Starting in January 2015 Amazon offered authors and publishers the opportunity to buy ads on its site. The feature was only open to authors with titles in KDP Select, but earlier this year Amazon made it available to all KDP users.

Self-Publisher-Bibel.de has noticed that Amazon has updated its KDP support pages with new instructions on how authors can advertise their ebooks on Amazon.com. The ebooks have to be available in KDP, they must be written in English, and the ebooks also have to meet Kindle Author Creative Acceptance Policies(PDF).

So long as the ebooks meet the minimum requirement, authors can buy ads on other books listing pages, on the Kindle and Fire tabletes, and they also have the option to buy ads which infest Amazon’s search results.

This service is apparently only available on Amazon.com at this time. Or rather, we have a report that it is not available through Amazon.de, and I could not find it on Amazon.co.uk.

But since there is no mention that this service is restricted to US authors, all authors should be able access it through their KDP.Amazon.com account.

Self-Publisher-Bibel.de

As a rule the major publishers hate library ebooks even more than they hate libraries because they see each library loan as a lost sale. So it should come as no surprise that European publishers are dismayed at yesterday’s ruling about library ebook loans.

As Ars Technica and other sites reported, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) released a ruling yesterday which said that libraries could lend ebooks just like they lend paper books. The ruling concurred with the opinion of

Maciej Szpunar, advocate general to the CJEU, who stated in June that libraries should be able to lend ebooks provided authors are fairly compensated in the same way as for physical books.

You can find the ruling here (PDF).

Needless to say, publishers, or rather, the legacy publishing trade groups,  were not pleased with the ruling.  Both the UK Publishers Association, and the Federation of European Publishers, have weighed in with expressions of dismay.

Stephen Lotinga, chief executive of the Publishers Association, spewed nonsense about ebooks:

This court decision raises concerns about the implications for the emerging ebooks market. In our view there is a fundamental difference between printed books and ebooks in that digital copies can be copied and borrowed by an unlimited number of readers.

While it’s important that libraries are able to develop and that authors are properly remunerated for public loans, that cannot be at the expense of a functioning digital book market.

The FEP released an official statement yesterday which spread similar FUD by misinterpreting the ruling:

Revenues from sales of physical books and e-books to the market are still the main way the sector is financed, and authors are remunerated. Early experiments of e-lending in the Nordic countries (Denmark and Sweden) and in the Netherlands [2] have shown that different e-lending models can have a significant impact on the commercial market. Very simply, it is difficult to compete in a market in which virtually the identical product is available for free.

E-books offered for free by libraries might have a particularly heavy impact on smaller language areas, such as Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Romania and others where the national book markets are limited due to small population and multilingual societies, and where currently, the e-book market doesn’t even constitute 1% of the book market.

Hence, the decision of the CJEU comes as a shock for the book publishing community. Today’s assessment runs counter to the letter and spirit of the Public Lending Right Directive and the Infosoc Directive. Both Directives prescribe the need to distinguish clearly between physical and electronic goods and services and to treat them differently.

The reasons for this distinction are evident. “Lending” an e-book is very different from lending a printed book since digital “lending” in fact means copying. One digital copy can for example potentially be “borrowed” by an indefinite number of users, whereas a physical copy can only be borrowed and read by one person at a time, and is subject to a degree of deterioration.

This is nonsense, for two reasons.

For one thing, the ruling said that ebooks had to be limited to "one copy, one user", so the comparison of ebook and print book lending is simply false.

Furthermore, anyone who claims that ebooks are not "subject to a degree of deterioration" is either being disingenuous or simply does not know what they are talking about.

Library ebooks have DRM, and like any type of digital content ensnared by DRM ebooks can die for no reason.

If the DRM stutters, the ebook dies.

If the DRM servers are turned off, the ebook dies.

If the library stops paying for its servers and they are turned off, the ebook dies.

If the only compatible hardware/software is discontinued, the ebook dies.

eBooks don’t deteriorate? Poppycock.

Go try downloading and reading a DRMed MSReader, Mobipocket, Rocketbook, eBookwise, Data Discman, eReader, or Sony format ebook, and then try telling me that ebooks don’t deteriorate.

The simple fact is paper books have much greater longevity than DRMed ebooks. With proper care a print book can last centuries, and in comparison no DRMed ebook has lasted more than a decade (with few exceptions).

But the FEP won’t admit to that simple fact; instead they want to make it more difficult to borrow library ebooks.

The experience of borrowing an e-book resembles the experience of buying an e-book to a much larger extent than is the case with printed books. It is the role and responsibility of publishers to develop e-lending models in collaboration with libraries that ensure that the incentive for consumers to buy e-books persists, in order for European publishers and retailers to remain in a position to invest in new innovative e-book platforms and third companies’ solutions for the distribution/making available of e-books, to the benefit of authors and consumers.

That is code for imposing artificial restrictions which make library ebooks as unusable as possible and as inaccessible as possible.

I would rather not let them get away with that.

How about you?

image by michael_d_beckwith

Amazon launched its ebook subscription service in Australia  on Monday. It offers access to more than one million titles for a monthly subscription fee, but as News.com.au pointed out the cost is higher than most streaming TV and music subscription services.

Kindle Unlimited costs $14 a month in Australia. That’s more than the local price for Netflix and the competing Stan service, which cost $9 and $10, respectively. It’s also higher than either Google Play and Apple Music subscriptions, which cost $12 AUD.

Edit: Here’s a lesson in why one should be careful about trusting online currency conversion sites.  The $14 AUD price of  Kindle Unlimited is closer to $10.70 USD, not $13 which I got from, well, I would rather not say. Thanks, Darryl!

It is rather curious that Amazon jacked up the price in Australia. In the past they have adjusted the price to suit the market, and then reduced the royalties paid to publishers  to the same degree. For example, Kindle Unlimited costs about $10 or 10 euros in most markets but costs far less in Mexico and India.

Apparently Amazon thinks they can soak Australians for a higher monthly fee. That is going to come back to haunt them.

Nevertheless, Amazon is still excited about the launch. “For less than the cost of a best-selling paperback, readers now have unlimited access to over one million titles, allowing them to discover new authors and books, including top sellers and tens of thousands of inspiring stories from local authors,” Kindle David Naggar said in a statement.

Kindle Unlimited is also available in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, India, Mexico, and, most recently, Japan. Subscribers can try the service for the first 30 days for free. It is accessible from both Kindle apps and devices.

The German ebook consortium Tolino announced its newest ereader on Monday. The Tolino Vision 4HD  is almost identical to its predecessor, but it does have a couple features to recommend it.

The Vision 4HD sports the same 6″ Carta E-ink screen (300 ppi), runs on the same 1GHz Freescale CPU, and has the same waterproofing as its predecessor, but there are a couple subtle improvements which may make this ereader worth getting when it reaches store shelves tomorrow.

Lesen.net reports that the Vision 4HD ships with twice the storage (8GB) and a USB cable which looks like it has a standard plug but will actually work both ways. The new cable is on the right:

Those who just want the cable can find them on Amazon for $5 to $10.

The other significant change to the Vision 4HD concerns its frontlight. Tolino followed Kobo’s lead and upgraded the frontlight with a night-reading mode which filters out the blue light emitted by the frontlight.

Tolino is calling it "smartLight", and when enabled this feature changes the color of the frontlight so that it looks bluer in the morning and more orange-red in the evening.

The Kobo Aura One, on the other hand, goes from white to a red-orange depending on the time of day and on a user’s settings.

And of course the Aura One has an 8″ screen; the Vision HD is the first ereader with a 6″ E-ink screen to add this feature.

You can see it in action in the following video at about 10:33:

Vision 4HD  Specs

• CPU: 1GHz
• RAM: 512MB
• Storage: 8GB
• Screen: 300 PPI Carta E-ink Screen
• Frontlight, Capacitive touchscreen
• Connectivity: Wifi
• Weight: 175 grams
• Dimensions: 114 × 163 × 8.1 mm
• Waterproof

Remember that publishing services portal which PastPencil and the bookseller Books-a-Million launched in April 2015?

They relaunched it last week with a new name and a new lure to pull in the unwary.

According to the press release, BAM! Publish is "an intuitive publishing platform with an integrated in-store book placement program".

Strip away the marketing dross and we see that this is a services marketplace run by FastPencil where publishers and authors can either buy a distribution package or specific services like editing, design, or an author website (I can do that).

I call it a "services marketplace" because there are so many sites like this one that they’re now a category which includes Bookbaby, FastPencil, and a half-dozen other sites.

The one major difference between BAM Publish and the other sites is the promise of in-store placement.

Yes, BAM is dangling the same lure as Nook Press Print: use a bookseller’s platform, and you might be able to get your book in their stores.

In the case of BAM, that promise comes with a few strings attached.

According to the website, authors have to pay $399 and jump through a few hoops (including spending $2,800 or more):

1. You purchase one of our Premium Services Packages, or 1,000 print books
2. When you’re ready, submit a copy of your book and purchase confirmation to your Books-A-Million contact
3. Books-A-Million reviews your book for relevance and appearance
4. Upon approval, Books-A-Million specifies local and/or other stores to stock your book, the on-shelf availability time period, and quantities required for each location
5. You fund book publishing and shipping to approved locations
6. If your book sells out, BAM will re-order/additional inventory at its option
7. Unsold copies are returned to you at Books-A-Million expense after shelf-life expires
8. Books sales and royalty payments are reported in your online workspace dashboard

Barnes & Noble has similar requirements for getting into its stores through Nook Press Print; authors have to sell 500 ebook copies through Nook Press and get the approval of B&N’s small press dept.

B&N’s requirements are less restrictive, and the potential reward higher: it has over 600 retail stores to Books-a-Million’s 260.

Nevertheless, I question whether either program is worth it; the costs are high and the potential gain is minimal.  With romance, thriller, and SF genres, for example, the market has largely gone digital. And since Createspace can distribute a POD title to bookstores, it obviates the value of bothering with niche programs like Nook Press Print or BAM Publish.

Amazon opened their first unstore in New York state this week at Stony Brook University on Long Island.

Located on the lower level of SBU’s Frank Melville Library next to a campus store run by B&N Edu, Amazon@StonyBrook offers students and faculty a secure, convenient package pickup location which is staffed by Amazon employees who can help resolve customer service issues.

As I reported back in September, Amazon was already Stony Brook’s official textbook supplier. Barnes & Noble had passed on the opportunity, and instead now runs gift shops in three locations on the SBU campus.

Amazon faced fierce competition for their new pickup location. “We got three bids from traditional, brick-and-mortar (retailers) and three bids from online services,” Peter Baigent, SBU’s vice president for student affairs, told Innovate LI. “The priorities were affordable books, textbooks and course materials, efficiency, superior service for students and the ability to have the SBU brand well-recognized, locally and nationally. At the end of the day, Amazon secured the bid.”

Counting the planned locations like the one at the University of Wisconsin, this is Amazon’s nineteenth pickup location on or near a college campus. It opened for a soft launch on Wednesday, and officially opened today with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Innovate LI

Paypal released the results of multi-nation survey this week, and it showed that consumers' reading habits, device preferences, and willingness to pay for content can change drastically as you cross international borders.

You can find the global report (more like a collection of slides) here as a PDF. There’s also a US-centric report (PDF). A few details which jumped out at me were the disparities in devices used for reading.

You can almost tell which countries have gone to a post-ereader market based on this chart. France has, and so has the US, but UK, Germany, and Spain have note.

The survey report also showed that in some countries consumers were more willing to buy ebooks than to buy games on in-game purchases.

Alas, while it sounds great that consumers are more willing to spend on ebooks, that doesn’t actually mena they are willing to spend _more_ than they would on games.

In fact, the average spent on games was universally higher than for ebooks:

When buying ebooks, Americans were most likely to buy thrillers, SF&F, and romance (which we already knew were the three most popular ebook genres).

And of course consumers were most likely to buy from Amazon.

Remember last year when Penguin Random House published a textspeak version of Shakespeare? And do you remember Hooked, an app which offers text message based stories?

If you liked those then you’re going to love what Amazon announced this morning.

On Wednesday the retailer announced a new subscription reading service for kids called Amazon Rapids. This $3 a month service offers access to a collection of stories written in chat style of writing. The stories come with illustrations, and if readers have trouble understanding a word they can click on it and look it up.

From Techcrunch:

Some of the chat bubbles might ask a question to get the kid to think about a concept or to make them laugh. One story Agarwal pulled up for me was about an alien interacting with a little boy named Gordon over a strangely misdirected text. Gordon didn’t know anything about aliens and asked if the alien he was chatting with was green. The alien was put off by the question but later admitted he was, in fact, a green alien.

Humor is really important for getting kids interested in reading according to Agarwal. “All the way to age twelve it’s the top thing they are looking for,” he said.

Rapids has hundreds of these short stories in its database so far and Agarwal tells TechCrunch Amazon is adding “dozens more” each month. The idea is to make them fun and short enough to keep the kids engaged till the end.

I generally loathe chat as a writing style, but I am going to make an exception for Amazon Rapids. The combination of the short chunks of text plus images makes this service a modern iteration of picture books, the books given to beginning readers.

Amazon Rapids isn’t dumbing down books; it is providing a simpler form for less able readers. And that’s a good thing.

The simple fact is, many readers are pushed to switch from picture books to chapter books before they are ready. Chapter books have paragraphs of text which are harder to read than picture books, and readers who are forced to switch too early may be frustrated by the more difficult text.

Now Amazon has provided an intermediate type of book which both stretches a reader’s  abilities without overwhelming them.

What’s not to like?

Remember how Amazon launched its bookstores so it could train customers on how to use its app and the rest of its services?

Apparently Amazon is now using the stores to encourage customers to sign up for Amazon Prime. Geekwire reports that Amazon is celebrating the one year anniversary of the launch of the Seattle Amazon Books  with a new pricing policy.

When the store opened, Amazon charged the same price in the store as it did online, but now  the low prices are a perk reserved for Prime members paying $99 a year. Everyone else now has to pay the list price for any non-Amazon hardware sold in its stores.

According to Geekwire, that could be a considerable markup:

There are no price tags on the books at Amazon’s store, as customers can either scan the book at a kiosk or use Amazon’s app to find out how much each product is. But based on a handful of titles I scanned today, the discounts range from 6 percent to upwards of 40 percent. The kiosks clearly show how much you’d save if you were a Prime member.

The new pricing policy reportedly started in August, and have already taken effect at the stores in Seattle, Portland, and San Diego. Amazon is also in the process of launching to two more bookstores in Chicago and Boston.

When I first read this I wondered if Amazon was simply making it easier for non-members to find the price; they might not have Amazon’s app on their smartphone and thus finding and paying the list price would be easier than taking each book to a kiosk.

But looking at how the kiosks highlight the price disparity, it’s clear that Amazon’s goal is to get visitors to sign up for Prime. (Also, there’s no reason to assume only Prime members will have the Amazon app; I for example have the latter but not the former).

Amazon is even promoting Prime with large signs around the store:

Amazon isn’t the first B&M retailer to tie its discounts to a membership program; many supermarket chains and other retailers offer discounts with a free membership card, and Borders and Barnes & Noble even charged for their membership programs.

So in a way Amazon is copying their competition while going one step better; the Prime membership is worth getting.

That said, I still have two questions. How would you prove to the cashier that you have a Prime membership?

Also, how much do you want to bet that the receipt for non-members will highlight how much they could have saved?

The strangest case of scamming in the Kindle Store crossed my desk on Sunday, and I am still scratching my head.

On Sunday several authors started commenting on Kboards that obviously fake ebooks were moving up the various best-seller lists in the Kindle Store. The scam titles were first noticed on the "Movers & Shakers" list (it tracks sudden increases in popularity) as they started moving up the best-seller list.

For example:

The ebooks all had similar generic covers, similar generic titles, and you could frequently find two or three different copies of an ebook from multiple authors.

And according to reports, the ebooks had large file sizes but little original content. Many just had the same couple paragraphs repeated over and over.

So they were obviously scam ebooks, and some even got high on the children’s best-sellers list before disappearing.

But the question remains, what were the scammers trying to accomplish?

I ask this question because by the time I heard about this scam on Sunday afternoon, most of the scam ebooks were no longer available. Amazon had pulled them and vanished the ebooks' listing pages.

What’s even more interesting is that some of the titles kept going up the lists even after they were gone; it’s almost as if their trajectory kept propelling them upward.

But still, it’s not clear what the scammers gained from this attempt.

The consensus opinion over at KBoards was that the scammers were running a page count scam in Kindle Unlimited, and I have to admit that this is the most likely possibility.

The idea behind this scam is that the scammers would upload junk ebooks and then use bots to "read" the ebooks in Kindle Unlimited. The scammers get paid, Amazon gets bilked, and authors lose out on the visibility of getting on the best-seller lists (and no, authors aren’t losing any money here).

But one problem with that theory is that the ebooks were all published within the past few days, and were pulled quickly by Amazon. So clearly Amazon had identified the scam and responded promptly.

That’s not what scammers want, as one commenter put it over at KBoards:

That was too fast and hard, too visible, to be scammers out to make money. Because you do not draw attention to yourself like that if you want to get away with it. You stay under the radar.

And since Amazon declines to pay out earnings when they think you’re scamming them, what exactly did the scammers gain, here?

Amazon’s publishing divisions have set up shop in the US, UK, Germany, and France. Now that list includes India.

Deal Street Asia and The Hindu report that Amazon was buying Indian publisher Westland:

Online marketplace Amazon has agreed to acquire the remaining 74% stake in Westland, the publishing unit of the Tata group retail company Trent Ltd, indicating its interest in expanding its presence in India books market.

The terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed.

In February, Amazon bought a 26% stake in Westland for about Rs 9.5 crore. Trent had said at the time that Amazon had the option to acquire the remaining 74% stake later.

Following the investment made by Amazon.com NV Investment Holding, Inc., Amazon will get right to name one member to the Westland board.

Westland’s own site is down for maintenance, but according to the profile on the site of its corporate parent, Westland is a fiction, non-fiction, and literary publisher.

It is also described as being one of the largest book distributors in India. Westland distributes books for Penguin Random House, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Canongate, Perseus, Hachette, and Pan Macmillan.

It is not clear whether Westland’s distribution arm was included in the sale, or just its publishing divisions.

While the terms of the sale have not been released, that 24% stake cost Amazon about 95 million rupees, or $1.4 million USD, in February.

image by TheCreativePenn

B&N has been re-branding Samsung Galaxy Tabs for the past three years, but now they are apparently going to release their own budget tablet.

A new FCC filing from a Chinese company called Shenzhen Jingwah has revealed that B&N’s next tablet, model number BNTV450, will have a 7″ screen and run Android on a quad-core MediaTek CPU.

Thanks to an oversight by B&N’s Chinese contractor, we get to see all of the info, including the external and internal photos which show the Nook logo, test results, and a user manual (PDF) which clearly confirms that this tablet runs B&N’s software and carries its brand.

That’s how we know that this tablet has specs about on par with the $50 Fire tablet. I can’t tell you everything yet, but so far I have gleaned the following from the FCC paperwork:

• CPU: 1.3GHz MediaTek MT8163 quad-core
• GPU: Mali-T720 MP2
• Battery: 3Ah
• Wifi: 802.11a/b/g/n dual-band
• Bluetooth 4.0
• Cameras: two, resolution unknown
• Speaker, headphone jack
• microSD card slot

I also can’t tell you which version of Android it will be running, but the one photo I have of the software suggests that it will run a vanilla flavor with Nook apps running on top.

The screenshots in the user manual also point to that theory.

As you can see in the photos at the end of the post, this tablet carries the Nook logo, but that is about as close as it comes to the beautiful designs we used to expect from Nook.

Instead, this is a generic Chinese tablet which B&N has licensed for its use – just like the last Nook ereader was built by Netronix and licensed to B&N.

That’s a cost effective move for B&N, but will it result in good hardware?

We’ll have to wait for the official announcement before we can answer that question.

FCC via Liliputing

If you were disappointed by last year’s $150 Shiftwear ePaper sneakers when they ultimately proved to be vaporware then I have some good news for you.

News of a similar product has crossed my desk this week, only this time the shoes actually exist and have more than a lot of fancy photoshop to back them up.

Meet the Vixole Matrix, a pair of sneakers whose crowd-funding campaign just launched in Indiegogo.

These $245 sneakers sport LED screens wrapped around the heel. The screens are relatively low resolution (32 x 72) monochrome screen, but on the plus side the Matrix shoes also have a g-sensor, accelerometer, a sound sensor, and a magnetometer.

They’re powered by a 3Ah battery, and can connect to your smartphone over Bluetooth.

And best of all, these shoes actually exist. Vixole has been showing off the matrix sneakers since July:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTX1rHD-Bmg

The Matrix sneakers are up for pre-order on the website and on Indiegogo. You can order a pair for a$225 if you act fast. The regular retail is $345, but either way you will have to wait until at least June before you can put the shoes on.

That’s a long wait, but it is still better than the Shiftwear. That product launched in December 2015 and has yet to show a working prototype.

The above video is the kind of thing I want to see before I would risk my money on a project. That’s why I didn’t invest in Shiftwear last year; that, and shown in the demo GIFs , the shoes with impossibly high resolution color E-ink screens, were simply impossible.

While the Vixole Matrix is a much more limited design, it is also more feasible.

I bet you a pair of shoes that the Matrix will ship by the end of 2017, while Shiftwear will never ship the shoe design they showed off last December.

Who wants to take me up on that bet?

Engadget

Yesterday’s story about the Nook Press platform has turned up a newsworthy detail about the platform which had so far gone unreported (I would also have missed it, had David Gaughran not brought it up).

Barnes & Noble has made major changes to its digital platform over the past year. Most were announced with fanfare, but not the changes to the Author Services part of Nook Press.

Sometime between March and August 2016 B&N shut down the part of Nook Press which had been overcharging authors for basic services like cover design, editing, and the like.

Launched in November 2014, Nook Press Author Services sold authors over-priced services bundles under the pretense that it was assisting them in publishing their work, but that was just the cover. This dept was run by the infamous vanity press Author Solutions (ASI), and in reality ASI was really interested in upselling authors by getting them to buy expensive and useless marketing packages.

ASI frequently used otherwise legit companies like Lulu, Simon & Schuster, and yes, B&N, to run front operations like the Star Trek writing contest or publishing imprints like S&S’s Archway.

While B&N never came out and said that its Author Services dept was run by Author Solutions, in March 2015 a whistle blower leaked the ToS contract, proving the connection. The relationship was later confirmed during the discovery period for one of the class-action suits filed against ASI.

And now that partnership has ended, which is good news for everyone except the scammers at ASI.

This is the latest bad news for Author Solutions, which was sold off by Penguin Random House last fall for an undisclosed sum. ASI’s business had dropped by half since PRH bought ASI in 2012.