If you know how to use Word, you will be able to write an interactive ebook. Or so says French start-up Adrénalivre, which earlier this year had over 1,000 authors contributing interactive content. Having invested €100,000 in the design and development of interactive story writing software, the start-up has now launched the world’s first subscription Read More …
The global publishing market has never been more exciting, and every day myriad publishing stories cross my screen that I’d love to develop here at TNPS, but there simply isn’t time. They do make the TNPS twitter feed, however. Follow TNPS on twitter here: @thenewpubstd. But twitter is an ephemeral beast. If you’re reading TNPS in Read More …
It would be impossible to try cover even a fraction of the publishing news that lands on my e-desk each day, but there’s so much happening in our industry that passes unnoticed. So here’s a selection of some of today’s best publishing stories. Apologies if some are behind pay-walls. Amazon Launches Kids’ (Hardcover) Subscription Service. Read More …
On the indie author circuit discussion about how to promote self-published ebooks is prevalent everywhere. Understandably the focus is on Amazon, as the biggest ebook retailer in the US and UK, and of course Amazon famously offers certain promotional features through KDP, such as the ability to list at $0.00 for five days in a Read More …
Kobo’s French ebook and audiobook distribution partner Fnac started offering digital comics via the Orange mobile service last year, and this year it adds audiobooks and ebooks to the telco offering. At a time when telcos are struggling to differentiate themselves from one another, being able to offer additional consumer content is one way to Read More …
The Swedish audiobook-focussed publisher and distributor Storytel has delivered another quarter of positive results, reporting a total of 577,900 subscribers (across ten countries) at end Q1, an increase of 51% on Q1 2017, and 6,000 above forecast. Streaming revenue, up 43% on Q1 2017, exceeded forecast by SEK 2 million, hitting SEK 222 million($26.5 million). Read More …
This is breaking news from Colombo, and I’ll come back with more retails as they emerge. What we know so far is the the first Big Bad Wolf book sale in Colombo last October was a huge success, and this year the event is being brought forward to June. Last year 1.5 million books were Read More …
Like Amazon, Flipkart started out as an online book retailer. Later it branched into other products, just like Amazon. That shouldn’t come as any big surprise. Flipkart’s founders were both former Amazon employees. But while Amazon has largely maintained its focus on books, despite the publishing sector now being just small part of its overall Read More …
Denmark’s largest online bookstore Saxo this week launches its new Saxo Premium club, offering deep discounts on print books alongside unlimited access to over 30,000 ebooks and audiobooks. As a Premium member, you can listen freely to audiobooks when you are doing everyday tasks, read e-books on your travels without having to pay extra weight Read More …
While we in the west have been enthralled by Amazon’s move into bricks & mortar bookstores and its experimental Amazon Go no-checkouts grocery store, China’s Beijing Publishing Group takes things to a whole new level. The first of 20 planned BPG stores opened inside China’s Beijing International Book City in Tongzhou district, and at just Read More …
Ookbee has come – and gone – a long way since its emergence as Thailand’s primary ebook store in 2011. Today Ookbee’s growing empire spreads across five countries in SE Asia, and after a brief but unsuccessful foray into physical goods with a partnership with Japan’s Transcosmos, Ookbee is now comfortably focused doing what it Read More …
Probably the single most unforeseen consequence of the digital revolution in publishing was that mainstream publishers would soon be competing not just with countless “indie authors” successfully self-publishing their works, but that mainstream publishers would be directly competing with their biggest retailer. It all seemed so improbable when Amazon started its first imprint back in Read More …
The Edinburgh Arts Festival is regarded by many as the largest arts events in the world, which often overshadows the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) which runs concurrent. But the EIBF is a powerhouse in its own right, owning and operating two large pop-up shops within Charlotte Square Gardens, including the largest specialty Children’s Bookshop Read More …
The world’s biggest book sale? Two million books at discounts of up to 80%? Where would we be without Amazon? Only, this has absolutely nothing to do with Amazon. This is the Philippines debut of the Big Bad Wolf event, the ten day 24/7 book sale that is taking SE Asia by storm. Originally just Read More …
For a few minutes yesterday it looked like Apple might have been planning an ebook comeback, after having pretty much lost all enthusiasm for the iBooks store following the law suits against Apple and several publishers, commencing 2012, that cost Apple $450 million in fines. That sort of money, for Apple, was barely a slap Read More …
It was never meant to be this way. Profitable bookstore chains? In the age of Amazon? That’s not how the bookstore apocalypse narrative goes. But as The Guardian reported back in 2015, Four years ago (2011), Waterstones was facing oblivion. Declining sales of physical books, together with the relentless growth of Amazon and mismanagement by its former Read More …
The world’s biggest book sale lands in Manila next month. With 2 million titles on sale at big discounts 24 hours a day you could be forgiven for thinking Amazon is about to open a Kindle Philippines ebook store, but actually these are print books, sold in real time. Amazon? Isn’t that a river in Read More …
Living in one of Donald Trump’s “shithole countries” as I do, the US president’s racist remarks stung a little more if I had been back in my old homeland in the UK. I’ve seen no indication Trump reads anything other than business reports, so probably he is totally unaware of Africa’s rich literary heritage and Read More …
Amazon this week announced its anime service Anime Strike, acquired just a year ago, is being shuttered as an independent entity and rolled into Prime. Great news for those already subscribed to Prime, who will now get the service for free. Not so good for those who were subscribing to the Anime service but not Read More …
As the USA’s Book World chain shutters its 45 bookstores the media is having the usual Retail Apocalypse party that accompanies every such incident. “Bookstore Chains, Long in Decline, Are Undergoing a Final Shakeout,” ran the New York Times headline, anxious to draw in the retail apocalypse rubberneckers. But even here, tucked away in the Read More …
