News and opinion on the changing world of book publishing
With the holiday sales war over and all new devices already out on the market, much of January consisted of tallying up the sales numbers and looking to new developments in the new year. There have already been some big announcements: Apple’s digital textbook publishing, a possible spinoff of the Nook from Barnes & Noble, [...]
{ 0 comments }
January 2012
Things heated up in the tablet/ereader race this month as more in-depth reviews—and in some cases, criticisms—were being published just in time for the last weeks of holiday shopping. The Kindle Fire was the player most sweating it out in the hot seat this month with lots of complaints ranging from lack of external volume [...]
{ 3 comments }
Ira Silverberg Literature Director, National Endowment for the Arts When I started working in the mid 1980s, the publishing world was not unlike the one I’m leaving today. It’s filled with passionate people questioning how the business will get through the latest transitions. Whether it’s the death of the book club; the decreasing influence of reviews [...]
{ 0 comments }
December 2011
With the announcement of the new Nook Tablet, all the key ereader players appear to have entered the ring in time for the holiday season. And while it remains to be seen what effect Rakuten’s acquisition of Kobo will have on the device in the long run, quality-wise, all the ereaders appear to be in [...]
{ 0 comments }
November 2011
Lest you think that last month’s announcement of Amazon’s new heavy-hitting team of Kindles means it has a monopoly on the market, Kobo has come out swinging with the news of its Vox tablet. Playing up the more social aspects of the ereader, Vox offers social media features that make sharing while reading all the [...]
{ 0 comments }
October 2011
It was the press conference heard round the tech/publishing world last Wednesday when Jeff Bezos announced the Kindle Touch, a dedicated touch screen ereader, and Kindle Fire, the long awaited Amazon tablet. These new products, combined with surprisingly low price points, are enough to be a real game changer, causing Barnes & Noble’s stock to [...]
{ 3 comments }
September 2011
This past month in the e-reader market, Amazon has already set itself ahead of the pack with the launch of its HTML5 cloud-based e-reader system in response to Apple’s new in-app subscription rules. While the Kindle Cloud Reader definitely wags its finger at Apple, asserting Amazon’s refusal to give Apple 30% of its revenue, many [...]
{ 2 comments }
June was a busy month for e-reader coverage, as the unveiling of the All-New Nook from Barnes & Noble at the end of May inspired a changing of the tide for the Little E-reader That Could, propelling a once-clumsy model into the lead with reviewers in the e-reader arms race thanks to its affordable price [...]
{ 0 comments }
Laura Hazard Owen | March 2011
The once-staid Kirkus is launching an iPad-centered initiative; BlueInk Reviews is helping the industry find the best self-published titles; and a mysterious startup based on a Rotten Tomatoes-like site for books is crashing in the Simon & Schuster building. This is the book review in 2011. Kirkus Reviews Kirkus (which was acquired a year ago [...]
{ 1 comment }
Laura Hazard Owen | December 2010
For more results from this survey, check out Book-Giving Etiquette Guide and I Love You, Keith Richards. “My siblings assume that every book I get is free, so they expect books AND a ‘real present.’” “Any time I give a book, I fear it will be assumed that I did not pay for it, so [...]
{ 2 comments }
