Posts Tagged ‘ebooks’
Google eBooks is partnering with Korean electronics manufacturer iriver to release the Story HD, an e-book reading device integrated with the Google eBooks platform. The Story HD is an e-ink device with wi-fi connectivity and beginning July 17 it will be priced at $140 and sold exclusively through Target stores.
Google eBooks is the last of the major e-reading software platforms to offer a reading device integrated with its e-reading software. The new device will allow Google eBooks’s consumer to buy and download e-books from the Google eBooks store directly to their Story HD devices. The new device and Google eBooks’s partnerships with iriver and Target were announced on the Google Blog.
But while the iriver Story HD is priced competitively, its design (which resembles the Amazon Kindle 2) and basic technology may seem a bit dated to consumers. Google eBooks is releasing its own e-reading device at a time when B&N (Nook Simple Touch) and Kobo (Kobo Touch Edition) have both released smaller (5”) black and white touchscreen e-ink devices with increased processing power and with social reading software aimed at heightening the enjoyment of reading.
That said, the Google eBooks/Story HD has some interesting features. It has a 6 inch screen and is said to have 63% more pixels than other e-readers, offering sharper, more legible text and images. The device is said to have a more powerful processor (faster page-turns) and iriver claims the battery will last more than a month (6 weeks) on a single charge. The device also has an expandable SD card and a physical keyboard. Presumably, consumers will also be able to use the device to buy e-books from indie physical bookstores who have signed on as part of Google eBooks’s partnership with the American Booksellers Association.
Resource from: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/first-google-ebooks-integrated-e-reader.html
Authors – what does this mean to you? This is one more outlet to sell your eBooks. If you already have an ebook distribution agreement with us, we’ll be uploading your eBooks on the new Google eBook site this week. If you are ready to get started on eBooks, let us know!
Google Launches Google eBooks
After months of anticipation, Google today launched its long-awaited cloud-based e-book program, Google eBooks. Rebranded from its original moniker, Google Editions, Google eBooks overnight becomes the largest e-book provider in the world, at least in terms of its offerings, launching with nearly three million books available for purchase or download, including “hundreds of thousands of e-books” available for purchase and over two million public domain titles available for free.
The launch includes a redesigned Google Books page, featuring both a store where consumers can find and buy e-books, and a research option for those who wish to search and use the repository. It also includes a Google web reader, and apps for both Apple and Android devices, which are available for free. Google’s cloud-based e-books can be accessed and read anywhere, on any device with a modern, HTML5-enabled browser, whether desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, tablets, or via apps for iPhones, iPads, and Android-powered smartphones. Because it is an open platform, Google eBooks will also be accessible on any e-reader that is based on an open platform, like ePub, including, the Sony Reader and the B&N Nook. Announced over two years ago, the program launches just in time for the 2010 holiday season, with roughly 4,000 participating publishers. Although it is currently limited to the U.S., Google will roll out international editions of Google eBooks beginning in early 2011.
Readers can store and access their e-book libraries on cloud-based personal bookshelves accessible through their Google accounts, and can also download DRM-protected ePub or PDF files directly to their computer or other device for use offline. Google officials say its pricing “will be competitive,” with other e-book ventures, and will accommodate the agency model if desired. The price for titles from agency publishers will be set by the publishers, and the the price for non-agency publishers will be set by the seller, meaning that Google will set the price for books in the Google eBookstore, and “resellers” will set the price in theirs
As for resellers, the program envisions a key role for independent booksellers, who can host and sell Google’s eBooks on their Web sites, a move that makes sense both for Google, which despite its dominant online search presence lacks the retail experience of its competitors, and for indie bookstores, who can now get into the e-book game without having to build and maintain their own expensive platforms. At or shortly after launch, indie stores will begin to roll out their own customizable Google eBook storefronts, including stores participating through a partnership with the American Booksellers Association.
As sales in the traditional trade segments plunged in September, e-book sales jumped 158.1%, according to the monthly sales estimates released by the Association of American Publishers. Sales for the 14 publishers that reported e-book sales hit $39.9 million in the month, and were up 188.4% in the first nine months of the year to $304.6 million. In contrast, sales in the three adult trade segments, adult hardcover, trade paperback and mass market paperback, all fell by more than double digits with the adult hardcover segment experiencing the biggest decline with sales down 40.4% at the 17 publisher who reported sales to the AAP of $180.3 million. The only other segment to post a significant sales gain in September was downloadable audio with sales from the nine reporting companies up 73.7%, to $7.7 million. Sales of audio CDs fell 42.6%, to $11.6 million, in the month at the 22 reporting companies.
Reference: Publishers Weekly
You can’t deny eBooks are TAKING OFF at an rapid rate!
While sales in the print trade segments shrank in August, e-book sales had another strong month, jumping 172.4%, to $39 million, according to the 14 publishers that report sales to the AAP’s monthly sales estimates. For the year-to-date, e-book sales were up 192.9%, to $263 million. AAP said that of the approximately 19 publishers that report trade sales, revenue in the January to August period was $2.91 billion, making the $263 million e-book sales 9.0% of trade sales. At the end of 2009, e-book sales comprised 3.3% of trade sales. The mass market segment, where sales were down 14.3% in the first eight months of 2009, represented 15.1% of trade sales through August.
Reference: Publisher’s Weekly
Originally Written and Posted on Read Write Web
It won’t be long before we start seeing ads in e-books, a business professor and a former book editor wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial today.
Growing e-book sales and the opportunity for targeted advertising mean space in e-books is ripe for corporate messages. Add rapidly falling e-reader prices and the planned Google e-book store and the pressure is on for publishers and retailers to increase revenue from digital books.
Ads in books may sound like heresy. Reading is supposed to be immersive – one of the requirements of a successful e-reader is that it be unobtrusive, so the medium could disappear as the reader gets lost in the story. Who wants to curl up in a chair with “Red Bull – it gives you wings”?
But the lack of ads in paper books isn’t because book-reading is sacred, Ron Adner and William Vincent argue. Companies don’t advertise in books because there is no guarantee of when or whether the book will sell. That’s all changing, they say:
In short, physical books can’t compete with other print media for advertisers. Digital books can. With an integrated system, an advertiser or publisher can place ads across multiple titles to generate a sufficient volume. Timeliness is also possible, since digital readers require users to log in to a central system periodically.
The tech giants have already realized this potential. Google places ads next to search results in its Google Books archive, which already has ten million scanned texts. Amazon filed a patent for advertisements on the Kindle last year, and Apple could easily make the leap to in-book advertising using its iAds platform (Why iAds Could be Bigger Than iPads).
Advertising in books – the tangible things that you put on your shelf or leave on your coffee table – seems weird. But e-books aren’t a possession. You can’t lend an e-book to a friend (note: the Nook lets users “lend” certain books out once each, for 14 days only). Amazon can even cause your e-book to disappear to disappear from your e-library.
What do you think? Are ads in e-books a violation of the treasured ritual of reading? Or a necessary way to subsidize prices in the age of readable bits?
After sales growth slowed slightly in April, to 127%, e-book sales rose 162.8% in May, to $29.3 million, at the 13 publishers that report results to AAP’s monthly sales report. Sales for the first five months of the year increased 207.4%, to $148.3 million. In some other trade segments, adult hardcover sales jumped 43.2%, to $138.5 million, at the 17 publishers that report results. Sales at nine mass market paperback publishers fell 14.6% in May, to $53.6 million. For the five months, mass market paperback sales were down 7.3%, to $264.8 million; that decline coupled with the rapid growth of e-books puts the e-book market at 55% of the size of the mass market paperback market.
Information from Publishers Weekly
BookWise Publishing can help you with your eBook! Go to http://bookwisepublishing.com/ebook-conversion/ , submit your information and get started! Or contact Meagen at meg@megbunten.com for details on conversion and distribution.
Article from: http://mashable.com/2010/07/07/borders-ebookstore-launches/
Borders, the second largest bookstore chain in the U.S., is launching its e-bookstore today, as well as reading apps for Blackberry and Android devices.
The company also announced its aggressive plans to capture 17% of the e-book market by July 2011, following arch rival Barnes & Noble’s recent disclosure that it has already secured 20% of the market in the first six months of its entry.
Borders’s store is already stocked with more than 1.5 million titles (for comparison: Barnes & Noble offers more than 1 million, and Amazon boasts nearly twice that) in a variety of formats, including ePub, mobile and PDF. Customers will be able to read these titles on the two devices offered on Borders.com, the $150 Kobo and $120 Libre Pro e-readers, as well as on the company’s recently launched mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Android ().
As an added incentive, those who download the mobile apps on their devices from July 9-10 will receive the five recent bestsellers, including Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein, One Shot by Lee Child, Michael Scott’s The Alchemyst, Julia Child’s Kitchen Wisdom and Master Your Metabolism by Jillian Michaels, for free. This should ensure that a large number of people download and interact with the app right away — something Borders desperately needs if it’s going to carve out a significant marketshare this year.
Borders is, after all, a latecomer to the e-book market, which is expected to surpass $500 million in the U.S. this year, after nearly doubling to reach $314 million in 2009.
Amazon, the biggest player in the space, launched its e-bookstore and e-reader, the Kindle, in November 2007. Sony and Barnes & Noble released their own stores and devices in 2009, followed by Apple’s iBookstore (), which accompanied the release of the iPad in April.
Yet Borders’s CEO Mike Edwards confidently insists, “The race to emerge as a retail leader within the digital category is just starting,” pointing to the company’s “device neutral philosophy” and the low prices of its e-readers compared to its competitors’.
Authors!! You are missing out on an opportunity to sell your book if don’t have a digital version of your book. Contact me to get your book converted and distributed to Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and others! Contact meg@bookwisepublishing.com
Barnes & Noble’s share of the digital market already exceeds its share of the retail book market. Read More
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