On the newest episode of the Open Book podcast, Open Road ceo David Steinberger talks to Kobo ceo Michael Tamblyn about not fighting with their competitors, changing consumer demographics, and internal debates about AI. Tamblyn explained that Amazon is the predominant seller of ebooks only in the US and UK, and other countries buy ebooks through local bookselling chains. Once Kobo was established in Canada, Tamblyn recognized that competing with Amazon, Google, Apple, and Barnes & Noble for market share in the US would be like “a knife fight in a dark basement.” Instead, Kobo expanded into Europe and Asia, […]
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KDP Limits Authors To Two New Titles A Week
As of September 21, Kindle Direct Publishing has changed its guidelines, now limiting the number of new eBook, paperback, and hardcover titles authors can submit to two per week. Previously, authors could submit up to 10. They write, “We are updating the title creation limits on KDP to help maintain a positive publishing experience for all authors.” The limit resets on Sunday at 12:00 AM UTC. The company adds in an FAQ that the new rule will not effect existing titles.
Libro.fm to Launch Ebooks Alongside Audiobooks
Libro.fm announced that it will add ebooks to its platform “soon,” in addition to audiobooks. The addition will allow independent bookstores to sell ebooks through the app. Features of the new initiative include: flexible credits that can be used on either ebooks or audiobooks, bookseller ebook ARC access, member benefits, and a syncing feature which allows readers who purchase both the audiobook and ebook to “toggle between the two versions or follow the text while they listen.” “Since co-founding Libro, I’ve always imagined us offering more than audiobooks, and ebooks are a natural next step. We’ve built an audiobook platform […]
Bookshop.org Sales Are Growing Again, Says eBook Offering Is Running Ahead of Projections
Bookshop.org founder Andy Hunter is the latest interviewee on the Open Book with David Steinberger podcast. Hunter reports that their recent initiative to add ebook sales to the retail site is, “Already performing three times what we expected when we launched—about 5% of our sales now, and I thought it would take a year for us to get to that point.” On overall sales through the site, Hunter says they are growing significantly: “This year we’re looking to do about $70 million, maybe $75 million.” That would be significantly ahead of sales of $44 million in 2024, which showed modest […]
Scribd Will Move eBooks and Audiobooks To New App
Scribd announced that it will now separate its content across three products, with ebooks and audiobooks moving to a new app called Everand. Everand will also host magazines, podcasts, news articles, and sheet music. Meanwhile, Scribd.com and a new Scribd app will continue to host documents and other community-uploaded content, while they continue to operate SlideShare as a separate entity. Trip Adler, co-founder and CEO of Scribd, said in a release, “Over the last 16 years, we’ve offered a wide variety of content to everyone, but we recognized that readers either gravitated toward ebooks and audiobooks, or documents and research. […]
Amazon’s New Ebook Return Policy to Take Effect Shortly
Amazon’s new restrictions on ebook returns will be rolled out in the US by the end of the month, the Authors Guild reports. The policy, encouraged by the Guild and announced in September, will limit automatic returns on books where more than 10 percent has been read. This change to the policy was supposed to be implemented by the end of 2022, and a press release states that Amazon is “in the final stages of making these technical changes.”