped with both a capacitive touchscreen and an electromagnetic stylus, and it would appear to also have a frontlight.

This ereader has Wifi but not Bluetooth, and its screen resolution is 1440 x 1080 (265 ppi). While I don’t know the dimensions, the listing does say the battery capacity is 1.5Ah.

There’s no word on when it will reach the market.

I have contacted Team UC for more info, and I also asked them about the digital signage products mentioned on their website. They are showing E-ink’s 32″ screens as products they carry, and I hope that means we can actually buy them.

FCC

It looks like Amazon is losing interest in opening new bookstores. It has recently either abandoned or adapted three Amazon Books locations, raising questions whether Amazon is going to continue opening new bookstores.

This story came to my attention this morning when I read in the Idaho Statesman that Amazon had let its plans for a bookstore outside of Boise, Idaho, fall through. The store had been announced in March when Amazon filed the initial permits, but Amazon never followed through on completing the paperwork, and according to the landlord is no longer interested in the location.

This reminded me that about a month ago Amazon opened an "Amazon 4-star" store outside of Denver. According to what I found back in March, the location was going to be an Amazon Books location (and I reported it as such) but apparently Amazon changed its mind.

And then there’s Atlanta.

Last November I reported that Amazon was opening a bookstore at the Lenox Square Mall. Amazon had filed construction permits for that location for an Amazon Books store, but I confirmed this morning that public records show Amazon never followed through on completing the permits, nor have they opened the store.

Once is an anomaly, twice is a coincidence, but three times  – well, that is a trend.

Amazon opened its first bookstore in Seattle in 2015.  It currently lists 18 16 open and 2 planned Amazon Books locations on its website. The newest store opened in Bethesda, MD, in June, and the two stores under development could very well be Amazon’s last two bookstores.

Update: Amazon has updated their site since I published this post. They changed the list of Amazon Books locations, which is why I crossed out the sentences above. Also, the Cherry Creek Amazon Books location in Denver is not yet listed. Amazon won’t discuss it, so this might be the 4th bookstore Amazon cancels.

Bookstores are no longer the apple in Amazon’s eye; instead, the retailer is focused on opening cashier-less Amazon Go stores. There are reports that Amazon is meeting with multiple airport authorities to discuss putting Amazon Go stores in airports (FOIA requests are wonderful).

These stores would almost be upsized versions of the vending machines Amazon first started installing in airports and malls four or five years ago, and they might even carry a few books. But they won’t be bookstores.

Amazon was queried before this post was written, and I will update this post if they say anything interesting.

image by anokarin via Flickr

Bowker likes to claim that their ISBN book serial numbers (the ones that come with a free side of credit card fraud) can be used to count the number of indie titles published each year. This obviously isn’t true, but their annual report is good for one thing.

It’s a good way to track the decline and fall of Author Solutions, the vanity press that Penguin Scamdom House sold off in 2016. Given that all Author Solutions package deals include one, ISBN registrations is a good way to estimate its activity.

As I reported a couple years ago, Author Solutions has been in a decline since 2011. As indie authors rose, Author Solutions fell, until they were only registering half as many ISBNs in 2015 as they did in 2012.

And according to the Bowker report released last month, things have only gotten slightly better for Author Solutions in the past two years. Following a brief spike in ISBN registrations in 2016, Author Solutions' ISBN use fell in 2017 to within 5% or 6% of their figures for 2015.

Looking at the print and ebook charts, it’s clear that the resurgence was entirely in ebooks.  Author Solutions isn’t registering nearly as many ebook ISBNs as they did at their peak, but they did register more in 2017 than in 2015.

Author Solutions' print ISBN usage continues to decline, however. They only registered half as many in 2017 as they did in 2012.

While it is pleasing to watch a scammer’s decline and fall, I’m still meeting a lot of authors at book fairs who were fleeced by Author Solutions.

Clearly there’s a need for a more aggressive public awareness campaign.

Let me see what I can do about that.

P.S. Remember a couple weeks ago when I said I decided to start giving a damn again? This is me giving a damn.

image by Leeber via Flickr

One of the favorite pastimes of the publishing community is sharing author income survey reports, and wringing hands over the results. The reports are usually bullshit for various reasons (more on this in a later post), and usually wildly misinterpreted.

Both generalizations are true in the case of The Writers' Union of Canada annual report on its members' income.

The TWUC’s report was publishing last month, but it only crossed my desk last night when the CBC covered it.

It’s a story as old as the craft itself: an impoverished author, serving coffee or scrubbing floors while writing what would become a seminal novel.

Except in Canada today, tales of financial hardship extend to writers who are established, have published several books and even those who have won major prizes.

When the Writers' Union of Canada recently surveyed its members about their incomes, the results were sobering: an average writer made $9,380 a year from his or her writing. That’s 27 per cent less than what writers made three years ago, and a whopping 78 per cent less than they made in 1998.

The problem with this report is the makeup of the survey group.

If you go download the report from the TWUC website, you’ll see that, of the 1,499 respondents, 62% are  over the age of sixty (another 20% of the survey group were in their fifties).

The thing about this age distribution is that only about 31% of Canada’s adult population is over the age of 60 (Wikipedia).

What’s even crazier is that 31% of the survey group were over the age of 70, while at the same that age cohort only makes up about 14.4% of Canada’s adult population. This population is over-represented in the survey group even though they are statistically more likely to be dead than working.

This survey is not a representative sample of the population, and should not have been published. Then again, the same can be said for just about all surveys on author income.

The problem with these surveys is that they are conducted by groups living in the past. All of these groups share the assumption that author income is controlled by external forces when in reality author income is market-driven. Writing is a skill and writer and author are both professions.

An author’s income is dependent on how good they are at marketing their work, but do you ever hear one of these reports being framed in those terms?

Nope. Every time one of these reports is published, the group behind it always talk about somehow changing the external forces that supposedly control authors' incomes. They never talk about this business matter in terms of authors learning to be better business people; oh no, authoring is a noble calling, and it cannot be sullied with crass commerce.

Any group that feels this way has achieved the zenith of irrelevancy, and should be allowed to continue to wither away into nothing.

Next!

image by waferboard via Flickr

As promised, Amazon’s Black Friday deals start today, and they are so good that they are well worth tearing yourself away from the table.

Amazon doesn’t have either of their newer Kindles on sale, but they did put the older Kindle Paperwhite on sale as well as several Kindle Fire models. Amazon also knocked $80 off the price of the 2018 iPad (I would get one to replace the iPad I misplaced 3 years ago, but I missed out).

Kindle deals

• Fire Tablet 7 ($20 off) – $29
• Fire HD 8 ($30 off) – $49
• Fire HD 10 ($50 off) – $99 

• Paperwhite 4 – $129 (it comes with 6 months free, Kindle Unlimited)
• Paperwhite 3 – $79
• Paperwhite 3 essentials bundle ($60 off) – $119

• 3 months Kindle Unlimited – $0.99

Other eReader deals

• Kobo Aura 2 ($30 off) –  $99
• Sony DPT-RP1 Digital Paper ($100 off) – $599
• Sony DPT-CP1 Digital Paper ($100 off) – $499
• Kobo Clara HD  ($30 off) – $109 CAD

I’ve never been one to mark the anniversary of this blog. I started it in January 2010 on the spur of the moment, and generally maintained that attitude of "hey, now that’s a cool idea – let’s do it". This tended to get in the way planning things like anniversary celebrations (and back when I attended CES in the first week of January every year I didn’t really have the energy for a celebration, anyway).

But as I sit here today, it is two months and eight days until this blog’s ninth anniversary, and I have decided I am going to do something different.

This time around I am going to celebrate the anniversary of the blog, and also its relaunch.

To put it another way, I have started to give a damn about the blog again.

I don’t know if you noticed, but for the past year and a half or so I have regarded this blog as a failed project. I looked at the falling weekly traffic reports, and counted the ever-declining number of comments, and grew depressed about the inevitability of site traffic eventually dwindling away to nothing. This belief came to be reflected in the care (or rather, the lack of care) I was putting into things like proofing blog posts. (After all, why bother investing in something that is going to die anyway?)

The reason I bring that up is that I don’t believe that any more.

One of the things I did this past week was to try to quantify what exactly is a good conversion rate for a site’s mailing list when compared to page views. I still don’t have an answer to that, but looking at my monthly traffic stats made me realize that this blog still has a lot of traffic compared to a lot of sites.

I now see this blog as being the metaphorical glass half-full rather than half-empty. (As I said, I have started to give a damn about the blog again.)

So, the anniversary.

I’m going to spend the next couple months thinking about what should be done with this blog. I’m also going to be thinking of how I can thank readers, commenters, and contributors, including those who have been here since the beginning and those who read the blog now.

My current plan is to give away Kindle Fire tablets in contests. (Or is that too generic, do you think?)

For example, I’ll hold a raffle which you can enter by telling me the original name of the blog. I’ll also give away a Kindle Fire tablet to the longest running active commenter (or maybe not; I don’t think my very first commenter – who I hope is still following the blog – would want a Kindle Fire).

Those contests are just ideas at this point; I’m still in the throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks phase. But I am looking at having several contests, and thus several prizes (where several is defined as being between three and seven).

Oh, I know that I will have at least one contest that you can enter by making suggestions about what I should cover on the blog. I have always valued feedback and input but I don’t know that I have really made it clear, so I hope this contest will show that I am putting my money where my mouth is.

Anyway, this was me running my keyboard off.

What do you think?

We’re five days away from the official launch of Gutenberg, the new WordPress post and page editor, and I finally have an answer to one of the most important questions:

No, WordPress.com users will not be forced to use it (at this time).

Mike Cane tipped me to the news that Gutenberg is being promoted to WordPress.com users. Users have the option to switch between the Gutenberg and what is being called the WordPress.com "classic editor".  Yes, you can switch, and those of us who prefer the traditional WordPress admin menus can still use those menus. (See the FAQ for more detail.)

For those who are just hearing about this for the first time, Gutenberg is the name given to the new WordPress post editor. It is intended to make it easy for you to make richly formatted pages and blog posts, and has been under development for about 18 months now. On WordPress.com, it will look something like this:

Gutenberg has been a contentious topic in the WordPress community. Support for Gutenberg comes primarily from above, while a significant minority of users have pushed back and pointed out that we are quite happy with the features of the existing editor. In fact, the "Classic Editor" plugin that is intended to disable Gutenberg actually has almost as many users as the official Gutenberg beta-testing plugin.

If you have a WordPress site, you should familiarize yourself with Gutenberg and decide whether you want to use it:

• Gutenberg, WordPress, & You: the What, the Why, and the How
• Gutenberg Will be Released with WordPress 5.0 on 19 November – Here’s What You Need to Do

My recommendation is that you avoid it for now, and wait for the developers to wrk out all the bugs.