From the Bowker Announcement: British children aged 10 and under are reading e-books, but on laptops rather than designated devices like the Amazon Kindle.  Once they turn 11, they embrace the Kindle as their most widely used device for e-book consumption. These insights are courtesy of Bowker Market Research’s Understanding the Digital Consumer project, an ongoing study of the use of e-books by British consumers.  The latest wave of research, completed in March 2012, included an extended set of questions around children and their use of digital content. [Clip] The latest results from Understanding the Digital Consumer show that among adult readers...

From the press release: As the only dedicated digital-first publisher in Scandinavia, Stockholm Text is set to publish 25 English language books for worldwide distribution in 2012. The first titles will be on sale as trade paperback and e-books on all leading platforms beginning May 15th. Stockholm Text has attracted some of the most popular authors of the region, in genres ranging from bestselling fiction to edgy non-fiction. Among the books to be released this summer are four mystery novels, written by a few of Sweden’s true crime queens, including Mari Jungstedt and Carin Gerhardsen, both with millions of books sold in...

FutureBook has a piece looking at the rate of e-book adoption in the UK, which is still a few years behind the US but growing year to year. The first half of the article is a confusing flood of statistics, but it seems to conclude that, as of the end of 2011, e-book sales accounted for about 10% of the total book business among trade publishers in the UK. By comparison, Hachette stated that in the USA e-books made up 28% of its adult trade sales in the first quarter of 2012. The article also looks at what the...

If you know someone serving in the military whom you would like to send an e-reader, iPad, or other device powered by lithium-ion batteries, better send it now. As of May 16th, the US Postal Service is banning the international shipment of lithium-ion batteries or devices containing them due to the potential safety hazard of the batteries exploding on board mail planes. (This only applies to international shipments, not domestic.) Neither UPS, DHL, nor FedEx ships directly to APO, FPO, or DPO addresses. FedEx offers a service for military boxes, SmartPost, which is subject to the...

The UK is notorious for its libel laws that allow for libel tourism and which punish responsible journalism.  It looks as this may change.  The Guardian is reporting: A draft defamation bill was subject to close scrutiny in the last parliamentary session but now appears as fully developed proposals in this year's legislative agenda. The bill is intended to abolish costly trials by jury in most libel cases, curb online defamation through a new notice and takedown procedure, reduce so-called "libel tourism" and make it more difficult for large corporations to sue newspapers. Lord Mawhinney, chairman of the joint Commons and Lords committee...

From ebookgratis.it.  First in a Google translation and then in Italian: Google enhances competition in the Italian market Ebooks, launching its first store outside the British market: ebooks are now ashore on the Italian version of Google Play Play Google google is the showcase for the sale of entertainment products for today now has a book section, which allow 'users to purchase Ebook to read them on their preferred device. The vast difference in Google than its competitors is that it forces you to use a particular device or application, but thanks to the web and the cloud can access their...

From the press release: Students in the United Kingdom who recently participated in ebrary’s Global Student E-book Survey reported a greater preference for digital over printed books and higher usage than their global counterparts in a similar survey conducted in 2011. When asked how often they would choose e-books over printed books, 58% of UK students stated they would “very often” to “often” choose the digital version if it were available compared to 48% of global respondents. Over 85% of UK students indicated they use e-books up to 10 hours per week and only 10% stated that they never use e-books....

The project was first announced in February.  via LIBER: The newest LIBER’s project’s website has been launched in co-operation with the Berlin State Library, the Europeana Newspapers project leader. The Europeana Newspapers project aims at the aggregation and refinement of newspapers for The European Library and Europeana. Direct to the New Web Site See Also: Europe: More Than 10 Million Digitized Newspaper Pages Coming to Europeana (February 16, 2012) (Via LJ INFOdocket.)...

From the Taipei Times: Taiwan’s e-book market will grow dramatically in the next three years as a large number of e-book readers and tablets are made available, a local publisher said. “By 2015, the number of e-book readers and tablets is expected to exceed 2 million units in Taiwan, a figure that is big enough to drive the e-book industry forward faster,” said Yu Kuo-ting (俞國定), chairman of the Taipei-based Taiwan E-book Association (台灣電子書協會). Taiwan’s e-book industry lags behind the US by three to five years, so 2015 is likely to be the turning point, said Yu, who is also the managing director...

Singapore Airlines, one of the world’s great air carriers, is partnering with the National Library Board of Singapore to provide a larger selection of audiobooks to the airlines in-flight entertainment system. From Today’s Announcement: Customers on board Singapore Airlines flights can now look forward to a wider selection of audio books on KrisWorld, the Airline’s award-winning in-flight entertainment system, through a collaboration with the National Library Board (NLB). They can relax and enjoy a “good read” while in the air without the hassle of packing their own books or eBook readers. The initial batch of 13 audio books includes all-time favourites such as...

They’re nowhere near as big as Tor, but the Bookseller reports that Duncan Baird Publishers, a UK publisher of illustrated mind, body, and spirit and cookery books, has announced it will be removing restrictive digital rights management (DRM) from 150 of its current and 80 future e-book titles in order to provide a better experience for readers. It is not clear from the Bookseller piece what percentage of Duncan Baird’s overall catalog this represents. Duncan Baird is writing to authors to tell them of its decision, which has met with mixed response. “There are some authors...

From the WorldReader blog (blockquotes omitted):The sun was shining and our publishing partners were filing in the door. Every single publisher we work with in Ghana was represented, most of them by more than one person. I was about to lead the inaugural Worldreader Digital Publishing Seminar, and I couldn’t have been more excited.First ever Worldreader Publishing Seminar in Ghana All this started six months ago, when a number of our publishing partners in Ghana expressed an interest in learning more about the digital world and its implications on the publishing industry. Prior to joining Worldreader, I worked at...