When Microsoft released a Windows 10 preview last November which included Epub support in the Edge web browser, it looked like it was just a technical test of the browser’s ability’s, but now MS is about to launch a matching ebookstore.

MSPowerUser reports that Microsoft is about ready to fill the one content hole in its online store.

Like Google, Amazon, and Apple, Microsoft sells apps, music, and video through its retail site, but unlike the other three MS does not sell ebooks. According to a leaked internal build of Windows 10, that is going to change soon:

We were today able to get an early look at the new e-books store in an internal build of Windows 10 Mobile, but the feature is also going to be available for PCs and tablets running Windows 10. The new e-book store will be integrated into the Windows Store as a dedicated section where users will be able to buy books from a range of different publishers and authors. Buying a book from the Windows Store works just like how you would buy an app, game or a music album — simply find a book you want to buy, and hit the Buy button to purchase it.

Once purchased, you can start reading the book on Microsoft Edge which is also getting a dedicated section for Books in Windows 10. This is where you will be able to find all the books you have purchased from the Windows Store which is pretty neat. Thanks to Microsoft Edge’s strong EPUB support, you will be able to add bookmarks into any book you are reading or easily view the table of contents. You can also customize the EPUB Viewer’s theme, change the font size and even the font family to fit your needs.

I first heard the news on PCWorld, which excited over Microsoft’s potential impact on the ebook market and how it could unseat Amazon.

Me, I don’t think ebooks will matter any more to Microsoft than they do to Apple or Google. All three are far too large and make far too much money in other sectors to really care about the ebook market.

Their interest is perfunctory, which is why Amazon, a retailer, continues to dominate the market.

But I do agree that MS is getting back into ebooks. Microsoft was actually one of the early pioneers in the ebook market. They partnered with Barnes & Noble to launch the Microsoft Reader format in 2000, but eventually lost interest when the early ebook market fizzled out.

Even after the Kindle ignited the ebook market, MS allowed its ebook service to languish before ultimately killing it in 2012 It was soon replaced with a second partnership with B&N Nook Media. That was a smart move for MS but ultimately came to naught when B&N’s ebook division imploded in early 2013.

And now Microsoft could be making a third venture into ebooks.

Will it prove more successful than before?

In other words, would you buy an ebook from the Windows Store?

Thanks, Tom, for the tip!

Reading a lot of books in a single calendar year takes careful planning, dedication, and a willingness to abandon awful books.

The following infographic from Darius Foroux details several steps you can take to boost your throughput from a few books a month to over 100 books a year.

Enjoy!

When it shut down just over 2 weeks ago, indie ebook retailer All Romance eBooks gave customers just 3 days to download their purchases, and more importantly, it offered publishers and indie authors ten cents on the dollar for unpaid royalties on the condition that they agree to not sue.

That did not sit well with the authors and publishers. only around 11% have stated that they accepted the offer, and now one of the holdouts has filed a class action lawsuit against ARe and its owner, Lori James.

I am still waiting for a text copy of the announcement, but here is what we know so far:

The press release was initially posted to a private FB group; while I was waiting for permission to post it publicly, Writer Beware beat me to the punch.

Individually, the money owed to authors and publishers would be regarded as unsecured debts. They would be the last to be paid in a bankruptcy and might get paid even less than ten cents on the dollar.

But as a class, they might have a better shot at getting assets.

Assuming there are any assets to go after.

As Kris Rusch pointed out last week, ARe had been failing for a couple years – at least. What looks like an abrupt closure is really the final stage in a slow downward spiral:

They are threatening bankruptcy. Since authors are unsecured creditors, most authors will see no money at all in a bankruptcy.

In fact, I expect the writers who opt for the 10 cents on the dollar solution will not be paid either.

Why do I expect that, besides experience with this kind of thing? Primarily because of the ad blast. The blast wasn’t ARe being venal. It was their last-ditch attempt at raising enough capital to save their business.

Guessing now, purely guessing.

ARe had run ahead of their money since they started. They used today’s money to pay yesterday’s bills. They had no profit. So they were floating money—payments to authors, payments to creditors, payments like website and rent.

That’s why ARe’s technology grew antiquated, why they weren’t keeping up with the times, why payments in some cases were late or impossible to get. They probably got a line of credit too late or they didn’t have one or they were borrowing off credit cards.

Rusch had pulled her titles from ARe once it was clear that ARe was no longer tracking sales correctly. That was a couple years ago.

If ARe has been pinching pennies for that long, struggling to get by, then it would mean that by this point there is nothing left to the retailer but debts.

On the other hand, this lawsuit may be able to go after Lori James assets. Depending on how ARe was incorporated, the judge may be able to go through to the owners' assets and use them to pay the plaintiffs.

Assuming, that is, that James has any assets left to fight over.

image by kenteegardin

Regulatory filings suggest that Hewlett-Packard may be moving forward with a new tablet despite the previous termination of its mobile device line. Recently, a new hardware submission from HP successfully cleared the Federal Communications Commission, fueling speculation that a revised version of the abandoned TouchPad could eventually see a commercial release.

While HP has requested confidentiality regarding most of the specific technical details, the FCC documentation confirms the device features Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. Identified by the model number HSTNH-I31C, the device is widely believed to be the "TouchPad Go," a seven-inch version of HP’s original tablet. Previously, this smaller model was considered a casualty of HP’s decision to exit the webOS hardware market, as it never reached retail shelves.

The appearance of these documents suggests that HP might still be interested in a U.S. launch, which would provide a significant boost to the longevity of the webOS platform. Notably, this represents the second time this specific model has appeared in FCC records. The repeat filing points toward potential hardware changes; the latest version seems to lack the 3G cellular radio found in earlier iterations and may have been stripped of other features, such as a camera, to lower production costs.

While some industry observers argued the paperwork was merely the conclusion of old administrative business, the filing dates are current, with certain reports signed as recently as October 5, 2011. Whether this indicates an upcoming product announcement or simply the completion of a long-delayed internal project remains to be seen. Unless HP makes a formal statement, further details will likely stay hidden until the regulatory embargo on the filing’s images and manuals expires in several months.

Last month I brought you the news that Barnes & Noble’s $50 Nook Android tablet came with bonus malware which harvested personal info and sent it to China. At the time, the company claimed to have already fixed the issue and that a future update would completely remove the software.

Now, less than 2 months after it was launched, the $50 Nook Android tablet has been pulled from store shelves and is no longer available on the b&N website.

According to a leaked screenshot, the tablets are being shipped to George Wajda, the B&N director of distribution. The recall was leaked on Reddit by an alleged B&N store employee who wrote that:

early this week we received a project to remove every device from stores. It was very important that they be shipped out quickly, demo devices and all. There was no explanation given and so far this week the signs are still up in the windows, but there has been radio silence and no further instruction other than get them boxed, get tracking numbers, and ship them out. There’s no script for customers, and no recall I can find publicly.

I am waiting for B&N to issue a statement, but I have confirmed that the tablet is not available on the website, and that it has been removed from my local B&N store.

We don’t yet know why that happened, but the original source has speculated that B&N pulled the hardware when they realized that they could not remove the ADDUPS malware with software updates, or that they could not guarantee that everyone will get the update.

That is speculation of course, but even if malware is not the issue, B&N has still pulled the hardware in a quiet but mad rush. That suggests there is something wrong with the $50 Nook tablet, which is why owners should definitely return their tablet forthwith.

Fortunately, B&N’s holiday return policy extends until 31 January, so all of the $50 Nook Android tablets can be returned.

Update: B&N has responded, and their statement might actually be a worse scenario than a malware problem.

Barnes & Noble is investigating three reported cases involving the adapter sold with the NOOK Tablet® 7”. The specific issue involves the adapter casing breaking apart while still in the socket. This does not affect the NOOK® device itself. With no injuries reported and out of an abundance of caution, we recommend that customers stop using the adapter until we provide a replacement adapter. In the meantime, the NOOK Tablet 7” can be charged using a computer. We will be providing more information as we work closely with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to determine the details of a public product recall.

First: One doesn’t yank all store stock for this type of issue – not without also telling store staff what they should say to customers.

The thing is, the original source said that B&N corp did not explain why the tablets were recalled.  The staff were not given any instruction on what to do if a customer brought in a broken charger or a melted tablet but were instead left as confused as the rest of us.

But that is a side issue; the more important issue here is how completely B&N has bungled their new tablet. Not only did it ship with malware, but it also shipped with a defective charger.

Barnes & Noble tried to put a minimum amount of effort into their new tablet, and it has come back to bite them on their stingy ass.

9to5Google

The IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) is about to be subsumed into the W3C, hand over its control of the Epub standard, and vanish into the ether.

That’s the way things are supposed to work, but a small group of protesters have thrown a wrench in the works.

OverDrive is leading a coalition of ebook companies that want to prevent the IDPF-W3C merger.

As many of you already know, the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) is finalizing its plans to “merge” with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). OverDrive, along with other concerned companies in the industry, opposes the plan. We have banded together as the “Save the IDPF. Save EPUB.” Committee.

Libraries and schools, like many others in the eBook ecosystem, depend on EPUB.  For more information about how you can help save EPUB, please join us for an open conference call on Friday, Jan. 13 at 10:00 AM ET (15:00 GMT). Contact us at [email protected] for the dial-in information.

It’s not a good deal because it’s not a merger.

Members of the IDPF were asked to vote on a proposed “merger” of the IDPF and the W3C. To be clear, the planned “merger” is not a merging of the IDPF and the W3C: it’s a transfer of assets from the IDPF to MIT as U.S. host for W3C, followed by a dissolution and liquidation of the IDPF. The IDPF will cease to exist as a trade and business organization. Its assets – its intellectual property – the main one being the EPUB standard, trademarks, logos, et al. will become the property of MIT. Technically, EPUB won’t even be owned by W3C. And, the W3C has made no commitment to maintaining the standard.

You can read more at OverDrive and at DBW.

While there is no value in the continued existence of a group which brought us the Epub 2 and Epub 3 standards – one is less a standard than a collection of recommendations which developers were free to ignore while the other was less a standard so much as it was a recipe for disaster – the protesters are right in that there were and are other options.

They say that the IDPF can be revived, that new funding can be found, but even if that is not true there are still other options.

Here’s one: what if the ISO charters an Epub working group to set a new standard? There’s an ISO standard for PDFs, and the ISO already has working groups like MPEG (which sets standards for video and audio formats).

image by maxf

 The ebook tech services company Firebrand has just expanded into yet another market niche.

Firebrand announced this morning that it had closed a deal to acquire IP created by Calgary-based Enthrill, a provider of ebook gift cards which can be sold in retail stores like Walmart or (for example) given away at conventions. The cards are redeemed online for ebooks which can be downloaded.

Firebrand Technologies, a pioneer in publishing technology services, today announced the acquisition of the technology assets and brands from Enthrill Distribution, Inc., a provider of innovative digital content distribution technologies for the publishing industry.

The acquisition includes PackaDRM, a device agnostic social DRM, and the Endpaper Engine, an ebook delivery platform that delivers ebooks into any reading device.

…

Kevin Franco will continue to work with Firebrand as a consultant for the foreseeable future.

Enthrill had previously raised $1.3 million in a capital round in 2014.

“Firebrand is the perfect fit for the technology developed at Enthrill, this deal offers a terrific opportunity to expand on the bulk ebook business we created,” says Kevin Franco, CEO of Enthrill.

Firebrand also owns marketing services such as Eloquence and Direct2Reader, and had previously purchased Netgalley (ebook review samples) and eBook Architects.

And now it owns Enthrill’s tech for ebook gift cards. Enthrill started negotiating this deal in late 2016; I found out about the negotiations in mid-November. There are a number of details which I can’t share, but publicly available info does not fill me with optimism for the future of ebook gift cards.

Clarification: Firebrand bought Enthrill’s DRM and delivery tech, not the ebook gift card tech. I was just told by email that "The gift card and retail programs were decommissioned in early 2016." So the thrust of the story of the story remains the same.

For example, Amazon has briefly experimented with this niche. They launched a pilot where Kindle ebook gift cards were sold in drug stores in the Seattle are.

That pilot started in June 2015, and concluded in June 2016, and is just one of several less-than-successful attempts to introduce ebook gift cards into retail. Other examples include Livrada, which briefly trialed ebook gift cards in Target stores as well as BookinCard.com and Quingo, both of which have gone out of business.

Enthrill had previously had some commercial success; it ran Walmart’s bookstore in Canada.

And now it is selling off its assets to Firebrand.

This is clearly not a technology which is going anywhere fast.

Stats from the AAP show that some publishers are seeing a decline in ebook sales, but when it comes to usage in libraries the news is very different.

OverDrive reports this morning that:

readers borrowed 196 million digital books, an increase of 21 percent over 2015. Of the 678 million visits to library and school websites, readers borrowed more eBooks (+16%) and audiobooks (+34%) from their local and school libraries digital catalog compared to last year.

The record growth can be attributed to several key factors, including:

• More libraries hosting digital Book Clubs using the OverDrive platform. More than 200 digital Book Clubs in 31 countries and on six continents took place last year. Some of 2016’s most popular eBooks (see below) were featured in OverDrive’s Big Library Read program, a worldwide digital Book Club.
• More people discovering audiobooks. People live life on the go and readers are increasingly using audiobooks through their daily exercise routine, doing work around their house or while traveling. The number of people who used OverDrive Listen for audiobooks jumped 67 percent in 2016.
• Younger readers are reading more and increasingly embracing public library Children’s and YA eBook collections.  2016 saw a 19 percent increase in children’s eBooks borrowed.
• Spanish, Chinese, Russian, French, and other non-English readers are discovering the growing eBook and audiobook catalogs now available from their libraries with nearly a 40 percent increase in non-English books borrowed.

Highlights of record-setting growth from the OverDrive global network:

• Total digital titles borrowed from libraries & schools: 195 million (+21%)
  • eBook circulation: 139 million (+16%)
  • Audiobook circulation: 55 million (+34%)
• 49 library systems achieved at least 1 million digital checkouts
• Visits to OverDrive-powered library & school websites: 678 million

The most popular ebook titles in libraries in 2016 were Julie McElwain’s A Murder in Time, followed by The Girl on the Train and John grisham’s Rogue Lawyer.

The most checked-out audiobooks were The Girl on the Train, All the Light We Cannot See, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

OverDrive has additional data which they are sharing at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits in Atlanta.

image by brokentrinkets

The 10th anniversary of the Apple iPhone reminds us that while it was not the first smartphone, it was the first to achieve mass-market appeal. Since then the iPhone has defined the approach that other smartphone manufacturers have taken.

Smartphones have transformed our lives, essentially giving us an internet-connected computer in our pocket. But while we’re distracted by Candy Crush or Pokemon Go, we are losing freedoms. We are losing control of our own devices, and losing access to the information they contain – in the very same devices that are increasingly important in our life.

To see how far we’ve come, consider that personal desktop computers only became widespread with the IBM PC. By designing the PC with an open architecture, an enormous industry of PC-compatible products from other manufacturers sprang up. It’s the same today: when you purchase a computer, you’ll have (if you wish) the ability and the right to add or remove, swap or upgrade any element of the system hardware, install or remove any software you wish, including the operating system, and access to any information stored on it.

However, today the smartphone or tablet have in many cases effectively replaced the desktop or laptop computer. In parts of the developing world, smartphones are the first experience many have of computing and internet access. The fact that they are small and portable and work wirelessly means they are put to many other uses, such as receiving guidance from navigation systems, listening to music while exercising, or playing games in waiting rooms.

Yet doing something that’s very simple on a computer – such as listing your files – is impossible on an iPhone. iPhone users can change their background image, their ring-tone, the time of their alarm. But the iPhone guards what files it contains jealously. Your phone that is carried everywhere with you, which knows your precise location, which records the websites you visit – has all of its files completely inaccessible to you. If you care about privacy this should sound disturbing.

We have always had the right to govern our own computers, to do with them as we wished. But the smartphones and tablets we’re buying today come without administrator rights: we are merely users in the hands of the big tech companies, and these firms effectively rule the machines we live with.

Information and freedom

Of course, the iPhone does allow access to some information, such as photos, emails or documents. But it is often difficult to get that data off the phone. The way the iPhone communicates with your computer is a closed, proprietary protocol, and Apple changes this protocol each time it updates the phone. So if you use neither Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac computers you will have a hard time even to get your own photos out of your own phone.

Apple also restricts what information can be stored on the device. For example, iPhone users are obliged to transfer any music files on the phone through Apple iTunes software. If you cannot or do not wish to run iTunes – no music for you. Additionally, iTunes will automatically delete all the music tracks on your phone if you try to transfer files from more than one computer, due to digital rights management software that assumes that access from more than one computer means that the file has been shared illegally. It’s a bit like buying spectacles that control the conditions under which you’re allowed to read books. Or a backpack that will destroy all its contents if you attempt to carry items bought from different stores.

The same issue also affects which applications can be installed. If you learn how write code, you can develop your own applications to solve your own unique problems. But the iPhone doesn’t allow you to run those programs: only software authorised by Apple and distributed via the Apple Store is permitted.

Open alternatives

Why so tightly control what we can do with our devices? Some may argue that these restrictions are necessary in favour of security. If we look again at computers, however, we find that Linux, an open source non-commercial operating system, is also the most secure. It’s true that the Android mobile phone operating system, which is more open, is not as secure as the iOS operating system that runs Apple’s iPhone. But it shows that it is possible to have a system that is both secure and open.

In fact, iOS is built around several open source software projects – those whose internal workings are open to anyone to view or modify, for free. But while elements of iOS are open source, they are used as part of a tightly closed system. Android, an open source mobile phone operating system originally created by Google, is the chief alternative to the iPhone. But Android phones too have many closed source components, and Google is constantly replacing open components with closed source ones.

Another alternative comes in the form of Ubuntu Touch, a recent version of the popular Ubuntu Linux for phones and tablets, although it is not yet widely used. The fact remains that ten years on, the mobile revolution kicked-off by the iPhone has taken us several steps forward and several steps back; leaving us uncertain of whether some day we will actually fully own our devices.

reposted from TheConversation under a CC license

image by blakespot

Recent bookselling news may be bleak for Barnes & Noble but things are looking up for Amazon.

News broke this week that Amazon is opening a bookstore in Manhattan as well as a second bookstore in Boston, and now I can exclusively report that Amazon is planning to open their eighth bookstore in the Garden State.

Amazon has updated their website with a new page which lists Amazon Books locations.  That page lists the three open stores in San Diego, Portland, and Seattle, as well as the stores planned for Chicago, Boston, and Manhattan.

The page also mentions a previously unannounced store in Paramus, NJ. The store is going to be located in Garden State Plaza, a mall which is anchored by Macy’s, Nordstrom, and Lord & Taylor.

Amazon has not posted any job listings for the new bookstore, but an Amazon rep did confirm to me today that the store is scheduled to open in 2017.

This store is bracketed by 4 B&N stores to the north, south, east and southwest, and B&n says that they have 40 stores within 50 miles of Paramus, NJ.

How many stores they’ll have this time next year remains to be seen.

Edit: this story isn’t as exclusive as I thought; Publisher’s Lunch also reported this story on Friday.

There’s a lot of drinking going on at B&N HQ this week, after the report they just released:

Barnes & Noble today reported that comparable store sales decreased 9.1% for the nine-week holiday period ending December 31, 2016. Online sales increased approximately 2% for the holiday period.

The sales decrease was largely due to lower traffic, as well as the decline in coloring books and artist supplies – a reversal of last year’s phenomenon – and the comparison to last year’s best-selling album by Adele – the largest selling CD in our history – which combined accounted for approximately one third of the sales decline.

In spite of the holiday sales shortfall, the Company is still expected to exceed last year’s operating profit owing to strong expense management.

"Although books outperformed the company as a whole, we were not pleased with our results," said Len Riggio, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble, Inc. "Fortunately, post-holiday traffic and sales have improved and we are optimistic for the remainder of the fiscal year, and we believe this most unusual retail season may be behind us."

In comparison, revenues rose by a couple percent last holiday season.

B&N took a hit from the election, which depressed retail sales in the period leading up to 8 November, but most of the holiday sales period (over seven weeks) fell after the election, when rebounding sales should have made up for the slowdown.

While that is the case with Amazon (or so they say), clearly B&N did not benefit from the rebound.

image by Random Retail

Hot on the heels of Amazon’s first New York bookstore comes new news that Amazon is also opening a second bookstore in the Boston metro area. The company had previously sought planning permission for a store in Dedham, MA, and now it is also hiring for a second store in Lynnfield, MA, which is about 36 miles away.

They haven’t revealed the location of the new store, but Amazon does have job listings open for an assistant manager, team leaders, and a store clerk. The job descriptions suggest that the store will carry books as well as Amazon devices.

Lynnfield is a relatively tiny suburb almost entirely given over to residential, but the store will likely be located in the town’s one significant mall, MarketStreet Lynnfield.

That is speculation, of course; the new Amazon Books could be located near Lynnfield rather than in it.

We do have more info on Amazon’s other recent retail expansion, however. Amazon has 3 bookstores on the west coast as well as a store planned for Chicago and 3 more on the east coast, and they also have around a couple dozen pickup locations on or near college campuses, including one just announced for College Park, MD.

Amazon, which has recently begun opening bookstores in major cities and pickup locations around college campuses, is bringing its retail concept to College Park, MD.

The e-commerce giant will open a physical location in Terrapin Row, the 445-unit student housing community that opened in September, serving the University of Maryland.

Amazon has put up its logo in the windows of the storefront, above, and a permit on the door lists the occupant as "Amazon Campus."

The new unstore is located at University of Maryland, College Park, which is just outside of Washington DC. It is within driving distance of much of the DC metro area, if you wanted to make a day trip.

I plan to do just that when it opens.

image by Rebecca Rainey

So that rumor last summer of an Amazon Books opening in New York City has just been proven to be about 75% true.

The WSJ reports that Amazon will be opening an Amazon Books store on Manhattan, just not quite where we thought:

Online retailing giant  Amazon plans to open its first New York City bookstore in Manhattan’s Time Warner Center, the company said. The store is expected to open in 2017, an Amazon spokeswoman said. It will be located in the Shops at Columbus Circle, a multistory shopping complex developed and run by Related Cos.

So the rumor got the landlord right but the location wrong. Rather than move into a building which hasn’t been built yet, Amazon will instead open a bookstore in a high-end mall near the southwest corner of Central Park.

I beleive I was in that mall in 2010; I want to say it had a B&N store, but I could be thinking of another mall in Manhattan.

Edit: According to readers the store was Borders, not B&N.

In any case, the mall directory says there’s no bookstore there now, which is a pity. It would be fun to try to give the B&N staffers a stroke by telling them how to get a title cheaper at their competitor down the hall.

Amazon has three bookstores on the west coast, and also has Chicago and Boston stores in the works.

image by kiewic

About three months back I predicted that Medium would pivot for the fourth time and/or take a buyout offer within a couple years (if it doesn’t go bankrupt first).

I should have been more bold with the time frame.

Medium founder Ev Williams just announced that the startup has fired a third of its staff, "eliminating 50 jobs, mostly in sales, support, and other business functions". The startup hasn’t found a way to make money selling ads:

We set out to build a better publishing platform — one that allowed anyone to offer their stories and ideas to the world and that helped the great ones rise to the top. In 2016, we made big investments in teams and technology aimed at attracting and migrating commercial publishers to Medium. And in order to get these publishers paid, we built out and started selling our first ad products. This strategy worked in terms of driving growth, as well as improving the volume and consistency of great content. Some of the web’s best publishers are now on Medium, and we’re happy to work with them every day. We also saw interest from many big brands and promising results from several content marketing campaigns on the platform.

…

Upon further reflection, it’s clear that the broken system is ad-driven media on the internet. It simply doesn’t serve people. In fact, it’s not designed to. The vast majority of articles, videos, and other “content” we all consume on a daily basis is paid for — directly or indirectly — by corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals. And it is measured, amplified, and rewarded based on its ability to do that. Period. As a result, we get…well, what we get. And it’s getting worse.

That’s a big part of why we are making this change today.

…

So, we are shifting our resources and attention to defining a new model for writers and creators to be rewarded, based on the value they’re creating for people. And toward building a transformational product for curious humans who want to get smarter about the world every day.

I would like to say I told you so, but honestly was there anyone who didn’t see this coming?

Medium has been a pipedream from the beginning, and was propped up by an extensive hype machine. It started out as a vague desire to "fix" the internet  but never figured out how to pull it off.

The startup has never really progressed beyond aspiring to that altruistic goal.

It is the Underpants Gnome of web startups.For those who haven’t heard the term before, Underpants Gnomes were creatures from the second season of Southpark who went around stealing undergarments as the first stage in a 3-step business plan. Unfortunately for the gnomes, they never did figure out what to do in the second step:

Like those Southpark characters, Medium knows what it wants to accomplish. It wants to fix the internet by creating a platform where great content is promoted and great ideas come to the fore.

And it has achieved the first step; it raised $134 million in capital, developed a platform, and started publishing.

But after five years it has yet to figure out step two.

To be fair, Medium is not the first startup to struggle with finding a profitable business model; that is the norm rather than the exception. But most startups don’t have such lofty goals, and most startups figure out their business model doesn’t work faster than Medium, which has taken five years and counting.

Let’s hope that Medium finds a solution before the money runs out, or at least finds a buyer. Otherwise when Medium goes down it is going to take a lot of personal blogs as well as blogs like Pacific Standard, The Awl, and ThinkProgress.org down with them.

What with Scribd having removed digital comics from its subscription service in early December, many comics readers are looking for their next source for a binge-reading session.

Sure, they could simply buy each of the comics as they work their way through a series, but that is a good way to lose the next several months' rent. (They might patronize a site with free comics, but the selection and support is limited.)

Luckily, there is a cheaper option.

Several companies, including Comixology and Marvel, offer unlimited reading services for a flat monthly fee. Readers can binge-read Iron-Man or Daredevil to their hearts delight without running up a huge tab.

Updated 4 July 2018: This post was updated with current pricing and the addition of DC Universe.

There are at least a half-dozen competing sites. Their catalogs and support vary widely, so let’s start with the unconventional and work our way through the obscure to the giants.

Let’s start with an honorable mention for DC Universe. This service was announced in July 2018 but hasn’t launched yet, so I can’t give you any specifics on price or selection.

 To start, there’s GoComics. This is not a paid service for comic books and graphic novels; instead GoComics hosts the daily comics found on the funny pages of your local newspaper.

Here you’ll find everything from Dilbert to Andy Capp to what appears to be the complete run of Calviin and Hobbes. All of the comics can be read online, or in apps for Android, iPad, and iPhone.

ComicBlitz is a relatively newcomer in this market; it launched at the NYC Comic-Con in 2015 with just an iPad app. It has since added an iPhone app, and is currently beta-testing an Android app.

ComicBlitz is one of the few services to offer a couple different pricing tiers; they have a handful of free titles and a budget plan which costs $3.99 a month and lets you read up to ten titles. Price: $7.99 per month

Next up is Comics Fix. Edit: The ComicFix site was down when I updated this post in July 2018.

This company is on hiatus at the moment and may or may not stick around. It has apps for iOS and Android, and it also lets you read in the web browser. Price: $8.99 per month

I liked Comic Fix when I saw it several years ago, but it has struggled to get much media coverage. Few people have heard of it, so I can see why it is struggling.

The next service, on the other hand, is much better-known – for its ebooks.

Kindle Unlimited is best known as the king of ebook subscription services, but it also carries 7,700 digital comics. That is a limited selection compared to the next two services, but if your reading habits cover both comics and ebooks then this could be the service for you. Price: $9.99 per month

But if your reading habits center on comics, there’s Marvel Unlimited.

 Marvel Unlimited is owned by the comic book publisher and offers access to 17,000 titles from Marvel’s catalog.  The comics can be read on iOS, Android, or in your web browser. Price: $9.99 per month, or $70 per year

Marvel Unlimited is great if you’re a Marvel fan, but if you want to read more broadly then I have just the thing.

Comixology Unlimited is Amazon’s Marvel Unlimited. Amazon used their subsdiary’s contacts with comic book publishers to assemble a catalog which offers the broadest selection possible.

Comixology Unlimited launched only this summer, but thanks to Amazon’s ability to generate buzz it is bound to be one of the larger services by now. Price: $5.99 per month

So, have you tried any these services? Which one did you like the most?