[This article was originally published in the March 2012 issue of News on Bookselling, the magazine of the Australian Booksellers Association.] This year will mark the fifth anniversary of Amazon’s launch of the Kindle, the event that triggered the spectacular rise of the ebook. Amazon has remained the biggest beneficiary of this growth, with its [...]

[Read more →]

Apple made several announcements yesterday which can drive the textbook’s digital transformation — or, in Steve Jobs’ more colourful phrase, its “digital destruction”. My pick is that this will  be the tipping point for educational publishing, its ‘iPod moment’ or ‘Kindle moment’ when the market suddenly takes off. But Apple’s moves will go much further [...]

[Read more →]

When Apple took its heavy-handed action against retailers last month, stopping them selling from within iPad and iPhone apps, those retailers were inevitably going to search for ways to avoid this happening in future. Any business would want to know that its very existence wasn’t subject to the changing whims of Apple management. It turns [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

[Updated 26 July, 9:42am. I've just received an email from Kobo about the changes to its service. Included in the email is the note that, "Any books you buy on Kobo.com are automatically updated on your iPhone or iPad Kobo app." So, my problem was that I didn't actually have to download it via the Adobe [...]

[Read more →]