July 9-10, 2013
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Updated 10:18 a.m. Pacific time: Amazon has confirmed the purchase

Amazon’s Kindle Fire is in glorious living color, but its original and still-strong-selling Kindle and cousins, the Kindle Paperwhite family, are still irritatingly stuck in 1950s-style black-and-white.

That may soon change.

As The Digital Reader found, Amazon has bought recent Samsung acquisition Liquavista while attempting to hide the fact by routing the acquisition through a limited liability corporation registered in Delaware, which is in turn linked to a holding company named CSC: “Corporation Service Company.”

Very tricksy, Amazon.

Amazon confirmed the purchase with a short emailed statement, saying:

We are always looking for new technologies we may be able to incorporate into our products over the long term. The Liquavista team shares our passion for invention and is creating exciting new technologies with a lot of potential. It’s still early days, but we’re excited about the possibilities and we look forward to working with Liquavista to develop these displays.

Liquavista has built a screen technology that approaches the efficiency of traditional e-reader black-and-white e-ink screens while offering the color of LCD and other full-color screen technologies. In other words, you can have your cake and eat it, too: gorgeous full-color screen plus long-lasting battery life.

That might be just the technology that Amazon needs to kickstart conversion of its full e-reader line to a full-color and quick-response screen, as e-ink is also notoriously slow to refresh.

And that is important, because Amazon is doubling down on digital content, hoping to drive both sales and margin growth by selling digital media like movies and TV shows, apps, in-app purchases, and games. The company just launched its new virtual currency, Amazon Coins, today, attempting to increase the rate at which Amazon customers buy things that don’t have to be expensively stored, packaged, and shipped.

And you can’t sell much digital content on a slow black-and-white screen.

While Liquavista’s screen tech won’t be cutting-edge enough to run Samsung’s Galaxy phones and tablets, which need the best screens available, it is advanced enough for Amazon’s Kindles, The Digital Reader says, which are primarily budget, mass-market devices.

And advanced enough to move Amazon’s low-end devices beyond being ghettoes for books, and towards being able to handle all the full-color and full-motion media that Amazon can sell.

Image credits: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
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If you bought a Nook HD or Nook HD+ plus over the holidays, you probably didn’t have too much company.

Barnes & Noble has reported its Nook sales results for the holiday season, and it spells out some bad news for the company’s e-reading venture.

Revenues for the unit were $311 million — a 12.6 percent decrease from last year’s numbers. Barnes & Noble said that while Nook content sales were up 13 percent, Nook device sales took a dive of an unspecified magnitude.

“Nook device sales got off to a good start over the Black Friday period but then fell short of expectations for the balance of holiday. We are examining the root cause of the December shortfall in sales and will adjust our strategies accordingly going forward,” Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch said in a statement.

Barnes & Noble shouldn’t have to examine for long, because the root cause of that sales shortfall should be pretty obvious: competition. Between the iPad Mini, Nexus 7, and Kindle Fire, the 7-inch tablet market is cutthroat, intense, and largely kicking the Nook HD’s tail.

And then there’s the e-reader market, where Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite has taken over despite being largely similar to the Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight.

Barnes & Noble’s problem isn’t that it creates bad devices– it’s  just that no one is buying them. Blame its pricing strategy or content ecosystem or even the Nook’s tiny mindshare, the conclusion is the same: Barnes & Noble needs to figure things out — and quick.

I’m just wondering why it takes six months to report that news.

The 2012 report shows that adult fiction is dominated by e-book sales, outperforming paper and other categories, such as audiobooks. However, somewhat surprisingly in the age of Amazon, Kindle, and Nook, actual brick-and-mortar bookstores remained the primary distribution channel for publishers.

BookStats isn’t releasing more detail publicly, but that number must be decreasing.

Source: Amazon

Kindle Fire

Amazon’s ebook sales outgrew paper sales back in 2011, and the online retailer believes it has the market share lead for digital books.

Just a few months ago, Association of American Publishers data showed that ebook sales doubled from January 2011 to January 2012.

An interesting twist: Publisher revenues from direct-to-consumer sales topped $1 billion for the first time ever. That’s a significant accomplishment — and a direct challenge to Amazon and other online retailers.

Amazon, of course, dominates online bookselling, and sold about five million Kindles this past Christmas season on its way to selling perhaps as many as 20 million in all of 2012.

BookStats is a partnership between the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group that launched in 2009. Almost 2,000 publishers contributed data to this year’s report.

With the industry moving so quickly, the organization would do well to release 2012 data early in 2013, if not regularly throughout the year.

VentureBeat contacted BookStats for comments, but has not yet received a response.

Image credit: Rob Stark/ShutterStock

Kobo’s Vox isn’t the most popular eReader in the pack, but it may have just one-upped the cool kids.

Kobo is finally opening up the device to the full Google Play Store, a move that the company hopes will broaden the Android-based tablet’s appeal in comparison to the Nook Color and Kindle Fire. The move comes as Kobo continues to position the Vox as more of a multimedia tablet rather than simply an eReader.

Previously, Kobo had limited the Vox to a select 15,000 apps, but with the expansion, the tablet will have access to Google Play’s entire 500,000 app catalog.

App curation to increase the quality of available apps is a strategy the Nook Color and Kindle still emply. Limiting app selection works when you’re a front-runner, but for a third-place device like the Vox, having access to only 15,000 apps rather than 500,000 becomes a liability, not a feature.

While Kobo’s decision is certainly a talking point for the company, it’s pretty unlikely that this move will make much of a difference in the end — at least not on its own. But with the Kindle and Nook dominating, every advantage helps.

July 9-10, 2013
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After some back-and-forth between Amazon and Wattpad, a third party e-reader app, Kindle Fire owners can now use a different apps to read e-books on their device.

Before now, Amazon had been hiding competitor’s e-reader apps in the Kindle Fire’s Amazon Appstore. The apps still showed up in the web-based Appstore, but weren’t available for download onto the Fire. Hidden e-reader apps included Wattpad, Kobo, and Bluefire, all competitors of the Kindle.

For those who wanted these e-reader apps on their Fire, they could use work-arounds to download them. Customers needed to sideload the app, which is downloading it from a different source, a somewhat confusing process for the average Kindle owner.

“Over the past couple of weeks we’ve spoken with representatives at the Kindle Fire Store, first over email and then eventually with some phone calls up to the higher levels, convincing them that we’re actually a valuable complementary service,” a spokesperson for Wattpad wrote in an email to VentureBeat “Our community is super engaged readers and writers; they are passionate book lovers and eventually Amazon came around to see the value we could bring.”

After some back forth between the two companies, Amazon made the Wattpad app available for download on the Kindle Fire. Kobo and Bluefire apps are still missing from the Fire’s Appstore.

It’s not surprising that Amazon hid these apps; they could cut into Amazon’s profits from e-book sales. And given that Amazon just barely breaks even with its sales of the Kindle Fire, Amazon is counting on e-book sales to make the Fire profitable. With Kobo’s in-app marketplace selling the same books at around the same prices as Amazon’s Kindle store, Kobo could be a big threat to Amazon’s digital content sales. Just because Wattpad made it back onto the Kindle Fire, doesn’t mean will we seen other apps follow suit.

Amazon’s Kindle lineup is en fuego and selling at a rate of more than one million units per week.

For three weeks in a row, the Kindle maker has seen this astounding statistic repeat itself.

The Kindle Fire is also the site’s top best seller, its most popular gift and the product that appears on the most wishlists for all of Amazon.com.

“Kindle Fire is the most successful product we’ve ever launched -– it’s the bestselling product across all of Amazon for 11 straight weeks, we’ve already sold millions of units, and we’re building millions more to meet the high demand,”Dave Limp, Amazon’s Kindle-focused vice president, told Reuters today.

The VP further revealed that Kindle Fire sales had been growing week-over-week since Black Friday shopping began.

The Kindle Fire was announced in late September, when its pre-sales started. It represented a new breed of consumer mobile devices: an e-reader/tablet hybrid that could contain books as well as surf the web, run apps, deliver and send email, display video content and more.

And at a price point under $200, it was destined to score big with holiday shoppers and any gadget-lover trying to deal with a tough economy.

By the beginning of this month, Amazon had already shipped between 3 and 4 million units, making the Kindle Fire the second-most popular tablet behind the iPad.

For the entirety of Amazon’s Kindle lineup, Black Friday shopping numbers quadrupled year over year, Amazon executives revealed a few weeks ago. At that time, the company also stated the Kindle Fire had been its top-selling product for the previous eight weeks.

There are many different devices and mobile apps for electronic reading, such as the Kindle, the Nook and Apple’s iBookstore. As we move toward digital reading, our children will as well. MeMeTales gives children their own app to not only read from, but also write in and interact with. Kids can unlock reading-related games and activities or publish their own stories.

It’s also simple to publish a story on MeMeTales. You create a PDF of your story, upload it to MeMeTales, format it for the iPad, add any audio and submit it to MeMeTales, which publishes it “automagically.” Adult publishers who want to get their stories in front of kids can use the publishing system as well.

A 2010 Scholastic study on reading in the digital age says, “The power of choice is a key factor in raising a reader. Nine out of 10 children say that they are more likely to finish a book they choose themselves.”

According to founder Maya Bisineer, MeMeTales wants to create a community — a place that children can feel is their own reading space. When they use the app on their parent’s mobile device, it will feel like their own spot to create and imagine.

Since its private launch for the iPhone 12 weeks ago, MeMeTales has had 25,000 downloads and its stories have been read over 100,000 times. The iPad app will launch with 50 stories available.

MeMeTales was founded this past July and is headquartered in Cupertino, Calif. The company has raised a friends and family round of funding under $100,000.

MeMeTales is one of 80 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2011 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

July 9-10, 2013
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Amazon is planning to release its long-rumored tablet before October, in addition to two new Kindle models (one touchscreen, one cheaper than the current Kindle), the Wall Street Journal reports.

That’s bad news for those expecting an Amazon tablet or revamped Kindle this summer. But for Amazon, it will likely pay off more to spend time developing its new devices so that they’re truly different from the competition, like the iPad and Barnes & Noble’s new touchscreen Nook, instead of just quickly churning them out.

Sources who have seen the devices say that Amazon’s Android tablet features a screen around 9-inches and doesn’t have a camera. Naturally, it’s being positioned as an easy way for consumers to tap into Amazon’s media marketplace, which includes streaming and downloadable movies and television shows, as well as its MP3 and e-book store.

The lack of a camera is disappointing, but it may be a sign that Amazon is positioning its tablet as more of a competitor to Barnes & Noble’s wildly successful Nook Color, a hybrid tablet/ereader that retails for just $250. It would make more sense for Amazon to strip out uneccessary hardware and features from its tablet to make it as cheap as possible — especially since it will serve as a conduit to Amazon’s own media services.

The revamped Kindle news isn’t very surprising, since both Kobo and Barnes & Noble have already released touchscreen ereaders. Last year’s $139 Kindle model also proved very popular for Amazon, so it makes sense for the company to release a lower-priced model. The sources said the new Kindles will continue to use e-Ink technology and are slated for release some time in the third quarter (so there’s still a chance it may land in the summer).

July 9-10, 2013
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Liberty Media proposed a deal late Thursday to buy the largest U.S. book retailer Barnes & Noble for $1.02 billion through the purchase of the company’s stock at $17 per share, according to Reuters.

The offer may seem high for an ailing fleet of retail stores that are seeing declines in print book sales, but Barnes & Noble’s Nook tablet and online marketplace could be very valuable to the right buyer.

Barnes & Noble announced it was putting itself up for sale in August 2010 and has since pushed an online commerce strategy to boost sales through its Nook eReader.

Recently, Barnes & Noble rolled out a software update to its Nook Color that transformed it from an ereader to a full-fledged tablet computer with apps and support for flash (web videos). Not only does this make the Nook one of the least expensive tablets ($250) running the Android operating system, but it also enables all of Barnes & Noble’s 720 retail stores the potential to become interactive with the online marketplace.

And it’s that interactive potential between physical stores and online Liberty Media would probably like to extend to the corporation’s subsidiaries, which have a presence in media, communication, video, entertainment and online commerce.

The acquisition will go through Liberty Media’s Interactive group, which owns television shopping network QVC and has major stakes in Expedia, Gifts.com, Lockerz, and many others. The acquisition proposal itself has yet to be evaluated by Barnes & Noble’s special committee, according to the company.

July 9-10, 2013
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Book and media retailer Borders announced today that it will hold off on paying some publishers in order to buy time and reorganize its debt amid a year of weak sales in its brick and mortar stores in the era of digital distribution.

The company has seen declining sales in books, movies and music since electronic book readers emerged and consumers started to use digital distribution marketplaces like iTunes. Borders’ revenue was down 17.5 percent in the most recent quarter when compared to the same quarter a year ago, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its loss has also doubled to $74.4 million, up from a loss of $37.7 million the same quarter a year earlier.

But despite losing out on sales of books and other products, Borders is essentially looking to pull a GameStop and stay focused on its brick and mortar stores. Borders acknowledged e-books and e-readers as a definitive threat to its business but expects its in-store sales to remain intact, according to its most recent 10-Q filing. That being said, the company doesn’t plan to open any new stores in the near future.

Barnes & Noble, the largest book retailer in the country, decided to take on the e-reader trend by producing its own electronic reading tablet, the Nook. The Nook became Barnes & Noble’s best-selling product in more than 40 years, according to a recent announcement by the company — beating out titles like Harry Potter and The DaVinci Code. Barnes & Noble also recently released the Nook Color, a light version of an Android tablet. The device includes Facebook and Twitter functionality as well as some apps like music service Pandora.

Borders doesn’t plan on developing its own e-reader and expects to find a niche as a neutral provider of e-books for every e-reader in the market. So why does Borders want to focus on its brick and mortar stores in the era of digital distribution and e-readers, where consumers can basically snap their fingers and get a book or song? There is basically no reason for an e-reader user to visit a brick and mortar store to pick up a new copy of a book.

It’s hard to argue with the popularity of e-readers, with companies like Barnes & Noble and Amazon seeing runaway successes with their versions. Borders’ shareholder confidence has already dropped off this year, with its share price dropping around 72 percent to less than $1 from its high of $3.29 this year. So now seems to be the best time for Borders to make a move into something new.

[Photo: mikemol]

July 9-10, 2013
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Google’s long talked-about ebook store, Google Editions, is set to debut by the end of the year, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The store was initially supposed to launch this past summer, but sources close to the company say that it only recently cleared some legal and technical hurdles. Now Google is gearing up to launch Editions by the end of the year in the US and by first quarter 2011 worldwide, according to Google product management director Scott Dougall.

So what is Google offering that Amazon isn’t? Just as with its open-source mobile operating system Android, it appears that Google is aiming to establish a more open ebook ecosystem. You’ll be able to purchase ebooks from Google, or other online retailers, and tie them to an ebook library with your Google account. The Google Editions library will be easily accessible online from any web-enabled device, including smartphones, tablets, and PCs.

This is in contrast to Amazon’s Kindle ecosystem, in which you order books from Amazon’s store, and they’re subsequently delivered to your Kindle. Kindle books are also available on computers and smartphones via Amazon’s Kindle apps, but Google is avoiding that intermediary step altogether by letting you access your library on the web.

Google is working on an affiliate program that will let website owners earn revenue by recommending ebooks on Editions, and it’s also partnering with independent booksellers to share revenue from their websites. It’s unclear how much revenue Google will share with affiliates or booksellers, but I suspect it will have to be more than the 10 percent Amazon offers its affiliates for Kindle ebook sales.

The WSJ reports that Google has already signed deals with major book publishers. Google will offer hundreds of thousands of books for purchase, as well as millions that will be available for free — figures that should put it in line with the ebook libraries Amazon and Barnes & Noble offer. Prices are expected to be similar to the competition as well.

While Google’s ebook venture sounds ambitious, I don’t suspect that it will play nicely with existing e-readers. Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook devices offer web browser access, but it’s fairly primitive. It wouldn’t support some of the features users get on the devices, like highlighting, or typography tweaks. I also don’t think that either Amazon or Barnes & Noble will go out of their way to support Google Editions. Tablets, which have access to more fully featured web browsers, are better off.

Google is positioning the ebook store as an extension of Google Books, its plan to scan the roughly 150 million books ever published worldwide. The book scanning project is currently about 10 percent complete, according to Google executives.

I suspect that we’ll see Google Editions very soon — perhaps within a week or two. Google, like many other software companies, imposes a code freeze towards the middle of December, which would delay any uncompleted projects into the next year. After so many delays, I don’t think Google can afford to have Editions miss out on this holiday season.

Image via Javier Candeira

July 9-10, 2013
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Amazon announced today that qualifying newspaper and magazine publishers will soon be able to earn 70-percent from sales on the Kindle store.

The new revenue sharing plan, which will take effect on December 1, is clearly a bid to get more periodicals onto Kindle devices. To coincide with the news, Amazon also announced a beta version of its Kindle Publishing for Periodicals utility, which will help publishers easily bring more newspaper and magazine content to the Kindle store.

To qualify for the new revenue sharing plan, publishers will need to make sure their titles are readable on all Kindle devices and apps (including those on the iPhone, iPad and Android phones), and that customers can read the titles across all territories where the publisher has rights. For titles sent over the Kindle’s Whispernet wireless network, delivery costs will be split between the publisher and Amazon.

The revenue sharing terms are the same that newspaper and magazine apps receive from the iTunes App Store for the iPhone and iPad, and they also match Apple’s rumored plans for an iTunes newspaper subscription service.

July 9-10, 2013
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If you were hoping for a Kindle hardware refresh, today’s your lucky day. Earlier this evening, Amazon unveiled the latest generation Kindle e-book reader, which offers better contrast, improved speeds, lighter weight, and double the storage and battery life compared to the previous model.

This time around, Amazon is offering two Kindle models: A $189 version with 3G and WiFi to replace the Kindle 2, and a cheaper $139 version that only features WiFi. The cheaper model is clearly a response to Barnes and Noble’s $149 WiFi-only Nook, and it brings Amazon one step closer to the magical $99 price point. Amazon also ended up dropping the Kindle’s price to $189 back in June when Barnes and Noble reduced its Nook 3G model to $199.

Both new models are slated for release on August 27th, and are available for pre-order now. The company will also release UK versions of the devices for £109 and £149 respectively on the same date and has announced a new UK e-book store.

The addition of WiFi is new for the more expensive Kindle. Previous Kindle models relied entirely on cellular data networks — first with Sprint’s EVDO, and then AT&T’s 3G network for the newer “international” Kindle 2. The addition will let owners of the new Kindle take advantage of their faster home wireless networks, and it will be particularly useful if they don’t have decent cellular data reception near their home or work.

The new Kindle will come in graphite (like the Kindle DX) and white, is 21 percent smaller, and will feature the same 6-inch E Ink screen as previous models. While not much has changed with the basic screen technology, Amazon promises that page turns will be faster. Battery-wise, it will run for a month with no wireless capabilities turned on, and 10 days with wireless. Since you won’t always need wireless connectivity, real-world battery life will rest somewhere in between those suggested battery times. The Kindle’s on-board storage has also been doubled from 2GB to 4GB, which will let it hold up to 3,500 books.

Both the Kindle’s keyboard and five-way directional rocker have been modified. “The rocker is now more compact and flush with the device, and the side buttons have been modified in length to emphasize the forward paddles, while the back buttons have been downsized,” according to Engadget, which had some hands-on time with the device.

Amazon also added an “experimental” web browser based on Webkit, the browser engine currently used in Safari and Google Chrome. It’s purportedly faster than the previous Kindle web browser, and it now includes an “article mode” that lets users simplify web pages into text-based versions better suited for the Kindle.

While the new Kindle’s upgrades may seem minor, the most important aspect of this release is the cheap $139 model. Only a few months ago, the only available Kindle was $259. Soon, you’ll be able to get one — albeit without 3G internet — for about $100 less. It’s a sign that competition is keeping the e-reader market agile, and that even with the advent of the iPad, it’s far too early to write off these devices.

Check out a video below of Ian Freed, vice president of Kindle at Amazon, showing off the new device to the Seattle Times.
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/73315185001?isVid=1

July 9-10, 2013
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iBooks, the Apple application for users to download and read books, today released several new features with version 1.1.1. These additions include the ability to tap images to view them in greater detail, embedded audio and video within books and enhanced PDF viewing.

iBooks is compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad and requires Apple’s operating system 3.2 or later. A good selection of various books, including the classics are available, including a complimentary edition of Winnie the Pooh.

The application includes the usual eReader features, including altering font size, word or character finder, ability to add notes and add PDF documents.

The new features may help Apple against the many of its well-established competitors, including Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s eReader. However, since the new features are all already available on competitors’ products, it may not make much of a splash, except for those already using the iBooks app.

Time may be a factor as well, since iBooks very recently came to the App Store.

July 9-10, 2013
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Things may be looking up for Barnes & Noble’s Nook ebook reader, at least according to analysis by Digitimes Research. Its numbers from hardware suppliers show that the Nook outsold Amazon.com’s competing Kindle for the month of March, and accounted for 53 percent of all ereader device purchases.

Amazon has historically refused to divulge specific numbers for its Kindle sales, which leaves tea-leaf-reading analysts as one of the few ways to determine its success against competitors like the Nook.

Digitimes senior researcher Mingchi Kuo offered a few reasons why the Nook may be faring better. For one, it has the in-store advantage at Barnes & Nobles. Customers can touch and test the device in person, and the company also sales representatives on hand to answer questions. Amazon.com announced last week that Target stores will soon start carrying the Kindle, but the Nook still has the advantage of being featured in dedicated bookstores.

The Nook also had the advantage of coming out more recently — it was announced in October 2009, and started shipping out in November. The release came just in time for the holiday season, and also offered features that the Kindle lacked — like a secondary color touch-screen display, and the ability to loan ebooks to friends. In comparison, Amazon hadn’t announced any new devices since the large-format Kindle DX in May 2009. It released the Kindle 2, a smaller, updated version of the original Kindle, in February 2009.

Until Amazon releases a new Kindle, or drastically reprices the current models, the Nook is likely to continue winning out. The Nook is also receiving more new features and updates than the aging Kindle, which continue to make the device more compelling.

Then again, Amazon is spending more time developing its Kindle ecosystem by delivering apps for the iPad and iPhone that are more polished than Barnes & Noble’s — so maybe it doesn’t care as much about winning the hardware battle.

Digitimes also reports that global e-reader shipments totaled 1.43 million in the first quarter of 2010, and will hit 2.02 million units by the second quarter. Global shipments of readers in 2009 were a mere 3.82 million in 2009, and Digitimes predicts it will jump to 11.4 million units for 2010.