The NZ$100 million upgrade to New Zealand’s National Library building has prompted debate about whether it’s money well spent. The latest contribution to this debate from the New Zealand Herald’s Brian Rudman suggests that the money would be better spent digitising the library’s collection so it’s available to everyone, not just tourists and residents of [...]

[Read more →]

Take a look at this Teleread discussion. A reader has noticed that ebook retailer Fictionwise/Ereader.com, recently acquired by big US book retailer Barnes and Noble, appears to be tightening its policies, blocking foreign buyers from purchasing titles. In the past, under independent ownership, it seems to have had fairly loose territorial restrictions on its customers. [...]

[Read more →]

When news broke in the DomPost this week that Dymocks in New Zealand had shelved its ebook plans, it looked like we were about to take a step backwards in getting ebooks established here. Plans by the Dymocks bookstore chain to sell ebooks in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have had the industry talking for [...]

[Read more →]

I suppose I should add to the noise and write about Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 release. But before I do, I should clarify: it’s not actually a new phone, it’s just an operating system upgrade. And it’s only for developers at this stage, is still full of bugs, and won’t ship to users until later [...]

[Read more →]

New Zealand’s publishers can learn from Amazon’s advice to UK indie publishers — if you ever want to see the Kindle here, get digitising. Amazon executive Genevieve Kunst was addressing delegates to the UK Independent Publishers Group conference. The thrust of what she had to say was that there was no planned date at this [...]

[Read more →]