The Digital Reader

There’s a new report out today from the EIBF, the European and International Booksellers Federation, which says that they could not find any technical reason to justify proprietary ebook formats.

I read about this in The Bookseller:
[Read more →]

It’s been just over a month since ReDigi lost an important copyright infringement lawsuit, but you can’t tell that from the status of their website.

This 2-year-old start up is still running a marketplace where you can resell your digital music, and in the not too distant future they plan to open a similar marketplace where you can resell ebooks as well.
[Read more →]

Ask any doomsayer decrying the rise of video games and they’ll tell you that reading is dead. Ask any publisher bemoaning the rise of piracy and they’ll tell you that the book market is dead. And as Steve Jobs is well-known for proclaiming, no one reads any more.

That’s why I was surprised to learn today that Amazon has just released the 2013 list of the best-read cities in the US.
[Read more →]

It looks like Amazon is having a lot of trouble with voice recognition, because they sure are throwing a lot of money at the problem.

Techcrunch is reporting (and everyone is repeating) today that Amazon has quietly acquired Evi, a UK-based virtual assistant startup:
[Read more →]

There’s an old saying that opposites attract, and it has never been more true than today. The collaborative writing site Medium has just announced that they are acquiring the subcompact publisher Matter.

These months-old startups have very different views on how to publish content, so much so that this deal is unusual to say the least. But the two companies see that they have a common ground:
[Read more →]

Cutting edge LCD screens are always going to have a higher resolution than E-ink screens, right?

Wrong. Meet the Kobo Aura HD, a new ereader with a 6.8″ E-ink screen that (according to the product page) has a resolution of 1440×1080. That screen resolution is actually higher than the screen on the Nook HD (1440×900).

Kobo has just unveiled an ereader that puts even Amazon to shame and could well restore the concept of a premium priced and premium quality ereader.
[Read more →]

Amazon rolled out an update today for the Kindle Fire HD and the second gen Kindle Fire that you’re definitely going to want to download (if you don’t already have it).

In addition to new support for audio and video enhanced Kindle ebooks, this update also gives Amazon’s Android tablets better support for their PDF format as well as support for X-Ray for textbooks.
[Read more →]

Penguin announced today that starting next week they planned to change the terms under which they sell ebooks to libraries.

They’re still going to require an expiring 1-year license and they’re still going to change retail prices for the ebooks, but the good news today is that Penguin will no longer be holding back new titles. Penguin currently has a 6 month window on newly published ebooks during which libraries can’t buy them. That window is going away.
[Read more →]