Last week, we reported on Ars Technica’s release of writer John Siracusa’s 27,000-word review of the new version of OS X, Lion, as a $4.99 Kindle e-book. In case you’re wondering how it did, the Nieman Journalism Lab reports that it sold over 3,000 copies in the first 24 hours. The entire review was and still is available for free on Ars Technica’s website as a 19-page article. In fact, the web version is continually tweaked and updated, whereas the e-book version only gets changed for major mistake fixes. But some people just wanted an e-version of their...

Last week, The Digital Reader noted that erotic fiction publisher Ellora's Cave plans to release a custom ereader device at its annual RomantiCon Convention in September. Although it's rare to see a publisher move directly into the device space, it could bring obvious benefits, like lower costs and direct access to shoppers. It's also the sort of thing one might expect to see first from a romance or erotica publisher, since those genres tend to have customers who are comfortable buying and reading ebooks. (Only some of Ellora's Cave's titles are sold in print.) There's not much information about the device...

A couple of days ago, author Steven Lyle Jordan complained that anti-DRM advocates were tagging his books on the Kindle store with labels like "defectivebydesign" and "drm-infested." The trouble is, Jordan's books don't have DRM. He wrote: DbD's answer to fight the Evil Empire: To tag every ebook vendor's books with their anti-DRM tags, regardless of whether DRM is there, to protest Amazon's actions. Their "Kindle Swindle" campaign is openly devoted to this practice. In the comments that followed, the executive director of the Free Software Foundation left a note addressing the issue: Hi Steven, We do not intend to tag all Kindle...

Those who decry e-readers as “toys” might just have gotten more ammunition. Toys-R-Us is going to carry the Amazon Kindle as of July 31, Reuters reports. Customers will get a free $10 gift card with the reader during its first week of sale. Devices on hand will include the standard Wi-Fi Kindle, the ad-based Wi-Fi Kindle with Special Offers, and the standard Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi model, as well as accessories. (Found via EBookNewser.)...

Bookending nicely with the story about Amazon’s ad-supported 3G Kindle being its most popular device ever, 9 to 5 Google is running a story on a price point survey Retrevo ran for Amazon’s rumored forthcoming tablet. When asked if they would buy an Android tablet with similar features over a $499 iPad, 31% of those who responded (who were interested in buying a tablet of any kind) said they would buy it if it cost less than $400, 48% if it cost less than $300, and 79% said they would if it cost less than $250. It looks like...

Edward Nawotka of Publishing Perspectives has a summary of events at Brazil’s second digital book conference. There is some interesting stuff there, including the contention of SocialBook founder Bob Stein that Brazil has the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of far-too-conservative American publishers who “blew it” when it came to meeting the e-book challenge. But something I find more interesting in this case is Nawotka’s “discussion seed” post, that brings up a point raised at the conference that wasn’t even reflected in the main article. One panelist noted that piracy proves, at the very...

One area where the rise of ebooks has upended traditional publishing is in the 12-month window between hardcover and paperback editions, suggests The New York Times. For new releases, even a $15 ebook edition can be considerably cheaper than the hardcover, and that has some publishers concerned that price-conscious customers who would have bought a trade paperback might be choosing the digital format because they don't want to wait a year. Does this mean ebook editions actually cannibalize future paperback sales rather than (or in addition to) hardcover? The newspaper notes that customers, and therefore bookstores, love paperbacks, which suggests that...

Futurebook has an article looking at a recent discussion in Soho held as part of a “Future of Publishing” conference series. As the piece points out, it seems like you can’t turn around without running into another conference or other event trying to determine how to deal with the “future of publishing”, but this series differs in that it tends to offer some hands-on exercises aimed at finding practical solutions. A few interesting things that came out of this discussion include the contention that, even though e-book readers and tablets have taken off in the last few years, the...

The Spanish company, which launched earlier this month, has just announced a free iPad app. The app uses a sliding pane interface similar to Twitter's iPad app, but for now it's pretty bare bones. The same might be said for the company's book selection at the present, at least based on the comment a reader named Michael left on our earlier post. He wrote: Near as I could tell, almost all of their content consists of English-language works in the public domain. Covers for those books cleverly use some sort of random pattern generator. There are a few Spanish-language books with...

Amazon's experiment with lightly subsidizing the cost of its ereader seems to be yielding good results. From VentureBeat: The digerati pooh-poohed it, but Amazon.com's advertising-supported Kindle 3G with Special Offers is now the company's top-selling e-book device. "Since AT&T agreed to sponsor screensavers, Kindle 3G with Special Offers is now our bestselling Kindle device," Amazon's press release said. The ad-supported Kindle 3G model was announced only two weeks ago, with AT&T named as the official sponsor. ...

Earlier this month in the UK, several publishers formally raised concerns about Amazon's deal to buy online bookseller The Book Depository, and asked their government's Competition Commission to review the matter. I'm not sure whether any Irish publishers expressed similar concerns, but regardless Ireland's own Competition Authority has just given Amazon an all clear to proceed. From the agency's announcement yesterday: The Competition Authority has cleared the proposed transaction whereby Amazon.com, Incorporated would acquire sole control of The Book Depository (International) Limited. The transaction was notified by the parties under the Competition Act 2002 on 4 July 2011. The Authority has formed the...

Apparently Apple’s new in-app purchase restrictions aren’t throwing everybody off of offering media through their iOS apps. Barnes & Noble has announced that its Nook for iPad app will offer access to more than 175 full-color magazines and newspapers, and Nook Kids users will be able to get access to interactive children’s books based on properties such as SpongeBob SquarePants or Dora the Explorer. Presumably, Barnes & Noble will be ponying up the 30% premium Apple demands. Despite having its own color reader, it seems that the company must do enough business on the iPad platform to make it...