E-Books and Interactive Publishing

A funny thing happened on the way to the future: the book didn’t get left behind, after all. That’s a functional if simplistic interpretation of what the more-than 550 attendees at The Bookseller’s annual FutureBook Conference in London on Friday (December 2) found themselves hearing. Now deep into the digital shakedown, the industry seems to be coming…

Iowa is the latest state considering the introduction of a sales tax on digital products such as e-books and software. Today, state legislators and Iowa Department of Revenue officials met to discuss the proposal, which would result in a tax on digital products sold by companies with a nexus, or significant physical presence, in the…

In just a few short years, the Russian ebook subscription service Bookmate has become a market force in Indonesia, Latin America and CIS countries. Expansion plans include Northern Europe and additional South Asian countries. Bookmate's Managing Director Andrei Bayev told RBTH how the Russian company manages to inspire a love of reading in countries around…

Brighton, U.K. -- December 1, 2016 -- Semantico have announced a partnership to provide the native integration of TrendMD within their Scolaris digital publishing solution. The partnership will deliver to publishers an enhanced research experience for their end-users and increased content discoverability, but above all, the potential for increased usage. The market-leading content discoverability tool…

BOSTON -- November 30, 2016 -- Global learning company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) today announced the release of HMH Social Studies ©2018, its new, next generation social studies curricula for grades 6 through 12. The comprehensive program covers history, civics, psychology, government, geography and economics. Program highlights include document-based investigations and new, analytic skills activities…

Creating or aggregating content and actually getting readers to see it are two sides of the same coin. Without both content and a reliable way for people to find it, the motivation to create or house such content becomes less. One feeds the other. So, how do content aggregators and authors find that sweet spot…

MADRID — November 24, 2016 – Rakuten Kobo, leading innovator in ebooksand digital reading, today announced it has partnered with Fnac, beloved retailer of cultural, entertainment and technology products, to bring Kobo’s world-class ereading platform and devices to Spanish readers. Customers now have access to the Kobo by Fnac service at www.fnac.es and in-store at…

Pottermore, the digital content company for J K Rowling's Harry Potter books, returned to growth in its last financial year after the firm’s decision to make its ebooks and audiobooks available via Amazon, Apple, Audible and others “really paid off”. In the year to end-March 2016, sales more than doubled to £15.1m, compared to £7m…

Ask media executives about readers’ global migration to smartphones, and you can expect a chorus of groans. It’s the same lament across the newspaper, magazine and book businesses. The rise of tiny screens upends readers’ traditional habits — and clobbers ad revenue. David Risher sees things differently. He’s the president and cofounder of Worldreader, a…

In mid-October, the Nobel Committee for Literature awarded the Nobel Prize to Bob Dylan, “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” The announcement came shortly after the most recent Annual Arts Basic Survey (AABS) by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released data that found adults in the United…