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By Emily Witt 12/08/11 11:36am

Amazon Tests Locker Delivery System In New York City

Amazon Bribes Self-Published Authors to Sell Exclusively Through the Kindle Store

Amazon has started what it's referring to as "a $6 million annual fund dedicated to independent authors and publishers." It sounds like a fellowship program but it's actually a pot of money for luring self-published writers into exclusive short-term contracts with the Kindle store. The more bestselling writers the company can lock into the Kindle (however temporarily), the less appealing rival e-readers will be. This has already gotten some authors into trouble with Barnes & Noble, which has refused to stock print books by authors it cannot sell through its own digital platform, the Nook. Read More

1 By Emily Witt 11/04/11 8:54am

Digital Publishing

Amazon Might Err, But It Will Not Apologize

Earlier this week, a glitch in the Amazon matrix caused some readers of Haruki Murakami's new novel 1Q84 to mistakenly conclude that the Kindle version of the book is only available for reading on one device rather than the usual six. This turned out to be a mistake, but before the problem was resolved a half dozen readers left one star reviews on the page for 1Q84. Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 12/30/10 5:01pm

Robot Books

Kindle Finally Learns How To Share

Amazon quietly enabled their Kindle e-reader with a lending feature that allows users to give e-books away for fourteen day periods, reports eBookNewser.

Previously sharing or lending had been the exclusive domain of the Barnes & Noble competitor, Nook, which allows books to be lent once, to one other Nook user, also for a two Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 12/06/10 5:17pm

Planet Google

The Anarchist’s Bookstore

Google's eBooks initiative debuted today and has already made it into Twitter's trending topics, showing how the promise of device-agnostic e-books captures the imagination of the reading public.

The store launched with more than three million titles from 4,000 publishers, any of which can be read from a browser, e-reader or mobile device. The books Read More

By Nate Freeman 8/25/10 6:32pm

E-Readers Encourage Book Consumption, Even on Kayaks

The Wall Street Journal reports that a Marketing and Research Resources study of Kindle, iPad and Sony Reader owners—ahem, paid for by Sony—indicates that these electronic libraries are somehow convincing people to read more books. Of the 1,200 device-owning people surveyed, 40 percent said they are reading more now. It's a bit of good Read More

By Lee Siegel 8/25/10 12:44am

The Last Critic

Copy This, Baby: Nothing’s Unique In the Age of Google

A few years ago, I found myself on the giant playground known as the Google "campus" in Mountain View, Calif., speaking to a small group of Google employees about, among other things, originality. I tried to make what I thought was a pretty unoriginal point.

The culture, I suggested, rewarded successful copying and ignored Read More

By Esther Zuckerman 7/28/10 9:40pm

EBooks

Kindle Deficit!

If you want just a plain old Kindle (new, not used), tough luck. They are "temporarily out of stock" at Amazon. The Journal's Digits blog weighed in on the lack of $189 reading devices:

Amazon didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment, and it’s unclear whether the shortage is due to a Read More

By Molly Fischer 6/21/10 8:44pm

EBooks

Kindle: Cheaper than iPad, Still Not Actually Cheap

Amazon has dropped the price of a basic Kindle to $189. Like much pertaining to ebooks, this is interesting but not, you know, THRILLING. It isn't quite the "paperback Kindle" (no frills, super cheap) that Seth Godin recently proposed--but a step in that direction, maybe?

By Dan Duray 5/27/10 1:33pm

E-Book Appomattox: Amazon and Penguin Settle Bloody Feud

Amazon and Penguin came to an agreement on e-book pricing Wednesday, settling a dispute that dated back to early April, when the publisher’s previous Kindle agreement expired.

The conflict stemmed from Amazon’s instance on a $9.99 price point for digital versions of new releases, and the bookseller soon began a scorched earth campaign. Some Read More

By Molly Fischer 1/25/10 10:30pm

Times Forms Unit for E-Editions

The New York Times Company announced today that it will create a new unit dedicated to electronic editions. According to BusinessWeek:

Times Co. said in the memo that it appointed Yasmin Namini, the senior vice president of marketing and circulation, as general manager of the unit, which joins four others as part of the Read More

By Molly Fischer 9/29/09 6:10pm

Brown’s Beast Grows–Rrrowl!

Tina Brown's Daily Beast, noted for spending lots of Barry Diller's IAC dollars in the service of journalism, is entering another ailing industry. In conjunction with Perseus Books Group, Ms. Brown will be starting a Daily Beast book imprint.

Beast Books would produce titles by the site's writers on a short schedule--two to four months including Read More

By Gillian Reagan 6/25/09 1:01pm

Times’ Nick Bilton Takes a Byte Out of Books

A couple of weeks ago, Nick Bilton went on leave as the New York Times' user interface specialist and design integration editor to start writing his book, Byte. Snack. Meal: The New Business of Storytelling, due out from Crown in June 2010."It was a touchy subject," he said. "The Times is having a Read More

By Gillian Reagan 5/12/09 2:28pm

Yet Another Way to Read Your Morning Paper: The New York Times Releases Times Reader 2.0

On May 11, The New York Times released the new version of its Times Reader, its downloadable software application that makes reading an digital version of The Times more like reading the printed newspaper. Times Reader is an application, not a page on a Web site, so users downloads the software onto their computer Read More

By Matt Haber 5/06/09 3:45pm

Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and Jeff Bezos To Save Journalism With $489 Kindle DX

This morning in the 743-seat basement theater of the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, Jeff Bezos, president, chief executive and chairman of the board of Amazon, and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times and chairman of the New York Times Company, unveiled a device they hope Read More

By Gillian Reagan 3/31/09 5:07pm

Toy Story: Are Those 5,000 Magazines in Your Messenger Bag, Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Eight months ago, after more than 14 years working as a digital-media business developer at News Corp., Daren Benzi left his job and joined a relatively unknown company called Plastic Logic, based in the same neighborhood as Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. The company is building what they hope will be a Kindle killer—the Read More

The New York Observer

Kindle

Amazon Bribes Self-Published Authors to Sell Exclusively Through the Kindle Store

Amazon Might Err, But It Will Not Apologize

Kindle Finally Learns How To Share

The Anarchist’s Bookstore

E-Readers Encourage Book Consumption, Even on Kayaks

Copy This, Baby: Nothing’s Unique In the Age of Google

Kindle Deficit!

Kindle: Cheaper than iPad, Still Not Actually Cheap

E-Book Appomattox: Amazon and Penguin Settle Bloody Feud

Times Forms Unit for E-Editions

Brown’s Beast Grows–Rrrowl!

Times’ Nick Bilton Takes a Byte Out of Books

Yet Another Way to Read Your Morning Paper: The New York Times Releases Times Reader 2.0

Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and Jeff Bezos To Save Journalism With $489 Kindle DX

Toy Story: Are Those 5,000 Magazines in Your Messenger Bag, Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

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