The company that bought retail portal Buy.com in 2010 and eBook company Kobo in 2011Â is expanding again. Rakuten has announced plans to buy OverDrive for $410 million. OverDrive is an eBook and audiobook distributor that makes digital media available to library patrons, school students, and others. You can use the OverDrive system to borrow or […]
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Are eBooks goods or services? An EU Court thinks they’re services
When you buy an eBook you might think you’re spending money on pretty much the same thing you’d get if you bought a paperback book: thousands of words composed by an author to tell a story, make an argument, or otherwise put ideas into words, paragraphs, and maybe even chapters. Sure, an eBook isn’t a […]
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How to borrow library books on your iOS, Android, or Kindle device using OverDrive
The ebooks market is huge. There are dozens of services for purchasing books to read on your tablet or smartphone. There are also ways to read ebooks for free, legitimately. Just like borrowing a physical book from the library, you can check out ebooks right on your Android, iOS, or Kindle device. OverDrive is one […]
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Amazon Kindle Convert lets you turn books into eBooks (slowly)
Amazon is in the business of selling books printed on paper and eBooks that you can read on a Kindle. Now the company’s also offering a new tool that you can use to convert your physical books into eBooks. Kindle Convert is a Windows application that lets you take scans of your books and convert […]
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B&N Sync Up lets paperback buyers get cheap eBook versions
Barnes & Noble and NOOK Media have launched a new program called Sync Up that lets you get a big discount on select eBooks when you purchase a paperback copy of the same title. It’s kind of the B&N version of the Amazon Kindle MatchBook program that launched last year… but there are a few key […]
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Google Play Books update makes skimming, reading non-fiction easier
One of the key difference between reading eBooks and reading paper books is that it’s easier to skim, skip around, or flip pages on a physical book. Need to jump back a few pages to double check something, or want to sort of create a temporary bookmark with your finger while you read ahead? No […]
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Kobo stops making tablets, shifts focus to eReaders and apps
Digital bookseller Kobo currently offers a line of eReaders and a line of Android tablets. But moving forward, Kobo president Michael Tamblyn tells The Bookseller that the company plans to focus on eReaders and apps that can run on tablets from other companies. Kobo doesn’t currently plan to continue developing its own tablets. The move makes […]
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Reports: Sony getting out of the eReader business
Sony was one of the early players in the eReader space. The first Sony Reader products offered a way to read digital books on a portable device with an E Ink screen and long battery life several years before Amazon launched the first Kindle. But last year Sony decided not to offer its latest eReader […]
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HarperCollins, BitLit offer cheap eBooks of print books you already own
Have a copy of Neil Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, but don’t want to haul a 900 page book around with you? Publisher HarperCollins now lets you buy an eBook edition for just a few bucks if you can prove that you already own a print copy of the book. It’s part of a pilot program that has […]
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Amazon Kindle Unlimited is a Netflix-for-eBooks subscription services
Amazon appears to prepping the launch of a new subscription-based eBook service called Kindle Unlimited. For $9.99 per month, subscribers would get access to a library of 600,000 eBooks and thousand of audiobooks. Update: Kindle Unlimited is now live. The company already has a Kindle Owners’ Lending Library which lets customers with a Kindle eReader […]
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Barnes & Noble to spin off NOOK division as a separate company
Barnes & Noble plans to split into two companies by early 2015. The company has announced plans to spin off its NOOK digital book division as a standalone company while Barnes & Noble will remain as a bricks and mortar book store chain. The decision follows a rocky couple of years for B&N. While the […]
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Oyster’s Netflix-for-eBooks app now available for Android
Oyster is a subscription-based eBook service that lets you read all the eBooks you’d like for $10 per month. while that might not be a great value for casual, occasional readers, folks who buy a lot of books can save a lot of money with this sort of Netflix-for-eBooks type of service. Up until recently […]