While it has been increasingly clear over the past year that Amazon is dominating the market share and price wars among dedicated ebook reader devices, it is now clear that Amazon is also winning its tug of war with traditional book publishers over ebook pricing. Amazon is succeeding dramatically in its efforts to bring an ever increasing number and percentage of all Kindle Store ebooks into its preferred price range between $2.99 and $9.99, inclusive, according to our most recent analysis of the overall pricing composition of the Kindle Store catalog and the "Top 100 Paid" spots on the Kindle Store...

It's been a big news week in Australia in the world of ebooks - as it has overseas. But, for this much-overlooked corner of the world, ebooks have started to take their first tentative steps into the mainstream, and the logjam of rights, content and device issues has started to free up. In short, some important players in book publishing and selling here have evidently been looking at the whole "ebook thing" and decided that rather than a fad, it's the inevitable direction of the book industry. To be fair, I'm sure this happened a while back but, aside from one major...

   1. Smashwords Smashwords continues to kick goals in self-publishing. In an increasingly crowded market, I just don’t think you can beat Smashwords for ease of use, price (you can’t do better than free), and distribution. Fling your words to Smashwords, and you’ll quickly end up with an ebook in multiple formats, playable on all devices, and distributed to iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store. Soon they’ll be adding Amazon to the already impressive list. The website could use prettying up, but this offering is the best one-stop-shop free solution out there. Other services...

Imagine only being able to open one window or application at a time on your laptop. Work for a bit in Excel and when you need to switch to Word, you've got to closer the former before you open the latter. Or what if you want to open two spreadsheets at the same time? Imagine you had to close the first before you could open the second. That's silly, right? On a regular computer, yes, it is. So why do we accept those sorts of restrictions on our ereader devices? I can't open two books...

Editor's Note: I am proud to announce that Australian journalist Jason Davis will be contributing a regular column to TeleRead on the state of "e" in Australia and New Zealand. This content will be exclusive to TeleRead. Jason also runs the BookBee and EbookAnt websites. PB. This is my first official guest post, so I thought I’d start by bringing those who are interested up to speed with the state of play in ebooks in Australia. That Australia is a couple of years behind the rest of the West in ebook uptake is probably not news to many....

 I’ve spent too many days this summer visiting this page on Amazon’s Kindle store, waiting for the price of the latest book from Charles Stross to drop to $9.99 (as of the date of this post, it’s $11.99). Clearly, it’s not going to happen until the publisher feels it’s notched as many $12 purchases as it can from eager fans who aren’t as price-conscious as I am. But wait a minute! I too am an eager fan, and because of this pricing issue, I ended up reading the book for free. I’m still a fan but now...

 + The Legendary Ray Bradbury Says No to E-Books, Tells Yahoo to “Go to Hell” (by Susan King, LA Times) + Sony ‘plans two new ebook readers’ (via The Telegraph) See Also: New Sony Reader eBook Devices Coming Soon (via Sony Insider) + E-Readers are Dead. Long Love E-Reading! (by Harry McCracken, Technologizer.com) + A Very Brief Intro: Digital Rights Management (via Computeractive) + Digital books are changing our reading patterns (by Jeremy Wagstaff, Jakarta Post) + eBooks – Year Two (by Kenneth C. Green, Inside Higher Ed) Green identifies three critical issues re: e-books in higher-ed: 1) Price 2) Features and Functions Although they are “Digital...

 The Kindle for PC app has been quietly updated.  Some have chosen the option to have it updated automatically when they open the program and an update is available. I like to choose the time, but then I didn't get a notice that there was an update waiting to be 'noticed.' I read about it when @MikeCane tweeted it the other day in his inimitable way. See below: So, I went to my Kindle for PC program, still showing a bright, plain white background, chose the menu's install-update option, and got what ...

A while back I was talking to an Australian who has been in the book publishing biz since Adam was on a skateboard. We were talking about other stuff, and I was bemoaning how it was that one industry (book publishing) didn’t learn from the recent mistakes of a similar industry (music publishing). Off the record (that’s why he doesn’t get a name here) he told me: “Truth is, I know the major publishers in this country saw the ebook writing on the wall, but they’ve done everything they can to stave off the...

Cnet has a good interview, done by David Carnoy, with Amazon's Ian Freed, vice president of digital. Here are two excerpts. The first is about market share. Carnoy asks Freed to comment on B&N and Apple saying they each have a 20% market share: Honestly, something doesn't add up because we're pretty sure we're 70 to 80 percent of the market. So, something, somewhere isn't quite working right. I encourage you to do some more research. Obviously, from the beginning of Amazon we've been very metrics-focused and we don't typically throw out numbers we don't firmly believe in....

From a Blog Post In June, we concluded a survey, linked on 10 of our highest traffic websites, with more than 5,000 responses from patrons around urban and rural America. The survey included questions regarding demographics, computer/device usage, borrowing habits, general feedback on user experience, and suggestions for collection development. [Snip] Here Are a Few Findings: + 74% of users are female, between the ages of 30-59. + Nearly 70% have a college and/or postgraduate degree. + 60% learned about the download service from the library’s website (if our past blog posts and training sessions weren’t enough to get you ...

A recent exchange on a message board I frequent led me to a surprising realization: there is a demand for ebook readers even for very young children, and it might not be a device maker that wins this niche at all. It might be a peripheral maker. Here's why. The initial poster was looking for advice on a reading device for her toddler daughter, let's call her D. D is already an avid reader, enjoys paper books immensely, and also enjoys playing with Beatrix Potter downloads on Mama's Kindle (she can turn the pages already herself). Mama never thought she would consider...