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

Survey Says: E-Readers Are Racing Toward Extinction

Dan Eldridge — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 14:05:04 +0000

I can’t even begin to count the number of articles I’ve seen over the past few weeks about the swiftly growing popularity of tablet computers. A week or two after the holiday season has ended, I suspect we’ll start seeing solid proof—one way or the other—in the form of sales numbers, and we’ll finally have a [...]

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E-Books means never having to say “excuse me”

Jon Jermey — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 01:42:29 +0000

It’s the week before Christmas, and the post office and local stores are full of people I’ve never seen before. Where do they shop the rest of the year, these folk? Do they live in suspended animation till December? I can only surmise that the warmer weather here in Oz wakes them up, like locusts, [...]

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Why free Kindle e-books are like a slot machine

Chris Meadows — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 20:15:00 +0000

With about a zillion people getting Kindles for Christmas, they’re going to be wanting something to read, and not necessarily for a lot of money, either. I spotted a couple of articles highlighting some of the best works available to read for free on Kindles. One of them offers an intriguing theory on why Amazon’s [...]

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Amazon Kindle sales figures for December – over a million a week

Paul Biba — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:33:24 +0000

From the press release: Amazon.com, Inc. today announced that 2011 was the best holiday ever for the Kindle family as customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers. Authors also continue to benefit from the success of Kindle — the #1 and #4 best-selling Kindle books released in 2011 were both published independently by their [...]

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Apple’s iTunes Connect publishing platform closes for the holidays

Chris Meadows — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:15:00 +0000

One of the benefits of electronic media is that e-book stores are never closed for the holidays—at least for purchasers. But in some cases, for publishers, it’s another story. EbookNewser reports Apple’s iBookstore team sent an email to iBookstore sellers letting them know that the iTunes Connect app and e-book publishing platform is down from [...]

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Giving ‘The Gift of E’ this Christmas

Chris Meadows — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:15:00 +0000

PaidContent writes about a holiday campaign launched by digital publisher Open Road Integrated Media. Called “The Gift of E”, the campaign centers on giving e-books for Christmas as an alternative to shopping in crowded stores. The site feature instructional videos on how to give e-books as presents. After Christmas, the campaign will focus on e-book [...]

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Black Library offers Christmas e-book bundles

Chris Meadows — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:52:28 +0000

Our sister blog GamerTell points out a set of game-related e-book deals for the holiday season. Games Workshop e-book publisher Black Library (whom we’ve covered here before) is offering a number of e-book and audiobook bundles for fans who haven’t bought in yet. Some of them are a little pricey. For example: Christmas Space Marine [...]

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CNET video briefly compares tablets, Kindle as holiday gifts

Chris Meadows — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 04:37:50 +0000

CNET has a 3-minute video that bills itself as a “Buyer’s Guide” for tablets and e-readers, though it primarily focuses on tablets, and mostly the more expensive tablets—the iPad, the Galaxy S, and Sony’s Android tablet (which I hadn’t heard of before). It paints this trio of $499 tablets as the main attraction for buyers [...]

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Boy saves allowance for whole year, helps buy brother Kindle for Christmas

Chris Meadows — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 03:36:41 +0000

From Reddit comes the heartwarming story of a 27-year-old man whose 13-year-old brother saved his allowance all year to chip in (with other members of the family) toward buying him a Kindle for Christmas. The 13-year-old is the only child of the family who still lives with his parents, and since his father suffered congestive [...]

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Nook e-reader servers apparently go down for Christmas…again

Chris Meadows — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 00:18:07 +0000

Last year at this time, I posted a story on a contrast between Kindle and Nook’s successes or failures over the holiday: Kindle sold more e-books than printed books on Christmas day, and the Nook’s servers collapsed for 24 hours. Now TeleReader Karen Mallinger posts: And yet, it has happened again. A year to the [...]

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UK News Corp papers issue promotional Christmas Day iPad editions

Chris Meadows — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 19:44:53 +0000

Robert Andrews at PaidContent has a brief piece on News Corp’s UK papers The Times and The Sun getting excited about using the iPad to “break with a century-old British tradition of not publishing an edition on Christmas Day,” in the hope of catching the attention of Christmas recipients of new iPads. But these iPad [...]

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The Night Before Christmas appbooks

Chris Meadows — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 12:15:00 +0000

On The Literary Platform, Dean Johnson of appbook developer Brandwidth takes a look at four different appbook interpretations of a holiday classic, Clement C. Moore’s poem “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”. While he finds a number of things to dislike about each of them (one rates 6/10, two 7/10, and one 8/10), he notes interesting [...]

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Christmas disappointments: Are books the new clothes?

Chris Meadows — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 05:18:34 +0000

This YouTube video has been making the rounds of the book and e-book blogs lately, so far be it from me not to join the crowd. In it, a three-year-old is nonplused at opening a Christmas present and discovering it contains not toys but books. His parents explain in a comment that this was essentially [...]

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iPad in demand this Christmas; new iPad 2 features rumored

Chris Meadows — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 19:14:01 +0000

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that the iPad is going to be very popular this holiday season. eWeek reports that a Nielsen survey ranks the iPad as a very popular wishlist item for kids. 31% of kids aged 6-12 expressed a strong interest in owning one in the next six months, compared to [...]

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Wired posts tablet shopping guide

Chris Meadows — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 23:58:43 +0000

And speaking of Christmas gifts, Wired has a guide to what to look for when buying a tablet computer. The article notes that, even though Apple is still the frontrunner, enough tablets have emerged to offer credible alternatives, and offers a number of areas in which to compare each model to decide which one is [...]

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