TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics » Amazon

Diminishing returns dawn for self-publishing?

Paul St John Mackintosh — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:36:17 +0000

This is as much a thought piece and a kickoff for discussion as a fully fleshed-out article, but it goes like this: Is the end of the golden age of self-publishing already in sight? Part of the reasoning behind this comes from the dawn of the dot-com era just over a decade ago, when Internet [...]

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Morning Roundup: Digital Book Signings, Copyright Reform

Joanna Cabot — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:28:59 +0000

Amazon Fights to Keep Secrets in eBook Trial (Publisher’s Weekly) Amazon attorneys last week filed a letter with the court asking that it be allowed to redact sensitive business information about its Kindle e-book program gathered as evidence for the upcoming Apple price-fixing trial. — CourseSmart Enhances its eTextbook Offerings (Good e-Reader) With some reports [...]

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Amazon’s UK Tax Debacle: Time for the scapegoat to butt back?

Paul St John Mackintosh — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:57:29 +0000

UK press, politicians and public all seem heated up about Amazon’s tax bills in the UK—or lack thereof. Seems those deceitful corporations have been daring to incorporate and structure across jurisdictions, rather than standing meekly inside good honest British borders and reaching their hands into their pockets whenever that nice Mr. Osborne tells them to. [...]

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Notion Ink Adam II: A new Adam?

Paul St John Mackintosh — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:30:48 +0000

Reports on Androidos.in and later picked up on Engadget and elsewhere have outed the Notion Ink Adam II Android tablet, successor device to the much-hyped Adam device produced by India’s Notion Ink Design Labs, and apparently supported by the Indian Department of Science & Technology Technology Business Incubators program. Documents indicate a reasonably specced and very price-competitive tablet, [...]

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E-Book Usability News: Adjustable line spacing now available on the Kindle Fire HD 8.9”

David Rothman — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:30:55 +0000

LibraryCity knocked Amazon for not letting users of the Kindle Fire HDs adjust their line spacing. But guess what I noticed just now within the font-related submenu of my Kindle HD 8.9” model running version 8.3.1 firmware? Alas, on my several files tested, I still couldn’t narrow the spaces sufficiently on the HD even though the Kindle app [...]

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Morning Links: Amazon Acquires Liquivista, OverDrive Unveils Big Library Read

Joanna Cabot — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:52:09 +0000

‘Unbundling’ in the Book Business: The Fourth Big Trend (Shatzkin Files) A few weeks ago, I wrote that there are three big forces driving the future of publishing: scale, verticalization, and atomization. I was wrong. eBook Spending on the Rise (Digital Book World) In 2012 ebooks accounted for 11% of all book spending, according to a recap [...]

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Reports of the Bookstore’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Aggregated Content — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:50:36 +0000

By Michael Weinstein There’s been a great deal of conjecture lately about the future of the bookstore: What will happen to the B&N stores (especially if they do plan to reduce the number of stores)? What about independent bookstores? Will Amazon crush bricks-and-mortar stores out of existence? Oh, lordy, will there even be such a [...]

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Amazon Coins Goes Live, a Digital Currency for the Amazon App Store and Kindle

Arnold Zafra — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:51:00 +0000

Amazon has just gone live with its own digital currency dubbed Amazon Coins. Announced in February 2013, Amazon Coins is described as a new way to buy Kindle Fire apps, games and in-app items from the Amazon App Store and on Kindle Fire. To kick off the launch of Coins, Amazon also announced that they [...]

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Kindle Fire users: Check out your Amazon Coins!

Juli Monroe — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:00:02 +0000

When I stopped by Amazon this morning to check the Daily Deal, I saw something cool for you Kindle Fire owners. You’ve got free Amazon Coins! In case you missed the announcement of Coins earlier this year, they were supposed to start in May, and it looks like this announcement is the launch. What can [...]

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Review: “Let’s Get Visible: How to Get Noticed and Sell More Books” by David Gaughran

Paul St John Mackintosh — Sun, 12 May 2013 15:00:43 +0000

This book had me diving into my current e-book projects within the first few minutes of opening the review copy, looking at how to improve the preview, feedback hooks, tagging, category choice, etc. And by the end, I had a whole checklist of sites to visit, tweaks to make, programs to sign up for. That’s [...]

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Weekend Roundup: Drug Paraphernalia on Amazon, B&N’s Nook Dilemma

Dan Eldridge — Sun, 12 May 2013 14:39:28 +0000

Barnes & Noble’s Nook Dilemma (Dear Author) What’s left if B&N sells the Nook business to Microsoft? (Forbes) Free Books for Mother’s Day (GalleyCat) Now Amazon is selling bongs, nitrous oxide, and deadly hallucinogenic drugs (Business Insider) Kindle Daily Deals: 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (and 3 others)

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Deal Alert: Amazon Slashes Price on 7-Inch Kindle Fire HDs in Time for Mother’s Day

Adrian Diaconescu — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:00:30 +0000

As if to confirm a 10-inch Kindle Fire tablet is in fact in the works and coming our way soon, Amazon has decided to slash the prices of the thing’s existent smaller siblings, namely the 7-inch Fire HDs. However, the promo likely has nothing to do with the alleged coming of the 10-incher, being instead a special, [...]

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Amazon Rumored To Be Working On 10-Inch Kindle Fire With Impressive Display

Adrian Diaconescu — Tue, 07 May 2013 01:02:31 +0000

You’re familiar with the saying “Go big or go home?” Well, it doesn’t exactly apply to the tablet market nowadays, but the tide could turn soon enough. One of the biggest ongoing battles is for the small tab crown, with Google, Asus, Amazon, Apple, but also Acer fighting each other guns blazing. Meanwhile, the bigger [...]

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Amazon Reportedly Producing a “Kindle TV” Set-Top Box

Aggregated Content — Sun, 05 May 2013 14:00:25 +0000

By Jeff Kleist Amazon has been making its own devices for quite a while now. From e-readers to tablets to a rumored smartphone, the company has been pretty successful in establishing its own Apple-style ecosystem. So it makes perfect sense that Amazon wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to take charge of the one device [...]

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How Popular Are Amazon’s Kindle Singles?

Aggregated Content — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:05:21 +0000

By Moe Zilla The New York Times ran a fascinating profile of David Blum, the editor of Amazon’s “Kindle Singles” store. But along the way, they also took a look at the whole phenomenon of Singles—and what it means for the future of books. Amazon has sold nearly 5 million Kindle singles over the last 27 months, according to the [...]