Diesel eBookstore celebrates the restoration of the final agency model publisher to their store with a look at agency six months later. Writing that “the A5 performed an impressive near-checkmate on the eBook chessboard,” they look at the pros and cons of operating in a partial-agency world. Among the weak points–related to the two stories above–are limitations to selling agency ebooks exclusively in the US: “Without exception, all A5 publishers now offer their eBook titles in the US only. Needless to say, our foreign customers are very upset. We, here at Diesel, have been very vocal with our A5 publishing […]
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Right Alongside BN, Kobo Launches Their Newsstand
As further evidence of the coming push to expand options for newspapers and magazines in the growing ereading market, today Kobo follows Barnes & Noble’s planned newsstand with their own offering, live as of today. Their site offers about 30 newspapers and magazines to start, and Kobo executive Michael Tamblyn says “this is just the beginning of an aggressive expansion into newspapers and magazines.” All of the offerings work via their iPad and iPhone apps as well as on the Kobo reader. The Apple apps include images in full-color and the iPad versions have a three-column format “that evokes the […]
Checking the Numbers As Amazon Distracts with Press Releases
With Barnes & Noble expected to announce a color touchscreen device this afternoon, Amazon continues to push a steady stream of press releases to try to distract the media. Today they say they have completely redesigned the front end of their entire site to be optimized for iPad, though Amazon Windowshop app. Yesterday it was a Kindle classic, reaching for new ways of saying they are selling a lot while, true to tradition, not really saying anything. Kindle svp Steve Kessel declares it “astonishing” that Kindle sales continue to grow, saying the new generation devices have “sold more since launch […]
Territorial Mess, Continued: Waterstone’s Stops “Overseas” eBook Sales
The Bookseller reports that Waterstone’s has discontinued selling ebooks to customers with billing addresses outside of the UK and Ireland. Spokesman Jon Howells says “it is basically due to rights of controlling where we sell books to” adding that “this is not a temporary move.” In an e-mail to customers the bookseller said “we have had to take this action to comply with the legal demands of publishers regarding the territories into which we can sell e-books.” The decision puts fresh spin on the already-tense landscape of “export” sales for English-language ebooks from out of both North America and the […]
Typical Starbucks Fanfare Hides Some Real Book News from Libre Digital and Others
Starbucks is one of those companies the media loves to over-cover (consider, say, free wifi at the coffee shops, versus free wifi at McDonald’s) and today they announced yet another complicated promotional entertainment offering. Traditionally these initiatives are great for free media, and then tend to fizzle away after a couple of pops. (The roster includes: their dedicated book picks; CD racks; Oprah book club sales; their music label; Starbucks Entertainment; their film adventures; their audiobook promotion; and so on.)The announcement introduces the Starbucks Digital Network–kind of AOL from the early 90s, reinvented for today in partnership with Yahoo, providing […]