via Digital Book World – After a Roller-Coaster Ride, Ebook Prices Have Stabilized Somewhat in 2013: Prices have since stabilized at a low level as retailers and publishers jockey for position among consumers who generally like and want lower ebook prices. We are now seeing some of the largest publishers experiment with discounting even newer titles. This past week, the average … Read More
Will Google Compete with Amazon as a Bookseller?
via TechCrunch: Google Is Building A Same-Day Amazon Prime Competitor, “Google Shopping Express”: Google is stealthily preparing to launch an Amazon Prime competitor called “Google Shopping Express.” According to one source the service will be $10 or $15 cheaper than Amazon Prime, so $69 or $64 a year and offer same-day delivery from brick-and-mortar stores like Target, Walmart, Walgreens and Safeway … Read More
Inkling Habitat Enables Teams to Collaborate on Rich-Media Non-fiction eBooks
If you are involved in non-fiction books, Inkling Habitat is a major innovation that can change the way you work. It enables teams to collaborate to produce eBooks that contain text, video, images, etc. When the book is complete, it can be output to epub and epub3 for use on all major e-reading platforms (Kindle, iPad, etc.) Pages resize the … Read More
Apple Launches Special Section for Self-Published iBooks
Via The Verge. One major benefit of ebooks doesn’t necessarily apply directly to readers — digital reading has made it a good deal simpler for aspiring authors to self-publish books and sell them through huge storefronts like Amazon’s Kindle Store or Apple’s iBookstore. Now, Apple is making an effort to do more promotion for those indie authors by means of … Read More
Want to Sell Your Own e-Books Directly From Your Own Site? Try Sellfy
It’s backed by a Skype co-founder:. To date, CEO and co-founder Maris Dagis tells me that Sellfy is seeing the most traction in the eBooks segment with many authors preferring to sell via Sellfy rather than Amazon because of much lower transaction fees — Sellfy takes a highly competitive cut of just 5% of each transaction, compared to Amazon’s Kindle … Read More
Amazon to Launch Its Own Currency?
Are we going to start buying e-books with Amazon e-bucks? Amazon is launching its own private currency:. Amazon has just announced a new virtual currency for Kindle Fire owners to use on in-app purchases, app purchases, etc. in the Amazon Appstore. The service will launch in May, at which point Amazon will be giving away tens of millions of dollars worth … Read More
Amazon No Longer the Lowest-Cost Place to Buy Books?
Amazon as the lowest-cost seller of books – an outdated myth? Online retail giant Amazon is cheapest option only on its top 20 bestsellers, with lower-selling books costing 14% more than price charged by rivals, study finds
Smashwords CEO’s Epic Putdown of Big 6 Self-Pub Efforts
Via DigitalBookWorld: Becoming yet another blood sucking parasite is not the path forward for publishers. It runs completely counter to what the best publishers have always represented. Great publishers invest in authors, not exploit them.
What if You Could Buy an EBook at Your Local Indie Bookstore?
Kobo and Zola are two companies trying to make this happen. I could see it making sense. It could be more social. You walk out, rub shoulders with fellow readers, browse books at your local indie bookstore (in hardcover? on computer screens?) and then you buy an ebook there.