Could serialized fiction finally force the e-book to evolve? Various ventures are trying to satisfy a common complaint about e-books: that they are simply black-and-white digital reproductions of long-form print books, flat and unoriginal in their design and concept. One variation, what publishers call enhanced e-books, with audio and video elements woven throughout the text, has largely fallen flat with readers. But serialized fiction, where episodes are delivered to readers in scheduled installments much like episodes in a television series, has been the subject of an unusual amount of experimentation in publishing in recent months. Read Full Article ... Source: New York Times...

Bookouture is a new digital publishing imprint launched by ex-Harlequin UK marketing controller Oliver Rhodes. Specializing in women’s fiction, Bookouture will publish e-books and print-on-demand globally, paying a 45 percent of net receipts royalty on e-books. “My aim with Bookouture is to focus on creating global author brands and followings—through high-quality editing and particularly through smart, creative digital marketing," Rhodes says. "We’ll be delivering bespoke digital publishing and marketing for every single one of our authors, in a way not always possible at larger publishers. That means focusing very much on the author as [a] brand, and aiming for a select number...

Techdirt writes a lot about the problems with DRM, and how inefficient and inconvenient it is. But for millions of visually-impaired people, those "inconveniences" represent something much deeper, and much worse. Somebody who has started writing eloquently about this issue is Rupert Goodwins. He is one of the UK's most respected technology journalists and also, sadly, is losing his sight. As he points out in a powerful new piece, things ought to be getting better for the visually impaired in the Internet age:... Read Full Article ... Source: Techdirt...

By Jeremy Hill | for Gadget Tell  Pocket (previously known as Read it Later) released an interesting update for its Android app last week: Known as the "Listen" feature and part of the Android 4.2 update, Pocket can now read your articles to you. It's easy enough to use: You simply open any article you've previously saved, press "Listen," and then sit back as Pocket reads the article to you, word for word. It’s a neat update, but is it practical? Here are our impressions: I think Google’s artificial intelligence voices are among the best in the industry. For example, the voice assistant within Google Now sounds...

California Governor Jerry Brown gave his pen a workout this past Thursday,  September 27. In addition to signing legislation prohibiting social network snooping by employers and colleges, he also signed off on a proposal for the state to fund 50 open source digital textbooks. He signed two bills, one to create the textbooks and the other to establish a California Digital Open Source Library to host them, at a meeting with students in Sacramento. (See video below.) Source: Ars Technica     * * * Update: Thanks to commenter Frank Lowney for bringing our attention to the following infographic from Twenty Million Minds; it illustrates the implications...

♦ Humorist Joel Stein to Judge New Entries to The Devil's Dictionary ♦ Readers to add definitions and vie for $2,000 worth of e-books Earlier this week, the social e-reading platform and website known as Copia announced the Devil's Dictionary Contest, in which entrants add humorous definitions to the margins of the free Copia edition of the classic book by Ambrose Bierce. According to a release, the contest, which will be judged by Time humorist and bestselling author Joel Stein, marks the first time note-sharing in the margins of a book has been used as the forum for a contest. The contest has been officially underway for a little over four...

By Andy Richardson, CEO of Influential Software Last week the UK Culture minister, Ed Vaizey, bowed to sustained pressure from publishers and The Society of Authors and announced a government review of e-book lending that will have important implications for the British book trade. The review’s stated objective is to look into the “possible consequences of e-lending, including the long term impact on library premises, the effect on publishers and the impact on those who cannot keep up with changes in technology,” and will be chaired by William Sieghart, the founder of Forward Publishing. Looking at the official announcement that the Department of Culture,...

Barnes & Noble’s new Nook HD tablets, priced starting at $199, aim to stand out from the pack with reader-centric features and enhanced reading experiences for magazines and catalogs. The company’s goal is to drive book discovery and purchasing through the tablets in new ways. Barrnes & Noble’s two new Android Wi-Fi tablets, the 7-inch Nook HD and 9-inch Nook HD+, aim to compete with other moderately priced tablets such as Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7. But the new Nook tablets, starting at $199 and available in October, differentiate themselves most from competitors when it comes to some new...

By Brian Howard RELIVE THE 2012 PUBLISHING BUSINESS VIRTUAL CONFERENCE Free publishing resources now available on demand, for a limited time What were you doing last Thursday? No matter. We here at the Publishing Business Group were putting on another installment of the Publishing Business Virtual Conference and Expo. Whether you were online with us or not, you can now, starting today, access all 12 book, magazine and technology sessions from the conference, plus two keynotes—from Globalvision’s Rory O'Connor and the New York Times’ Charles Duhigg—on demand. Any time you want. Did your lunch run long and you missed “Organizations Confronting Digital Change”? Have a gruelling production meeting...

By Brian Howard | for Book Business “If you came here looking for a map, good luck,” joked Perseus Book Group's Rick Joyce, noting that figuring out the new world of discoverbility is “not about map following, but about map building.” While the metaphor might seem extreme, when it comes to marketing and discoverability in the Internet age, publishers really are, like the early explorers, in uncharted territory. This was the theme of the opening keynote delivered by Joyce, Perseus's Chief Marketing Officer, to the gathered publishing professionals at New York's Metropolitan Pavilion for the first Digital Book World Marketing and Discoverability conference. Joyce’s table-setting address stressed the...

[From Digital Book World] In response to the growing library of exclusive content Amazon offers its Prime customers who also own Kindle devices, Barnes & Noble will launch Nook Video this fall. The largest bricks-and-mortar bookstore chain and second-largest e-book retailer in the U.S. will add a large collection of streaming video for sale to its large catalog of e-books. The company has not yet responded to Digital Book World’s request for comment on how much the content will cost and whether there will be a subscription service like Amazon Prime. * * * [Press Release] NOOK Video™ to Premiere This Fall Coming Soon: Shop Popular...

Late last week Wal-Mart announced that it will no longer sell the Amazon Kindle and Kinde Fire in its stores, joining Target in in rejecting the devices. While the argument could be made that the razor-thin margins on those products contributed to that decision, the real reason is clearer: Amazon's tablets are a gateway to easy ordering from Amazon.com, which means fewer sales for Target and Wal-Mart. According to Reuters, there's speculation that Amazon will open physical stores to put the Kindle products in front of more consumers. Given how quick it is to get pop-up stores up and running -- they are...