Paul Biba’s eBook, eLibrary and ePublishing news compilation for week ending Saturday, August 20

Editor's Note: The following is a compilation of tweets from @PaulKBiba, the former editor of Teleread. @rhizome Has Released the First Public Version of #Webrecorder (Infodocket) Did You Know Audible Will Steal Away Your Credits If You Cancel Your Membership? (The Digital Reader) Kindle in Motion:...

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from The Digital Reader

Kobo Wins Appeal Over Agency eBook Pricing in Canada

Kobo has successfully appealed a 2014 consent agreement between the Canadian Competition Bureau and Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster where the publishers had agreed to abandon agency pricing and let retailers set the retail price of the ebooks they sell. As a result,...

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from The Digital Reader

Barnes & Noble Education is Opening College Bookstores Right and Left

When B&N Education was spun off from Barnes & Noble last year, it said it was going to expand its presence in the college bookstore industry by signing new contracts with colleges and universities to run their bookstores. While at that time that sounded like the usual optimistic hype found...

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from The Digital Reader

Morning Coffee – 19 August 2016

Here are six stories to read this morning. Augmented Reality Can Unlock the Magic Hidden in Bookstores (Book Business Magazine) Business Musings: Agent Agreements (Contracts/Dealbreakers) (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) News Sites Realizing That Relying On Facebook For Traffic Might Not Have Been Wise...

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from The Digital Reader

Facebook Wins First Round of Its Fight With Ad Block Community, But Eyeo Says the Fight Has Just Begun

For the past couple weeks Facebook has been fighting a quiet little war with ad-block users and developers, and while the early battles ended in a draw which favors Facebook the war's not over with yet. AdBlock Plus developer Eyeo published a blog post this morning which explains how the status quo...

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from The Digital Reader

Amazon to Open Pickup Location at the University of Wisconsin Madison

Amazon has struck a deal with the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the exclusive right to open a staffed pickup location on the UW-Madison campus. The retailer has promised to pay the university a minimum of $100,000 a year under a contract which runs for five years, and plans to install its new...

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from The Digital Reader

Kobo & Overdrive – What We Know So Far

In addition to a night-reading mode, what sets the newly launched Kobo Aura One apart from other ereaders is the way it supports library ebooks. The Aura One features close integration with Overdrive, the library ebook vendor bought by Rakuten last spring. There are no first-hand reports yet, and I...

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from The Digital Reader

Morning Coffee – 18 August 2016

Here are eight stories to read this morning. 5 Story Opening Clichés That Need to Die (LitReactor) A Breakthrough for Library E-Books? (PW) Companies Can’t Legally Void the Warranty for Jailbreaking or Rooting Your Phone (Motherboard) Google Says It Wants to Help Publishers, But Some Remain...

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from The Digital Reader

The Fourth Time is the Charm: Wattpad to Interrupt Stories With Adverts

Wattpad styles itself a community, but it has the same problem as any other site which hosts content: money. Over the past few years the social reading community has dabbled in several ways to generate revenue: crowd-funding, native advertising, and selling content. And now Wattpad is going to...

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from The Digital Reader

Hands On With Kobo Aura One Night Mode (video)

When Kobo announced the Aura One ereader this morning, one question was at the top of everyone's mind: How the heck did Kobo add a night-reading mode with a red-orange filter? Night-reading modes were a hot topic in the ebook world last year. Amazon, Google, and even Apple released updates for...

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from The Digital Reader

Kobo Aura Edition 2 Ships on 30 August, Costs $119

The Aura One is getting all the press today, but it's not the only new ereader Kobo is launching today. Kobo is also launching a mid-range model, the Aura Edition 2. This ereader costs about $10 less than the Kobo Glo HD, and is the worst for it. The Aura Edition 2 is about the same size and weight...

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from The Digital Reader

Barnes & Noble Rebrands Samsung Galaxy Tab A Nook 7.0 Android Tablet

Barnes & Noble can't commit to a CEO, but back in May it made a commitment to sell tens of millions of dollars worth of Samsung hardware every year. That deal included a rebranded Samsung Galaxy Tab A 7.0, which was planned to launch by the end of the year. That tablet was released today....

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from The Digital Reader

Kobo Aura One Ships in September, Will Cost $230

Kobo hasn't sent a press release yet with an official announcement, but a bunch of sites have posted reviews of the new Kobo Aura One on Wednesday. I still don't have one of these babies (I found out while writing this post that mine is literally on the UPS truck right now), but The Verge, Tom's...

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from The Digital Reader

New Harry Potter Short Story Collections Coming This September

Remember all those reports that Rowling wasn't going to release new Harry Potter books? It looks like I was right when I noted that Rowling was talking about Harry (as a character), rather that his wizarding world, because Rowling has three new Harry Potter titles up for pre-order. The Bookseller...

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from The Digital Reader

Barnes & Noble Just Fired Its CEO

Thirteen months and fourteen days. It was just over 13 months ago that B&N announced that it was hiring Ron Boire. the acting CEO of Sears Canada, to take over the CEO role at B&N. And now they've fired him. It seems Boire's experience with a failing retailer in its declining years was not...

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from The Digital Reader

Kindle Unlimited Funding Jumps in July 2016

Amazon announced on Monday that the funding pool for KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited rose slightly in July 2016, to $15.5 million. That represents an increase of $100k from June 2016, and a new peak for the funding pool. Data collected by SelfPublisherBibel.de show that the per-page royalty payment...

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from The Digital Reader

Morning Coffee – 16 August 2016

Here are five stories to read this morning. 17 Books That Sell Way Too Fast at Used Bookstores (BookRiot) Connecticut State Library Launches a Statewide Library eBook Platform (Connecticut State Library) Kindle in Motion: you should pay attention to the boring parts (Medium) Librarians Have an...

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from The Digital Reader

Amazon Deletes Kannada-Langauge eBook, Indian Literary Community Freaks Out

Remember back in 2011 when Amazon removed a Maltese-language book from the Kindle, and everyone lost their shit? It's happening again, this time in India. The Times of India, Bangalore Mirror, and other sites are reporting that Amazon won't let a Kannada-language ebook into the Kindle Store....

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from The Digital Reader

Author Co-Founds Enhanced eBook Startup

Some pundits would tell you that the best opportunities for authors are the ones they create for themselves, and now that apparently includes enhanced ebook formats like Amazon's Kindle in Motion. PW reported on this story on Friday: Although enhanced e-books and apps with sound and video have been...

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from The Digital Reader

Lit-Era.com Promises a Paid Alternative to Wattpad

Wattpad has carved a niche for itself as a community where writers can publish a work in sections, polishing it as they go, before putting the work up for sale elsewhere. Now a Russian site plans to copy that model, only with a direct financial component. The-eBook.org brings our attention...

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from The Digital Reader

Amazon to Open Pickup Location at University of Illinois – Chicago

On Monday Amazon announced that it is going to open its seventeenth unstore later this year at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Dubbed Amazon@UIC, this 2,300 square-foot operation will be location in the Student Center East building on the UIC campus (Google Maps). It will be staffed by Amazon...

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from The Digital Reader

The 5″ eReader Isn’t Dead

Smaller ereaders like the Kobo Mini may have been relegated by many as collectibles or hacking projects, but they haven't completely vanished from the retail market. A post on MobileRead brought a "new" 5" ereader to my attention. The Wizlib 5 is the smallest of three ereaders offered by the...

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from The Digital Reader

Onyx Boox T76 Plus Android eReader – $209, 6.8″ Carta E-ink Screen

Yesterday I reported on a new budget Onyx 6" Android ereader called the Boox C67s which is being carried by Chinese retailer Banggood for $73. There’s also a listing for a second new Android ereader over at Banggood called the Onyx Boox T76 Plus. The T76 Plus looks to be an updated version of the...

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from The Digital Reader

Morning Coffee – 15 August 2016

Here are nine stories to read this morning. 5 Reasons Publishing Hasn’t “Plateaued” that authors need to be aware of (Bob Mayer) Bot-Writer for Hire: Interview with Courtney Stanton of Feel Train (Exolymph) Business Musings: The Agent Clause (Contracts/Dealbreakers) (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) Can...

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from The Digital Reader

AAP Throws Hissy Fit, Can’t Tell the Difference Between Studying a Pirate Site and Supporting It

The Association of American Publishers is incensed that anyone should have a word - any type of word - to say about the disruptive academic article hosting site Sci-Hub. Late last month the AAP sent a threatening letter to California State University, Long Beach which complained about one of the...

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from The Digital Reader

Onyx Boox C67s Android eReader Now Available for $73

Chinese retailer Banggood is now carrying a new budget ereader by Onyx. The Onyx Boox C67s is a competitor to the basic Kindle which costs $73 and runs Android. You can't get much cheaper than this, and that low price tag comes with strings attached. The C67s runs Android 4.2 on a dual-core 1.2GHz...

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from The Digital Reader

Did You Know Audible Will Steal Away Your Credits If You Cancel Your Membership?

This morning's 2-for-1 sale at Audible finally gave me a chance to use up all my credits and cancel my membership. I am not a big audiobook fan, but I got an Audible membership back in November 2015 when Audible offered six months of membership for $8 a month. Since I could let the credits pile up...

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from The Digital Reader

Kindle in Motion: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly about Amazon’s New Enhanced Format (Screenshots)

So a couple weeks back Amazon quietly launched a new ebook format for the Kindle (I think it's the sixth seventh different type of Kindle ebook). First noticed by KBoards, Kindle in Motion adds GIF-like animations which can be seen on the Fire tablet and in the Kindle apps for iPad, Android, and...

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from The Digital Reader

Paul Biba’s eBook, eLibrary and ePublishing news compilation for week ending Saturday, August 13

Editor's Note: The following is a compilation of tweets from @PaulKBiba, the former editor of Teleread. Smashwords Self-Published Bestsellers List, June 2016 (Publishers Weekly) Senior editor shows the passion behind AmazonCrossing’s big lead in international translation (Teleread) The world's...

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from The Digital Reader

WDC 2016: The Best Opportunities for Writers are the Ones They Create For Themselves

It's 2016, and much of the publishing industry is in disarray. Traditional publishing is sliding into chaos, self-pub is constantly and discordantly reinventing itself, and both are being disrupted by new type of publishing ventures, including cooperative and partner publishing. In these turbulent...

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from The Digital Reader

Visionect Debuts an ePaper Sign for Museum and Galleries

The ereader market may have peaked several years ago, but E-ink screens aren't dead. A small Slovenian startup continues to find new uses and markets. Visionect announced on Monday that it was adapting its Joan smart meeting room sign for use in museums. The Amlabel digital gallery display offers...

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from The Digital Reader

Morning Coffee – 12 August 2016

Here are five stories to read this morning. 'Chronicles of Narnia' franchise will return with 'The Silver Chair' (Mashable) E-XCELLENT NEWS: KSU to offer students free e-textbooks (The State Journal) The First Trans Woman in Western Fiction (The Awl) Journalism Is Not Content Marketing (Six Pixels...

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from The Digital Reader

New York City’s Free Wifi HotSpots Are Popping Up Across Manhattan

This week finds me in NYC for F&W Media's Writer's Digest Conference, and while I was taking in the steam bath walking around the city today I happened across an old story I'd always wanted to follow up on. Back in 2014 the City of New York announced a plan to install ten thousand free Wifi...

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from The Digital Reader

Facebook’s Ad-Blocking Blocker Blocked by Ad-Blockers

So a couple days back Facebook admitted that it valued its customers, advertisers, more that users and was going to show ads to users whether they wanted to see them or not. Naturally that has a lot of users and right's activists pissed off, but it looks like we really had nothing to worry about....

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from The Digital Reader

Guest Post: All Hail the Bookshop – Survivor Against the Odds

This National Bookshop Day, Australia’s one-time Minister for Small Business, Nick Sherry, will be remembered for his words, not his deeds. A reader, bookbuyer and enthusiastic patron of terrestrial bookshops, in June 2011 Sherry told a conference on online business that, In five years, other than...

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from The Digital Reader

Morning Coffee – 11 August 2016

Here are seven stories to read this morning. Amazon India launches a used book store (MediaNama) Finally, There's a Comic Book Store for the Blind (Vice) In Search Of Gutenberg (The Scholarly Kitchen) Is an iPad still worth it for ebook lovers? (Teleread) OldNYC is like time travel for Google...

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from The Digital Reader

College Students Are Buying More Course Materials From College Bookstores, and Other Fictions

The National Association of College Stores (NACS) has just released the results of a survey which was conducted by an NACS subsidiary and contains results which will make NACS members very happy. For that reason, I suggest you trust this report only as far as you can throw me. I am calling BS on...

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from The Digital Reader

You Can Now Share Share Your Kindle Notes and Highlights via Goodreads

Kindle users have long been able to share via Twitter and FB the annotations from the ebooks they're reading, and now we have the option to share via one of Amazon's social networks, Goodreads. Goodreads just announced the launch of a beta feature where Kindle using Goodreads members can: ......

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from The Digital Reader

Old Kobo eReader Finds New Life as a Sailplane and Paraglide Computer

We've seen any number of re-purposed hacked Kindles over the years, including as a weather station, fridge magnet, and wireless monitor, but all of those projects pale in comparison to one hack i just found. An ambitious Kobo owner has hacked his Kobo Mini and turned it into a GPS-equipped flight...

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from The Digital Reader

Morning Coffee – 10 August 2016

Here are seven stories to read this morning. Actively Defending the Passive Voice (Writer Unboxed) Adobe’s Acrobat Reader app finally lets you use any cloud service you want (TechCrunch)  Are you emotionally attached to your books? (BBC Arts) The Coming Copyright Fight Over Viral News Videos, Such...

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from The Digital Reader

Is It Really a Surprise That Indie Bookstores Are Wifi-Free Zones?

The NYTimes brought a "new" trend among indie bookstores to our attention today. It seems the avant-garde of London indie booksellers have regressed, technologically speaking, to the mid-1990s: What do literary tourists look for when they visit the British Isles? Often it’s the quaint,...

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from The Digital Reader

Author Drops eBook Royalty Suit Against S&S Over Book It Doesn’t Publish

The most bizarre publishing lawsuit of the year has just gone on hiatus. Earlier this year author Sheldon Blau filed a lawsuit against Simon & Schuster over the ebook rights to  his 1997 book How to Get Out of the Hospital Alive. Blau alleged that S&S had unlawfully released an...

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from The Digital Reader

Kobo Aura One Leaks, Has a 300 PPI 7.8″ E-ink Screen for 229 Euros

For the past six weeks Kobo has been teasing us with hints about a new and larger ereader.  We first learned of it in an FCC filing, then Kobo CEO teased that it would launch this month, and now thanks to a leak I can finally show you what we've all been waiting for. A Dutch retailer has...

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from The Digital Reader

What’s the Point of ShapeReader’s Tactile Comic Books for Blind Readers?

Today I'd like to revisit a story I linked to last week in a morning coffee post and ask a few questions about it. As Forbes reported a little over a month ago (and NY Magazine and HypoAllergenic reiterated) ShapeReader is an experiment in adding a tactile dimension to comic books. Comic books are...

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from The Digital Reader

Morning Coffee – 9 August 2016

Here are five stories (and an academic paper) to read this morning. The ABCs of Blogging (The Write Conversation) The Cuneiform Tablets of 2015 (PDF) Dear reader, I blogged it (The Ed Techie) Erasing the Pop-Culture Scholar, One Click at a Time (The Chronicle of Higher Education) Let Kids Read...

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from The Digital Reader

HarperCollins Reports Slight Dip in Revenue, Huge Drop in eBook Sales in FY 2015

About a week and a half ago S&S, PRH, and Hachette released their bad news about ebook sales (variously obfuscated). Now HarperCollins  is joining the fun. News Corp released its FY2016 report today. You can read the press release over on Talking New Media, but the more interesting details like...

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from The Digital Reader

Pocketbook Inkpad 8″ eReader – 199 Euros

Pocketbook has just announced an updated version of the Inkpad, its 8" ereader. Launched in 2014, the Inkpad was arguably the best premium ereader of the year (and still one of the better ereaders two years later). With a large 8" screen and a one-handed design which Amazon later copied for the...

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from The Digital Reader

Walmart Acquires Jet.com to Boost Online Sales, Fight Amazon

Last week's rumor came true on schedule. Walmart announced on Monday it would buy online retailer Jet.com for about $3 billion, the largest-ever deal for an e-commerce startup, as it pushes to revive its under-performing web business to compete with market leader Amazon. The Jet deal would be...

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from The Digital Reader

Is B&N Really Attracting Readers While Repelling Authors?

A story crossed my desk this morning which has me questioning whether Writing for Huffington Post, Kallen Diggs argues that indie authors should work more closely with indie bookstores because B&n was only interested in readers: Barnes & Noble. It is the last, major physical bookstore left....

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from The Digital Reader

Infographic: Films You Didn’t Know Were Adapted From Books

Many movies and quite a few tv series are based on book adaptations (and sometimes the reverse is true; Twilight, for example, is arguably a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic). Working from a book provides a crutch for Hollywood studios which are now afraid to produce original stories. It also often...

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from The Digital Reader

Can Reading Fiction Literally Change Your Mind?

If you are committed to the pleasures of reading you may be pleased to discover that there is evidence to suggest that reading fiction is good for you. In a paper published in Trends in Cognitive Science, the psychologist and novelist Keith Oatley lays out his stall, arguing that fiction, and...

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Morning Coffee – 8 August 2016

Here are thirteen stories to read this morning. African Science Fiction and Literature (omenana) Airline buys 2,000 copies of self-published bedtime story for night flights (The Guardian) Anne Carroll Moore, the New York librarian who changed children's lit forever. (Slate) Computer Vision...

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from The Digital Reader

Test Post

Right now I'm working on porting this blog's email newsletter to Mailchimp, and I need to test a few features. I still don't know for sure that I will move from Feedburner, but I rather like a few of the Mailchimp features like choosing which days of the week to send the email (I'd like to skip...

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Singapore Installs 32″ Color E-ink Signs at Bus Stops

The island nation of Singapore has become the second government to install a 32" E-ink sign. The Singapore Land Transport Authority has just installed eleven new public transportation information boards at bus stops across the island. The signs are based on the 32" E-ink screen which was revealed...

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from The Digital Reader

It Will Be a Cold Day in Hell before You Can Buy a 32″ E-ink Monitor

Today's news about the 32" E-ink street signs in Singapore reminded me of a story I had been doggedly pursuing. The signage announced today is based on an E-ink screen which was originally launched in 2014. Those screens sported a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1440, and were reportedly developed in...

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from The Digital Reader

Author Spent Years in the Slush Piles, Claims That’s the Only Way to Get Published

It may be 2016, and there may be thousands of writers who are independently building their careers as book authors, but for some reason a myth continues to persist that the only way to succeed is via a contract with a traditional publisher. Dr. Harriet Lerner reiterated that myth last week in a...

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from The Digital Reader

Pokemon Go Weeded from a Utah Library

Pokemon Go has had any number of positive side effects since it was introduced, including exposing couch-dwellers to sunlight and fresh air, and encouraging strangers to interact at Gyms and Pokestops. It's been called a boon to businesses and any where else that players congregate, but one public...

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Paul Biba’s eBook, eLibrary and ePublishing news compilation for week ending Saturday, August 6

Editor's Note: The following is a compilation of tweets from @PaulKBiba, the former editor of Teleread. Big thanks to @JeffBezos for being my guest on the eighth anniversary of the Kindle Chronicles! (The Kindle Chronicles) If Almost Forty Percent of ABA Members Aren’t Actually Indie Bookstores,...

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from The Digital Reader

EU Takes Next Step Towards Lower Taxes on eBooks

Remember all that foofaraw over the past few years where France and other countries lowered the tax they collected on books, the European Union ruled the tax rate illegal (because ebooks weren't books), the countries protested, and then the EU decided in May 2015 that, okay, maybe lower taxes on...

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from The Digital Reader

This Wisconsin University Launched a Bookstore Without Books

For some unknown reason many people are convinced that only Amazon could open a college bookstore with no books, but that simply isn't true. Amazon has several competitors currently disrupting the college bookstore industry, including eCampus and textbook distributor MBS Direct. Owned by B&N...

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from The Digital Reader

Morning Coffee – 5 August 2016

Here are six stories to read this morning. British Muslim woman detained under terror laws after cabin crew report her reading Syrian art book on plane (The Independent) Business Musings: My Agent Will Negotiate (Contracts/Dealbreakers) (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) Facebook Needs a Public Editor...

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from The Digital Reader

No, Reading Books Won’t Make You Live Longer

The NYTimes and other news orgs have just fallen into another correlation/causation trap. Yesterday they published an article which implies that you will live longer if you read books: Reading books is tied to a longer life, according to a new report. Researchers used data on 3,635 people over 50...

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from The Digital Reader

Facebook’s News Feed to Show Fewer Clickbait Headlines

Your Facebook news feed will show fewer "clickbait" headlines over the next few weeks, the company announced Thursday, as it seeks to establish itself as the prime web destination for news and social updates. The company receives thousands of complaints a day about clickbait, headlines that...

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from The Digital Reader

Target’s Now Carrying Amazon Hardware Again

When Target stopped carrying the Kindle in mid-2012, many pundits hailed the move as Target kicking a Trojan Horse out of its store. Today they invited that horse back in. Bloomberg reports that Target started selling Kindles, Fire tablets, and other Amazon hardware on its site on Thursday. The...

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from The Digital Reader

Kindle Update v5.8.2 Adds Improved Table Support

Amazon released a new update this week for the Oasis, Voyage, basic Kindle, and the Paperwhite which tweaks how these ereaders support some very old web tech. According the page on Amazon, this week's update makes one major change to the reading experience. Improved Tables Experience: Reading and...

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Morning Coffee – 4 August 2016

Here are six stories to read this morning. Closed for business: Two big things that could penalize your Amazon author account (and how to prevent them) (Teleread) Dropbox gives Evernote some competition with Paper (AP) Getting Your EBook into Libraries (Indies Unlimited) On Books: Visions and...

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from The Digital Reader

Do Indies Have to Do Print?

Editor's Note: Will O'Neill kindly agreed to share his experiences with print-on-demand, and help indies decide whether they need release a POD edition, or participate in B&N's vanity press. Years ago I tradpubbed an espionage thriller, The Libyan Kill. In print, traditional offset printing,...

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from The Digital Reader

Tapas Adds Hachette Titles to Its Pay-As-You-Read Comics Platform

Hachette has signed a deal with Tapas to distribute titles to the latter's mobile platform. Tapas will soon be carrying several Hachette titles, including thriller Underground Airlines by Ben Winters, Peter Brown’s middle-grade novel, The Wild Robot, and Dan Lyons’ memoir Disrupted: My...

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from The Digital Reader

WSJ: Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Online Retailer Jet.com

Once touted as a serious threat to Amazon, startup retailer Jet.com is reportedly in acquisition talks. Walmart is in talks to buy online retailer Jet.com, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. It was not clear how much Walmart would pay, but Jet.com...

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Gainesville, Florida Launches Book Vending Machine Project

Little Free Libraries are small free-standing structures where the reading public can leave or take a book with no registration or library card required. These volunteer-run libraries are often small, wooden purpose-built structures about the size of a breadbox, but some are built into repurposed...

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Morning Coffee – 3 August 2016

Here are six stories to read this morning. DMCA Takedown Co Thinks It's Making A Point With 'Transparency Report' -- Really Just Looks Like A Jackass (Techdirt) No power or running water – but digital books galore (The Guardian) Publishers Lose Another Round in GSU Copyright Case (PW) Tapas Wants...

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IDC: Tablet Shipments Declined 12.3% in 2nd Quarter

Having fulfilled everyone's need for coasters, cutting boards, and skeet, tablet shipments dipped again last quarter. The latest stats from IDC show that global tablet shipments dropped in the second quarter of 2016 to 38.7 million units, from 44.1 million units. Both Apple and Samsung saw their...

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Kindle Unlimited Launches in Japan, Costs 980 Yen a Month

Here's a surprising bit of news. Nikkei reports that Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited in Japan several hours ago on Wednesday. The program costs 980 yen per month and offers access to more than 120,000 Japanese titles and over 1.2 million titles in other languages. Like the KU program in the USA...

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Free eBooks: Last of the Mohicans (Amazon), Jo Walton’s The Just City (Tor.com)

It's the beginning of the month, and that means that we have new free ebook offers. For example, Amazon Prime members can choose one of four free titles published by Amazon (it's the monthly Kindle First offering). And for those of us who don't have Prime (me, to name one) there are other deals....

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from The Digital Reader

Authors, Please Keep Telling Readers How eBooks Should be Expensive

What with the AAP reporting on the decline of publisher ebook revenues, and Big Five publishers either posting falling ebook revenues or refusing to talk about the category at all, I thought today would be a good day to to return to the topic of authors justifying high ebook prices. Michael J....

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Morning Coffee – 2 August 2016

Here are six stories to read this morning. A Comic Book Artist Reinvents His Craft For Blind Readers (Co.Design) The Hilarious Art of Book Design | Chip Kidd (TED Talks - YouTube) How a Publishing House Designs a Book Cover (The Passive Voice) Publishers (and vendors) killed off the digital...

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from The Digital Reader

Txtr Has Closed, Customers Advised to Transfer Accounts to Juke

Eighteen months have passed since German ebook startup txtr declared bankruptcy, and just over a year since the company was taken over by Saturn, a media retailer and one of txtr's partners. And now txtr is no more. Saturn sent out an email this morning through Juke Entertainment, its digital media...

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Apple Launches Instagram Account for iBooks to Market Book Quotes, Reviews, and More

Apple has Twitter accounts for iBooks and Apple News, and now they're expanding onto Instagram. Over the weekend Apple launched an Instagram account for iBooks The account only launched a day ago, and it already has fifteen updates. From what I can see, and from Mac Rumors description, it looks...

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Here’s How to Upgrade to Windows Ten For Free

29 July has come and gone, taking with it your last chance for a free upgrade to Windows 10 - or maybe not. Ghacks has pointed out that Microsoft is still enabling free upgrades for some users. Anyone who uses assistive technologies like screen readers (or is willing to fib and say they use it) can...

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