Month: July 2020

77 posts

Amazon Kindle can now save preferred fonts & layout settings

The Amazon Kindle app for iOS can now save your preferred font and layout settings into custom themes. Located in Aa menu, themes allow you to toggle between favorite reading configurations with a single tap. This system is ideal for people who share the same login and password between multiple people in a household. The settings in the iOS app are automatically synced to the Kindle line of e-readers, since they have had this feature for awhile. 

ebooks sales in the US generated $1.94 billion in 2019

The Association of American Publishers has announced that in 2019 ebook sales declined 4.9% and generated $1.94 billion. Overall sales are down 30.8% for the five-year period of 2015-2019. Digital audiobooks remains the fastest growing digital revenue segment in the industry, generating $1.31 billion in revenue in 2019, a 15.9% increase over 2018. In the five-year period from 2015-2019, downloaded audio grew a total of 143.8%.

The Pocketbook Color e-reader is great for Manga and Comics

The Pocketbook Color displays over 4,000 different colors with a resolution of 300 PPI. You will get a great color experience, even though the PPI is dialed down to 100 when viewing color content. Normally you might think that degraded resolution would be poor with comics or colored manga, but this isn’t further for the truth. The color quality of the average comic book, manga or even webcomic is not using millions of colors, the artists are using a limited palette that is suitable for publication, the less colors that are used, the cheaper the printing costs will be. Manga is sometimes drawn and colored by a single artist and writer, larger productions have an entire team.

Sony might be closing down the Digital Paper division

The Sony Digital Paper division might be in trouble in Japan and the United States. The USA division was started by Daniel Albohn and Bob Nell, in 2015. Both of them quit or retired from Sony in 2018 and 2019.  Sony suspended their relationship with Laruepr in early 2020 and currently and does not have anyone doing internal marketing . Last week Sony discontinued the Sony Digital Paper DPT-RP1, which initially came out in 2017. It is completely unavailable for purchase on Amazon.com, B&H and other retailers in Japan. Things are looking grim.

Dasung Not an e-Reader hits mass production in August

The Dasung Not an e-Reader has been crowdfunded for a few years and shipped their first units in October 2019 and since then, not many units have been shipped out. They closed their Indiegogo campaign in December and have been taking orders on their American and Chinese websites, but they have been out of stock for most of 2020. Customers are revolting in the comment section, since most have never received their units. This might change sometime this year.  Dasung has confirmed with Good e-Reader that most of their orders will be fulfilled  in September or October of this year, because in August, the Not an e-Reader will hit mass production.

Amazon releases new Print Cover cases for the Kindle

Amazon has just unveiled a new series of cases for the entry level Kindle. They are called Printed Covers and feature three full color themes, bookscape, library and mystery. They magnetically close, protecting your Kindle and automatically put to sleep when the case is closed and wakes it up when the case is opened. They are retailing for $24 USD on the main Amazon website and are not available outside of the United States, except for Good e-Reader.

Pocketbook Color eReader Hands on Review

The Pocketbook Color is a six inch e-reader that has a solid entry price of $219.99. You are getting a very consumer friendly product, although I know many people wish Pocketbook would develop a series of color e-readers with larger screens. I had high hopes for this e-reader. I wanted it to be good. I want there to be a future for color e-readers and if Pocketbook had a dud, it would be bad news for the e-reader industry, as a whole. I was pleasantly surprised, this model is actually really solid. You can browse the web in color. You can read ebooks in color, view the cover art and any pictures that are inside. PDF files are in full color. Other digital content such as comics or manga are also in full color. Don’t be put off by the 100 PPI maximum resolution for color content, you don’t even notice it. This is Pocketbooks second attempt at color. They first device was the Pocketbook Color Lux that came out in 2013 and was using E INK Triton, the amount of colors it could display was around 1k to 2k, and colors looked really washed out.  The PB Color in 2020 blows this old color technology out of the water.

Pocketbook Touch Lux 5 is coming out next week

The Pocketbook Touch Lux series is one of their most popular and their 5th generation e-reader is coming out next week and will cost $159.99. This device is very affordable, has a dual core processor, good battery and supports a myriad of formats.

Unboxing the brand new Pocketbook Color e-Reader

The Pocketbook Color is the first English e-reader that is employing the new E Ink Kaleido, which can display 4,000 colors and also show B&W text at 300 PPI. This is one of the most eagerly anticipated devices of 2020 and should prove whether or not there is a future in color e-readers.

Learn How to Recycle Your e-Readers Responsibly

One of the benefits of using an e-reader is that you get…

Kobo Should start making Android tablets again

Kobo released a series of tablets a number of years ago and their first product was the Kobo Vox that was released in 2011 and second generation model was issued in 2012, the Kobo Arc. In 2013 they came out with the Arc HD and Arc 10, they discontinued them all a few years later and never developed another tablet. Do you think it is time for Kobo to develop more e-reading tablets? Kobo has moderate success in the early years of the global tablet market because there were no clear industry leaders. From 2011 to 2013 it was basically the wild west with everyone and their mother was releasing a new device and it quickly saturated the market. Apple, Amazon and Samsung have all proven to be the biggest players in the industry. Almost everyone else exited the sector.

Should Amazon let you sideload audiobooks on the Kindle?

A couple of years ago Amazon incorporated Audible audiobooks on the Amazon Kindle. All of the current and previous generation models have an audiobook player and you can listen to them with a pair of wireless headphones. There is an Audible shop, next to the Kindle store, where a wide selection of audio content is available. Amazon does not let you sideload in your own audiobook collection, because the audiobook player only recognizes Audible books. Should Amazon let users sideload in their own audiobooks, like they let people do with ebooks in various Kindle friendly formats?

Ebook sales continue to rise in April and May

Year-over-year e-book sales in the United States declined by 5%, with 55 million units sold through April 2020. However, unit sales in April 2020—the first full month of COVID quarantine—rose by nearly one-third, 31% compared to March 2020. All major categories experienced ebook growth in April 2020, compared to previous month, with adult fiction posting the largest unit gain of 1.8 million units, according to The NPD Group.