The Digital Reader |
- The Morning Coffee – 22 May 2014
- Amazon Launches New Kindle Store Section Devoted to eBook Singles – “Short Reads”
- Vimeo Launches “Copyright Match” to Find and Remove Pirated Videos
- Goodreads Adds New “Ask the Author” Feature
- Simon & Schuster Strikes Deals With Scribd, Oyster
| The Morning Coffee – 22 May 2014 Posted: 21 May 2014 09:22 PM PDT For your reading pleasure today, I have a couple takes on the current debate over trigger warnings (link, link), the problem with selling ebooks in Google Play (link), and more. And no matter what some may say today, it was the printing press that destroyed society, not the internet (link).
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| Amazon Launches New Kindle Store Section Devoted to eBook Singles – “Short Reads” Posted: 21 May 2014 03:11 PM PDT Never one to pass on a new way to promote a story, Amazon has in the past launched sections of the Kindle Store for serials, short-short works (Kindle Singles), and for enhanced ebooks, and a few weeks ago they added another section for stories that only take 15 minutes to a couple hours to read. The Short Reads section has not been announced by Amazon, but it went live in the Kindle Store some time in late March 2014. It was first noticed by authors on KBoards, and it contains stories which are anywhere from 1 to 100 pages in length, with prices between free and $1.99. It’s not clear whether the new section has content that can’t be found in other parts of the Kindle Store, but it does have a unique organizational scheme. The stories are broken up in to 6 sub-sections based on the estimated reading time (15/30/45/60/90/120 minutes). It’s also not clear how many titles are available; based on the menu on the left there seems to be around 600,000 titles, all sorted by length. The ebooks are a mix of fiction and non-fiction. I don’t think I saw any excerpts, but there were a number of stories that had previously been published in anthologies, magazines, etc. A few minutes browsing also showed me that Amazon is showing content from several of their publishing imprints, including Kindle Worlds, Story Front, Kindle Singles, and Day One Journal. All of these imprints publish short works, and their presence here suggests that Amazon launched Short Reads in order to make it easier for readers who simply want a short piece to quickly browse all the short works Amazon sells on a single page. Starting with Kindle Singles (announced in January 2011), the 4 imprints were launched over the course of 3 years and cover a diverse selection of content. Kindle Worlds, for example, launched in June 2013 with a focus on licensed fiction. DayOne is a digital literary journal which launched in October 2013, and StoryFront launched in December 2013 as Amazon’s fourth foray into short fiction. The post Amazon Launches New Kindle Store Section Devoted to eBook Singles – “Short Reads” appeared first on The Digital Reader.  |
| Vimeo Launches “Copyright Match” to Find and Remove Pirated Videos Posted: 21 May 2014 10:51 AM PDT
Describing itself as a home for original work, Vimeo sees Content Match as being the ideal balance between the rights of copyright holders and other creators. It builds on the mistakes we’ve all seen Youtube’s ContentID make over the years, and tries to protect the original artists without unduly hampering creators who make new work that qualifies as a "fair use" under copyright law or is based on material that's being used with permission. Rather than automatically flag and remove any suspect videos, Content Match scans uploaded videos and asks the uploader to confirm that the video is legit. Vimeo will accept fair use as a defense, and they’ll also note whether suspect video uses legitimately licensed content. In addition to letting uploaders plead their case, Vimeo also lets them replace or delete the video, on in certain situations replace the audio track. It’s too early to pass judgement, but at this point Content Match looks much more creator and user friendly than for example the system used by uStream, which in 2012 cut off the streaming video for the Hugo Awards when someone played a licensed clip from Doctor Who. It’s also bound to be better than ContentID, which has grown infamous for blocking videos and penalizing uploaders for nonsensical reasons like a radio briefly playing in the background. The post Vimeo Launches “Copyright Match” to Find and Remove Pirated Videos appeared first on The Digital Reader.  |
| Goodreads Adds New “Ask the Author” Feature Posted: 21 May 2014 09:01 AM PDT Have you Goodreads has long enabled readers to ask questions of and interact with authors, and today the online community expanded the ongoing discussions with a new option:
This feature is going live today, with 54 authors participating, and over the next few weeks the Goodreads will be rolling out the feature to authors participating in the Goodreads Author program. All 100,000+ authors in the program will have the option of taking questions from fans and readers. Goodreads has posted a list of the 54 authors already taking questions over on their blog post. To check whether other authors are participating, visit their author profile and look for the “Ask the Author” section. The post Goodreads Adds New “Ask the Author” Feature appeared first on The Digital Reader.  |
| Simon & Schuster Strikes Deals With Scribd, Oyster Posted: 21 May 2014 05:12 AM PDT The Simon & Schuster has agreed to make available more than 10,000 titles from their backlist to the two startups. Launched last Fall, Scribd and Oyster each offer an all-you-can-read subscription service similar to the ones offered by companies like Netflix and Spotify. Scribd offers access to a catalog of more than 400,000 titles (which can be read on Android, iOS, and your web browser) for $9 a month, and Oyster offers access to more than 500,000 titles (which can only be read on the iPhone, iPad) for $10 a month. Following in the footsteps of HarperCollins, Wiley, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Simon & Schuster is the fourth major US publisher to sign a deal with either Scribd or Oyster, which have drawn most of their content from smaller publishers as well as distributors like Smashwords. Wiley is still dabbling in the market with a mere 1,000 titles at Scribd, but both HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster are being more aggressive in using the services as a way to jump-start sales of older books. HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster each limit the titles supplied to Scribd and Oyster to titles which were published over a year ago. According to Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy said, “Consumers have clearly taken to subscription models for other media, and we expect that our participation in these services will encourage discovery of our books, grow the audience and expand our retail reach for our authors, and create new revenue streams under an author-friendly, advantageous business model for both author and publisher.” Three other major US publishers (Hachette, Penguin Random House, and Macmillan) are still holding back from the subscription ebook market. “It’s not a model for us,” Evan Schnittman, chief marketing and sales officer at Hachette, told the WSJ. Acknowledging the contradiction between Hachette’s position and what consumers want, he added: “My kids no longer buy music because they are using one of many music subscription services and have access 24/7.” Simon & Schuster signed the deals today because they too realize that Oyster and Scribd offer a service that customers want which could also boost direct sales. “We thought the lower barrier to reading could, in fact, increase sales,” Ms. Reidy said. “Whether a book is 20 years old or five years old, they are equally discoverable.” The post Simon & Schuster Strikes Deals With Scribd, Oyster appeared first on The Digital Reader.  |
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