In my email this morning, I received a notice from Quora that I had been invited to submit an answer for the following question: Are there any services or business models in which one can trade paperback or hardcover books for digital books, without having to pay full price again? After typing my answer, I thought it was interesting enough to repost here: Not that I've ever heard of—or no model that is legitimate under copyright law, anyway. The idea has been suggested by a number of people as something that publishers should...

On Wired’s Epicenter blog, Tim Carmody writes about why he thinks that the main global e-book competitor Amazon has to worry about is Kobo. He points out that while Amazon and Apple have been making highly visible splashes with their new hardware or e-publishing initiatives, Kobo has quietly been building support from a multinational network of bookseller partners, including major booksellers in England, Hong Kong, and France. And now its acquisition by Rakuten adds all of Rakuten’s previously-existing worldwide digital book and media operations to the Kobo brand. “An e-book reader will ultimately not be only...

Engadget has the press release from Kobo on the completion of its purchase by e-commerce company Rakuten. Kobo’s HQ will remain in Toronto, though Rakuten is based in Japan. Given that Rakuten owns a lot of popular e-commerce and other industry sites already (including e-tailer Buy.com), it has the potential to give Kobo a lot more expansion and marketing opportunities than its erstwhile partner, the late Borders. Will that be enough to let Kobo catch up with Amazon, or even maintain its lead in international areas Amazon doesn’t service yet? That remains to be seen. But if there...

When I started my “Cheap Reads” series, I expected I would be posting a number of entries. I never expected it to be limited to just two for all this time! Fortunately, I’ve found another inexpensive novel that is highly worthy of mention. In recent weeks I became aware of a small-press-published novel that looked very interesting by one of my Facebook friends, Sara M. Harvey. It is called Seven Times a Woman, and is a tempestuous romance set in ancient Japan involving a kitsune woman named Rei-Rei, the god Inari, and a dragon Rei-Rei has to...

TechCrunch has a piece on a startup called 1DollarScan, a scanning and digitizing company that is offering extremely inexpensive scanning and digitizing services. An expansion of a similar operation in Japan called Bookscan, 1DollarScan’s prices start at $1 for digitizing ten photos or 100 pages from a book. I’m not sure exactly how this service will stand legal scrutiny. Consumers might have the fair-use right to scan and digitize their own books (though some will still argue vociferously against that), but it seems to me that a company that offered this service to other people for a profit is...

Hiroki Kamata, the Editor of E-Book 2.0 Magazine, explains on Publishing Perspectives why, despite being a leader in technology and consumer electronics, Japan only has 30,000 Japanese language ebook titles available: Simply put, publishers continue to remain reluctant to convert their books into digital formats due to cost, as well as their own ongoing fears about digitization. Why are publishers so suspicious when it comes to e-books? First, they believe e-books will eventually cannibalize their print book business. Second, they suspect the book market will continue to decline and, ultimately, become less lucrative. Third, they think international e-book businesses, especially Amazon’s...

Japanese company Glory recently unveiled a new ebook vending machine concept aimed at customers with smartphones. The Digital Reader writes, "You select and pay for the ebook on screen. The machine will print a receipt with a QR code and other info you’ll need to download the ebook." Here's the full post....

Over at Publishing Perspectives, Hannah Johnson reports on a panel at the recent Tokyo International Book Fair where publishers discussed ebooks in Japan. It's an interesting look at what some publishers think, especially if you've read Robin Birtle's Innovation in the Japanese eBook Market that we posted last week. From Johnson's report: One of the roadblocks to developing Japan's e-book market lies in the usability of e-book stores and devices, according to Fujio Noguchi, Senior General Manager of Sony's Digital Reading Business Division. Noguchi said currently, customers are confused about where to buy e-books and how to get that content on their...

Technical publisher O’Reilly is having an e-book sale today to benefit Japan. All of the publisher’s books are on sale for 50% off, and O’Reilly will be donating all revenues, less author royalties, to the Japanese Red Cross Society. If you’re actually donating money directly, I’ve been told that Japan’s disaster relief now has just about all the money it needs, and it’s better to make a donation to places that can make a difference in more parts of the world, like Doctors Without Borders. But on the other hand, 50% off DRM-free O’Reilly e-books would be a great...

I may vacillate between liking Apple’s iOS devices and disapproving of Apple’s policies, but sometimes Apple is capable of doing cool things completely unrelated to hardware and software matters. Kevin Rose has posted to his blog a couple of interesting emails from an Apple Store employee in Japan. The messages detail the heroic measures Apple took to help both the people of Japan, who relied upon the store’s open wireless hot spots (a rare thing in Japan) to message their families, and Apple’s employees (retail and corporate), who were faced with offices fifty floors up in buildings with...

eBookNewser reports based on a paywalled story on Nikkei that the Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan has announced it will adopt EPUB 3 as its standard format. Expected to be finalized in May, EPUB version 3 will include support for displaying vertical text, which is commonly used in Japanese-language books. This will allow Japanese books to be read on overseas e-reader devices. (Though given the territorial restrictions that currently plague e-book sales, it’s anyone’s guess just how many overseas readers this will actually benefit.) The EBPAJ is expected to finalize its specification by the end of March. (We...

I remain intrigued by the fact that, helped along by the "free spree," The Path of Dreams had 2118 total Amazon downloads for October, while A Man of Few Words had 1900. And yet paid sales of the latter continue to outstrip the former ten to one. It seems that people were more willing take a chance on the "exotic" looking The Path of Dreams when the opportunity cost was zero, but are more willing to actually pay for the familiar A Man of Few Words (this was true even when they were priced the same). Joe Konrath emphasizes the importance a...