In a pre-holiday announcement on its blog, Google quietly pulled the plug on its attempt to help booksellers to sell ebooks: it announced the end of its reseller programme in which Google provided the technology for booksellers to sell ebooks from their own websites. The move affects partners in the US, Canada, the UK and [...]

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Technology researcher Forrester released a survey of US publishing executives yesterday which uncovered an interesting disconnect: 82% were optimistic about the digital transition of books, but only 28% thought their own company would be stronger as a result. The explanation? “Publishers have started to do the hard work of making the digital transition and they’re [...]

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Australian readers will have few reasons not to join the ebook revolution this Christmas as a host of offerings come on stream. The past year has seen major strides in the key areas of local availability, price, ease of use and ease of purchase. “This Christmas will be a very important one for ebooks in [...]

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Almost a year after it launched in the US, Google has opened its ebooks business to Australian readers through partnerships with national bookselling chain Dymocks and online bookseller Booktopia. The two sites went live today and will bring “hundreds of thousands” of ebooks to Australian customers. A search of the Dymocks site shows 148,000 titles [...]

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When the mightiest online retailer in the world, Amazon, has to bow to Apple’s demands and cut ties to its ebookstore in the Kindle app, we know we’re facing a big problem. Retailers have lost an important battle to stop Apple turning its hardware dominance into control over content sales. It’s now time for publishers to [...]

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