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The Morning Coffee – 27 January 2014 Posted: 26 Jan 2014 09:39 PM PST Top stories this Monday morning include  Hugh Howley’s take on the Authors Guild (link), one author’s snarky response to ongoing telemarketing calls from Author Solution (link), a commentary on the publishing industry’s silence on last week’s net neutrality ruling (link), a look at the growing shift of people reading more and more on smaller and smaller screens (link), and more. Bread and Roses (Hugh Howey) Dear Nathan (centre of the universe) The Hybrid Reader–and What That Means for Books (Leather Binding & Gold Leaf Pages) National (Japanese) library joins digital wave, will offer books online (AJW by The Asahi Shimbun) NYC vs. HEA, by Jesse Barron (Harper’s Magazine) Public Libraries Show Why Sharing Culture Should Never Have Been Banned in the First Place (TorrentFreak) Sit Back, Relax, and Read That Long Story—on Your Phone (The Atlantic) Things that matter (Brian O’Leary) Why and how bookstores can benefit from Google Street View (eBookFriendly) The post The Morning Coffee – 27 January 2014 appeared first on The Digital Reader.

New Review: the Kobo Arc 7 is not the ‘Droid You’re Looking For Posted: 26 Jan 2014 03:43 PM PST Who wants to see me eviscerate Kobo in a review? Sorry, but you’ve come to the wrong place. I’ve just finished a review of the Kobo Arc 7 and it revealed details about Kobo which surprised me. Read on for the full review. Of the 4 major ebook platforms in the US, Kobo was the only one with a truly baffling interest in tablets. Amazon has always clearly been building a media tablet where they could sell you stuff, Apple is Apple, and Barnes & Noble’s tablet efforts are showing all the signs of being a glorious failure. But Kobo’s tablets, on the other hand, have never made much sense. Their first 2 tablets (the Vox in 2011 and the Arc in 2012) were outdated the day they launched, and Kobo’s third generation tablets were clearly overpriced when they were announced in August 2013. At some point you have to start wondering why Kobo is still in the Android tablet market after so many missteps, but as I discovered while writing this review Kobo isn’t actually trying to compete in the Android tablet market. Kobo has their own plan, and competing on price isn’t part of that plan. I had to get my hands on this tablet before I realized that Kobo designed the Arc 7 for a specific type of consumer: readers, and more specifically Kobo customers. If you’re not a member of at least the first group then you were never in Kobo’s sights, and so there was no reason for Kobo to try to make a sale by offering a super low price. This freed Kobo to sell the Arc 7 at a price point which enabled them to make at least some money on the tablet while still attracting readers and locking them in to buy ebooks from Kobo first. Read on for the full review. P.S. As you are probably thinking, B&N tried a similar model but failed miserably. TBH I don’t know whether Kobo will succeed where B&n failed, though Kobo does have at least one advantage (an international focus). I’m still thinking about how this will affect Kobo’s position in the long term; would anyone care to guess? The post New Review: the Kobo Arc 7 is not the ‘Droid You’re Looking For appeared first on The Digital Reader.

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