By keeping e-book prices high, the Big Six book publishers are not only getting less money from their books in many cases, but they are also fuelling piracy and pushing readers away — all of which is giving Amazon even more ammunition to use against them. Read More »
Tech
Social reading app Readmill has been tipped as one of Berlin’s hottest startups — but does it have what it takes to shape the way we read? The company is about to find out as it opens its service to the public for the first time. Read More »
Amazon has been busy disrupting the traditional publishing market by encouraging self-publishing and signing authors to its own in-house imprint, but author Charles Stross argues that publishers themselves handed Amazon its biggest weapon in this fight: namely, the widespread use of digital-rights management locks for books. Read More »
The traditional publishing industry has been taking a beating lately from Amazon and the rise of self-publishing, but one writer says working with a publisher has a lot of benefits that self-publishing doesn’t. If publishers have any weapons against Amazon, they are on this list. Read More »
Printed books may have been groundbreaking technology 500 years ago, and they still have plenty of value as an information-distribution platform — but they are no longer good for every purpose, Matt MacInnis of digital textbook publisher Inkling told the GigaOM RoadMap conference on Thursday. Read More »
The launch of Amazon’s new “Kindle lending” feature means another form of content is becoming something that we rent, Netflix-style, rather than owning. But moving to a rental rather than an ownership model changes our relationship to content, and not always in a good way. Read More »
The fact that none of the six major book publishers are taking part in the “Netflix for books” lending program that Amazon just launched for the Kindle is another sign that the industry is more interested in retaining power than adapting to a changing business model. Read More »
The fact that books are digital now means it should be easy to share our favorite books or passages, but competing rights, standards and platforms mean these features are available on a tiny fraction of books, and that keeps most readers inside proprietary corporate silos. Read More »
Are books just packages for ideas, or physical souvenirs designed to market an author, or can they become social in the same way the news is becoming social? Everyone from Amazon to new startups like Subtext and Findings are trying to come up with the answer. Read More »
In addition to launching its new color tablet the Kindle Fire last week, Amazon also announced another price drop for the original Kindle, which is now just $79. Could the e-reader eventually become free, and if it did, what would that mean for the e-book industry? Read More »
Amazon has launched a program that allows Kindle users to borrow e-books from 11,000 libraries across the U.S. This and the recent news that it plans to launch a “Netflix for books” service make it clear Amazon is stepping up its disruption of the book industry. Read More »
Since 2004, Google has been trying to scan the world’s books but has run into opposition from authors and publishers. Now a lawsuit has been launched against the universities who were its partners. Is this the final nail in the coffin of the global library? Read More »
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