Melbourne’s indie bookstore chainReadings debuted its ebookstoretoday – offering 120 titles through the unfortunately named Small Press Underground Networking Community (SPUNC). As far as I can tell all 120 titles are Australian and published through s who’s-who of indie publishers, including larger indies Text Publishing, Spinifex and Wakefield Press. Obviously, the catalogue is going to have to expand for this to make any inroads intoRedGroup’s Kobo-powered ebookstore(s), but it’s a pretty good start. Whether you consider this the first indie ebook store in Australia is up for debate – it hinges on RedGroup, and your definition of “independent”. But back to the Readings...

TechCrunch broke the story earlier today that Google has just snapped up a tiny firm called Ebook Technologies that has produced, among other ebook-related tools, software for managing the distribution of ebooks. The description of the company’s products are a little on the vague corporate-speak side, but it sounds a little like they build the software for a type of ebook distribution system/portal. Given that some of the tech that Google acquires never sees the light of day, none of this is set in stone. Far from it. But it does hint at an expanded ebookstore ecosystem. If I had to guess, I’d...

I’ve been following J. A. Konrath for a while, and have enjoyed him railing against traditional publishing in a much more vocal and high-profile way that I ever have. Naturally, many haven’t enjoyed his work as much – and I would think that would include almost all of traditional (read “paper”) publishing itself. He’s long been the tall poppy to attack when people want to prove that self-publishing  - or, more accurately, author publishing in his case – is an adberation that will soon die out. Whether these barbs have their genesis among traditional publishers...

I’m a journalist, and a member of the journalists union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (of which the Australian Journalists Association, the AJA, forms part). All members receive a monthly magazine with news and in-depth articles about the industry, but this year is special – it’s 100 years since a wily bunch of Aussie scribblers formed the AJA. So, a century into Australian journalism proper, the union has published a report of the state of the industry, and where it expects the future to lay. (SPOILER: online). The report is called Life in the Clickstream II (a similar report came out two years ago),...

Just got off the phone with Mark Tanner, who is Google’s ebooks rep in Australia. He’s ensconced down in Sydney in the Googleplex (Aust version) in Pyrmont. Interesting guy. He’s the man charged with getting the Google Ebookstore successfully launched here and publishers and retail partners signed up. He emailed me the other day and was nice enough to do a quick interview. Even though I’ve had a play with the GE site (see how here), chances are that the question foremost on my mind was the same as the one on yours: “When?” Unfortunately Mark has to follow the company line. “We’ve...

Every now and again, missives like this one entitled “How the rise of e-readers takes the fun out of giving books” from the Canadian Globe and Mail by Leah McLaren pop up and bounce around the web. They make me chuckle. Their common theme is that, essentially, you can’t wrap ebooks and stick them under your Christmas tree. They are only one step away from those “but what about the smell of books” rants bemoaning the changing of technology. Don’t get me know – if people don’t like ebooks, and enjoy dead trees with words on them, that’s their right. But call a spade...

When two high-profile ebook entities – one the incumbent, one a new player – launch similar embedded ebook reading services on the same day, naturally you compare them. Google Ebooks has roughly the same number of paid books at launch (5-700,000, although their numbers are sketchy) as Amazon’s Kindle titles, and probably a greater reach in terms of out-of-copyright titles, thanks to their extensive book scanning efforts. Amazon has an enormous number of dedicated devices out there, as well as apps on most platforms. Google says, “We have everything with a browser.” Amazon is the leader in the field of ebooks, and has...

The ebook-related interwebs are buzzing with news that Mark Coker and his Smashwords ebook-publishing site is adopting the anti-competitive, price-fixing “agency model” favoured by publishing monoliths everywhere. He wrote a long and detailed missive on the Smashwords blog the other day, justifying the move, and if we didn’t know any better, after reading it you’d say his explanation makes sense. But of course he can justify the move. In practice, when buying directly from individual amateur authors, it won’t make much difference. They set their own prices then and now, and would see "discounting" rarely, and on tiny turnover it wouldn't...

A day or so after those in the US finished celebrating Thanksgiving, I had reason to thank my lucky stars for pirates. In particular, the ebook pirate who ripped off my book and posted it on a well-known non-legitimate download site. I’d name the site, but I don’t think that’s the done thing. People can use Google any way they like. I’m a journalist who became an author in 2006 when my book Baby Steps: a Bloke’s-Eye View of IVF was published by a major Australia publisher. It went out in paperback and, as an afterthought – as it was back then...

“Hi everyone, and thanks for tuning in! Welcome to another episode of Publishing Hypocrisy … the game where we show both faces of the bookselling industry!” “Our first contestant tonight - is Jane from Melbourne! Hi Jane.” [Applause] “Hi, Brad! I’m a bit nervous!” “Jane! [Pulls her in close] You’ve got nothing to worry about – you know exactly how the game works … You pick a topic and then simply rank three examples of modern publishing and bookselling hypocrisy in order of heinousness – and hilarity.” “Let’s go to the big board! And you folks at home - don’t forget to play along!” “Well...

Colour me excited. In recent months, a few things have happened in our sunburnt country that have left it teetering on the brink of the ebook mainstream. And they said it would never happen in our backwards, sundrenched, animals-made-from-bits-of-other-animals land. So look out North America, Britain and others … Here are five reasons why we’re about to enter the ebook big-time. (Please suppress any laughter – we’re painfully aware you’ve been enjoying these conditions for years). 1. Amazon just dropped the “Whispernet tax” for Aussies Early this week, some eagle-eyed readers here noticed that books they had on their Kindle wishlists got $A2...

Little more than a day since the launch of paid Aussie titles in Apple’s local iBookstore, Borders has hit back with price cuts across their ebook range. Due to the “old publishing” paradigm of geographical restriction, Borders in Australia can’t formally guarantee to beat Amazon’s price on ebooks, as they do (incl. postage) with paper books. However, a quick check of Borders.com.au reveals that they are selling most books cheaper than Amazon. Parent company REDgroup Retail is the first to sign all of Australia’s major publishers to ebook deals, as well as many of the small indie publishers missing from the iBookstore. In...