The Kobo Cloud Reader has been officially discontinued and the link to access it now redirects to the companies general app page. Â The Nook Cloud Reader has also been abandoned with the advent of the new Barnes and Noble website that was unveiled last summer.These two online reading apps were developed in 2012 when Apple decided to handle all in-app purchases through their … [Read more...] about Kobo and Nook Cloud Readers are Discontinued
Archives for April 2016
Datalogics is now offering Sony DRM for e-books
Datalogics is the largest player in the Digital Rights Management sector and they are officially licensed to sell all of Adobes SDK and PDF solutions. They have a huge portfolio of app developers and e-reader companies that use their technology and they make a killing. Datalogics has just announced that they are the exclusive providers of the new new Sony DRM system for e-books … [Read more...] about Datalogics is now offering Sony DRM for e-books
Google Play Books for Publishers is Closed Forever
Google Play Books experienced a massive piracy problem last year and many unscrupulous individuals were uploading other peoples e-books and making a ton of money. You could buy Fifty Shades of Grey, the whole Harry Potter oeuvre and some work by that Game of Thrones guy, George R.R. Martin for only a few dollars each, while the legitimate version cost a heck of a lot more. It … [Read more...] about Google Play Books for Publishers is Closed Forever
These are the key findings of the Smashwords survey
What are the writing habits that successful indie authors employs?  When it comes to self-publishing what are the hottest genres and is it worth it to engage in pre-orders? Smashwords seeks to address some of these issues in their latest report.Fiction dominates - 89.5% of our sales were fiction titles. Despite fiction's dominance, a number of non-fiction titles were … [Read more...] about These are the key findings of the Smashwords survey
E-Ink Unveils 2.9-inch e-Paper Display
There are a number of companies currently developing a secondary e-paper screen for their smartphones and and there are a number of startups and established players thinking about crafting their own solution. Things are going to get a bit easier on the R&D front because E-Ink has just unveiled a new 2.9 inch ultra-thin display.I am not surprised that e-Ink has developed … [Read more...] about E-Ink Unveils 2.9-inch e-Paper Display
Kobo Emerging Writer Prize Shortlist Announced
Kobo has just announced the shortlist for its second annual Emerging Writer Prize. The award was created with the goal of kick-starting the careers of debut authors, with a $10,000 CAD cash prize awarded to a book in each of three categories: Non-Fiction, Literary Fiction, and Genre Fiction (Romance). In addition, each winning author will receive promotional, marketing, and … [Read more...] about Kobo Emerging Writer Prize Shortlist Announced
Tapas Launches Freemium Comic Book App
Tapastic was a run of the mill comic book app but the company is trying to rebrand themselves. They changed their name to Tapas and they are attempting to employ the freemium model whereby users get access to a good portion of a comic or e-book, hopefully hooking them in enough that they will want to buy the whole thing. Basically, they are doubling the size of the … [Read more...] about Tapas Launches Freemium Comic Book App
Overdrive starts to focus on international libraries and schools
The vast majority of libraries in North America have an e-book collection and 95% of them source their digital content from Overdrive. The company is starting to broaden their focus into the lucrative educational market, while at the same time expanding into foreign markets.In March, OverDrive hired Steve Rosato to sign deals with Spanish language publishers, which will … [Read more...] about Overdrive starts to focus on international libraries and schools
Supreme Court Refuses to Grant Authors Guild an Appeal Against Google
The Supreme Court has announced that they refused to grant the Authors Guild an appeal against the Google Book scanning project and this official ends an 11 year legal saga.The idea behind Google Books was to preserve millions of bodies of texts, and put them into a searchable database. Users could look up and read passages from the books. And the fact that in most cases, … [Read more...] about Supreme Court Refuses to Grant Authors Guild an Appeal Against Google
Follett Purchases Baker & Taylor
Over the course of the last calendar year the digital library industry has been consolidating.  The largest company operating in this sector is Overdrive and they were purchased by Rakuten last March and the 3M Cloud Library was acquired by Bibliotheca in October. The last man standing was Baker & Taylor and today Follett has just announced they have just purchased … [Read more...] about Follett Purchases Baker & Taylor
Amazon Introduces Monthly Prime Membership
Amazon Prime makes sense for millions of people who want to get free two day shipping and a host of other benefits. Since the platform originally launched in 2005 the only way you could subscribe is by paying a yearly fee. This has all changed today with the advent of monthly Prime membership that only costs $10.99 and the Seattle company has also introduced a standalone Prime … [Read more...] about Amazon Introduces Monthly Prime Membership
Women represent 75% of the most active digital readers
The most active digital readers are women who are aged 45 and older and they spend on average 30 minutes per day reading on their Kobo e-reader. This is not surprising considering If you take a look at the iBooks  top 100 authors you will notice that 64% are written by women.  Meanwhile at Amazon, 56% of the top 100 bestsellers are women and Publishers Weekly top 25 has been … [Read more...] about Women represent 75% of the most active digital readers
Kobo is recommending these services to indie authors
Kobo knows that there is a large demographic of writers that are not very tech savvy. Writing your book is the first step, but there are lots of hurdles to overcome, such as finding an editor, cover artist or just getting your table of contents formatted correctly. To this end, Kobo has just posted a list of recommended services for anyone wanting to self-publishing with Kobo … [Read more...] about Kobo is recommending these services to indie authors
Blackberry is pushing out Android Marshmallow for the Priv
Blackberry has just released the first wave of updates for the Priv and it is upgrading their phones to Android Marshmallow.  It is currently only available to beta testers but a public rollout should occur next week.Android 6.0 brings a number of notable features, such as Doze – for better power management while the device sleeps – and granular application permissions – to … [Read more...] about Blackberry is pushing out Android Marshmallow for the Priv