The 2014 results are in and Apple’s iMacPad has for the first time dropped out of the top three ebook devices globally. It was a close run thing with readers finally focussing all their attention on pure ebook readers and dropping their use of tablets for books.

[To remove any doubt, and keep the lawyers at bay, what follows is a pure work of fiction. I do not, or have not possessed a time travel device and my psychic powers are not as good as they may appear. However, anything I am proved right on I reserve the right to say ‘I told you so’]. Read more »

In a week where Apple fans have got angry on the blogs, Amazon appeared to have scored lots of points in the small tablet war. However, dig a little deeper and it was not necessarily the high price tag on the iPad mini that seemed to irk the loyal Apple fans, but the news that their shiny new iPad 3 will be obsolete within a few months with the launch of the iPad 4.

It will be interesting to see how far the innovative manufacturer can stretch the patience of their fans. Have they gone one step too far this time? Read more »

Over the last few months I’ve been preparing the launch of my ebook publishing experiment and taking notes on the process.

Studio Tendra, the first publishing experiment itself was launched a couple of weeks ago and, Heartpunk, the first book series, is off on a good start.

The first issue became obvious very early on and my experience over the first few weeks confirms it: existing ebook publishing platforms are a joke. Read more »

We know that readers are reading more ebooks in the US, but now new research gives us some interesting insights into their behaviour and their use of digital and physical content. Some 30% of those that read econtent claim that that they now read longer, with some 41% of tablet readers and 35% of ereaders readers claiming to be reading more. Read more »

Does the Agency Pricing issue make your brain hurt?

Fear not. Help is at hand. Wired/Tim Carmody's piece on what's at stake and how it all works (or doesn't) in a legal sense is today's must read for all in the book trade. Includes:

definition of hub-and-spoke conspiracy (bad)

definition of conscious parallelism (good)

and some really powerful and interesting points about the legal ramifications of the court accepting the model. 

Go. Learn.

Here.

Companies like Apple have been dazzling users with fresh innovations for years.  Publishers have enjoyed riding their coattails into the App-mosphere for some time as well.  But what we haven’t been as clever at is emulating their ability to innovate ourselves, particularly in the field of Education Publishing. Read more »

In the jostle for market share in the tablet space Amazon is betting it will sell a great deal of content through the Kindle Fire as unlike its fierce competitor Apple it does not make money on its hardware sales. Read more »

So what was the biggest news story this week? Read more »

Today we all wake up with an Apple hangover from yesterday’s iBooks Education announcement. We all will now face a bombardment of commentary on whether it is good, bad or ugly. Opinion will be divided. Technical detail on file constructs will loose all but the die hard techie. The commercial rights and wrongs of the restrictions Apple have built in to contracts, their pricing vision and much more will be heatedly debated. Read more »

Before his death Steve Jobs had already targeted textbooks as the next opportunity His idea was to hire the best textbook writers to new create digital versions that were complimentary and exploited the iPad. Read more »