From the press release:  A slew of best-selling electronic books helped boost profits at Britain's Bloomsbury Publishing (BLPU.L) as the book industry continues its shift to digital, and the firm said it would look to academic titles for a larger part of future growth. Bloomsbury, the publisher of the "Harry Potter" series by author JK Rowling, also said it was counting on a new Rowling three-book box set tied into the Potter series, and a non-fiction account of spies in World War II to support sales in the coming year. Pretax profit at the publisher rose 13.6 percent to 4.8 million pounds ($7.6...

Yesterday I wrote a post that was generally favourable to the deal between Amazon and Waterstones: If I was to think of one single reason for the move being a good though I would say it is this, it allows Waterstones to stand still and observe for a little longer. The value of inaction is often underestimated and right now when the ebook retail and distribution space is changing rapidly and requires such a huge investment, this move brings revenue, options but most crucially of all, time to just see what happens while rebuilding the core bookselling business. I still think the above holds true. One major issue...

Duke University Libraries: eBook Strategy and Advocacy Model: "Published August 2011 and Prepared by Duke University Libraries E-Book Strategy Committee. E-Book Advocacy Model Duke University Libraries E-Book Advocacy Model E-book Advocacy Statements PDF Version of Materials (10 pages) Statements Cover the Necessary Functionalities of eBooks To Support Research: Conceptualization and Discovery Reading Theory Formation Documenting and Synthesizing Collaboration Publishing and Disseminating (Via LJ INFOdocket.)...

Friday, May 4th was the fourth International Day Against DRM, and wow — what a day! We were supported by our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, the Accessible Computing Foundation, Fight for the Future, APRIL, and our sister organizations, FSF France, FSF India and FSF Europe. Our focus for this year's day was the threat of DRM on ebooks, and so we also welcomed support from several publishers. Libre Graphics Magazine, O'Reilly, No Starch, Angry Robot and others had their own sales on DRM-free ebooks, encouraging authors and readers alike to step up and vote with their wallets. Additionally, we...

Tools of Change interview with Travis Alber of ReadSocial.   Social reading is gaining momentum. There are quite a few startups involved in this space, and most of them simply assume your Facebook friends share the same reading interests you do. ReadSocial is different. In this TOC interview, we hear from ReadSocial co-founder Travis Alber (@screenkapture) on why they're building their platform without tying it to your social graph. ...

OnlineUniversities.com has a post by Justin Marquis Ph.D. looking at the alarming trend of declining reading rates over the last few decades, and bringing up the recent Pew study showing that e-reader owners read more as a possible harbinger of ways to reduce the trend. People who read more, Marquis points out, become more “interesting, engaged, and intellectual”. They have a higher degree of emotional as well as standard literacy, developing empathy through repeatedly putting themselves in the place of the characters they read about. Adolescents who don’t develop good reading habits are at a disadvantage in college where...

A few days ago I mentioned the Harvard Book Store, which features an Espresso Book Machine which it uses to help it stay relevant in its market, and pondered why it is that more stores aren’t following its example. As it turns out, Alan Beatts has a definitive answer to that on the blog of his San Francisco bookstore Borderlands Books. Beatts ran the numbers for the cost of the machine, materials, and operations, versus how long it would take to pay down those costs at various rates. He determined that if he averaged one book an hour over...

How can publishers thrive in a digitally-disrupted world? David Borgenicht, president and publisher of Quirk Books (best known for publishing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) has some advice for other publishers. The five quick tips basically boil down to creating as engaging a product as possible, and then marketing effectively in order to grow new readers. 2. We are not in Kansas anymore. We are not even in the publishing business anymore. We are in the entertainment business. This is something we've said at Quirk for years. We are competing for attention against everything people do...

It all started harmlessly enough with Amazon's Kindle with Special Offers. That's the cheaper Kindle that displays ads when the device is in sleep mode or at the bottom of the screen when paging through the owner's catalog of books. It is very unobtrusive and, since it lowered the price of the device, has made that Kindle an extremely popular device. Now there are rumors that Amazon is selling ad space on the Kindle Fire's welcome screen. That sounds pretty reasonable too as it's a simple way for Amazon to drive a bit of additional income that's pure profit for them. Given that...

From The Unoffical Apple Weblog: If you're someone who does a lot of work on the road, and needs to reference PDF source material, you'll find that QuickSearch PDF (US$4.99) from Olive Toast Software is the tool you didn't realize you needed. It has one job to do -- to help you find information inside large PDF files -- and it does that job well. You type search terms into a text field, and QuickSearch PDF finds every occurrence, in every document that's been added to it. It lets you flip through each match until you find just the information you need. It's a...

paidContent's annual conference will be held in New York on May 23.  I'll be there covering the event for you. There will be a number of speakers in the ebook/epublishing arena including: James McQuivey, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research Bob Sauerberg, President, Conde Nast Nick Bogaty, Director of Business Development, Digital Publishing Group, Adobe Systems Liz Schimel, EVP and Chief Digital Officer, Meredith National Media Group Jonathan Shar, GM, Digital Newsstand and Emerging Content, Barnes & Noble Jim Bankoff, Chairman, CEO, Vox Media John Paton, CEO, Digital First Media Charlie Redmayne, CEO, Pottermore...

Originally published on Ebook Friendly. Check all cartoons....