Once viewed as a serious local threat to the Kindle, Flipkart announced on Friday that it is pulling a Sony. The Indian retailer is shuttering its three-year-old ebookstore, and handing its customers off to Kobo.

In a deal that closely resembles Kobo’s agreements with Tesco/Blinkbox and Sony, ebook accounts belonging to Flipkart customers will be transferred to Kobo starting on 17 December. All ebooks should be transferred, but Flipkart has promised refunds for any ebooks which don’t make it through the transition. Flipkart customers can continue to read ebooks in the Flipkart app after the transition, although the retailer has said it will turn off its servers in mid-February.

You can find more details on the Flipkart website.

Based on reports that Flipkart’s digital efforts had fallen into disarray, rumors of the store’s closure have been circulating since September, but the decision was only made official this week when Flipkart announced that it would be focusing on paper books, and not digital.

"The Indian book market is overwhelmingly dominated by physical books and this is a market that is growing at a fast clip. Flipkart will continue to be a leading player in the overall books market in India,” Flipkart said in a statement. "In an overall strategy for books, Flipkart does not see the eBooks service as a strategic fit and hence the decision of transitioning the eBooks service to Kobo," it added.

This move will leave the Kindle as, if not the most popular ebook store in India, at least the most well-known. Amazon opened a local Kindle Store in India in 2012, and counts Google, Apple, and Kobo as competitors.

I can’t tell you which bookstore has the largest share, but Amazon is devoting a lot of attention to India. That’s one of the few markets where KDP offers a 70% royalty (there’s a catch: you have to also be in KDP Select). And earlier this year Amazon also launched  Kindle Unlimited in India, charging a cut rate price of 99 rupees, or around $1.49 a month.

Kobo, on the other hand, launched in India a year after Amazon by partnering with WH Smith and Crossword as local retail partners.

Medianama, TechCrunch

image by oldandsolo

With the year coming to a close, the major book and ebook retailers have started posting their "best of" lists.

Barnes & Noble, for example, took the opportunity to market certain books on lists that don’t even come close to representing actual best sellers. I won’t repeat them here, but I thought you would be interested in the best seller lists released by Amazon, Google, and Apple.

I’ve embedded the lists later in this post so you can see how they differ.

All three lists are similar, but Apple’s and Google’s list share seven of the same titles while Amazon’s list only has two or three titles in common with the other lists.

All the lists are biased towards the heavily promoted titles from major publishers, but the lists from Google and Apple are biased towards the same particular titles.

Interesting, no?

O O O

Amazon’s 2015 top best-selling books list is influenced by print and ebook sales. According to Amazon, the best-selling print book of 2015 was Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee and the best-selling Kindle book was The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. The complete list is 20 titles long and includes a couple coloring books, although I’m only going to cite the first ten here:

1. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
2. Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian by E.L. James
3. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
4. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
5. Memory Man by David Baldacci
6. Make Me: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child
7. Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham
8. The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz
9. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
10. Silent Scream by Angela Marsons

Amazon also released a top 20 list for YA/kid’s books, which you can find here.

Apple’s list was considerably harder to find, and also included far more detail. The not one but four lists include fiction, nonfiction, free, and audiobooks, but the lists can only be found in iBooks.

I’ll detail the fiction list below, but the other lists are worth perusing if you have the time. The fictionalized biography American Sniper took first place on the nonfiction list, and you might also be surprised to see that the user manuals for iOS 8.4 took the two top spots in the free books list.

1. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
2. Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian by E.L. James
3. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
4. Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James
5. Paper Towns by John Green
6. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
7. Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James
8. The Martian by Andy Weir
9. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
10. Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

And for the sake of completeness, here’s the list that Google posted last week:

1. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
2. Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian by E.L. James
3. Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James
4. Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James
5. American Sniper: A Novel by Chris Kyle, Scott McEwen,  and Jim DeFelice
6. The Girl on the Train: A Novel by Paula Hawkins
7. Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn
8. The Martian: A Novel by Andy Weir
9. Fifty Shades Trilogy Bundle by E.L.  James
10. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

image by joannapoe

Both Amazon and Apple offer ways for family members to share content across multiple accounts. This didn’t always work well, but it was better than Google’s solution, which is that you had to share a single account.

But that’s going to change soon.

Actualitte has uncovered an update to the Google Play Books ToS which mentions a "Family Library" sharing option. At the discretion of the publisher, readers will be able to share a book purchased in GPB with up to five other people.

2.1    The definitions of "Authorized End Users" or "End Users" (as applicable) are amended to include all members of a Family Group for the purpose of Family Sharing. As a result, the rights, authorizations and licenses granted by Publisher under the Agreement to Authorized End Users or End Users (as applicable) are granted by Publisher to every member of the applicable Family Group.

2.2    The rights, authorizations and licenses granted by Publisher under the Agreement to Google are amended to allow Google to make the applicable electronic book(s) available to every member of the applicable Family Group in accordance with the rights, authorizations and licenses that are amended under section 2.1 of this Amendment.

The new ToS also mentions that the six accounts will share a single payment method which will be under the control of a Family Manager, the user "responsible for managing various aspects of the Family Group account" including inviting new members of the group, approving in-app purchases, and kicking members out.

I haven’t found a sign of the new sharing option in Google Play Books, but there are mentions of the new family group features in this week’s update to Google Play Service (8.4). Android Police also found hints in the early November update.

But the service is still limited at this time. According to the help pages, the family group feature is only supported in six countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, UK, and US). Furthermore, Google’s FAQ says the only current option for setting up a family group is to subscribe to the Google Play Music app first, and only manage the group afterwards.

Google says we can buy apps, books, movies, etc with that family group, although there is no explicit mention of sharing the content in the group.

In short, sharing is a feature that is coming in the near future, and is not yet available.

So let’s all keep an eye out, shall we?

image by GotCredit

Another day, another Universal Windows App is released.

Kobo has updated its Windows 10 app this week. It’s now a Universal app, meaning that it will run on all Windows platforms except the ones people are actually using (Windows 7, and Windows XP).

Kidding aside, one of the key benefits of a universal Windows app is integration with Cortana, if you’re reading on your phone, and the possibility that you can use Continuum to expand that support on to a large screen simply by plugging in a screen, keyboard, and mouse.

Or at least that is how it is being pitched; for sensible reasons I don’t have Windows 10 so I can’t say for sure.

But WinBeta has installed the new Kobo app, and they report:

The user interface is clean, almost spartan. Interestingly, while the developer touts it as ‘optimized for Windows 10,’ the UX still retains many elements from Windows 8’s design guidelines, with horizontal main menu (even with a hamburger up top) and horizontal swiping navigations. The reading experience is satisfactory with all the basic optimization options in place. As with the Kobo eReader, users are not limited to the book store for their reading materials: importing ePUBs is but a drag-and-drop away.

Windows App Store via WinBeta

Thanks, Phil, for the tip!

Scribd’s headline news today is the new content they’re adding to their catalog, but that’s just press release fluff. The important story happened several weeks ago, and only just crossed my desk this morning.

In late November, Scribd settled the 2014 lawsuit filed by the National Federation of the Blind and by Heidi Viens, a visually impaired reader in Vermont. The lawsuit alleged that Scribd had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when it developed its subscription ebook service but did not make the service accessible to the blind.

Arguing that "the ADA does not apply to website operators whose goods or services are not made available at a physical location open to the public", Scribd tried to have the case thrown out in March of this year. District Court Judge William Sessions ruled against Scribd, adding another legal precedent which showed that the ADA covered virtual spaces as well as physical spaces.

And now Scribd has settled the lawsuit. Under the terms of the settlement agreement (PDF), Scribd promises to rebuild its website to make most subscription content compatible with screen access software for the blind. This software converts text-based content, as well as the text description of images (alternate text), into Braille or spoken words.

“Lack of access to the printed word has traditionally been one of the most significant barriers faced by the blind, but electronic books and documents, when they are designed to be accessible to us, can provide access to more information than we have ever had in all of human history, leading to better education and employment outcomes, and helping us to live the lives we want, " said Mark A. Riccobono, President of theNFB.

Scribd also agreed to make any updates to its apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android accessible to blind users, but it will only have to make the entire mobile app accessible should it rebuild the app from scratch.

That’s a less than complete victory in terms of platform, but on the plus side Scribd has to make all of the Epub ebooks accessible to the blind by the end of 2017. Considering that fixed layout Epub3 ebooks are inherently inaccessible, that is a pretty big workload, but it is ameliorated by the limitation that Scribd has to make graphic content like images, comic books, and picture books accessible only as far as the original publisher supported.

If the publisher didn’t provide a text description of a comic book page, or alternate text for an image in a book, then Scribd is not obligated to fix that book. iIt will, however, be required to provide paying subscribers text-based alternatives to PowerPoint, Excel, or PDF files hosted by Scribd on request.

In short, the NFB got the bare minimum out of Scribd: compliance with the law. It didn’t even get its legal fees reimbursed, much less win an award that some ambulance chasing attorneys demand.

image by lissalou66

Marketwatch has a misleading article up today which claims that audiobooks are starting to outsell print.

Given that the AAP measures print book sales in billions of dollars each quarter and audiobook sales in tens of millions, that is rather hard to believe. But once we move past the clickbait headline we learn that some authors and publishers are reporting that a few titles audiobook versions which are outselling the related print editions.

Authors are perfecting techniques that boost audiobook sales, sometimes by writing with the audiobook narrator in mind:

When I called Audible, Amazon’s audiobook subsidiary, the company crunched the numbers and found examples of books in every imaginable genre that sell better as spoken than written words — sometimes four times as well. (Characteristically reticent Amazon declined to give exact sales figures across formats.)

Then I talked to Andrew Peterson. …

“The truth is that whenever I write, I imagine to myself how this will sound with Dick Hill reading it,” Peterson told me. “There’s just something about his voice — he’s truly a world-class narrator, and I knew it had to be him.”

Andrew Peterson was an audiobook fan, and he hired Dick Hill with his own funds when his publisher decided that it wasn’t willing to gamble on producing an audiobook for Peterson’s first novel.

The investment paid off.

And Peterson isn’t the only one reporting stellar ebook sales. I know of another publisher, New Street Communications, who is reporting stellar audiobook sales:

As I move toward closing out my fiscal year with some 84 titles in print, I see eBooks (mostly Kindle) representing 42% of sales worldwide, print representing 32%, and audio representing 26%?—?with the trend over the five years of our business being steady growth in eBook and audio, and steady decline in paper as a percentage of gross sales.

And here’s a report from a narrator:

Amanda Ronconi, who narrated all of Molly Harper’s supernatural romance novels, also said she had been unaware that the audio was selling twice as well as the text — that is, until the author told her she was able to “quit my day job” because of audiobook sales.

In short, audiobook narrators are at long last becoming as well-known for their voices as singers (and yes, that is an apt comparison) or other orators.

Thanks to new tech, including the internet, we’re seeing a shift in how books are being consumed, according to Donald Katz, Audible’s CEO. “This is a completely different phenomenon — a cultural and, frankly, aesthetic change in people’s habits,” Katz said.

This might not be the "audiobooks have begun to outsell print" story that Marketwatch clickbaited us into reading, but it does give us another handle on Audible’s decision to expand into more complex audiobook productions, and why this Amazon sub is publishing original works.

It’s one of the signs that audio is making a revival some decades after television killed elaborate radio show productions in favor of the more visual medium. And that’s not a stretch; surely I’m not the only one who sees the connection between a a ’40s radio serial, and the elaborate audiobook production for the graphic novel Locke and Key?

That work featured the voices of Stephen King, Haley Joel Osment, Tatiana Maslany, and Kate Mulgrew, to name just a few stars. It’s a concentration of talent that, ten years ago, was rarely gathered anywhere other than in front of a camera (or, if you’re lucky, on stage).

And now they’re collaborating on audiobooks. And that, folks, is the bigger story than audiobooks sometimes outselling print, because it takes back to the point that Peterson made above: that audio can outsel print when audio is treated as its original format and not produced as an after thought.

I think we’ve already seen encountered that situation with ebooks, and it’s interesting to see that the same is true for audio.

image by Finding Josephine

Thanks to a couple court rulings, it’s currently as legal to resell ebooks in the Netherlands as it is to resell music in the US, but that doesn’t mean that publishers are happy about the situation.

Now someone (it’s not clear who) is sending sellers of used ebooks threatening letters, and is accusing them of committing a felony. The sellers are being threatened with jail time, and fines up to 19,500 euros.

TorrentFreak beat me to the story, and published a report which left out about half of the important details:

With this kind of opposition in mind it was no surprise that yesterday several media outlets began reporting that sellers of used eBooks in the Netherlands had received legal threats from aggressive copyright holders.

In an email titled “Illegal dissemination of digital books”, sellers of pre-owned eBooks were warned, apparently by Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, that their activities were illegal.

“The Brein Foundation acts against piracy of music, film, interactive software and digital books on behalf of rights and stakeholders such as authors, performers, publishers, producers and distributors,” the email begins.

“We’ve detected that you are distributing digital books without permission being granted by the copyright holders. This practice is unlawful towards the rights-holders and if you infringe you are liable for the damage they suffer as a result.”

I’ve looked into this myself, and I can add a couple details.

One, the operators of the used ebook marketplace Tom Kabinet are aware of the story. A rep told me that "I have seen the article but have no clue on who is sending the emails. Our sellers haven’t received any so far, as far as I know."

Two, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit Brein has vehemently and rudely denied sending the emails (or at least that’s the impression I get from reading the Dutch-language tweets from a Brein rep).

That was puzzling until I dug a little further and learned that the threatening emails were being sent through a site called marktplaats.nl. This is the Dutch equivalent of Ebay, which leads me to conclude that anyone who got the email may have been selling ebooks on the site.

The subject line of the one email I saw mentions a Dutch book from 2012, which was probably the book being sold. However, I didn’t find that ebook for sale on the site, so I can’t say for sure.

Three, I also can’t say who is sending the emails. Nos.nl reported thatMarktplaats.nl was trying to find out who sent the mail. The site told Nos.nl that Brein was actively trying to prevent the sale of second ebooks, and that therefore hardly any ebooks were being sold on the site.

Brein has a reputation for threats and bluster, but they’ve never in the past denied sending a threatening letter. That raises doubts that they are behind this email, and without additional detail there’s no way to know for sure.

So at this point we don’t know if this is a valid legal threat, a publisher trying to scare consumers, Brein’s left hand not knowing what the right hand is up to, or if this is some type of scam or shakedown operation (a la RightsCorp).

In the absence of new information, I lean towards the last option.

In any case, the issue of used ebook sales will be back in Dutch courts next week. The publishers are appealing the January 2015 ruling which said that Dutch consumers could resell ebooks, no matter what the license agreement said.

We won’t be hearing about the results f this court battle for several months, but I will report on it when it is handed down.

image by clementchene

The Bookseller has a report one of the more ridiculous aspects of UK copyright law:

A legal change made in 2013 to the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act (technically, the repeal of Section 52) is set to reinstate the full term of copyright protection (70 years) to 2D representations of 3D artistic works. Previously the duration of the term was 25 years. This means many images previously free to use would now incur fees, applying to any book stock sold or published after the legal change is implemented.

Now the government has changed the transition period for the new legislation to take effect from five years to six months, following a judicial review brought in the UK by three furniture manufacturers— US-based Knoll, Italy-based Cassina and Switzerland-based Vitra—with the clock ticking for publishers to comply by October 2016.

Leaving aside the issue of arbitrarily extending the copyright on existing works and the fundamental unfairness of the abrupt transition, did you catch the point about who owns the copyright?

To clarify, under UK copyright law, the photo of a copyrighted object is itself copyrighted, and whoever owns the copyright on the object also owns the copyright on the visual "reproduction" of that object.

So if you bought a designer chair, and wanted to publish a photo of said chair, you would have to pay a designer a fee for the "reproduction" of the chair.

Given that a photo cannot serve as a replacement for the object, I don’t see how it can be called a "reproduction".

That’s just nuts, and if you disagree then I would like to invite you over next week so we can discuss it. I’ll serve a "reproduction" of dinner (photos of my lamb ragout are to die for).

Seriously, folks, this law is that absurd, and the abrupt change is going to hurt the book publishing industry.

"It’s had this terrible knock-on effect on publishers who publish 2D images of design objects,” said Natalie Kontarsky, associate director for legal and business affairs at Thames & Hudson. “The government has actually said ‘you are collateral damage’ in a very sanguine, offhand way. The dark end of the spectrum would be to take books out of circulation and have to pulp. Obviously no one wants to look at that. Licensing images retrospectively is likely to be a very expensive prospect—in terms of actual licence fees to rightsholders, working out who actually owns the rights and the cost of getting picture researchers involved and people like me on the legal side… It’s very complex."

And sadly, this madness is spreading to the US.

This UK ruckus reminds me of a similar situation here in the US where a sculpture sued the USPS for using his work, the Korean War Memorial,  on a stamp. The sculptor argued that the photo used for the stamp infringed on the copyright of his original work, the statues.

Here’s the stamp:

The argument sounds crazy on the face of it (the photo was obviously transformative, and this fair use). And while the district court judge ruled against the sculptor, his lawyers convinced the appeals court for the federal circuit to overrule the lower court (Techdirt):

The Federal Circuit has ruled on the appeal and stunningly decided that this isn’t fair use, claiming that it’s not, in fact, transformative. I’m somewhat amazed — as is law professor Peter Friedman in the post linked here. The two works are quite clearly extremely different, but the court felt that since they both were designed to honor soldiers killed in the Korean War, it couldn’t be seen as transformative. The fact that the photographer took hundreds of images before settling on this one apparently didn’t matter. On top of that, the fact that the snow totally changes the character of the image was dismissed by the court as being just "nature’s decision."

And so thanks to a court, the US is encumbered with a copyright law very similar to the nonsense in the UK. Luckily for us, this hasn’t been codified into US law, so there’s a chance that the Supreme Court might inject some sanity into the situation.

Is it any wonder that so many of us have so little respect for copyright law?

image by PugnoM

Judging by its most recent quarterly statement, Barnes & Noble’s plan to become a niche retailer has hit a snag.

B&N released the quarterly statement for its second fiscal quarter late on Thursday. The retailer reported that revenues declined 4.5%, to  $895 million.

With a lost off $20.5 million, the EBITDA was also in the negative but also included a $10.5 million charge related to the spin off of B&N Education. The second quarter net loss from continuing operations was $27.2 million, compared to net loss from continuing operations of $5.1 million in the same quarter last year.

Retail revenues totaled $861 million, down 3.1% "due to lower online sales, store closures and a 1 percent comparable store sales decrease", which makes sense given that the recently relaunched website is still pretty fucked up.

And then there’s Nook, which continued to circle the drain. Digital revenues accounted for $43.5 million, down 32% from a year ago, with an EBITDA loss of $21.3 million. And just to put this into perspective, Nook revenues have shrunk so much that B&N has stopped citing both hardware and content sales and instead shared just the one figure (that’s going to make it harder for us to tell that Kindle Unlimited generates more revenue, but it probably still does).

It makes you wonder why Barnes & Noble launched a new Glowlight Plus and a new Galaxy Tab Nook last quarter, doesn’t it? Why not just shut the service down?

While it’s not costing B&N a lot of money to keep the lights on in the Nook dept, the persistent loss is still a drain on resources. Is putting off the bad publicity from the closure really worth the ongoing expense of keeping the service open?

Over the nearly 3 years since the Penguin Random House merger was announced, the newly formed conglomerate has been slowly merging operations in the US, Canada, and elsewhere, and now the consolidation efforts have spread to the library ebook market.

Starting 1 January 2016, all ebooks published by Penguin Random House will be sold under the same terms currently offered by Random House.

PRH currently licenses Penguin titles to libraries under an expiring one-year term, and sells Random House titles to libraries at premium prices with no expiration. Starting next month all of the ebooks will be sold under the premium price model, and libraries will continue to enjoy the right to transfer ebooks from one library ebook platform to the next.

“We want this transition to our new terms to be as easy and as smooth a process as possible for our library partners, and my team and I have been working closely with all the various digital aggregators who sell our titles to libraries to achieve this. Any Penguin or DK titles purchased prior to January 1, 2016 will be honored under the existing one-year loan cap,” Skip Dye, VP of library sales for Penguin Random House, told LJ.

At the same time, PRH also plans to cut the library ebook price cap from $85 down to $65. Current prices start at "under $20 per title" (meaning $19.95), and in the statement PRH said their "suggested pricing of ebooks for libraries will be variable and flexible." They’re also promising to hold periodic sales.

Those high prices are the main reason why library ebook adoption lags. Depending on which survey you look at, as few as 38% of Americans know that their library has ebooks (when in fact over 95% of public libraries offer ebooks) and only 6% have checked out a book.

But PRH is not solely to blame; the other Big Five publishers demand similarly exploitative terms. Hachette also sells ebooks to libraries at a steep markup, while S&S licenses ebooks under an expiring one-year license (or two years, for 150% of the price). Macmillan manages to combine the worst of both models; they charge a premium price and limit libraries to a two-year license.

image by michael_d_beckwith

Publishers Weekly has the details on a new survey report from BISG, but I’m not sure how far we can trust the numbers.

The Book Industry Study Group, in partnership with the ALA, conducted a survey earlier this year on US library usage. A total of 2,000 US adults were surveyed, and the report found:

The newest industry report from BISG, “Digital Content in Public Libraries: What Do Patrons Think?,” found that even though over half of library patrons surveyed are aware that their local libraries carry e-books and digital audiobooks, relatively few had borrowed them in the previous year. Only 25% of patrons reported that they had borrowed an e-book within the past year, and even fewer (9%) said they had checked out a digital audiobook.

The low rates came despite the fact that 58% of patrons said they know that their library offers both e-books and digital audiobooks. Library patrons also borrowed digital content less frequently than they use it outside libraries; 44% of patrons said they had read an e-book in the past year, while 12% had listened to a digital audiobook.

I can’t speak for you but I was surprised to read the results – not because they were so low, but because the numbers were so high.

You see, I have been following the survey reports released by the Pew Research Center. Those reports, which are based on surveys conducted semi-annually, show a much lower rate of awareness and usage.

The most recent Pew survey into library ebook usage was released in September 2015, and it found:

People are increasingly aware that they can borrow e-books at their public library. Some 38% say their public library has e-books, compared with 31% who said this in 2012. Those more likely to be aware that their library has e-books are college graduates (52% say they are aware of e-book lending), parents (44%) and those in homes where the annual income is over $75,000 (44%).

Only 16% of the 38% have checked out a library ebook, which means that only 6% of library patrons are making use of a service that many libraries offer.

In comparison, the BISG found that  a far greater percentage of respondents (58%) were aware of library ebooks and had checked one out in the past year (25%).

Does anyone else wonder why the numbers are so different? better yet, does anyone else know why the numbers are different?

My current working theory, which I am still trying to confirm or deny, is that the BISG study was conducted online, while the Pew survey was conducted both offline and online.

That distinction is important because, as Pew showed us in September, results from an online survey are biased towards respondents who are richer, more technologically sophisticated, and better educated.

If I am correct about the BISG survey then it would mean that the BISG inadvertently selected the survey group for those who would be more likely to use ebooks and be familiar with their library’s digital offerings.

Alas, I do not know if I am right; I have queried BISG, and Jim Milliot at PW, but neither has responded with any info.

I will update this post with more information when I get that response.

Edit: Jim Milliot has confirmed that the BISG survey was conducted online only.

O O O

Just so we’re on the same page, even if this report should prove flawed that doesn’t mean it’s not useful.

It has also affirmed that many people aren’t happy with their library’s digital offerings. To name one example, 90% of respondents were happy with the catalog of print adult titles, but only 51% were happy with the selection of ebooks.

The approval rating for print and digital newspapers and magazines were similar.  While 65% of patrons were satisfied with the range of print magazines, and 63% were happy with the selection of print newspapers, only 39% of respondents indicated they were pleased with the selection of digital magazines and newspapers  at their public library.

image by uberculture

Around this time every year Amazon likes to generate free advertising by showing off some shiny new tech that everyone simply has to write about. This year, like in 2013, Amazon is showing off a new delivery drone.

On Sunday Amazon unveiled what its latest generations drones look like. Gone is the faintly spiderish fixed-arm design with six motors and a helicopter like base; in its place we see a design that more closely resembles a model plane:

Narrated by television show host Jeremy Clarkson, the video shows a family receiving a set of emergency replacement soccer shoes which replace the one chewed up by its dog. "In time, there will be a family of Amazon drones. Different designs for different environments," Clarkson says.

The video shows the delivery box containing the shoes slotting seamlessly into the body of the drone. It then rises vertically on four propellers in VTOL mode, to nearly 400 feet, after which it engages a fifth propellor and starts to fly more like an airplane.

Amazon has not said when it hopes to have the drones in service, but the relevant webpage does mention that it has a 15  mile range, weighs 55 pounds, and can carry a 5 pound package. That’s a significant improvement over the drone Amazon showed us a couple years ago, which had a range of ten miles.

However, we still don’t know when the drones will see real commercial use. Amazon didn’t get permission to even test drones in the US until March 2015, and due to bureaucratic delays that approval applies to an obsolete model.

And to make matters worse, NPR reported last week that the FAA doesn’t currently have a timeline for finalizing regulations for commercial drone operations. 

So we probably won’t see Amazon Prime Air taking off anytime soon. And that’s a shame, because some of Amazon’s other ideas for using drones include neighborhood watch, surveillance, etc.

A couple days ago I published an open topic post where I invited readers to ask any question they wanted.

One reader asked me which device I thought was the best ereader on the market. That’s really not the type of question you can answer in a comment, so today I sat down and jotted out a few notes on what I think makes for the best ereader.

Hardly any new ereaders were released this year, but there are enough new and old models on the market that the few best devices stand out from their competition.

I haven’t covered all the possible bases, though; some questions, like the best cheap ereader, are difficult to answer. And then there’s the title of best Android ereader, a topic which I don’t feel I can answer (I’m not happy with any of the models I have tried).

Do you have a recommendation for best Android ereader?

Best All-Around eReader

This was an easy one.

Amazon’s newest Paperwhite, with its 300ppi screen, is hands down the best all-around ereader.

Its solid hardware is supported by reading software that combines very adequate formatting options with useful reading features like X-Ray, Wikipedia look-up, shared notes and highlights, vocabulary builder, Goodread integration,

The Paperwhite (2015) has the same screen resolution as on the Kindle Voyage, only for $80 less. That price difference also means you don’t get the Voyage’s flush glass screen, sleaker design, or its auto-adjusting frontlight, but I’m just one of many who think the tradeoff is worth it.

• Amazon ($139)

 Best Premium eReader

I think the Kobo Aura H2O is the best ereader among those with a $180 and up price tag.

I know that most people would go with the Kindle Voyage as the best premium ereader, but I’ve had my hands on both the Voyage and the Aura H2O, and I have to say that I prefer the latter.

The Aura H2O has a 6.8″ screen and provides the best balance of performance, software features, and hardware. It covers all the basic features, including highlights, notes, and bookmarks.

Also,the Aura H2O offers more formatting options than the Kindle Voyage, including margin and line with, setting custom font weights, and even installing your own fonts. And of course the Pocket integration means you can also read news articles with very little effort.

Plus, the Aura H2O waterproof, and has a microSD card slot (two features the Voyage lacks).

• Review
• Kobo ($179)

Best Large-Screen eReader

Over the past few years I have reviewed several large-screen ereaders, including models from Onyx, Bookeen, and Pocketbook.

The Pocketbook InkPad 840, with its 8″ screen, is far and away the best ebook reader larger than 6″. It has the best mix of features, speed, and format support. While it doesn’t run Android like the i86 HDML, the Inkpad is still faster, is nicer to hold, and has an all around better design.

Alas, it is also difficult to acquire unless you live in Europe or Russia.

• Review

Best Cheap eReader

Now this is a question which I don’t think I can answer. This title is a fast moving target which depends almost as much on which device is on sale this week as on hardware and software features. While I have tried several cheap ereaders over the past year, I don’t know that I can recommend one over any other.

Their chief value comes from their price, and not from software or hardware. While I found last year’s basic Kindle to be very usable, I don’t know that I would say it’s still the best cheap ereader – not when another model could go on sale in the next few months. (It is a safe choice, though.)

Updated: 8 June 2017

After stripping the DRM from their ebooks, the biggest concern for any ebook lover is how to store an ebook library so it is safe, secure, and easily accessible. For many that means storing their library online so it can be accessed from anywhere.

There are many options for online storage, including (as a reader reminded us yesterday) buying your own NAS and setting it up a file server on your own home network. One could also set up a LibraryBox, but that is more of a local solution than an online one.

And in any case, I for one prefer to look for the cheapest options available. And since I am looking for a solution this weekend, I thought it would be useful to share my notes.

So here’s a quick survey of the free service tiers for the major cloud storage providers. (Please let me know if I missed one, or if there’s a question I forgot to ask.)

The tl;dr version is that Amazon, Google, and Copy.com each give you 15GB of storage. Some limitations apply, so when you start browsing for a chosen platform, you should first ask yourself what exactly you want to do with it. Do you need an automatic sync? the ability to store huge files?

I just need a space to put my files so I can sync them every once in a while, but not everyone is so easy.

Amazon Cloud Drive

Amazon only has the two paid tiers. The first costs $60 a year and offers 1TB of storage, while the second costs $12 a year and lets you store as many photos as you like as well as an additional 100GB.

As for free service tier, Amazon gives free storage to their existing customers:

• Everyone who signs up for Cloud Drive gets 5GB free.
• Fire tablet owners get 5GB of storage to use as they wish.
• Amazon Prime subscribers get 5GB space plus unlimited space for photos included in their annual or monthly fee.

Apps – You can access the storage from most web browsers, as well as Cloud Drive apps for iOS and Android or the third-party Windows/OSX app oDrive.

Dropbox

Dropbox lists a single paid tier on its website: $99 a year for up to 1TB of storage.

• It also offers a free 2GB of storage to all users.

Apps – The storage can be accessed through a web browser, or through Dropbox apps for iOS, Android, OSX, or Windows. There’s also a host of third-party apps which add unique features and support for other devices.

Microsoft OneDrive

Microsoft’s offerings have changed since I first published this post. will sell you 50GB of storage for $2 a month

In June 2017, MS will sell you 50GB of storage for $2 a month, or 1TB for $70 a year, or 5TB for $100 a year.

Apps – You can find apps for Windows, OSX, Android, iOS, and XBox. The service is also accessible through most web browsers.

Google Drive

Google sells storage at 100GB for $2 a month or 1TB for $10 a month. There are more costly tiers as well as a different set of prices for Google Apps users.

Edit: A reader has pointed out that Google Drive mangles calibre’s folder structure, and so the two are not compatible.

• Anyone with a Google account gets 15GB of storage for free.
• Last year Google also gave away a free 2GB bonus storage to anyone who filled out an online security review checklist (we got to keep that extra 2GB forever).

Apps – Google has apps for Windows, OSX, Android, iOS, and Chrome.

Box

This company is more business oriented, so it has more business plans than personal plans, but the paid consumer tier costs $10 a month for 100GB.

• The free tier gets you 10GB, and a file size limit of 250MB.

Apps – You can find Box apps for Windows, OSX, Android, iOS, Blackberry, Touchpad, Windows Phonem and more. There are also third-party apps.

Copy.com

Copy.com shut down in mid-016.

Barracuda is a hard disk maker, but they also have other services, including cloud storage.  Its business service is known as CudaDrive, but the consumer-focused cloud storage can be found at Copy.com.

• Copy.com’s paid tiers start at $50 a year for 250GB ($100 a year for 1TB).
• All users get a free 15GB, to start.

Apps – The files can be access through apps for Windows, iOS, Android, OSX, Windows Phone, and Linux.

image by perspec_photo88

Disney’s schedule of trailer releases and planned leaks for  the upcoming Star Wars movie was rudely interrupted today when a tie-in children’s book leaked on Imgur.

According to MakingStarWars.net, the book reveals a number of details, including:

• Maz Kantata is apparently Han’s old mentor. Post-Return of the Jedi or as far back as the anthology film? He hopes she can help them with their mission to return BB-8 to the Resistance.
• Finn wants to rescue Rey before the Resistance destroys the base.
• A spy on Takodana tells the First Order the heroes are there. Phasma readies a surprise attack on the castle.
• During the battle of Takodana, Leia’s X-wing Squadrons save the day.
• Rey and BB-8 are captured on Takodana.
• D’Qar is the planet the Resistance is stationed on. Han, Finn, and Chewie crash the Falcon into the Starkiller base.

If you’ve only been following the trailers (like me) then many of these details won’t make any sense. Fortunately, MSW says they’ve already discussed some of these details in a couple earlier posts.

Alas, I can’t confirm any details due to the images being taken down from Imgur, apparently under threat from Disney. The related discussion thread on Reddit was also removed, although at least in this case the removal was documented.

I followed up with the original source, and was told:

@thDigitalReader under Disney copyright law I can’t. Sorry.

— ?Jared Sloan? (@JaredLSloan) November 24, 2015

That’s too bad. I was looking forward to reading the book and sharing the images with you all, but now it looks like we’re just going to have to wait.

I’m still following up on this story with Sloan, but if anyone else gets a copy of this SW book, or any other book, don’t hesitate to contact me. Any personal info will be kept strictly confidential.

P.S. And for the latest info on the new Star Wars movie, check out Reddit.