Amazon’s free conversion service has been one of Kindle’s killer  features ever since the Kindle launched in 2007. I have used it countless times over the years, but lately I have found that Amazon is throwing up roadblocks that limit how I use the service.

Earlier today I emailed several ebooks so they could be converted and added to my Kindle account, only to have the process stall when Amazon sent not one but two emails demanding that I confirm that I really wanted Amazon to convert these ebooks.

Have you seen this before? Do you know when it started?

I only started seeing it in late April, but it had been a couple years since I last used the email conversion service, so I might have missed it being phased in.

Is this annoyance widespread, or am I being singled out for some reason?

You just finished reading When Did Amazon Start Demanding That You Verify Your eBooks Before They Get Converted and Sent to Your Kindle? which was published on The Digital Reader.

Newsletters have always been important, and with more people cutting back on social media, newsletters have gotten more important than ever. They are a great way of connecting with your readers and with creators.

I have been looking for new ways to stay on top of things since I curtailed my FB and Twitter use just over a month ago, and it recently occurred to me that I should be reading more newsletters.

What are some of your favorites? Who’s got the best newsletter?

You just finished reading You Tell Me: What Are Your Favorite Newsletters? which was published on The Digital Reader.

How well do you know your fonts?

Me, I can tell the difference between serif and san-serif, but aside from a few fonts like Papyrus and Comic Sans I could not name a font to save my life. That’s why I got an abysmally low score on The Font Game.

This game challenges you to correctly identify 30 fonts in a multiple choice test. You’re given 4 options for each font, and since there’s no timer you can spend as much time as you like choosing the correct answer.

What did you score?

You just finished reading “The Font Game” Challenges You to Earn the Title of Font Nerd which was published on The Digital Reader.

Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning.

• The Authors Guild is whining again because Google can’t wave a magic wand and make piracy disappear from the internet. 
• Someone wrote an 8-bit simulator for the British Library.  It reminds me of the games I used to play on my dad’s Compaq luggable.
• Huffington Post delves into how the legacy book publishing industry is struggling during the pandemic. 
• Emily Powell, CEO of Powell’s Books, was interviewed by the NYTimes. 
• Project Gutenberg has been mistakenly blocked in Italy. 

You just finished reading Morning Coffee – 8 June 2020 which was published on The Digital Reader.

Amazon has quietly released a couple new color options for the Kindle Paperwhite.

When the latest Kindle model shipped in late 2018, it was only available in black (the previous model was available in black and white). Then Amazon added a blue color option last summer, and now Amazon is offering two more color options: sage and plum.

It is almost as if Amazon has run out of new features to add, and has decided to offer us new color options instead.

As you can see in the graphic from Amazon’s website, the color options only apply to the rear shell. The front of the Paperwhite has been kept black to increase the perceived whiteness of the screen.

Bit sage and plum are available with either the 8GB  or 32GB storage options; coincidentally, the blue is out of stock, and won’t ship for a couple week.

Amazon

You just finished reading Kindle Paperwhite is Now Available in Four Colors which was published on The Digital Reader.

With one of the strictest paywalls in the news industry (you can’t even view an article if you block adverts), the Washington Post takes getting paid for their work pretty damn seriously.

Unfortunately, they do not extend that attitude to other people’s work. The WaPo published an uncredited editorial on Tuesday on the lawsuit that four publishers filed last Monday against the Internet Archive. This editorial stopped one step short of calling for actively pirating books.

A repository full of free books, available at the click of a button to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Whether this is a utopia, a dystopia or something in between depends on whom you ask — but thanks to the Internet Archive, it’s a reality. Now publishers are suing to stop it.

…

Its storehouse of scanned physical copies of books, however, is possibly illegal. And its decision amid the novel coronavirus pandemic to create a “National Emergency Library” by suspending limitations on how frequently these books can be “lent out” makes the problem worse.

…

And yet — the archive does appear to be serving a need. The National Emergency Library, which defends its strategy as copyright fair use, is supposed to get books to people when physical libraries are closed. Because print books and e-books are indeed not interchangeable, physical libraries are not able to start lending out extra electronic products in place of the print products they can no longer dispense. The waiting lines for e-books are longer than ever today, but lines were already long because libraries often can’t afford enough e-books to meet demand.

If this makes you furious, and you’re not quite sure why, it’s because the argument is juvenile – seriously, it’s like something you would hear from a teenager.

The WaPo’s position can be boiled down to “because libraries have limited funds, it’s okay to just not pay for licenses”. That’s the kind of argument a 12-year-old would make when caught stealing candy bars, only here it is being used to justify a massive piracy operation.

If libraries don’t have enough money then the solution isn’t to go out and pirate books; the solution is to raise funds for libraries.

In the case of the National Emergency Library, the IA could have found an internet billionaire to fund the endeavor. Bill Gates, for example, is currently whitewashing his reputation through philanthropy; he could have put up $100 million without blinking.

Can you imagine the discussion we would be having now if all the copies were being paid for using retail prices? This would no longer be a fight over piracy; we’d be talking about compulsory licensing for libraries and whether libraries should be forced to only buy the digital content in their market, as opposed to the retail market.

Publishers are very lucky that the IA didn’t make this fight about compulsory licensing because that argument would have a whole lot more support among creators, pundits, and the public. That would have been an argument that the IA would win hands down.

The National Emergency Library, on the other hand, is shaping up to be a very public loss for the IA.

image by clasesdeperiodismo via Flickr

You just finished reading Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post Takes Pro-Piracy Position on Internet Archive which was published on The Digital Reader.

The Internet Archive is shutting down one of its pirate sites ahead of schedule, and they are also not being honest about the reason.

Yesterday IA founder Brewster Kahle posted this on the IA blog:

Today we are announcing the National Emergency Library will close on June 16th, rather than June 30th, returning to traditional controlled digital lending. We have learned that the vast majority of people use digitized books on the Internet Archive for a very short time. Even with the closure of the NEL, we will be able to serve most patrons through controlled digital lending, in part because of the good work of the non-profit HathiTrust Digital Library. HathiTrust’s new Emergency Temporary Access Service features a short-term access model that we plan to follow.

Given that the IA is boasting that they will continue pirating books through The Open Library, this is really a case of “too little, too late”. They’re not stopping the piracy, just dialing it down a couple notches.

That is a wholly inadequate response, and to add insult to injury, Kahle went on to misrepresent why this occurred.

We moved up our schedule because, last Monday, four commercial publishers chose to sue Internet Archive during a global pandemic.  However, this lawsuit is not just about the temporary National Emergency Library. The complaint attacks the concept of any library owning and lending digital books, challenging the very idea of what a library is in the digital world. This lawsuit stands in contrast to some academic publishers who initially expressed concerns about the NEL, but ultimately decided to work with us to provide access to people cut off from their physical schools and libraries. We hope that similar cooperation is possible here, and the publishers call off their costly assault.

Yeah, I’ve read the complaint filed by the publishers (PDF), and that is not true at all. I am inclined to distrust the major publishers, but I thought the complaint was pretty narrowly focused on the IA’s piracy.

I don’t see how this lawsuit could impact actual libraries – not unless they are engaging in massive amounts of piracy.

Did I miss something?

image by jblyberg via Flickr

You just finished reading Internet Archive is Shutting Down National Emergency Library Two Weeks Early which was published on The Digital Reader.

Apple  sent out an email yesterday to iBooks Author users, informing them that the nine-year-old macOS app will be discontinued on 1 July, and removed from the App Store.

From the email:

Thank you for being a member of the iBooks Author community. We have some news to share with you about the future of book creation.

Two years ago we brought book creation into Pages. With key features such as the ability to work on iPad, collaborate with others on a shared book, draw with Apple Pencil, and more, Pages is a great platform for making books.

As we focus our efforts on Pages, ?iBooks? Author will no longer be updated and will soon be removed from the Mac App Store. You can continue to use ?iBooks? Author on macOS 10.15 and earlier, and books previously published to Apple Books will remain available. If you have ?iBooks? Author books you’d like to import into Pages for further editing, we have a book import feature coming to Pages soon.

I have long expected this move. Now that Apple has a browser-based publishing portal and a has added ebook creation features to Apple Pages, iBooks Author has mostly become redundant. (Plus, the fact that Apple never changed the apps name from iBooks Author to Books Author told us everything we needed to know about the app’s future.)

On a related note, Apple is also retiring iTunes U. That app will be supported until the end of 2021.

You just finished reading Apple is Discontinuing iBooks Author on 1 July which was published on The Digital Reader.

One of the more common arguments made by defenders of the Internet Archive’s site, The Open Library, is that it is a library. They point out that it lends ebooks using expiring licenses and DRM tech quite similar to what public libraries use via Overdrive.

What they are hoping you will overlook is that The Open Library doesn’t source their ebooks like real libraries do.  A real library pays for ebook licenses from legit distributors such as Overdrive or Biblioteca, while The Open Library buys and scans used print copies, and then shares copies of the scans. (This is why four publishers filed a copyright infringement lawsuit last week.)

The Open Library even encourages people to donate the purchase price of a used book so it can be scanned and distributed. I discovered via Twitter yesterday that the IA has been encouraging those “sponsorships” since the middle of last year. They even have a page on their site devoted to the effort where they mislead supporters on the legality of the project.

The thing about that page is that any other library wouldn’t ask you to donate the cost of a used book so it could be scanned and shared. Instead, they would ask you to help it buy a license to one of these books.

Other libraries would get that ebook from a legally-authorized distributor, ensuring that the publisher and author got paid for their work. When The Open Library lends an ebook, on the other hand, no one is getting paid.

The simple truth is folks that The Open Library doesn’t act like other libraries because it isn’t a library – it’s a pirate site.

You just finished reading Why the Internet Archive’s The Open Library is Not a Real Library which was published on The Digital Reader.

When B&N was acquired by a venture capital firm last year, and James Daunt named CEO, many feared that he would shutter B&N struggling digital division. Daunt was seen as anti-ebook, after all, and Waterstones ebook sales certainly did not thrive under his leadership (in fact, since Waterstones’ Overdrive-powered ebookstore was closed way back in 2016, the bookseller had no ebook sales).

I had been wondering if B&N would even bother to  ship another Nook model, or just make my April Fools Day joke come true, and now it would appear we have an answer.

The Bookseller published an interview of Daunt on Friday where he said:

He also referenced the US e-book operation  Nook, part of Barnes & Noble. “Evidently it has been helped by the pandemic, but things have turned around for Nook. The perception that I am anti-e-books is wrong. I am very in favour of them if I can sell them, and I have not been able to do that [in the UK]. One of the things where I differ from my immediate predecessor at B&N is that I consider the ability to sell e-books to be a great strength, and the company had stopped investing in Nook. That will change. We will make Nook very much part of what we do [in the US].”

He said questions about selling e-books in the UK had been parked during the coronavirus crisis, but added that it would be looked at again. “I wouldn’t hold your breath, but all other things being equal, it is something we should aspire to do. We sell an awful lot of e-books in the US.”

I know that Mark Williams has made a big deal about Daunt supposedly rewriting history about his being anti-ebook, and I think Williams is mistaken.

The problem with labeling Daunt as anti-ebook is that it lumps him in the same group with the major US trade publishers. The Big Five actively sabotaged their ebook sales, and even engaged in a conspiracy to to rig ebook prices, but Daunt has never engaged in any action showing that degree of hostility to ebooks.

I would instead say that Daunt was really good at selling print books, and really into the print book buying experience. I would say based on his public statements that it’s not that he hated ebooks so much as he knew how to sell print books, and could grow a business built on physical bookstores, while ebooks required a different bag of tricks.

To give you an analogy, folks, I do not know how to play a cello, but that doesn’t make me anti-cello. It just means I am doing other things. The same applies to Daunt.

That said, we live in a post pandemic world. Retail is going to change radically in the next few years, and Daunt’s new opinion on ebooks reflects that fact that he is building a new business in a new era, one in which ebooks will likely be more important than they were this time last year.

You just finished reading Nook Gets a Reprieve Under Daunt which was published on The Digital Reader.

Remember back during the early part of the COVID-19 shutdown when we were supposed to start side gigs or learn new skills with our copious free time? I mainly spent my time avoiding bankruptcy and rebuilding my business, but I did start a couple new projects, including one that I could use help with.

I am trying to launch a book review blog that focuses on books for indie author (business, marketing, editing, etc). To put it another way. this blog will focus on the non-fiction books that authors might read to advance their career.

I think there’s a need for this blog, and I would really like to make it happen. Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time and energy to do this entirely by myself.

I need your help.

Would you like to help launch a new book review blog?

I already have an initial draft of the review guidelines, and I have a list of books to be reviewed. What I need next are reviewers, and possibly someone to help edit and publish the reviews.

What do you think? Interested?

image by by Thad Zajdowicz via Flickr

You just finished reading Who Wants to Help Launch a Book Review Blog? which was published on The Digital Reader.

Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning.

• It’s surprising how many of these sayings are centuries old and yet still in use today.
• Since Chuck Wendig is being singled out as the author solely responsible for killing the Internet Archive, I thought it a good idea to share his statement from March.
• I did not make this list of 18 worthy sites for writers.
• Nathan Bransford delves into the discussion around the #PublishingPaidMe hashtag.
• Alex Shepherd points out that trad pub’s promises to do better on diversity ring hollow given that the industry continues to publish the likes of Tom Cotton, Tucker Carlon. 
• Much to no one’s surprise, the stats for print and ebooks borrowed from UK libraries differ. 
• Amazon is now under antitrust investigation in both Washington and California (and let’s not forget the EU). 

You just finished reading Morning Coffee – 16 June 2020 which was published on The Digital Reader.

Amazon is launching its Father’s Day sale a little early this year. The retailer has put both the Kindle Paperwhite and the basic Kindle on sale this week.

The entry-level Kindle has been marked down to $65, and the (black) Kindle Paperwhite is selling for $99. That’s $25 off the regular price for the basic Kindle, and $30 off the list price for the Paperwhite.

Curiously enough, the two new Paperwhite color options cost $5 more than the black Paperwhite. I don’t know why Amazon did that.

Amazon

You just finished reading Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite on Sale which was published on The Digital Reader.

For the past 9 or so years app developers have had a quasi-truce with Apple. So long as the developer didn’t sell anything inside the app (or even hint that something could be bought), the developers didn’t have to pay 30% of their sales as a vig to Apple.

That truce is about to end.

Earlier today Basecamp cofunder David Hansson tweeted that Apple wasn’t going to let Hansson update the Hey email app unless it started selling its email services inside the app:

Wow. I'm literally stunned. Apple just doubled down on their rejection of HEY's ability to provide bug fixes and new features, unless we submit to their outrageous demand of 15-30% of our revenue. Even worse: We're told that unless we comply, they'll REMOVE THE APP.

— DHH (@dhh) June 16, 2020

If you click through to the tweet and scroll down, you will see a screenshot of the email that Apple sent. That email lays out the rules that the Hey app violated, and Apples claim that they are doing this for the benefit of consumers.

The thing about those rules is that many apps such as Spotify, Basecamp, and Kindle “break” the rules. They have been “breaking” the rules for years, and Apple accepted this.

This has in fact been the status quo since the spring of 2012, when Apple decided that all in-app transaction had to go through it. Most companies can’t afford to pay Apple the vig, so they removed any mention of sales, even going so far to delete the in-app help pages. Bol.com actually had to remove the DotCom from its name before Apple would accept its ebook app (I am not joking).

The thing about paying Apple 30% of an app’s revenue is that Apple is doing nothing more than payment processing, and is demanding over ten times what payment processors typically charge. For example, I pay Paypal 2.9% on each transaction. That is actually on the high end of what payment processors charge (most charge under 2%) and yet Apple wants 30%.

That is outrageous, and also arguably illegal.

The other problem with Apple demanding 30% is that in many cases they have a competing product (such as Apple Books). Apple is effectively forcing its competitors to raise their prices 43% in order to cover the cost of Apple’s vig or take a loss on every transaction (do the math, and you’ll see I am right).

This is a prima facie violation of antitrust law. That’s why Spotify filed an antitrust complaint in the EU last spring, and why Rakuten filed a similar complaint back in March. Or so I have gleaned from the Financial Times story published today (I don’t think they got the story right).

From the FT:

Rakuten’s ereader subsidiary Kobo claimed it was anti-competitive for Apple to charge it a 30 per cent commission for e-books sold through the App Store while promoting its own product, Apple Books.

Kobo said it loses out on business by forcing customers to go to its website to buy e-books, as it seeks to avoid the Apple commission, according to several people familiar with the complaint.

The case is a mirror of a March 2019 complaint from Spotify, which said Apple’s App Store charges allegedly tilt the playing field to disadvantage rivals and favour its own music service. The European commission has yet to rule on Spotify’s complaint.

Apple has defended the commission it charges some apps in the past by saying that it gives businesses the option to either sell their services through the App Store or not and that it provides the service to distribute apps for free.

I am pretty sure that Apple is making the same demand of Kobo that they made to Hansson, and that the FT got the story wrong. (If nothing else my interpretation makes more sense than what the FT published.) This would mean that Apple has expanded from targeting small developers, and is now going after $12 billion a year corporations.

I have queried Kobo for more info, and I will amend this post with their response.

Apple’s greed knows no bounds, and it’s going to hurt consumers in the long run. When Apple first demanded the vig in early 2012, they killed a bunch of smaller ebook app developers who simply could not afford to pay 30%, and we’re going to see another round of dead apps as Apple sends out more demand letters.

In the long run Apple is probably going to be fined for its antitrust violations, but that is little solace for the developers and consumers it has harmed.

image by Andrew Gustar via Flickr

You just finished reading Apple is Turning the Screws on App Developers, Including Your Favorite eBook Apps which was published on The Digital Reader.

The publishing services provider Lulu has been in something of a tizzy these past few months. The company updated its platform on April as part of launching its new services marketplace, and things did not turn out as planned.

There hasn’t been much discussion in the FB groups or author forums I frequent (I actually heard about this third-hand) but apparently the update broke, basically everything. Multiple authors have reported:

• lost sales,
• lost books,
• lost covers,
• lost projects, and
• lost accounts.

Lulu informed authors on its FB page on 12 June that the issues are being fixed on an ongoing basis, and also telling authors that all revenue since the end of April has been reported. What is especially scary about that is that there are authors who have recorded no sales since the April update, so it would appear that they have had no sales through Lulu for the past couple months.

Lulu also posted a link to a Google form you can use to submit support tickets for the more common problems, including:

• missing or incorrect cover thumbnails,
• missing projects,
• unable to download files,
• unable to Add to Cart, or
• previously approved projects incorrectly requiring proof purchase.

I know I have a well-earned reputation for being melodramatic but I do not think I am exaggerating to much when I say that this looks to be the worst system update since the PennCentral merger.

If you are one of the authors or publishers who was affected by the borked update, now might be a good time to to locate the exit.

You just finished reading Lulu Borked Their Platform in the April Update, and It’s Still Not Fixed which was published on The Digital Reader.

Remember how I had said that the new Kobo ereader would have a color E-ink screen? I withdrew that prediction when I learned that the new color E-ink screens had a screen resolution (in color) of only 100 ppi, and now I am glad I did.

Details are starting to leak about the new Kobo Nia. We still don’t know many specifics, but a partial product listing was discovered by MobileRead members. It told us that the Kobo Nia will have a 6″ Carta E-ink display, with a screen resolution of 1024 x 758.

It looks like the Kobo Nia is going to be an entry-level ereader. Its specs might beat the basic Kindle, but the screen alone puts it below the Kindle Paperwhite, which means it cannot be anything other than an entry-level device.

I can also tell you based on the FCC filing that it will have Wifi but not Bluetooth. The battery is specced at 1Ah, and the filing said the Nia had 16GB of storage.

As for the design, it’s going to be a black rectangle (Kobo is not terribly original in that regard).

Your guess is as good as mine when it will launch, but based on this leak I would expect the Nia to be announced in the next month or so, if not sooner.

You just finished reading Kobo Nia to Sport a 6″ Carta E-ink Screen which was published on The Digital Reader.

Fastpencil sent out an email yesterday, informing us that it was re-branding as Opyrus.

We are very excited to announce that FastPencil, a leading all-in-one solution for creating, distributing and selling print and eBooks, is rebranding our company. We do this to better reflect our vision and enhance our position, so we may provide a more compelling offering for our writers and authors.

Introducing Opyrus, an online, self-betterment platform for writers and authors. Our goal is to inspire, guide and enable people to tap into their power to write, become better authors and to make a positive impact on people’s lives.

For those not familiar with the name, Fastpencil/Opyrus is a competitor to Bookbaby and Lulu. They are a comprehensive service provider. I have never used them, however, so I can’t comment on their services.

BTW, they are holding a raffle to celebrate the re-branding. You can enter here to win a Kindle, Audible subscription, a Dragon license, and more!

You just finished reading Fastpencil Rebrands as Opyrus which was published on The Digital Reader.

If you are buying a new basic Kindle in the next few weeks you might be getting a surprise upgrade.

A bunch of Kindle owners over on Reddit have reported that the Kindle they just got had over twice the expected storage. The devices are showing that they have 8GB of storage, and not the 4GB listed on the product page on Amazon.com.

No one knows why this happened, although it has been pointed out that the Kids Kindle ships with 8GB of storage, which could mean that Amazon is substituting one model for the other when one ran out.

On the other hand this could be Amazon deciding to upgrade the storage, only they forgot to edit the product listing. (It’s not the first time there was a goof on the website.)

Your guess is as good as mine. In any case, if you got a Kindle with the surprise extra storage, enjoy your good fortune!

You just finished reading Basic Kindle Now Shipping with 8GB of Storage which was published on The Digital Reader.

It turns out Kobo’s new ereader is not as new as I had hoped.

I was just reading over on MobileRead that Staples Canada has put the Kobo Nia’s product page online two days early. The new ereader is reportedly going to sell for $129 in Canada (which is really weird given that the Kindle Paperwhite has much better specs and costs $119 CDN).

Meet the Kobo Nia, aka the Tolino Page 2:

I hadn’t mentioned this before, but it had previously been speculated on MobileRead that the Kobo Nia would be a Tolino Page 2 clone. I didn’t take that speculation seriously (I was hoping for something cool) but I will give credit where it is due.

As you can see if you compare the photo gallery at the end of this post with the Tolino Page 2 gallery, the two devices really do have the same hardware. This move makes a certain amount of sense given that Kobo is the hardware partner for Tolino.

The Tolino Page 2 (Kobo Nia) has a 6″ Carta E-ink screen with a capacitive touchscreen and color-changing frontlight. It runs on a 1GHz single-core CPU with 512MB RAM and 8GB internal storage. It has Wifi but not BT, measures 9.1mm thin, and weighs 179 grams.

The Kobo Nia is a replacement for Kobo’s current entry-level ereader, the Aura 2. I do not know when it will be available, but I am expecting it to be announced on Tuesday of this week.

What do you think?

You just finished reading Kobo Nia is a Tolino Page 2 Clone which was published on The Digital Reader.

A book’s cover is often the first thing a reader sees when they find your book for the first time. You never have a second chance to make a first impression, as the saying goes, which is why many would suggest you hire a professional to design your book covers.

But some authors have the skill to DIY or want to learn about cover design by doing so they can work better with the designers they hire, so here are thirteen sites, services, and apps that you can use to make an awesome book cover.

Sidenote: Before you use any of these tools, you should read up on good cover design techniques.

There are many similar tools out there, so if you know of one not on this list please leave a comment.

Which one do you use?

Update for June 2020: I was making graphics today when i remembered this post needed to be updated. I have actually used several of these tools since this post was published in 2017, but for the most part I still use Canva. That app now has even very nice templates you can use as a starting point than it did in 2017.

Canva

Visme

Poster My Wall

3D Box Shot Maker

Quick 3d Cover

MyeCoverMaker.com

Adazing

PiktoChart

Fotor

CoverFactory.com

eCover

Boxshot

Book Cover Creator

You just finished reading Thirteen Sites for Making a Spectacular Book Cover (Updated) which was published on The Digital Reader.