The internet is making us dumb.

You may have read Nicholas Carr espousing the idea, and I’m sure you’ve seen the research that shows that concentration and comprehension suffers when reading online, and now we have authors suggesting that books should be written for shorter attention spans.

I think that is a terrible idea, but that is the argument Judith Briles made on The Book Designer last week.

The standard how-to and business book tomes of yesterday have become dinosaurian. Blame it on TV … the way we take in information … the Internet. The fact is, attention spans are shrinking. As a writer and author, the probability that your words need to shrink between the covers of your book is high.

…

When I stepped away from writing and speaking in the healthcare field in mid-2000 exclusively dedicating my time to authors and publishing, two truths bubbled up.

First the need to write visually; and second, to write short … or at least, shorter.

While I don’t doubt that there are more shorter nonfiction works today than were published ten years ago, I don’t believe the change was caused by shortening attention spans. I think what we’re seeing is digital production removing the artificial commercial constraints imposed by the printing industry.

In the olden days books had to fall into certain page counts so they could be fed into the sausage-making machinery and spat out with predictable production costs and price tags.

Now, ebooks let us publish books of any length we like, and POD enables us to print those books. This frees writers from constraints and enables ideas to exist at their natural length and not be stretched to fit the book-length requirement of old.

Rather than having to fit the round hole of yesteryear, books can now be squares, rhomboids, or any other shape. This is not the fault of attention spans but rather the benefit of tech making the industry more efficient.

If you want to write a shorter story, you should do it. Let a story grow to its natural length, and then end it.

But don’t rewrite a story because you think readers have shorter attention spans. That is simply not true.

Are readers more distracted these days? Yes.

Do we flit from social network to news article to video and back to social network? Sure.

Does that impair concentration and comprehension? Absolutely.

But I would not assume that the same problem extends to books.

One needs to write to keep readers interested, yes, but that is not the same thing as writing for a short attention span. If an author can keep a reader interested then the reader will come back to a book each time they put it down. What’s more, if the reader is interested they’ll pick up the next book in the series and continue reading.

Part of the reason I find this premise of a short attention span so ridiculous is that I just finished a 5 book series.

Over the course of a month, I started and finished Larry Niven’s Fleet of World series. I picked up the first book, and when I finished it I moved on to the next and the next and the next. They’re not his best work, and I won’t read them again, but I did read them one-two-three-four-five.

Rather than being short, my attention span for this author and this series lasted over a month. (And that’s not even the first time this attention-deficit blogger has finished a series in one go; I sometimes consume whole series when I discover new authors I like.)

Folks, you’re welcome to write for short attention spans. I think you’re sabotaging yourself, but it is your choice. I would recommend, though, that you write to keep a reader’s interest rather than assume the reader is deficient.

A reader’s attention may be fractured, but I would not assume that it is short.

Allow me to prove my point.

If you made it to this point in the post then you just proved that it is possible to catch and keep a reader’s attention even on the web in these busy times. Chew on that.

If I can keep your attention through a 700 word blog post, do you really think that books need to be written for shorter attention spans?

images by David Blackwell, Enokson

Here in the US the AAP reported that 2014 was a good year for book publishers, but the news coming out of the UK today is not so good.

The new edition of the Publisher Association’s Statistics Yearbook was released today, and it reports that the combined print and digital revenues of UK publishers fell by 2% in 2014, to £3.3 billion.

Print revenues dropped 5%, to £2.7 billion, while ebook revenues increased by 11%, to £563 million. That is not nearly as fast of a growth rate as 2013 (19%), but it is a new record high for ebook revenues (both unit sales and market value).

The Statistics Yearbook is not available to the public, but some details have been released. The PA announced this morning that digital was strong across academic and children’s segments. Digital subscriptions now make up 79% of revenues for journal publishers, and consumer fiction is growing almost as fast. The PA said that this digital segment had increased to 37% of the reported fiction revenues – a "trebling in absolute terms in three years".

Children’s ebooks grew 36%, which is great, but at £22 million that segment is still only a tiny fraction of  the  £349 million in kid’s books sold last year.

Digital textbook revenues were also up 17%, now accounting for 24% of sector sales. Downloadable audiobooks were also up 24%, and sales of digital curricula were up 20%.

According to PW, the Statistics Yearbook is administered by Nielsen and is based on the Publishers Association Statistics Monitor. The Monitor collects sales data from publishers and is believed to represent  about 75% of UK publishers' sales.

Whether it accurately reflects the entire industry is another matter.

PW

P.S. In case you’re wondering why my report differs from the one in PW, I went looking for more info and found the PA’s press release. I’m glad I did because otherwise I would not have known about the wild growth in genre ebooks.

images by Leonard Bentley, PA

Earlier this week I broke the news that Google had a rampant piracy problem in Google Play Books, and today Google has finally responded.

Far more so than most ebookstores, Google is a safe haven where pirates can operate with impunity. Pirates can upload copy after copy of a pirated ebook, secure in the knowledge that Google won’t delete their account. This leaves authors and publishers with little recourse but to play a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.

Luckily that game is coming to an end. Google told me today that they feel authors' pain:

Google Play takes copyright seriously. We take swift action when we receive a DMCA complaint, which the copyright holder can complete here. Additionally, we’re constantly improving our systems to provide a better experience.

Yes, they take this issue very seriously – just not seriously enough to actually do anything.

When I asked what Google was doing to fight piracy in Google Play Books, they were unable to name a single activity. When I asked what it would take to get a commercial ebook pirate banned from Google Play Books, the Google rep was unable to even confirm that they would even ban a pirate after dozens of valid DMCA notices. When I asked what improvements they planned to make, none came to mind.

But that should not worry you; Google Play takes copyright seriously. It says so right there in their statement.

Folks, when I first covered this issue on Monday morning I suggested that it would take either a lawsuit filed by publishers or lots of pressure+publicity before Google would take an interest in fighting piracy in Google Play Books.

Viacom sued Youtube, and we got ContentID. The RIAA and MPAA spent years beating up Google over search results, and Google started deranking pirate site from its search results.

Unless and until the Big Five decide to pursue one path or the other, Google simply won’t give a damn.

Most major ebook platforms let readers sync notes and highlights across the devices on their account, but now Google Play Books is going one better.

The latest version of Google Play Books for Android showed up yesterday in Google Play. This wasn’t a major update but it did add a couple features and drop a hint about Google’s future plans.

The app features a new Serif font, Literata. This typeface developed by Type Together. It was commissioned by Google to replace Droid Serif, and as any font nerd can tell you they look nothing alike.

Next up, there’s a new translation interface.

GPB used to take up the full screen with the translation menu when you translated a word or phrase in an ebook, and now it displays the translated phrase on a card:

That is going to prove useful, but not nearly as useful as the new notes feature.

Android Police went digging through the install file for Google Play Books, and they found hints in the code which they say suggests that Google is going to start syncing your notes and highlights to some location in Google Drive.

This code is not active yet, but I agree that it does point to the possibility.

Google Play Books already syncs the annotations you make in the personal ebooks you upload; now it looks like Google is going to start storing the notes and highlights in an easily accessible location in the cloud.

And more importantly, an easily sharable location. Getting your notes out of GPB is great in and of itself, but sharing is even more important. Once the notes are in Google Drive, they can be shared with just about anyone. And that is what could be the killer feature here.

Many ebook platforms let you share notes inside the platform, or even share _a_ note on social networks, but Google offers the promise of sharing a complete set (or some subset) of notes from a book.

The possible benefits for collaboration are obvious.

Google has yet to officially respond to Monday’s post on the rampant piracy in Google Play Books, but my work is already having a visible effect.

On Tuesday I noticed that the ten pirate accounts I called out in Monday’s post had all been disabled. The author listings have vanished, and so far as I can see the listings for the pirated ebooks are no longer visible in Google Play (the ebooks I purchased are still there, though).

That is good news, but I would not celebrate just yet. Google may have swatted a handful of ebook pirates, but they have not addressed the underlying problems which led to the rampant ebook piracy.

Google has not enacted any policies to fight piracy, and the industrial-scale ebook piracy will continue until they do so. They have only removed a handful of the more blatant pirates and leaving the more subtle pirates to continue their operations.

If you would like to find examples of pirated ebooks in Google Play Books, simply search for an author’s name: Douglas Adams, for example.

If you look closely you will see that there are 4 copies listed for Mostly Harmless or The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (to name a couple of examples). One copy is published by Del Rey, two copies are foreign editions published by Macmillan, and one copy is published by Fire & Ice Books.

That last copy is almost certainly a pirated ebook. It is priced at $1.99, while the legit copies are priced at $5.99 and above.

While I can’t guarantee that those Adams ebook are pirated, the pirated copy of Mario Puzo’s works is easier to spot:

The Penguin-published copies of The Godfather are priced at $7 and above, but the pirated copy I just bought cost me $1.99, came with a generic cover, and was published by Fire & Ice Books. That publisher also offered other pirated books in the series.

Another useful trick for finding pirate ebooks is to search for last name, first name. For example, King,Stephen reveals a long list of defunct listings for pirated ebooks.

Or you could search for Roberts, Nora, and note that some of the pirates had been allowed to upload the same ebook 4 or 5 times. Several of those pirates have since moved on to pirating other titles, but are still active in Google Play Books.

What’s more, Google’s piracy problem extends beyond just English language books. For example, Google Play Books is home to both a legal and a pirated copy of the Spanish language version of George RR Martin’s A Storm of Swords.  That helpful pirate has in fact uploaded the first 3 books in the series, and is selling them at a reduced price.

Speaking of GoT, that brings me to another industrial-scale pirate operating in Google Play Books; Ispanyolca was pirating Spanish translations of popular novels, including 50 Shades, Hunger Games, and Game of Thrones (source).

Luckily for us it too was swept up in the Tuesday morning cull.

On Monday I wrote that Google is not doing a damn thing to fight piracy in Google Play, but as we can see today that is not entirely true. They can be shamed into taking action.

Now if only that action would extend to changing their policies, then we would be going somewhere. Google may be the king of search engines and know more about algorithmic filtering than anyone, but they have yet to turn any of their tools to fighting piracy in Google Play Books.

Google will only respond to DMCA notices, and will only remove the specific titles mentioned in a notice. Under Google’s current policy, pirates are allowed to continue operating no matter how many ebooks are removed (the Tuesday morning cull was an exception).

Remember, on Monday I showed you that at least one of the industrial-scale ebook pirated had been operating in Google Play Books for several weeks (at a minimum), even though it was blindingly, nay, algorithmically obvious that it was a pirate operation.

In comparison, the other major ebookstores will close accounts after enough DMCA notices; Amazon, in fact, will suspend an account that receives too many complaints about issues as trivial as the formatting, much less piracy.

But Google will allow pirates to continue to harm authors and publishers. And yes, authors are being harmed.

It’s not just that they are losing revenues in Google Play Books; a pirated ebook in Google Play Books can impact sales in the Kindle Store and elsewhere.

As any author or publisher can tell you, Amazon aggressively watches prices in competing stores. If Amazon finds a lower price they will match that price in the Kindle Store. It doesn’t matter if it is a pirated copy or a legit copy; Amazon doesn’t care.

I’ve been told by several sources, including an author who saw it first-hand, that Amazon will price-match against a pirated ebook. I was also told that:

@thDigitalReader Two or three list price infractions and KDP will suspend you. So pirates can also endanger authors' Amazon selling ability.

— (@thxithink) May 4, 2015

I have yet to confirm the tweet with a first hand report, but I do have a similar report from a second source.

I can also tell you that it is in keeping with Amazon’s ToS for KDP, and that it fits with Amazon’s sometimes capricious behavior (publishers have been banned for less).

Now if only Google would adopt a similar policy for pirates; that would solve a lot of the piracy problems.

Alas, Google won’t even fully remove the pirated ebooks, much less ban the pirates themselves. When Google gets a DMCA notice, they will disable the buy button on a listing but leave the listing visible. You will still be able to see the cover image, description, and other details. For example: (one, two, three).

The cover image and description are copyrighted, so leaving them visible would arguably mean that Google has not actually complied with the DMCA notice. But given all of the other bad policies Google has in place, that is a relatively minor issue.

The real issue here is the ease with which you can find pirated ebooks in Google Play Books, and Google’s general silence on the issue.

As always, Google was contacted several before I published this post. They were first contacted Sunday night, and as of Tuesday evening they have so far declined to respond. Should they respond I will amend this post.

image by victoria white2010

With literally months of standby time, Apple’s mobile devices have excellent battery life. Most users will tell you that their iPhone lasts at least a day of heavy usage (the iPad lasts even longer) but lately there have been reports from some users that battery life has dropped significantly.

James Kendrick of ZDnet was the first blogger to notice, and yesterday he reported that:

About two weeks ago I noticed that my iOS devices were using more battery than ever before. A couple of days the iPhone was very low at the end of the day, and the same with the iPad Air 2. Each time it happened I couldn’t think of anything I’d done differently. The iPhone 6 Plus and iPad Air 2 were hitting the battery harder than before.

Looking at battery usage by app in Settings>General>Usage>Battery Usage I quickly homed in on the culprit. The Kindle app from Amazon is now always the app that is using a greater percentage of my battery, and often by a wide margin.

I read a lot of Kindle books but rarely for hours at a time; a typical reading session is only 15 minutes or so. Rarely does my accumulated daily reading time exceed an hour. The usage of other apps far exceeds this, especially Safari and Evernote. These don’t come close to how hard the Kindle app hits the battery.

From the sound of it, the app must be active and running in the background, even when it is not being used. That is a surprise; IOS is great at putting apps to sleep when you’re not using them. This cuts down on the resources they use – or at least it is supposed to.

I don’t use my iPad enough to see an appreciable drain on the battery, but I have gotten anecdotal confirmation from a couple of friends. They all said that they saw a battery drain similar to what Kendrick reported:

What’s more, Amazon has confirmed the initial reports, telling ZDnet that they had: "checked and see that number of eligible customers have contacted us regarding this issue and our technical team is currently working to address this problem. "

Update: Amazon’s PR dept is disputing this report. They deny the scale of the problem. Okay, but I’ve now heard from several more people on Twitter who have experienced this problem. They also deny that the app is running in the background, and I could be completely wrong on that point.

Amazon is expecting to release an update which fixes this problem in the next few days. Until then, you might want to shut down the Kindle app when you’re not using it.

In order to see what apps you have running, press the home button twice.  This will bring up a menu which shows all the apps running in the background. If you’re running iOS 8, it will be a full screen menu. Earlier versions of IOS will show a taskbar menu across the bottom of the screen with icons.

To turn off an app (on iOS 8) simply select it and swipe towards the top of the screen. In earlier versions of iOS, press the little red X on the app’s icon.

If you were hoping that new retailers in the subscription ebook market could grow large enough to balance Amazon, then you might want to look for a plan B.

A new survey report from Peter Hildick-Smith’s Codex Group reveals that Amazon is dominating subscription ebooks to a surprising degree.  Even though Amazon doesn’t have any ebooks from major publishers, the ebook giant has many more subscribers than either of its US competitors.

According to the Codex Group’s April 2015 consumer survey, 12.4% of ebook buyers also have a Kindle Unlimited subscription.  In comparison, only 1.4% of respondents reported that they had a Scribd membership, and even fewer were paying for Oyster.

The report also showed that Amazon’s subscriber base grew by 10% between November 2014 and April 2015, while the customer base of its smaller competitors fell by an average of 30% over the same period.

I do believe we just learned why Oyster really launched a retail ebookstore; they are smaller and they were losing subscribers. And that wasn’t Oyster’s only problem; they were also the least well-known of the three services.

Four out of five members of the survey group knew about Kindle Unlimited, while 24% knew of Scribd and 16% had heard about Oyster. The respondents were also more interested in signing up with Amazon than its competitors, with 4.2% of ebook buyers thinking about getting a Kindle Unlimited subscription.

As I sit here typing this post in May 2015, Kindle Unlimited is just about to turn 10 months old. KU (inadvertently) launched in July 2014, and its competitors Oyster and Scribd launched in October 2013.

Amazon’s competitors have been in this market for about twice as long as KU, offer more titles from the major publishers, and yet they can claim (at best) a subscriber base that is but a fraction of Kindle Unlimited.

While it would be wrong to call the game for Amazon, they are certainly winning this round, and that is both good and bad news for publishers.

Oyster’s and Scribd’s relatively low adoption rates should allay concerns that the subscription ebook services will cut into retail ebook sales; they just don’t have enough subscribers for that to be a problem. On the other hand, they also don’t have enough subscribers to be a major source of revenue.

And given that Kindle Unlimited is funded (for the most part) from a pool worth $9.5 million in March 2015, at present that isn’t a major source of revenue either.

As a result, the subscription ebook market is in its second year and it has so far proven to be less than the game changer some pundits had expected and some publishers had feared. Instead it is just another niche, and there is little reason to believe that will change in the near future.

BuchReport

Piracy is endemic to almost every retail site which sells digital content. Some sites such as Amazon routinely (and sometimes aggressively) police their catalog for pirated content, while others have a more laissez-faire attitude.

Google definitely falls into the latter category. The ad network is allowing large-scale commercial ebook piracy to infest Google Play Books.

Update: I have published a second installment. And Google has responded.

And to be clear, we’re not just talking about an excess of pirated ebooks; Google Play Books' policies are enabling industrial-scale ebook piracy operations.

On Sunday I came across a tweeted link to an industrious ebook pirate who had set up shop in Google Play Books. Claiming to be the author, that pirate has uploaded and is selling no fewer than one hundred ebooks, all of which are obviously pirated copies:

The books had been stolen from indie authors and publisher, including HarperCollins, Baen Books, Penguin Random House, Dell Magazines (Ellory Queen Mystery Magazine), and Tor-Forge Books.

And just to be sure, I bought 4 copies at random and compared them to the copies in the Kindle Store (I’m out about $30). The pirated ebooks in Google Play Books were clearly inferior copies with missing formatting, generic or outdated covers, and other problems, but were as complete as the copies in the Kindle Store.

All these books are being sold out in the open, for $2.11 each, in what would best be described as the pirate’s own personal ebookstore. And to add insult to injury, they are all encumbered with DRM.

And Google isn’t doing anything about it, nor is Google doing anything to deal with the many other pirates who have set up shop in Google Play Books.

To be clear, I’m not talking pirates who have republished a book or two under their own name, or ones who snuck in a pirated copy of Ringworld; Google’s problems aren’t that small.

What we have here are multiple accounts which have picked an authors name and uploaded obviously pirated books under that name, effectively creating a pirate ebookstore.

A friend on Twitter spent a few minutes searching through Google Play Books and found no fewer than ten different "authors" and "publishers":

• Huzur Burda
• Dogukan Akbulut
• Kazam Butur
• Bestsellers – Books USA Press
• Asama Davran
• Samar Dana
• JAMAL KASA
• Zara Hakan
• Global Dogan
• 80% DISCOUNT ( Save up to 80%)

Update: Google killed some of those accounts in response to this post.  Here’s a new list:

• Bestsellers – Books USA Press
• Dedem Adam (en español)
• Duhyu Aban
• Kansa Zera
• Ahban Azer
• Cather Danus
• Ahacan Kanat
• Best Book
• Hamdi Yazar
• Sahin Akbulut
• Devad Akbak
• 80% DISCOUNT ( Save up to 80%)

And that was in just a few minutes; just imagine what a thorough search will find.

Pretty much every site that sells digital content has a problem with piracy, but most try to cope with the problem. They respond quickly by removing the content as soon as they get a DMCA notice – and sometimes faster.

Scribd and Amazon, for example, have automated scanners which check for pirated, public domain, and other types of content. Youtube has the much maligned ContentID scanner, and there are even 3rd-party services like Atributor and Muso which will scan retail and pirate sites on behalf of their clients.

As we’ve seen in the past, those automated scanners are not without problems, but when paired with human oversight the scanners would be a far better option than Google’s current policies.

But Google won’t do that. Hell, they won’t even respond to a piracy complaint unless it comes from the copyright holder or their representative.

And when Google does respond, they will take down the ebooks but they will leave the listing active so it clogs up the search results and author listings (see the bottom of Larry Niven’s listing for examples).

Furthermore, Google may remove the ebooks you complain about but they will allow the pirate to continue to operate.

Tymber Dalton discovered a couple weeks ago that one of her books had been stolen by one of the commercial ebook pirates mentioned above (or a different pirate using the same author name):

This shitstain of a cuntnugget needs to go down:

https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=Dogukan+Akbulut

ALL the books he has posted are ILLEGALLY POSTED. And I found out today, after discovering he’d posted at least one of mine, that authors have been sending takedown notices to GooglePlay Books for WEEKS and their books are STILL showing up there.

The illegally posted copy of my book is here and keep in mind, it’s an ILLEGAL posting. Not all of the books he’s posted are showing up on the front page of his stuff. Authors, go search your books by your name and make sure this fucking shitstain isn’t listed as author/publisher: Dougukan Akbulut

Either that pirate is still in operation, or another pirate has moved in and set up shop on the same author name. Given the similar operational styles, I think they are the same pirate, but either way, it does not speak well of Google.

Folks, the above examples show that Google doesn’t have a laissez-faire attitude; it’s more that they simply don’t give a damn about piracy in Google Play Books.

If Google cared, they would use the patent they filed for in 2013. That patent explained how to build a scanner which would identify and flag pirated content. If Google were using that scanner, my friend would not have found so many pirated ebooks.

Sadly, I think it is going to take an expensive lawsuit before Google starts to care about piracy in Google Play Books.

Viacom’s lawsuit against Youtube led to the ContentID scanner, and Google only started taking an active position against pirate sites showing up in search results after a lot of yelling on the part of the music and movie industries.

If we want Google to take similar action in Google Play Books I think the Big 5 will have to file a lawsuit.

Google was queried for comment before this post was published, and has not responded.

P.S. In the past Google has delisted and deranked pirate sites from its search results. Do you suppose they will do the same for Google Play Books?

P.P.S. If you have complaints about piracy in GPB, please leave a comment. I’m not done with this story. There are several issues I haven’t addressed yet, and I would love the opportunity to slap Google around again.

image by Free Grunge Textures, Sugar Sleuths

eBook readers like the Kindle let you take thousands of stories with you anywhere you go, and now one will make up a new story as you travel.

A Brazilian ad agency has created a limited production ereader which uses GPS to track its current location and automatically change the location and landmarks in a story to wherever the reader is located.

According to the video, it really does exist (and isn’t just a marketing gimmick):

The Trip Book was developed by FCB Brazil for a Brazilian loyalty program called Smiles. It features a story by Brazilian author Marcelo Rubens Paiva which was written in a sufficiently generic style that key locations and landmarks can be replaced with whatever locations are near the reader.

On a technical level, this is a nifty idea, but on an artistic level it strikes me as unappealing.

The most interesting stories can transport you to their location simply through description and are affected by the setting. This story, on the other hand, is little more than a MadLib.

But you don’t have to take my word for it; in addition to developing the TimeBook, FCB Brazil also released the story as a free interactive ebook app for Android and iPad/iPhone. That app uses your mobile device’s location tracking ability to work its magic and change the story.

I’m having trouble with iTunes at the moment (and I don’t have a compatible Android device) so I haven’t had a chance to try the app, but I can see from the Google Play listing that the story is written in Portuguese. I think there’s an option to change your location manually, although I’m not sure.

I hope there is an option to change your location in the menu; that would be an improvement on The Silent History, an ebook app which tied certain parts of the story to specific locations around the world.

Design Taxi via Gizmodo

A story has been circulating on Tumblr and on author blogs over the past week which hasn’t made its way into the media yet, and that’s a good thing because it’s bogus.

Numerous authors and other creators are saying that Paypal is a giant evil corporation which is about change its terms of service so it can rob creators of all the rights to all the content sold through its money transfer service.

They’re pointing to a new clause in the new ToS which will be going into effect on 1 July. That clause, which you can read on Paypal’s own site, says:

For those who can’t see the screenshot, the first sentence of the clause says:

When providing us with content or posting content (in each case for publication, whether on- or off-line) using the Services, you grant the PayPal Group a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise any and all copyright, publicity, trademarks, database rights and intellectual property rights you have in the content, in any media known now or in the future.

That clause is being interpreted by some creators to mean that Paypal is grabbing the rights to all the content _sold_ through the service, but that isn’t quite what it says.

What this says is that Paypal has a right to use the content uploaded to them.

What we are looking at here is a standard boilerplate contract clause the likes of which you would expect to find in digital distribution platforms. Amazon has a similar clause for KDP (see section 5.5). Dropbox, Kobo, and many other services have similar clauses.

To be clear, those clauses are in the KDP et al contracts in order to give the services the legal right to distribute a creator’s content on their behalf (the KDP clause is pretty clear on this point).

And now Paypal has decided it needs a rights clause. Given that Paypal does not offer any type of file transfer service, my mind boggles at the idea that Paypal would need this clause. I am even more confused by their decision to let a context-blind first-year law student write the clause.

Or perhaps they are letting a bot draft their legal contracts now, I don’t know.

Update: We might not know for sure why this clause was added but we suspect that Paypal plans to add file delivery to its payment processing.

In any case, I am about to go yell at Paypal. There’s no need for this clause to exist at all, but if Paypal really wants to have it then they are going to have to redraft it so it isn’t quite so egregious.

As it is now written, the clause could be interpreted as a way for Paypal to grab the rights. I do not think that is what Paypal intended, but I agree with the members of the WetCanvas forums who pointed out that is how it could be used.

It would not be impossible for Paypal or its lawyers to connect a specific financial transaction with a specific piece of content. That type of detail is recorded if you use Paypal’s shopping cart.

For example, a few weeks ago I bought an ebook from O’Reilly and paid via Paypal (it was related to the Sony piracy story). That transaction listed the title of the ebook, and under a certain interpretation of that clause Paypal has the right to do whatever they want with the book.

And for that reason, the clause needs to be redrafted. Luckily for us the new ToS do not go into effect until 1 July, so there is plenty of time for Paypal to fix the problems it has created.

image by VBC17, melenita2012

The Association of American Publishers reported on Wednesday that revenues were up by just under a percentage point.

According to the 1,200 odd publishers who submit their data to the AAP’s Statshot program, revenues for the month of January 2015 were up +0.9% to $543 million over January 2014.

Update: the AAP has revised the revenue stats for January.

Aside from that the actual details are sparse this month. The AAP didn’t release specifics, so I can’t offer much in the way of financial stats.

But the press release did tell us that the adult trade segment increased by 0.6%, and that religious presses were up 11.1% (with most of the growth in hardback books). Kids/YA segment declined by 1.6%. According to the AAP, this segment saw great paperback and board book revenues (10.9%, 34.1%, respectively)which were damped by a sharp decline in ebook sales (37.4%).

In related news, the AAP also reported that the curricula market was down 7.8% in January 2015 from the year before ($1.06 billion dollars, from $1.15 billion).

In terms of formats, paperbacks, hardbacks, and audiobooks all saw great growth in January 2015, but ebooks did not. Paperback revenues were up 10.4%, while hardbacks increased by 3.6% and audiobooks 11.5%.

Revenues from ebook sales, on the other hand, did not carry over momentum from 2014, and were down by -10.2%.

AAP reported last month that ebook revenues ended the year up 4.7%, but as anyone who followed publishing news over the past couple months that trend was not going to continue.

In the last few months of 2014 Amazon signed new contracts with several major US trade publishers. Those contracts included provisions for agency priced ebooks. This both raised the prices of ebooks published by S&S, Macmillan, and Hachette and blocked retailers from discounting.

We saw the obvious result in January: consumers switched to other formats and other segments of the industry (ones not tracked by the AAP).

How much would you bet that the trend in declining ebook revenues will continue?

I’m expecting the decline to continue in February and to get a lot worse when we get the figures for April and May 2015; those will reflect HarperCollins' new agency ebook contract.

image by e³°°°

With the number of indie bookstores in the US growing every year, no one can argue that they are on the rise. B&N may be closing stores left, right, and center, but indies are doing great. That is why I found myself deeply confused when  I read this bit on The Bookseller yesterday:

Standing in this beautiful new Foyles store to launch ALLi’s Authors For Bookstores campaign, for a moment we can fool ourselves that reports of the decline of bricks-and-mortar bookshops are greatly exaggerated.

When I first read that I thought we were in for an article about Amazon killing bookstores (the likes of which Salon.com is famous for), but then I realized that the quote came from someone speaking in the UK and referring to bookstores in that country.

While it is true that all the news reports say that the number of bookstores in the UK continue to decline, similar reports from the US say the opposite. In fact, as I noted in February of 2014, the number of indie bookstores in the US rose, while that figure declined in the UK. This trend reportedly continued in 2014, with the count declining from 987 to 939 in the UK.

In the US, however, the American Bookseller  Association announced in February that its membership rolls had grown in 2014:

In 2014, the American Booksellers Association welcomed 59 indie bookstores that opened in 25 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. This is the largest number of new stores joining ABA in a single year since the start of the Great Recession in 2008.

The new stores include nine branches or satellites of existing businesses and five stores selling primarily used books.

The ABA has noted that their membership has grown most years since 2005. That is rather curious, given that the UK Bookseller Association has said that the number of bookstores in the UK peaked in 2005 at 1,535.

Does anyone know why the two English speaking countries continue down such different paths?

I’m not familiar enough with British bookselling to be able to answer this question, but it has me puzzled. I would have thought that the higher population density in the UK would mean that any bookstore would have a greater concentration of customers.

Or is the higher density causing an increase in property values to the point that marginal retail operations like bookstores simply are not profitable?

What do you think?

P.S. And do you know what is even more fascinating? The Us has more indie bookstores while at the same time we also have a thriving online used book market. Yes, indie booksellers can sell online bought the bigger operations have no brick & mortar presence.

image by skunks, Kathleen Tyler Conklin

When we first saw the Noteslate in 2011 we were promised a $99 color epaper writing slate. That device turned out to be complete vaporware,  but Noteslate’s current design isn’t quite as fictional.

A reader has tipped me to the news that Noteslate has announced the Shiro, an epaper writing slate with a 6.8″ screen. (Thanks, Jafnaw!)

Update: Here’s the latest on the Shiro.

The Shiro looks nothing like the original Noteslate, and is instead based on a 6.8″ Pearl E-ink screen with a frontlight and a touchscreen. This is not the first to use this screen size, but it is the first to come with a pressure sensitive stylus.

According to the Noteslate website, the Shiro runs Noteslate OS on a 1GHz Freescale CPU. It also has Wifi, Bluetooth and a microSD card slot. It weighs 240 grams, and measures 10 mm thick.

Aside from that, I can’t tell you much at this time. I queried Noteslate before writing this post, but the folks behind Noteslate aren’t sharing any other details right now. (Edit: they did tweet that they are planning a 13″ model which will be launched later.)

I don’t, for example, know who their hardware partner is or what OS is being used, but I can guess.

I would bet that Noteslate has partnered with Onyx, the Chinese ereader maker, to adapt one of Onyx’s Android ereader designs for use as the Noteslate. Onyx has experience with stylus-equipped ereaders, so the Shiro would be right in their ballpark.

Edit: And if not Onyx, then possibly Netronix. This firm has a 6.8″ ereader which would fit the bill.

I’m told that an official announcement is coming next week, and that the Noteslate Shiro is expected to ship this fall.

So are you going to get one?

It’s up for pre-order right now, but I don’t plan to put my money up. The struggles of the Earl E-ink tablet and the Popslate iPhone case have made me leery of the idea of handing my money to unknown and untried device makers.

The Earl has been under development for two years and is back to square one, while the Popslate shipping 2 years late and is showing no evidence that it will ever have the nifty features promised in the original Indiegogo campaign.

Neither company had previous device development experience, and they were not prepared for the many roadblocks thrown in their path.

While I don’t know that Noteslate will have similar issues, their silence leaves me with no way to judge whether they can pull this off.

If you want one, I would wait until the Shiro ships before buying.

Edit: A reader noticed that there was an option to pre-order and not pay until the order shipped.  That strikes me as a good option. Thanks, Ingo!

Noteslate

Over 3,000 apps have been released for the Apple Watch (there’s even a web browser) and countless apps have been updated to support  the smartwatch. That includes Glose, which just released an update today.

The update adds a cluster of new features. Glose says they added a new night-reading mode, better formatting, and new Tinder-inspired gestures for adding books to your reading list, but the big news today is the new support for the Apple Watch.

Apple Watch owners can now catch up on what their friends are reading in Glose, nd receive notifications as soon as someone they know starts reading a new ebook. They’re also going to receive free book quotes and "be inspired at every important moment of the day".

And last but not least, Glose also added a speed reading option. The changelog says that you can speed your books word by word on Apple Watch,. That sounds like Glose implemented some kind of RSVP technique (Spritz uses similar tech), but I’m waiting for an Apple Watch owner to test it for me and confirm.

Speaking of speed reading, Instapaper recently added the option. I don’t think they offer it on the Apple Watch, though, just their apps for iPhone and iPad. Instead, Instapaper added a TTS option which worked through the iWatch.

Glose is free in iTunes.