TweetReaders are voting with their wallets: The eBook is winning. In the US, eBooks sales are now topping hardcovers for the first time (story in TechCrunch). Not everywhere of course. According to the Bowker Global eBook Research, the global market for eBooks is driven — in that order — by India, Australia, the UK and [...]
Tweet(Last of a series — for a while.) Launching an antitrust probe against books publishers, as the US Department of Justice might do, can’t come at a weirdest time. In the two previous Monday Notes, we explained how Amazon is maneuvering itself into a position to dominate the entire book industry. The Seattle giant keeps [...]
Tweet(Second of a series) Last week, we looked at the ebook’s Giant Disruption. A new ecosystem in which Amazon eats publishers’ and agents’ lunch by luring authors into self-publishing. Today, we examine the new regime’s impact on book-making and distribution processes. The outcome will surprise few readers: Over time, the new book publishing business will [...]
February 26, 2012 – 10:39 pm
Tweet(Part of a series) In the last twelve months, I’ve never bought fewer printed books — and I’ve never read so many books. I have switched to ebooks. My personal library is with me at all times, in my iPad and my iPhone (and in the cloud), allowing me to switch reading devices as conditions [...]
November 14, 2010 – 11:36 pm
TweetLet’s come back to the ebook with more questions. There is no doubt: the digital book will find its place under the sun; its prospects look much better than those of the online press. In the first place, there isn’t an ingrained, now decade-old, habit of reading news for free on the internet. Second, the [...]
November 8, 2010 – 12:41 am
TweetThere are many reasons to be bullish for ebooks. On the device side, the iPad set the standard (rather high) and triggered an intense competition among manufacturers and operating systems providers. On the people side, just take New York’s subway, or a high-speed train in Europe. And we’ve seen nothing yet: tablets prices will go [...]
TweetOver the last month, I’ve been stuffing my iPad with books purchased online, long PDF files and other documents for later reading sessions. I’m waiting for the mind-blowing media applications, they’re still in the making. Several prototypes of French newspapers I have seen are quite promising. We have to be patient. This is just the [...]
February 7, 2010 – 6:07 pm
TweetI’m not through with the iPad. Actually, I’m just warming up. For today’s column, let’s focus on the perils of a closed system. I live in a country (France) where censorship is a big deal. It comes mostly from greedy celebrities (sorry for the truism); they use a legal system that largely favors them. Often, [...]
November 29, 2009 – 12:57 pm
TweetLet’s rejoice: French teachers embrace the internet. Well, calm down. I’m not saying they embrace it the way I would like them to. This week saw two technological breakthroughs at my son’s Parisian high-school. The first one is a decision-support tool on the school’s website: it helps parents decide whether or not to send their [...]
February 8, 2009 – 8:24 pm
TweetUpdate: see a presentation of the Kindle2 here. Another look at an old, but not aging, topic: eBooks. There is visible agitation ahead of Amazon’s expected announcement, probably as you read this note Monday February 9th. Jeff Bezos is set to announce a new version of the Kindle eBook reader, let’s call it Kindle 2.0. [...]
