ebook

The Association of American Publishers released some numbers today that put eBooks at the #1 spot for sales in all publishing categories. From the release:

According to the February results, once again e-Books have enjoyed triple-digit percentage growth, 202.3%, vs February 2010. Downloaded Audiobooks, which have also seen consistent monthly gains, increased 36.7% vs last February.

For February 2011, e-Books ranked as the #1 format among all categories of Trade publishing (Adult Hardcover, Adult Paperback, Adult Mass Market, Children’s/Young Adult Hardcover, Children’s/Young Adult Paperback).

And my favorite bit:

For the year to date (January/February 2011 vs January/February 2010), which encompasses this heavy post-holiday buying period, e-Books grew 169.4% to $164.1M while the combined categories of print books fell 24.8% to $441.7M.*

eBooks are still not the majority of book sales…but with numbers like this, it certainly won't be long.

Engadget is reporting that Barnes and Noble’s Nook 3G is running short on supply, and that bulk orders of the device are being turned down. This almost certainly means that the device is on its way out, perhaps for an updated version. Keep an eye out as B&N sells through their existing supply for an announcement of a new Nook. If you or your library is in the market for them, but not in a hurry…you might want to wait a few weeks before you jump in.

Amazon announced today via Facebook and Twitter that one of their Black Friday deals was going to be blowing out their inventory of the Kindle 2 (the last generation of Kindle) for $89. These are new units, not refurbs, and include 3G access with the device.

This deal is going to get pounded, and who knows how many they have left in stock. If you want to try and grab one, the deal starts 11/26 at 9 am PST.

Take a look at design firm IDEO ‘s examination of the Future of the Book….fascinating! Which would you rather have: Nelson, Coupland, or Alice?

Apple pushed out an update today for the iWork 9 suite that patches a lot of issues within each of the apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote). But the big news as far as I’m concerned is that Apple added native ePub support into Pages, which means that you can use it to prepare eBooks for publication. Up until now, the only real option for full layout control over ePub was Adobe InDesign… . Pages support will make it that much easier to get your work into ePub, and onto your iPad, Nook, or Sony Reader!

And today, on the heels of the formal announcement of the $150 wifi Nook, and the price drop to $200 for the 3G Nook, Amazon fired a shot across the bow by dropping the price of their Kindle dramatically…all the way to $189. Just yesterday the Kindle was $269!

Both the Nook and Kindle are definitely leaders in this eInk-based eReader space, and for libraries the $150 Nook is especially promising, given that it works with the Overdrive ebook platform. But these price drops just signify what I’ve been saying for a few months now: eInk based devices like these are going to be in a race to the bottom as far as pricing goes for the foreseeable future. Expect these to continue to get cheaper…it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see another small price drop for the holiday season.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google will launch Google Editions in late June or early July, an ebook store that would allow users to purchase ebooks that they find through Google Book Search. No word on the details (format of books, DRM, etc) but given that Gizmodo is reporting that the service could launch with as many as 400,000 to 600,000 titles, it would immediately be a huge force in ebook publishing.

I’ll report on more details as they emerge. As with all ebooks, the devil is in the details of the licensing and DRM. We’ll see what Google has been able to negotiate from the publishers.

More details emerged about Apple’s upcoming iBook app just a few days ago when the iPad preorders began. Two things were confirmed that will be of interested to libraries and librarians, I think.

The first is that Apple finally confirmed that you will be able to load non-DRM ePub books onto the iPad via iTunes syncing, in addition to being able to purchase DRM titles directly from Apple. This is great news for anyone who likes reading the classics, as sites like Feedbooks already have nearly all their titles up in Non-DRM ePub format. It’s also good news for booksellers who deal in non-DRM titles, as they will be compatible with Apple’s new “magical” device.

The second, and for my money, more interesting bit of info is that it looks like Apple is defaulting to allowing text-to-speech functionality, the same thing that got the Amazon Kindle into trouble with the Author’s Guild. According to the page linked above:

iBooks works with VoiceOver, the screen reader in iPad, so it can read you the contents of any page.

If I’m parsing this tiny bit of information properly, that sounds like iBook hooks into an OS level text-to-speech convertor, which means that the iPad may be a very capable device for the visually impared. I will be very, very interested to see whether the Apple VoiceOver technology is controlable at the individual book level, and whether publishers can choose to disable it for given books as they do for the Amazon Kindle.