e-books

Stories 1 - 20 |  Next >>

Reading in Print Sinks in Better
Reading in Print
Sinks in Better
NEW STUDY

Reading in Print Sinks in Better

Comprehension of reading materials is 6-8 times greater in print, study finds

(Newser) - You might be better off printing these next few paragraphs before you read them. A new meta study out of the University of Valencia found that reading for fun on screens yields far less comprehension than when it's on the printed page, the Guardian reports. This is because our...

Amazon's e-Book Returns Leave Authors in the Red

Authors say 'life hack' feels more like theft

(Newser) - Readers increasingly are using Amazon as a library for e-books, a practice that authors want to put a stop to. It's made possible by Amazon's return policy, which gives buyers seven days to cancel an accidental purchase, NPR reports. So people are reading the book in less than...

Are You the Heir of This Mystery Crime Author?

Publisher saving royalties for Clifton Robbins' relatives

(Newser) - If only the detective from Clifton Robbins' crime novels could hop off the page and give his new publisher a hand. Scott Pack of Canelo imprint Abandoned Bookshop has been searching high and low for Robbins' relatives after discovering the novelist's 80-year-old works and deciding to publish two as...

'Netflix for Books' Calls It Quits
'Netflix for Books'
Calls It Quits

'Netflix for Books' Calls It Quits

Oyster team is joining Google instead

(Newser) - A service billed as a Netflix for books is calling it quits after failing to attract enough voracious readers willing to pay $9.95 a month for access to 1 million books. Oyster, which launched in 2013, announced in a blog post that it's going to "sunset" the...

Publishers Can Win Amazon War by Selling Their Books

Publishing industry has long been held hostage by booksellers: Michael Wolff

(Newser) - Amazon is locked in a death struggle with book publishers—particularly Hachette , which is openly throwing down against the online behemoth. And "while Amazon may be the worst thing to have ever hit the book business," writes Michael Wolff at USA Today , dealing with the predominant booksellers (Barnes...

Shooting Up the Sales Chart: Mein Kampf?

Writer thinks online anonymity, curiosity, driving Hitler's e-book sales

(Newser) - If you look at the politics and current events section on iTunes' book store you will, as of this writing, see Hitler's face staring back at you out of the 3 and 4 spots. Mein Kampf has been a nothing short of an e-book blockbuster, on both iTunes and...

Didn't Finish That E-Book? Your Digital Librarian Knows

New subscription services track data, feed it back to publishers

(Newser) - If you happened to pick up Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s The Cycles of American History in e-book form and read it in full, congratulations. You are among the 1% who made it all the way through, at least according to the digital library startup Oyster. That's one...

E-Book Boom Fizzles
 E-Book Boom Fizzles 

E-Book Boom Fizzles

Sales growth bottoms out after years of huge increases

(Newser) - The e-book boom looks to be finished, writes Nicholas Carr at the Rough Type blog. He picks up on stats from the Association of American Publishers that show just a 5% increase in sales in the first quarter of 2013 compared to the previous year. That's "anemic,"...

Barnes & Noble CEO Steps Down

William Lynch faced big Nook losses

(Newser) - Shortly after news of big losses for Barnes & Noble's Nook, the company's CEO is exiting. William Lynch, named CEO in early 2010, had made the firm's digital business paramount, the Wall Street Journal notes, working on an array of Nook gadgets. Now, however, Barnes & Noble...

Why Amazon's Kindle Will Someday Be Free

Ultimately, the company wants to make money off content: Farhad Manjoo

(Newser) - Farhad Manjoo admits that his "record on predictions about Amazon is mixed at best," but he's pretty certain about this one: Sooner or later, the company will start offering its Kindle e-reader for free, he writes on Slate . Even though Amazon currently loses money on each Kindle...

Amazon: Hunger Games Has Out-Sold Harry Potter

Growth in digital books helped fuel that

(Newser) - Move over Harry; these days, readers demand Katniss. The Hunger Games trilogy has now outsold the entire Harry Potter series on Amazon, the company announced today. "Interestingly, this series is only three books versus Harry Potter's seven," Amazon's editorial director tells the Wall Street Journal . "...

Kids' E-Books Squashing the Real Thing

UK survey finds almost half of parents read to kids via e-reader

(Newser) - Kids aren't exactly picking a book off the shelf before snuggling under the covers these days. SmartMoney reports on the trend by way of the UK, where a survey found that almost a full half of parents say they now read to their kids via e-reader or tablet (or...

100 Early Caravaggio Artworks Discovered

Will appear in ebook tomorrow

(Newser) - Art lovers around the world are in for a treat tomorrow: For the first time ever, they'll get to see 100 newly discovered paintings and sketches by a young Caravaggio, the great Renaissance painter. The works, estimated to be worth nearly $900 million, will appear in a 600-page Amazon...

DOJ Should Have Gone After Amazon, Not Apple
DOJ Should Have Gone
After Amazon, Not Apple
OPINION

DOJ Should Have Gone After Amazon, Not Apple

Price-fixing lawsuit focuses on wrong targets: David Carr

(Newser) - When the Justice Department decided to take on "the monopolistic monolith that threatened to dominate the book industry," it chose the wrong targets —five large publishers plus minor e-book player Apple—while ignoring the all-powerful Amazon, writes a dumbfounded David Carr in the New York Times . "...

Feds May Smack Apple With Ebook Suit Today
Feds Sue Apple Over
E-book Price Fixing
UPDATED

Feds Sue Apple Over E-book Price Fixing

Allege Apple deal with publishers drove up prices

(Newser) - The Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five of the US' biggest book publishers over allegations that they conspired to fix the price of e-books ahead of the iPad's launch, the Wall Street Journal reports. The conspiracy allegedly aimed to drive up prices, which had...

Unpublished Vonnegut Novella Goes to Kindle

'Basic Training' is a long-forgotten work by late author

(Newser) - A treat for fans of the late Kurt Vonnegut: When he was working in the PR department of GE in the 1940s, Vonnegut tried to pitch a novella called Basic Training to two of the big magazines of the day. The Saturday Evening Post and McCalls passed on it. The...

Harry Potter E-Books Debut
 Harry Potter E-Books Debut 

Harry Potter E-Books Debut

For sale on Pottermore website

(Newser) - Finally, e-reader users can be reunited with Harry Potter. For the first time, e-books of the entire series went on sale today on the Pottermore website, with the first three books costing $7.99 apiece and the last four $9.99 each. The books are compatible with most e-readers, but...

8 Famous Books Still Only on Paper

Including 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Catcher in the Rye'

(Newser) - The e-book market has spiked from 0.6% in 2008 to 6.4% in 2010, or $878 million in sales, yet you still won't be able to find certain hugely popular books in the new format. The Street rounded up a list of eight classics that can be found...

PayPal Tells Publishers to Pull 'Obscene' E-Books

Remove controversial titles or else, booksellers told

(Newser) - PayPal is overstepping the bounds of its role as a payment processor by trying to ban e-books it deems obscene, publishers and free speech groups complain. At least three online publishers and booksellers received emails warning them that their accounts will be "limited" unless they pull titles "containing...

Amazon Yanks 5K E-Books in Contract Dispute

Publishers group says it was strong-armed to accept new terms

(Newser) - Amazon is playing hardball with a book distributor that refused to give it a bigger share of the pie. The company's Kindle store yanked some 5,000 e-books after Independent Publishers Group, which represents hundreds of independent publishers, refused the online giant's demands. "They decided they didn'...

Stories 1 - 20 |  Next >>