Already running late with its promised ereading initiative, Waterstones announced that “a far-reaching partnership” with Amazon “to launch new e-reading services and offer Kindle digital devices through its UK shops.” Downplayed in coverage of the announcement is that, even with a plug-and-play solution, Waterstones still won’t be ready to launch the initiative until sometime “in the Autumn.” First they need to install wi-fi in their stores (which apparently they had never done previously). Waterstone’s managing director James Daunt says in the press release, “The best digital readers, the Kindle family, will be married to the singular pleasures of browsing a […]
ebookstores
Google Launches eBooks In Italy, and More eNews
Google’s first ebookstore in a non-English-speaking country is a bit of a surprise, with the company launching Google Play with ebooks in Italy on Tuesday. The other global players are not particularly established in the Italian market already. The Kindle store launched there in December 2011, and the iBookstore opened in Italy (and much of Europe) in October 2011. Kobo named Italy as one of the markets they would launch in “shortly” back in April 2011, but have not gotten there yet. Bloomsbury Reader, created to reissue long out-of-print works as ebooks and POD paperbacks, is releasing an ebook original […]
eNews: Low Estimates for Q1 Amazon and BN Tablets; Diesel eBooks for Miles; Glenn Beck’s eSerial and The Missing Metadata
IDC is one of the monitoring companies that publishes quarterly estimates of shipments of tablets and ereaders from Asian manufacturers. Usually their updates don’t cause a big stir, but this time around their estimates for the first quarter of 2012 fit the narrative of the moment: supply of Amazon’s Kindle Fire dwindled sharply. After shipping an estimated 4.8 million units in the holiday quarter, IDC puts the first quarter Fire number at 700,000 units. To be fair, it was a light quarter for Barnes & Noble‘s tablets as well, reflecting a dropoff in the reader’s tablet market (and a corresponding […]
eNews: Warner Bros. Scripts Turned Into eBooks; DemiBooks’ New Children’s Appstore; and More
Warner Bros. announced it would sell four of the movie studio’s classic scripts — CASABLANCA, BEN-HUR, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, and NORTH BY NORTHWEST — as enhanced ebooks for Kindle, Nook, and iPad. It’s the first part of a large-scale initiative in which they hope to turn hundreds of scripts into ebooks. The WSJ reports each title will retail for $10 and “includes the film’s actual shooting script and rare historical documents from the Warner Bros. archives.” President of Warner Bros. digital distribution Thomas Gewecke told the paper the company “had been looking at a variety of ideas to leverage […]
Devices: Another 11.8 Million iPads; Glowing Review for New Nook; and More
Apple reported second quarter earnings after the close of the market on Tuesday, reporting sales of 11.8 million iPads for the period (compared to 4.7 million iPads in the same quarter a year ago). As ceo Tim Cook noted, in two years they have sold 67 million iPads worldwide (“and to put that in some context, it took us 24 years to sell that many Macs and 5 years for that many iPods and over 3 years for that many iPhones.”) The company says they saw “very strong growth in iPad sales around the world with sales more than doubling […]
Book Sales Down 8 Percent at WH Smith, with 100 Kobo In-Store Shops Coming This Year
Book sales continue to decline at UK chain WH Smith, down 8 percent on a same-store-sales basis for the six months ending February 29. On their Kobo relationship, the company says “initial performance is encouraging and we plan to further develop the offer throughout this year,” without indicating any figures. High street store sales of 448 million pounds were down over 5 percent overall (by 25 million pounds) and 6 percent on a comp-store basis, but groupwide profit rose 3 million pounds. In a parallel announcement, Kobo explained that they will open 100 in-store boutiques within WH Smith high street […]