Print
RSS
TwitterThe Kindle Chronicles
.gif){kind=logo}
What We Have Here Is a Failure To Communicate
Posted Friday, December 18, 2009 - 3:05pm
The evolution of publishing from print to digital has caused a schism in the reading world. There are now two constituencies: Readers (and writers) on the one hand and the publishing world on the other. And they don’t want to hear each other.
Read more »
Buy This Digital Magazine or We'll Kill This Virtual Dog
Posted Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 5:15pm
The vapor-ware announcement this week of an “iTunes for magazines" backed by a consortium of magazine publishers highlights an important turning point in the migration from print media to digital distribution. Magazines will never be the same again.
Read more »
Who's Afraid of the E-Book?
Posted Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - 8:40am
One of the key questions confronting the future of digital reading is where to find the best source of material for the new devices. Since Amazon (AMZN) broke through with the Kindle, the assumption has been that books would drive the development of software for this new hardware.
Read more »
Nook-Niks
Posted Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - 3:20pm
At the launch event for Barnes & Noble’s (BKS) new Nook reading device, the company made an aggressive effort to pretend the Kindle didn’t exist. Their claim was that B&N is the leading innovator in publishing, not Amazon (AMZN). That’s certainly true in terms of bookselling, but that hid the truth: B&N is scared by the success of the Kindle.
Read more »
The Nook of Doom
Posted Thursday, October 22, 2009 - 4:18pm
Barnes & Noble (BKS) held a slick press event earlier this week to announce its new Nook digital reader. William Lynch, president of online business, was justifiably pleased as he stood cradling the cute arrival.
Read more »
It’s the End of the Book World as We Know It
Posted Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - 7:25am
Publishers have been battling Amazon (AMZN) over the price of e-books, only to get outflanked by Wal-Mart (WMT) last week on the bread-and-butter best-sellers. In an effort to boost traffic on Wal-Mart.com, the Bentonville, Ark., retailer is offering select hardcovers that are among the most anticipated of the season for $8.99. Who saw that coming?
Read more »
App It Up—I’ll Take It
Posted Thursday, October 15, 2009 - 1:08pm
The astonishing thing about the transformation of print into digital distribution is not that it has taken so long to finally happen but that, once begun, it is evolving so rapidly. A year ago, digital readers were barely taken seriously. Today everyone from authors to readers assumes we will see a massive step forward in technology in the next few months.
Read more »
Why Big Books Still Matter
Posted Sunday, October 4, 2009 - 6:10pm
Dan Gross, my colleague at Newsweek and Slate, pinged me the other morning after he had read the reports that Sarah Palin’s new book—suddenly announced for next month—would not be available as an e-Read more »
The Ingenious Beast
Posted Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 5:24pm
There’s good news and maybe even better news in the e-reader space this week. And both come from the announcement that Tina Brown’s Daily Beast is getting into the book business with a plan to launch original digital titles on her site, followed by paperback distribution through Perseus Books.
Read more »
A Fork in the E-Reader Road
Posted Thursday, September 24, 2009 - 2:21pm
The path forward toward a digital reading future became a little clearer this week, thanks to Irex, the Dutch company spun out of Phillips Electronics and a leading manufacturer of e-readers in Europe. It introduced a consumer product for the American market, somewhat awkwardly named the DR800SG. The device is a wirelessly enabled (through a partnership with Verizon (VZ), another player eager to get into digital book distribution) 8-inch screen stripped down to minimal controls.
Read more »
Secrets of the Amazon Best-Seller List
Posted Wednesday, August 5, 2009 - 1:13pm
It's almost a philosophical riddle: Do sales drive the best-seller list, or do best-sellers get all the sales because buyers see them on the list? As much as we'd like to believe that the crowd picks the best books, a strong presence in retail locations—front-of-store positioning and tempting discounts—still counts a great deal in determining how well a title sells. Nonetheless, authors are in it for the glory, and the visibility and bragging rights of being a "best-seller" retains the glamour of years past.
Read more »
Kindle Under Fire
Posted Monday, July 20, 2009 - 1:46pm
Amazon (AMZN) had a rough go of it last week. It was revealed that the growing force in ebooks was able to delete titles from Kindle owners' accounts when a publisher uploaded editions of George Orwell's books that it didn't have the rights to sell.
Read more »
Let e-Readers Be e-Readers
Posted Wednesday, July 1, 2009 - 11:57am
Despite the Kindle's continuing success, it's widely believed that the device cannot remain simply a terminal for Amazon's (AMZN) e-book sales if it is ever to become a true mass-market product. But what must it become?
Read more »
How the iPhone Rekindled Reading
Posted Monday, June 22, 2009 - 3:31pm
Only a year and a half ago, Steve Jobs peed all over the idea of building an iPod-like device for reading. "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is," he famously said. "The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."
Read more »
Finding the Kindle Beater
Posted Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - 1:58pm
The recent Book Expo publishing industry convention held in New York accelerated the impression that the industry is rapidly embracing new technology. Many attendees remarked that e-books pervaded every discussion they had on the convention floor. "It has tipped," tweeted Todd Sattersten, president of Milwaukee-based 800-CEO-Read, an influential online source of business books. "Buckle in for the ride."
Read more »
