E-books are more akin to audio books — a compliment to print, not a replacement.
An Association of American Publishers report says sales of e-books rose just 5 percent in the year ending in the first quarter of 2013, a big drop from the year earlier when sales grew 28 percent, and an enormous drop from two years ago, when sales jumped a crazy 252 percent.
Microsoft C.E.O. Steve Ballmer
Two-time George Polk Award winner Kurt Eichenwald analyzes one of American corporate history’s greatest mysteries—the lost decade of Microsoft— traces the “astonishingly foolish management decisions” at the company that “could serve as a business-school case study on the pitfalls of success.” Relying on dozens of interviews and internal corporate records—including e-mails between executives at the company’s highest ranks—Eichenwald offers an unprecedented view of life inside Microsoft during the reign of its , in the August issue. Today, a single Apple product—the iPhone—generates more revenue than all of Microsoft’s wares combined.
Is your e-book reading you?
On the Kobo e-reader the average reader will take just seven hours to read the last book in Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy, that’s about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: “Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.” And on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first “Hunger Games” book is to download the next one.
A fifth of American adults report that they have read an e-book in the past year.
Twenty-one percent of Americans have read an e-book. The increasing availability of e-content is prompting some to read more than in the past and to prefer buying books to borrowing them.
Bendable e-reader.
One big disadvantage to e-readers is that they’re made of breakable glass and sensitive electronics that can get damaged when dropped. Books, by contrast, are pretty durable.
Continue reading… “XGA – bendable e-reader goes into production”
58% of college students prefer digital over print for textbook reading.
According to a new survey from the Pearson Foundation, the majority of U.S. college students now prefer digital formats whether they’re reading textbooks or “fun” books.
Continue reading… “Most college students in the U.S. prefer digital over print when reading”
Kindle Library Lending
Amazon announced Kindle Library Lending, a program that will let Kindle users borrow books from more than 11,000 libraries in the United States. The program follows Amazon’s person-to-person Kindle Book Lending feature that debuted at the end of 2010 and addresses long-running concerns that e-readers like the Kindle would bypass libraries entirely.
Devices that display text in a clear, legible format encourages the brain to be ‘lazy’
Readers using electronic books are less likely to absorb what they have read because the information is presented in such simple form.
Continue reading… “e-Readers Encourage the Brain to be ‘Lazy’”