Over on JA Konrath's blog, he takes a swipe at the Authors Guild for their lawsuit against Google over the company's plan to scan every book ever published.  He also makes fun of some other lawsuits filed by the Authors Guild, and admittedly, those sound pretty dumb.  But when it comes to Google Books, Konrath is giving the world's biggest search engine company a pass they don't really deserve.

Konrath has apparently forgotten that during the genesis of the Google book scanning controversy, Google made it clear that they intended to offer the scanned books for sale through the Google eBookstore.  This included books that were considered "out of print" at the time and for which they had no permission from...

Anna Baddeley at The Guardian has written an interesting and accurate assessment of how ebooks and digital reading have essentially become a part of our collective culture. Well worth a read...digitally, of course.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at how publishers raising their ebook prices has negatively affected revenue under the new Amazon contracts.

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/e-book-sales-weaken-amid-higher-prices-1441307826-lMyQjAxMTE1MzAxNDUwMjQ2Wj

An article in today's Publishing Perspective reports that a startup called Metabooks is the latest company to take a stab at the 'enhanced' ebook market. 

According to Metabooks' Creative Director, Benjamin Alfonsi, the company's first project is an iOS-exclusive edition of John Berendt's bestseller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  The book appears to be a stand-alone app--nothing new in the so-called interactive book arena--and includes a variety of content such as a full-length audiobook recording (Alfonsi refers to it as an "audio dramatization").   

Which is kind of an odd thing to call it.  Because aren’t audio...

Bestselling self-published author J.A. Konrath blogs about the new Kindle Worlds program that allows other writers to create all-new stories featuring his characters.  If the very nice looking covers showcased on his blog are any indication, the program looks to be off to a strong start.

Personally, I wouldn't really want other people playing in the worlds I create without some fairly stringent guidelines as to what can and cannot be done to my characters.  Perhaps that comes from my background in licensed intellectual property and seeing the level of concern that license holders generally have over how the public perceives their characters and the value of those properties as a whole.

That said, I applaud Konrath for allowing such freedom with his creations.  I hope it continues to be a positive...

In this March 11, 2015 blog entry, Michal Kozlowski at the Good E Reader blog takes a look at the increasing success of episodic fiction on Amazon's ebook subscription service, Kindle Unlimited.  Although the focus of Michael's blog entry is the KU program, I would argue that the same trends are likely occuring on rival platforms such as Scribd and Oyster.

Niche markets such as children's books or computer books are a logical fit for the subscription ebook model.  So is episodic fiction.  The question people should be asking is why we need a dedicated marketplace just for subscription fiction.  Based on reports by authors and some industry bloggers, authors are being hurt by the subscription model and the only...

Just two days ago, I talked briefly about Mike Kozlowski's blog entry on Good E Reader that, like many articles before it, seems to suggest that the death of ebooks is a foregone conclusion.  As it turns out, any report implying the impending demise of the format is, in the words of Mark Twain, “greatly exaggerated.” 

Today, Publisher’s Weekly reported that overall book revenue were actually up 4.9% in 2014, with ebooks rising 1% to $1.29 billion and accounting for 27.2% of adult book sales for the year.

Not great, but not too shabby, either.  Especially for a format that some...

An organization called Unglue.it is working hard to make free books more easily available.  This is a noble and worthwhile mission, up to a certain point.  I find myself disagreeing with their assertion that some books must be free to continue providing value.

In one example they use, Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa, they state that for the book to "...continue to stimulate original research and new insights…" it must be free.  That's an odd perspective, especially for a book that was published in 1970 and one they acknowledge is a classic in its field.   Their implication seems to be that because the book is currently out-of-print, taking the effort to turn it into an ebook must by extension make it free forever.

This seems remarkably...

Mike Kozlowski at Good E-Reader reports that publisher revenue from ebooks has "plunged".  A 1% drop in 2014 revenue over the same period in 2013 is hardly call that a "plunge".  2014 was a rough year for many people.  Obviously, a bad economy affects the economy and how people spend their disposable income.  Personally, I think we should wait until 2016 until we start calling a slight loss in ebook revenue for one year a trend.

This article by blogger Dana Beth Weinberg at Digital Book World provides some interesting insight into the continued presence of a viable print book market and the growth of ebooks.

We have been aware of these kinds of statistics for some time. We predicted five years ago, when ebooks were growing at a relatively insane rate, that most bookstore who relied only on ebooks to stay afloat would likely sink as the market reached various saturation levels.  As it turned out, many did, from the independent Diesel Books to the corporate-owned Sony ebook store and quite a few others. 

That's why Eread Technologies, Inc. and Ereading.com® will offer over 19 million new and used print books as part of our extensive...