Beneath the Ink

15 January 2015 by particularkev

The link below is to an article that takes a look at ‘Beneath the Ink,’ a publisher of enhanced ebooks.

For more visit:
http://www.teleread.com/enhanced-ebook/beneath-ink-enhanced-ebooks-done-right/

Amazon exec: Here’s why it pays to make your ebooks exclusive to us

15 January 2015 by particularkev

Amazon’s ebook subscription service, Kindle Unlimited, has attracted criticism recently, with some self-published authors complaining that the service devalues their work and chafing at the requirement that they make their ebooks exclusive to Amazon in order to participate.

But Russ Grandinetti, Amazon’s VP of Kindle Content, suggested at the Digital Book World conference in New York on Wednesday that the vast majority of authors participating are satisfied with Kindle Unlimited — and he said that the program is helping them achieve earnings that have doubled since the program’s launch in July.

Authors who want their books to appear in Kindle Unlimited have to enroll in KDP Select, a program that requires them to make their ebooks exclusive to Amazon for three-month periods. “Every month authors have renewed availability of titles on KDP Select in excess of 95 percent before and after the launch of Kindle Unlimited,” Grandinetti said — suggesting that they…

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Publisher Macmillan Signs On With E-Book Subscription Services Oyster And Scribd

14 January 2015 by particularkev

Big-5 publisher Macmillan adds its ebooks to Scribd and Oyster

14 January 2015 by particularkev

Gigaom

Another large publisher has decided that ebook subscription services are worth testing out: Macmillan on Tuesday became the third big-5 publisher to make ebooks available on Oyster and Scribd, following HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.

Macmillan is adding about 1,000 titles to both services. Macmillan CEO John Sargent had said in December that the publisher would test ebook subscriptions on “backlist books, and mostly with titles that are not well represented at bricks and mortar retail stores,” as a way of battling Amazon’s dominance in the ebook market.

Oyster and Scribd are vying for dominance in the ebook subscription market right now, alongside [company]Amazon[/company], which launched its competing Kindle Unlimited service over the summer. All three services are slightly less than $10 a month. So far, big-5 publishers are refusing to participate in Kindle Unlimited (like Macmillan, they see no reason to give Amazon a larger share of their ebook sales than…

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Kindle Unlimited and the ongoing commoditization of books

8 January 2015 by particularkev

Gigaom

If you know anyone who writes books, or if you follow any authors on social media, you’re probably used to regular cries of doom and gloom about the death of writing and how Amazon is killing the book as we know it. Some of this may even be true. But if anything, it’s the massive increase in writing of all kinds that is killing (or changing) the book industry, and Amazon is just one part of that phenomenon. Books — like so many other forms of media — are becoming a commodity.

Take Kindle Unlimited, for example, an Amazon feature that provides a kind of Spotify-for-books rental service, where users pay $9.99 per month and can borrow one of more than 700,000 books. The service is similar to subscription rentals offered by Oyster and Scribd, but since this is Amazon, all hell broke loose when the new offering was…

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Reasons to Read Ebooks

5 January 2015 by particularkev

The link below is to an article that looks at seven reasons for reading ebooks and I think it’s a pretty good article.

For more visit:
http://ebookfriendly.com/ebooks-new-year-resolutions/

Scribd Raises $22M For Its Subscription E-Book Service

3 January 2015 by particularkev

Ebooks in 2015: Dull new world

2 January 2015 by particularkev

Gigaom

Ebooks are feeling a bit hungover heading into the new year. The 50 Shades of Grey exuberance of 2011 and 2012 feels long ago. The first seemingly viable ebook subscription services launched at the end of 2013 (Scribd, Oyster) and Amazon launched its own ebook subscription service, Kindle Unlimited, mid-2014.

The main difference between Kindle Unlimited and Scribd and Oyster — all of which cost around $10 a month — is that Kindle Unlimited has way fewer books that people have heard of. That’s because Scribd and Oyster have been able to attract big-5 publishers (HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, likely soon Macmillan) that hope to shake Amazon’s dominance in the ebook market, so they see no reason to make their books available on Kindle Unlimited.

Kindle Unlimited (KU), meanwhile, is attracting a bunch of negative press coverage as indie authors become disillusioned by it. The general bad feeling has…

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