Nate Hoffelder

Scribd’s deal with Penguin Random House may be getting much of the attention today but they’re not the only subscription service to sign a new publisher.

Playster announced on Tuesday that it had signed deals with S&S and Harlequin to add additional titles to its subscription platform. The deal includes works from Jennifer L. Armentrout, Robyn Carr, B.J. Daniels, Jeannette Walls, Cassandra Clare, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Doris Kean Goodwin.

Like their deals with Oyster and Scribd, Simon & Schuster’s contract only covers its backlist, so it is limited to past best sellers like The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

Harlequin and S&S mark the second and third major publishers to sign with Playster, following the deal Playster signed last month with HarperCollins. All told, Playster now offers 100,000 books.

That is a decent track record for a subscription service which has so far managed to fly under the radar.

When it officially launches later this year, Playster will offer a streaming media service which will serve up movies, music, books, and games under a single subscription. Sixteen dollars a months will buy you unlimited access to a cornucopia of content which Playster says will be accessible on virtually any mobile device and web browser.

The service is in beta right now, and I’ve been playing with it for most of the afternoon. I’m not exactly overwhelmed by the selection in any single category, but I am beginning to like the diversity. Unlike most subscription services, Playster covers multiple types of content. Netflix does video, Scribd does books (3 types of books, but still books) but Playster offers video, books, and more.

I have the feeling, as I sit here writing this post, that the diversity of the content is more likely going to keep me coming back to Playster than to other services. On days where my attention span measures at "Squirrel!", I can flit from one Playster category to another without getting bored. That feels like it has more value than competing services which offer a better selection in any single category.

That said, the service is not without its problems. It’s still in beta, and some things don’t work (for example, I can’t stream movies). There’s also no iOS app (although there is an Android app in Google Play), and a lot of the games I am interested in trying require that I install Playster’s app on my PC (the install process failed).

To be fair, Playster is in beta, so they’re still working out the bugs before the planned launch this summer. No one could reasonably expect them to have a flawless platform at this point, which is why I plan to circle around and reevaluate the service as the launch day approaches.

When Huawei launched the P8 yesterday, they made it clear that this would be their flagship phone and that it would have accessories to match. That includes cases.

One of the many custom cases announced with the 5.2″ P8 smartphone yesterday was a model which adds a 4.3″ E-ink screen to the rear of the phone. This case is an optional aftermarket part which is intended to turn the P8 into a plus-sized Yotaphone 2:

There aren’t many details available at the moment (I can’t even tell you the name), but I do know the manufacturer.

Update: GizmoChina got their hands on the P8’s new case, and they revealed that the name of the case is InkCase (yes, just like the other smartphone cases developed by Oaxis).

This case was made by Oaxis/Gajah, the same consumer electronics company which developed the InkCase Plus. This connection has not been officially announced, but Oaxis inadvertently revealed the relationship on its support forum.

Like Oaxis’s other case, the P8’s new case pairs with the P8 over Bluetooth. It has its own battery and charging port.

I’m still waiting to hear back from Oaxis with more details on the features, but at this time I can report that Huawei said that it will work as an ebook reader and display your schedule, weather info, or a clock.

It sounds like the new case has the same features as the Inkcase Plus I reviewed last year, which is disappointing. The Inkcase Plus looked neat but it couldn’t do very much. The software was and is lacking, and if the P8’s new case is similarly limited then it won’t be worth buying.

The same goes for the Inkcase i6, which was developed for the iPhone 6.

AnandTech

Thanks, jjj!

Apple has been selling audiobooks for far longer than they’ve sold ebooks, but in all that time the two book formats have been divided between iBooks and iTunes. But with the next iOS update, that could change.

Apple Insider reports that with the iOS 8.4 beta release, readers will find audiobooks accessible from inside the iBooks app.

Within the iBooks app itself on an iPhone or iPad, audiobooks occupy their own unique collection, accessible from the pull-down menu at the top of the screen. Notably listeners can open a selectable tracklist for each book, and fast-forward or fast-rewind through a title by tapping and dragging the cover art.

I don’t have the update and can’t confirm the news, but I did note that the current dropdown menu lets you chose between books and PDFs. I could see where Apple might add audiobooks as an option:

To be clear, all we know at this time is that you will be able to listen to audiobooks from inside iBooks; we don’t know whether the audiobook section of iTunes will also be shifted over to the iBooks app.

That would not be a bad idea, I think. Right now I can buy audiobooks (and play them) through the Music button on my iPad. That path doesn’t make any more sense than buying the audiobooks through the iBooks app, so it would be a good idea to reorganize and shift the content from one app to the other.

In related news, the iOS8.4 update will also give CarPlay users a new Audiobooks app. According to AI, It’s going to have the iBooks icon.

iOS8.4 is in beta, and it isn’t expected before Apple’s WWDC event in June.

image  by ActuaLitté

The Kobo Glo HD may be the most anticipated ereader to launch this year but it is not the only one to ship in the next few weeks. A leaked product listing has revealed that Pocketbook has a new 6″ ebook reader in the works.

The Touch Lux 3 sports a 6″ Carta E-ink screen. It’s up for pre-order on Mein-eReader.de with a retail price of €111 and an expected ship date of two weeks.

Weighing in at 208 grams, the Touch Lux 3 runs Pocketbook’s software on a 1GHz CPU with 256MB RAM. It has 4GB internal storage, a microSD card slot, Wifi, but no audio. The screen has a resolution of 1024 x 758, and as you could guess from the name this model has both a frontlight and a touchscreen (capacitive).

All in all there’s not much here to surprise us. The Touch Lux 3 looks like a slight update to the existing model, and not the monumental upgrade that the Kindle Voyage was last year, or that I’m hoping the Kobo Glo HD will be this year.

It looks like Pocketbook is playing it much safer this year than last. In 2014, the company released two novel designs: the Inkpad, an 8″ ereader, and the Ultra, a 6″ ereader with a Carta E-ink screen and an 5MP camera. One was great while the other was crap, but both were more interesting than the Touch Lux 3.

Let’s hope Pocketbook’s next device does something new, but if it doesn’t then there is always the CAD Reader, the 13.3″ ereader Pocketbook has been working on since December 2013.

AlleseBook.de

The months-long contract negotiation between HarperCollins and its biggest customer came to an abrupt end today with the news that the two parties had signed a multi-year contract.

Few details are available at this time, but we do know that a HarperCollins spokesperson said in a statement that "HarperCollins has reached an agreement with Amazon. Our books will continue to be available on the Amazon print and digital platforms".

The WSJ is speculating that this means that the contract calls for HarperCollins to set the retail prices of its ebooks, with incentives for HarperCollins to provide lower prices to consumers. That’s more or less what was whispered about the contracts Amazon signed with Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster last year, so it is probably true.

Last October, Amazon reached an agreement with Simon & Schuster which covered both ebooks and paper books. A few weeks later Amazon came to terms with Hachette Book Group, followed in December by a contract with Macmillan.

And now Amazon has a deal with HarperCollins, putting an end to the speculation that the two were approaching a showdown.

While we don’t have specifics on any of the contracts, we do know that the earlier contracts were referred to as agency lite. But I’m not so sure that term is accurate.

Given the price tags the 3 publishers were hanging on their ebooks when I checked in late March, I don’t think we should use the term "lite" as an adjective. I think they should simply be called agency contracts, because as far as a consumer is concerned there is nothing "lite" about them.

They are straight up agency contracts, and that means that there are now 4 publishers whose ebooks I will not be buying. It’s not just that I have a philosophical objection to agency pricing, but also that the prices are higher than I am willing to pay.

image by Philip Taylor PT

The US ebook market has shown every sign of having gotten boring but other markets are still much more active. CB Logistics, the leading ebook distributor in the Netherlands, just released a new infographic which reveals that Dutch ebook sales are growing by leaps and bounds.

Dutch publishers now distribute 37,190 titles, up from 33 thousand last July.  The majority of the titles (85%) are sold as Epub, with PDF (13%) coming in a distant second place. (Kindle format sales aren’t being tracked at this time).

Two-thirds of the ebook sales being tracked involved either no DRM or minimal DRM (digital watermarks). The remaining third of sales were handled through ecosystems, which in this case means Kobo and Tolino (also Apple, Amazon, Google, and Nook). Kobo had formed a partnership with Bol.com last fall, and Tolino recruited a bookstore coop in September, and clearly they are making their presence felt.

Thanks to the close attention of Kobo, Tolino, and Amazon, the Dutch ebook market continues to grow. eBooks made up 26% of online sales and 5.2% of total sales, up significantly from last July (23% and 3%, respectively).

CB Logistics doesn’t break the market share figure down by quarter, but instead averages it over the previous 12 months. That makes it difficult to estimate the growth rate, but if we compare the figures from last July to the ones from today it’s easy to see that eBooks are on their way to doubling their market share in only a year.

There’s nothing like marketing to a captive audience. TV commercials make use of that idea, and pretty soon a new startup called Rook will launch a service which offers free ebooks to users so long as they remain at their current location.

The Guardian reports that later this spring Rook will release an app which will provide "location-based free access to ebooks". Under Rook’s system, readers will be able to read an ebook for free so long as they remain at the coffee shop, commuter, train, or other location where they first opened it.  Should the reader leave, they’ll have the option of buying the ebook.

Rook is at the London Book Fair this week, where they plan to announce a couple publishing partners. The service is launching this spring in London and NYC.

This is a nifty idea which I’ve been wanting to see someone turn it into a startup ever since B&N announced the Read In Store program in 2010. That program lets Nook owners read for up to an hour a day in Barnes & Noble stores, but B&N never hit on the idea of expanding the program to include other locations (airports, coffee shops, libraries, etc).

B&N’s program is still running, and there have been similar programs on Spanish, French, German, and American rail systems which let you read ebooks for free.  So far as I know only the French effort is widely available; the other programs are limited to specific lines.

And now Rook is turning the idea into a retail operation.

Coincidentally, Rook is up for an innovation award at the London Book Fair. They were also nominated for a similar award at Futurebook’s conference last fall.

I don’t see what is innovative about building a business on a 5-year-old idea, but then again I also don’t see how Rook is going to cover its costs. They’re saying at the LBF that their revenue will come from retail:

#PDMC15 #LBF15 @getrook makes its money when a reader pays to keep reading out of the original area.

— Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) April 13, 2015

I just don’t see that happening.

I would expect that a reader might find a book in Rook’s app and then go on to buy it from their preferred source, be it a local bookstore, Amazon, or some 3rd-party app. I don’t foresee a significant number of readers tying themselves to yet another reading app, and if I’m right then Rook would be better offer sending readers to other stores and collecting a commission.

But even if I am wrong Rook is still going to have to compete for a reader’s attention. They’ll have to fight against the ebooks, games, and other content a customer carries on their mobile device. Those customers may be a captive market but they’ve already been captured by someone else, and that is going to make Rook’s job that much harder.

So how will Rook proceed? I don’t know, but I’ve reached out to Rook. I will post their response.

Rook

image by craigdfreeman

When the Earl was first announced in May 2013 it was an Android tablet with a 6″  E-ink screen, a solar panel, a bevy of sensors, and a firm ship date in late summer 2013.

Two years later and the Earl has gone through multiple hardware revisions, missed multiple ship dates, and it’s still nowhere near ready to enter production.

According to the latest update, the Earl tablet will be delayed past the end of 2015. When or if the Earl arrives it will look nothing like the concept design we first saw two years ago:

Sqigle, the company developing the Earl, had revealed several months ago that they were parting ways with their existing hardware partner, Onyx. The two companies had concluded that they had reached the limits of Onyx’s abilities and experience, so it was time to bring in a replacement.

Here’s where I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that the new partner is Netronix, a company with nearly a decade of experience in developing ereaders for dozens of companies.

The bad news is that bringing Netronix in means that the entire design is getting tossed out the window, a "full reboot" as Sqigle put it. Netronix wants to use their in-house resources to develop the production unit.

They project that they’ll have the Earl finished and ready to ship to backers in 9 months.

The new model will feature a modular design based around a flexible 4.7″ E-ink screen, not the 6″ screen found on the original prototype. Sqigle noted that after two years of working with the prototypes, "we’ve found a rugged tablet in most scenarios required the use of both hands. Other than reading guide books or maps, almost every other feature functions better on a smaller display."

Sqigle went on to add:

While we wait for a preliminary design from Netronix, we’re working to setup a new office here in Seattle. Working remotely with the new team will be much more manageable and it looks as though I won’t need to fly as much. My next trip to Taiwan shouldn’t be until the end of May. We expected to grow into a company like Netronix, but with this opportunity we’ll have to hit the ground running. Development costs have effectively doubled, not only do we need more funding, we need more customers. We’re planning to spend the next couple months putting together a dedicated marketing, sales and support team. We fully intend to fulfill our promise, though components may have changed, the original idea is still here. We’re pushing forward and with your continued support we’ll be able to finally bring Earl to life!

While this is quite the dark cloud, there is a silver lining.

Two years have passed since the Earl was first announced, and in that time the ereader and mobile device markets have advanced significantly. E-ink screens are better, the frontlight is now an established technology, and mobile electronics are both cheaper and more energy-efficient that they were a mere two years ago.

Sqigle has also had two years to work on the software which will run on the Earl. Not all Android apps like running on E-ink screens; graphic intensive apps like map apps tend to choke, freeze, or crash, and Sqigle has had time to work their way through the potential conflicts.

We could see the benefit of the overlong development cycle when the Earl finally ships, but after two years of waiting I won’t be getting my hopes up.

Kobo took a low-key approach with the launch of its newest ereader earlier this week. The Kobo Glo HD might be amazing and priced to disrupt Amazon, but hardly anyone has put their hands on the 6 inch ereader.

I’ve been watching Youtube for the past couple days, and so far I’ve found just the one video. It’s not long, but it is better than nothing. The video was shot at the breakfast launch event on Tuesday, and it takes the Glo HD through its paces.

So tell me, have you seen any other videos?

To be honest, I’m having trouble finding any photos of the device, much less videos. There’s so little first hand reporting that it is almost as if Kobo didn’t want anyone to see their new Kindle killer.

Given that the Kobo Glo HD has a screen resolution comparable to the Kindle Voyage but is priced the same as the Kindle Paperwhite, I find that very puzzling – also frustrating. If you see a report from someone who actually put their hands on the Glo HD, let me know. I want to read it.

The Kobo Glo HD is scheduled to ship in the US and Canada on 1 May. It will go up for pre-order next week on Kobo.com, and can be pre-ordered on the Chapter.Indigo.ca website.

Amazon has hit a snag in the launch of its Russian Kindle Store. Several local sources have reported that the Kindle now requires a special license before it can be imported into Russia.

The-eBook.org, Pro-Book.ru, and novostiliteratury.ru all report that a "specialist in information security" (?) by the name of Alex Lukatskii had recently tried and failed to import a Kindle Paperwhite. He was reportedly told by DHL that the Paperwhite had been rejected by Russian customs agents because it used encryption DRM.

Curiously enough, only the Kindle Paperwhite is banned; we have no similar reports about the cheaper Kindle. Both devices have been available in Russia since 2013, and according to one comment on The-eBook.org, the Paperwhite has been banned in Russia since January 2014.

The commenter was puzzled why this story counted as news when it was a year old. That was an important detail because without it I would have written this story off as an unverified urban legend found on Facebook – even with the confirmation that Russia does have import regulations covering encryption systems.

More so than most countries, Russia has strict import regulations for encryption. Where most countries would at least let you bring in a device for person use, that exemption doesn’t always fly in Russia.

Devices which incorporate encryption can be imported, but they sometimes require an import license. Thanks to the DRM used on the Kindle platform, the Kindle Paperwhite has run afoul of that regulation, and it is effectively banned in Russia.

Update: Or perhaps not. I now have conflicting reports that Amazon did secure the import permit (Thanks, Vladimir!), and that Paperwhites have made it through customs. (Thanks, Alex!)

via Digital-book.ru

Following tense months-long negotiations with Amazon, HarperCollins is reportedly planning to force ebook retailers to adopt agency pricing as early as next week.

Publishers Lunch reports that:

Multiple retailers report that Harper has informed them their selling terms will change as of Tuesday, April 14. (The change is actually effective midnight Pacific time, rather than Eastern. Amazon would be among those companies that naturally end their business day on Pacific time.) Harper is requiring retailers to implement all price changes within 24 hours.

Going forward Harper will require that their ebooks be sold at the publisher’s listed consumer price, without any discounts.

The notice going out to retailers is an interim measure; HC hasn’t signed contracts with all the retailers just yet. Something tells me that they have signed a new contract with Amazon, and that it will go into effect next week.

This comes as no surprise.

When I first reported on the HarperCollins-Amazon dispute earlier this month, I noted that many titles from Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan were showing that the prices were set by the publisher. That used to indicate that the ebooks were being sold under an agency agreement where the publisher set the price and the retailer was forbidden to discount.

In the past 6 months Amazon had negotiated contracts with Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. Those contracts were described at the time as agency lite, but in retrospect I don’t think that term is accurate.

I was surveying ebook prices in the Kindle Store in late March when I noticed that nearly all the more popular titles from Simon & Schuster and Hachette mentioned that the prices were set by the publishers. Many Macmillan titles also had that notice (not Macmillan AUS or Palgrave Macmillan titles, though).

I concluded that Simon & Schuster and Hachette had a stronger agency deal than previously expected, and sarcastically suggested that HarperCollins wasn’t satisfied with the outright agency terms the other publishers enjoyed.

For a statement made in jest, that was surprisingly prophetic.

image by msbhaven

One of the three big names in subscription ebooks suddenly decided to launch a retail ebookstore to complement its Netflix-style unlimited service. Am I the only one who wondered why?

Earlier today many news sources reported that Oyster was launching an ebookstore. They’re saying that the startup is trying to take on Amazon, or that Amazon is under attack, or stuff like Oyster wanted to take on both Amazon and Apple.

I’m coming to this story late in the day not because I missed out on the pre-brief (I got it, actually) but because I spent some time thinking about why Oyster launched the ebookstore.

To put it simply, Amazon has nothing to do with it. Here’s why that premise is wrong:

• An ebookstore with its own proprietary DRM and walled garden is not a threat to Amazon (exception: Apple, with its huge hardware platform).
• An ebookstore which only sells in the US is not a serious threat to Amazon.

So why did Oyster launch an ebookstore?

To explain that, I’ll have to share some background.

Founded in late 2012, Oyster has run a subscription ebook service for the past 18 months. It offers a million title strong catalog which users can read on Android, on the iPad/iPhone, or in the web browser. The service costs $10 a month and is limited to the US.

Oyster has ebooks from 3 of the 5 major US trade publishers as well as a bunchaton of other publishers, including indie authors. But the service doesn’t have nearly as many titles as the Kindle Store. In comparison, the major ebookstores carry millions and millions and millions of titles.

That difference in selection is the indirect explanation for Oyster’s new ebookstore. Tell me, what do you think is the most common reason given for cancelling a subscription ebook service like Oyster?

If you answered "I can’t find the ebooks I want" then you won the prize.

Folks, this is why I say that customer retention is Oyster’s focus here, not Amazon. Oyster might not be losing all that many subscribers each month, but they were losing some.

But now Oyster can promise to sell the ebooks which it was unable to lend, and that is going to keep some subscribers from leaving. Or at least that is what will happen in the long run; the ebookstore only has a million titles at the moment. The catalog does include titles from the Big 5 (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster) as well as titles from smaller publishers like  Scholastic, Harlequin, Norton, and Chronicle.

Customer retention is not as amazeballs hypeworthy as competing with Amazon, but it is a critical part of any service.

Today Oyster repaired a deficiency, making them more competitive against their immediate competitor, Scribd. The latter company offers a more diverse selection of formats, and it too has an ebookstore (albeit one with a limited catalog).

P.S. I’ll be adding an early review of the ebookstore in the comments. What did you think of it?

If you’re one of the millions of Americans with dyslexia then I have some good news for you.

OverDrive rolled out an update last week which added a new font option to its mobile apps. Install the new app and you’ll find that you can switch the font to OpenDyslexic.

You can see a sample of the font at right.

OpenDyslexic is one of a number of fontfaces which are intended help those with dyslexia better comprehend the words they are seeing. The fonts are drafted to emphasis certain parts of each character to make them easier to differentiate. Common design elements include giving certain parts of the characters thicker lines, varying the length of the projecting bits on characters like b, d, g and p, and slanting characters.

If this is your first encounter with OpenDyslexic, here’s a larger sample:

OpenDyslexic wasn’t the first dyslexic font, but it was the first released under an open source license. Other dyslexic fonts like Dyslexie are licensed at a high cost. All of the fonts have the same general goal, though: they’re supposed to make reading easier for people with dyslexia.

However, some experts don’t believe that the fonts help reading comprehension. As a layperson who doesn’t have dyslexia, I can’t tell you one way or another. But I do think it’s better to have options.

The fonts were added last week, but the news just crossed my desk today. (In related news, OD also added new audiobook features to its Android app.)

I’ve tested the font myself and can confirm that it works in OD’s iPad app. I can’t say the same for the Android app; I was able to select the font but it did not show up in the ebook. Hopefully I found a bug unique to my Android tablet, but if not then OD can always fix it in the next update.