AllThingsD » e-book

Finally, Harry Potter Is Touching Down on Amazon's Kindle

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 09 May 2012 23:37:46 +0000

J.K. Rowling has been one of the big holdouts, refusing to sell Harry Potter in electronic form through booksellers like Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

That is apparently about to change, according to Amazon.com, which has posted two different images hinting that “Wizardry is on the way.”

In one of the images, there is a picture of an owl, similar to Hedwig, Harry Potter’s loyal companion and courier. In another — found at the top of the Kindle eBook store — it restates that “Wizardry is on the way.”

An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment, saying, “We’ll have to ask you to stay tuned for an upcoming announcement.”

Update: Amazon has officially announced that starting June 19, all seven Harry Potter books (in five languages) will be added to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Members of Amazon Prime will be able to borrow the books for free.

Presumably, there is still pent-up demand for the electronic copies since the bestsellers have not yet been for sale directly on Amazon or the Kindle.

In March, Amazon announced that all seven of the books would become available, but that consumers would have to buy them directly from J.K. Rowling’s online bookstore called Pottermore and then download them to their e-reader. Despite the inconvenience, Pottermore sold more than £1 million worth (roughly $1.6 million) of e-books in three days.

Because they were being distributed directly from Pottermore to customers, the Harry Potter series has never appeared on the Muggle bestseller list — I mean, Kindle.

Apple Fires Back at the Feds, Amazon

Peter Kafka — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 01:29:51 +0000

Nearly two days after the Department of Justice filed antitrust charges against Apple and major book publishers, Apple is responding. Here’s a comment from Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr:

The DOJ’s accusation of collusion against Apple is simply not true. The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry. Since then customers have benefited from eBooks that are more interactive and engaging. Just as we’ve allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore.

Apple’s response is similar to ones made by Penguin Group and MacMillan, two of the five publishers named in the suit. The three other publishers — HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster — signed settlements with the DOJ immediately after the suit was filed Wednesday morning. (News Corp., which owns HarperCollins, also owns this Web site.)

It’s worth noting that Apple’s pricing policy with books and apps differs from the setup it has with the music industry. In that relationship, Apple pays the music labels a wholesale price for their digital assets, and then sets the retail price itself.

Barnes & Noble Wants to Be Amazing in Bed, With New GlowLight Nook

Lauren Goode — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:45:46 +0000

There are E-Ink devices that are great for the beach but not great at night, and there are tablet screens that shine brightly in dark rooms but aren’t ideal in sunlight.

So Barnes & Noble is combining E-Ink with a backlit screen in its newest Nook, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight.

The 6.5-inch device comes with a glare-free e-reading screen, and text appears in E-Ink, but the Nook’s “N” button at the bottom of the device activates GlowLight and lights up the screen.

The new Nook, which costs $139, also claims faster page-turning and longer battery life than the original Nook Touch — up to 60 hours of continuous reading with the GlowLight turned on to around 18 percent, which sounds a lot dimmer than it is. At 6.95 ounces, it also weighs 5 percent less than its predecessor.

At a New York press event today, Barnes & Noble executives invited journalists to literally hop into bed with them in a dimly-lit room in a Manhattan hotel, where the new device was propped up against Amazon’s Kindle Touch and Apple’s new iPad. The company said internal research shows that two-thirds of U.S. adults say they read in bed, and that 42 percent get annoyed when a partner reads in bed with the light on.

The iPad and Kindle Fire tablet were also displayed alongside the hotel’s outdoor rooftop pool, in direct sunlight. (When asked what the contingency plan was if it rained today, a Barnes & Noble exec said, “Lots of lighting.”)

Barnes & Noble is clearly taking aim at its competitors and looking to stand out in the e-reader category, following disappointing sales of the first Nook Touch.

As AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka reported, in January the company said Nook sales overall were up 70 percent over the holidays, driven by the new Nook Tablet, which competes with the Kindle Fire and iPad. Barnes & Noble also said at the time it was exploring a spinoff of the Nook e-reader unit.

While this device might appeal to an audience serious about e-reading, it’s not for tablet-seekers. While it is Wi-Fi enabled, it doesn’t come with apps, aside from the option to purchase and download e-books from the Barnes & Noble online bookstore, and it doesn’t offer a Web browser. Consumers who buy Barnes & Noble e-books, however, can read that content on apps across other devices.

At $139, the Nook with GlowLight is more expensive than the $99 Kindle Touch Wi-Fi e-reader and costs slightly less than the Kindle Touch with 3G.

The device is available for preorder today, will ship in early May and is expected to hit Barnes & Noble stores in late April.

An E-Book Argument: Are Fixed Prices Needed to Preserve Publishing?

John Paczkowski — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 19:55:17 +0000

The U.S. Department of Justice’s decision to file antitrust charges against Apple and five of the nation’s largest publishers for conspiring to raise e-book prices may do more harm than good if it dissolves the new agency pricing model for books those companies created. At least that’s the case being made by Apple’s defenders.

Though it has its problems, they contend, the model adopted by Apple — which requires retailers to charge book prices set by the publisher, while allowing them to keep 30 percent of sales revenue — may actually protect the long-term interests of everyone in the e-book value chain: Author and publisher, retailer and consumer.

What Apple has been attempting to do with e-books is pretty much what it did with digital music: Standardize pricing*. And while that effort might still irk recording industry executives, it’s near impossible to imagine the industry today without iTunes. And Apple clearly has similar hopes for iBooks and the publishing industry.

“Apple [is] attempting to recreate an environment around books that exists around digital music: Establishing base-line pricing so that consumers understand the digital value of a ‘book’ in much the same way a single music track is worth 99 cents,” Auriga analyst Kevin Dede argues in a note to clients today. “And as we see Apple’s overarching philosophy, it appears to us that Apple is defending interests of all the members of its ‘book’ value chain, including authors, publisher, and customers, as it does with all its constituents that offer value to the end customer. There is no salvageable long-term business model in destroying any key participant’s position; all players need to see a reason to play the game.”

In other words, with its agency model, Apple has been working to set a basic market perception of book value. And one could argue this is a good thing. Setting an agreed-upon value, says Dede, brings stability to book pricing, which is typically pretty chaotic. “One day, a new best-seller may be on sale for $15.99 at a book store, but the next day, when some anxious customer is looking for it, the price may have returned to $29.99,” Dede explains. “This is the undesirable, unpredictable atmosphere we see Apple attempting to avoid.”

And, alleged collusion aside, setting baseline prices does do that. More, it preserves the value proposition of books themselves, regardless of the means by which they’re distributed — which is good for publishers and, more importantly, authors.

It’s also very good for Apple, and in the company’s best interests. This is not at all an altruistic effort by any means.

But it does raise e-book prices. And, of course, it prevents Amazon, which already controls about 60 percent of the e-book market, from taking a loss on every book it sells as it drives to dominate the market. Short-term, that’s great for consumers who can buy their e-books at a significant discount.

But long-term what does it mean for the value of a book, and the industry itself — authors in particular? If the value of a “book” continues to drop, what does that mean for them? What does it mean for the editors who work with them? The proof-readers that ensure their copy is clean? Right now, Amazon is the one taking the loss on books it sells at heavily discounted prices. Who takes the loss when a shift in public perception of book value makes those discounted prices the norm?

*Caveat: With iTunes Apple pays record labels a wholesale price for music and then sets retail prices itself. This is obviously not how the agency model works. The similarity that Dede is pointing out here is solely standardization of prices.

U.S. Sues Apple, Publishers Over E-Book Pricing

Chad Bray and Brent Kendall — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:39:48 +0000

NEW YORK — The U.S. filed an antitrust lawsuit Wednesday against Apple Inc. and five of the nation’s largest publishers, alleging they conspired to limit competition for the pricing of e-books.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, alleges Apple and the publishers reached an agreement where retail price competition would cease, retail e-books prices would increase significantly and Apple would be guarantee a 30% “commission” on each e-book sold.

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Reports: Apple Could Face Federal E-Book Suit Today

Peter Kafka — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:32:59 +0000

The Department of Justice may file a suit against Apple today over e-book price-fixing complaints, according to reports from Reuters and Bloomberg. The DOJ has been probing antitrust complaints regarding Apple’s 2010 pacts with book publishers; several of the biggest publishers are preparing to settle those charges by “tearing up” those deals, according to The Wall Street Journal.

20 Percent of Americans Say They're Reading eBooks

Peter Kafka — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 02:00:53 +0000

One in five Americans say they’ve read an e-book in the last year, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Those numbers come from a late-January survey, and they’re up sharply from a December 2011 survey. Pew says the jump coincides with a rise in e-reading hardware: Ownership of dedicated e-reader devices like the Kindle and the Nook went from 10 percent in December to 19 percent in January, and ownership of tablets like iPads and Kindle Fires made the same leap.

J.K. Rowling's Website Starts Selling Harry Potter E-Books

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:03:01 +0000

It didn’t take a Hogwarts magician to know this day would eventually come.

The bookstore feature of J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore website went live Tuesday, enabling English-language readers to buy the digital editions of all seven Harry Potter novels — and the audiobook editions — from anywhere in the world. Editions in French, Italian, German and Spanish will be the next wave.

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Fortune Gives Facebook the Apple Treatment

Peter Kafka — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:40:21 +0000

Last year, Fortune magazine was so proud of an Apple cover story that it made it hard for people to read: The magazine kept the piece off the Web and only made it available to subscribers, via the print edition and an iPad app, or to people who bought the story as an Amazon e-book.

Now it is trying the same gambit, but with Mark Zuckerberg instead of Steve Jobs. If you want to read “Inside Facebook,” Miguel Helft and Jessi Hempel’s pre-IPO profile, you’ll need to pay up.

I just plunked down $1.99 for the Amazon edition, and zipped through it this morning. Like the Apple story, this one is focused on the company’s structure and management philosophy more than anything, which is quite useful for outsiders. Alas, no org chart.

And if you’re into profiles of big Silicon Valley companies in big business magazines, this is your lucky week: Businessweek’s Brad Stone profiles Twitter in a story out now.

The cover art is very promising:

Inkling Rolls Out New E-Book Publishing Platform

Peter Kafka — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000

E-book maker Inkling is introducing new software it says will make it much easier to produce sophisticated textbooks and other digital tomes. Inkling is positioning its Habitat software as a more professional option for book publishers than Apple’s new iBook Author. Until now, the start-up’s books have been created with the iPad in mind, but Inkling says an HTML5 option will allow publishers to work on multiple devices.

Coliloquy Steams Up Interactive E-Books (Video)

Peter Kafka — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:34:40 +0000

E-book publisher Coliloquy is doing a bunch of interesting things: The start-up is trying to overhaul the traditional book royalty system, for one thing. And it is built on an interactive platform that allows readers to influence the way their stories play out.

But what really grabbed the audience at D: Dive Into Media was a good old-fashioned helping of sex, delivered with verve from co-founder Lisa Rutherford. No need to say much more to tease this, though we should point out that Coliloquy doesn’t work exclusively with erotica. They’re also targeting teen girls with “Twilight”-like books, for instance.

Oh. And we should also note that readers who do want the steamy stuff can dial the dirty quotient up or down, depending on what floats their boat. But there’s at least one part of this clip that may not be safe for your work, so here it comes on a Sunday.

[ See post to watch video ]

App Makes Readers' Thoughts an Open Book

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:26:09 +0000

Even the shyest airplane passengers are hard-pressed to remain mum when a seatmate pulls out a book with a familiar cover. Now, thanks to the popularity of e-books, these once visible book covers are shrouded in the nondescript cases of Kindles, Nooks and iPads.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tried Subtext, a free iPad app designed to enable and encourage conversations based on e-books—not necessarily with fellow plane passengers, but among readers within digital books themselves. A revamped version of Subtext, originally released in October, is available in Apple’s App Store Tuesday.

On the Subtext iPad app, a reader’s profile page, with her shelf of books.

Like Amazon’s Kindle already does, Subtext gives anyone who reads an e-book the ability to make notes, highlight passages and to keep private or share those notes or highlights with other users. But this app goes much further: It also lets readers post questions, polls, quizzes or even Web links that are noted in the margins of the book. Other users respond to these posts and start mini book discussions that can continue indefinitely. Subtext content can be kept private, made visible to all users or made visible only to a user’s friends. Along with comments from fellow readers, Subtext users can see comments marked in blue that are made by a book’s author or other experts.

Unfortunately, Subtext smacks of immaturity when compared with other reading apps like Amazon’s Kindle app and Barnes & Noble’s Nook app. While those work on several devices and operating systems, Subtext works only on Apple’s iPad. It only runs with books from Google Books or those in Adobe’s ePub format, and the process for getting the latter—emailing the book to oneself or downloading the file from a website to the iPad—is clumsy and not intuitive. Co-founder Rachel Thomas said Subtext is actively developing for other platforms.

Another issue is that Subtext is only as good as its users’ involvement. The more people comment and create discussions, the more interesting it will be for others. For this to happen, the app has to lure readers away from the devices and apps they’re already comfortable with, like the Kindle or Nook, or the Kindle, Nook and Apple iBooks apps on the iPad.

I got an early look at the new version of Subtext and found it more self-explanatory than its predecessor. I signed in using my Google account, though users can sign in using a Facebook account or explore the app as a guest. By signing into my Google Account, my shelves were populated with the Google e-books I already purchased. Previews of books give users a sense of what the app does.

A Discussions section neatly organizes all social interactions about books in one place.

Users can tap on any book cover to see all content and social information related to that book. Likewise, tapping on any user profile image lets you visit that person’s shelf. A Featured Shelves section suggests different categories of books like Critics Picks 2011 and 2011′s Most Social Books.

As I used Subtext for the first time, small hint windows floated onto the iPad screen at certain points to demonstrate how things worked. One encouraged me to tap and hold my finger on the screen at a favorite book passage to see options for adding notes to that passage. I tried this a few times, including while reading a line in Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” about working moms with kids. I highlighted this passage and posed a question to all Subtext users: How many kids does Tina Fey have? Someone, who I later found out was Subtext’s co-founder Andrew Goldman, answered about an hour later, saying Ms. Fey has two daughters—a 6-year-old and a 6-month-old.

The Discussions section of the app neatly organizes all social interactions in one place, so people don’t have to skip back through books to see the continued conversations surrounding a question.

I like the way Subtext subtly notifies readers that notes exist: by showing a tiny thumbnail image of the user who posted the note in the margin of a book. Tapping on that image opens the note. I commented on some existing discussions by tapping the Reply button.

I created a note for one book passage using a related Web link, and the steps for doing this were clear and understandable. I kept this visible only to myself; other times, I made notes about passages and shared them only with my friends who I could invite to use Subtext via Facebook or email.

But what’s to stop someone from posting something inaccurate or abusive? Users can flag any note as inappropriate or as a spoiler, and the note is reviewed by the company. Users can vote on others’ comments, and over time, comments with more votes will be more broadly distributed.

As of now, authors and experts have enhanced just 18 books in Subtext, though users have left thousands of notes across books. The few books enhanced by authors or experts were fun to read. Steven Levy remarked on a line in his book, “In the Plex,” that described his travels from San Francisco to Tokyo, Beijing, Bangalore and Tel Aviv: “Newsweek paid for my trip, shelling out over $10,000 for my expenses. Kind of ironic because a couple of years later, Newsweek itself sold for $1.”

Apple, Book Publishers Face European Antitrust Probe

Peter Kafka — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:11:09 +0000

Apple’s entry into the e-book business hasn’t been a huge success, but it has still registered with European antitrust regulators. They’ve started a formal investigation that is supposed to determine whether the company and five major publishers “engaged in anti-competitive practices.”

A press release from the European Commission doesn’t provide much detail into the probe, which will look at Apple along with Lagardère Publishing’s Hachette Livre, News Corp.’s HarperCollins, CBS’s Simon & Schuster, Pearson’s Penguin and Germany’s Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

The EU says it will “investigate whether these publishing groups and Apple have engaged in illegal agreements or practices that would have the object or the effect of restricting competition.”

It also says it will look at the “agency” pricing agreements that Apple pushed through when it introduced the iPad back in 2010. Those deals allow publishers to set the retail price of their books, and give retailers like Apple’s iTunes a set percentage of the transaction.

The previous wholesale model, championed by Amazon, allowed retailers to set the price of books. After a series of high-profile negotiations, Amazon has moved to the agency model as well; the e-commerce giant still dominates the e-book market.

Mark Cuban Takes Shot at Writing an E-Book

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:53:19 +0000

Mark Cuban has 335,000 friends on Facebook and 760,000 followers on Twitter. Monday, the Internet billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team will test just how friendly those fans really are.

Mr. Cuban has written a 30,000-word e-book, “How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It.” Culled from blog postings Mr. Cuban has made over the years about his business career, it will be available for $2.99 through online digital-book retailers. To drive sales, Mr. Cuban plans to tap all his online followers.

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So the Kindle Version of "Where the Wild Things Are" Is Out of the Question, Then?

Voices — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:01:40 +0000

I hate them. It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of book! A book is a book is a book.

Maurice Sendak, to Guardian reporter Emma Brockes, about how much he hates e-books

Steve Jobs Biography Arrives in October, a Month Early

Peter Kafka — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:25:10 +0000

Steve Jobs’s death has prompted Simon & Schuster to move up the publication date for his much-anticipated biography by Walter Issacson. The CBS-owned publishing unit has moved up the release date for “Steve Jobs” from Nov. 21 to Oct. 24. Not surprisingly, preorders for the book are skyrocketing, and the title now tops bestseller lists at both Amazon and Apple’s iTunes.

Author Ann Patchett on the E-Reader Phenomenon

Voices — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 03:24:02 +0000

Sure, I signed a couple of iPad covers, Kindle covers. I’ve got no problem with that. But just because some people like their e-readers doesn’t mean we should sweep all the remaining paperbacks in a pile and strike a match. Maybe bookstores are no longer 30,000 square feet, but they are selling books.

Author Ann Patchett about her recent book tour in Sunday’s New York Times.

Readmill Aims to Make Digital Reading Social

Liz Gannes — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 23:13:49 +0000

Reading remains mainly a solitary activity, and perhaps that’s the way it always will be. But as e-books become popular, opportunities to share and personalize the digital reading experience are increasing.

Readmill, a soon-to-launch iPad app and accompanying Web site, helps users highlight passages in the e-books they are reading, and turns those passages into shareable, embeddable permalinks. So just as you might post a YouTube video on your blog or Twitter, Readmill will allow you to share quotes.

There is, of course, an underlying social network where users can follow each other’s reading histories. Users can also post comments and minireviews about the books they’re reading, which could eventually help inform book recommendations.

And the Readmill app has some nifty features that quantify personal reading stats by visually depicting for users how far along in a book they are, and how much they’ve read per session. Readmill founder Henrik Berggren showed me, for instance, that he spent 21 hours over the span of six months reading the epic novel “Shantaram.”

For now, since Readmill works only with EPUB books rather than proprietary formats, it mainly has access to older classics.

What Berggren would like to do is get the Readmill API included in e-book applications, to bring a social reading experience to larger libraries and user bases. He said he’s making some progress on that front, but it’s slow. Market leader Amazon Kindle is “proprietary to the core,” he said.

Both Kindle and Nook already have some social features. Amazon, in fact, has come under fire for automatic-sharing settings. Berggren argued that Readmill offers a superior social experience because it’s built to be social from the ground up.

Currently the Berlin-based Readmill team is working on a marginalia mode for its next release, which will make it easier for users to share their comments directly within books. Berggren said the service should open to the general public in the next couple months.

Readmill has raised about €300,000 ($431,460), led by Index Ventures and Passion Capital.

Rupert Murdoch's Disaster Is Already an E-Book

Peter Kafka — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:40:31 +0000

No surprise that News Corp.’s PhoneGate travails will end up in book form. But this one may be the first out of the gate: Vanity Fair is selling a compilation of 20 previously published stories about the life and times of Rupert Murdoch as an e-book.

At $4 a pop — via Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Nobles’ Nook stores — “Rupert Murdoch, The Master Mogul of Fleet Street” costs less than a single copy of the print magazine.

It’s also a bargain if you’re a fan of Murdoch biographer (and non-baseball expert) Michael Wolff, whose work accounts for 20 percent of the copy here.

In other PhoneGate news, News Corp. has told employees at its New York Post tabloid to “preserve and maintain” any documents related to phone hacking.

News Corp., which also owns this Web site, has maintained that none of the systemic voicemail hacking that has come to light at its News of the World tabloid occurred in the U.S., but investigators will be looking into the matter, regardless.

The Nook Gets a Nudge From Consumer Reports

Peter Kafka — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:19:09 +0000

Barnes & Noble’s newest Nook has fewer features than its predecessor, as well as many other rivals. That’s great, says Consumer Reports, which has crowned the new $139 device its favorite e-book reader. It’s the first time the magazine has put an e-reader made by anyone other than Amazon at the top of its rankings.

If You Don't Mind the Ads, Amazon Offers 3G Kindle for $164

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 25 May 2011 00:16:25 +0000

Trying hard to stand out from all the e-reader news from the past two days, Amazon says it is cutting the price of its 3G Kindle to $164.

The $25 price difference is being made possible through the introduction of advertising on the platform. The so-called “Kindle 3G with Special Offers” is available starting today and will ship immediately.

Amazon cut the price of its Wi-Fi model to $114 last month by introducing advertising on the platform. In the six weeks that model has been available, it has become the bestselling member of the Kindle family, said Jay Marine, director of Amazon Kindle, in a statement.

As the tablet and e-reader market heats up, price will become a competitive advantage.

However, Marine told us last month that there’s no chance the device can ever be subsidized heavily enough to become free.

Still, it may be able to afford much larger discounts in the future. In a sense, Amazon may actually be building a much broader–and more profitable–deal network, a la Groupon. For example, one of the offers is $10 for a $20 Amazon.com Gift Card.

A revenue stream like that could provide a competitive advantage to Amazon if it launches a rumored Android-based tablet, which is estimated to be available before the holidays.

Today, Barnes & Noble unveiled its new one-button Nook, which costs $139, and yesterday Kobo announced a touch-sensitive e-reader that will cost $130.

Liberty Says Nook Inspired B&N Bid

Jessica E. Vascellaro and Nat Worden — Tue, 24 May 2011 07:00:45 +0000

Liberty Media Corp. executives laid out their rationale for their surprise bid for Barnes & Noble Inc., touting the potential of the bookseller’s Nook e-reader and the vast network of retail stores it can use to promote it.

Liberty Media Chairman John Malone and chief executive Greg Maffei told investors Monday that the potential for the Nook platform to become the e-book application of choice for consumers on all tablet devices built on Google Inc.’s Android operating system helped motivate the company’s bid for the ailing bookstore chain.

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Kobo's Strategy Includes Hardware With Introduction of New Touch E-Reader

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 23 May 2011 15:00:37 +0000

The bare bones e-reader that Kobo released in May 2010 was intended to help sell more of its e-books.

In fact, the e-reader was never supposed to be a big part of its business, but now it is seeing the merits of pursuing a hardware business as well.

Today, the Toronto-based company is unveiling its latest e-reader, which comes with the same gray-scale displays that the devices are known for, but boasts a touch display. Users will be able to flip to the next page of the book with a swipe of their finger, a much more natural motion than having to use a directional keypad.

Starting today, the new Kobo eReader Touch Edition will be available for pre-order at Indigo in Canada and Best Buy, Borders and Wal-mart in North America. It will cost $130, and will start shipping in early June.

The company’s first-generation device will be marked down to $100.

“By default, we launched the first device to get into the market,” said Todd Humphrey, Kobo’s EVP of business development. “But what we found is we were able to remain competitive….We are an e-book company, but the device is part of that strategy. We’ll continue to put out top-tier devices in the market.”

Kobo, which celebrated its one-year anniversary in December, announced in April that it had raised a $50 million round in venture capital to help it go up against some serious competition.

Also pursuing e-books are much larger rivals, such as Apple with the iPad, Amazon with the Kindle and even Google. Additionally, Barnes & Noble, which has invested heavily in the Nook, plans to introduce a new e-reader tomorrow at an event in New York.

Humphrey said the decision to produce additional devices does not mean the company is less invested in the digital e-book side of the business.

“I think we are a hardware company in the sense that the device is a pure reading device. They aren’t suddenly getting emails or ads, or allowing people to play Angry Birds. Our consumers have told us they like a single-purpose device, and we will continue to meet the needs of our customers,” he said.

Other e-readers are morphing into tablets as companies see the success of the iPad, and Amazon is rumored to be working on one of its own.

Kobo says it has more than 3.6 million users in more than 100 countries.

But it has not disclosed how many of its original Kobo devices it sold, just like Amazon, which also refuses to say how many Kindles it has sold. The biggest hint it provided recently was that it is now selling more e-book titles than paperback and hardback combined.

Humphrey would not say if a tablet would be next for Kobo or not.

“We have nothing to announce, but we are looking at all the options. We want to enable great reading experiences,” he said.

QOTD: About Those Amazon E-Book Sales…

Peter Kafka — Fri, 20 May 2011 14:50:42 +0000

“As a former Amazon Associate, I can tell you that a great many sales of Kindle Books are for the 99¢ complete Dickens, etc.”

–Movie critic and Web publisher Roger Ebert, providing some context for Amazon’s stat about Kindle e-books outselling print books.

Amazon Reaches The E-Book Tipping Point: Kindle Sales Blow By Print

Peter Kafka — Thu, 19 May 2011 13:36:54 +0000

Hard to believe that just a few years ago, e-books were still a novelty item. Now Amazon is selling more e-book titles than print combined.

Amazon says that since April, it has been selling 105 Kindle titles for every 100 print copies it moves. Reminder: Amazon only started selling Kindle e-readers in November 2007.

In the past, we’ve seen similar numbers from Jeff Bezos and company, but they’ve always come with caveats–Amazon was only talking about hardcovers, or softcovers, etc. Now Amazon wants to be clear–it’s comparing apples to apples (and not counting free e-book titles, which are very popular on the site).

Amazon still hasn’t released sales numbers on actual Kindle units, but today we can give the company a pass on its non-disclosure, and just let it soak up the plaudits it deserves for moving its flagship business from physical to digital in less than four years. (Pay attention, newspaper, TV, movie, and music executives!)

From Amazon’s release:

Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
So far in 2011, the tremendous growth of Kindle book sales, combined with the continued growth in Amazon’s print book sales, have resulted in the fastest year-over-year growth rate for Amazon’s U.S. books business, in both units and dollars, in over 10 years. This includes books in all formats, print and digital. Free books are excluded in the calculation of growth rates.
In the five weeks since its introduction, Kindle with Special Offers for only $114 is already the bestselling member of the Kindle family in the U.S.
Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books so far in 2011 as it did during the same period in 2010.
Less than one year after introducing the U.K. Kindle Store, Amazon.co.uk is now selling more Kindle books than hardcover books, even as hardcover sales continue to grow. Since April 1, Amazon.co.uk customers are purchasing Kindle books over hardcover books at a rate of more than 2 to 1.