Digital Media News for the Week Beginning 03/31/2013

IS IT A BOOK OR AN APP? DIGITAL PUBLISHING COMBINES THE TWO IN A NEW MEDIUM
Last year we invested in a start-up digital publisher called Open Air Publishing. The company focuses on creating how-to books for tablets. Two weeks ago they released their latest title, a high end digital parenting book that caters to mothers and… [read more]
Source: Forbes

HTML5 APPS ABOUT TO ENJOY “ENLIGHTENED COEXISTENCE” WITH NATIVE
What do you mean it’s April already and people only do this kind of thing in January, it’s still snowing in most of Northern Europe isn’t it? IDC’s Hilwa suggests that there will be a new “enlightened coexistence” between web and native device… [read more]
Source: ComputerWeekly.com (blog)

AMAZON TO LAUNCH COVER CREATING TOOL FOR SELF-PUBLISHED E-BOOKS, KDP COVER CREATOR
Amazon is developing a cover creation tool for its Kindle Direct Publishing self-publishing platform, dubbed KDP Cover Creator. The tool is currently being tested by a limited number of KDP authors but the company expects to roll it out to all its KDP… [read more]
Source: Digital Book World

WHAT’S UP AT PUBIT!?
Barnes & Noble has created a stir in the self-publishing community with the e-mail it sent yesterday to publishers and others who have used PubIt!, alerting them to “stay tuned for an upcoming announcement on our next chapter in self-publishing… [read more]
Source: Publishers Weekly

Digital Media News for the Week Beginning 03/17/2013

EFF BLASTS PLANS TO BUILD DRM INTO HTML5
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has weighed in on the growing controversy over the proposal to build DRM into HTML5, the next version of the standard language for building Web pages and applications… [read more]
Source: Boing Boing

ATAVIST CO-FOUNDER EVAN RATLIFF ON DIGITAL CONTENT MODELS
The Atavist, founded by Evan Ratliff, Jefferson Rabb and Nicholas Thompson, was launched in early 2011 to tap the burgeoning long-form digital content… [read more]
Source: Folio Magazine

HTML5’S OVERSEER SAYS DRM’S TRUE PURPOSE IS TO PREVENT LEGAL FORMS OF INNOVATION
Ian Hickson, the googler who is overseeing the HTML5 standard at the W3C, has written a surprisingly frank piece on the role of DRM. As he spells out in detail, the point of DRM isn’t to stop illegal copying, it’s to stop legal forms of innovation from… [read more]
Source: Boing Boing

AMAZON’S ‘SEND TO KINDLE’ BUTTON TAKES AIM AT READ-IT-LATER SERVICES
Now Amazon is entering the read-that-really-long-story-later market with a Send to Kindle button that will push content directly to Kindles and devices with the Kindle app. The button has already launched on Boing Boing, Time and The Washington Post… [read more]
Source: Wired

AMAZON WHISPERCAST FOR KINDLE NOW LETS ORGANIZATIONS MANAGE MASS APP
When Amazon introduced its Kindle Whispercast service back in October, it did so with the promise that ‘”bulk app distribution” would be coming soon for Fire tablets. Fast forward to today and that feature is now live, giving organizations the ability… [read more]
Source: Engadget

Podcast: Up to Speed in Digital Media News with Quinn & TJ for 09/22/2012

Digital Media News for the Week Beginning 09/02/2012

AMAZON KINDLE FIRE HD 8.9″ VS. APPLE IPAD: SPECS COMPARED
Amazon made a huge splash with the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD, a high-definition tablet computer priced aggressively against the iPad. In doing so, Amazon has just made it very clear it’s playing to win, and not just be a cheaper alternative to Apple… [read more]
Source: PC Magazine

HERE’S THE BIG EDGE AMAZON HAS OVER GOOGLE IN TABLETS
Amazon’s app store works on both its Kindle Fire tablets, which run a customized version of Android, and non-Amazon Android devices. In fact, it customizes itself to users’ smartphones or tablets so they only see apps that work well on those devices… [read more]
Source: Business Insider

THE CRUEL PARADOX OF SELF-PUBLISHING
A thorough assessment of self-publishing by Alan Finder in the New York Times recently observed these benefits: “Digital publishing and print on demand have significantly reduced the cost of producing a book. Writers who self-publish are more… [read more]
Source: The Atlantic

Digital Media News for the Week Beginning 08/19/2012

A PRETTY GOOD SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF E-BOOK LENDING (OR AT LEAST I THINK SO)
That quirk of human psychology helps explain why today, five years after the launch of the Amazon Kindle and three years after the introduction of Apple’s iPad, there’s still no satisfactory way to lend and borrow e-books. Nobody much likes the current… [read more]
Source: Forbes

NEW BESTSELLER LIST GIVES MORE ACCURATE DATA
Success stories of indie authors and self-published authors making the major bestseller lists are becoming more and more commonplace, especially in this climate of digital reading and an appreciation for the DIY authors… [read more]
Source: Good E-Reader (blog)

BIG PUBLISHERS, HIGH PRICES DOMINATE E-BOOK BEST-SELLERS
Think consumers have a problem with higher priced e-books? Think again. According to our new e-book best-seller list, most of the e-books that are bought each week are priced near or above $10 and the vast majority of them are published by “big six” publishers… [read more]
Source: Forbes

Digital Media News for the Week Beginning 08/12/2012

GETTING LEFT BEHIND IN THE E-BOOK REVOLUTION
That’s what publishers of illustrated books may be feeling right now as they watch traditional immersive reading publishers (you know: fiction, non-fiction, mostly text) fill their coffers with e-book and digital publishing revenues… [read more]
Source: Forbes

AMAZON ‘SEND TO KINDLE’ OPTION HITS GOOGLE CHROME
“Send to Kindle for Google Chrome” adds a Send to Kindle button to users’ Google Chrome browsers, explains Amazon community manager Kevin Goddard in a Kindle forum post. The button sends text published on the Web to the user’s Kindle device and… [read more]
Source: InformationWeek

MOVE OVER KINDLE, BEBOOK PURE – THE WORLD’S THINNEST E-READER IS HERE
Its closest competitor (in terms of thickness) is Amazon’s 8.5mm thick Kindle Keyboard, which weighs 247g. Pure is encased in a rubber shell and runs on a 600MHz processor and packs in 4GB of memory… [read more]
Source: Mobile & Apps

Digital Media News for the Week Beginning 08/05/2012

ENGADGET’S BACK TO SCHOOL GUIDE 2012: E-READERS
Barnes & Noble didn’t change much with the latest version of its Nook e-reader — and really, with the previous version of the device having nabbed the top spot on this list last year, there’s not really a heck of a lot that needed changing… [read more]
Source: Engadget

THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS – SOLAR POWERED E-READERS
e-Readers such as the Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook are famous for lasting months on a single battery charge. One of the draws of e-ink displays is that the power requirements are amazing because the screen does not automatically refresh… [read more]
Source: Good E-Reader (blog)

SMASHWORDS ADDS PRICING & LIBRARY FEATURES
Self-publishing platform Smashwords has a new update which includes a new pricing and library feature. The “Pricing Manager” feature lets authors and publishers set the retail price of their books within the dashboard of Smashwords… [read more]
Source: mediabistro.com

Digital Media News for the Week Beginning 07/29/2012

FOUR SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHORS ON NEW YORK TIMES E-BOOK BESTSELLER LIST
Four self-published authors will have a total of seven novels on the New York Times ebook bestseller list this weekend, and the founder of self-publishing powerhouse Smashwords is predicting the number is only going to grow… [read more]
Source: The Guardian

DIGITAL STARTUPS NEED LEARN A THING OR TWO FROM THE CORNER RECORD STORE
With the rise of digital distribution, the means of production and publishing are available to all — and everyone, everywhere, wants to be an artist. 81% of Americans believe that they have a book in them… [read more]
Source: Huffington Post

WHY APPLE, GOOGLE CAN LEARN FROM AMAZON’S DIGITAL STRATEGY
Amazon.com is trying to get its digital music and video on as many gadgets as possible as the world’s largest Internet retailer replicates a strategy that paid off for its Kindle e-book business… [read more]
Source: Firstpost

Podcast: Up to Speed in Digital Media News with Quinn & TJ for 07/27/2012

Digital Media News for the Week Beginning 07/27/2012

BARNES & NOBLE AND FASTPENCIL ANNOUNCE AGREEMENT
FastPencil and Barnes & Noble have announced a deal that will see FastPencil’s titles carried in Barnes & Noble bookstores as well as in Nook bookshelf merchandising. As part of the deal… [read more]
Source: Publishers Weekly

AMAZON AND THE PROBLEM WITH PLAGIARISM
Publishing houses may worry about DRM, but there’s a far more problematic issue plaguing the writers of ebooks… [read more]
Source: CNET Australia

SMASHWORDS FOUNDER CRITICIZES AUTHOR SOLUTIONS ACQUISITION
Mark Coker, founder of self-publishing platform Smashwords, criticized Pearson’s acquisition of self-publishing company Author Solutions in a recent post… [read more]
Source: mediabistro.com