Technology

While we publishers tend to be a pessimistic lot, it's nice every now and again to think about how much technology has advanced and made our lives easier and better over the last century. With that in mind, a set of three silent films from the archives of Oxford University Press, made in 1925 by the Federation of British Industry, on the making of a book.

In 2012, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) filed for bankruptcy protection. In July of this year, Cengage Learning did the same, hoping to eliminate $4 billion in debt. Earlier in the year, McGraw-Hill completed the sale of its entire education division. And though HMH has since emerged nearly debt free and is seeking an IPO, clearly these are signs that disruptive changes are underway in educational publishing.

If you’re struggling with just whatthe relatively new concept of the "entrepreneurial author" means, there's nobody better to ask than Bookigee founding CEO Kristen McLean.

The advent of digital media has presented educational publishers with opportunities not only for the delivery of effective teaching and learning solutions, but also with significant challenges that are well known by readers of this column. These challenges include the need to acquire new competencies within the organizations, the creation of new partnerships with service providers and the need to sort through a range of technical issues.

Quebec, September 11, 2013 -Nu-book, the leading North American provider of ereading technology platforms for the publishing industry, today announced the release of a suite of solutions for a variety of different publishers, including corporate, retail, catalogue, and book publishers as well as magazines, newspapers-and even book printers.

Kobo, the Canadian e-reader maker, has launched the addition to its line-up today: the Kobo Aura. It is the latest attempt by the company to compete against Amazon's Kindle range in the e-reader market.

One of the device's chief points of difference is battery life, which at more than two months is longer than any other competitor.

Another is storage capacity. The Kobo Aura holds more books than other rivals with 4GB of storage, according to the company, and can expand up to 32GB with a microSD card.

It has survived the onslaught of apps that turn a smartphone into an e-reader. But a new device is set to take on the Kindle by offering similar features. One of the main reasons people also buy a Kindle is because of its e-ink display - its low-power meaning it lasts much longer than a phone, and its anti-glare screen means it can be read in bright light.

Tablet sales showed their first sequential decline ever in the second quarter of this year, according to research firm IDC. Apple sold fewer iPads than expected in its most recent quarter. Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader sales fell 20% in the fiscal first quarter ended August 20, two months after the company announced it will no longer make color versions of Nook, only black and white ones. And analysts are worrying about whether smartphone profit margins can hold up as buyer fatigue sets in.

By now, we've all gotten pretty used to not owning stuff-at least in the traditional, hold-it-in-your-hands sense. If you're anything like me, your DVD collection stopped growing a few years back once Netflix and Hulu bolstered their offerings. And that CD storage stand (hell, even your iTunes account) has probably gathered dust thanks to Spotify and Rdio. But books? Turns out, we're still content to pay $10 for a paperless novel that we're not even certain we'll like or finish.

Lynn Rosen, Editorial Director of the Publishing Business Group, interviewing Len Vlahos, Executive Director of the Book Industry Study Group, and Karina Luke, Executive Director of Book Industry Communication at the IDPF's Digital Book conference at Book Expo America