Two separate surveys of more than 2000 Americans conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in December and January found that the share of adults who owned tablet computers increased to 19 percent from 10 percent, with the same increase for adults who owned e-readers. (Women bought ereaders more than men, with the reverse being true for tablets.) In addition, the number of Americans owning at least one device, either a tablet or an e-reader, rose from 18 percent in December to 29 percent in January. The jump was particularly significant according to Pew because ownership of tablets […]
Tablets
eNews: Kindle Has “Best Holiday Ever”; 100K Xmas Downloads for Harper UK; and More
Restating the obvious and continuing its tradition of trumpeting nonspecific success, Amazon announced that 2011 “was the best holiday ever for the Kindle family as customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers,” while Christmas day was the “biggest day ever” for Kindle book downloads. Building on their earlier press release, they say that “throughout December, customers purchased well over 1 million Kindle devices per week.” Despite straining to celebrate and overplay the success of KDP authors, the etailer admits that the top ebooks for the holiday sales period were The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins […]
eNews: Chabon Criticizes Standard eBook Royalty As Open Road Publishes His Backlist; New Cookbook Apps;and More
Open Road Integrated Media will publish five backlist titles by Michael Chabon starting today, including novels THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH and THE WONDER BOYS. In an interview with the AP Chabon called the 50 percent royalty Open Road offered for the books “fair and generous” while took issue with industry standard (which the AP said was “around 25 percent” but which we take to mean 25 percent of net proceeds) for ebook royalties as offered by current publisher HarperCollins and past publisher Random House, which will publish the ebook edition of THE ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY next June. “I […]
eNews: Kobo’s Tablet, Berkley/NAL’s Digital Imprint, S&S’s Author Portal, 11 Million iPads, Google’s Bookshelf, and More
Kobo is joining the ereader/tablet movement with their just-announced Vox, dubbed “the People’s eReader.” Selling for $199.99 and shipping as of October 28, it runs Android 2.3 and promises easy web browsing, e-mail, and access to “over 15,000 hot music, video and game apps.” It weighs 14.2 ounces (lighter than Nook Color or Kindle Fire), and a vibrating Kobo pulse icon signifies pages with more social activity. Kobo says it comes with three free color ebooks. Berkley/NAL has announced a digital imprint (actually they call it an “e-initial eBook imprint”) launching in January 2012, InterMix. The line will debut with […]
Live From NY, It’s The $199 Kindle Fire and New Kindle Touch Devices
It was within a block of the West Side’s fragrant horse and carriage stables that Amazon set up tent this morning–literally with a large, air-conditioned tent on the street as a holding pen for press-conference visitors–to introduce their new devices: the Kindle Fire tablet, the new line of Kindle Touch ereaders, and an inexpensive version of its original Kindle model. Bloomberg jumped the gun by about 25 minutes quoting unnamed Amazon executives about the specs, but Wednesday’s press conference made it official: the Kindle Fire Tablet will have a 7″ full-color touchscreen and Wi-Fi, weigh 14.6 ounces, and will retail […]
Briefs: Amazon Lights a “Kindle Fire” Under Its Tablet; Quercus Sales Fall From Larsson Ebb; and More
Multiple reports (including this one from TechCrunch) indicate that Amazon’s tablet, which will be formally introduced at an event Wednesday morning, will be called the Kindle Fire, and will not be ready to ship until the second week of November. For the first six months of 2011, Quercus reported sales of 12 million pounds, down 20 percent from a year ago (largely due to a natural ebb in Stieg Larsson volume sales, which had boosted Quercus’s bottom line significantly for the past few years) though profits rose slightly to 3.4 million pounds during the same time frame. The cost of […]