Pobre Gutenberg

Two weeks ago, the annual Book Expo America (BEA) conference hit New York City. A gathering of publishers, booksellers, librarians, authors, reviewers, and book bloggers, BEA is the CESor E3 of the literary world. However, though e-books are a huge portion of the book world today, you wouldn’t know it from walking the show floor. The literary world is slow to adopt and acknowledge that it is now a part of the tech industry, and no where is that more apparent than the sad state of e-book lending for libraries.

Subscription business often make good business sense to both the service provider and the consumer. For the service provider it enables them to build a sustainable and predictable revenue stream where the peaks and troughs of fads and the unpredictability of demand is cushioned by the width and depth of offer. They still have to manage down the exposure to churn, but have the opportunity to build customer loyalty and relationship. For the consumer it offers the obvious one stop shop and protection from change in what today is often dynamically changing markets.

“O Brasil não pode cometer o mesmo erro que, nós europeus, cometemos. Imaginávamos que a representatividade do livro digital era muito pequena e não nos preparamos. Deixamos que as grandes plataformas internacionais tomassem conta do nosso mercado, que interferissem em parte de nossa cultura, de nossa identidade cultural.” Para ele, as livrarias e bibliotecas são parte da identidade de um país e não podemos perdê-las, mesmo que diante de grandes e radicais transformações, como a da revolução digital.

Amazon wants to take readers on a trip around the world. No, it’s not a sweepstakes and it certainly isn’t literal. The leading U.S. ebook seller has launched a new ebook discovery tool, Around the World in 80 Books

Bookstores sell books. We’re all clear on that, right?

But lots of stores — the smart ones — are going beyond just selling books to their customers. They’ve branched out into services, experiences, and other intangibles, and they’ve done it without abandoning their fundamental connection to books.

Library For All has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund an ebook platform to distribute ebooks in the developing world.

Wexler was the first company in the world to use the new flexible LG e-Paper technology. They did brisk business selling out of their first two major shipments and then disappeared from the face of the world. Sources at Wexler today have confirmed that the seminal flexible e-Reader is now back in stock and at a reduced price.

Estoy convencido de que el libro es una tecnología casi perfecta a la que tal y como la conocemos hoy en día se le pueden hacer muy pocas mejoras porque está muy cerca de su estado evolutivo más avanzado. Es verdad que en los procesos de producción del libro sigue habiendo muchas cosas que pueden mejorarse —principalmente para facilitar la integración de lo digital y de los posibles desarrollos que en el futuro se deriven de su evolución—. Y en lo que se refiere a la comunicación, a la promoción y al marketing aún tenemos más de una tarea pendiente. Por otro lado, la situación actual de la industria editorial pone en evidencia la necesidad de que ésta se reinvente más allá de la optimización de sus procesos de producción y de la creación de nuevos modelos de negocio.

Yahoo has filed two US patent applications which are based on delivering adverts to ebooks and even offering a variable price that is dependent on the advert placement. Some will cry, ‘not on my watch and it will never happen,’ but perhaps we need to at least consider the implications further before we dismiss it.

Random House and Facebook's BookScout, which recommends titles for users based on their timelines, will surely help all publishers, writes James Bridle

Lee una muestra de Booqui y Quiboo buscan un pollo de Alfons Freire o descárgalo con iBooks.

BEA director Steve Rosato shared some attendance numbers earlier this week. With the caveat that these are raw numbers yet to verified by their third party audit, the figures represent very slight changes from 2012, as follows:

I was doing some Googling this morning when I came across the following infographic. It compares the iPad with 5 ereaders, and offers a basic comparison analysis based on a few technical details.