E-book prices have soared due to an international agreement between publishers. But why are non-US customers being gouged even more?
E-books
E-books are the new black
They’re cheap, relatively easy to make and simple to distribute. The e-book market is becoming more and more crowded, with news organisations now in direct competition with book publishers, reports Julie Bosman and Jeremy W. Peters.
REDGroup collapse: few lifelines as publishers slash orders
Australia’s largest book retailer is on the verge of total collapse, with administrators likely to break up the Borders and Angus & Robertson chains to sell to other retailers.
Life in the Amazon: e-books outsell the printed word
Powerful bookseller Amazon announced that for the first time since it began selling e-books — and its succesful Kindle e-reader — four years ago, it now sells 105 e-books for every 100 printed book.
Read library books on your Kindle
Amazon’s Kindle e-reader gets a lot of flack for hurting local booksellers and now 11,000 libraries in the US will soon offer Kindle e-books for short-term lending.
Borders and A&R simply got the business model wrong
Should the demise of the mega bookseller come as a surprise? Probably not.
Apple versus the e-book industry
Apple appear set to aggressively respond to the universal functions of Google and Amazon e-books by requiring sellers to go through iTunes instead of apps, which means Steve Jobs and co. will gobble up 30% of their earnings, reports Farhad Manjoo.
Google launches open source e-book store
Google has entered the proliferating e-book industry with a new store that offers hundreds of thousands of books to purchase. The good news for skinflints is that there are millions more available for free, writes Julia Boorstin .
E-books: no pulping, no typos, no end in sight
Pulping and reprinting are costly issues in book publishing. Hence the joy that e-readers bring, with the ability to easily download updates for book stuff ups. But what are the drawbacks?
Kobo represents a new Australian inroad to e-readers
Margaret Simons may be getting rid of her Kobo e-reader, but let’s forget about the device and look instead at the list of titles on offer, writes Tim Coronel.
must read Two paths for the future of text
Author Steven Berlin Johnson’s excellent take on how the great minds of the 17th and 18th century compiled their favourite passages of text, and what it means for journalism today.
Will Apple save or destroy the publishing industry?
With Amazon offering increasingly cut-price e-books, the publishing industry is looking to Apple’s iPad to kill the Kindle and save the book business. But is Steve Jobs really looking after the interests of publishers, or just his own legacy?
Why authors should write apps, not e-books
Authors shouldn’t just think of the iPad as another place to publish their books, says Cody Brown: they should see it as an opportunity to communicate their stories and messages in new, “mind-blowing” ways.
How the iPad will kill reading
E-books on the iPad probably will replace real books, says Paul Carr, but it’s a shame, because everyone will be too distracted with Flight Control and Twitter to actually read them.
Is it wrong to download a pirated e-book if you own a hardcopy?
The New York Times’s resident ethicist tackles a thoroughly modern ethical dilemma: is downloading pirated e-books still stealing if you own the real thing?
Will e-Readers kill the book cover?
How can we judge a book by its cover if it doesn’t have one? As the book industry goes digital, we will no longer have images of exploding buildings and heaving bosoms to guide our literary choices.
Get a FREE Smart Health Choices e-book
Croakey is offering a free download of Smart Health Choices: Making Sense of Health Advice — a great tool for getting your head around health advice and learning how to take an active role in your own health care.
Destroying the Amazon
After Amazon last week pulled all the Macmillan published books from its online shelves following a dispute over pricing of e-books, Amazon has caved and raised the prices as per Macmillan’s wishes. Is this the first defeat in the Kindle vs. iPad war?
E-books: publishers need to get with the program
Book publishers been twiddling their thumbs on e-books for years, but the success of Amazon’s Kindle and the looming Apple Tablet is about to force their hands, writes Mark Davis.
How to write a best-seller: give it away free
The best-selling e-Books aren’t necessarily the ones penned by big-name authors or showered in awards: they’re the ones that don’t cost anything. Heaving bosoms and lusty vampires don’t hurt “sales”, either.
Download Paul Carr’s True Confessions Of A New Media Whore free
Online journalist Paul Carr has made the controversial move of releasing the entire text of his popular 2008 book, Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions Of A New Media Whore free online. Read his justification — and the book — here.
The Kindle won’t kill libraries
Aussie Publishers may be worried the predicted surge in e-reader sales will damage the book industry, but news from the States shows libraries needn’t share their concerns, with “digital lending” booming in public libraries.
Kindle not the book’s iPod moment
The release of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader in Australia has impatient early adopters crying “about time”. But don’t get too excited, says Matthia Dempsey: you may not actually be able to read anything on it.
A tale of two tablets
As Apple and Microsoft race to release their own tablet computers and get a foothold in the emerging e-Reader market, new leaks and rumours reveal what each party will be offering.
The Beast gets bigger and bookier
Online news site The Daily Beast is bringing its “speedy and smart” news philosophy to the literary world, launching a book-publishing arm that will turn around timely and topical tomes in a fraction of the time it takes regular publishers.
