Industry News
`The Color Purple' Released As An E-Book
20th September, 2011NEW YORK — Alice Walker's \"The Color Purple,\" a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1983 and still a widely taught and talked about novel, is finally...
Why Amazon's New Tablet May Pose A Greater Threat To NetFlix Than To Apple
19th September, 2011Fact: my commenters are smarter than yours. The latest proof comes from Dennis McCunney, weighing in on a post examining whether fire-sale prices by the weaker players in the tablet market will translate into a tablet price war. I?m running it in ful...
Which is the best format for ebooks? | Ask Jack
15th September, 2011Lydia would like to buy an ebook reader, but which format should she choose to avoid getting stuck with the latter-day equivalent of Betamax?Could you please clarify the various formats for digital books? Then I can decide which hardware to buy. I ho...
Amazon's Ad-Supported Kindles to Get Local Deals When Idle
15th September, 2011Amazon just announced that their Groupon-like local deals service—Amazon Local—will soon be coming to their ad-supported Kindles when the devices are idle. Smart, especially when you consider that the devices are already synced with your Amazon a...
Taxing Amazon: Out of State Doesn't Mean Out of Mind
14th September, 2011??????????????????Is Amazon a great company, or what? As aficionados of innovation (and, face it, recreational online shopping), it's been a pleasure to watch the company become a retailing giant. Trouble is, Amazon has been as innovative in its camp...
Jeffrey Small: Tough Lessons From a Debut Novelist
14th September, 2011Every time I walk into a bookstore and I see a novel written by a celebrity or some newly-minted reality star, I cringe. Yes, I'm jealous and resentful. But the truth is the book publishing business is a terrible business.
Amazon May Be Considering a 'Netflix for Books'
12th September, 2011Imagine a Netflix… for books. Wait – isn't my Netflix subscription ending soon? What will I do without it? Is it time to stop watching the boob tube and start reading? Luckily for me, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amazon, Lord of the ...
Waterstone's to launch e-reader
9th September, 2011Waterstone's is to launch a digital e-reader, similar to Amazon's Kindle, in spring 2012.
Michael Hart, inventor of the ebook, dies aged 64
8th September, 2011Project Gutenberg began life in 1971 after Hart was given free use of University of Illinois computersProject Gutenberg founder Michael Hart, who created the first ever ebook after deciding on a whim to type the US Declaration of Independence into a ...
Laura E. Kelly: Did Amazon Just Make Authors' Lives Harder?
6th September, 2011With @author, readers can ask questions directly from their Kindles while they are reading a book, and the questions get sent to authors' Twitter accounts as well as to their author pages at Amazon for all to see.