I was suspicious when E-ink announced its newest color epaper display today; no E-ink screen could really look as good as what you can get from a high-quality inkjet printer.

But now that I have seen some first-hand photos and a video of the screens on display at SID Display Week, damned if I wasn’t wrong.

Slashgear has gotten up close and personal with E-ink’s new Advanced Color ePaper (ACeP, for short). This wholly-new epaper does away with the color filter required for previous color epaper screens and instead displays a full color gamut, including all eight primary colors, using only colored pigments in each pixel.

This means that the new ACeP screen doesn’t have just white and black pigment capsules in each pixel like regular E-ink screens (or in the case of Spectra, yellow/red, black, and white).

Instead the new screen has seven sets of pigment capsules a single pixel. E-ink doesn’t name them, but if I had to guess I’d say that the colors are white, black, red, purple, blue, green, yellow, and orange. (Chris suggested a different set over at Teleread.)

That sounds impressive, but as you can see in the video all those pigments come at a cost.

The flashing you see in the video is the screen reversing itself in preparation of activating another color. In other words, thanks to the 7 pigments the refresh rate is very low, which is why this isn’t going to be made into an ereader.

E-ink has targeted the ACeP screens for the signage market. They’ve built 20″ displays, with screen resolutions of 1600 x 2500 at 150 ppi, and they expect this technology to go into commercial production in the next two years.

So this is not the ereader screen we have been hoping for. But even so, it’s pretty.

P.S. Do you think it would be any good for a monitor, or as a document display?

There’s a story going around this weekend about a new class action lawsuit filed against Simon & Schuster. Doctor and author Sheldon Blau is alleging that S&S is paying him for ebooks as sales when they are in fact licensed, only the story is not nearly that simple.

From Copylaw:

A book is a book, except when it comes to eBook royalties. That’s the premise of a class action lawsuit filed on Thursday, May 19, 2016, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York by class representative Sheldon Blau, MD.

The lawsuit alleges Simon & Schuster has been cheating its authors by improperly categorizing eBook transactions as "sales" rather than "licenses."

The distinction is significant, because the royalty rate for sales is much lower than the rate for the license of rights.  If categorized as a license the author receives 50% of net receipts, rather than 25% of net typically paid to authors for the "sale" of an eBook.

…

The eBook royalty class action looks back approximately six years, the statute of limitations on contract actions in New York State.  It alleges Simon & Schuster engaged in a "pattern and practice of paying Plaintiff and others similarly situated royalty payments for the distribution of licenses for electronic books, or "e-books," at a rate for book "sales," or some other lower rate than that required for "license" transactions."

You can find the filing, as well as commentary, over at The Passive Voice.

This case should immediately remind you of Eminem’s lawsuit against his record label over royalties. Like S&S, Aftermath Records (a UMG sub) was collecting license fees on mp3 sales and passing them along as "sales".

This case was filed in 2007 and decided in Eminem’s favor in 2010, and Blau’s case shows every sign of following the same pattern, right?

I wouldn’t be so sure.

We don’t have all the details, but there’s a less than obvious complication. Law360 noticed this detail, but apparently no one has realized its significance.

The problem is that while Simon & Schuster has a contract with Blau, it isn’t publishing his book. The book is still carrying the S&S name, but:

A spokesman for Simon & Schuster told Law360 on Thursday that the company sold the division handling Blau’s 1997 book to another company the following year and are no longer its publisher. In addition, the spokesman said Simon & Schuster never published an e-book edition of Blau’s book.

According to the listing on Amazon and every other retail site I checked, this book is actually published by Wiley. (WorldCat says S&S, however, and the Kindle edition still mentions S&S on the copyright page.)

So rather than this being a straight-forward situation where a publisher is allegedly underpaying royalties, what we have here is some complicated contract quagmire which might end up having nothing to do with ebook royalties at all.

And without seeing the contracts in question, we really don’t know what is going on.

P.S. Anyone else wonder why Blau is under the impression that his book is published by S&S?

image by XWRN

The romance publisher Ellora’s Cave has moved on from trying to silence book bloggers with a SLAPP lawsuit; now it is reportedly making threats against the Romance Writers of America.

The RWA is the leading writers association for the romance genre. While it has no legal authority, it does have considerable industry clout. It can sanction publishers for violations of the RWA’s Code of Ethics for Industry Professionals, and has done so in the past when publishers cheated  authors out of royalties or otherwise tried to exploit authors (Harlequin and DellArte Press, for example).

Throughout Ellora’s Cave’s ongoing financial problems, the RWA has been pressuring the publisher to pay authors overdue royalties or release the authors from their contracts. The RWA has banned Ellora’s Cave from conferences and forbidden the publisher from contacting RWA chapters to recruit new authors.

Ellora’s Cave has been turba non grata with the RWA since September 2015, but matters took a turn for the worse this week.

Author Kellie Jamieson has revealed on Facebook that Ellora’s Cave is making legal threats against the RWA. On Thursday she published part of a notice which she says the RWA sent out.

RWA has repeatedly contacted management at Ellora’s Cave to demand payment to authors. RWA has also requested that the publisher revert rights if it is unable to pay authors in full. The response we received was a letter signed by Steve Mastrantonio, attorney for Ellora’s Cave, in which he states, “any premature comment by RWA that Ellora’s Cave is in breach of their agreements is reckless, false and Defamatory.” Mr. Mastrantonio asserts that Ellora’s Cave is paying authors as it should, and “any false comments by RWA to harm his clients reputation will be dealt with in a forceful manner.

In light of Ellora’s Cave’s lawsuit against the Dear Author book blog, that is not a legal warning so much as it is an outright threat, an attempt to silence the RWA through legal intimidation.

Update: I have confirmation from a second source. The RWA really did inform its members that it had been threatened by Ellora’s Cave.

Assuming, of course, that this statement came from the RWA. I am still seeking confirmation from the RWA. The RWA was contacted over 24 hours before this post was published, and they have not responded.

If and when they do respond I will update this post, but as of right now I don’t have confirmation that the initial report is accurate. If you have seen the notice from the RWA and can confirm the report, please let me know in the comments.

I can, however, add that authors are disputing the claim that Ellora’s Cave is paying authors on time. They have told me that EC’s standard specifies payments every three months, and numerous authors are insisting that they have not been paid in months, if not longer.

" I received a check in Jan. So now they’re only holding 10 months of royalties hostage. 10. Months," one told me on Twitter. Another chimed in with "They’re only 7 months late paying me…last check supposedly covered thru 9/15." A third author told me that "At the end of this month it will be 11 months owed to me."

In short Ellora’s Cave is in the same poor financial state it has been in for the past several years.

As initially reported by Dear Author in 2013 and 2014, Ellora’s Cave has been struggling to pay authors (and staff, for that matter) following a downturn in its sales. Rather than trying to fix the issue, reorganize the company, or shutdown, EC chose to respond to the news coverage by filing a defamation lawsuit in 2014 against Dear Author and its owner.

Given the corroborating reports from authors, this was nothing more or less than a SLAPP lawsuit intended to silence DA.  It accomplished nothing other than wasting money neither party had to spare (DA had a crowd-funded defense fund, fortunately) and was settled in October 2015.

And now Ellora’s Cave may be threatening the RWA.

Good luck with that. The RWA has stood up to Harlequin in the past; does Ellora Cave really think a has-been publisher can intimidate a writers association which made Harlequin blink?

image by Ezra.Wolfe

When B&N announced that it was closing its Nook UK Store and handing its customers off to Sainsbury’s, I predicted that some Nook owners would find themselves with worthless hardware which neither B&N nor Sainsbury’s would support, and sadly, that has come to pass.

While some former Nook customers are only just getting the notice that their ebooks are transferring or are still waiting for ebooks to show up on the Sainsbury’s site, others are having trouble with their Nook.

"I purchased a book and transferred it to my Nook but it cannot read the format so my wife and I will dispose of our Nooks and not get involved with Barnes & Noble ever again," one wrote in the comment section of this blog. Another expressed similar frustration, writing "We have two Nooks which are now completely useless. I have downloaded a book to one of the Nooks from Sainsburys but it says it is an unreadable format. I have decided to dispose of the Nooks and never get involved with Barnes & Noble ever again."
And a third Nook owner is reporting an even more serious problem: "I need to reregister my Nook. At the moment I cannot do so, which means I cannot access the 300+ books I have on there. It has all been transferred to Sainsbury’s but they can’t or won’t help me."

And there are other similar complaints on that post, and elsewhere on the web.

B&N is going to have to do something to help the third owner, but it sounds like most of the problems experienced by Nook owners in the UK are the usual problems with transferring DRMed ebooks from a computer to an ereader. It’s really hard to be sure without having one of the uncooperative ereaders in my hand, but that is what this sounds like.

In some ways that is good news because a local public library should be able to help the Nook owners with the technical hurdles of downloading an ebook to their PC and transferring it to the Nook (mine would be able to help, anyway).

On the other hand, some people don’t have the skills or wherewithal to overcome this issue, in which case they are better off switching to reading in an app on their smartphone or tablet, where Sainsbury’s will be able to automatically deliver their ebooks to them.

They could also consider getting a Kindle or Kobo ereader and relying on those ereaders' automatic delivery feature, but that would involve simply abandoning their Nook library.

This, folks, is the perfect example of why Amazon came up with the idea of free ebook delivery when it launched the Kindle in 2007, and why both Kobo and Barnes & Noble copied the idea.

Thanks to DRM, the process of reading an ebook was needlessly complicated, and so Amazon took steps to make sure users never noticed the DRM. Now that these Nook owners have been discarded by B&N, we are seeing just how much that effort matters to the average user.

Is it any wonder that the Kindle is the most successful ebook platform? Honestly, who else can you trust in this industry?

images by indi.ca, Danni Alexandria

The ongoing Oracle v Google patent infringement spat is currently in week Nth of its retrial, and this week’s testimony is shedding new light on otherwise closely-held deals between Amazon and Oracle.

Techcrunch reports that Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz testified that Oracle gave Amazon a steep discount to keep Android off the Kindle Paperwhite.

Yes, she said the Paperwhite almost ran Android, bBut I don’t know how much weight we should give this testimony:

“Amazon… had used Java to create [the Kindle] reader for many years,” she said. “Then they had another product called the Kindle Fire and that one they used Android. They didn’t license Java at that time.

“The way we look at different discounts and handle them with customers comes through an approval process that comes through me. I was made aware through that process that Amazon was going to [develop] the Kindle Fire with Android.

“They were now considering a new product called the Paperwhite and they were considering whether to use Java for that or Android.

“In order to compete with [Google], we ended up giving a 97.5 percent discount for the Paperwhite. Instead of what we would have historically offered them, because our competition was free, we had to offer them a cents on the dollar price.”

There’s a few problems with this testimony.

For one thing, Java is a programming language while Android is an operating system. It’s not clear from the testimony how one would be used to replace the other. Also, part of Android (including Android apps) is _written_ in Java, which is why this makes less and less sense as we get deeper into it.

Furthermore, I can see from my old notes from 2012 that the Paperwhite runs on the exact same software as its predecessor, the Kindle Touch: Linux, with a Java app for the reading app.

The only _Java_ part which could be replaced is that reading app, and that frankly was not a high probability. That app was originally developed for the first Kindle, every Kindle ereader since then have run later versions of that same app – including the Voyage, Oasis, $79 basic Kindle, and the current Paperwhite.

Catz is telling us that in 2012 Amazon was considering chucking over six years worth of work and replacing it with an Android app. Companies do that sometimes, yes, but not without a very good reason.

I can’t tell you whether Catz is obfuscating, doesn’t know what she’s talking about. or if perhaps Amazon tricked Oracle into discounting the Java license, but I do  know we should take this testimony less as historical fact than as eyewitness testimony (and you know how unreliable that can be).

image by grotos

In early 2014 Adobe announced a new type of ebook DRM which had the dual properties of being unbreakable as well as incompatible with existing ebook readers and apps. After initially planning to force everyone to switch to the new DRM in less than six months (which would leave millions of ereader owners in the lurch), Adobe backed down and largely dropped the issue.

But what they didn’t do was kill the new DRM. It still exists, and now I am getting reports that it has been showing up in the wild.

Over the past few months I have been receiving suggestions that I should be pointing users to older versions of Adobe DE because ebooks downloaded with the later versions might come wrapped in a new type of DRM.

I hadn’t been able to confirm the reports until this week, but it turns out that they were true.

A reader has tipped me to a comment over on the Apprentice Alf blog from a user who is unable to strip the DRM from a PDF he bought. The book in question is a Spanish-language genetic algorithm textbook, and even though it opens correctly in Adobe DE 4.5 on Windows 10 it still kept defeating Apprentice Alf’s DRM-striping tools.

After confirming that the PDF would not open in Adobe DE 2.0.1, the user was told that:

Sounds like you probably have the newer DRM that hasn’t been figured out yet. And the tools can’t remove it. In the future, stick with ADE 2.0.1.

And so this user has an ebook which they can’t protect by removing the DRM – for now.

Now that the DRM has been spotted in the wild, it won’t be long before someone turns their attention to bypassing it and then sharing their work. Until then, your best best for avoiding the DRM is to stick to the major ebookstores.

The new DRM is rare because it is most likely only being used by the less popular ebook retailers which don’t realize how they’re harming their customers.

Google and Kobo, on the other hand, both know they have to support existing devices and apps, and so they avoid the new DRM like the plague. I would be stunned to find the new DRM in either store.

So to keep your ebooks safe, stick to the more popular ebookstores, and be sure to avoid the latest versions of Adobe DE.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Thanks, Purple lady!

image by rabanito

When I reviewed the Kindle Oasis on Saturday, one of my complaints was that the much ballyhooed battery died in only three days. At the time I had written that off to the Oasis not living up to Amazon’s marketing claims, but now I wonder if there was a more specific cause.

There’s a new discussion over on MobileRead where one Oasis owner reports that their new ereader wasn’t charging correctly:

Why did my Oasis shut itself down when there was plenty of battery charge left at the cover? I started with both batteries at the Kindle and the cover fully charged at 100%. I started reading at light level 24 (maximum brightness) for 6 straight hours, WIFI off. At the end of 6 hours, I started to get low battery warning message before the device shut itself down. Before it shut down, I looked at the battery meter and it showed that the battery at the Kindle was at 10% while at the cover was still at 44%. Then the battery at the Kindle went down to 5% and then downed to 1% before it finally shut down while the battery at the cover only went down a bit further.

This mechanism made no sense. When the Kindle and the cover are connected, shouldn’t it use the battery at the cover first before draining the battery at the Kindle? And why shut it down when there was still 44% battery charge at the cover? Why can’t it draw current from whatever part of the unit still has battery charge?

I didn’t think to check my Oasis when the battery ran down, so I can’t tell you whether but this would tend to explain why the battery on my unit died so quickly.

Here’s my theory.

The Oasis connects to its battery case through a 5-pin port.  A power connection would only require two pins, which tells us that it’s a smart connection of some kind.

What if the Oasis isn’t drawing from the battery case because it thinks the battery case isn’t connected? There are five pins; what if they’re not seating correctly?

That’s not as big of a stretch as it sounds. I for one fidget when I read, and I repeatedly caught myself removing the cover and snapping it back on.

I also noticed that it was possible for the magnets to hold the cover on even when the Oasis wasn’t seated correctly, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the reports about battery life had that obvious cause.

What do you think? Have you witnessed any strange battery behavior with the Oasis?

There’s a story going around today which reminds us why one should always understand the limitations of a set of statistics before one repeats them in a news article.

The Telegraph took a look at the UK Publisher Association’s annual stats for 2015 and used them as the basis for recycling that old trope about ebooks not killing paper books after all.

For years, book-lovers have been lamenting the inevitable demise of the printed book in the face of competition from a digital behemoth.

But reports of the death of the traditional book have been greatly exaggerated, according to the definitive annual survey of the industry. The Publishers Association study has revealed that sales of print books are rising, while digital sales are down for the first time since the invention of the e-reader.

Experts have hailed the figures, saying the claim that the "physical book is doomed" can "finally be refuted".

Stephen Lotinga, chief executive of The Publishers Association, said: "Those who made predictions about the death of the book may have underestimated just how much people love paper."

This year’s annual report shows physical book sales up to £2.76 billion in 2015 from £2.748 billion in 2014. Digital sales dropped from £563m to £554m, the first year-on-year fall since 2011 when PA started measuring e-book sales.

The change has been attributed to readers realising the pleasure to be taken in a physical book, as well as a host of lifestyle non-fiction, which does not translate as well onto digital.

The problem with this piece is that The Telegraph is working from a data set that does not include the entirety of the UK market.

Rather than saying that UK ebook sales fell, a more accurate report would be that publishers ebook revenues fell last year in the UK.

Like the NYTimes last fall, The Telegraph has misinterpreted data collected by a trade group and assumed that it represented the entire market. Last year the NYTimes was reading too much into figures from the American Association of publishers, but this year The Telegraph incorrectly assumed that the UK Publishers Association’s annual yearbook reflected the entire UK market.

As the UK Publishers Association explained when I followed up, this is simply not true:

The figures related to publisher invoiced sales, grossed up from the PA sales monitor which represents 75% of UK publishing industry turnover (both members and non –members ) and involves both publishers and distributors.

The PA’s data is even less than complete when it comes to ebook sales. Remember, the Author Earnings report showed that 30% of the ebook sales in the UK Kindle Store went to indie authors, and another 15% went to Amazon.

This means that 45% or more of the ebooks sold in the UK’s dominant ebook store do not show up in the PA’s annual stats. And the figure is probably worse than that given that the PA has said that their data is not complete.

Furthermore, The Telegraph’s report offers a misleading take on even what limited data the PA can provide. According to The Bookseller, the PA’s stats showed that overall digital revenues rose last year:

But digital revenues were a mixed bag. There was plenty of growth: the overall figure for digital books and electronic journal subscriptions was very healthy, with a 3% rise year on year, to £1.3bn. Schools showed they were continuing to make a digital shift, with figures up 23% from a small base to £16m. In English-Language Training (ELT), digital book sales were up 35% (to £15m), and in academic and professional books the rise was 4%, to £262m.

So it’s not nearly as simple as proclaiming that ebook sales fell, or even announcing that publisher ebook sales fell (the more accurate title).

And while we’re on the topic of ebook sales in the UK, it’s also worth noting that there is conflicting data. Last November Nielsen reported that ebook sales rose 5% in the UK in 2015.

Nielsen’s data is based on consumer surveys, and so they are not completely reliable either, but the fact that they disagree with the PA’s annual stats suggests that we should trust neither, and most definitely avoid reporting either statistic as a fact.

The Telegraph has already made that mistake, unfortunately, but hopefully will avoid repeating it.

image by David Holt London

There’s a story going around for the past couple weeks about the IDPF and the W3C, and a proposed merger between the two groups. One manages web standards, and the other is responsible for screwing up ebook standards like Epub3. Since one is a closely related subset of the other, someone had the bright idea that the two groups should consider merging.

If you ask me, this will come off about as well as the PennCentral, but not everyone is as realistic.

Tim Berners-Lee was quoted in Book Business Magazine yesterday , and he discussed a few of the benefits he saw in the potential merger. I sincerely hope that his words are taken out of context or misquoted, because they are a mix of the ignorant and the abhorrent.

To start with, someone doesn’t understand that the real problem with ebooks is DRM (something the IDPF does not address), and not ebook standards.

Permanence. In a world of where ebook and web technology converge, ebooks will no longer disappear when new devices and formats emerge. They will live on because they are written in what Berners-Lee described as “the simplest coding language,” HTML 5. This is the foundation on which all web content is built, and Berners-Lee anticipates it will soon be the coding language on which all digital content is created.

DRM is why ebooks vanish, not minor technical issues like format compatibility. We know how to break open just about any ebook format and turn it into another; in most cases calibre can even do it for you.

But there’s a stumbling block which stops us from converting ebooks, and that is the DMCA. It is illegal to strip DRM, and that is the real problem – again, a problem which the IDPF can’t address.

And sadly, with the W3C willing to consider screwing up the web by making DRM a core element of web standards, I don’t think they’re either able to see or admit that DRM is the enemy, not formats.

Seamless. Because ebook content of the future will be created in HTML 5, it will seamlessly transition across different platforms as well as different content types. “Even though it creates some trouble [to make content interoperable], the trouble is worth it,” said Berners-Lee.

Again, the problem isn’t format; ebooks have been standardized on one form or another of HTML/XHTML/XML since the turn of the millennium.

Edit: And just so we’re on the same page, DRM is not a problem which the IDPF can address. It’s outside their control, so when Berners-Lee discusses how a merger can fix problems caused by DRM he demonstrates that he doesn’t know what he is talking about.

The one thing stopping us from seamlessly transitioning content across different platforms is DRM, not format.

But I have serious doubts that Berners-Lee grasps that problem, because the article implies that he is for more DRM, not less.

Only now they’re calling it tracking, rather than what it really is: spying.

Trackable. Along with interlinking, content should be trackable, said Berners-Lee. Publishers must have the ability to understand how books are being read and shared. “We should live in a world of linked data,” he said.

This is spying, yes, but the other problem is that any platform capable of this level of tracking is only half a step away from denying you access to the content when the tracking data isn’t being sent, or simply on a publisher’s whim.

Yes, I am going a step beyond what he said, but my extrapolation is an example of why we should fight that type of thinking. If publishers are allowed to go down that road, users will get screwed. We have already seen that situation crop up with video and apps, so it’s not like it’s a stretch of the imagination.

Folks, I think we should give Berners-Lee the benefit of the doubt and assume that his statements are somehow garbled or miscommunicated, because if this is really what he really thinks then we have someone who could actually screw things up worse than the IDPF.

I did not think that was possible.

image by Paul Clarke, via

When Amazon launched Voiceview for Kindle on Tuesday, they announced  it with a $140 Kindle Paperwhite bundle and the promise that the feature would be coming to other Kindle models eventually.

That day has arrived.

My loaner review unit arrived on Thursday morning, and the first thing I did after taking a few unboxing photos was to plug the Kindle audio adapter into my Kindle Oasis (also a loaned review unit).

Voiceview for Kindle started working on my Oasis as soon as I plugged in the adapter into the Oasis’s USB port. The Kindle started reading the menus to me aloud (via earbuds) and explained how to use the new feature.

This feature also works on the Kindle Voyage, although some additional steps are required.

Also, you will need to supply your own headphones, earbuds, etc. They’re not included.

It is designed to be used by anyone who can touch but not see the screen. Simply move your finger around the screen, and the Kindle will tell you what is under your finger. (Amazon explains the options in detail on its site.)

You can double tap to select a menu item, or use one of a limited number of gestures, and you can disable Voiceview for Kindle simply by unplugging the audio adapter from your Kindle.

You can also disable the feature by removing the Kindle Oasis cover (I found this out the hard way).

Edit: You can find the Voiceview settings menu through the "quick actions" menu. It’s the sun/gear symbol on the menu bar. According to my tip at MobileRead:

In VoiceView settings you can toggle VoiceView On and Off, engage a Tutorial, adjust Reading Speed (from .66x to 4x with 8 intermediate speeds), and Volume (from 1 to 8, default is 4).

Voiceview for Kindle works with the dictionary, Wikipedia, and translation feature (although they are rather hard to navigate). It does not work with the Kindle’s web browser, Kindle Freetime, or audiobooks, and there’s no obvious option for changing the voice’s speed.

But it is simple to use and the hardware is equally simple.

I now have two reports which confirm that the Kindle audio adapter is a generic USB to audio converter which works with any headphones, earbuds, or speakers. Amazon charges $20 for it, but you can put together your own unit for less than ten dollars on Ebay.

Seriously:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRGwIMHDVqw

The only limitation is that the voice is currently limited to English, and you might need to install the voice file.

The Kindle Voyage, for example, does not have the voice. Also, at least one 7th-gen Kindle Paperwhite in Germany does not have the voice (probably because the Voiceview for Kindle has not officially launched in Germany). But it does have the software, and you can download the voices separately (from this page on Amazon.com).

All in all, Voiceview for Kindle still needs some work. It’s not as intuitive as it could be, but I still feel Amazon has managed to over-deliver a feature which is not available on any other current ereader.

Last July I broke the news that Audible was beta-testing a program where listeners could share an audiobook in their library with a friend, more or less giving away a copy at Audible’s expense.

That program, Audible Onebook, is now open to all Audible customers.

Audible announced on Wednesday that they’ve launched a new program where Audible customers can share an audiobook in their library with a friend. Strangely enough, this program is not named in the press release, but it sounds like the one I reported on last year:

Audible today announced the release of a new feature that allows listeners to give any audiobook they own in their “My Library” to others instantly via e-mail, text, Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, using their iOS, Android, and Windows 10 devices. Each recipient gets his or her first title through the program for free, and Audible will pay authors, actors, and other rights holders the equivalent value of each recipient’s first title.

That’s a nifty (albeit a little expensive) way for Audible to build up their customer base, and I’m glad to see that Audible got the bugs out of the program.

It is still limited to the US, however.

“Audible’s many millions of habitués know how our audio service can enhance the quality and character of daily life – whether driving, exercising, or working around the house.  Audible is growing at historic rates as powerful words matched by powerful performances redefine reading and listening,” said Audible founder and CEO Donald Katz. “Audible customers also understand that they own each title they buy as members or a la carte purchasers, and they can carry their Audible libraries around forever. Now, for the first time, our listeners can send complete titles to anyone in the US and the cost is on us.”

image by BarnImages.com

Amazon’s greatest secret strength is its affiliate program. It gives web publishers a financial incentive to push customers to shop at Amazon, and this in turn has lead to a whole cottage industry of sites which find and promote Kindle ebook deals.

Now Amazon’s latest policy enforcement action is casting a shadow on the future of that industry.

Author Carmen Webster Buxton has tipped me a recent announcement from The Fussy Librarian, one of the many ebook newsletter services. Yesterday Fussy Librarian sent out an email to authors and publishers who had advertised in the newsletter, telling them that TFL was losing its affiliate account at Amazon:

It’s the email that no one in email marketing wants to receive:

“Your Associates account has come up for review in connection with our ongoing monitoring of the Amazon Associates Program. During our review, we have determined that you are not in compliance with the Operating Agreement that governs your participation in the Associates Program.”

Participation Requirement Number 6 prohibits the inclusion of Amazon Associate ID tags in any “offline manner,” including email. (In the URL, it’s the part at the end that says "tag=thefuslib0e-20.") In other words, it’s okay to get a commission if someone clicks on a link on your website, but not okay if someone clicks on that link in an email. Yeah, I don’t get it either, but it’s Amazon’s program, and they get to make their own rules. It’s been in the rules forever, too — just not enforced. Until now.

The email goes on to predict that this new enforcement will soon be applied to other email newsletters like BookBub and eReaderIQ.

I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

Update: Nope. I was wrong. Amazon has since gone after eReaderIQ and Pixel of Ink. eReaderIQ has lost its affiliate account, and Pixels of Ink has shut down.

While I can confirm that the rules do forbid using affiliate links in emails, I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to the conclusion that the sky is falling.

Yes, the news media is in the habit of responding to a single report by running around screaming like Chicken Little, but as we have seen in the past Amazon (for reasons we don’t understand) sometimes enforces a policy against a single party while leaving others untouched.

For example, in 2011 Amazon cut off an ebook sharing site, Lendle, for some unknown ToS violation. And then in 2012 the note-taking service Findings stopped supporting Kindle notes and highlights, ostensibly following a complaint from a publisher.

The relevant details from those stories is that Amazon only took action against a single site. Sites like Techdirt jumped to the conclusion that publishers were evil, but the fact is Amazon did not engage in a sweeping enforcement of their policies. And that is the current situation with the Kindle email newsletters.

I have checked, and eReaderIQ is still using Amazon affiliate links in its emails. I have also reached out to BookBub and asked whether they have received a similar notice.

They have not responded, and between that and the lack of discussion on KBoards and Absolute Write I can only conclude that we don’t have enough info to tell what is going on.

Stay tuned. I will post BookBub’s response when I receive it.

image by Skley

After years of forbidding sites from putting Adsense ads on interstitial pages and penalizing sites for app install ads, guess what Google just did?

The ad network giant has launched a new interstitial ad unit for mobile sites.

I was browsing my admin pages in Adsense today when a banner ad informed me that Google is testing two new mobile ad units. One is a small persistent ad that clings to the bottom of the screen, while the other is an interstitial ad (it appears after you click a link on a site to visit another page on the same site).

The ads will only show up on some mobile devices; the Silk browser on my Kindle Fire isn’t supported. The new ads are also opt-in, and require that the web publisher add code to their site. But when they do show up, the interstitial ad will look something like this when viewed from a smartphone:

So much for insisting on a good user experience.

This type of ad is one of the more annoying parts of the mobile experience, which is why (for as long as I have used Adsense) Google has discouraged web publishers from putting Adsense ads on interstitial pages.  In fact, Google’s own beginner’s guide to Adsense specifically mentions this type of ad and tells you not to do it.

But now Google has ignored its own instructions, proving once and for all that even in a company which used to have the motto "Don’t be evil", money is still ultimately the boss.

Google flipflopped on this issue because one, Google gets most of its revenue from selling ads, and two, they ran out of places to put those ads.

If Google wants to keep analysts and stockholders happy, it has to keep revenues up, and that means finding new places to annoy you with ads.

This is why Google shows ads as the first and sometimes second search result (and to the right of search results), why Google started inserting similar ads in Google Play, and why they now have a couple new mobile ad units (like the one at right).

Does anyone want to guess where Google will find the next spot to insert more ads?

I would bet that Google will find a way to monetize its matched content ad unit by inserting links to advertisers. This unit isn’t technically an advert – right now. Instead it currently recommends articles on whichever site it’s on. It’s really a "related posts" unit, but if Google replaced some of the recommendations with  articles from other sites then Google will be able to sell the links as adverts.

Edit: And apparently Google is already selling those links as adverts. Artem R of Android Police pointed out that the FAQ for this ad unit mentions an "allow ads" option. I can’t enable that option, which means it’s in a limited beta test.

For reference, Taboola and OutBrain have similar ad units. (You can find an example on Liliputing, if you like.) I have tried a couple and found them to be unproductive, but it’s pretty clear that Google disagrees.