Archive for E-Book News
Books-A-Million Proclaims NO Amazon Book Titles in Their Stores
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Barnes and Noble made waves earlier this week when they issued statements that they would not carry any Amazon published books in their stores. It seems this proclamation resonated with the nation’s second largest book seller Books-A-Million. The company today officially announced that they also would not carry any of the books that Amazon publishes.
Books-A-Million is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama and has bookstores in 31 States in over 200 locations. They are the second major company thus far to resist the urge to carry physical books in their retail locations from their arch-nemesis Amazon. There is no word yet on whether this applies to ebooks. Barnes and Noble mentioned that although they will not carry paperbacks by Amazon they will sell the ebooks in their online store, because there is a higher profit margin on them.
Apple stands to benefit from new US Government Initiative for Digital Textbooks
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The US government is poised to commit to a five year plan to integrate digital textbooks into the K12 educational system. There are many benefits of going this route because of the interactive nature and higher potential to enamor students. Apple is one of the leading companies in America that stands to benefit from this arrangement with its new ecosystem unveiled last month.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said earlier today that “Do we want kids walking around with 50-pound backpacks and every book in those backpacks costing 50, 60, 70 dollars and many of them being out of date? Or, do we want students walking around with a mobile device that has much more content than was even imaginable a couple years ago and can be constantly updated? I think it’s a very simple choice,” Duncan said in an interview.
Digital Textbooks are nothing new and companies such as KNO have been doing it for years. New projects have been launched in Florida, Idaho, Utah and California. One of the barriers so far as been dedicated high-speed connections to push the data and WIFI networks being employed by the schools.
Textbooks are big business and about $8 billion is spent annually in the U.S. on children in kindergarten through 12th grade, said Jay Diskey, the executive director of the school division of the Association of American Publishers. Diskey said textbook companies have been working on the technology for the past five to eight years to transform the industry, but that in many cases, schools simply aren’t ready.
There is no disputing that in wired cities and select areas digital textbooks are a boon. If you are reading a science book you can interact with the molecules and get 3D renderings on cancer cells. Updates can be pushed right through the Apple App Store and immerse students because of the interactive nature.
The American government much like Russia seems committed to the Digital Textbook revolution but the future remains uncertain. Small town American simply does not have the infrastructure in order to provide enough bandwidth and internet access to the schools to facilitate downloads. Obviously students will benefit from the low prices and schools themselves will save money on buying books that will be outdated in a few years.
The way I see it the best way for schools to handle digital textbooks is to put the onus on the parents to purchase the books at a low price instead of providing the books themselves. Part of the problem is because there is no aftermarket for digital textbooks, the school would need to purchase them each semester for each student individually. Not to mention how will schools and especially schools that are not generally higher income based, will handle giving the students iPads or other tech to read the books on? The schools would be better off upgrading their bandwidth and WIFI connections in order to serve data faster. In the end, I doubt we will see a ton of schools embrace digital textbooks. The logistics would be a nightmare and most administrative staff are not technologically savvy enough to make this work.
via AP
Random House Titles Available for Library Lending…with a Price Increase
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The ALA Midwinter Conference was held in Dallas, TX, only a couple of weeks ago, but some major news came out of that event for the American Library Association. Essentially, the leadership finally expressed that it was fed up with the current upheaval in public library ebook lending, with different members of the Big Six publishing houses setting their own rules—from no lending of our new titles, to a book can only be borrowed a specific number of times, to no lending of any of our titles at all—it was chaos for the libraries and disappointment for their patrons.
But a meeting between the ALA and some of those publishers was called for by ALA executive director Keith Fiels, and that meeting took place over the course of several days beginning January 31. Fiels spoke with Andrew Albanese from Publisher’s Weekly about the need for coherence on the issue of lending.
“The issue of e-books has really been boiling up over the course of the last year, and I think if you had to say there was something keeping librarians awake at night, this is the issue, and there is a range of aspects to the issue,” explained Fiels. “You have issues with a variety of different formats, technical standards. And, you have issues with just the demand at this point. I still have people approach me and ask how libraries feel about e-books, and well, libraries can’t get enough of them. Which is obviously where the big issue comes up, because you have some publishers that will not make e-books available to libraries, from a triage standpoint. This is a serious issue, and there’s been a lot of interest expressed on part of ALA members that we take a strong stance on this.”
One of the end results of these meetings is an agreement from Random House that it would support ebook lending of its catalog of titles, but that the price that libraries must pay for those books would have to increase. While that’s not welcome news for any industry trying to maintain budgets, libraries are typically charged more than consumers for library editions of many of their works. More importantly, it’s an acceptable solution when considering that the alternative is to not be able to offer ebook lending to their patrons, an initiative that libraries will have to offer if they plan to move forward into a future where so many readers are going digital.
Sesame Street eBooks arrive on the Barnes and Noble Nook
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Barnes and Noble are now offering seven Sesame Street eBook titles on its Nook Tablet and Nook Color Platforms starting today. The Monster at the end of this book, Elma Loves You and Abby in Wonderland are but a few of the new enhanced offerings which are sure to resonate with kids the world over.
Sesame Street and Random House Children’s Books started a new imprint last week that allows new enhanced ebooks to be distributed to various platforms. Barnes and Noble was the first company to get access to the new catalog and will garner nine new eBooks in the next few months. The new titles are enhanced which means there is tons of audio narration and other interactive elements.
“We are excited to introduce a series of popular Sesame Street titles into our extensive picture book catalogue of NOOK Books,” said Wendy Bronfin, Senior Director of Kids Digital Products for Barnes & Noble. “Sesame Street has been a leader in technology and education for young children for many years and we are thrilled to bring these family-favorite stories to Barnes & Noble customers– and right before Elmo’s birthday. What a great birthday present!”
I think the Nook Tablet and Color are a great platform to land the new Sesame Street content! The Nook Kids area does very well for the company and B&N does a good job at marketing their line of devices as being very kid friendly. The Kindle Fire and iPad are marketed more towards adults and teenagers while the Nook is aimed at the entire family.
Graphicly Launches Cross-Platform eBook Distribution
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One of the key obstacles to digital publishing, especially for the indie author but also for publishers of graphics-intensive content, is the need to format their work correctly for the various devices on the market. Adjusting for file type and for screen size has led authors and publishers to favor one device, such as iStoryTime’s need to step away from Android and focus on iOS products, essentially because there were so many screen sizes to factor in when developing content for Android devices.
This is especially true for indie authors who self-publish their works to ebook. An incorrectly formatted book can wreak havoc on book reviews and ratings, causing sales to fall. Ebook distributor Graphicly announced its cross-platform capability in a recent press release:
“Graphicly’s platform offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for authors and publishers to distribute their books across a variety of digital channels. Utilizing Graphicly allows authors to upload their book, publish it to one or many platforms, and promote it via the channels they choose, while retaining full ownership of their revenue stream. With a brandable and embeddable reader, an author will now be able to provide its consumers the ability to buy and enjoy content from wherever the author chooses.
Content distributed via the Graphicly platform is available across multiple channels, including the Apple iPhone, iPad, and iOS Newsstand; eBook stores including Amazon Kindle, Kobo and Apple iBooks as eBooks and enhanced eBooks; Android devices, including the Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color and the Amazon Kindle Fire; and an industry-leading HTML5 web app allowing for publishing to any website or blog. Graphicly is also the only distribution service offering books on Facebook, with more than 90% of its publishers using this channel.
Graphicly’s expanded distribution platform also delivers custom analytics which help authors and publishers tailor their content to how their audience is reading. This seamless experience allows control over how content is consumed, as well as insight into consumers’ behaviors, including how often they read a book, how far they read into a book, and more. For the first time, publishers and authors are able to utilize data, metrics and social media – empowering them to market their books in exciting ways and better connect with their readers.”
One thing working against Graphicly, however, is its status as a late-to-the-game newcomer. There is no shortage of ebook distribution platforms, both free and for fees or royalties, that will help authors get their works into the hands of readers across different device preferences. In order to compete with some tried-and-true digital publishing options out there, it offera authors unique user-friendly formatting tools, hopefully with an unsurpassed ease of use for those less tech-savvy authors. The platform is open to key authors and publishers right now and will be coming into full launch in the next few weeks.
The Book Wars Continue: B&N Won’t Stock Amazon Publishing Titles
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When Amazon created its own traditional publishing house in late spring 2011, a lot of eyebrows went up. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the retailer was taking over the industry with its fast shipping of content via its online marketplace, as well as becoming a game changer with Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace self-publishing divisions, now the giant was taking on becoming a typical submission-based publisher and wooing some major name authors away from their publishers.
Now, Barnes&Noble has issued a statement to select news outlets that it will not stock any Amazon Publishing titles in its physical stores. Amazon forged a partnership with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s new imprint, and B&N has also said that no titles from that venture under the New Harvest imprint will be sold in the brick-and-mortar B&Ns.
Laura Hazard Owen from paidContent.org had this statement posted in her article, purportedly attributed to Jaime Carey, Chief Merchandising Officer, from Barnes&Noble:
“Barnes & Noble has made a decision not to stock Amazon published titles in our store showrooms. Our decision is based on Amazon’s continued push for exclusivity with publishers, agents and the authors they represent. These exclusives have prohibited us from offering certain eBooks to our customers. Their actions have undermined the industry as a whole and have prevented millions of customers from having access to content. It’s clear to us that Amazon has proven they would not be a good publishing partner to Barnes & Noble as they continue to pull content off the market for their own self interest. We don’t get many requests for Amazon titles, but If customers wish to buy Amazon titles from us, we will make them available only online at bn.com.”
Hazard Owen goes on to explain that B&N will step back from this mandate on the condition that Amazon allow B&N to sell ebook titles that Amazon is currently holding on to exclusively. There was a similar tension over the summer when B&N pulled various graphic novel titles from its shelves after those titles were being released as ebook versions strictly to the Kindle Fire; B&N at that time had said they would not stock any book in their stores that their customers could not order online, and it seems as though they are holding to that promise.
How to Market Your Indie Book via Press Releases
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In our continuing series of helping indie writers get more exposure for their books, we are looking at how to utilize press releases for promotion. A press release is a great tool for independent companies or a writer trying to draw more attention to their work. Writing a book is not easy and often takes months, if not years, to fully complete and edit. The least you could do is take a few days and promote your book effectively.
Digital press releases are becoming an important part of the ebook promotion process. Often publishing companies will petition their PR companies to write one up and have it submitted to all of the major search engines and contact book review websites directly. This process allows the general public to become aware of a new book and helps blog owners get a source of daily content.
If you have never written a press release before, don’t despair! The process is rather easy and there is a great tutorial HERE on how to write one according to industry standards. You can also look at press releases issued by your favorite companies to see how they do it. Basically, to get started you need a captivating heading—this is the title of your release. It should say something about your name, genre, and book title. For example, “Michael Kozlowski’s Paranormal Thriller, Love Hurts, out now on the Kindle.” This title is effective because it says my name, the book genre, what platform it is on, and some extra details. This ensures that when I distribute it for the next few days, if someone Google’s the words “Paranormal Thriller Kindle,” my book should show up as the number one search result.
The next step is writing a summary of your book for the press release, often in under 200 characters. This should be an expansion of the title but going into a little bit more detail. “Love Bites is an urban Paranormal Thriller about the coming war between vampires and pixies.”
The majority of your press release should be contained within the body, and the guide I posted above explains in detail what you should mention. The only advice I will offer is don’t let it be dry. Explain the premise of the book, the platforms its on, demographic it’s aimed at, who you are, and a direct quote.
The essence of a press release is to get your name and book title out there for the masses. Most of the time, if you submit with the right services, tons of blogs and websites will pick up on your story and write about it on their sites. Not only does this help with your exposure, but once your Press Release is played out and not showing up on the search engines very much, those websites talking about you will be.
There is no need to spend a copious amount of money in writing press releases! There are plenty of free services out there and you can read a big list HERE and HERE. If you intend on submitting to a ton of websites, my major advice is to change the title of each press release. This would make your campaign a little bit more distinctive and allow you to focus more on keywords.
What exactly is a keyword? What do you type in Google to find new books to read? Most people will search for a genre or a type of book. If I was looking for a new paranormal book to read, I might type “New Paranormal Books, Paranormal Books 2012, Paranormal Urban Fantasy, New Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Pixies, Vampire love stories, and so on. If your book is like mine, you can tailor the title of your press release to put all of those keywords in it. This would help with people randomly searching Google for any of those keywords, even if they were just trying to find out more information about that specific subject.
There are a number of paid services, but as an indie author you should be focusing on free! If you are dead-bent on paying, PRWEB is THE best service on the internet. If you buy their highest tier package they send it to CNN and other major sites to pick up on your story. It is well worth the money and often over 500,000 people will read your press release in a month.
In closing, press releases may take some time and energy and it’s easier to sit back and be lazy. Your book is very important and it comes down to sales and exposure. The only way you are going to get sales beyond your friends and family is to promote your book. Promoting it via press releases is THE most effective way to get the average person to take five minutes and read it or for other websites to report on your new book. This can lead to interviews from other companies or even agents seeing it and contacting you for a lucrative contract!
If you have any questions on press releases or making one, we will be monitoring this thread for the next week. Please ask anything you want about this process and we will do our best to clarify questions or concerns.
Ebook of the Week: David Wollin
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GoodEReader took a break from the Ebook of the Week feature last week while on location in New York at the Digital Book World conference. We’re please to return to offering our readers great digital content for their portable e-reading devices.
This week’s featured title is political thriller Death To The Bone, by author David Wollin. And who better to write a novel of this kind than a lawyer-turned-author.
“After the Chief Justice is gunned down in his Supreme Court chambers, aging FBI Agent Ted Bishop postpones his hard-earned retirement plans to track the assassin and becomes a target himself. But he soon discovers that the assassin has bigger prey in his sights – the President of the United States. Bishop’s only hope of preventing the President’s murder from a deadly nerve agent stolen from top secret government laboratories may lie with an unsuspecting blind woman who has decided to end her own life. Set against the backdrop of today’s divisive political climate, Death To The Bone is a thriller that will keep the pages turning until the final, startling ending.”
“I chose Smashwords because of its excellent reputation and ability to publish on numerous platforms,” says the author of his decision to make this debut novel available as an ebook on that specific distribution platform.
To download your free copy of Death To The Bone, click HERE and enter the following code at checkout: WQ79S
E-Readers Stimulating the Sales of Erotica eBooks
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Sales are rising of erotic ebooks due to the constant proliferation of e-readers. At any given time there are numerous erotica books in the best seller list on Kobo, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
British Columbia owned eXtasy Books recently told the CBC that “Customers are starting to discover them and finding that they can read certain books that they do not want other people to see and in privacy.” The e-publisher notes that sales took off in early 2010 and doubled last year. She expects them to triple in 2012 with a majority of downloaders being female. Xtasy has more than 1,000 titles in its “store” including ones such as the paranormal Dragon’s Pearl, the hybrid fantasy/Victorian Lady Mechatronic and the Steampunk Pirates and the Western-tinged Dead Man’s Diamond.
Privacy and being anonymous are two reasons why digital erotic books are becoming so popular. Being able to read them in public on an e-reader is a safe way to avoid the scrutiny of others. When you have a hard copy and are on public transit or commuting people can’t help themselves peaking over your shoulder to see what book you are reading. Cover art tends to give the books away and in the past this created friction. e-Readers only display text and many women are finding they can satiate their thirst.
Erotica and Romance have always been more popular with women and we want to know if you are reading more books out in public now with an e-reader then you did with the paperback?
Digital Book World Wrap Up with Mike Shatzkin
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GoodEReader attended this year’s Digital Book World conference in New York and met up with an amazing crew of attendees from various arms of the publishing world. Agents, editors, and publishing executives were on hand to hear from the many representatives from across the digital publishing spectrum. These experts on ebooks were presenters, panelists, moderators, and exhibitors on everything from children’s app books to digital textbooks, as well as accessories to reading like voice-over narration developers and audio soundtrack creators.
GoodEReader managed to spend a few minutes with the conference chairman, Mike Shatzkin, to get his impressions of the event as a whole, as well as some of his predictions for where digital publishing will be going in the coming year. The video of that interview can be found below.
Top 5 Mainstream eReader Apps for Android
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Google Android continues to enjoy being one of the most heavily used operating systems for tablets and phones. This is a robust operating system that is easy to license and many vendors relish in the constant attention the big G brings to their companies. If you have an Android Tablet, e-reader, or phone, you might find yourself in the position that you have no access to some of the best apps on the platform. Many e-readers, like the Kobo Vox, Pandigital Novel, Velocity Micro Cruz and many others, have limited access to 3rd party downloads. The average user only uses the apps the unit is shipped with and does not know there are tons of choices out there.
There are quite a number of mainstream e-reader apps that allow you to buy books, newspapers, and magazines directly from the apps. Not only can you buy, but you can also read them as they were meant to be seen, making them the perfect all in one solution. Today we are going to take a look at some of the best mainstream e-reader apps out there and tell you a bit about them. You can also download any of these apps directly to your tablet or phone by visiting http://goodereader.com/apps/
Amazon is one of the largest and most successful companies in terms the sheer amount of ebooks that are available. They have a tremendous ecosystem that allows you to buy the latest bestsellers and newspapers at good prices.
The Kindle for Android interface is very clean and gives you many options to browse content from the New York Times Bestseller list to the staffs personal picks. It has its categories developed fairly well, but often works best if you know what you are looking for.
Amazon has released a new library lending program via Overdrive partners. If you have a local branch that participates in digital ebook lending you can borrow books form the library and have them sent directly to your Kindle account. You can then send the books directly to your Android Tablet or e-Reader and read for free. Amazon also has a lending program that allows you borrow select books from other users or from eBook Club websites like Lendingebooks.com
Amazon for Android continues to be one of the better ecosystems out there in terms of mainstream and current books. They have a great indie writer community and you can discover new writers at affordable prices, often at .99. This program is a free download but obviously the content costs money but there is a ton of free books on the service.
Barnes and Noble Nook for Android
Barnes and Noble in the last few years has developed an expansive bookstore with tons of content. If you have a Nook Tablet or Color you know first hand how the store functions and the sheer amount of kids books, cook books and others specifically tailored for the Nook line of devices? What if you just have a Kobo Vox or other tablet? How does the experience rank up against the competition?
Nook for Android only works best if you live in the USA, if you live outside that country you do have some options. Many users claim using a fake address from the USA is all you need to do and then use your real email address and credit card. The company will NEVER send anything to your physical address unless you order non-digital content.
Nook for Android is a great reader program that allows you to lookup words via the dictionary and alter your fonts and margins. You can also augment your linespacing if you want to customize your reading experience.
This bookstore has a ton of new and mainstream books available and also a select amount of other material. The company runs their own indie publishing project called PUBIT which allows writers to submit their own content. Unlike Amazons publishing program physical people actually read the book to make sure its suitable to publish.
Kobo boasts a current library of 2.5 million books and 60% of them are free and open source. This means a fair number are classics and books you might have read when you were a little kid. Kobo is a very internationally friendly company and you can buy and read books in almost any country in the world.
One of the strongest features the company has going for it is ‘Reading Life’ which allows you earn awards and achievements. You can then let your friends know when you have read a book or earned an award via Facebook and Twitter. Speaking of social media you can also send passages of text or select words to those services too.
If you want to load your own books Kobo is one of the only mainstream apps that allow you to do it. Simply upload books that don’t have DRM to your dropbox account or send them as attachments via email and when you open it up the books can be read within the app.
Finally, like most mainstream apps there is a ton of customizations you can make to change up the look and feel of most books. You can change fonts, margins, line spaces and much more.
Android is the first platform that Sony started to market its own fledgling bookstore to phones and tablets. There is actually an optimized version of their app specifically for tablets that is an independent download. Book Prices are a bit higher then some of its competition but they do have a bunch of graphic novels and manga available.
The Sony Reader is one of the least developed mainstream apps and by comparison ranks lower on our list of essential apps. It does not give you as much freedom to change fonts and other aspects of your book experience like Kobo, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
When you download the app you are greeted by 3 free books that change once in awhile but are often open-source free books that are in the public domain.
If you have a Android Tablet or Phone with full access to the Android Market often this app is installed on your device. Often if you don’t there is no actual way of getting it other then our own app store. It features one of the nicest page turn animations in the business and looks very slick to read even scanned books.
Google is trying very hard to make a go of the entire ebook world and only started its service last year. They are the least mature of all of the other mainstream apps in terms of selection of books and the overall app experience.
The essence of Google Books is it is mainly a cloud based reader, when you buy books they are not stored physically on your e-reader or phone but within the Google Cloud Service.
There are over 3 million books in its ecosystem, but the majority are free and open sourced books the company has tediously scanned over the last five years. If you live in the USA it has an expansive selection of modern bestsellers in the fiction and non-fiction genres. If you live in Canada, Australia, or the UK the selection tends to fall of the cliff fast with an emphasis on local writers. It seems like most publishing companies did not authorize their books to any market outside the USA, which makes finding the latest best sellers an exercise in patience.
Amazon Divulges Some Critical Numbers at Digital Book World
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Most of the big names in electronic reading—Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo—like to keep a lid on all information about things like sales figures on devices, numbers of ebooks sold, and more. So when Amazon’s VP of Kindle Content Russ Grandinetti took the main stage at Digital Book World and enlightened the publishing industry crowd about some of that information, everyone paid attention.
Some of the most important info graphs that Grandinetti put up demonstrated a possible connection between titles being listed in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and an increase in sales. The explanation for that rested on the user agreement of KOLL that patrons can only borrow the equivalent of one book per month. The numbers might suggest that rather than wait as much as thirty days to check-out another ebook, Kindle users were opting to buy a book. This seemed to especially be the case when users had already read the first book in a series and had therefore become familiar with the author and the story line.
“Some customers may be willing to try authors and series they might not otherwise have discovered,” explained Grandinetti at DBW. He specifically mentioned The Hunger Games trilogy as an example, with graphs demonstrating that the number of people who first borrowed book later were more likely to purchase the second and third books.
Amazon was there also to discuss some of the newer aspects of Kindle Format 8 and its capabilities for children’s content and graphic novels on the Kindle Fire tablet. Both of those genres are making great headway now that there are inexpensive devices on the market that can tackle the screen size and full-color formats. The video below is from Grandinetti’s highlights of the updated capabilities for graphics-intensive ebooks.
Should e-Readers Embrace Social Media More?
Posted by: Michael Kozlowski | Comments (3)Many e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle and Kobo Touch have embraced social media, but in very different ways. Amazon allows you to share via Twitter and Facebook quotes and passages from the books you are reading. Kobo has developed “Reading Life,” which takes this premise a step further and earns you awards and achievements. Kobo even allows you to access Reading Life with no software on the Kob Vox and Apple iPad gives you the freedom to talk with other people in real time who are reading the same book as you are. Are these companies doing enough with various social media platforms or is this a feature that takes away from the book experience?
Social Media is growing. A recent survey conducted yesterday on Facebook Burnout states that even though the social network is many years old, people are clearly not jaded or banal about it just yet. Facebook is in the news a ton lately due to its recent IPO filing and the company imminently going public, making many people rich. Twitter is the other mega-network that helps foster the revolutions of the Arab Spring and lets you find out what your friends ate for lunch.
Clearly, social media has come a long way since the early days of Friendster and Myspace. These networks are embedded into the fabric of our society and at the very least people can keep track of their old high-school friends. The question is how these networks enhance the reading experience or take away from it.
Reading is often an anti-social endeavor and whether you read for a few hours or an entire day it can be quite cathartic. People love to get into a book and live the life of someone else, battle dragons, or find out how Apple was created. Reading gets you away from your normal life and even for a brief moment you forget about emails, text messages, work, or the kids. Do people really want the distraction of popup messages or social media elements taking them out of reverie?
Many people who have emailed us or commented on our blog during the last few years have mixed reactions about social networks employed by Amazon and Kobo in their book experience. Some think its a great idea to chat with friends about quotes they are reading or form their own virtual book-clubs. Others find it a nuisance and a distraction from the process of reading. The companies offering the service do give you options whether you even want to use those features and are not embedded into the book experience, yet.
Clearly social media elements are severely lacking in the whole e-reader and ebook experience. I can send Tweets of a paragraph or make a Facebook status update of a book I am reading? How 2009. Kobo is about the only company that actually does something unique with the whole social experience while your reading a book. They stared with Reading Life, which was basically updating your status with text from a book. They expanded on this and offered merit badges and progress achievements on books you read and allowed you to share with it friends. Recently with their VOX Tablet they unleashed “Pulse” which allows you to read comments other users made about the book. It even gives you “spoiler” options so you will not read any comments made by users who have progressed further in the book as you. People use it to post reviews, ratings, or even just to chat. A few weeks ago they updated their “Timeline” feature into Facebook which was a culmination of their partnership with Facebook they announced at the D8 conference last year.
I think companies aren’t using social media right and are not offering anything very innovative or indicative of how it should work in the book experience. For one, this is no great virtual bookclub feature that allows me to talk with other users about the book I just read or are in the process of reading. Kobo Pulse strives to do this but falls short in the execution. I would love to see each book published in ebook form to have an automatic Facebook Group page started that is developed to be a virtual bookclub for that specific book. People who are reading the book have options to talk about it as they are reading it and say “I loved it when the character said this” and see an immediate response like “OMG ME TOO.” Blending a Facebook Page with a live chat option would really develop a sense of community. Personally I love the idea of a bookclub that meets once a week for coffee and discusses books they read, but seriously, they are so hard to find. I want to talk with other tech savvy people with e-readers that are reading the ebook version. When I am not reading at work, I want to login to the Facebook eBook Page and talk to the new friends I made or just relive past chapters.
There are clearly other major options, and standalone Twitter API and Facebook APP coding knowledge will reap you huge rewards. The sky is the limit based on the limitations of the platform to develop innovative ways for an e-Reading program to let you socialize more. Humans are naturally social beings and adding an expanded twist on the reading process might encourage more people to actually read. If a company were to use social media correctly, they would have a major selling point for their product or service. Customers who were looking for a more social book experience would gravitate to that company and everyone would make money.
In the end, social media in electronic books is severely lacking. Most companies are not exploring the myriad of ways that you can improve the experience of talking to other like minded people. What paltry features we have now really just spams other peoples walls and most of your friends don’t have the same taste in books as you do. Having more embedded social functions in an e-reading indie app or mainstream company taking to the next level will only help the industry grow and spurn more companies to offering competing or better options.