Boundless: Digital Publishing Roundup – Spring Edition

For many of us, spring marks a new beginning. A period of reinvention. An opportunity to grow. It seems the same can be said of digital publishing. With e-book sales slowing, publishers are experimenting with new retail channels and digital marketing opportunities, while other key players are transforming their business models in hopes of reaching more readers. Here are the latest developments…

Trains, Planes, and…E-books

Publishers are setting their sights on travelers…

Free Kobo E-books Now Available on Southwest Airplanes

Kobo has teamed up with Southwest Airlines to offer free e-books to travelers who want to read digitally…https://bit.ly/1FqoAl8

HarperCollins Takes Flight with JetBlue Ebook Partnership

Back in November, JetBlue rolled out its new in-flight digital content platform, which came equipped with a selection of samples of twenty best-selling ebooks published by HarperCollins…https://bit.ly/1uBmDWV

Amazon Goes Airborne With JetBlue

Amazon is adding one more advantage to the long list of services it already offers its premium customers. So long as they fly with JetBlue, Amazon Prime members will have unlimited access to the airline’s Wi-Fi, allowing them to stream all the Amazon Prime content available to them – for free. This includes thousands of films and TV shows via Amazon Instant Video, more than one million songs, curated playlists and 500,000 eBooks on Kindle’s Owner’s Lending Library… https://bit.ly/1KVnThU

S&S Tries Geo-Targeting in New Marketing Outreach

In the latest effort to enhance book discovery, Simon & Schuster is partnering with mobile content delivery service Foli to offer customers complimentary access to a selection of full-text e-books in airports, museums and hotels around the country…https://bit.ly/1e7l3ft

Something Old, Something New

Some industry players see change as the path forward…

Hoopla Launches E-book, Comics Service for Libraries

Midwest Tape, a media distributor to libraries, has announced the roll-out of its new e-book service. Thousands of titles from indie publishers, including comics, will now be available through the company’s hoopla digital platform, which currently offers libraries access to movies, music, audiobooks and TV shows. Officials said the hoopla e-book titles will be available on a multi-user basis, a factor that sets the service apart from the one copy/one user models that currently dominate the market…https://bit.ly/1Foy11i

Eyeing Amazon, Oyster Launches Ebookstore with All Big Five Publishers

The ebook subscription service Oyster is no longer just that. Eighteen months after launching publicly, the company has unveiled an ebookstore offering a la carte titles from all of the Big Five publishers, encompassing all front- and back-list ebooks, including preorders, available everywhere else…https://bit.ly/1IWzKen

Vook Pivots, Becomes Self-Pub Platform Pronoun

After a year of acquisitions that included the online literary boutique Byliner and the e-book data analysis engine Booklr, e-book creator Vook has relaunched itself as Pronoun. The new company is a soup-to-nuts self-publishing platform comprising the combined technological tools of Byliner, Booklr and Vook. Declaring itself “a new model for authors,” Pronoun offers its services free of charge and gives authors a 100% royalty rate…https://bit.ly/1Afujby

Audio Samples Now on Goodreads

Do you love listening to audiobooks? Now it’s even easier to choose your next audiobook thanks to the new Goodreads ‘Listen’ feature. Goodreads has added free audio samples for 180,000 Audible titles to its website, where they’re available to all members…https://bit.ly/1FfIdJi

Rakuten Buys Ebook And Audiobook Platform OverDrive

Rakuten is beefing up its digital content chops after it announced the acquisition of ebook and audiobook marketplace OverDrive for $410 million. The Japanese e-commerce giant got into the e-reader game when it picked up hardware maker Kobo for $315 million in 2011. It stands to reason then that U.S.-based OverDrive, which was founded way back in 1986 and offers over 2.5 million titles from more than 5,000 publishers today, will be put to work providing greater choice and reading material for Kobo owners…https://tcrn.ch/1OaeRRs

Libraries Opening Shelves to Indies

Libraries have struggled for years to find an efficient and easy way to make eBooks available to readers from local authors. The SELF-e platform initiates a process for public libraries to accept self-published submissions from their local authors — and in turn, add these eBooks to their inventory…https://bit.ly/1Joi7aa

 

Have you tried any of these new tools or services?
If so, what was your experience?