By Helen Gregg The Canadian government has approved Apple’s iBookstore Canada with some stipulations for the media giant, CBC reported on Tuesday. The iBookstore launched internationally on May 28 of this year, but only select US and public domain works were available to Canadian consumers while the government examined the cultural impact of the iBookstore. The iBookstore was approved after …
Try a Kobo eReader in your Hotel Room
By Hannah Johnson Kobo and Random House are spreading the word about e-reading to hotel guests. At 10 Fairmont Hotels locations in the USA and Canada, guests can use a Kobo eReader loaded with bestselling Random House titles by authors like Bret Easton Ellis, Sophie Kinsella and Alexander McCall Smith…all for free! Guests even get coupons off Random House titles …
A Little Slap-and-Tickle: The Double Life of Author/Bookseller Deborah Willis
By Deborah Willis VICTORIA, B.C.: In one of my lives, I’m a writer. This means, essentially, that I contemplate the human experience while wearing my pajamas. This writer –– let’s call her Deborah Willis––prefers to be alone. Her shoulders are hunched from bending over a notebook and her eyes are strained from the computer screen. Fortunately, there’s another me, and …
Aussies Get Kobo, Half to Buy E-Readers in Three Years
By Edward Nawotka Kobo is now available Down Under. REDgroup retail launched its Kobo ereader and e-books platform in Sydney earlier this week, reports Bookseller+Publisher. The reader is available at the group’s Borders website and priced at $199. It is is also available at Borders stores, and is expected to be available in Angus & Robertson and Whitcoulls in the …
Richard Nash gives “best speech about the future of books” in Canada
By Hannah Johnson “Assuming that the physical book is the only incarnation for the writer-reader connection is, I think, a mistake,” said Richard Nash during his presentation at the BookNet Canada conference called “Calculated Risk: Adventures in Book Publishing” on March 25 in Toronto, Canada. The crux of Nash’s presentation was about supply and demand. The current supply chain that …
Kobo UK E-Bookstore: “First of Many International Launches this Year”
By Edward Nawotka Earlier this month we wondered why the UK was so far behind other countries in e-book adoption. Well, things are suddenly heating up: Kobo, the Canadian e-book company previously named Shortcovers, has launched a UK e-bookstore. At launch the company will offer some two million titles for download (no doubt a large percentage of those being public …
Building the World’s Biggest Book Club
By Kathy L. Patrick JEFFERSON, TEXAS: They say everything is bigger in Texas…and it’s true. When I opened Beauty and the Book in January 2000 — the ONLY hair salon/book store in the world — in January 2000, one of the first things I did was start my book club, The Pulpwood Queens of East Texas. We started with six complete strangers …
Top US/UK Trade Talk: Will the UK Get Cheap Ebooks?; Munro Nixes Giller Prize
By Edward Nawotka Sony’s general manager for content and services development, Richard Palk, said that the UK would likely have to follow suit with US pricing of ebooks as the devices become more widespread in the UK. The Bookseller reports that publishers and booksellers are divided on the issue, with publishers setting prices as the same as hardcovers and while …
Canada’s Suite101 Writers Profit, Expanding to France, Spain
by Craig Morgan Teicher VANCOUVER, B.C.: “I sometimes see us more like a service to writers than just a publication. We want to make them successful,” said Peter Berger, the German CEO of Suite101, a company whose online magazine features articles on, well, just about everything — from choosing the best fly-fishing vest to doing PR for a small business during a …