Doubleday unveiled the cover of Dan Brown‘s May 14 release Inferno on the Today Show this morning. ‘”Inferno takes place in Italy and was inspired by Dante’s iconic 14th century poem of the same name. The cover features a portrait of Dante against the city of Florence, as well as Dante’s famous nine rings of hell.” Apparently Audible has not had a dedicated app for Apple’s iPad line, even though “more than 20 percent of Audible customers already use Audible’s iPhone app on the iPad. They have addressed that with the release of a new app optimized for iPads, and […]
Apps/iOS
Corporate: Tisch Raised BN Stake to 8.1 Percent; Amazon to Mint Their Own Virtual Money
In an annual SEC filing Tuesday, investor Daniel Tisch disclosed that at some point last year he raised his stake in Barnes & Noble from 5.1 percent (originally disclosed in January 2012) to 8.1 percent, or nearly 4.9 million shares, the holdings he controlled as December 31. Two million shares are registered to Tisch’s personal investment company TowerView, while the rest of the stake is held by Four Partners, another investment company owned by all four Tisch brothers and run by Thomas Tisch, though Daniel Tisch has “sole voting power and sole investment power” over the entire BN holding. Separately, […]
Launches: Digital Noir, Spanish Self-Publishing, Nielsen Consumer Data, and Ruckus Revised
Former editor-in-chief and creative director of the now-defunct LA Times Sunday magazine Nancie Clare and Rip Georges launch their new Kickstarter-backed Noir Magazine in Apple’s App store today (with additional platforms to follow). It’s an iPad magazine for the mystery, thriller, and true crime genres “in all mediums–a thoroughly modern, multi-media immersion into their books, TV, films, graphic novels, and video games.” Megan Abbott is editor at large and many other well-known authors are on the board of advisors and will contribute. The first issue includes an excerpt of Suspect by Robert Crais; Lee Child on bringing Reacher to the […]
eNews: Kobo Has A Date In Brazil; Nook App Updates; Amazon Sells Bonds (and Kindles)
Kobo will officially launch in Brazil under their previously-announced partnership with bookseller Livraria Cultura on December 5. The Brazilian version of the Kobo Touch device went on sale for pre-orders starting today at R$399 (or roughly $190 US). Nook has updated their iOS and Android apps in a variety of ways. Like the recently-added support to the Nook hardware for reading aloud books, the new version of their iOS app supports Apple’s VoiceOver technology (which also reads aloud to aid the visually-impaired). The Nook apps now support French, Italian, German, Spanish and British English, and they are available for download […]
Nook Adds Beta Text-to-Speech Feature; Penguin Library eBooks Sold At Consumer Price
Though not an advertised feature, Nook appears to have added text-to-speech “read aloud” capability for all ebooks in its latest releases. The National Federation for the Blind posted about the “beta” feature–which appears as an “accessibility” setting–last week: “We selected enable accessibility (beta) which will actually provide speech to read Nook books. That’s quite momentous, and would be even better if it were documented somewhere we could find it, or if any of the customer service reps knew about it. Still–it’s more than we’ve seen previously.” In August, the California Public Library Authority reached a settlement with the NFB over […]
eNews: Penguin Expands eBook Library Lending Pilot with Baker & Taylor; Sourcebook’s “Put Me In The Story” Children’s Book App
Penguin is expanding its library ebook lending pilot programs through a new distribution agreement with Baker & Taylor that will make their titles available to public libraries in Los Angeles County and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, the NYT reports. Penguin tells us they “hope it is up and running before the end of the year.” The new initiative will employ the same lending terms as Penguin’s pilot with 3M and the New York public libraries from earlier this year: Titles are available for library lending six months after publication, sold at standard ebook prices, available for one-lend-at-a-time, with each purchase valid […]