Are You Ready For The Next eBook Boom?
The legacy book publishing industry is fond of telling itself comforting myths. For example, one myth that just crossed my desk was the idea that younger...Continue reading
Amazon Demands Authors Do the Impossible – Control the Prices of Print Books Sold by Third-Party Sellers
As I am sure you know, Amazon requires competitive prices for ebooks sold through its site. The ToS for KDP specify that authors can't price their...Continue reading
Rakuten Sells Overdrive to Private Investment Firm
I do not know why they chose to announce this on Christmas eve, but yesterday Rakuten announced that it was selling Overdrive to KKR. KKR, a leading...Continue reading
Authors Can Now Advertise Their eBooks on Amazon Sites in Italy, Spain, and France
Have you checked your Amazon.com KDP dashboard lately? I just did, and I noticed that Amazon has added a notice informing users that we now have...Continue reading
The Five Types of “Q” Tails
If you read this blog then you probably know about serif and san-serif fonts, how to tell the difference. But did you know there are several...Continue reading
Morning Coffee – 23 December 2019
Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning. The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled ebook resale is illegal. The NYTimes has...Continue reading
Publishers Object to Losing the Ability to Profit From Publishing Papers They Didn’t Pay For (And Research They Didn’t Fund)
I don't say this enough but one of the problems in academic publishing is how journal publishers are exploiting the academic "publish or perish" imperative to...Continue reading
Amazon is Merging Book Reviews From Its International Sites Into Amazon.com
For the longest time Amazon has kept the book reviews on its various websites in separate silos, but now the retailer is copying review from one...Continue reading
Fedex Service is So Terrible That Amazon Has Restricted Third-Party Sellers From Using It
if you have been following me on Twitter, you may have recently heard me complaining about Fedex leaving multiple deliveries out in the rain. In the...Continue reading
3-Color 12.5″ E-ink Screen Available via Waveshare
Around six years back E-ink launched a 3-color screen to be used in signage. The tech is called Spectra, and it featured red, black, and white...Continue reading
Morning Coffee – 16 December 2019
Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning. Today: MS Office comes to Linux. Tomorrow: Linux is EOLed. Researchers have learned that, even when...Continue reading
Kindle Kids Edition Gains Support for Audiobooks in Latest Update
Amazon has released a firmware update for the new Kindle Kids Edition that shipped in October 2019. The new firmware version is 5.13.0.9, and it comes...Continue reading
Kindle Unlimited Per-Page Rate Jumped in November 2019
Amazon announced on Friday that the Kindle Unlimited funding pool increased by one hundred thousand dollars in November 2019, to $26.1 million, from $26 million in...Continue reading
Morning Coffee – 9 December 2019
Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning. The AP notes that Amazon is making a lot of money off of ads now that...Continue reading
“The Casual Vacancy” Tops Goodreads’ List of Popular Abandoned Books
BoingBoing brings our attention to one of the hidden features of Goodreads. Lots of people like to use GR's "shelves" feature to track the books they...Continue reading