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12 December 2018

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Book Tech Brief

Audible to Launch New Features to Bring Listeners into the Story
11 October 2026 (Good E-Reader)
Over the coming months, the audiobook giant will be rolling out three innovative features: the Character Guide, Interactive Stories, and Visual Explorer.

Google Launches “Expert Intelligence” in Google Play Books
10 October 2026 (Good E-Reader)
The platform launched with over 100,000 titles; the integration lets users generate quizzes, infographics, and Audio Overviews while combining published books with personal notes. Publishers include Bloomsbury, PRH, Macmillan & O'Reilly

BookBeat says attention, not catalogue size, is audio’s bottleneck
10 October 2026 (audio@media)
BookBeat reported that 50,520 audiobooks were added to its service during the previous 12 months, but the 5,000 most-started titles accounted for 85% of all starts. CEO Niclas Sandin argued that future growth depends more on relevance and discovery than on adding further catalogue volume

Calibre app can now read ebooks aloud without sounding like a robot
9 October 2026 (OMG ubuntu)
A new update to the Calibre ebook manager is out and it brings more natural sounding text-to-speech (TTS) voices. The new voices sound ‘much more natural’, especially in English.

S&S offers self-published authors a digital-first hybrid model
8 October 2026 (Publishers Weekly)
Simon & Schuster’s new imprint promises to combine the flexibility of self-publishing with big five marketing might. Simon Stream will launch its first titles globally this month, with simultaneous publication in e-book, paperback (available through print-on-demand), and audio.
Audible Wants to Turn Every Book into an Audiobook
9 October 2026 (Publishers Weekly)
Audible will bring its service, with local languages, currencies and region-specific title recommendations, to Indonesia, South Korea, Denmark, Norway and Finland in 2027. The launches build on the 11 marketplaces announced at the London Book Fair earlier this year.

Book Publishers Are Quietly Using More AI. Staff Are Revolting
9 October 2026 (Wired)
Workers at three major publishing houses tell WIRED that LLMs are being used for publicity, cover art, back cover copy, and emails, as some execs push junior staff to champion the tech.

Tonies CEO Shares Vision for Growth
8 October 2026 (Publishers Weekly)
Tonies, the German maker of the screen-free Toniebox audio player for children, will start selling in two new markets next year, with a plan to be global by 2030, CEO Tobias Wann said during the annual showcase CEO Talk at the Frankfurt Book Fair on Wednesday, Oct.

Storytel Talks AI-translated Audiobooks
8 October 2026 (Publishers Weekly)
Storytel sees AI primarily as a publishing acceleration tool: useful for translating high-volume, commercially suitable content quickly across markets, while retaining human judgement and quality control for work where literary nuance matters most.

Spotify takes audiobooks global
7 October 2026 (9to5mac)
Spotify has announced a massive global expansion of its audiobooks section, rolling out over 350,000 titles across 180+ markets to reach more than 750 million listeners worldwide by 2026. The update introduces flexible listening options—including 12 monthly hours for eligible Premium subscribers and an expanded Audiobooks+ add-on—alongside an upgraded Page Match feature that syncs physical books to their audio versions via ISBN barcode scanning.

Demands for work-level disclosure of AI training data
6 October 2026 (boersenverein)
More than 120 publishers launched an appeal asking European and German lawmakers to require AI companies to disclose the individual works used for training, respect rights reservations and participate in licensing markets with fair remuneration. The statement argues that general descriptions of datasets are insufficient for rightsholders to identify unauthorised

Amazon’s new Kindle case is an insult to left-handers
6 October 2026 (Business Insider)
It's the case that I find to be a microaggression — no, perhaps macro — to my existence as a left-handed person. In fact, it makes me wonder: Does Amazon HATE left-handed people?

Marvel, Webtoon Team up on Digital Comics App
5 October 2026 (Publishers Weekly)
The new "Marvel Comics" app, a digital comics platform that will include titles from Marvel, Star Wars, and 20th Century Studios. The app, built and operated by Webtoon, will replace the Marvel Unlimited app, which is the publisher’s current digital platform.

Kortext acquires StudyStash
2 October 2026 (saasRISE)
The acquisition underscores a growing appetite among edtech platforms for AI‑centric tools that can demonstrably improve student outcomes. The move signals that larger edtech operators are willing to allocate capital to acquire specialized AI capabilities rather than build them in‑house, a trend that may accelerate consolidation in the sector.

ElevenLabs opens free AI tools to university students
2 October 2026 (ETIH)
ElevenLabs for Students gives eligible university students free access to the company’s AI voice, agent and development tools. The new student plan includes three months of ElevenCreative, ElevenAgents and ElevenAPI, plus a year of ElevenReader Ultra for eligible university students aged 18 and over.

Huge ebook antitrust suit against Amazon proceeds
2 October 2026 (Hagens Berman)
“Amazon customers paid over $740 million more (in aggregate) for trade eBooks published by the Big Five than they would have in a competitive market.” The lawsuit that alleges Amazon has anticompetitive agreements with publishers that prevent the sale of their ebooks at lower prices on other retail platforms. Attorneys accuse Amazon of using these agreements to maintain its dominance in the ebook market.

Storytel Launches Online Bookstore for Physical Books
1 October 2026 (Press Release)
The bookstore opens today at storytelbooks.com.

Podcast: Kobo's CEO, Michael Tamblyn, interviewed
1 October 2026 (Open Road)
Michael talks about his unusual journey to bookselling, how Kobo competes against Amazon, Apple, and Google in ebook markets around the world, and the surprising truth about who reads ebooks—and what it means for the future of digital publishing.

ReadBee converts photographed print pages into dyslexia-friendly reading
1 October 2026 (Publishing Perspectives)
ReadBee lets a child photograph a printed page and reconstructs it with adjustable layout, colour-coded syllables and a visual pacing guide. The pitch is accessibility layered over existing print books, rather than replacing reading with audio.
Analysis: demonstrates how computer vision can provide personalised accessibility without requiring a specially manufactured edition. Publishers will nevertheless need clarity about OCR accuracy, privacy, copyright and whether the transformation preserves intended meaning.

Digital Publishing Award Shortlist
1 October 2026 (Publishing Perspectives)
Innovation with AI Abounds: The 12 Finalists. The winners of the four categories for digital innovation and ingenuity in the global publishing industry will be announced at Frankfurter Buchmesse next week.

MEDIA DO to Divest Firebrand Group
30 September 2026 (TipRanks)
Assets sold include Quality Solutions and NetGalley. The deal realigns MEDIA DO’s global strategy toward exporting Japanese content while giving Firebrand Group growth support within Valsoft’s publishing-focused software portfolio.

AI-Generated Books Flood Amazon
29 September 2026 (Good E-Reader)
The scale of what’s actually happened to Amazon’s book marketplace is larger than the anecdotal version suggests. Hundreds of publishing accounts have each pushed out hundreds of AI-assisted titles in 2026 alone, concentrated in genres — romance, self-help, book summaries, biography knockoffs — that reward speed over originality.

De Marque to Offer AI Audiobook Capabilities Via ElevenLabs
29 September 2026 (Publishers Weekly)
Cantook has a catalog spanning 1.8 million titles in English, Spanish, and several other languages. With the ElevenLabs partnership, Cantook publishers can select titles to be read aloud by ElevenReader’s automated narration, allowing them to increase their output of audiobooks.
Analysis: This brings AI narration directly into established ebook-distribution infrastructure rather than requiring publishers to assemble a separate production pipeline. Will on-demand audio become a companion to the ebook or a separately licensed format?

Poland proposes regulated prices for ebooks and audiobooks
28 September 2026 (Publishing Perspectives)
Poland’s proposed book-market law would impose a uniform price for 12 months, cap wholesale discounts at 45% and introduce automated sales reporting. The rules would cover print, ebooks and audiobooks, with exceptions for libraries, certain institutions and some book fairs.

Digital textbooks significantly boost students' intrinsic learning motivation
24 September 2026 (Phys.org)
The findings reveal that digital textbooks have progressively greater effects at higher educational levels, with the strongest impact observed among university students. Older learners are better able to leverage metacognitive skills and digital literacy to process complex multimodal information.

EPUB Accessibility 1.2 sharpens the link between metadata, DRM and usability
12 September 2026 (W3.org)
The latest candidate draft formalises accessibility-conformance and discoverability metadata requirements. Its accompanying techniques warn that DRM can make text-to-speech or braille access difficult or impossible when reading systems do not expose the underlying content.
Analysis: Accessibility does not end when the EPUB passes a production check; retailer metadata, DRM permissions and reading-system behaviour determine the customer’s actual experience. Comments on the candidate specifications remain open until 19 October.

US ebook revenues were down 3.4% in July 2026
22 September 2026 (Good E-Reader)
E-book revenue in the United States fell 3.4% to $85.3 million for the month, while Digital Audiobook revenues rose 12.4% to $103.1 million. The United States Publishing Industry is up 14.0% for the Month of July and up 5.4% Year-To-Date.

Spotify Lets Indie “Aiudiobooks” Run Free
21 September 2026 (Publishing Perspectives)
The self-serve service uses ElevenLabs voice models to convert finished EPUB manuscripts into audiobooks, with authors able to select a voice, preview the narration, and approve it before publication ... eventually, audiobook files—and perhaps the format as we know it—could give way to ebooks narrated on demand.

CloudLibrary is coming to Kobo e-Readers
20 September 2026 (Good E-Reader)
Rakuten Kobo is running a trial period for select Canadian and US libraries using CloudLibrary with Send to Kobo.

eBooks.com Launches "Cosmic Sync": Your Reading, Everywhere, Instantly
15 September 2026 (eBooks.com)
Start reading on one device and carry on instantly on another. Cosmic Sync keeps your place, bookmarks, highlights and notes in sync across eBooks.com’s mobile apps and Online Reader. Your reading follows you everywhere. Smooth and seamless.

Frankfurt gives audiobook technology its own business centre
14 September 2026 (Press Release)
Frankfurt Book Fair will open an Audio Business Center and place Audible, Spotify, ElevenLabs, Storytel, BookBeat, Pozotron and other audio businesses into dedicated programming. Sessions cover synthetic narration, discovery, production technology and data tools.

Anthropic reportedly buys Japanese books through Nippan for AI development
14 September 2026 (Publishing Perspectives)
Major Japanese book distributor Nippan entered into an agreement to sell large quantities of books to Anthropic.

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