The split is 70% for the author and 30% for Amazon on books priced between $2.99 and $9.99. That's a lot higher royalty rate than traditional publishers offer.

It looks like 29 kills the Status-bar-4ever add on as well. I also don't like that it moves the bookmark menu way across the screen. It's going to need some customization.

The world goes from a functional civilization to tiny tribes of people speaking different languages and worshiping different gods in the space of one generation. No science, culture, art, or knowledge beyond what's needed by a hunter-gatherer society survives.

Typical Slashdot, ignore what I said, but scream bloody hell about a typing mistake.

If you've ever been near one you'll know it. They smell horrendously and are one of the biggest polluters in the world. And as far as literacy goes, world wide it dropped by half between 1970 and 2005, and reading in the US, at least for novels, has rebounded in recent years.

Does this study take into account the number of people buying ebooks from their e-ink devices? There are an awful lot of Kindles, Nooks, and Kobos out there (Sonys too, but I don't think they let you buy books directly off the device).

Flimsy?! The thing's a damn brick. A thin and sexy brick, but still. And, it's already been re-rooted since the last update. What B&N did, which Amazon hasn't done, is remove the ability to sideload apps. If you're going to criticize something at least have your facts right.

And I think these issues are being way overplayed by the tech media and some users with a big axe to grind against Amazon. It's a fine tablet with a very few rough edges that can be smoothed out with a couple of software updates. The notion that so many buyers are returning them is based on CNN counting the number of 1-star reviews at Amazon (some of which are fake) and guessing about how many are being returned, it's BS and nonsense. I've never hit the power button by mistake, web pages load just fine, and any hesitation in the interface is pretty minor and not what I would call balky. The ONLY significant hardware issue for me is that both speakers are on one side of the device. It would have been much better to split them up.

No, they are not counting free ebooks in this. Says so in the press release "Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher."

Conversion would require stripping Adobe's DRM first. That' not going to happen.

These aren't new books that OpenLibrary is suddenly making available. It's really just a search engine for the Overdrive Library System, and the only in-copyright books they offer are what's already available through Overdrive.

There's nothing to stop you from stripping the DRM and spreading it around, except your own conscience.

Overall it's not really very useful. Its ebook loans go through Overdrive, so if the title you're interested in isn't available as an ebook from your library then you're out of luck. Why bother going through Open Library when I can just use the search engine at my own library instead? Any PD books they have are going to be available at any number of places so why bother?

It's not a competitor to Overdrive at all since its non-PD loans go through Overdrive.

With Apple assisted Agency Pricing in effect, Amazon cannot raise the prices on ebooks.