Kobo executive Michael Tamblyn provided a look at some of the challenges of taking ebooks global quickly. Among the biggest challenges has been Japan, home of their new parent company Rakuten. “We’ve learned a lot working in Japan,” he said. “They have everything there–it’s just evolved completely differently” than in the rest of the book publishing world. They have no metadata standards, two competing ebook standards, very little simultaneous release in print and digital, file conversion challenges, and very few centralized repositories. In many countries, as Tamblyn underscored, “we see a lot of vertical integration once we get outside of […]
ebookstores
BN Offers to Share Digital Reading Data and Work With Indies to Preserve Bookstores
Barnes & Noble vp of ebooks Jim Hilt told the Digital Book World audience Tuesday morning some things you aren’t accustomed to hearing from the industry’s largest chain of bookstores. Speaking to “the power of the independent bookstores,” Hilt said “the notion that we are competing with each other is, I believe, untrue.” He added, “as people move on to other forms of content, what we want to do is to be working together to get more books in front on more readers.” Without offering further specifics, Hilt suggested that BN would be willing to work with independents to help […]
eNews: Kobo Formally Launches in the Netherlands; Survey Says Tablet Market “Not Set In Stone”; and More
After soft-launch in Holland late last year, Kobo’s will formally roll out their ebookstore there on January 30 with “thousands of Dutch titles,” while Dutch retailer Libris Blz will sell the Kobo Touch for €129. “Through our new partnership with Libris Blz, we’re confident our expansion into the Netherlands will be a huge success,” Kobo ceo Michael Serbinis said in a statement. “Kobo’s focus has always been to bring e-reading and e-books to people everywhere around the world. By launching in the Netherlands, and bringing e-reading to the passionate Dutch reading community — we are one more country closer to […]
Nook Kids Asks for More Audio and “Boy Content”
Nook Kids director of business development/content acquisition Kevin O’Connor shared a variety of observations on what’s working well in the Nook Kids store at Monday’s Publishers Launch Conference Children’s Publishing Goes Digital event. “I beg you, beg you, beg you beg you to create audio for your ebooks. It’s so essential for it to sell. The vast majority of what we sell is either interactive or has audio in it. It’s naturally going to sell better.” O’Connor, who was previously in the music business, cited singer/performer Laurie Berkner’s PARTY DAY as among their stronger ebook sellers. “Boy content [is] overperforming” […]
Some Things iBooks Author Is, and Isn’t
After Thursday’s morning press conference, Apple published some online documentation that cleared up at least a few details regarding their new iBooks Author software. Once books are created, they can be offered for sale in the iBookstore (under its standard revenue split) or given away there for free. All books must be no larger than 2 GB (and the software can easily create very large files). Creators can also turn iBooks Author files into PDFs or iBooks documents that they can distribute independently–but only for free. Apple requires that if the ebooks are to be sold, “you must do so […]
eNews: Another Textbook Reader (From Chegg); eBooks Are 28% of Sourcebooks’ Sales; Cemetery Dance’s Digital Subscription; and More
Taking advantage of interest around Apple’s press conference tomorrow, textbook rental company Chegg is wading into the morass of too many proprietary ereading platforms for students with yet another product. Their cloud-based eTextbook Reader is HTML5-based, developed by 3D3R, an engineering team recently acquired by Chegg. The app is currently optimized for iPads and computers, though the company says other platforms are on the way. Their product uses publisher-supplied PDFs, and the company says they have about 40,000 textbooks available from all of the major publishers. (The WSJ says Kno claims about 150,000 titles, with options to either purchase or […]