The Year in E-Books 2019

The Year in E-Books 2019

Every year, I look both backward and forward. This is my annual post, looking at what happened this year. If you want to see the details, please see the ever-expanding ILMK E-Books Timeline. For posts in this series for previous years, see The Year in E-Books category.

The first thing I’ll note is that there no longer seems to be any kind of prestige barrier in being published by Amazon. That was there in the beginning: the biggest authors didn’t seem to want to go with Amazon, for the most part. I think they weren’t seen as really a major publisher. Well, that’s been evolving over time, and this year, very top names have made deals. I think that may have been influenced by the success of Amazon as a movie/TV studio. Among those in agreement with or whose work was being published by Amazon were: Stieg Larsson; Blake Crouch; Veronica Roth; Andy Weir; Mindy Kaling; Sylvia Day; and Dean Koontz.

Next, Amazon absolutely continued its journey towards a true world market. One of the most important was Souq becoming Amazon.ae, which brought it into the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and brought Arabic language support in the app and on the website. There is a long literary history in Arabic, and Amazon has carried e-books in the language, but this is definitely a step up. Amazon also introduced Kindle Lite in Kenya. The full Kindle app had been available, but this is specifically designed for slower networks & phones with less storage. Amazon also launched Amazon.sg in Singapore, and separately, support for traditional Chinese. While the latter does affect sales in the USA, it also broadens the appeal.

In addition to spreading around the world with e-books, Amazon is also making e-books available everywhere with Alexa. They released a lot of wearables (a ring, glasses) and Alexa/Echo devices. While I didn’t have it for much of the year because it hadn’t been released, I’m sure that since I have, I’ve done most of my reading with my Echo Auto in the car.

Microsoft killed its current e-book platform (it’s done that before), which meant that people couldn’t access their books online.

Barnes & Noble was bought by the same company that owns the UK’s Waterstones…giving them the biggest physical bookstore chains in both countries.

In terms of creatives, Amazon ended its Kindle blogs through the Amazon store…which I’d personally been using for about ten years. I haven’t made up that income, but I’m not dependent on it. On the other hand, they opened up Alexa skills for publication to the store (I have four there: https://amzn.to/2EmJkyc ). I’m not making money on those, though, but again, it’s not crucial.

UPDATE: Thanks to reader Brian Hartman for reminding me about this! Another program Amazon stopped: Kindle Matchbook. This enabled customers who had previously bought some physical books to get a discounted price on the e-book. It was introduced in 2013, but I don’t think it ever really caught on very much. As the pricing strategy on Kindle books stabilized, I think they may have decided that they just didn’t really need to do that. Also, it could be that people had already surged and taken advantage of it initially and then interest dropped off, although I don’t know that.

I’ll wrap up on this with pointing out that Amazon paid a lot of attention to EBRs (E-Book Readers). They introduced a frontlit Kindle for just $89.99: New Kindle (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*). That was nice to see!

UPDATE: I have included this in the past couple of years, but neglected to include it this year: these are counts when I search the titles of the 2019 Amazon press release archive…AWS (Amazon Web Services) dominates, even though I rarely talk about it here. I’m more concerned with books and consumer gadgets than enterprise, despite how big and successful a part of Amazon it is. Also, when I went to do this, Amazon has changed something (again) meaning that I can’t have continuity with last year. I use to be able to search just within the titles of the articles, but now it appears I can only search for keywords…which greatly increases the results Hm…I’ll show you 2019/2018 to give you a sense of how it is trending.

• tablet=233/230 (+3)
• Kindle=243/232 (+11)
• Fire TV=249/234 (+15)
• Echo=243/233 (+10)
• Alexa=246/234 (+12)
• AWS=245/232 (+13)

Doesn’t look like much switch in publicity focus…maybe they just did more press releases overall.

I felt like it was a good year! Anything else stand out to you? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

Bufo’s Alexa Skills

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. 

Shop ’til you help! 🙂

The Year in E-Books 2018

The Year in E-Books 2018

Every year, I look both backward and forward. This is my annual post, looking at what happened this year. If you want to see the details, please see the ever-expanding ILMK E-Books Timeline. For posts in this series for previous years, see The Year in E-Books category.

In looking back over 2018, there are two things which really stood out.

One was how Amazon has really moved into the Spanish-language market.

They’ve had e-books in Spanish for some time, but this year feels like a watershed moment.

On September 6th, Amazon announced that FreeTime and FreeTime Unlimited were getting Spanish versions

press release

Now, it’s important to note that this isn’t a separate subscription: it’s Spanish-language embedded in the current Kindle FreeTime Unlimited.

What they are doing is not only giving substantively more Spanish content (including videos), but providing a Spanish user interface for the parents.

On October 23rd, they announced that Alexa and the Echo were coming to Spain (and France):

press release

press release in Spanish | comunicado de prensa

When they did this, they didn’t just take the existing Alexa assistant and translate it to Spanish…they tried to be culturally relevant to that country.

A couple of weeks later, they came to Mexico:

press release

Again, that’s tailored to Mexico; it isn’t just the same as the version for Spain.

That’s a lot of investment in Spanish-language customers!

The other big thing was Alexa everywhere. That does impact e-books: Alexa can read your Kindle books with text-to-speech enabled, and can fetch your Audible books and play those.

I do that in the car, and that was one of the big announcements.

Echo Auto (by invitation only at this point) (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Now, I already have Alexa in my car…because I have my SmartPhone. I have the free Alexa app on my phone, and I can get to her through the Amazon Shopping app.

Having the Echo Auto will be a game changer. I currently have to open up the app, and tap something every time I want to give a command. That should all become unnecessary (well, the app may need to be open in the background): it will be true ambient computing. They are also working hard to get it to integrate with many more things than my phone does…for example, the phone can’t play TuneIn, but I think they’ll get that done for Echo Auto (when it is eventually released).

I suspect the new ability of Alexa to read and let you interact with your e-mail is part of that drive (so to speak). I was going into work, and was able to deal with most of my e-mail on the way into the office! That was great. I request a read receipt for some things, and I tend not to delete them when I’m sight-reading them…but it was easy to do through Alexa. I dealt with my e-mail better through Alexa than through my computer.

Alexa is almost always with me, because of the phone…it would be a rare thing for me to be more than a meter away from being able to talk to Alexa, even at work.

Not all Alexa-connected devices can read my e-books…our Alexa microwave can’t.

Hands on…no, hands off…um, let’s see: “Voice on” with the Alexa Microwave

Still, Alexa will be as ubiquitous as the computer on Captain Kirk’s Enterprise. That means I can have a book read to me whenever, wherever…and it will become more intimate than a speaker before too long.

Spanish and Alexa glowed like shining beacons, but there were other developments as well.

I was very pleased to see a new version of the Paperwhite:

Amazon introduces new thinner, waterproof version of my favorite Kindle, the Paperwhite

Content also still mattered: for one thing, they made a deal with Patricia Cornwell for a new series. You can pre-order the first one for delivery…in about a year. 😉

Quantum (at AmazonSmile)

Interestingly, it looks like it will be available through

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

which is on sale right now. At least, they promote KU on that page in such a way that it looks like you’ll be able to read that book.

They also keep improving independent publishing (at least the technology for it), and it seems to be paying off…several Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) authors won RITA awards this year. That’s a top award for romance authors.

I want to point out one more thing: KDP authors can now publish in Arabic. Arabic is one of the most spoken languages in the world, and there is a long literary history.

2018 was a good year in e-books…I’ll be making my predictions for 2018 in the next couple of days.

Oh, and I did this last year…I think it’s worth doing again. These are counts when I search the titles of the 2018 Amazon press release archive…AWS (Amazon Web Services) dominates, even though I rarely talk about it here. I’m more concerned with books and consumer gadgets than enterprise, despite how big and successful a part of Amazon it is.

• tablet=2
• Kindle=4
• Fire TV=4
• Echo=7
• Alexa=14
• AWS=46

Have any thoughts on 2018 in e-books/Amazon? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. 

The Year in E-Books 2017

The Year in E-Books 2017

Every year, I look both backward and forward. This is my annual post, looking at what happened this year. If you want to see the details, please see the ever-expanding ILMK E-Books Timeline. For posts in this series for previous years, see The Year in E-Books category. For a more numerical look, see

2017 Annual Snapshot

When I looked back over the year, it was very clear that development of the Kindle and e-books were not Amazon’s focus in 2017.

Just searching the titles in Amazon’s press release archives for 2017, I find:

• Fire HD=3
• Fire TV=4
• Kindle=5
• Alexa=18
• AWS (Amazon Web Services)=56

It felt to me more like Amazon was…enhancing what already existed, rather than introducing new things in this field.

The big hardware introduction was the

Kindle Oasis 2) (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

on April 13th.

It’s the first waterproof Kindle, but other companies have had waterproof EBRs (E-Book Readers) for longer. So, while it was new to the Kindles, it wasn’t new to EBRs (E-Book Readers) generally. It also has “Audible integrated”.

Some other loose end tie-ups/enhancements:

• April 1st: Amazon is collecting sales tax on e-books in every state that charges it. That was a long-standing issue
• Late April: Amazon updates MYCD (formerly MYK), including the ability to see which books are on which devices
• May 17: Amazon revamps the Fire tablet line, adding Alexa
• May 18: Amazon introduces Amazon Charts
• June 7: Amazon updates Kindle Notes
• October 24: Amazon updates the Kindle app, adding more social sharing features

In 2017, qualifying customers also got another Apple settlement pay-out, and I appeared on Len Edgerly’s The Kindle Chronicles…with the interview being done in Virtual Reality.

This was definitely more of an evolutionary year for e-books than a revolutionary one…we’ll see what happens in 2018!

---

You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

---

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

The Year in E-Books 2016

The Year in E-Books 2016

Every year, I look both backward and forward. This is my annual post, looking at what happened this year. If you want to see the details, please see the ever-expanding ILMK E-Books Timeline. For posts in this series for previous years, see The Year in E-Books category. For a more numerical comparison between 2015 and previous years, I plan on doing my Annual Snapshot January 1st.

Well! This was a very different year than 2015!

I commented that 2015 wasn’t about hardware, but this year was really quite balanced between hardware and services and software for readers.

There were three significant EBR (E-Book Reader) introductions.

April saw the Kindle Oasis, a radical redesign to the morphology of the device, at a premium price. Part of that premium included that you could only purchase it with an animal-leather cover (which meant that some people, including me, wouldn’t buy it) which helped power it. It got some very good reviews. It was one of Oprah’s Favorite Things…Oprah had a big impact on making the original Kindle a success.

May gave us a special Kindle Paperwhite Blind and Visually Impaired Readers Bundle – Includes Kindle Paperwhite with Wi-Fi and Special Offers, Kindle Audio Adapter, and $19.99 Account Credit (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*), which returned a way to do text-to-speech (TTS) to a Kindle EBR.

In July, the least expensive Kindle got Bluetooth…allowing for TTS through an external speaker: All-New Kindle E-reader – Black, 6″ Glare-Free Touchscreen Display, Wi-Fi – Includes Special Offers (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

In terms of sales, those were likely eclipsed by Echo devices (which do read books to you, as of January of 2016) and Fire TV devices (which also have Alexa…and can also read to you), but certainly, that’s a good amount of EBR development.

Especially for Prime members, there was a lot going on in terms of content!

• May: Goodreads Deals (Goodreads is owned by Amazon) were introduced, announcements of e-books on sale (not just for the Kindle)
• July: Prime members got free www.amazon.com/singlesclassics (Single Classics) (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*), while others could pay for them
• September: Audible Channels come to Prime
• October: Prime members can now choose from (at time of writing) over 1,000 Kindle books to read for free Prime Reading (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
• November: Amazon Rapids, a text-style storytelling service, is introduced

Some other stories from 2016:

• I appeared on Len Edgerly’s The Kindle Chronicles twice, in February and October
• Amazon merged Shelfari into Goodreads
• The Supreme Court basically ended Apple’s e-book appeals…and some Kindle customers got money from the settlement
• Older Kindles had to be updated or they would lose wireless connection to Amazon
• Kindle EBR software got updated, giving us a new homescreen, and Page Flip was considerably upgraded
• Amazon continued community support, with Amazon Inspire for schools and the Kindle Reading Fund
• Kobo introduced the Aura One
• Changes were clearly coming to copyright, prompting a lot of statements from creators and distributors

Generally, this was a good year for Kindleers.

I think it’s clear that 2017 is going to be a year for change in a lot of fields…and I’ll make some guesses in my Year Ahead post about e-publishing, e-reading, and Amazon.

What do you think? Did I leave out anything big? Should I have talked more about how some bestsellers went up in price? What stood out to you about e-books in 2016? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard our new The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project! Join the TMCGTT Timeblazers!

When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the The Measured Circle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

The Year in E-Books 2015

The Year in E-Books 2015

Every year, I look both backward and forward. This is my annual post, looking at what happened this year. If you want to see the details, please see the ever-expanding ILMK E-Books Timeline. For posts in this series for previous years, see The Year in E-Books category. For a more numerical comparison between 2015 and previous years, I plan on doing my Annual Snapshot January 1st.

There was one obvious factor to this year: it wasn’t about the hardware, it was about content.

Amazon did introduce an updated version of the

All-New Kindle Paperwhite, 6″ High-Resolution Display (300 ppi) with Built-in Light, Wi-Fi – Includes Special Offers (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

on June 17th, but I think I can safely say it wasn’t a radical departure…more evolutionary than revolutionary.

When the big hardware announcements came on September 17th, there wasn’t a new model EBR (E-Book Reader) in the bunch. Yes, there were new tablets, and certainly many people (including me) do at least part of their reading on them. Eventually, Amazon would include a reading specific app on them…Word Runner, designed for speed reading. They also introduced a tablet billed as a “Reader’s Edition” on December 7th, but again, no new model of EBR.

Instead, innovation was really tied into Amazon producing or enabling the production of content:

• Kindle Textbook Creator is introduced
•  Kindle Convert (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*), which lets customers create personal e-book content by digitizing their books, is first released
• The Kindle Scout program lets readers advise Amazon about which books to publish…and the first winners come out this year…and the program expands internationally
• Write On by Kindle, a writers’ community, is officially launched

This is a year, then, when Amazon really went after the traditional publishers. All of the above programs help authors who decide not to go with the Big 5. Clearly, that’s a strategy. Amazon’s negotiation with tradpubs have not all gone smoothly, to say the least. I’m not saying they would want to stop carrying those books, but I think they would like to lower their dependence on them.

We’ve also seen Amazon whittling away at the big brick-and-mortar stores, although they already aren’t growing (independent bookstores are a different story). Amazon expanded

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

to Canada and Mexico, and that subser (subscription service) may really change things. Not only does it only work with e-books, it may considerably change discovery. People used to find books by walking into a bookstore (I’m a former manager of one) and browsing. If, though, people are looking through KU to find books to borrow, they’ll also see books to buy (particularly for other people). They might also read a KU book and decide to buy it for someone.

That has the potential to have a noticeable impact on the power of the brick-and-mortars.

Amazon also opened their first brick-and-mortar.

That doesn’t mean that they plan to open a bunch of them, but if it succeeds (or at least survives), that will have to have some folks sweating a bit.

I think it will survive: they don’t have to profitably sell books in the store itself (no easy feat). It it can serve as a showroom for the website (which is clearly at least one of the intents…if you don’t have a SmartPhone to scan a book to see the price (and to buy it at Amazon.com, if you want), a sales associate will help you with that.

So, this year was less about Amazon competing with Kobo or Barnes & Noble’s NOOK, but more about them engaging with Macmillan and Hachette (and to a lesser extent, the Barnes & Noble stores and Books-A-Million).

In other news, legal issues were less in the forefront, although the Apple case is still continuing and the Google case was upheld.

It was intriguing that previously unpublished older books, especially

Go Set a Watchman (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

did as well as they did.

That will certainly have publishers digging into the vaults and authors’ heir rummaging through attics and garages in the next few years.

In terms of next year specifically, I’ll be doing my The Year Ahead post soon.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things. 

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

The Year in E-Books 2014

The Year in E-Books 2014

Every year, I look both backward and forward. This is my annual post, looking at what happened this year. If you want to see the details, please see the ever-expanding ILMK E-Books Timeline. For posts in this series for previous years, see The Year in E-Books category. For a more numerical comparison between 2014 and previous years, I’ll be doing my Annual Snapshot tomorrow.

The Hachazon War

Unfortunately, the biggest e-book story of the year wasn’t about stories.

It was a dispute between Amazon, a retailer, and Hachette, a publisher. It clearly seemed to be about e-book pricing, and it took months before they came to an agreement.

During that time, I wrote more than ten posts relating to it:

Hachazon War category

Quite simply, I wasn’t happy with Amazon’s tactics. I can understand that their motive may have been to keep prices lower for their customers, but they took active steps to make it harder to get e-books.

This story did cross over into the mainstream. In part, that was because of famous authors stepping into the fray…books may get nowhere near the coverage that movies and TV do, but Stephen King still gets attention.

The story even made Entertainment Weekly’s “The Bullseye” feature. A Kindle was shown about as far off the mark as possible, with the line

“Amazon vs. Hachette: literally making it difficult to read since 2014”

I think this may have given Amazon its biggest public relations hit since they remove an unauthorized version of George Orwell’s 1984 from people’s Kindles in 2009.

While some authors publicly supported Amazon, and readers continued to buy, I think we may see continued efforts at damage control.

The Rise of the Subsers

Without a major hardware upgrade to Kindles/Fires and other EBRs (E-Book Readers) and tablets, I think the thing that will have the biggest impact on the future of how we read was the subsers (subscription services).

That’s where you pay a set amount (per month, per year) and gain access to books, rather than paying for them on a title by title basis.

Oyster, Scribd (the app became available on the Kindle Fire in February of 2014), and Entitle (which is more like a book club, where you own the books…Ellen Degeneres has promoted it) all may have increased their public profiles, but there may have been a bit of a Bambi Meets Godzilla moment when Amazon stepped in with

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

in July.

True, they didn’t have any of the Big Five publishers onboard, but they had a lot of good books and the selection has been growing.

Paying a set amount for access to hundreds of thousands of books is going to appeal to a lot of people…especially people who are in relationships (including legal guardians and children) where they are trying to support a serious reader. 🙂 Now that you can gift KU (that came late in the year), we’ll see it even more.

I think this is a significant enough development to affect publishing to some extent, and even how we read (shorter books may become the norm).

Some authors didn’t like, but others may find it to their advantage.

I don’t think a lot of people are going to pay for multiple services, although some will (just as they may have Netflix, Hulu, and use Prime video).

Amazon Tries the High End

When the Kindle was first introduced in 2007, it wasn’t cheap…it was $399, and there were less expensive EBRs (E-Book Readers) on the market.

Later on , though, and especially with the Kindle Fire, Amazon’s hardware tended to be less expensive than established competitors.

This year, Amazon introduced the

Kindle Voyage (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

which $199…one of the highest priced EBRs in the market. They actually raised the price of the lowest priced Kindle (while adding in a touchscreen), and the Fire Phone was introduced at $199 with a contract…not a budget price.

We have to see yet how that worked. The Fire Phone was clearly a liability when Amazon put out financials…but the Voyage seemed to be pretty well accepted, and I don’t think the extra $10 hurt the “Mindle Touch” (as I call it).

New Kindle/Fire Features/Services

• Gift cards can be applied to e-book purchases
• Bulk actions come to the Manage Your Kindle page
• #AmazonCart (get a Kindle book sample from a tweet)
• Find My Kindle feature added to some Fires
• Whispersync for Voice added to some reader apps
• Indie books published through Kindle Direct Publishing can be pre-ordered
• KDP Kids and Kindle Kids Book Creator
• Set a default device for Kindle e-book delivery
• Family Library (share books across accounts)
• Word Wise (in situ definitions of “difficult words”)
• Kindle book samples are stored in the Cloud

A number of these have been requested for years (Family Library, storing samples, Find My Kindle, default device), although the implementations may not be exactly as everyone wanted.

Apple Appeals

Apple is still fighting the decision against it in the case brought by the United States Department of Justice. Late in the year, it started to look like they might win on appeal, but we won’t find out until next at least 2015.

—

It feels to me a bit like we have moved out of the “frontier years”. Everybody recognizes now that the e-book market is a real thing…and that has pluses and minuses for readers.

On the plus side, lots of the backlist books are becoming available.

On the negative, there will be legal fights and more public disagreements.

Established companies will begin to solidify their positions, and there will be fewer opportunities for newcomers.

However, I also think the cat is out of the bag as far as new distribution methods, and the democratization of publishing. There will be more new authors finding readers…but they may be doing it through a finite number of primary channels.

Join over a thousand readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

The Year in E-Books 2013

The Year in E-Books 2013

I’m going to look at some of the big things that happened this year (so far…you never know what Amazon will do in the last days of the year). If you want to see the details, please see the ever-expanding ILMK E-Books Timeline. For posts in this series for previous years, see The Year in E-Books category. For a more numerical comparison between 2013 and previous years, I’ll be doing my Annual Snapshot in the next several days.

New programs from Amazon

This year has seen the biggest innovation not in hardware, or even in software, but in programs from Amazon.

While they are much more than that, you can think of them as ideas. It’s not even so much the implementation of them, but new ways of doing things.

• Kindle Matchbook (at AmazonSmile…benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*): people had been talking about something like this since the Kindle was first introduced. You can get a reduced price (sometimes free) e-book if you bought certain p-books (paperbooks) from Amazon. One major publisher (HarperCollins) was onboard at the beginning. Has it worked? Well, it launched with about 75,000 titles, and there are almost 100,000 titles now. My impression is that the concept was well-received by customers, although they may have been a bit disappointed as to how many titles were available to them…in a poll I conducted, almost 60% of respondents had 1 to 10 titles on their list. For more information, see Kindle Matchbook has launched!
• Kindle First (at AmazonSmile): Amazon Prime members can select one of a small set (it’s been four each month so far) of upcoming books…for free. This is yet another perk for Prime members. No way to judge the success of this, really, but why not? More information: Round up #217: Kindle Fire HDX giveaway, Kindle First
• Kindle Worlds (at AmazonSmile): I think Amazon has started doing what Disney was known for doing…looking around for what is working, and then stepping into that market…hard. In this case, the success was “fanfic” (fan fiction), although Amazon is doing it differently. They license the properties from the rightsholders, and then anybody can write works in it (following certain guidelines), and the author, the rightsholder, and Amazon all get cuts. The most popular title is in the top 20,000 at the Kindle store right now (top 1 percent, roughly), so this seems to be working. More information: Kindle Worlds: Amazon mainstreams fanfic
• Kindle Countdown Deals (at AmazonSmile): this is yet another way that Amazon gives us discounted books. These Kindle books go on sale for a limited time, and there is a countdown clock as to when they will go back up. There are about 2,500 titles in the program right now. This may be working: the most popular book in it right now is #218 paid in the Kindle store, and has nearly 900 reviews: More information: Kindle Countdown Deals
• AmazonSource: this program encourages bookstores and, importantly, other brick-and-mortar stores, to sell Kindles and Kindle books. I get the impression that there was a widespread enrollment, although I don’t know. More information: Amazon saves brick-and-mortars? AmazonSource
• AmazonSmile: this may be the biggest move for Amazon. They created a mirror site, where shopping is just like shopping at Amazon.com…except that you pick a non-profit, and half a percent of your purchase price of eligible items goes to support that charity. My guess is that we are going to hear some very positive news out of this within Q1 of 2014, especially from smaller, more obscure non-profits. More information: Smile.Amazon: support your favorite charity by shopping

Legal Actions: The Defeat of the Agency Model

There is a reason why there are lawyers who specialize in intellectual property. The publishing business is, well, a business…and legal actions are a part of that.

Macmillan became the last of the publishers to settle with the U.S. Department of Justice over the Agency Model’s use in raising e-book prices. Apple chose to fight on, and Judge Denise Cote eventually ruled against the technology giant. A separate action brought by states Attorneys general also prevailed, which will result in payments to e-book purchasers. There are still some loose ends to tie up, and Apple could appeal (and regardless, the Agency Model could return in the future), but this does feel like the end of an era.

Another important decision was made, arguably to the benefit of e-book readers, that Google’s scanning of p-books in libraries falls under Fair Use. It had taken years for that one finish, and it was good to see Judge Denny Chin make a ruling.

The shifting EBR (E-Book Reader) landscape

Sony, which had led the way with EBRs in the USA, quietly effectively withdrew from the market. Kobo, on the other hand, introduced the well-received Aura HD. Amazon updated the Paperwhite, and Barnes & Noble revamped the NOOK line…but the latter was a drag on the already vulnerable chain.

Tablets showed very strong growth, although I think support of non-backlit devices will continue at Amazon in 2014.

Update problems

There was a lot of buzz in the Kindle community about some updates that got a backlash. Cloud Collections were something people had wanted for a long time, but the way they were implemented on the Paperwhite seemed confusing and clunky to many. Similarly, an update to the new Kindle Fires apparently caused connectivity problems and freezing, at least for some. We look forward to solutions to these issues in the coming weeks.

Books about Jeff Bezos and Amazon were in the zeitgeist

Amazon CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Jeff Bezos has become much more visible, and that has led to more coverage.

Three of the big books were:

• The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (at AmazonSmile)
• Burning the Page
• The Battle of $9.99: How Apple, Amazon, and the Big Six Publishers Changed the E-Book Business Overnight (Kindle Single) (at AmazonSmile)

There was a bit of controversy when the first of those books got its first 1-star review…and it was from Mackenzie Bezos, Jeff Bezos’ Significant Other.

The success of these books, and the buzz they got outside the immediate Kindle community, suggested to me a generally higher awareness of the topic. I think Apple losing in court had something to do with it becoming of broader interest. That buzziness in turn probably contributed to all the coverage of Jeff Bezos announcing in an interview with Charlie Rose a possible “deliver by drone” program in a few years.

Those were some of my highlights for what was overall a very positive year. Feel free to share others, or your reactions to these, with me and my readers by commenting on this post.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

The Year in E-Books 2012

The Year in E-Books 2012

I’m going to look at some of the big things that happened this year (so far…you never know what Amazon will do in the last days of the year). If you want to see the details, please see the ever-expanding ILMK E-Books Timeline. For posts in this series for previous years, see The Year in E-Books category. For a more numerical comparison between 2012 and previous years, I’ll be doing my Annual Snapshot in the next several days.

Legal Actions

The US Department of Justice got settlements from four publishers (Hachette, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Penguin) in an Agency Model case this year (with one publisher, Macmillan, and Apple still fighting it). The  European Union’s European Commission got agreements. An action brought by the vast majority of US states was approved. The publishers spent so much money fighting the legal fights that it actually affected their quarterly reports. There will be more of this in 2013, and we should see the wrap up of the Agency Model in the USA (although class action suits might not be settled in 2013).

Library battles

There were a lot of news stories this year about publishers limiting the e-books that public libraries can license. It got pretty public and pretty ugly. There appears to me to be some weakening on the publishers’ side. I think this will continue to be a story, though. The very purpose of public libraries is now being debated: should they loan popular books to people who can afford them anyway? Should they focus on other functions? Is some sort of needs testing in the future? This will be a story still in 2013.

Amazon’s Global Expansion

Kindles and/or Kindle content expanded significantly in 2012. China got a store for Kindle e-books, Canada did, Brazil did, the Kindle Fire went international…this is only going to continue. When Britain’s Waterstones chose to go with Kindle, that was a blow for Barnes & Noble.

End of print editions

The Encyclopaedia Britannica and Newsweek both announced that they were going all digital. I expect we’ll see more of that in 2013.

Expanding availability

The Harry Potter books came to e-form, through a different sort of distribution model. Amazon acquired the Ian Fleming backlist of James Bond books. We continued to see more and more well-known backlist books make the jump. That will happen a lot more in 2013, partially due to an element of copyright law in the USA which will return rights to authors in some cases.

Team ups

Microsoft invested a ton of money in Barnes & Noble. Right at the end of the year, so did Pearson, the textbook publisher (although not nearly as much ,and just in the NOOK business…thanks to a reader for heads up in a private e-mail about that. Random House and Penguin have submitted merger plans to regulatory agencies. We may continue to see conglomeration in 2013, and people try to deal with Amazon’s size in the e-book world.

Hardware

Frontlit devices were one of the real stories. Barnes & Noble introduced the Glowlight in April, and Amazon followed with the Paperwhite in September. This suggested continued support for E Ink devices. There were conflicting analyses about whether E Ink was doomed or flourishing. Eventually, I think we’ll get devices which can switch back and forth (what I call “dualume”). My guess is that we’ll continue to see E Ink supported for the near future. Tablets, of course, were everywhere. Barnes & Noble and Amazon both introduced new models, and Apple did the mini. I think there’s quite a bit of room for the market to expand still, and yes, that will cannibalize some sales from reflective screen devices (like E Ink) in the next few years.

Game Changers?

Amazon introduced two new features which have the potential to really change the game, although they may not be there yet. One is Whispercast, which enables large groups of devices on the same account to be managed more easily. I think that’s got to expand, and could really give Amazon a leg up in the enterprise market. We need to have it come to personal accounts as well, though. The other one is Kindle Freetime Unlimited, and “all you can eat” subscription service for kids. Pay a monthly fee, get unlimited access to a curated selection. That’s just opening the door to what could be really interesting business models in the future.

There were a lot of other interesting stories, not the least of which was the success of Fifty Shades of Grey, which had started out as self-published fan fiction (fanfic). The fact that it went to a major publisher and was so successful suggests, as I’ve said before, a very different “farm system” for the tradpubs (traditional publishers). The rise of the indies, even if it means they get co-opted, is a large part of the future, especially if other traditional publishers merge. What do you think? Have I missed listing anything really important here? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

In the next few days, I’ll look ahead to 2013 in a separate post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

The Year in E-Books 2011

The Year in E-Books 2011

Once again, a remarkable year!

Eventually, this may all slow down, but we are definitely still in the Big Bang of E-Books.

I’m going to look at some of the big things that happened this year (so far…you never know what Amazon will do in the last days of the year). If you want to see the details, please see the ever-expanding ILMK E-Books Timeline. For posts in this series for previous years, see The Year in E-Books category.

Special Offers

April 11 saw the release of the first Kindle with Special Offers. In exchange for agreeing to see ads on the “screensavers” and a small ad on the homescreen, purchasers could get a Kindle at a discount. While initially greeted with some vehement skepticism, the ad-supported models proved to be more popular than their non-ad supported equivalents. Later on, Amazon will even give people who bought the more expensive version the ability to opt-in to receiving the ads and special offers.

Kindle Public Library Lending

Announced on April 20th as coming “this year”, borrowing books from the public library was enabled for Kindle users on September 21st. In November, there was a big buzz when the publisher Penguin has Overdrive disable the Kindle editions.  Some access was later restored.

Kindle World Expansion

Throughout the year, Amazon expands the Kindle to additional Amazon sites in more countries: Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. When the new low-cost Kindle was introduced, it gave users the choice of several languages for the menus. Amazon also opened Kindle Direct Publishing to these other countries.

Legal Challenges to the Agency Model

When the Agency Model came into play for e-books on April 1, 2010, some people thought that the idea of publishers setting the prices that consumers pay might be open to legal challenge. There have been investigations in the European Union, and class action lawsuits in the USA. Random House joined the other five largest US trade publishers in using the Agency Model in March of 2011.

Amazon Introduces the Cloud Reader

Following Google’s lead with web-e-books, Amazon introduced its Cloud Reader on August 10th. This let people read Kindle book through a browser, expanding their reach.  It launched for Safari and Chrome, and expanded to Firefox before the end of the year.

The Year of the Tablet…and the Touchscreen

On September 28, Amazon announced the new Kindle family. It kept the reflective screen, physical keyboard model, and introduced a touchscreen line. It also brought out an inexpensive, stripped down version. The big news, though, was the introduction of the Kindle Fire, a media tablet. Barnes & Noble and Kobo also introduce tablets (Barnes &  Noble already had the NOOKColor “Reader’s Tablet”, but they introduce a NOOK Tablet as well). Before the end of the year, Amazon will report having sold millions of Kindle Fires, as well as a million combined Kindle units a week for at least three weeks.

Equal Collection Legislation

States continued to pass so-called “Amazon laws”, designed to redefine what “doing business in a state” means in order to compel Amazon and other online retailers to collect sales tax at the time of sale. One particularly famous battle was in California (a temporary compromise was worked out in that state).  Paul Misener of Amazon testified before Congress in support of a national policy.

E-Book Market Continues to Expand…and with it, Independent Publishing

As sales of e-books continued to multiply (and mass market paperback sales retracted), independently published books rose on the bestseller lists. Two of Amazon’s top ten best-selling books of the year (combining e-book and physical book sales) were independently published. Some indie authors joined the Kindle Million Club, having at least a million sales of their titles at Amazon. In a related development, Amazon expanded its own publishing. Kindle Singles became bestsellers, and Amazon introduced new imprints, including one for science fiction/fantasy/horror.

A Special In Memoriam: Michael S. Hart

The mainstream media (and the specialty media) rightfully focused on the loss of Steve Jobs, a true innovator who affected the way we read e-books. Less covered was the loss on September 6, 2011, of Michael S. Hart, who was essentially the inventor of e-books. Hart’s organization, Project Gutenberg, utilized volunteers to digitize some of the world’s great (public domain) literature…and make it available to anyone for free.

Those are what I consider the top stories. In a later post, I’ll make my predictions for 2012…and look back at my predictions for 2011.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

The Year in E-Books 2010

The Year in E-Books 2010

The e-book world is still moving incredibly quickly.  As I look back over the events of 2010, I’m amazed at how much things have changed.  There are changes (at least one we know about…lending of Kindle books) still to come before January 1, and I’ll update this later.

Where were we on December 31st of 2009?

The Kindle 2 International has been released, but the Kindle DX is only available with US wireless.  The NOOK has been out for about a month.

Apple hasn’t entered the game yet (although there are rumors of an iTablet or iSlate).  Amazon is still able to discount e-books, even from all of the major pubishers in the US.

There are about 400,000 titles available in the Kindle store.

What happened in 2010?

I’m going to list some of the most significant events below.  For more detail, see

The ILMK E-Books Timeline

• January 6: The Kindle DX International is announced
• January 11: The National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind announce a settlement in a lawsuit against Arizona State University, severely hampering Amazon’s attempts to get the DX accepted by colleges for textbook use
• January 27: Apple announces the iPad
• January 28: Amazon announces that for every 10 paperbooks sold, six Kindle books are sold (when books are available in both formats)
• January 29: Amazon stop selliing all Macmillan books in a dispute over pricing and release dates
• February: Beta of Kindle Development Kit ships, to enable a Kindle apps store later
• February 17: Kindle for Blackberry app is released
• February 18: rescheduled Google settlement fairness hearing…no decision is announced by the judge
• February 22: Spring Design’s Alex EBR (E-Book Reader) is released
• March 17: Kindle for Mac is released
• April 1: the Agency Model goes into effect for some major publishers, ending e-book discounting by retailers for many titles
• April 3: Apple wifi iPads begin shipping
• April 25: Kindle begin selling in the first brick-and-mortar stores (Target)
• June 14: Update 2.5 for the Kindle is available for manual download.  It enables Collections, social network updates, and more 
• June 17: Borders begins selling the Kobo EBR
• June 21: Barnes & Noble lowers the original NOOK price $60 and releases the wifi only model for $149
• June 21: Following the NOOK price drop, Amazon lowers the 6″ Kindle to $189
• June 27: Amazon releases free reader apps for the iPad, iPhone, and iPad touch
• June 30: Amazon launches a new 70% royalty option for publishers using its Digital Text Platform
• July 7: the Kindle DX Graphite (with new screen technology) begins shipping
• July 7: Borders opens its eBookstore
• July 19: Amazon ann0unces that Kindle books outsold hardbacks at Amazon.com
• July 22: Amazon announces exclusive Kindle deal for some A-list backlist titles, including Lolita, The Naked and the Dead, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Portnoy’s Complaint, and John Updike’s Rabbit series
• August 3: Amazon releases Every Word and Shuffled Row, the first active content games for the Kindle
• August 5: the Kindle UK store opens
• August 25: the Kindle 3s start shipping
• September 8: Amazon does an early releases of software update 3.03 for Kindle 3s
• October 25: Amazon announces that Kindle books outsold hardbacks and paperbacks combined on the top 1000 books…2 to 1 on the top ten
• November 16: the NOOKcolor “reader’s tablet” is released
• November 18: Barnes & Noble announces NOOKbooks en español
• November 19: Amazon enables the gifting of Kindle books
• November 22: Amazon has its biggest sales day for Kindles to date
• November 26, 2010: Amazon sells thousands of new Kindle 2s for $89 apparently in under five minutes in a Black Friday deal
• December 6, 2010: Google opens it ebookstore
• December 30, 2010: Amazon enables Kindle book lending

So, in one year, we went from three major EBRs to many, including backlit models.  The number of titles in the Kindle store came close to doubling

Does that seem like a lot of changes?  Compare it to The Year in E-Books I did for 2009 in this earlier post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.