Walmart has recently introduced Kobo e-readers in 1,000 of their retail locations in the United States and they are selling audiobook and ebook gift cards inside 3,500 different stores. One thing that is being underreported is that Walmart has a great price match policy when it comes to digital content.If you see … [Read more...]
Kobo at Walmart will be the deathblow for the B&N Nook
When Kobo first incorporated and started to sell e-readers and ebooks they famously said the US market was too hypercompetitive and they would rather focus on international expansion. Barnes and Noble in their glory days was generating over a billion dollars a year on their Nook unit and Amazon was selling Kindle 4-5 … [Read more...]
Here is a breakdown of how much libraries pay for ebooks from publishers
Major publishers all have different strategies for selling ebooks to the public library system. Baker & Taylor, Overdrive and a myriad of others have to have enough of a selection to keep their patrons satisfied, but it can be challenging to know all of the different prices, terms and models that publishers employ, … [Read more...]
Here are the 2018 Hugo Award Winners
The Hugo Awards are a set of literary awards given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The awards are named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. The 2018 Hugo Award ceremony has just wrapped up at Worldcon … [Read more...]
India lowers the tax on ebooks
India has just lowered the tax on ebooks from 18% to 5%, but it has a few caveats. In order to qualify for the discount the ebook also has to have a print edition, which means the vast majority of self-published titles will not see a reduced tax rate.It is currently unknown if selling one single print edition and … [Read more...]
German ebook sales increase by 16% in the first 6 months of 2018
Boersenverein and GFK have just given us an indication on the overall health of the German ebook market. They have found that in the first six months of 2018, ebook sales have risen by 16.4% and 16.7 million units have been sold. The number of customers who purchased at least one ebook increased by 6.1% to 2.7 million … [Read more...]
Apple should release iBooks on Android
Apple iBooks is the second largest retailer in the United States. In 2016 Apple sold 44 million ebooks in the US, 7 million in the UK, 3.7 million in Canada, 6 million in Australia and a paltry 831 thousand in New Zealand. Apple sells more ebooks in the US than Barnes and Noble and Kobo combined. Apple would generate … [Read more...]
Scribd has just increased their throttling limits
Scribd relaunched their unlimited audiobook and ebook service back in February. The company disclosed to Good e-Reader that in order to remain profitable they need to be able to maintain some semblance of control over the most voracious readers. Publishers are paid after a certain percentage of pages have been read, … [Read more...]
E-Book Piracy is declining in Europe
A new study conducted by the Institute for Information Law and financed by Google has proclaimed that ebook piracy is on the decline in Europe. Between 2014 and 2017, the number of pirates decreased in all European countries except Germany. Online piracy is most prevalent in Indonesia, Thailand and Brazil, followed by … [Read more...]
Amazon Rapids ditches subscription model and is now free
Amazon Rapids is an Android and iOS app that launched in 2016 and it features short stories for kids. All of the content is delivered in the style of an instant messaging app and are told through the lens of characters chatting with each other, one message at a time. Over the course of the past two years Amazon charged … [Read more...]
Walmart will start selling Kobo e-readers and e-books on August 21st
Walmart signed an agreement with Rakuten Kobo earlier this year to sell e-readers and ebooks online and carry a number of electronic readers in their retail locations in the United States. Walmart has just developed an ebook retail page and an e-reader page on their online website, but everything is placeholder right … [Read more...]
People are losing their faith in e-books
Bokon.se is one of the most popular digital bookstores in Sweden and they have thousands of titles. The vast majority of the Swedish content is powered by Pubfront. Their English catalog is from Ingram and Bokon.se announced that they are no longer doing business with Ingram, and users were provided with one days … [Read more...]