July 30, 2014

Librarians, Media React to Launch of Kindle Unlimited

Kindle Unlimited

In a long-expected move, Amazon on July 18 announced the launch of Kindle Unlimited, a new subscription service that will give users unlimited access to a selection of 600,000 ebooks and more than 2,000 audiobooks on Amazon Kindle devices and any device with a Kindle app for $9.99 per month. The online retailer’s financial resources, marketing clout, and massive base of Kindle users alter the competitive landscape for all providers of ebooks, including libraries.

Library Vendors Make Business Case to Publishers | BEA 2014

"The Untapped Retail Channel: Public Libraries” panel on Friday, May 30 at the 2014 BookExpo America (BEA) conference in New York

When ebooks or other digital materials are not readily available in libraries, publishers “are missing a key conduit to a market that [they] can’t tap any other way,” Rebecca T. Miller, editorial director for Library Journal and School Library Journal, stated in her opening remarks for the “The Untapped Retail Channel: Public Libraries” panel on Friday, May 30 at the 2014 BookExpo America (BEA) conference in New York. Leaders from top library ebook and streaming media companies weighed in on this issue during an hour-long discussion.

Smashwords and OverDrive Ink Distribution Agreement

Smashwords Logo

Smashwords, the world’s largest distributor of self-published ebooks, on May 20 announced a new partnership with OverDrive that will make more than 200,000 ebooks from 80,000 self-published authors and independent presses available to libraries and their patrons via the OverDrive platform. All titles will be sold as perpetual, non-expiring licenses with no loan caps, and will be made available to patrons under a one ebook, one user model.

Total Boox to Offer Free Ebook Access During National Library Week

Total Boox logo

In recognition of National Library Week, Total Boox, the “pay-as-you-read” metered ebook platform, will make its entire collection of more than 20,000 titles free to read from April 13 through April 20. The week-long promotion will allow anyone with an Android, Apple iOS, or Kindle Fire tablet to download the free Total Boox ereader app at www.totalboox.com/freereading and access fiction and nonfiction ebooks.

“Buy-to-Unglue” Ebook Crowdfunding Model Goes Beta

Unglue.it logo

Unglue.it, the crowdfunding platform developed to encourage publishers to make ebooks DRM-free and open access under a Creative Commons license, in January launched a beta test of “Buy to Unglue,” a new crowdfunding model that will offer ebook licenses in exchange for donations.

EBSCO Acquires Altmetrics Provider Plum Analytics

EBSCO acquires Plum Analytics

EBSCO Information Services today announced the acquisition of Plum Analytics, the developer of PlumX, a tool that gives researchers and institutions a more complete view of the impact of their publications by harvesting and aggregating alternative metrics (altmetrics) data in five major categories: usage, captures, mentions, social media, and citations. Plum will continue to offer the same services, with the same management team, operating as a wholly-owned subsidiary of EBSCO.

Unlatched or Unglued, It’s All Good

ku

I and others on The Digital Shift have written about the efforts of Unglue.it to “unglue” books and make them openly available. The basic model is taken from crowdsourcing funding efforts. People pledge what they can, and if enough pledges are gathered before the time runs out the book is “unglued” and made openly available […]

Beall’s Bile

Jeffrey Beall has been on my radar for quite some time. Partly due to comments he has posted on blog posts of mine, but more importantly this piece that he wrote as a contribution to Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front. I’m into criticism as much as the next person, but character assassination? Really? K. R. Roberto […]

Curriculet—Formerly Gobstopper—Partners with HarperCollins on Enriched Ebooks for Schools

Curriculet pic1

Curriculet (formerly Gobstopper), a digital reading platform designed for teachers and stocked with interactive educational and social media features, has teamed up with HarperCollins to offer a flexible book buying program for schools.

Department of Commerce Seeks Input on Digital First Sale

U.S. Department of Commerce seal

In advance of a public meeting scheduled for December 12 in Washington D.C., the U.S. Department of Commerce is seeking public comment from all interested stakeholders on the issue of first sale doctrine and digital files, including ebooks. Comments are due on or before November 13.
http://www.thedigitalshift.com/category/publishing/
www.thedigitalshift.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-23
77279
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:65WPILDXYEPV2KPDBJEX4NSDJBRMIWY2
<urn:uuid:c4baa2ee-7480-49d8-ac2a-686157672aa8>
2014-07-31T03:22:14Z
216.70.86.237
sha1:GUFLABUYAAZDUNYTUVAZDHLZDHNDLXH7
<urn:uuid:27b3b4d5-d297-4474-81f2-ba8a0dfe3621>
http://www.thedigitalshift.com/category/publishing/
length
response
<urn:uuid:822b11ca-f4c4-42b9-a059-eb248c42c093>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-23
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for July 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf