Remember when Penguin Classics published A Canticle for Leibowitz?

Thanks to Nicholas Love’s Penguin Classics cover generator, now you can do just that.

This site lets you create your own Penguin Classic covers in either the Oxford World Classics or the Penguin Classics look. All you have to do is upload an image and set the author and title, and then click the button.

This is cool, but I’d rather see covers in the classic classic design (the one with a single color on the top and bottom thirds of the cover, and white in between).  Those covers would be a lot simpler, leaving less room to be clever.

BTW, if you are interested, there are many excellent spoof covers in this Twitter thread.

What you see at left is my own creation; what would you like to make with this tool?

via Boing Boing

Apple still doesn’t care if you want to read an ebook you buy from them on non-Apple hardware, but they have finally launched a publishing portal that anyone can access using a web browser.

David Gaughran brings us the news that Apple launched a new portal today called Apple Books for Authors. This is primarily an information portal, and it has lots of useful info on marketing, ebook design, audiobooks, cover images, and so on, but if you drill down you will discover that there’s a new way to upload Epub ebooks to be sold in Apple Books.

You can find the upload page here. (You’ll still an iTunesConnect account to upload ebooks, but you can set that up using your existing Apple account.)

This is a huge change for Apple; they used to require that you use a macOS-only app to upload ebooks, or go through a distributor such as Draft2Digital. (Another way around this was to lease a Mac in the cloud, and run the app there.) Now everything is accessible via a web browser.

Go check it out!

Apple Books for Authors

Calibre is widely considered the best tool for managing your library of DRM-free ebooks, but it’s not your only option. About 5 years back I reviewed an app called KDeasy (alas, that review got eaten), and today I would like to show you a second ebook library app, one that was also developed by the same developers who brought us KDEasy.

Launched about 4 years ago, Epubor is designed to be a multi-format replacement for KDEasy. The older app only supported Kindle ebooks, while Epubor supports multiple formats, and can even strip DRM from Epub and Kindle ebooks.

While Epubor is primarily marketed as a DRM-stripping tool, it does have library ebook management features. You can edit an ebook’s metadata, give it a rating, add a note or introduction, and change the cover image.

Epubor also includes an online ebook reader, and it can convert DRM-free ebooks between Epub, Kindle, and PDF formats.

Opinion

I was given a free license to Epubor so I could write this review And that’s great, because I would have regretted buying it.

I don’t think Epubor is worth the money. Yes, it does work (after a fashion), but I think you should be using calibre instead. Calibre works as well or better than Epubor, and doesn’t cost $25 for an annual license.

Take stripping DRM, for example.  Back when I did this more, I liked to use calibre because it was free and because when the process failed, I would (usually) get an error message that helped me troubleshoot the problem so I could try again.

While Epubor can strip DRM, some times it fails. When that happens it doesn’t tell me why it failed to strip DRM from an ebook, which means if I really want to strip the DRM from this ebook, I will have to use a different tool, so I figure I might as well use that other tool in the first place.

Furthermore, Epubor just doesn’t have the same features as calibre. They are both ebook library management tools, but only calibre lets you install plugins which add features. Also, calibre converts to and from far more formats, while Epubor only supports 3. And where they do have comparable features, such as the ebook viewer feature for example, calibre’s feature just works better than the comparable feature in Epubor.

I could go on to list a half dozen other reasons I prefer calibre, but I think you get my point.

P.S. This app has a rating of 1.7 stars on MacUpdate. Clearly I am not the only one who is not impressed.

Epubor

With several new color ereaders (such as the Onyx Boox Poke 2 Color) launching in 2020, everyone is wondering just what kind of screen tech is going into the new devices.

And now I have the answer.

E-ink’s new screen tech is called Kaleido, as I have previously reported.  This is a reference to kaleidoscopes, those toys "with two or more reflecting surfaces tilted to each other in an angle, so that one or more objects on one end of the mirrors are seen as a regular symmetrical pattern when viewed from the other end".

A Kaleido E-ink screen does not have a new type of E-ink screen. Instead, it pairs a Carta HD E-ink screen with a color filter layer. This is similar in design to the older Triton color E-ink screens, although obviously with a much higher resolution and better color quality.

The Carta screen is capable of displaying 16 shades of gray at a resolution of 300 PPI, which the color filter layer is responsible for converting into 4096 colors at a resolution of 212 PPI.

Edit: Color screen resolution is unknown. Some sources say this screen tech can display color at 212 PPI, while Pocketbook says the screens going into their device have a color resolution of 100 PPI. (I trust Pocketbook.)

(BTW, it’s worth noting that E-ink made a similar claim about the Triton being capable of displaying 4096 colors, but that screen never lived up to the promise. It remains to be seen if the new Kaleido screens will pull it off.)

A back of the envelope calculation shows that the Kaleido screens require two grayscale pixels for each color pixel. This raises interesting questions which E-ink has not yet answered. 4096 colors is 2^12 colors. The intensity of a color is controlled by the grayscale pixels underneath, and the Carta HD screen is capable of displaying 16 shades of gray, so theoretically the Kaleido screen should be capable of displaying 2^15 colors (32,768).

Edit: With Pocketbook saying this screen is capable of displaying 100 PPI in color, it suggests that each color pixel requires 4 grayscale pixels.

I have asked E-ink about the discrepancy, and will report back.

In the mean time, here’s the new screen in action on the Onyx Boox Poke2 Color.

When I reported last week that B&N was delaying payments, I didn’t know whether it was the result of the office closing or a sign of money issues.

In what is an eery reminder of the end of Borders, B&N has now admitted that they are having money issues so severe that they are even delaying ebook royalties (which are a negligible percentage of B&N’s revenue).

Edit: Snashwords posted a similar message to their update page. Then they posted a second update with the news that B&N will be making full payments to authors and distributors.

Draft2Digital sent out an email today, passing along the bad news.

Recently we informed you of certain issues facing Barnes & Noble, resulting from the impact of COVID-19. We wanted to update you with some news, and with a special request.

Just as each of us has individually faced unexpected challenges during this worldwide crisis, so have major retailers. With many of B&N’s storefronts closing during the pandemic, the retailer has seen a dramatic drop in cashflow. One result of this has been a delay in paying publishers for ebooks sold via their Nook Platform.

We’ve been informed that these delayed payments are being done for larger accounts, such as Draft2Digital, and not necessarily for all smaller accounts.

Barnes & Noble has advised us that full payment may be delayed up to 90 days. However, B&N has agreed to pay us 1/3 of the total for February sales now, and to pay the remaining 2/3 of funds at a future date.

Do you want to know how small fry the Nook is to B&N?

In B&N’s last fiscal year, Nook revenues, including both hardware and content sales, totaled $92 million, while revenues for the fiscal year totaled $3.6 billion.

That is not a lot of money when divided into monthly payments, which is even more worrisome. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that Nook royalty payments for February are in the ballpark of $3 to $4 million.

To be fair, with over 400 stores closed to the public, B&N has lost anywhere from a third to half of their revenue, so that minuscule Nook revenue now represents a much larger percentage of company revenues.

Furthermore, ebook sales are bound to increase as a result of the shutdown, which means that B&N’s ebook sales could grow to be as much as ten to fifteen percent of company revenue this quarter.

We’re not talking chump change any more, but it remains to be seen whether the company will still be around to make those sales.

image by batmartin79 via Flickr

With Pocketbook, a couple Chinese companies, and now Onyx announcing a new device, 2020 has turned into the year of the color ereader.

Details are still scarce, but Onyx has officially announced that they will launch a color ereader this year. Well, they have not announced it so much as released this graphic, and said nothing else.

We do not know the screen resolution, price, or release date at this time, but this is most likely going to be a 6″ ereader, and ship some time this fall.

This device will likely be using the Kolaido E-ink screen tech announced by Pocketbook (the Chinese ereaders use the same tech, Pocketbook told me). That screen is capable of displaying 4096 shades of color at a resolution of 212 PPI, or grayscale at a resolution of 300 ppi.

Edit: Color screen resolution is unknown. Some sources say this screen tech can display color at 212 PPI, while Pocketbook says the screens going into their device have a color resolution of 100 PPI. (I trust Pocketbook.)

E-ink has not yet answered my questions about the difference in screen resolution yet, but one reader pointed out that the difference could be explained if the color mode requires 2 grayscale pixels to display a color pixel. If you look at the number of pixels on the screen (and not just the PPI), the math checks out.

Remember how I’ve been saying that Kobo’s next ereader will probably have a color E-ink screen?

Well, I think that device may have just cleared the FCC website.

Earlier today a new device called the Kobo Nia showed up on the FCC website. It is made by Netronix, and will have an E-ink screen, but that is about all I can say about it. The test reports also tell us it will have Wifi, a 1Ah battery, and 16GB of storage, but all the more interesting details (such as the photos and user manual) have of course been embargoed.

All we really have to go on is the screenshot at right. If you look carefully, you will see there’s no mention of Kolaido, E-ink’s new color screen tech. That might indicate that the new device doesn’t have a color screen, but I am hoping against hope that it will.

Kobo’s embargo expires in October, but I would expect that the new ereader will be launched in the next few weeks.

BTW. a certain less than reliable blog had previously claimed that "Kobo is developing a next generation e-reader that will have note taking functionality and come with a stylus". They said it would have a 7.8″ or 10.3″ screen, and ship in August or September.

They have since taken that post down, which makes me wonder if perhaps they were telling the truth this time (there is a first time for everything, after all).

The test reports do not mention a stylus, so I don’t think that is likely.

Everyone knows that the current quarantine is throwing a wrench in the book publishing works, but what does that really mean?

Earlier this month an editor with a leading SF publisher explained on Facebook just what is happening behind the scenes.

First, you need to know that the vast majority of our business remains in hardcover and paperback books. Hard copies, physical objects. The second strongest sector has been audio books. Ebooks are a distant third.

Selling books is a very long and complicated supply chain. Ignore editorial — writers and editors can work at a distance and electronically. It really starts with the paper. Storing paper for the big presses takes an enormous amount of warehouse space, which costs money. Printers don’t store a lot — they rely on a "just in time" supply chain so that when a book is scheduled to go to press, the paper is delivered to the printer. Most of that paper is manufactured in China. Guess what isn’t coming from China? Anything, for the last three months. Some of it comes from Canada. Guess what the Trump administration put a big tariff on at the beginning of the year?

So, we don’t have adequate paper supplies. Then consider, big printing plants are not "essential businesses". There are only a couple printers in the US that can handle the book manufacturing business. One of them shut down last week. Covid-19. We started rescheduling books like mad to deal with that.

But supposing we had paper, and a printer and bindery, the books have to be shipped to the warehouse. Again, non-essential movement. The freight drivers moving books? Staying home, as they should. Not all of them. I hope they remain healthy, because dying to get the latest bestseller to the warehouse doesn’t seem quite right to me.

Now then, our warehouse. We have a gigantic facility in Virginia. Lots of people are working there, bless them, but it’s putting them at risk. There they are, filling orders, packing boxes, running invoices. Giving those boxes to the freight drivers who take the books to the bookstores and distributors. Again, truck drivers risking their lives to bring books to the bookstores.

But think again. The bookstores are closed. The distributors are closed . No place open to deliver the books to. Some bookstores are doing mail order business, bless them, but they aren’t ordering very many books from our warehouse. Amazon isn’t ordering very many, either — because they have (correctly) stopped shipping books and are using their reduced staff to ship medical supplies and food.

So the books that distributors and sellers ordered months ago are not being printed or shipped or sold. And because of that, they aren’t making any money. And because of THAT, they are not ordering any books for months from now. Plus they aren’t paying for the books they got from us last month and the month before. Cash flow has ground to a halt.

Now, audio books….turns out that people mostly, almost 100%, listen to audio books while they commute to work. Sales of audio books collapsed about three weeks ago. Fortunately, there isn’t a physical supply chain there, so theoretically that business can restart immediately upon resumption of commuting.

I understand the situation the industry is in. I don’t have a supply chain issue, but the shutdown of all public events has cost me all of my carefully laid plans to meet new clients at conferences and trade shows. I’ve had to pull out all the projects I didn’t have time or interest for before, and see which ones can still be implemented during a quarantine.

I would expect publishers are doing the same.

image by MacBeales via Flickr

Pocketbook has just announced that they are launching a 6″ color ereader later this year in Europe.

Details are still scarce, but we do know the device will reportedly cost 200 euros when it is released in the third quarter, and that it will sport the 4,096 color E-ink screen sported by the two Chinese ereaders announced last month. Coincidentally, neither of those devices have shipped yet, and now I think we know why (the screens haven’t shipped, either).

Heise.de says that Pocketbook called the screen Kaleido E-ink. That is not a name I have heard before, and it’s not mentioned in any of E-ink’s marketing materials.

Edit: Pocketbook says the screens going into their device have a color resolution of 100 PPI.

There actually is a company called Kaleido that makes printer ink, which could be a sign that the company is E-ink’s new tech partner (perhaps they were brought in for their material sciences expertise).

In any case, I am waiting for more info from Pocketbook, and from Kobo. I fully expect Kobo to launch their own color ereader this year (assuming the screens are available).

I am also reasonably certain that Amazon will launch a color ereader this year, but with different screen tech. I am basing that conclusion on the way three different companies have announced ereaders that don’t exist yet.

It’s almost as if they expect a bigger competitor will announce its color ereader soon, and they wanted to get a lead on the news coverage.

An interesting copyright ruling crossed my desk today. I don’t think it has been explained very well, so I would like to explain what it means for the average user.

According to The Hollywood Reporter:

When it comes to appropriating images found online, the situation is understandably confusing. If an individual posts something on social media, does that give someone else the right to use it in a different forum? Most lawyers would likely answer, "Not so fast," and yet on Monday came a suggestive ruling perhaps otherwise from a New York federal court.

The plaintiff in the case is Stephanie Sinclair, a professional photographer known for exploring gender and human rights issues around the world. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Time magazine and National Geographic. She uploaded one of her photographs — an image of a mother and child in Guatemala — to Instagram. Later, the news site Mashable contacted her because it wanted to reuse the image for a story on female photographers. Mashable offered $50. Sinclair declined. Mashable used the image anyway by embedding her Instagram post in its story. Sinclair claimed copyright infringement.

You can find the ruling over on THR’s website, and you can see the original Mashable post in the Wayback Machine.

Sinclair lost the case in a ruling that can be summed up pretty simply. In the view of the judge:

• The copyright holder uploaded an image to Instagram, granting IG permission to post the photo, and
• Instagram has as part of its platform an option to embed posts on other websites, so
• when someone uses that embed feature, they are doing so with the implied permission of the copyright holder.

That makes a lot of sense, and it fits with existing copyright rulings. What’s even better is that it doesn’t conflict with a related ruling from two years ago where a number of media orgs lost a suit over embedding a photo. (The photo they embedded was uploaded  to Twitter without the permission of the copyright holder, so it was in fact pirated before the media orgs shared it.)

Also, this decision sidesteps the really stupid "server test" that had started to creep into copyright rulings.

Now, I am sure there are many who are unhappy with this ruling, but I see this as an example of how users need more control so that we can say whether our work can be used elsewhere.

Some platforms already give you that control; Youtube, for example, lets you disable the embed feature on a per-video basis.

It would be great if more platforms gave us similar options, don’t you agree?

image by stockcatalog via Flickr

I haven’t gotten the announcement email yet, but CNBC has reported, and I have confirmed on Amazon’s affiliate site, that Amazon is cutting the fees it is paying for referrals from websites in Amazon’s affiliate program.

The rates will change on 21 April, and the affected product categories are:

You can find the old rates here.

Here’s what reportedly what Amazon said in the email.

Hello Associate,

We hope you are staying well during this time. We are writing to inform you of upcoming changes to the Amazon Associates Program Operating Agreement, which governs your participation in the Amazon Associates Program. All changes are effective as of April 21, 2020.

Visit the What’s Changed page to see a summary of these changes. You can also find the Operating Agreement, Program Policies, and the Fee Statement if you would like to refer to the current, pre-change versions.

Sincerely,
The Amazon Associates Program

image by Kurayba via Flickr

Offices are shutting down due to the pandemic , and that is throwing a wrench into previously  orderly operations. Messages are going unanswered, and now Barnes & Noble has warned that its royalty payments could be delayed as a result of shifting its staff to work at home.

Draft2Digital sent out an email today, warning that B&N royalties could be delayed.

As the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak continue to impact the industry, some of our retailers are having to adjust to new ways of operating certain aspects of their business.

As a result, Barnes & Noble has informed us that they are experiencing some delays in processing payments for February sales, due to having to shift to remote operation.

We will continue to monitor and make any updates to royalty reports as those come in. At this time, we are hopeful the payment will be received from B&N before the April 15th royalty payments are applied. However, if they come later, we will make a second payment of royalties immediately after we receive the funds.

The pandemic has also disrupted supply chains. While Amazon has not announced a delay to payments, it is delaying shipments of non-essential products. (I’ve been waiting 3 weeks for an order that would usually arrive within a couple days.)

Thanks, Brian!

image by MikeKalasnik via Flickr

A story broke this past week that reminded me about a post I had been wanting to write.

The Atlantic and ProPublica partnered on a deep dive into the Kindle Store’s problem with white supremacists, but they didn’t quite get to the root of the story.

Give me, a white man, a reason to live,” a user posted to the anonymous message board 4chan in the summer of 2017. “Should I get a hobby. What interests can I pursue to save myself from total despair. How do you go on living.”

A fellow user had a suggestion: “Please write a concise book of only factual indisputable information exposing the Jews,” focusing on “their selling of our high tech secrets to China/Russia” and “their long track record of pedophilia and perversion etc.”

The man seeking advice was intrigued. “And who would publish it and who would put it in their bookstores that would make it worth the trouble,” he asked.

The answer came a few minutes later. “Self-publish to Amazon,” his interlocutor replied.

“Kindle will publish anything,” a third user chimed in.

The thing about this story is that it is a slight variation on the same tale we’ve heard on an annual basis for the past decade. The current situation involves white supremacists, but in the past Amazon has been plagued by scammers, spammers, more scammers, content farmers (aka catfishing), book stuffers, yet more scammers, and even more spammers.

We’ve read this type of story so often that you can’t write them off as being the work of an Amazon hater like David Streitfeld of the NYTimes. You also can’t ignore them on the basis that Amazon is only getting coverage because of their high profile. Apple’s brand has similar value as clickbait, and yet we don’t see these stories about Apple Books (and that’s because Apple Books doesn’t have nearly the same volume of problems as the Kindle Store has).

No, as I explained to Ben Collins of CNBC last month when the Coronavirus spam books were first getting attention, the problem is unique to Amazon. "Most of Amazon’s e-book competitors have a content approval process in place that keeps the worst content out," I told him.

When I was talking to Collins last month, I checked Kobo and Play Books and could not find any Coronavirus spam books. Amazon, on the other hand, was filled with them.

"I don’t know if it’s a case of can’t or won’t," I told Collins. "What I do know is that Amazon is the only retailer with this problem. They have the lion’s share of the e-book market revenue, and could easily afford to use the same quality assurance processes as their competitors, and yet they still have this problem."

As Google has demonstrated, it’s not impossible to build a system to keep out evil-doers. Back in 2015 Google had an epic piracy problem in Play Books which was on the same scale as any one of Amazon’s problems in the Kindle Store. Google responded by shutting down new registrations in their publisher portal, and leaving it shut down until they had a process in place to prevent pirates from registering.

As a result, Google reduced their piracy problem from a disaster to a nuisance.

The thing is, folks, Amazon could nip these problems in the bud by building the same systems used by their competitors.  And while the retailer will insist that they have built these systems, Amazon keeps having problems, and Amazon’s competitors do not.

At some point we’re just going to have to conclude that the real problem is actually Amazon and its corporate culture. Until Amazon is willing to make fundamental changes, these stories are never going to stop.

image by SounderBruce via Flickr

I still don’t have any evidence that this ereader is actually available, but it now appears that at least two color ereaders have been announced in China.

The iFlytek eBook is a 6″ ereader with an unknown price tag and an unspecified ship date. According to coverage from China, it uses E-ink’s new 4,096 color Just Print screen.

Details are rather scare on the iFlytek eBook (which is why I seriously suspect it’s vaporware). Everyone is reporting that it has a 24-LED frontlight, support for TTS and music via a built-in speaker, but other details like RAM, CPU, Wifi, and touchscreen tech are still unknown.

What I do find interesting is that several sites mention that the screen has two modes, one for black and white and another for color. Here’s the fun part: the color mode is 212 PPI, while the black and white mode is 300 PPI.

Edit: Color screen resolution is unknown. Some sources say this screen tech can display color at 212 PPI, while Pocketbook says the screens going into their device have a color resolution of 100 PPI. (I trust Pocketbook.)

I asked E-ink for more info on why there’s a difference, but given the current crisis it might take them a while to get back to me.

CnTechPost

Microsoft’s new co-editing tool takes on Grammarly where it is the weakest, in the web browser.

Last week Microsoft rebranded Office 365 as MS 365. They added a bunch of new features, including a new editing tool called Microsoft Editor.

This AI-powered editor reportedly expands on 365’s existing features in several ways:

• Provides suggestions to improve sentence clarity
• Estimates time to read or speak your document
• Suggests alternate vocabulary or punctuation, and gender-neutral and inclusive terms
• Reminds you when to use formal language
• Helps identify plagiarism in your work, or lets you quickly provide citations if you’re the one writing

A number of those features already exist in most writing apps.  Others are paid features through services like Grammarly (which is pretty awful). And now Microsoft is going to make them available to paying 365 users.

Microsoft Editor started rolling out last week and should be available to all "by the end of April." It’s going to be available in Outlook, 354, and in both Chrome and Edge web browsers.

I can’t see it in the Chrome Web Store at the time I wrote this post, but I assume that will change at some point.

Microsoft via TNW