Would you pay to browse a bookstore's shelves? Victoria Barnsley, CEO of HarperCollins UK & International, discussed that concept during a recent interview on BBC's The Bottom Line with Evan Davis. "In America, certain shoe shops are charging to try on shoes. These people just go in, try them on and go and order them online,” Barnsley said. “I think the idea of a bookshop becoming a book club is not that insane, actually. You actually pay for the privilege of browsing.” Pay to browse. In a bookshop. [caption id="attachment_78843" align="alignright" width="161"] Victoria Barnsley, HarperCollins UK and Int'l CEO[/caption] The idea seemed crazy coming out of...

By Brian Howard Book Business, one of TeleRead's sister publications, spent the last two days soaking up the publishing wisdom on display at the Digital Book World conference at the Hilton New York. You can check their Twitter feed, @bookbusinessmag, for the full play by play. Below are some highlights. * * * [caption id="attachment_77159" align="alignleft" width="146"] Asra Rasheed[/caption] » Following the Children's Content in Context breakout session on Wednesday, we got to exchange a few quick words about our mutual love of the Android platform with none other than LeVar Burton, who was at the session to support Reading Rainbow CEO Asra Rasheed . "I'm a nerd," explained Burton during the session, with regard to...

Paid Content's Laura Hazard Owen is currently in Germany for the Frankfurt Book Fair. Earlier this morning she filed a brief post about the changes Barnes & Noble and Kobo are experiencing as they continue moving their retail operations abroad. Apparently Michael Tamblyn, Kobo’s EVP of content sales and merchandising, had some interesting (and especially wise) tips to share with his audience: Partnering with local bookstore chains has been central to Kobo’s international strategy, he said. “The infrastructure of selling e-books is a global endeavor," he added, "but bookselling is fundamentally a local experience.” Here's another interesting tidbit about Kobo's international strategy; the following words...

Last week, Digital Book World editorial director Jeremy Greenfield shared the details of an interesting (if non-scientific) e-reading study; it was conducted via DBW's Twitter account, which has more than 20,000 followers. The tweet itself was simple enough; it read this like: Do you read on your smartphone? Do you read on other devices, too? Tell us! As of September 11, 30 DBW Twitter followers had answered back, and about half of those respondents answered in the affirmative. The tweets featured in the post were fairly interesting, although most surprising to me was Greenfield's mention of Michael Tamblyn, Kobo’s EVP of content, sales and merchandising: In a DBW interview conducted earlier...

Michael Tamblyn of Kobo has just announced an upgrade to their ereader firmware. Here's what the Kobo blog says about it. I'll do without the blockquotes: We are very happy to announce that we have firmware upgrades on the way for Kobo eReader customers. I’m going to give as much detail as I can on this process and will be checking the forum to answer any questions that come up over the next couple of days. This is a big post, with lots of info, so let’s get started. Two Ways to Upgrade Option 1: Download and Install Download...

From the Kobo blog, this talk discusses, among other things: Two early mistakes we made and how we fixed them; 5 things that every publisher must have to win in ebooks; Why Kobo jumped into the eInk game with the $149 eReader; A day (and a week!) in the life of a digital reader; The answer to the age-old question: “If Charlotte Bronte fought Stephenie Meyer, who would win?”; The four other meanings for Kobo. ...