Amazon issued another of their periodic press releases underscoring how the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library “not only generates additional revenue from loans for authors, but actually increases customer purchases of authors’ work as well (even those authors, say, of high-profile YA movie tie-ins who are not there by choice) and detailing the money made by self-published authors who elect to epublish exclusively with the company. The new statistic is that “16 of the top 100 best-selling paid Kindle books in March are exclusive to the Kindle Store.” (For people paying attention, they announced that KOLL comprises over 100,000 titles more […]
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Harry Potter eBooks Finally For Sale, With Major Retailers – Including Amazon – Acting As Third Party Services Distributors
After many delays and unexpected hiccups, digital editions of JK Rowling’s entire Harry Potter series are available for sale from Pottermore. The first three books in the series are priced at $7.99 (£4.99 in the UK) and the final four books are $9.99 (or £6.99.) Digital audiobooks are also available, narrated by Stephen Fry (in the UK) and Jim Dale (in the US), priced at $29.99 (or £17.99) for the first three and £17.99 (or £32.99). The ebook editions are available in ePub format to load on a wide range of compatible devices, and so far Pottermore has partnered with […]
Beyond the Biggest Authors, Amazon Admits “Singles” Sales Are Quite Low
Laura Owen at PaidContent obtains some general statistics on Amazon Kindle sales over the past 14 months, which ratify our argument that–while interesting–both the form and this proprietary store are vastly overcovered. In 14 months, Amazon says sales are “over two million” units. With prices ranging from one to three dollars, that comprises gross sales of roughly $4 million, across 165 titles. The six bestselling Kindle Singles titles are in fact all non-exclusive works from established authors: Lee Child, Stephen King, David Baldacci, Dean Koontz. (Together they are likely to comprise over a quarter of those two million units by […]
Google eBooks Are Merged Into New Google Play App and Entertainment Store
Google launched their new online digital entertainment supersite Google Play on Tuesday, featuring online movie rentals, digital music, apps, and yes, ebooks all in one store. The new site has subsumed the previous standalone Google eBooks, which is now apparently known as Books on Google Play. (In an interesting stylistic decision, most of the time digital reading files are simply called “books” though occasionally they slip up and call them ebooks.) Within the ebook vertical, a slicker interface and more aggressive promotions include a “25-cent Play of the Day,” promoting Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, with Google […]
Scholastic Unveils Beta of Kids eReading Platform
Scholastic’s long-expected ebook reading platform for kids Storia has launched in beta today via the Scholastic web site. For now, however, the downloadable Storia app is only available on the most kid-adverse platform out there, Windows PCs. The iPad version is due next, and the company says Mac OS, iPhone and Android versions are also on the way. Storia ebooks are readable only through the Storia app itself, though many of the titles in the new store are also available through standard ebookstores in their regular versions. (Others, however, like Clifford’s Family, are available in digital form for the first […]
Two Distributors Do Sign with Kindle–And Pay eBook Coop
While IPG remains in what could be a long-standing contractual disagreement with Amazon over wholesale terms for their clients–and their approximately 4,500 ebooks remain unavailable for sale on Kindle–two other independent distributors of scale did both come to terms with Amazon in the past week or so. Both the Perseus Books Group and National Book Network (NBN) reported to their respective clients on the new terms arrived for ebooks. Those new contracts were some time in the making; one of the two told clients they “entered into negotiations with Amazon in October of last year and have only just concluded […]