Google

How can publishing compete with the allure of the tech companies? Do the tech companies scream "today" - even "tomorrow" - while publishing is still perceived as being stuck in "yesterday?" Does media portrayal of the publishing industry help or hinder? These were among issues raised at the London Book Fair's third 'Tech Tuesday" event last week, held in super cool Hoxton, a very funky area of east London, close to Old Street's "silicon roundabout" where so many app companies are based.

There's a lot of tsoris in the publishing community right now over ebooks. Much of it has something to do with THAT COMPANY WITH THE WEBSITE THAT SELLS ALL THE THINGS, how THAT COMPANY has a stranglehold on the book market, how it's devaluing our literary canon, how it has publishers right where it wants them. But we're not just cranky about THAT COMPANY. Other jeremiads include-but are not limited to-the painfully slow adoption curve of EPUB 3, the demise of beloved sites like Readmill, the failure of "enhanced" ebooks to gain traction, stagnating ebook sales,

Hold the phone: Amazon wants to burrow even deeper into your life.

The retailer is expected to introduce a smartphone on Wednesday at an event in Seattle, a long-rumored project that aims to close any remaining gap between the impulse to buy and the completed act.

Amazon has spent the last several years furiously investing billions of dollars on multiple fronts: constructing warehouses all over the country to deliver goods as fast as possible, building devices as varied as tablets and set-top boxes, and creating and licensing entertainment to stock those devices.

Google is terrific but it doesn't help me answer the question, "where did I read about topic xyz?" I'm running into that question more frequently these days, partly because I'm reading so many short bursts of content from so many sources.

Amazon has been locked in an epic battle with publishers for control of ebook prices for years now, and the fight has lately taken a nasty turn. Among other things, the retail giant has recently banned pre-orders of Hachette titles, including JK Rowling's next mystery novel, and today it appears that it's done the same to Warner Bros movies, refusing to take pre-orders of The Lego Movie.

This is obviously irritating for publishers - and authors, as Stephen Colbert's amusingly rage-filled reaction highlights - and it has implications for readers too

Amazon has a 78% market share of Hachette Livre e-book titles in the UK and a 60% share in the US, an Investor Day presentation by Hachette Livre has revealed. The presentation, made public on the company's website and first reported by Publishers Marketplace, has shed fresh light into how hard the publisher must be being hit by its current row over terms with Amazon in the US, which has seen pre-ordering removed from selected Hachette Book Group titles. The presentation has also discussed a necessary "rebalancing" between the company's US and UK operations.

TORONTO, CANADA - June 10, 2014 - Audiobooks.com, the only service that allows members to both stream and download audiobooks, today announced that they are releasing a new Romance Audiobooks, Novels and Stories app for iOS devices. Audiobooks.com extends the Romance Audiobooks app as a first attempt at targeting a niche market based on genre…

My long-held conviction that broad-based subscriptions for ebooks were not likely to work is partly based on facts that are now changing. It is still by no means a slam dunk that ebooks must go where Spotify has taken digital music and Netflix has taken the digital distribution of TV and movies, but it looks more likely today than it did six months ago. Still, looks could be deceiving.

For the first time, BookExpo America - the United States' primary publishing event - focused its Global Market Forum on the topic of translation, rather than on a specific country. And from the beginning, the sessions rang with overlapping themes of missed chances, an ever-expanding marketplace, and the changing avenues toward translation.

The conference's keynote speaker was Rüdiger Wischenbart, director of International Affairs for BookExpo America, who noted, "This year, translations are a genre that are a true destination at BEA,

Washington, D.C.-Leading library visionaries and experts discuss trends in digital content technology and the current state of library ebook lending in "Digital Discoveries," a new digital supplement from American Libraries magazine.

"There is some reason for optimism," said Alan S. Inouye, guest editor of the digital supplement and director of the American Library Association's (ALA) Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP). "However, there remain many formidable challenges and exciting opportunities for libraries within the digital content realm in the coming years."