Amazon has been fighting fake reviews since at least 2012. They have deleted scads of reviews, banned paid reviews, filed suit against several batches of fake review perpetrators, and even forbidden authors from having any type of relationship with reviewers.

And it’s still not enough. Fake reviews are still being posted, mostly due to an underlying problem.

Buzzfeed published a story earlier this week that delved into the dark underbelly of the paid review ecosystem that has sprung up to manipulate rankings on Amazon. This massive system continues to operate despite Amazon’s best efforts:

The systems that create fraudulent reviews are a complicated web of subreddits, invite-only Slack channels, private Discord servers, and closed Facebook groups, but the incentives are simple: Being a five-star product is crucial to selling inventory at scale in Amazon’s intensely competitive marketplace — so crucial that merchants are willing to pay thousands of people to review their products positively.

To be fair, Amazon isn’t the only retailer with a fake review problem; earlier this week Valve announced it had permanently banned a game developer from the Steam marketplace after finding out that developer’s employee had posted fake reviews.

This problem exists in all marketplaces, and not just Amazon, but Amazon is the only retailer who has a reputation for banning innocent reviewers, thereby punishing innocent authors.

Right about the time that Buzzfeed was publishing its article, I was reading FB post after FB post from authors whose reviewers were getting banned from posting reviews.

Elena Page wrote about how she lost one of her first fans: "Amazon emailed her last week and accused her of leaving biased reviews on Amazon. She was banned from ever leaving reviews on Amazon again, and told she was not allowed to argue her case or refute the claim in any way. All the reviews she’s ever left, have been removed."

Other authors chimed in with similar reports, including one who noted that their books had lost most of the reviews even though none of the reviews were fraudulent.

Amazon has an automation problem. This company uses bots to run almost every aspect of the Kindle Store from detecting fake reviews to checking the formatting in ebooks and finding fraud in Kindle Unlimited, but the bots don’t work very well. This leads to situations where innocent authors are punished because Amazon’s bots think the authors are scamming Kindle Unlimited while the actual scammers continue to operate at a massive scale.

The under-performing bots are also in part to blame for the ongoing problem with fake reviews on Amazon.com.

The simple fact is Amazon can’t tell which reviews are fake, and which are forbidden by policy, and they’re not the only ones.

A lot of the recent stories about fake reviews, including the Washington Post article from last month and Buzzfeed’s piece, have relied on a company called ReviewMeta. This one of two startups that have developed algorithms to detect fake reviews. The other is called Fakespot, which has its own algorithms that work in essentially the same way.

These two companies will tell you that they can identify which reviews are fake with a high degree of certainty, but the thing is, they rarely agree and that raises serious questions as to their accuracy.

After the Washington Post reported on the fake review problem last month, David Gaughran followed up with a post that pointed out how ReviewMeta falsely labeled his books as having fake reviews.

Okay, this doesn’t look good. And if you look down the page it shows each of the products they have assessed that led to this overall brand trustworthiness score. You can see many of my books have “failed” in the eyes of ReviewMeta and “Unnatural reviews detected” has been appended to several of my books. Crikey.

You can click on each product and see how it came to that determination, and the supposed evidence for each component of that decision. Again, I stress, this transparency is truly commendable.

But this breakdown also reveals the faulty assumptions that led to these incorrect determinations about my reviews. And it’s not just my reviews, of course. These simplistic calculations affect most authors. (You can search for your own books here.)

You can find ReviewMeta’s analysis of David here. While you are at it, you might also want to take a look at Fakespot’s analysis.

The thing about these two companies is that they identified some of David’s books as having fake reviews, but not all. The other thing about these two companies is that they didn’t agree on which books had fake reviews.

One thought Let’s Get Digital was tainted, while the other passed the book. The same goes for Liberty Boy, and other titles.

The disputed analyses call into question the very idea that fake reviews can be identified by algorithms. As David put it:

The sad thing about all of this is that Amazon does have a fake review problem, one which is compounded by Amazon deploying a fake review detection algorithm that seems about as accurate as the one from ReviewMeta, perhaps for similar reasons too. Which means that authors innocent of any wrongdoing get genuine, organic reviews from bona fide reviewers removed every day and the scammers and cheaters with fake reviews keep getting away with it.

This problem is only going to get worse before it gets better.

Kobo’s next ereader leaked on Youtube today, and it is exactly what we were expecting.

Kobo’s Canadian retail partner, Chapters/Indigo, uploaded a video to YouTube showing the Kobo Clara HD. The video has since been removed, and it shows digital images rather than the actual device, but it did reveal some interesting details about Kobo’s next ereader.

The Kobo Clara HD is a basic black rectangle with a 6″ E-ink screen. The video doesn’t mention the screen resolution, but it does say that the device has Comfortlight Pro. This is what Kobo calls its color-changing frontlight, and it means that the Clara HD will have the same frontlight options as Kobo’s last couple models.

The video also mentions that the Clara HD will have 8GB of storage, but it doesn’t say more than that. For example, there’s no mention of price or release date.

I agree with the other Nathan; this is a little disappointing. It’s a minimal refresh to existing hardware that adds a new frontlight, but little else.

This is a little silly, but over the past week I had started to wonder whether Kobo might decide they had to do something amazing so they could overshadow the Kindle Oasis, Amazon’s 7″ ereader.

I got it in my head that Kobo might release a 10″ ereader. Yes, I had predicted a 6″ model, but I would have been happy to be surprised  when I was wrong.

Alas, that is not to be.

The Association of American Publishers has released its end of year revenue report for the legacy publishing industry.

As expected, trade revenues were essentially flat (a 1.3% increase), while ebook revenues fell 4.7%.

Press release:

Publishers’ revenue for trade (consumer) books increased by $96 million (+1.3%) to $7.6 billion in 2017. The growth in trade books is attributed to a +3.0% revenue uptick in the Adult Books category, which comprises more than 65% of all revenue for trade books. Revenue for Childrens/YA books and Religious Presses declined in 2017.

Overall publisher revenue for 2017 was flat at $14.7 billion, up $57.5 million (+0.4%) from 2016. These numbers include sales for all tracked categories (Trade – fiction/non-fiction/religious, PreK-12 Instructional Materials, Higher Education Course Materials, Professional Publishing, and University Presses). Several categories that had declined in 2016 rebounded in 2017, including Adult Books, University Presses, and Professional Books.

Some 2017 trends include:

• In terms of growth percentage, downloaded audio dominates with +29.7% growth compared to 2016. This is the fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth for this format, with revenue nearly triple what it was in 2012.
• eBook sales declined overall for the third year, the -4.7% decline is lower than it has been the past few years, and eBooks for Religious Presses saw a revenue increase.
• Higher Education publishers’ revenue was flat (+0.2%), ending the previous years’ declines.
• Adult Books saw increased revenue from 2016, up $148.1 million.

Trade Book Formats

Print books generally continued on their positive growth trend from 2016. Revenue from print books totaled $5,774.9 million in 2017, up about $60 million (+1.0%), from 2016. In 2017, revenue grew for trade books’ most popular format – hardback books – which was up by $83.9 million; this countered the $4.8 million revenue decline in paperback books (-0.2%).

Downloaded audio, which grew +25.8% in 2016, continued its significant growth in 2017 with publisher revenue increasing +29.7% in 2017. This category has nearly tripled in the past five years. For the first time since AAP began measuring the category, growth passed the $300 million mark for the year, reaching $343 million, and overtaking mass market books in revenue.

The pace of eBooks declining revenue appears to be cooling, with a -4.7% decline – significantly less than the double-digit declines experienced in 2015 and 2016. While Adult Books and Childrens/YA saw declining eBook revenues, publisher revenue for religious presses was up by $3.1 million (+9.2%) in 2017.

Total Trade Net Revenue by Format (in millions)

Education, Professional and Scholarly Publishing

After several years of declining revenue, higher education publishers saw $8.8 million in additional revenue from Course Materials (+0.2%), flat from 2016. This is primarily due to a reduction in returns (down -20.6% from 2016.)

PreK-12 Instructional Materials declined by -3.6% in 2017 compared to 2016. Revenue for PreK-6 books declined by -12.1%, while revenue for 6-12 books increased by +10.2%, with growth coming from adoption states.

After two years of declines, both University Presses (+5.3%) and Professional Books (+8.4%) – which include business, medical, law, scientific and technical books – saw revenue growth in 2017.

Publisher net revenue is tracked monthly by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and includes sales data from more than 1,200 publishers. Figures represent publishers’ net revenue for the U.S. (i.e. what publishers sell to bookstores, direct to consumer, online venues, etc.), and are not retailer/consumer sales figures. AAP also tracks revenue annually with AAP’s StatShot Annual Report, which includes reporting from additional publishers and data about unit sales and channels. For more information about purchasing the StatShot Monthly and StatShot Annual, email [email protected].

The NY Times has published some stinker editorials lately (Ross Douthat’s piece springs to mind), including an editorial by David Leonhardt that was published on the NYTimes site yesterday.

Leonhardt wants to save Barnes & Noble by punishing Amazon for being a better bookseller. He wants regulators to step in and use antitrust law to spank Amazon and (I think) force Amazon to raise prices. He isn’t clear on that point, and Leonhardt also fails to explain how this would help Barnes & Noble given that consumers have shown they do not want to shop at the failing retailer, or why B&N deserves this special treatment.

The piece demonstrates muddy-headed thinking all around, including in its litany of Amazon’s supposed misdeeds, where Leonhardt  tosses out falsehoods and industry myths left and right.

Leonhardt  starts by claiming that Amazon "has never run into antitrust scrutiny" when it has been investigated at least once (during the Apple price-fixing investigation, and possibly a second time when the Authors United astroturfing group was making a spectacle in 2014 through 2016).

He then claims Amazon is losing money on book sales when in fact a DOJ investigation showed Amazon hadn’t been losing money on ebooks at the time the DOJ charged the Price Fix Six. (There is zero evidence on Amazon’s print book revenues one way or the other).

Leonhardt goes on to blame Amazon for Borders’s bad business decision and failure and for publishers abandoning mid-list authors. He is also under the mistaken impression that there are fewer professional authors now than before.

It’s really hard to take Leonhardt seriously after he made that claim; it shows that he didn’t do his research.

The thing is, there are more pro authors now than before Amazon got into ebooks.

Amazon has in fact created opportunities for authors to bypass gatekeepers and bring books to market. Authors get to keep a greater share of the revenues than if they signed with a publisher, which means there are more commercially viable books than before (and not less, as Leonhardt believes).

All in all, this piece is little more than the same old recycled ADS (Amazon derangement syndrome) tripe that we have seen before from the legacy publishing industry. It accomplishes nothing more than showing no one can make a good argument that Amazon is anything more than just unpopular among a small segment of the publishing industry whose sinecures have been disrupted by Amazon.

What Leonhardt is really saying by repeating the gripes of the legacy publishing industry is that  Amazon is guilty of"felony interference with a business model", which is another way of saying that Amazon’s disruptions have cost legacy publishers revenue, status, and marketshare.

As much as they may wish it were, this is not actually a crime.

Next!

image by THE Holy Hand Grenade!

Trademark bullying is a pox on industries ranging from breweries to whatever over-priced junk Monster Cable is making this week. A trademark bully’s ostensible goal is to keep consumers from getting confused, but in reality there was never any chance of confusion, and all the bullies accomplish is to make their victims needlessly waste time, money, and resources either fighting a lawsuit or re-branding in compliance with the bullying.

And now an author has brought the practice to romance publishing.

Hot from Twitter comes the news that author Faleena Hopkins is sending threatening letters to romance authors who use the word "cocky"  in the titles of their books.

For example:

The message I received from "Cocky Gate". #freecocky #cockygate #rwa pic.twitter.com/HzAr4Qr9Ii

— jamila jasper (@JamilaJasper) May 5, 2018

The above tweet includes a screensnap of an email that reads:

Hi Jamilla,

My name is Faleena Hopkins, author of Cocker Brothers, The Cocky Series,

The Federal Trademark Commission has granted me the official registered trademark of the word/mark “Cocky”, no matter the font.

Trademark Registration number: 5447836

I am writing to you out of professional respect so that you may rename your book “Cocky Cowboy” which shares the same title as my book, and republish all of the versions (ebook, paperback, and Audible) on Amazon to keep your ratings and money earned.

My attorney at Morris Yom Entertainment Law has advised me that if I sue you I will win all the monies you have earned on this title, plus lawyer fees will be paid by you as well.

I will do that – but I would rather give you the option.

I have had this series established since June 16, 2016 and I take all of the hard work I put into establishing it very seriously.

Your hard work I also take seriously.

You have the opportunity to adjust, rename, and republish before taking further action. You can do so on Amazon without losing reviews.

Thank you,

Faleena Hopkins

Hopkins has a trademark both on the word "Cocky" as a stylized script and on the word itself (this is being misreported elsewhere). She has a series of romance novels about a pair of brothers with the last name Cocker, hence the connection to the word "cocky".

This is trademark bullying, plain and simple, and it’s based on an incredibly weak argument.

While a lawyer will tell you that you can trademark common words, there has to be something unique about how you are using the word:

One example that I like to give to clients is that of Apple Inc., the famous computer and software manufacturer. The word “apple” is a very common word, and yet Apple Inc. had no problem trademarking the term “APPLE” for computers and computer programs. Nor did Apple Rubber Products, John Middleton Co., and Scholastic, Inc. All of those companies, and many others, own trademark rights to the single word “APPLE”.

Why was this allowed? Because the word “apple” is an arbitrary word when used in connection with the manufacture and sale of computers and computer programs, or tobacco products, or educational materials. That is, there is nothing about these products that relates to “apples”. Accordingly, the term “APPLE” is actually a pretty strong trademark, as is the case when you apply a completely arbitrary term (however common it may be) to promote your products or services.

The case would be much different if someone wanted to get a trademark on the word “APPLE” in connection with the sale of apples (the fruit). In that case, the name “APPLE” would simply be a generic term for the type of goods being provided, namely, apples. Because of this, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) would never issue a federal trademark registration for the term “APPLE” if the only products being provided were fruit products, even the best trademark attorney wouldn’t be able to help you with that attempt.

"Cocky" is a descriptive term that was already in widespread use before Hopkins filed for her trademark (including in the title of dozens of romance novels). Her use is in no way unique, and there is no way a consumer could get confused because there is no way that the consumer could possibly think the word "Cocky" is a trademark for romance novels.

Edit: As David Vandergriff (a lawyer) explains over at The Passive Voice, the reason that prior works are important is that in trademark disputes, control of a mark goes to whoever used it first, not whoever registered it first. So Hopkins’s trademark is invalid because she was not the first to use the term.

But if consumers were going to get confused, there is an equal probability they would think that her books were part of one of the several series of romance titles that used the work "cocky" in the title (here’s one example).

And while we are on the topic, one of her two trademarks is probably invalid; it appears to rely on a font licensed from Creative Market under terms that said you can’t get a trademark (edit: the creator has confirmed this).

If it helps, the font she used for one of her trademarks appears to be Northwell Alt Regular from Creative Market. Their T&Cs specifically say you can’t trademark designs using items purchased from there. Did @SetSailStudios give special permission? #cockygate pic.twitter.com/eO8eWfgs7e

— Syki (@the_syki) May 5, 2018

This trademark is going to be voided in the first lawsuit, if not sooner. Mark Whipple, an IP attorney, has weighed in with a detailed explanation of how and why Hopkins is going to lose, and the Romance Writers of America is already taking statements and is getting ready to consult with an IP attorney.

Authors who have been threatened with legal action by #Faleena Hopkins can contact Carol Ritter ([email protected]) as the #RWA is now collecting info to talk to an IP lawyer. Spread the word! #romance #cocky #StopTheCockBlock #authors #writers

— Ashley Jade/ A.Jade (@AJadeAuthor) May 5, 2018

Update: The story is still unfolding on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/RomancingNope/status/992947590902763522

Also, Hopkins is painting herself as the victim over on FB:

Amazon’s new book of the month club replacement, the Prime Book Box, got a lot of attention when it was announced on Tuesday, but so far everyone (including me) seems to have missed the important background detail that will decide whether this program succeeds or fails.

While I did make the connection between the new service and book of the month clubs even I missed the fact that Amazon is going up against a well-entrenched competitor who dominates the kids book market (a reader noticed, though – Thanks, Dave!).

The heavyweight in this arena isn’t Amazon, and it isn’t a retailer. It is a publisher.

I am referring, of course, to Scholastic.

With revenues topping $1.74 billion a year, this publisher is larger than several of the Big Five trade publishers, and yet it is frequently overlooked.  In part this is due to Scholastic not participating in the book industry’s favorite hobby, publicly whining about Amazon, but the other reason that Scholastic is overlooked is that they don’t do a lot of business with the retail book trade. Instead, Scholastic makes most of their money from direct sales.

Scholastic is the king of the school book fair, and between book fairs and its classroom-based mail order operation, Scholastic sells over a billion dollars worth of books a year in schools. That is more business than Simon & Schuster does in a year, and it’s more than Hachette US’s annual revenues.

This is the business that Amazon is trying to disrupt. Will they succeed?

One could go by Amazon’s dominance of the retail book trade and conclude that Scholastic doesn’t have a chance, but that could be a mistake.

Scholastic is not Borders or B&N, nor is it one of the Big Five. Scholastic has a direct connection to its customers that the Big Five never had and that B&N lost years ago, giving Scholastic brand recognition that few can match.

Amazon has their work cut out for them.

All Romance eBooks was at one time a leading romance ebook retailer, but by the time it shut down in late 2016 it was clouded in scandal. Not only had authors gone unpaid for months (some for over a year), ARe had also presold a number of marketing services right before it closed – and then kept the money.

ARe owner Lori James is being sued by a class of authors, so one would think she would maintain a low profile.

Apparently one would be mistaken.

According to the DragonCon website, Lori James has been invited to attend the con as an author guest. She will be coming under her pen name, Samantha Sommersby, but no matter what you call her this is still the same person who owes authors hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

DragonCon was first made aware of this situation 3 weeks ago by authors who belong to the (closed) FB group Pissed Off former ARe Authors, and when I contacted DragonCon two weeks ago they told me:

We’re looking into the situation. That’s all we can say right now. We were just recently made aware of it, and our programming team is looking at it.

I checked last night and DragonCon has not decided whether to uninvite James. If you would like to help them make up their minds, you can contact DragonCon through its site.

Dropbox is a popular way to store your ebooks and other files online, and now they have made it a little easier to read those ebooks.

A reader has tipped me to the news that Dropbox now has an Epub viewer built into its website. Simply double click on one of the Epub files you have uploaded to your Dropbox account and it will open in a viewer – just like PDF and Word.

My source and I were unable to find an announcement from DropBox, but I can confirm it works – just not very well.

The Dropbox Epub viewer ignores the formatting, table of contents, and all of the metadata. All it can really do is take the text and images from an Epub file and show it as a single column of centered text, making it a viewer app of last resort.

My source calls it "a pretty cool improvement" but I am going to let Dropbox add features like basic support for formatting before I get excited.

Thanks, Stephanie, for the tip!

The Kindle app for Android got an update last week about the same time as the iOS app. Weirdly enough, the apps did not get the same features in the respective updates, and it’s not clear why.

The Android app now lets you return ebooks borrowed from Prime Reading and Kindle Unlimited (just like the iOS app).

There’s also a new sort option where you can elect to only show Audible audiobooks (other options include all items, ebooks, ebooks, magazines, etc). And we have a new gesture to refresh/reload the library listing; just swipe down in your library, and any new books or changes are synced.

You can find the app in Google Play.

Changelog

• Return Prime Reading and Kindle Unlimited books from within the Kindle app. Simply long press on a book cover and select “Return book”.
•  Use the new Audible filter to quickly find audiobooks in your library.
• Pull down in your home or library to refresh your list of books.

Android Police

Judging by the continued decline in revenue, Barnes & Noble’s ebook project is a a failure, but someone apparently forgot to tell the tech team at B&N Press.

B&N announced new features for its publisher portal on Friday:

We’ve launched a few new features that we wanted to tell you about: the ability to schedule eBook price changes in advance and an at-a-glance 30-day sales reporting graph.

We know the ability to schedule an eBook price change in advance is important to our authors. You can now select a start and end date for eBook price promotions in advance, giving you extra time to focus on other things – like writing!

…

We also have an update to our Sales Reportingwith a new at-a-glance, 30-day graph to help you identify sales trends. We hope this graph gives you better insight into your sales performance quickly and efficiently.

The 30-day graph also provides a by title option that will allow you to focus on your sales trends with even more detail!

This is the first announced update to B&N Press platform January. That update featured new sales reporting options, including by day, week, and year.

B&N

Amazon has quietly added a new feature to book listings on Amazon.com that will quickly prove to be both a boon and a bane.

Authors on Facebook and KBoards have told me that Amazon has added a new "Related Video Shorts" section under the editorial reviews and product descriptions. At first glance this looks like it is intended for book trailers, but it turns out anyone can upload a video for any product. When you upload a video, you get to choose from a list of categories of what the video is about ( unboxing, product demonstration, etc.).

I found several book listings with reviews, including Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere. No one appears to be using the feature to post book trailers or other positive reviews yet, but I have found a few videos where buyers had uploaded a video as part their review and detailed problems with the print edition of a book.

Edit: I’ve just read in a (closed) FB group that author can’t upload videos to their book listing. This explains the lack of adoption. Thanks, Mark!

Edit: And apparently Amazon changed the rules some time before August 2018, because Indies Unlimited says authors can upload their own video.

Amazon has supported uploading video reviews of products for several years now, but this option is still not widely used. But now that the videos are being added to listing pages, authors would be wise to upload their own videos and take advantage of the new promotion opportunities.

This could be a great way to get readers interested in not just this one book but also the author’s other work.

NPD reported on Wednesday what everyone already knew from the past few years of AAP monthly revenue reports: publisher ebook sales are down.

From PW:

Unit sales of traditionally published e-books fell 10% in 2017, compared to 2016, according to figures released by PubTrack Digital, part of the NPD book group. The service, which tracks sales from about 450 publishers, said e-book unit sales hit 162 million last year, down from 180 million units in 2016.

NPD reported that combining print sales from its BookScan service with PubTrack digital sales, e-books accounted for 19% of total units (both print and digital) last year, down from 21% in 2016. The top selling e-book among the trade publishers, it reported, was The Handmaid’s Tale published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Back in 2015, when PubTrack Digital was still owned by Bookscan, PubTrack Digital reported that 223 million ebooks were sold by publishers in 2014.

That was shown to be under half the market then (around 44%). All independent reports suggest that the ebook market has not significantly shrunk in the intervening years, which means that the  PubTrack Digital data points to a significant drop in market share for the publishers who supply data.

I would put it at around a third of units sold, but I am still waiting to see if Data Guy has estimates he can share from the Author Earning report.

I will update this post with his data if I can.

image by San José Public Library

Amazon has wrapped a number of file formats around the magazines it has sold on the Kindle platform over the past ten plus years. The original magazine format was based on the old Mobipocket format, and it was replaced by magazines in the KF8 format, which launched in 2011/2012.

And now KF8 is being replaced by KFX as the preferred format for magazines on the Kindle paltform.

Amazon released a new update today for its Kindle app for iOS. According to the changelog, the updates lets users return ebooks to Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading. There’s also a mention of "a new mobile-friendly" magazine format.

I haven’t seen the magazines myself (no iDevice) but I have asked around and the consensus is that the new magazine format is based on KFX, the "new" file format Amazon debuted in 2015.

You can find the app in iTunes.

Changelog:

• Return Prime Reading and Kindle Unlimited books from within the Kindle app. Simply long press on a book cover and select “Return book”.
• Read your favorite magazines in a new mobile-friendly format. Initial titles include Food Network, Cosmopolitan, Life & Style, Us Weekly, and 15 others.
• A new setting lets you enable the highlight menu so it shows up when you select text.

It turns out Kobo has a lot in common with the major trade publishers; in both cases,  much if not all of their growth comes from acquisitions rather than growing sales.

According to Rakuten’s annual report to investors, which was released in February,  Kobo’s net content sales were up 60.4% in the firth quarter over the same period in the previous year.

The report also showed that Overdrive’s total checkouts were up 17.5% in that same quarter.

Rakuten did not reveal any additional detail in the report or in the presentation for investors. In fact, Kobo wasn’t mentioned in the presentation at all.

Did you look at that first chart?

Kobo got a huge boost when they took over operations of Tolino early last year, but ever since then their revenues have declined. That comes as a surprise given that I have not heard any complaints from users which would indicate they were turning away from Kobo.

And yet, that is probably what is happening given that Overdrive did not see a similar dip in checkouts, and Author Earning reports showed that the ebook market continues to grow.

Have you stopped buying your ebooks through Kobo/Tolino?

Amazon China announced on Tuesday that it will launch Prime Reading in China.Amazon Prime members in China can now enjoy unlimited access to more than 500 Kindle titles, including several best-sellers and issues of popular magazines.

Gu Fan, head of Amazon Prime China, said that a recent study showed the digital reading adoption rate had increased in China for eight straight years, reaching 68.2% in 2016. "Reading has been one of the most frequently-requested new benefits from members since Day One of Prime in China. We will continue innovating for Prime members in China by adding more benefits, making Prime the best deal."

Amazon revealed yesterday that it has over 100 million Prime members in the US.  It has not revealed numbers for China, noting only that subscribers to its Prime service in China increased more than threefold, year-on-year, in 2017,

"Prime Reading enables us to connect with Amazon Prime customers, and we look forward to bringing additional titles to Prime members in the future," said Wang Ziqi, senior vice-president at DuKe Publishing, which will join Prime Reading with 38 of its most popular titles.

BookFrere