Book social networking site Shelfari announced on their site that Amazon, which was an investor, is buying out the company: “As many of you may already know, Amazon has been a long supporter of Shelfari. They’ve worked closely with us as we introduced readers, like you, to our global community of book lovers…. And now Shelfari and Amazon will work hand in hand to continue to grow our dynamic community and create innovative new tools around the books you love. We’ve got some big plans ahead. With more resources and Amazon’s expertise in building a platform where people come to […]
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An Analyst with Some Sense on Kindle
McAdams Wright Ragen Tim Bueneman said on Friday in an e-mail that based on his meetings with management at Amazon, “There are already several new, improved versions of the Kindle in the works. But Amazon has no plans, however, for an MP3 music audio version. We guess the new version will have improved interface operating controls. This has been an issue with some buyers.” Bueneman’s letter notes that Amazon sees an opportunity to market Kindle to college students “market its e-book reader to college students” and it’s this threat that most of the press jumps on. Amazon’s Heather Huntoon comments […]
Lonely Planet Goes Mobile
Lonely Planet has made a deal with Nokia to sell maps and city guides for over 100 cities to users of Nokia Maps 2.0 users. (The maps are provided by their Navteq subsidiary.) The downloads will sell for 7.99 euros.Cnet
Stock Market Remains Irrational on Amazon/Kindle
To reinforce our Amazon/Sony Kindle/Reader observations from last week, in Monday’s trading the stock market drove up Amazon’s share price based on a new analyst’s report from Citigroup that contains no actual new data of any kind! Yes, the same folks who are deep in hock to Saudi oil masters and others after their huge losses in the American credit market keep using the power of fantasy and multiplication to conclude that Kindle is just like the iPod!Seattle PI Blog
Nielsen Wants ISBNs for Each eFormat
In their role as exclusive UK ISBN registrar, Nielsen Book has issued a statement indicating they will exclude from their database titles that use a single ISBN to represent all e-book forms of a particular. In other words they are rejecting that practice that is currently favored by most large publishers, requiring the assignment of a different ISBN to each different electronic edition of the same title. As quoted from the statement in the Bookseller, Nielsen notes that “we acknowledge that [publishers'[ e-book initiatives to date may not have required per-format identification…. We believe that hardwiring bibliographic and identification practice […]
Coelho on His "Online Journey"
Novelist Paulo Coelho writes in the New Statesman about his decade-long adventures in connecting with fans and readers electronically. His starting point was significantly different from that of many of his peers: “in my case, I was never very keen on the notion of the reclusive author working in solitude, and have always tried to interact with my readers. So I’ve spent a lot of time on my website, knowing that it is one of the rare public platforms, besides the traditional book signing, open to me.” That genuine desire for constructive engagement with his audience, and a creative willingness […]