Pirating ebooks is an offence against moral justice
15 Apr 2019 (Good Ereader)
Michael Kozlowski responds in support of angry authors’ open letter: “I believe that ebook piracy is morally reprehensible. You would not walk into a bookstore or secondhand bookstore and steal a book, because you do not want to pay for it or cannot afford to buy it. The same goes with digital, stealing is stealing. You are fundamentally an amoral person if you engage in theft.”
Philip Pullman leads call for UK government action on ebook piracy
8 Apr 2019 (The Guardian)
Pullman calls piracy ‘an offence against moral justice’ as authors including Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Drabble issue warning to business secretary Greg Clark. ‘The acid rain of online piracy is slowly dissolving something we thought was set in stone.’
Microsoft is Closing Its eBookstore (Again)
2 Apr 2019 (The Digital Reader)
Microsoft was actually one of the early ebook pioneers, but was never really able to exploit the advantages. Their MSReader format launched in the early aughts tech bubble, and was still worth buying when Microsoft killed it in 2011. Then in 2012 Microsoft invested $300 million in B&N’s Nook spin off, Newco, essentially funding the Nook’s international expansion, only to see it go nowhere. (Microsoft pulled out of that partnership in late 2014.) And now Microsoft is killing the ebookstore it launched to replace the Nook Store.
JellyBooks Launches a Cloud Reader
19 Mar 2019 (The Digital Reader)
JellyBooks offers what is essentially a focus-group service for publishers. It provides readers with free ebooks in exchange for collecting data about their reading habits. (This is the same data that Amazon, Kobo, and the other ebook platforms collect but do not share.)
OverDrive Partners with Libreka to Bring Ebooks to German-Speaking Countries
19 Mar 2019 (The Digital Reader)
Libreka is one of the largest distributors in Germany representing over 40,000 publishers and more than 1,000 domestic and international trading partners.
Pearson sells K-12 textbook division for $250 million
20 Feb 2019 (Star Tribune)
The British publishing company said this week it is selling the business to California-based Nexus Capital Management.
10,000 Arabic books have been digitized to ebooks
13 Feb 2019 (The Good E-Reader)
Project aims to digitize, preserve, and provide free open access to a wide variety of Arabic language ebooks in subjects such as literature, philosophy, law, religion, and more.
Ebook sales are up at eBooks.com
12 Feb 2019 (About Ebooks)
In summary, we keep listening to our customers and doing what makes them happy. The development list isn’t getting any shorter, but it looks like we actually do know what to do to retain and grow our audience.
Amazon doesn’t really do academic ebooks
7 Feb 2019 (Forbes)
A study from Ithaka S+R says EBSCO controls, “86.4 percent of ebook sales to academic libraries … and Amazon didn’t even sell enough academic ebooks to qualify as having any sort of meaningful presence.”
Canadian authors angry too
23 Jan 2019 (Writers Union of Canada)
“This is an outrageous trespass on the rights of authors,” said TWUC Chair Eric Enno Tamm. “The Writers’ Union is calling on the Internet Archive to stop this practice immediately, and to respect the licence terms for works in library collections.”
UK authors rage against Internet Archive’s ebook “library”
23 Jan 2019 (The Guardian)
The Society of Authors has called on the website’s Open Library to stop making scanned books ‘unlawfully’ available to British readers.
US ebook sales down 3% in 2018
15 Jan 2019 (AAP)
But up slightly in October and November.
Canadian public libraries protest ebook embargoes
14 Jan 2019 (Radio Canada International)
The Canadian Urban Libraries Council is calling on Canadians to demand stronger #eContentForLibraries of major multinational publishers. They’ve set up a campaign portal encouraging users to complain directly to trade book publishers.
How ebooks can help you keep your New Year’s resolution to read more
1 Jan 2018 (TeleRead)
To fit in those five pages, it also helps to keep a book, audiobook app, or e-reader on you as you go about the day. Then, when you have some down time—you’re waiting for a friend, dozing through your commute, or doing a task that doesn’t require your full attention—you can open your text…
Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature hacked
31 Dec 2018 (Justmaku)
“… I have built a simple ruby script to crawl the book starting with few generic keywords that I knew will be present in the book in several places and then continue in a divide-and-conquer fashion…”
[Analysis] The future book is here but …
20 Dec 2018 (Wired)
About 45 percent (up from 37 percent in 2015) of all print sales, and 83 percent of all ebook sales happen through Amazon channels.
Glose ebook start-up raises another 3m Euros
13 Dec 2018 (TechCrunch, via The Digital Reader)
French mobile reading platform lets you share your thoughts with other readers.
Ebook sales up 45% in Germany
11 Dec 2018 (destatis.de, via The Digital Reader)
E-Books were purchased by 1.6 million households in 2017. This corresponds to an 8% share of all households with expenditure on books. In 2014 there were 1.1 million households (5%).
More Ebook News …
![E-books, downloaded music and other digital products aren’t covered by Australian consumer law. [Shutterstock]](https://i2.wp.com/about.ebooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/file-20180220-116365-1tkqbl91.jpg?resize=218%2C150&ssl=1 "Australia’s consumer laws still don’t cover ebooks")
