Amazon is entering another new market with Kindle Textbook Rental, making available textbooks to students at up to 80 percent off list prices for a usage period of between 30 and 360 days (paying only for the time needed, with the option to extend the rental period or buy the textbook outright.) “Tens of thousands” of textbooks from Wiley, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis are available through the program, whose announcement would seem to anticipate Amazon’s long-rumored tablet plans for the fall. Release Meanwhile, it seems as if Sony has some explaining to do in-house, as the company denied VP […]
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International News: PA and IPG Want to Block Amazon/Book Depository Merger; Competition Commission on the Pearson/REDGroup Case; and More
As expected, the UK Publishers Association and Independent Publishers Guild are asking the government to block Amazon’s purchase of The Book Depository, calling for a wider public investigation into the competition between the online and bricks and mortar bookselling market. What’s less expected is that their request is a joint one, which PA ceo Richard Mollet said in a statement “reflects the strength of feeling among publishing companies that the OFT should block this merger.” Bookseller Meanwhile, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will conduct an ‘informal review’ of Pearson’s proposed acquisition of REDGRoup Retail’s online business. The closing […]
More eNews, Off the Beaten Path: Muhammed Ali Sues Kobo; An Author’s eFirst Serial; Chinese Authors Complain to Apple; and More
Muhammad Ali Enterprises has sued Kobo in a New York Federal Court, saying the company used the apparently-trademarked “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” phrase in an ereader ad without permission. Bloomberg Author Keith Devlin has self-published electronically a section that had been cut from his just-released book THE MAN OF NUMBERS, under the title Leonardo & Steve: The Young Genius Who Beat Apple to Market by 800 Years. Priced at $2.99, the self-published ebook was issued more or less simultaneously with the full title from Bloomsbury, packaged with the first chapter from the book itself. Agent Ted […]
Device/eReader News: Two Blasts From the Past (Blio for Mac and New Sony Readers) and Amazon Tablet Non-News
Blio Finally Adds iOS App–For Existing Customers Long after it was promised, Blio finally launched iOS apps in Apple’s App Store on Tuesday (announced in a press release that for some odd reason was embargoed until today). But it has an odd paradigm: the app is really for those hardy few who “already have a Blio account” who “can now read all their books on their iPad, iPhones or iPods by…entering their Blio account information.” So the app wants you to have an account already, and does not appear to let you create an account via the app. This may […]
Announcements: Cambridge UP Offers Digital Content Platform For Other Publishers, Cengage & Blackboard
Cambridge University Press will launch a new integrated ebook and digital content platform for other academic publishers, called University Publishing Online, in October. The new platform is based on the ‘Cambridge Books Online’ ebook delivery system, which offers access to thousands of front and backlist PDF titles in a fully searchable environment. Boydell & Brewer, Liverpool University Press, the Mathematical Association of America, and Foundation Books, based in India, are the first publishers to join the new site, with additional partners announced in the coming weeks. Cengage Learning is partnering with Blackboard in an attempt to streamline access to digital […]
Kobo Launches In Germany
After a planned debut in May (announced at the London Book Fair), Kobo has now gone live with their German ebookstore. The company says their collection features 80,000 German-language titles, which is more than Germany’s own collective effort Libreka (which lists about 73,000 titles), as well as Amazon’s recently-launched store, which announced 25,000 German titles at launch but seems to have grown to about 48,000 German books according to sub-category counts listed on the site. German-language apps are available for iOS, Android and BlackBerry, and German edition of the newest version of Kobo’s own ereader will follow in August, priced […]