Category Archives: Daily Links

News Bits and Bytes for February 9, 2012

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Lots of news happening today:

Reports are saying that E-ink revenues are down for the month of January. A lot. However, downloads of digital media jumped in 2011. 

A big shake-up in the library lending world today. Penguin is terminating their agreement with Overdrive to supply library books. With Harper Collins still only offering libraries the crippleware 26 loan contract for books, Random House is essentially the only Big Six supplier of library books. If you pay attention to the subtext in the article about the meeting between publishers and the American Library Association, this should not come as too much of a surprise, unfortunately.

If you have been following the reaction to Amazon’s foray into the publishing world, the responses are still coming in. Today, Indie Commerce joins Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and Indigo in boycotting Amazon titles. Interestingly, this article from Paid Content says they’re not – well not exactly, that is.

Mike Shatzkin has a very thoughtful take on the Amazon vs Barnes & Noble saga that I highly recommend reading!

And finally, from  Evo Terra (Podiobooks) and Jeff Moriarty’s “It Isn’t Rocket Surgery” broadcast, a rather extreme point of view on the quality of self-published ebooks on Amazon.com. Here’s the video:

News Bits and Bytes 10-21-2011

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On the self-publishing front, three of the so-called “Big Six” publishers announce plans to give authors access to sales data. Melville Books calls it war with Amazon.

Why else is this important? Well, back in the spring, authors’ sales data and royalty statements were somewhat of an issue, as Kristine Kathryn Rusch indicates in her piece on book royalties and the follow-up update.   (Note: I haven’t heard of any updates on this story – If anyone has, please share in the comments.)

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If you have privacy concerns about the Amazon Kindle Fire’s new Silk browser, this article from the EFF should interest you.

News Bits and Bytes for 10-20-2011

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Kobo has announced their new color reader, the Vox. It is available for pre-order and will be shipping on October 28. You can read the press release here.  Kobo is also having a contest in which you can win a Vox.

According to this article from SlashGear, Amazon has added Kindles to their electronics trade in program.

What do you do if your beloved eReader is [Gasp] lost or stolen? This article from Mashable has some tips.

Barnes and Noble is expanding their Marketplace,  “adding over one million new products to the catalog,” according to today’s press release. 

For self-publishers, Amazon has announce Kindle Format 8, which has HTML 5 support. Read Mike Cane’s take on the news here.