As long expected, Amazon announced today the launch of their first non-English Kindle store, debuting in Germany with “over 25,000 German-language titles,” including “71 of 100 Spiegel bestsellers” and “thousands of German classics downloadable for free.” The store appers to have lots of English-language titles for German customers as well, since the company says the store has over 650,000 titles in total. When the German Publishers and Booksellers Association launched their own ebookstore last November through Libreka.de, they also began with approximately 25,000 German-language ebooks for sale (which is still the count displayed on the site). Amazon says their title […]
ebookstores
eNews: Harry Potter eBooks Now in Play; Europe’s Slow Start; and More
Last May JK Rowling‘s agents at the Christopher Little Agency upgraded their position on the possibility of Harry Potter ebooks from “monitoring” the field to “actively” evaluating and “”currently considering all the options and opportunities.” Now there is a fresh round of media attention as a spokeswoman for Rowling reiterates the same thing to the Daily Mail: “The ebook format is now something that is being actively considered.” Neil Blair from the Christopher Little Agency also stands on his previous remarks, saying “we are continuing with our evaluation of all options relating to Harry Potter ebooks.” The Daily Mail The […]
Amazon API Returns to Lendle; Inkling Gets Investment From McGraw-Hill and Pearson; and More eNews
After what turned out to be a brief hiccup, Amazon has now reinstated access to its API access for ebook lending service Lendle. The problem turned out to be Lendle’s BookSync feature, which syncs a user’s Kindle books with their Lendle account and which Amazon said violated its terms of service. Lendle has now disabled what it termed a “very useful, but non-essential feature” and added “we need to work towards a Lendle product that does not rely on APIs provided by Amazon or any other third party.” Lendle statement Interactive textbook company Inkling secured “significant minority investment” from […]
More eNews: Amazon Appstore is Live as They Put Kibosh on Lendle
The aforementioned Android Appstore that has Apple launching legal action against Amazon is now live. What’s being touted is the exclusive Android edition of Angry Birds Rio, but the books and comics section also features a variety of free and paid apps from Oceanhouse Media and WattPad. Appstore Ebook lending library company Lendle found itself in Amazon’s crosshairs yesterday, as the service, built on top of Amazon’s Kindle lending feature, was shut down on the grounds that it did not “serve the principal purpose of driving sales of products and services on the Amazon site.” So far the shutdown appears […]
eNews: CEO Nourry on Hachette US EBook Sales; Airport E-Bookstores; Android Kindle Speculation
At a conference last week Hachette Livre CEO Arnaud Nourry told Le Figaro that Hachette Book Group USA ebook sales since January “are in line with the national average,” which the AAP reported as comprising approximately 23.5 percent of the total trade in January. Indeed, HBG is one of the 14 publishers who report ebook sales to the AAP to begin with. Le Figaro Some Borders stores in the midst of closing-out sales have discounted the Kobo Wi-Fi reader to $59.99. CNET Taiwan International Airport will open arguably the first airport e-bookstore, which stocks four hundred titles available in ePub […]
Riggio Sees Expanding Market, For Digital, Stores and Publishers Alike
Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio was the keynote speaker at this morning’s annual meeting of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), his first appearance there in 11 years, when he was excited about the possibilities the Rocket eBook held for his company and the industry at large. “Think of all that could have happened had we all led tje digital age together instead of following it,” Riggio said. His primary message was that “too many of us see bookselling as a zero sum game–that there’s a limit to how many books people will buy and how many books people […]