Tag: E-READERS

Americans are increasingly doing their reading on screens, according to the Association of American Publishers. From January 2010 to January 2011, e-book sales more than doubled, increasing by 116-percent to $69.9 million. By contrast, hardbacks and paperbacks fell by 11.3- and 19.7-percent, to $49.1 million and $83.6 million respectively. By our calculations, ten years from now, "turn the page" ...

Due to the rise in popularity of e-books and other digital texts, some worry that the digital divide may soon become a "reading divide." Low-income communities, particularly African American ones, have not only struggled to keep up in a world increasingly reliant on technology, but continue to trail their peers in literacy rates by a significant margin. The author Marita Golden told Reuters, ...

Two weeks ago, the Amazon announced that the Kindle would be sold in AT&T stores; it's already available at Best Buy, Staples and Target here in the U.S. Now the e-reader device will be popping up in Best Buy and Carphone Warehouse locations across the U.K. Both retailers will be offering the e-reader with an interesting twist: In addition to being able to purchase a Kindle at the regular ...

Less than two weeks after Harper Collins incited a firestorm with news of its e-book library circulation cap, the American Library Association has thrown its hat into the ring. This week, one of the group's recently-convened electronic book task forces met in D.C. to draw up recommendations for an ALA response to stingy publishers' licenses. Among the recommendations suggested by the ...

HarperCollins has placed a restriction on the number of times its e-books can be checked out from a public library. After 26 checkouts, the expired title becomes locked in the library's virtual collection until a new digital copy has been purchased. The idea is that the physical copy of a HarperCollins book would be worn out after about 26 checkouts, and the library would then have to ...

Lendle, an e-book sharing site that launched this week, allows Amazon users to borrow and lend select Kindle e-books, of which 821 are currently available, for two-week periods. All you need is at least one of the free Kindle apps for Mac, PC, iOS or Android (or a Kindle, itself). Besides that, you'll need an Amazon account and a willingness to share with others. Just make sure you return the ...

Amazon's empire is continuing to grow, with the company reporting an increase in profits of eight-percent in the fourth quarter of 2010. That growth was a little slower than expected, but the really big news from Amazon's quarterly financial report is the fact that sales of Kindle e-books have surpassed that of paperbacks. It was only in July sales of e-books passed that of hardcovers -- making it ...

Already available on Barnes & Noble's NOOKcolor e-reader, the 'NOOK Kids' app is now available on the iPad. According to TUAW, the app features hundreds of colorful, interactive books, which it will read aloud to your kids, and also easily syncs with your NOOKcolor device. The free app, which also works on the iPhone, comes with two initial downloads -- Richard Scarry's 'Colors,' and Rudyard ...

Ah, what unsurprising news a year can bring! Just as everyone predicted, e-books continued to nibble at the ankles of their printed forebears this holiday season, with between three and five million e-readers activated in the week after Christmas. Barnes and Noble claimed that it sold a million e-books on December 25th alone, while Amazon's been outselling print bestsellers with digital ones since ...

In October, Amazon announced that it would begin allowing Kindle owners to lend books to friends and family, so long as they use a Kindle (or the Kindle app), too. The company promised the feature would arrive before the end of the year and, while Amazon is cutting it pretty close with a December 30th launch date, it stayed true to its word. Users can now lend e-books for up to 14 days, although ...

The Kindle is officially the iPod of the e-reader world. It has its own locked media ecosystem and offers a best-of-breed user experience. And, this holiday season, the Kindle 3 offically became the best selling product in Amazon history, beating former top seller 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.' Amazon also set a single-day sales record on Cyber Monday, with orders for 13.5 million items ...

The NOOKcolor is the first of its kind: a serious, full-color e-reading device. Sure, the iPad and Galaxy Tab have found some success moonlighting as virtual readers, but they're first and foremost devices for apps and browsing the Web. Plus, they're a lot more expensive. The NOOKcolor is $249 of straight-up, reading-focused hardware and software. You can still browse the Web and do other things ...

The New York Times states that, on Christmas Day, "hundreds of thousands of consumers are expected to unwrap new e-readers that they received as gifts, and quickly begin downloading books to read." No surprise there, really, since Christmas Day 2009 doubled as the Bataan Death March of the popular printing press -- the first time that Amazon sold more digital books for its Kindle reader than it ...

Forget Roe v. Wade. Forget Miranda v. Arizona. Forget 'The People vs. Larry Flynt.' They're all milestone cases, to be sure, but they all pale in comparison to the virulent ideological divide that's ravaging today's Supreme Court: iPad v. Kindle. In a recent interview with C-SPAN, Justice Elena Kagan confessed that she reads many of her court briefs on her Kindle, where, presumably, she can ...

Romance novels are enjoying a renaissance, largely thanks to the discreet power of the e-book reader. The tawdry books have always been popular among female readers, but many of the more self-conscious readers out there would be too embarrassed to read the books in public, in part due to their bodice-ripping covers, bearing long-locked Fabio clones and breathless damsels. But, since e-readers ...