Amazon.com

When the world's largest publishers struck ebook distribution deals with Amazon.com Inc. over the past several months, they seemingly got what they wanted: the right to set the prices of their titles and avoid the steep discounts the online retail giant often applies. But in the early going, that strategy doesn't appear to be paying…

The Department of Education will approve a $30M contract with Amazon to create an ebook marketplace for NYC’s 1,800 public schools.

Authors United, the ABA, and other associations wrote letters to the DOJ, concerned that Amazon is controlling book prices.

Five years after Amazon secretly asked regulators to investigate leading publishers - a case that ended up reinforcing the e-commerce company's clout - groups representing thousands of authors, agents and independent booksellers are asking the United States Department of Justice to examine Amazon for antitrust violations. Perhaps stealing a page from Amazon, which often promotes policies that would benefit it by talking about what customers want, the groups said their concerns were more about freedom of expression and a healthy culture than about themselves.

There will be changes to several book platforms that will effect both readers and authors - some very minor, some possibly effecting what a self-author makes.

First, Kobo Inc. has updated its Kobo Reading App - Read Books and Magazines iOS app. It's a fairly minor update, though it does introduce instant book previews, according to the app description.

If this is truly a new feature, it is one overdue as all the book platforms have been offering previews, and many are expanding these.

Amazon has added audiobook reading to its Echo personal assistant, allowing the pillar-like speaker to regale owners with Audible ebooks. The update is the latest in a series of improvements to Echo which Amazon has pushed out, and follows Google Calendar integration which was installed late last month. Echo will also synchronize its place in each audiobook with Amazon's apps on other platforms, to make the listening experience effectively seamless.

For the moment, only audiobooks purchased through Audible - the store Amazon itself owns - will be available to play.

It takes something truly ridiculous to make me write an out and out rant. Still, every now and then I read something that I can't avoid responding to, because of the degree to which it misrepresents reality in an area I both care about and am knowledgeable in. Yesterday I had that experience when I read an article contending that proprietary eBook formats are good rather than bad, and that while "someday" we may have a truly interoperable eBook format,

The world's biggest publisher, Penguin Random House, could block sales of its books on Amazon if it fails to resolve a contract dispute with the online bookseller. According to industry sources, Amazon, which sells around 90% of all books online, and Penguin Random House are in dispute over the terms of a new contract for online sales that could grow into a full-blown row.

Penguin Random House, which publishes 15,000 books a year across 250 imprints, is the last of the "big five" publishers to renew its contract with Amazon

Amazon's book publishing business is turning a page to a new chapter on growth. In 2016, the company's publishing division plans to release 2,000 titles, up from 1,200 this year, and today, it ranks as the second-largest publisher on Kindle in the U.S, according to Publisher's Weekly, which interviewed Amazon's VP of Publishing Jeff Belle via email.

While the company is often recognized for being a massive seller of books, less is known about Amazon's publishing division, which appears to be thriving.

Indie bookstores have been resurgent in recent years, filling the void of brick-and-mortar shopping left by closing big-box bookstores. How are these bookshops succeeding where Borders buckled? Housing Works Bookstore Café, part of the Housing Works charity in New York City, which provides housing and other services to people living with HIV/Aids, perfectly exemplifies the answer. While walking into a generic big-box bookstore feels a lot like shopping at a slightly more expensive, slightly less convenient version of Amazon, walking into Housing Works feels worlds apart.