Monday, January 23, 2012
Growth market
 The Pew Internet and American Life Project just released a "mini-report" on the recent upswing in e-reader purchase and usage. According to the report, the number of Americans owning tablets and e-readers nearly doubled over the past month: from mid-December 2011 to early January 2012, the number of Americans owning a tablet computer and the number of people who identify themselves as e-book readers jumped from 10% to 19%. Clearly, all those dead-cheap e-reader promotions over the holidays worked. Labels: ebooks
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
You win some
 Publishers Weekly is reporting that Viz Media is moving closer to near-simultaneous English and Japanese manga publication, although English-language readers will be limited to the digital format. Viz is planning to launch Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha, a "weekly digital serialized manga anthology", in January of 2012. The digital anthology will eventually replace Shonen Jump (its print-media equivalent), which will be phased out by March. This news will come as a blow for readers who prefer their manga printed on actual paper, but it should also come as a boon for people who hate waiting, as the turnaround for Japanese-to-English publication will now be a mere two weeks. Labels: ebooks, manga
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Get 'em while they're hot
 If you're one of the many conflicted fans of both independent booksellers and e-readers, this is your weekend. Unbridled Books has partnered with the American Booksellers Association to promote the IndieCommerce program, and they're planning to offer e-versions of 25 of their titles for a mere 25 cents apiece on June 9, 10, and 11. This is a great opportunity to support your local independent bookshop and stock up your Kindle/iPad/whatever, so don't miss out. Labels: Booksellers, ebooks
Thursday, April 07, 2011
Who knew?
 I had no idea these didn't already exist, but The Hollywood Reporter informs me that J.K. Rowling is considering releasing digital versions of the Harry Potter books. Apparently, this is Big News because the later books in the series are, like, really heavy, and offering ebook versions will spare Potter fans years of back pain*. *Oh, and it might make Rowling up to $100 million richer. Labels: ebooks, J.K. Rowling
Or you could buy two candy bars instead
 Fans of Carrie Ryan's zombie-apocalypse series The Forest of Hands and Teeth take note: Random House released Hare Moon yesterday, an ebook prequel written by Ryan. The story is only available in digital format and costs $1.99. Here's the official plot description (which is really poorly written, by the way): HARE MOON: An Original Forest of Hands and Teeth Story is set in the barricaded village of The Forest of Hands and Teeth, but takes place years before the novel began. Tabitha, an adult character in the first book, is a teenager who dreams for there to be more to her world. This desire pushes her to sneak past her village gates and into the Forest of Hands and Teeth where the undead reach for her from beyond the fence. And where she meets Patrick, who proves there is life beyond her village. HARE MOON answers questions about how Tabitha the teenager became Sister Tabitha of The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Readers will live through the gruesome moment when she realizes just how much she’ll have to give up to live and love among the Unconsecrated. Gruesome, plus a built-in depressing ending? How can I resist? Labels: Carrie Ryan, ebooks, Prequels
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Holiday contest
 In honor of Valentine's Day, romance novelists Lisa Kleypas and Teresa Medeiros are giving away a wi-fi Kindle and a wi-fi Nook. To enter, make sure you're a member (Fan? Follower? Whatever they call it...) of both authors' Facebook pages by midnight on February 14th. One winner will receive a Kindle, another will win the Nook, and both will receive e-book copies of the authors' most recent releases: Kleypas's Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor and Medeiros's Goodnight Tweetheart. Click here for details, and good luck! Labels: contests, ebooks, Lisa Kleypas
Thursday, January 20, 2011
What people want to read... when it's free.
 TresSugar has provided us with a list of last week's top 10 ten free e-Book downloads, according to Project Gutenberg. I was okay with the fact that I haven't read all ten of these books (particularly since so many of them are international classics), but I'm a little distressed to realize I've never even heard of Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict's How To Analyze People on Sight: The Five Human Types. Labels: ebooks, Wordcandy on the cheap
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
The end of book-browsing as we know it?
 The New York Times posted an article last week about the year-end boom in e-reader sales, which some analysts believe will lead to a huge increase in e-book popularity in 2011. Most of the article is stuff we've heard before, but my attention was caught by this quote from Carolyn Reidy, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster: "My No. 1 concern is the survival of the physical bookstore... We need that physical environment, because it’s still the place of discovery. People need to see books that they didn’t know they wanted." Something to consider, you know? I appreciate the trees we're saving with the trend towards e-books (although I'm certain the e-reader manufacturing process comes with its own environmental impact costs), but their effect on brick-and-mortar bookstores is disturbing. We hear a lot about the loss of jobs, but this was probably the most articulate point I've heard about the changes e-books will make in the way we choose our reading material, and the (negative) impact that will have on the publication industry as a whole. Labels: ebooks, newspaper articles
Thursday, December 23, 2010
A gift from Scholastic to you...
 The fine people at Scholastic have made Alexandra Bullen's YA novel Wish available as a free e-book download. From now until January 3rd, click here to read Wish in its entirety. (You can also preview Ms. Bullen's upcoming sequel, Wishful Thinking, should you be so inclined.) Enjoy! Labels: ebooks, teen literature, Wordcandy on the cheap
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Plus after plus
 Finally, some e-book news I'm genuinely excited about: Google has launched an online e-book retail store. Their e-books aren't fancy (no 3-D pictures or dictionary definitions on demand), but they are stored online, which means they can be read on almost any Internet-connected device—PCs, e-readers (except for Amazon's Kindle), and smart phones. Users just buy their book(s), sign in, and read. And in addition to their widespread availability, Google's e-books will allow independent booksellers to get a cut of the revenue! When readers buy the books via their local booksellers' websites, those stores will receive a portion of the profits. Labels: ebooks, Google, Technology
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Low, lower, lowest
 Slate just posted an article speculating that e-readers like Amazon's Kindle will soon be costing less than one hundred dollars. While this is certainly more reasonable than the 2009 price of roughly $300, I'm still not sold. Fifty bucks, guys. It's as high as I'm goin'. Labels: Amazon, ebooks
Monday, August 09, 2010
Flipped: new and improved?
 If you've never read Wendelin Van Draanen's adorable 2001 novel Flipped, Random House is releasing an "enhanced" e-book edition of the book featuring a bunch of tie-ins from the upcoming movie adaptation: 8 video clips of scenes and 16 full-color photos from the film, as well as 4 video interviews with Van Draanen and a excerpt from her (inferior, sadly) second romantic comedy, Confessions of a Serial Kisser. At $14.99, it's a little pricey, but they're also offering a standard e-book and a new trade paperback, both of which retail for $8.99. Personally, I'd stick with the original edition—the cover is cuter, and until I see some very good reasons for transferring the story to the 1950s I'm reserving judgement about this movie adaptation. Labels: ebooks, Movie Adaptations, Promotions, Wendelin Van Draanen
Monday, August 02, 2010
Seriously, dude? Thucydides?
 While checking out the Horn Book Blog, I followed a link to this Harvard Magazine profile of literary agent Andrew Wylie. I was mostly impressed by Mr. Wylie's seemingly colossal ego*, but I think he makes a good point about the future of e-books: the trashier the title, the more attractive its e-book version. I'm never going to give up buying printed books, but when e-readers drop down into the $50 range, I expect I'll start buying e-book versions of the authors on my B-list—you know, the titles you buy because you're too impatient to wait for a library copy, but you're unlikely to read twice. *Also the fact that he twice uses Shakespeare to disparage Danielle Steel. I'm not arguing the idea that Steel is a terrible writer, but Wylie's comparisons suggest that he is unfamiliar with the many, many genre writers who fall somewhere between the two. Labels: ebooks, Magazines, other websites, Publishing
Friday, July 23, 2010
Wave of the future?
 According to The New York Times, Amazon.com announced on Monday that they've been selling more titles for its Kindle e-readers than hardcover books during the last three months—143 e-books for every 100 hardcovers, to be exact. I don't quite see these numbers as a death knell for the printed book format (as the article mentions, hardcover sales are also up 22% over last year), but it's certainly a culture shift in the world of book-buying. Labels: Amazon, ebooks
Thursday, December 20, 2007
eBooks GALORE!
 Girlebooks.com is a website with a mission: it offers free e-books by female writers, all in an effort to “make classic and lesser-known works by female writers available to a large audience through the e-book medium”. Their titles include well-known novels by Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, and Lucy Maud Montgomery, as well as books by lesser-known authors like Hanna Webster Foster and Fanny Fern. In an effort to judge the e-book experience, I compared the Girlebooks version of Fanny Burney’s Evelina with my print copy. The idea of reading a 400-plus-page-long novel online was a little daunting (even to a longtime fanfic reader like me), but I was happy to discover that Girlebooks had done everything possible to make their readers comfortable: 1. The digital version was surprisingly easy to read. I wouldn’t recommend trying to wade through Girlebooks’ Spartan “Plain Text” version of Burney’s novel, but their PDF version was attractive, neatly organized, and written in large, clear font.
2. There weren’t many differences between the printed and the digital texts, although I noticed that the e-book typist didn’t include any italics, and they appear to have changed some of the original punctuation marks. On the other hand, 18th century grammar and spelling wasn’t standardized, so I can’t be certain that the text in my print version is accurate, either. And last, but definitely not least… 3. The e-book version of Evelina is free, while the cheapest (unused) print copy I could find was ten bucks. (There doesn’t seem to be a Dover Thrift edition.) Sure, you can’t curl up in an armchair with an online novel—unless you have some kind of fancy e-reader doohickey, which I don’t—but did I mention that it’s FREE? My hat is off to the fine people at Girlebooks: their e-books are beautifully designed, and you can’t beat their prices. Anybody who hasn’t read Evelina—or any of the other excellent titles they offer—should run, not walk, to check them out. Labels: ebooks, Fanny Burney, Technology
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The Pew Internet and American Life Project just released a "mini-report" on the recent upswing in e-reader purchase and usage. According to the report, the number of Americans owning tablets and e-readers nearly doubled over the past month: from mid-December 2011 to early January 2012, the number of Americans owning a tablet computer and the number of people who identify themselves as e-book readers jumped from 10% to 19%. 
