The following article was published in the latest Australian Booksellers Association magazine. I wrote it a couple of months ago and some of the UK moves have been affected by the change of government. (The Digital Economy Act 2010 passed by the previous government did include Section 43 which amends copyright for some public library [...]

[Read more →]

Following my story yesterday about the Canadian ebook store Shortcovers and its change of name to Kobo, it turns out there was another reason for the change. Kobo now has several new investors and one of them, the REDgroup will be bringing this fine service to Australia and New Zealand by May 2010. The REDgroup [...]

[Read more →]

Canadian ebook store Shortcovers has changed its name to Kobo, an anagram for “book”, and revamped its online store www.kobobooks.com as part of its plan to expand its international coverage. [Update: 16 Dec, 11:47am. REDgroup which has Australian and New Zealand book chains A&R, Whitcoulls and Borders ANZ, is a minority investor in the new [...]

[Read more →]

Following yesterday’s announcement by Amazon that the Kindle is going global from next week, there’s been a flurry of activity trying to sort out the details and implications of the announcement. Given the scale of the announcement — the move will make the Kindle, previously only available in the US, accessible to readers in 100 [...]

[Read more →]

Amazon’s Kindle is going global. From October 19, customers in 100 countries will be able to buy a Kindle, buy ebooks from the Kindle’s 200,000+ English language titles, and do it all over the wireless network that has made the Kindle so popular. [Update: 1:37pm Just had a call to tell me that Amazon is [...]

[Read more →]