Books

Sony, which is essentially a non-player in the U.S. ebook market at this point, is cutting its losses and shutting down its digital bookstore in the U.S. and Canada, the company reported Thursday. “Sony is withdrawing from the digital reading business in the United States,” Sony spokeswoman Maya Wasserman confirmed. The beneficiary is Kobo, which Continue Reading →

The Netflix monthly subscription model is a hit for movies and TV, and is spreading to music with paid versions of services like Pandora and Spotify. In 2014, it looks like the model could finally catch on for e-books. On Tuesday, a company called Epic launched a service that offers children a monthly library of Continue Reading →

Amazon on Wednesday launched “a literary journal for the digital age,” Day One (not to be confused with the journaling app of the same name), which will publish the work of one writer and one poet each week. An annual subscription will normally be $19.99 but is $9.99 for “a limited time.” Issues will be Continue Reading →

Amazon is playing matchmaker to help you find low-cost audio editions of your Kindle books. The retailer’s new Matchmaker page scans your Kindle library to see which e-books have a corresponding audio version. The audio versions then pop up with discounted price tags. Simply click on the upgrade button for a specific book to make Continue Reading →

Amazon announced a new publishing platform on Wednesday called Kindle Worlds, which will give both established authors and aspiring fan fiction writers the chance to earn royalties based on their work. Fan fiction is a rather murky topic, given that it often combines beloved characters and franchises in rather unusual scenarios. Regardless, the medium has Continue Reading →

Well, this process seems a bit counterintuitive, eh? This morning, Barnes & Noble introduced a new scheme for getting Nook customers to visit the company’s retail stores. The promotion nets you one free e-book when you purchase another, but — and this is where the offer tripped us up a bit — you can only Continue Reading →

To-do lists and task managers are commonplace on the App Store, and it’s sometimes hard for unique apps to stand out. But a recently launched app from Betaworks called Done Not Done surprisingly manages to do so. Don’t let the name fool you, this app doesn’t focus on the boring things you need to do, Continue Reading →

Amazon’s just launched Free Time Unlimited for its range of Kindle Fire tablets. It offers unlimited access to age-restricted movies, games and books for kids, for $3 a month. Essentially a subscription service for children, the service lets you tell Amazon your offspring’s gender and age, and then a custom library of books, movies, apps Continue Reading →

I railed against e-books about a month ago. My biggest issues were their cost and use of DRM. In the interest of doing my best to see the other side of things, I committed to reading only e-books for the rest of the month. And you know what? I loved it. I used the the Kindle Continue Reading →

There’s no doubt that Amazon sells a lot of Kindles; it’s the most popular product on a site that sells many very popular things. But we’re five years into the Kindle Age, and we still don’t have a single firm sales number to pin on them. Come on, guys! Let us quantify how impressed we Continue Reading →