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Submission + - Amazon Wants to Crowd Source Your Next Kindle eBook (the-digital-reader.com)

Submitted by Nate the greatest
Nate the greatest writes: Can a crowd of booklovers collectively pick a book which is worth reading? Amazon wants to find out. The retailer is about to launch a new program which will have indie authors submit their new unpublished work for readers to rate and discuss. The best books will be picked up by Amazon under a publishing contract with strangely limited terms: Amazon is asking for digital and audio rights, but not paper.

The program is so new that it doesn't even have a name, but it is already drawing the attention of some indie authors, including one that said she would be "all over it with a stand-alone just to generate more name exposure, which could lead to sales of my other books."

Submission + - Consumers Aren't Paying for Online Content (emarketer.com)

Submitted by Nate the greatest
Nate the greatest writes: If you only download free apps, you're not alone. A new survey from the UK shows that, with the majority of internet users get their content for free rather than paying for it. A third of the 1,000 respondents in the survey reported downloading free apps, while only 8% had bought apps. Over a quarter are streaming video online, but only 9% are buying said apps.And 24% were streaming music while only 4% paid for the service.

All in all this does not look good for anyone trying to sell content online, but there are a couple exceptions. The pollsters found that people were buying ebooks and music in greater numbers than those paying for streaming services.That suggests that consumers have transferred their buying habits fro books and CDs to ebooks and MP3s , and that makes sense. The streaming services are like broadcast TV and radio, which a lot of consumers are used to getting for free (BBC fees notwithstanding), while consumers are used to buying books and CDs.

Submission + - Japanese Publishers Lash Out at Amazon's Policies (the-digital-reader.com)

Submitted by Nate the greatest
Nate the greatest writes: Amazon is in a bitter contract fight Hachette in the US and Bonnier in Germany, and now it seems the retail giant is also in conflict with publishers in the land of the rising sun. Amazon has launched a new rating system in Japan which gives publishers with larger ebook catalogs (and publishers that pay higher fees) preference, leading some to complain that Amazon is using its market power to blackmail publishers. Where have we heard that complaint before?

The retailer is also being boycotted by a handful of Japanese publishers which disagree with Amazon offering a rewards program to students. The retailer gives students 10 percent of a book's price as points which can be used to buy more books. This skirts Japanese fixed price book laws, and so several smaller publishers pulled their books from Amazon in protest in May.

I know that businesses are out to make money and not friends, but Amazon sure is a lightning rod for conflicts, isn't it?

Submission + - Would you buy a waterproof eReader or Tablet? (the-digital-reader.com)

Submitted by Nate the greatest
Nate the greatest writes: Following only a couple months after a TechCrunch review of a waterproof Kindle Paperwhite, new leaks have revealed that Kobo is working on a waterproof ereader. The new Kobo Aura H2O is expected to go up for pre-order at the beginning of next month for $179, and while that's a high price it's not bad when you consider what you get with it.The Aura H2O will come certified to meet the IP67 standard, meaning that it will be dustproof and able to withstand being dunked in a meter of water for up to 30 minutes. The leaked specs tell us that it will have a larger screen than that waterproof Kindle — a 6.8" display, in fact. That's going to make the Aura H2O the best as well as one of the biggest ereaders on the market.

Would you buy one? I wouldn't. I don't have a problem with my electronics getting wet so i don't see a need to pay extra, and even if I did I wouldn't want a device which was tied to Kobo. If I were going to get a waterproof gadget it would probably be a tablet like the Xperia Z2 tablet from Sony. I might also pay for Waterfi to waterpoof a tablet as an aftermarket mod, but as I see it an ereader just isn't worth it.

Submission + - Do readers absorb less on Kindles than on paper? Not necessarily

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: eBooks are great and wonderful, but as The Guardian reports they might not be as good for readers paper books. Results from a new study shows that test subjects who read a story on a Kindle had trouble recalling the right order of the plot points. Out of 50 test subjects,half read a 28-page story on the Kindle, while half read the same story on paper. The Kindle group scored about the same on comprehension as the control group, but when they were asked to put the plot points in the proper order the Kindle group was about twice as likely to put them in the wrong order.

So is this bad news for ebooks? Have we reached the limits of their usefulness? Not necessarily.

While there is evidence that enhanced ebooks don't enhance education, an older study from 2012 has shown that students who study with an e-textbook on an ebook reader actually scored as well or higher on tests than a control group who did not. While that doesn't prove the newer study wrong, it does suggest that further study is required.

Comment Re:I'm not sure these buttons belong to the Wash P (Score 1) 136

I don't think it's co-owned. Read the article I linked to. Also, I can't find any other affiliate links to Amazon, so there is no evidence to support the idea that "whenever a title is mentioned, link to the appropriate Amazon page". If that were the case then song titles would also link there.

Comment I'm not sure these buttons belong to the Wash Post (Score 4, Informative) 136

Did anyone else notice that the affiliate tag on the links suggest that the links belong to Slate magazine and not the newspaper? For the record, Bezos didn't buy Slate last year, and I don't think he owns it now. http://www.slate.com/blogs/mon... Given the unanswered questions, I'm going to assume there's more to this story. I think this could be a syndicated article which arrived with the links. Or perhaps something broke in the WP's servers, I don't know. But I do know that I checked a half dozen other articles and didn't see any affiliate links.

Submission + - Amazon launches a new Kindle with double the storage (the-digital-reader.com)

Submitted by Nate the greatest
Nate the greatest writes: Don't look now but Amazon has quietly updated its flagship ebook reader, the Kindle Paperwhite — just not the one we were expecting. The new 2014 model lacks the 300dpi resolution screen and page turn buttons that rumors said it would have (it also missed the second quarter ship date from the TechCrunch rumor). In fact, numerous Kindle owners report that the new Kindle looks identical to last year's model, only it comes with twice the internal storage. It's been shipping since July, but the blogosphere only noticed this week. Do you think this means no new Kindle this year, or is the new model simply a placeholder for the new and amazing Kindle? Amazon has filed for new patents on new screen tech, but when do you think we'll see the new screen?

Comment Where's the money? (Score 3, Informative) 95

by Nate the greatest (#47668143) Attached to: Student Bookstores Beware, Amazon Comes To Purdue Campus
Here's an interesting detail not in the original post. According to what the bookstore director told me, the UC Davis bookstore only earned around $140 thousand in affiliate commissions in the first 6 months. Considering that the bookstore had revenues of around 20 million dollars last fiscal year (July to June 2014), the partnership doesn't look like it is worth anything to the bookstore. http://the-digital-reader.com/...

Submission + - Why the Public Library Beats Amazon - for Now (and Forever) (the-digital-reader.com) 1

Submitted by Nate the greatest
Nate the greatest writes: The launch of Kindle Unlimited last month has many questioning the value of public libraries, with one pundit on Forbes even going so far as to proclaim that the UK could save money by shuttering all its libraries and replacing them with Kindle Unlimited subscriptions. Luckily for libraries, they're safe for now because they still beat Kindle Unlimited and its competitors in at least one category: content you want to read. As several reviewers have noted, Kindle Unlimited is stocked almost entirely with indie titles, with a handful of major titles thrown in. Even Scribd and Oyster only have ebooks from two of the 5 major US publishers, while US public libraries can offer titles from all 5. They might be expensive and you might have to get on a waiting list, but as the Wall Street Journal points out public libraries are safe because they can still offer a better selection. That is true, but I think the WSJ missed a key point: that public libraries beat Amazon because they offer services Amazon cannot, including in-person tech support, internet access, and other basic assistance. The fact of the matter is, you can't use KU, Scribd, or Oyster if you don't know how to use your device, and your local public library is the best place to learn.

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