Today's Washington Post has a very interesting article  'As demand for e-books soars, libraries struggle to stock their virtual shelves.'

"Kindles, Nooks and iPads can do many amazing things, but they can’t bump you ahead in line at the Reston Regional Library. In fact, if you want to borrow a book, it may be quicker to put down your sleek new device and head into the stacks."

Which E-Books Are Most Borrowed From Libraries, And Why?

Which E-Books Are Most Borrowed From Libraries, And Why?     

An article on paidContent.org covers ebooks borrowed from libraries:

'OverDrive released its lists of the most-downloaded e-books from libraries in December 2011. These lists look pretty different from the current New York Times e-book bestseller lists."

Also, included in the article is some information on Penguin restoring libraries to lend ebooks -- but no new ebooks.  hmmm.

Good e-Reader announced a few days ago that Apple plans to launch a new Self-Publishing Program later this month:

"Apple is going to be holding an exclusive event in New York city later this month to possibly launch a new program for their iBooks and Publishing platform. Sources close to the matter have told us that they intend on launching a new digital self-publishing platform to get peoples content into the iBookstore. This is a huge step forward for Apple to compete with Amazon (DTP) and Barnes and Noble (Pubit)."

Self-publishing is getting stronger every day making the ebook world a more interesting place every day, too!

Love it!

Good year for Amazon

Amazon announced in a press release today that 2011 was the best holiday year for the company.

" Amazon customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers

#1 and #4 best-selling Kindle books released in 2011 published independently by authors using Kindle Direct Publishing"

"SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 29, 2011-- (NASDAQ: AMZN) - Amazon.com, Inc. today announced that 2011 was the best holiday ever for the Kindle family as customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers. Authors also continue to benefit from the success of Kindle — the #1 and #4 best-selling Kindle books released in 2011 were both published independently by their authors using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).
“We are grateful to our customers worldwide for making this the best holiday ever for Kindle,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. “And in a huge milestone for independent publishing, we’d also like to congratulate Darcie Chan, the author of ‘The Mill River Recluse,’ and Chris Culver, the author of ‘The Abbey,’ for writing two of the best-selling Kindle books of the year.”
More Kindle holiday facts:

• Throughout December, customers purchased well over 1 million Kindle devices per week.
• The new Kindle family held the top three spots on the Amazon.com best seller charts – #1: Kindle Fire, #2: Kindle Touch, #3: Kindle.
• Kindle Fire is the #1 best-selling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 13 weeks ago.
• Kindle is also the best-selling product on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es and Amazon.it this holiday season.
• Gifting of Kindle books was up 175 percent between this Black Friday and Christmas Day compared to the same period in 2010.
• Christmas Day was the biggest day ever for Kindle book downloads.
• Kindle Fire is the best-selling product on Amazon.com’s mobile website and across all of Amazon.com’s mobile applications.

Additional Kindle Direct Publishing successes include:

• December’s #1 best-selling Kindle Direct Publishing book “Wife by Wednesday” was also the #5 overall best-selling Kindle book in December and has appeared on both the USA Today and Wall Street Journal best seller lists. Author Catherine Bybee was formerly an emergency room registered nurse, and has now left her job to focus on writing full-time.
• In 2011, KDP and CreateSpace author CJ Lyons reached #2 on the Amazon best seller list, #2 on the New York Times best seller list, and #4 on the USA Today best seller list. As a former pediatric ER doctor, CJ has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge suspense novels, and she quit her job in medicine after 17 years to pursue her dream of becoming a full-time novelist. Her latest work includes “Face to Face” and “Hot Water.”       

450 Children's books for the Amazon Kindle Fire

A recent post on Mashable Business talked about how Amazon will be offering 450 children's books for the Kindle Fire:

"In a strike against Apple and Barnes & Noble, Amazon’s publishing unit has acquired 450 children’s titles from Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books, which the company plans to format for its full-color Kindle Fire tablet...."


Competition in the ebooks business is great.  I wonder what's coming in the future??

New stats and $99 e-readers

Updated ereader and ebook stats have been posted on paid-content.org:
"if all you want for Christmas is a $99 e-reader, Santa is listening, according to research firm IDC. The company also finds e-reader shipments growing 167 percent year on year...."

 Other items of interest in this article is info on Amazon's new device and sale percentages for Kindle and Nook.   "We’re also expecting Amazon’s much-rumored, color LCD-based device to ship later this year. Because we expect it to run a customized version of Android that ties its use to Amazon’s content services, we expect the device to more closely resemble Barnes & Noble’s Color Nook than Apple’s iPad 2."

Amazon and Netflix-type service

From the Wall Street Journal Digital edition:


"Amazon Digital Library, Book Prices Pressure Publishers: The Kindle maker is trying to get book publishers to buy into a book rental service for digital content, reports the Wall Street Journal. But publishers aren’t excited, believing that such a Netflix-like service could lower the value of books and strain relationships with other book retailers. The service would charge customers a fixed monthly fee.
According to the WSJ, Amazon told publishers that the service would feature older titles. Publishers would also receive a “substantial fee” for participating."

Google Books add library management

Do you use Google Books?  I have saved a few ebooks on my computer, but have not built up a big library.  Most of my free ebooks are saved on my Kindle, but for those of you with other devices iLounge added a short article on Google Books (  Google Books adds library management) which may be of interest to you.

Best Children's Books on the iPad

Back in March The New York Times listed the best children's books on iPad.  Kids will surely love these books!

Back in March The New York Times listed the best children's books for the iPad.  Kids will surely love these books.


"Once upon a time (five years ago), e-books for children came on shiny CD-ROMs that cost $40, plus a few dollars for sales tax. Today’s children’s e-books cost just that sales tax. All you need is a $500 iPad.
Just a fad, you say? Perhaps, but recent e-books for Apple’s iPad indicate that the professionals have arrived in the app stores. These e-books can sound out difficult words and move you with illustrations that change based on the tilt of the screen. Today’s children can actually blow the little pig’s house down, by way of the iPad’s microphone...."

Amazon Kindle Daily Deal

Today's deal is The Lincoln Lawyer for $2.99.

Don't Miss a Deal


The Kindle Daily Deal will be posted daily on Twitter, and frequently on Facebook and the Kindle Daily Post

. 

Kindle Cloud Reader

Technology is truly amazing.  Now Amazon has come up with the Kindle Cloud Reader.

Buy Once, Read Everywhere

• Instant access to your Kindle library
• Continue reading even when you lose your internet connection
• Optimized for iPad: shop the integrated Kindle Store for Tablets

Back from a little break and Lending Kindle books

Took a little break from blogging the past couple weeks.  Been busy taking care of household chores, running errands and travelling to the beach!  The temperature has finally lowered to the 80s, but now we are waiting for the rain so I thought I would get back to blogging.


Borrowing and or lending Kindle books always seems to be a hot topic.  A recent article in Daily Finance has information on another lending site.

Apple and Amazon ebook sales

paidContent.org  has a short article on the number of sales of Apple ebooks that Steve Jobs announced the other day -- an increase of 30 million since March.   The site also has some statistics on Amazon's sales to as they say "help put Apple's 130 million figure in perspective."






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Kindle Screesavers

Some people are just so creative -- I 'm not!  The Shifted Librarian and How To Geek discuss how to personalize the screensavers on your Kindle and add library-related screensavers.  I haven't tried this yet, but they say it is simple to do.

Share Books with the Troops

How to Share Books With Troops Overseas -- great plan!!  GalleyCat has a list of seven ways you can share books (printed and ebooks) with the troops.

Kindle books at your local library

Amazon will make Kindle books available at public libraries.  According to a recent Amazon press release  'Kindle Library Lending, a new feature launching later this year that will allow Kindle customers to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will be available for all generations of Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps....


"We're doing a little something extra here," Marine continued. "Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we're extending our Whispersync technology so that you can highlight and add margin notes to Kindle books you check out from your local library. Your notes will not show up when the next patron checks out the book. But if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced....

Amazon is working with OverDrive, the leading provider of digital content solutions for over 11,000 public and educational libraries in the United States, to bring a seamless library borrowing experience to Kindle customers. "We are excited to be working with Amazon to offer Kindle Library Lending to the millions of customers who read on Kindle and Kindle apps," said Steve Potash, CEO, OverDrive. "We hear librarians and patrons rave about Kindle, so we are thrilled that we can be part of bringing library books to the unparalleled experience of reading on Kindle." '

Maybe all the negative comments about Amazon/Kindle not liking libraries made an impact.  A win-win for all.

ebook sources

Lately I've been seeing more and more ebook sources (free and not free).  Below are a few:

         "The largest independent eBook store globally, BooksOnBoard - headquartered in Austin, Texas - opened in 2006 and offers eBooks and audio books in six different formats, including the industry standard Adobe ePUB format, available from all the major publishers and most of the smaller ones. With 7 day a week support, BooksOnBoard never closes for its customers, having thousands of unsolicited testimonials from happy support customers...."       $$$

 The World's classic literature at your fingertips. Over 1,000,000 free ebook titles available.

"LendInk is a free service that allows you to connect with other book lovers, loan your lendable eBooks in seconds and find new books to borrow."

15 Best websites to find and download ebooks

15 Best Websites to Find and Download ebooks   (many of these websites are technology related).

Top 100 Authors downloaded from Project Gutenberg

Top 100 Authors last 30 days

1. Dickens, Charles (78364)
2. Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir (75838)
3. Twain, Mark (74747)
4. Shakespeare, William (56503)
5. Austen, Jane (54921)
6. Wells, H. G. (Herbert George) (51128)
7. Verne, Jules (39705)
8. Johnson, E. Pauline (36709)
9. Wilde, Oscar (36663)
10. Carroll, Lewis (36462)
11. Poe, Edgar Allan (34060)
12. Burton, Richard Francis, Sir (32715)
13. Dumas, Alexandre (29373)
14. Vatsyayana (27241)
15. Indrajit, Bhagavanlal (26731)
16. Bhide, Shivaram Parashuram (26731)
17. Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville) (26706)
18. Burroughs, Edgar Rice (26297)
19. Tolstoy, Leo, graf (25772)
20. Stevenson, Robert Louis (25529)
21. Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank) (24840)
22. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (21664)
23. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor (20747)
24. Joyce, James (20594)
25. Christie, Agatha (20503)
26. Plato (19481)
27. Grimm, Jacob (19028)
28. Grimm, Wilhelm (19028)
29. Doré, Gustave (18864)
30. Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) (18594)
31. Aesop (18280)
32. Swift, Jonathan (18265)
33. Kipling, Rudyard (18240)
34. Kafka, Franz (17874)
35. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (17498)
36. Melville, Herman (17378)
37. Dante Alighieri (17150)
38. London, Jack (17033)
39. Conrad, Joseph (16794)
40. Jowett, Benjamin (16736)
41. Defoe, Daniel (16636)
42. Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud) (16567)
43. Benedict, Elsie Lincoln (16501)
44. Benedict, Ralph Paine (16501)
45. Garnett, Constance (16280)
46. Sunzi (6th cent. BC) (15922)
47. Homer (15920)
48. Hugo, Victor (15869)
49. Potter, Beatrix (15736)
50. Giles, Lionel (14620)
51. Leonardo da Vinci (14388)
52. Stoker, Bram (14170)
53. James, Henry (14019)
54. Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (13946)
55. Richter, Jean Paul (13839)
56. Alcott, Louisa May (13512)
57. Brontë, Charlotte (13102)
58. Alarcón, Pedro Antonio de (13060)
59. Dick, Philip K. (12707)
60. Balzac, Honoré de (12686)
61. Sterndale, Robert Armitage (12605)
62. Wyllie, David (12567)
63. Lang, Andrew (12519)
64. Pope, Alexander (12506)
65. Widger, David (12294)
66. Maude, Louise Shanks (12016)
67. Russell, Bertrand (11948)
68. Vernon Jones, V. S. (Vernon Stanley) (11814)
69. Maude, Aylmer (11755)
70. Haggard, Henry Rider (11737)
71. Hawthorne, Nathaniel (11536)
72. Whitman, Walt (11464)
73. Bierce, Ambrose (11279)
74. Giese, W.F. (11170)
75. Voltaire (10707)
76. Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew) (10408)
77. Hardy, Thomas (10399)
78. Cary, Henry Francis (10098)
79. Darwin, Charles (10098)
80. Townsend, F. H. (Frederick Henry) (10092)
81. Berens, E.M. (10010)
82. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (9970)
83. Machiavelli, Niccolò (9908)
84. Scott, Walter, Sir (9802)
85. Milton, John (9707)
86. Brontë, Emily (9631)
87. Burnett, Frances Hodgson (9512)
88. Eliot, George (9503)
89. Maupassant, Guy de (9490)
90. Collins, Wilkie (9481)
91. Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian) (9340)
92. Gibbon, Edward (9301)
93. Thoreau, Henry David (9266)
94. Milman, Henry Hart (9189)
95. Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich (8898)
96. Henty, G. A. (George Alfred) (8776)
97. Marriott, W. K. (William K.) (8749)
98. Hapgood, Isabel Florence (8651)
99. Shaw, Bernard (8635)
100. Trollope, Anthony (8589)