The most interesting rumor crossed my desk today. According to a source I trust, Kobo wasn’t the first ereader maker to express an interest in the 6.8″ HD E-ink screen used in the Kobo Aura HD.

I have been told that Barnes & Noble was the first company to be interested in the screens, but then they changed their minds. They passed on buying the initial production run, giving Kobo a chance to step in and buy all 300,000 screen units.

Update: Now that I have the Aura HD in hand I am convinced the rumor is true.

My source was quite firm on both the number of screens made and the fact that B&N passed on buying them. I have not been able to verify either part of the rumor, but I do have a few facts to flesh it out.

E-ink makes the screen (obviously), and in the case of the 6.8″ screen E-ink can assemble the entire combined unit (frontlight, touchpanel, and E-ink screen) and sell the screen as a unit to Kobo or anyone who wants to buy. E-ink tells me that this screen is in production at the moment and that it is available to Kobo’s competitors.

On a related note, this ereader showed up on the FCC website in March and was originally tested in February of this year. No, I didn’t see it at the time and I am still kicking myself for that.

Assuming this rumor is true, when do you think B&N decided to pass on the screen?

Here’s my speculation.

First, I find this rumor plausible because Kobo doesn’t do Spring launches; the Aura HD launch came as a shock. Also, Kobo released their newest devices only 7 or 8 months ago so releasing another new device this soon was a double surprise.

But as for B&N, this could not have been the screen that B&N wanted on the Nook Glow; that was far too long ago. That ereader would have had to have been finalized in February or March 2012 so it could hit the market in May 2012.

That suggests this 6.8″ screen would have had to have been intended for the next model, and I think I can show that B&N would have been interested. Last Fall B&N revealed a marked interest in cutting edge screen tech. The Nook HD had a higher resolution 7″ screen than anything on the market. Ask any reviewer and they’ll say that it’s biggest issue was the B&N lock-in, but other than that it had all around impressive hardware. What if B&N was planning for their next ereader to be similarly impressive?

If you find that plausible then I’m sure you’d agree it’s entirely possible that B&N was also quietly funding the development of a high resolution E-ink screen in preparation for a Spring launch.

We didn’t see that screen last Fall because B&N has a policy of only releasing new Nook ereaders in the Spring (May or June). That’s when they released the Nook Touch and when they released the Nook Glow. Furthermore, this policy was confirmed to me at the Nook HD launch event last year.

Only now I don’t think they will – not this year.

It’s my guess that, assuming this rumor is true, B&N passed on the 6.8″ screen as a result of the disastrous holiday season. Take this a step further and we see that they might no longer be investing in new hardware.

To be completely honest, I hope this is not true. A new cutting edge ereader would have changed public opinion about B&N and it could have revitalized the Nook platform.

But is this rumor true? I don’t know, but I tend to think it is. It just fits too well with the facts I do have, though I cannot prove the connection.

I contacted both E-ink and Kobo, and held this post until I heard from one of the companies. E-ink sent me a politely phrased no comment (and answered some technical questions), which I won’t quote here.

Kobo has yet to respond. TBH, Kobo has only responded to my press queries twice since July 2012 (I’m not kidding), so I was not surprised to be ignored once more.

It’s been just over a month since Google announced the end of Google Reader and Feedly is clearly in the lead to dominate the market.

This news reader service has released a number of major updates in the past month, including one today that finally offers the Google Reader style reading experience that this hard-core news junky has been looking for.

• iTunes
• Google Play

This update adds some bug fixes, better support for Hebrew and Farsi, and improved support for poor internet connections, but it also brings one hugely important change that is going to please a lot of news junkies.

The iOS and android apps now have a new title view that I have been desperately wanting. Feedly is describing it as a "denser and cleaner title-only view" and compared to the previous list view or magazine style layouts it truly is dense.

You can see one example of the new view at the top of the post, and here is a larger one:

Speaking as an expert on reading, if you liked the dense info rich Google Reader layout then this is the replacement you want. This new title view is actually one step better than Google Reader. Seriously.

One problem I always had with GR was that the titles were so densely packed that it was easy to miss an important story. It’s not that I wasn’t reading the titles as I scanned them, but that the layout was so dense that it was easy to skip a line and not realize it.

This new title view on Feedly fixes that problem by added a short blurb to each title. This costs a little bit of screen real estate but it also adds a useful spacer.

Do you know what? This is something Google should have added years ago, if only they had cared to put any work into Google Reader. In my opinion this moves Feedly far ahead of the other 6 possible Google Reader alternatives.

On a related note, it is also possible to make Feedly look more like Google Reader in the browser as well, so right now all I need before I completely give up on GR is a way to translate non-English feeds.

Feedly is also coming up short in the search dept; you can search for feeds that you want to subscribe to but you cannot search the feeds that you are already following. That can be a problem for those of us that want to find stories we had read weeks ago but didn’t think to save.

Have you found a good replacement for Google Reader?

iTunes

Google Play

There’s an old saying that opposites attract, and it has never been more true than today. The collaborative writing site Medium has just announced that they are acquiring the subcompact publisher Matter.

These months-old startups have very different views on how to publish content, so much so that this deal is unusual to say the least. But the two companies see that they have a common ground:

One of the things that made it easy to join Medium was the knowledge that the company believes in great storytelling as much as we do, and is prepared to support what we do. For those interested in exploring more about storytelling on this platform, magicalai offers valuable insights.

The Matter founders go on to add that they aren’t planning any drastic changes to their subscription or publishing model, but over the next few months they do plan to better integrate some Medium features:

We’ve already started using Medium to expand on the ideas we cover — see, for example, Amputees & Wannabes, the recent series of commentaries around our launch story, Do No Harm. We’ll also be introducing some exciting changes at the MATTER website; changes that will make the site better for readers, and improve our mechanism for supporting long-form writing.

Matter was funded in a Kickstarter campaign in February 2012. As I explained back in December, it’s a digital magazine that takes subcompact publishing to an extreme; they publish one article each month. Medium, on the other hand, was launched later in 2012 with the goal of offering a new way for readers to contribute to a blog post that involves greater participation than simply leaving a comment.

This could be a interesting publishing model, don’t you think? Once this deal is finalized, Matter will be encouraging readers to contribute content as money, and that could result in a radically new definition for publisher.

From my vantage point this looks Matter could become more like a club or debating society with paid membership than a magazine. Now that would be an interesting situation, don’t you think?

The major publishers might not be all that interested in selling ebooks to libraries but the feeling is not mutual.

The American Library Association released their annual state of the library report today, and in spite of the lack of publisher support the adoption of ebooks and ereaders is up. Over three-quarters of American libraries reported in the survey that they lend ebooks, up from 67% in the previous survey.  The libraries are now using a wide variety of vendors, including ebrary, 3M Cloud library, Axis360, as well as others.

A growing number of libraries are also lending ereaders to their patrons. The report showed that 39% of the 7,200 plus libraries surveyed lent ereaders, up from 28% in the previous survey. That is a remarkable increase, and  I can also confirm this anecdotally. I have seen a number of news reports over the past few months of libraries announcing new ereader collections, including newly purchased Nook Touch ereaders.

This report also shows that more Americans than ever are using their libraries, and libraries are working to meet that demand. Over 91% of US libraries now offer free Wifi and internet, with 62% indicating that they were the only source of free internet access in their communities. Some are even considering following in the footsteps of BiblioTech, the bookless public library located in Bexar County. That library is still on schedule to open in Fall 2013, and it will stock ereaders and tablets for patrons to use or check out as well as a sizable ebook collection.

The data in this report comes from the annual survey which is conducted every Fall, so it is fairly out of date by this point. But even with the age issue this report is sill useful in providing a snapshot of library use.

ALA

image by Muffet

For as long as I can remember it hasn’t been hard to make a Kindle ebook. Assuming you only want to use text and at most a few images, you can find any number of tools online that will do the job quite nicely. There’s calibre, Jutoh, Feedbooks,, Mobipocket Creator (and that’s just the handful I can recall off the top of my head).

But the same cannot be said for graphic novels. Amazon may have launched a new comics section in the Kindle Store along with the Kindle Fire in 2011, but they didn’t release any tools which could be used to create graphic novels – until today.

I have just learned that Amazon has released a new tool this week that will enable independent comic artists to make graphic novels for the Kindle Store. It’s called the Kindle Comic Creator, and it was very quietly launched late last week.

According to Amazon KC2 removes the need for authors and publishers to understand the intricacies of the HTML/CSS code that goes into an ebook. This tool lets authors import artwork, arrange the layout, and even create a guided reading experience with Kindle Panel Views. KC2 is reportedly able to automatically detect the panels in an image and it will recommend a reading order that will best guide a reader through the story.

This tool is available for Windows and OSX, and it can create books with double page spread, facing pages, and right-to-left page turns from a wide variety of formats including PDF, jpg, tiff, png, and ppm.

I haven’t had a chance to use it myself, but I was told by Joshua Tallent of eBook Architects that his firm has been using it to create digital comics.  He likes it, and he even demoed an early version of the tool at O’Reilly TOC a couple months back.

If this tool is really that good then comiXology had better watch out. That digital comics distributor has a dominant position in the market, and they’ve used that control to take a one-third cut of the retail price of digital comics sold via their platform.

That is a lot of money that isn’t going into the pockets of the creators, but thanks to KC2 that might no longer be true. Now that it is easier for comics artists to deal directly with the Kindle Store they can cut out a middleman and keep a greater percentage of the funds.

On the other hand, I’m not so sure they will want to do that. Amazon might pay a 70% royalty but they also charge delivery fees which can add up to a significant chunk of change on a 100MB graphic novel. And while Amazon’s 35% royalty might not have delivery fee attached it isn’t exactly a better deal than what Comixology offers.

If you have been weighing you options for distributing your graphic novel, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What’s the best way to maximize your revenue?

Kindle Comic Creator

User Guide (PDF)

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I know this might be hard to remember after yesterday’s stupendous Kobo news, but there are other ereader makers in the market and one of them will be announcing new gadgets next week.

Pocketbook is holding a press conference next week. This Ukraine-based ereader company is expected to announce 3 new devices, including a color ereader, an ereader with an HD E-ink screen, and an updated 7″ Android tablet.

But before I get to the products I expect Pocketbook to announce, I have a question. Have you considered the timing of next week’s press event?

I think the Pocketbook press conference raises some interesting questions. It was announced right before Kobo launched the Aura HD and happens a week later.

Kobo made an announcement this week and Pocketbook is announcing next week, and that leads me to think we might possibly be seeing ereader makers respond to the products they know that their competition have in the works.

If I am correct then Amazon might have an announcement of an amazing ereader some time in the next month or so. It’s not out of the question that Amazon plans to reveal that they’re using a Liquavista screen on their next Kindle. They have to come up with some way to match the Kobo Aura, after all.

I know that I have been saying since January that Amazon is buying Liquavista and it might be getting old. But now that Kobo has an awesome product in the Aura HD I think Amazon is going to have to release their own awesome ereader just to stay competitive.

And there is also a chance that B&N could be getting ready to announce something wonderful, though I doubt a new Nook would spook either Pocketbook or Kobo.

==

There is no firm data on this so we could be in for a surprise, but the current rumors suggest that Pocketbook will unveil the PocketBook Touch Lux next week. This is expected to be a 6″ ereader with an HD E-ink screen and a frontlight. It’s the next-gen model for their existing 6″ ereader, and it is rumored to retail for 139 euros.

Note that I am calling out the rumors on these details; for all we know Pocketbook might have the 6.8″ screen found on the Kobo Aura HD. That is not very likely but it is also not impossible.

In addition to the Touch Lux, Pocketbook could also announce the Pocketbook Color, the 8″ ereader that they have been working on since at least November 2012. I have almost no details on this ereader, but it is supposed to have an 8″ color E-ink screen. It is also supposed to have a frontlight, which as we have seen in past conference videos will likely improve the color quality. I have no info on specs, price, or release date, but then again I can’t see that anyone else has that info either.

The third new product that Pocketbook might reveal next week is an updated model for the SurfPad, one of their 7″ Android tablets. Again, I don’t have any info on the specs pr price, but the new device will probably have a higher resolution screen and a faster CPU. The specs on the current model suggest a weak budget tablet, so it would make some sense to improve upon it.

I don’t really find any of the devices expected to be released next week all that interesting, but to be honest that is because yesterday Kobo set a new standard. That news has also made me wonder if competition is heating up in the ereader market again.

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Ever since Google announced the end of Google Reader I have been reading about major investment in this niche by Google Reader’s competition as well as all sorts of companies taking an interest in news readers including some otherwise surprising names like Digg, Opera, and Microsoft.

Yes, Microsoft has just released an update to their Bing News app, and I wonder how much they were influenced by the Google Reader news. I don’t have Windows 8 myself, so I am forced to quote the relevant section of the blog post:

Interested in politics, but not very interested in entertainment? Or the other way around? Now you can customize the Bing News app to keep tabs on specific story categories, topics, or news sources that matter to you. Plus, we’re now supporting RSS feeds and offline reading so you can make the news truly your own and take it with you.

This app only works on Windows 8 and Windows RT, so far as I can tell, but the new version does add a number of useful features. From what I can see this really looks more like a Flipboard or Zite competitor than a serious Google Reader alternative, but I’m sure it will work well for someone.

Have you tried it? What did you think?

source

Digg has just released the early results of last week’s survey.

This social reading start-up is working on their own replacement to Google Reader, and one step Digg made in that direction was to ask current Google Reader users what we liked. Over 17 thousand users have already filled out the survey, and Digg has noticed that the average Google Reader user spends a lot of time in the service.

For example, over 60% of users report that they subscribe to 50 or more RSS feeds in Google Reader, with nearly 20% subscribing to more than 250 RSS feeds.  The survey has also shown that 80% of users check Google Reader many times a day, and that we are using it both for work and for personal reading.

Search doesn’t seem to be used all that much, and since it is "a huge investment in terms of development time and infrastructure costs" it’s been moved down the list. Digg has also noted that keyboard shortcuts were used at least sometimes by 67% of respondents. So far none of this surprises me because it matches with how I use Google Reader. And the rest of the survey is not too surprising, either.

Take the word cloud at the top of this post, for example. The final question asked users for suggestions as to what could be removed from Google Reader to improve it. As you can see, the leading answer is "nothing".  Other questions asked which alternative feed readers we used, and there doesn’t seem to be a clear winner among the possible Google Reader replacements.

That’s good news for Digg, but it is also good news for the rest of us as well. As the many possible replacements vie for the throne, the competition will force them to improve their service, offer more features, and try to be better.  That means we are going to see more innovation in this niche over then next few months than we have seen in the past 5 years.

The American Association of Publishers released the year end stats report for the US book market yesterday, and it looks like the US ebook market is not growing nearly as fast as it did in past years.

AAP’s stats for the overall book market showed a 6% growth in 2012 (from $6.7 billion to $7.1 billion), with most segments except hardcover reporting positive growth. Adult and religious hardcover market segments both shrank in 2012 by several percent, a sign that the more expensive editions are a luxury that consumers can do without in this tight economy.

The combined ebook market was up 41% (from $1.1 billion to $1.54 billion), with children’s ebooks showing the best growth (120%). That puts ebooks at about 21.67% of the total US book market, just under the combined paperback market segments (trade, massmarket, etc) which the AAP pegs at $1.66 billion. Though I am not sure that figure is reflective of the real paperback market; it’s not clear where YA paperbacks are factored in.

Update: The AAP is reporting that ebook market share was 22.55% in 2012. The reason my number differs is that their figure is based on stats that were edited slightly so the 22.55% reflected the same data set as collected by the AAP in earlier calendar years.

All in all, the growth rate of the US ebook market does appear to have slowed considerably. The AAP reported in early 2011 that the calendar year 2010 saw a 165% increase in ebook sales, and last year the AAP reported that 2011 ebook sales were up 117% over that of 2010 (I still have the emails).

Of course, these figures don’t necessarily reflect the entirety of the US ebook market, just the sales data reported to the AAP. As anyone who follows this topic should know the AAP figures only include data provided by 1,193 AAP members.

It is entirely possible that the growth of indie ebook sales now outpaces the rate reported by the AAP, and there is even some data to support that conclusion. Amazon, for example, reported a much higher growth rate for their ebook sales in 2012 – 70%, in fact.

And as a reader has just reminded me, B&N reported earlier this week that a quarter of sales in the Nook Store are self-published ebooks and thus not reflected in AAP figures. Apply that percent across the market and there could be quite a lot of ebook dollars that aren’t being counted by the AAP.

When B&N announced Nook Press earlier today I was thrilled to see that B&N was a step ahead of Amazon. The new online editing and creation tools offered hope that B&N might have the technological ability to go toe to toe with Amazon.

But then readers left comments about their experiences in using Nook Press and reality set in. It turns out that Nook Press is no better designed than PubIt. Not only are users reporting that the site crashes frequently and has broken features, one user has already found the tragic flaw that renders Nook Press useless.

Unlike KDP, you can’t edit a book after you have published it via Nook Press.

Update: B&N finally added this much needed feature.

I’m not kidding. B&N’s new and amazing online editing and collaboration tool isn’t designed to let you edit or collaborate on an ebook after it has been put up for sale in the Nook ebookstore. B&N even spells this out in the FAQ (here):

Can I edit my Project after I put it On Sale?

NOOK Book Details can be changed after you put your Project On Sale as a NOOK Book, but at this time, the NOOK Book itself cannot be updated or replaced. To update or replace a NOOK Book that is currently On Sale, you would need to take the Project Off Sale, download the ePub from the Project page, create a new Project, upload the downloaded ePub or create a new Manuscript in that Project, and then put that new Project On Sale as a NOOK Book.

Just to add insult to injury, you can’t even edit the title of an ebook without losing all the reviews, ratings, and other reader contributions.

?!?

I suppose some might say that this doesn’t matter because an ebook should be finished before it is published, but what about typos? We’ve all encountered typos in an ebook, and it’s now the norm for publishers to fix them and push out a new copy of the ebook.

Or, what about ebooks on topics that go out of date quickly? Jason Matthews, the reader who first found this flaw, writes how to guides for self-publishing an ebook. His ebooks need to be refreshed every few months with the latest info on the publishing industry.

On a related note, B&N proclaimed in the press release that Nook Press was "designed with input from PubIt authors". Gee, I wonder how many asked that B&N block them from editing a title that has already been put up for sale?

I would bet that answer is some where between zilch, nada, and zero.

P.S. I have asked B&N when they expect to add this basic ability; if and when they reply I will update this post.

image by roberlan

Amazon is widely recognized as having ignited the ebook market with the launch of the Kindle Store in 2007, and today I realized that they might be trying to repeat that success with audiobooks.

Earlier this evening I was reading a post by a self-published author, Josh Lanyon. Josh was lamenting about his experience with creating audiobooks via ACX and his general dissatisfaction with the fact that Amazon controls the retail price.

In the post he complains that Amazon is bundling his self-published audiobooks with the Kindle edition of his ebooks and selling them cheap. As he sees it, Amazon is trying to encourage more readers to use Whispersync for Voice:

So…yeah. Cool. Not essential, but a fun little gimmick. I really never gave it a thought because whispersync is not something I particularly need or want or care about.

I should have given it a thought, though, because it creates a problem for ACX customers, and by ACX’s customers, I mean authors and narrators. I mean me. Amazon, in its perennial quest to crush all competition through loss leading, came up with the idea of encouraging readers to try out these whispersynced audio books by knocking the price of audio books down to $1.99 if the (current version) kindle ebook is also purchased.

Naturally Josh sees this as a significant loss of income. But as frustrating as this might be for Josh, there is a larger story here. You see, I double checked his claim, and in doing so I learned there is more to this story than Amazon simply offering discounts.

I went to Amazon, picked an author at random, and checked to see what prices Amazon asked for bundled ebooks and audiobooks.

In the case of Stephen King, the prices were all over the map. Some titles didn’t have a bundle price mentioned, but on the rest of titles the asking price for adding an audiobook to the purchase of a Kindle ebook  varied considerably. The prices ranged from $4.95, $13.95, $17.95, and there was even one for 87 cents.

That’s a big difference from what Josh reported, isn’t it? Rather than simply offering a good deal to customers at the expense of authors, Amazon is charging a variety of prices.

It’s almost as if Amazon is trying to find a better price point for audiobooks.

That, folks, is a far more important detail than it might appear. Right now audiobooks are sold via subscriptions or at a rather high price – often higher than the price of the hardback edition. Everyone accepts that as the norm, but I think Amazon doesn’t.

Thanks to ACX, Amazon has made it relatively easy and inexpensive to produce an audiobook. In fact, the 20 grand that Josh reported having spent on the 12 audiobooks is actually less than it might cost to produce a dozen ebook editions (here’s why).

And now that the production cost and effort is minimized, I think Amazon is trying to find the price point where readers will buy the most audiobooks.

Remember how Amazon was famous for the $9.99 price point for ebooks? That’s the kind of price point that Amazon want to find for audiobooks.

Luckily, Amazon is in a unique position to do so.

Amazon inherited a controlling interest in the downloadable audiobook market when they bought Audible in early 2008. I don’t have data on market share but I have been told that Audible is the downloadable audiobook market.

Update: A friend tweeted that I really should offer more data on the market because there is more to the market than downloadable ebooks. This is true, but there is little public data. The AAP only reports figures for downloadable audiobooks (and not for example CD-based), and the data that the Audiobook Publishers of America has released is unreliable.

There’s little public data on Audible’s revenue, but the latest info from the AAP reveals that the US downloadable audiobook market was worth $87 million in 2012, and that it has seen an annual growth rate between 20% and 30% for the past several years.

Something tells me that a 20% to 30% increase isn’t good enough for Amazon, but I should think that should really come as no surprise.

Amazon has been doing their best to build the audiobook market for a couple years now, first by launching Audible Creation Exchange in May 2011 and then by launching Audible Author Services, which pays authors a dollar each time one of their audiobooks is sold, in April 2012.

Amazon’s investment in audiobooks is having incredible success in creating a larger supply of audiobooks to sell (a reported 10-fold increase in production). I expect that when Amazon does pick a new and lower price point, sales of the self-published audiobooks will go through the roof.

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BooksOnBoard has updated their website this morning with a drastic change. They’ve shut down their ebookstore, and replaced it with this notice:

Please sign in on the login page to download books you have purchased. BooksOnBoard has temporarily stopped selling books. We are re-structuring to compete more effectively against Goliaths who have entered our marketplace since we first launched in 2006, i.e., Amazon, Apple, Google, Sony and Barnes & Noble.

We expect to be back with our new business model soon. Meanwhile, customers can continue to download their prior purchases as long as the publisher and their distributors continue to make them available – same as always and out of our control. As in the past, it’s always wise to download your eBooks as soon as possible after purchase.

Thank you for your support of our store over the last seven years during which we have pioneered many innovations with our customers, including the first eBooks for sale on the iPhone. We look forward to serving you again with an exciting new approach soon.

If you have bought any ebooks from BooksOnBoard, now would probably be a good time to download them one last time. I doubt the site will be around for much longer.

BooksOnBoard has been having financial difficulties for quite some time now, and in fact I have heard from a couple different publishers that BoB has not been keeping up with payments.

This issue first came to my attention in early February 2013 when Dear Author reported that the romance and urban fantasy publisher Samhain Publishing cut ties BooksOnBoard due to unpaid invoices. According to the statement:

Samhain Publishing discontinued a direct relationship with Books on Board over 18 months ago due to non-payment of money owed. However, our books continue to remain available to them via Ingram’s Lightning Source. It is obviously their choice as to which titles they would like to stock, so if you are unable to find a Samhain book listed for purchase with them, we invite you to purchase the title directly from us at store.samhainpublishing.com.

And I know of at least one other publisher who hasn’t been paid. Lyrical Press complained on Twitter in late February 2013 that they had not been paid by BoB for any of the ebooks sold during 2012. Renee Rocco, the head of Lyrical Press, confirmed the complaint in a detailed email.

I didn’t report this story in late February because when I asked BoB for a statement they insisted the nonpayment was an error that they would correct. I gave them the benefit of the doubt, but unfortunately BoB never got around to paying Lyrical Press all of the money owed. I confirmed with Renee Rocco this morning that BoB is still in arrears.

But that’s not all. I have the strong suspicion that BoB wasn’t paying their major suppliers either. I’ve been told that Lightning Source, the main ebook distributor for indie ebookstores, has also complained of non-payment. I was not able to confirm this rumor, but I will note that the shutdown today could very well be a result of LSI no longer distributing ebooks to BoB.

My requests to LSI for comment have gone unanswered. If they respond I will amend this post.

Folks, I’ve already said this but it bears repeating. Go Download Your eBooks Before It’s Too Late.

This ebookstore is very likely D-E-D dead. Someone might buy the assets out of bankruptcy, but the current operation is almost certainly a goner. And if a new ebookstore is resurrected under the BoB name, there’s no guarantee that the new owners will honor past sales.

This is a sad end to one of the older indie ebookstores. B0B was found in 2006 during a time when the ebook market was far more of a dream than a reality.  It’s weathered the rise of the Kindle, the rise and fall of the Nook, and agency pricing.

But margins have always been tight in retail, and ebooks are no exception. And thanks to agency pricing that margin got a lot tighter.

Yes, i do blame agency pricing – at least in part.  While I do like the idea of creators and publishers getting a larger percentage of the retail price, that extra money had to come from somewhere. At least some of it came from the pockets of retailers. I know that publishers like to claim that agency pricing was brought about so they can protect the smaller bookseller from Amazon, but they also made it more difficult for the smaller ebookstores to make a profit.

Cities all over the word are discovering that virtual libraries need little physical space, making it possible to place them in locations that would otherwise not be able to hold more than a handful of books. Cities as diverse as Mexico City and Bucharest are putting virtual libraries in transit stations, and earlier this week Philadelphia followed suit.

The Free Library of Philadelphia announced earlier this week that they had installed a virtual library at Suburban Station, a transit station that (in spite of the name) is actually in downtown Philly.

As part of their celebration of National Library Week (14 April to 20 April), more than 70 advertising boards were installed in the station. As you can see from the images at right, the signs are covered with a selection of book covers as well as QR codes that travelers can scan to download ebooks.

According to the Free Library’s blog, more than 50 titles are available for download via the virtual library as well as podcasts from the Free Library’s Author Events series. This is but a tithe of the Free Library’s extensive digital collection which includes more than 80 thousand ebooks, 8 thousand audiobooks, and over a thousand author podcasts.

The project was launched by the Free Library in cooperation with their partners SEPTA and Titan, with funding provided by Dunkin’ Donuts. The virtual library is going to be maintained during the month of April. Plans have not yet been made to expand it or keep it running after April is over, though that it under discussion.

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Apple, a company with a long history of censoring content, is back again today with a new purity campaign.  Reports are coming in that the digital comics distributor Izneo has had to radically prune their catalog or face banishment from iTunes.

Izneo has been selling digital comics on the iPad since they released an iPad app in mid-2010, and they successfully built a catalog of over 4000 French and Belgian titles. Business was good and everything was going fine until late Friday night when one of Apple’s censors noticed that Izneo sold adult comics. And since Apple clearly cannot allow their precious iPad to be sullied by salacious content, the censor abruptly gave Izneo 30 hours to remove all adult comics.

IDBoox broke the story earlier today, and they report that Izneo had absolutely no warning that there was a problem or guidance as to which titles needed to be removed.  All they were reportedly told by Apple was that the adult content had to go, so Izneo drastically pruned any comic that showed a breast, cleavage, and  even ones with characters evoking a suggestive gesture.

All in all 2800 titles were initially pulled from the iPad app. After removing the titles, the Izneo staff went through a second time and restored some of the less explicit titles. Izneo is back up to a catalog of 2500 titles, far fewer than they had before.

Izneo has not released any details publicly, but they have confirmed the news via Twitter (here, here).

They also have not mentioned any future plans, but so far as I can see they really have only 2 options. Either Izneo can grin and bear it, thereby putting up with Apple’s censorship, or they can find some way to get around Apple.  Izneo could always follow in the footsteps of The Financial Times and release an HTML5-based reading app, but a simpler option would be to simply stop selling comics from inside the app.

All the major ebookstores took that step last year, and besides saving the 30% vig that Apple demanded for in-app purchases the move also keeps Amazon, B&N, and other ebookstores from being hassled by Apple’s censors. Izneo would be well advised to do the same.

We’ve all read the stories about Amazon buying Goodreads for their 16 million members, and that this site was the most successful online book community with 23 million reviews, 525 million books categories, and over 11 million monthly visitors. But have you ever considered exactly how large those figures are?

The following infographic should help put it into perspective. eBookFriendly assembled this graphic last week, and it shows you just how much Goodreads has outgrown the competition.

via eBookFriendly