Category: News

eBook Retailers Pull Option for In-app Sales from Apple Devices

Picture this: two lemonade stands side by side. Our lemonade is 25 cents and yours is 50 cents. If you want to compete, you might consider lowering your price, making superior lemonade, maybe offer a free Captain America collectible cup and decoder ring with each qualifying purchase…. But, we suppose another way to go would be to buy the land our stand sits on, charge us an annual fee to use the land, tell us we can only make our lemonade with water we purchase from you, and then take 30% of our profit.

Read more

Amazon’s Non-existent Tablet: Cheaper, Better, Faster than the iPad?

The rumor mill suggests that the Amazon tablet will launch sometime in September, but it’s probably more realistic to say, “some time this year, with the expectation that you will be able to buy it in time for Christmas.”

Read more

Variable eBook Pricing: The Good, the Bad & the Unsold

The price of your ebook does make a difference. When selling on Amazon, many authors know there’s a $9.99 ceiling if they want to keep a larger share of the profits from sales; however, is there ever cause to go above this? And what about all the authors selling titles for $0.99?

Read more

Kindle vs. the New Barnes & Noble Nook: The Battle of eReaders Continues

Barnes & Noble has released the new Nook, which will be available in stores beginning June 10. This device is set to compete with the Amazon Kindle and would most likely replace the 1st Generation Nook, which was $149 and had a color touchscreen strip at the bottom.

Read more

Will Amazon allow the ePub Format?

It seems that Amazon may begin requesting books in the ePub format. This is breaking news in the world of ebooks. At present, Amazon has only accepted .prc or .mobi files, which they then further convert for reading via their Whispernet service. This is a proprietary format, and this file type will not be readable on eReaders such as the Nook. (Although Amazon does supply Apps for most major devices.)

Read more

Using eBooks for Business

Since eBook Readers and Tablets make information more easily accessible (and with a much smaller footprint), using them to distribute information in a business setting should be the focus for authors of technical or educational material.

Read more

Who Watches Out for the Little Guy? Apple, iFlow, and the Agency Model

The iFlow Reader is a very innovative App for Apple that allows readers to navigate through books in a non-traditional way. For examples, instead of pages, the book is presented as a continuous ribbon of material, allowing you to position the viewing window anywhere on that ribbon instead of being forced to rely upon page breaks. You could manually scroll through the text, use next and previous “page” buttons to advance, use a virtual trackball, and even use autoscrolling if you don’t want to navigate yourself. In addition, readers can highlight, annotate, bookmark, share, and look things up. Readers could also purchase content through the iFlow Bookstore or read ePub files. Sounds nice, right? Well, they are going out of business!

Read more

Students and eReaders: What Authors Should Know About Textbook Design

The current flaws in functionality when it comes to reading textbooks on eReaders leaves space for design improvements (or App improvements for Tablet reading), but authors should take note as well. The way you structure a non-fiction ebook should not automatically be the same way you structure a print book.

Read more

Will eReaders Fade as Tablets Take Over?

Could this be true? Will eReaders eventually fade as tablets take over more of the market? It does seem likely. Even Amazon, with their bestselling Kindle, appears to think it likely. If the rumors are true, Amazon is already hard at work on a Tablet device, which is likely to compete with the Apple iPad. In addition, B&N has already
upgraded the Color Nook to have more tablet-like functionality.

Read more