The Digital Reader

Bad news comes in threes, and Amazon certainly learned that this week.

First, B&N announced that they weren’t going to carry the print editions of any of the books published by Amazon, which are currently being distributed by HMH. That by itself was bad news,but it was lessened by B&N’s concession that the books would be available on their website. Then later this week, Books-a-Million confirmed that they were following suit.

And late Friday afternoon Indigo, Canada’s largest bookstore chain, joined the club. They won’t be stocking books published by Amazon either.

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The ebook market continues to see explosive growth in 2011, and now indie publisher Sourcebooks is sharing their good news.

Revenues were up 11% in 2011 over 2012, and a lot of that growth was due to ebooks. Ebook sales increased by a factor of 8 in 2011, and they now account for 28% of Sourcebooks  revenue.

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Ars Technica posted an interesting story last night. According to their source, Apple’s news this week isn’t about selling digital textbooks, like I previously assumed; it’s about making them.

Apple is slated to announce the fruits of its labor on improving the use of technology in education at its special media event on Thursday, January 19. While speculation has so far centered on digital textbooks, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Ars that Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books—the “GarageBand for e-books,” so to speak—and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users.

There’s not much to go on beyond the few lines above, but I believe it. Apple is currently making  number of tools like the one mentioned above. Pages, for example, is  Word app that also makes Epub. Final Cut Pro edits movies. And of course Garage Band creates music.

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The ebook and book distributors Baker & Taylor announced this morning that their ebook platform is finally going into a private beta. They’ve named their first partner, and it will be King County Library System, an urban system that covers Seattle, WA.

B&T hasn’t released much in the way of details about their platform, but I have discerned a few tidbits. Axis360, which was first announced at the ALA conference this summer, appears to be built around Blio. This is an enhanced ebook format that Baker & Taylor launched last fall. While it’s not clear how much commercial success B&T  has had with Blio, they have had some luck with signing publishers. Blio currently offers titles from most of the major publishers as well as a quite a few specialty and indies.

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Google and Roxio Labs have teamed up for a scavenger hunt, but you’ll need to be running Chrome before you can go look for them.

A new version of Google Books for Chrome was released on Monday, and buried inside the app are hints and instructions. You’ll need to open the app in your Chrome browser or ChromeOS PC and decipher the clues.

You’re actually going to need the Chrome versions of both apps, because according to Google these particular secret levels were only added to the Chrome version of Angry Birds. You won’t find them elsewhere.

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Dell is known for their laptops, PCs, and tablets, but they also have an electronics store on their website where they sell gadgets. And today they have a sale on the Sony Reader Wifi.

It’s selling for $99, and that’s $30 less than the US retail. I’d get it if I were you; my hacked Sony Reader is my favorite ebook reader.

Like the Nook Touch, this e-reader is running  Android underneath the 6″ Pearl E-ink screen. That means that once it’s hacked you can install Android apps. Now, the Sony Reader Wifi doesn’t offer much room for the apps, and not all work. But the extra reading options are a nice addition to an already good ebook reader.

Dell.com (free shipping)

The French media conglomerate  Lagardere released some details from their quarterly report today, and the figures for the publishing division might shock you. When compared to 2010 , sales were down 5% last quarter at Lagardere Publishing (down to 601 million euros), with the US and UK markets seeing an even steeper drop (8% and 10%).

The drop at Hachette, the US sub, is being blamed on cheaper ebooks  and the death of Borders.  Lagardere  also reported that when Stephenie Meyer’s book were excluded from the accounting, sales were actually up  a fraction of a percent.Even so, ebook sales were still up at Hachette, and they now account for 21% of revenue for the first 3 quarters, and that’s up from 9% revenue last year.

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Apple announced that today we lost one of the great minds of our time.

We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.

Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that
enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.

His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.

I would hope that he was well enough yesterday to watch one last iPhone launch.

If you ask me, it’s never to early to train the next generation of code geeks.

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