Sargent Out at Macmillan

John Sargent is being let go from his position as CEO of Macmillan, and it probably has to do with the policies he set for ebooks. Sargent  is leaving Macmillan on 1 January. The president of Macmillan US Trade, Don Weisberg, has been named as his replacement. According to the statement, “With great regret, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group announces the...

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Amazon Rebrands Amazon Freetime Unlimited as Amazon Kids+

Amazon’s kid-centric subscription service is old enough that its earliest users are now attending college. And just like empty-nesters who remodel a kid’s old room into a den, Amazon is changing Freetime Unlimited. The retailer announced on Monday that it was rebranding the service under the name Amazon Kids+: Since the launch of Amazon FreeTime and...

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Kindle Unlimited Funding Pool, Per-Page Rate Rose in August 2020

Amazon announced on Tuesday that the Kindle Unlimited funding pool for August 2020 totaled $32.6 million, up two hundred grand from July. At the same, the royalty paid for each page increased to $0.004322. Here are the per-page rates for the past just over 2 years. August 2020: $0.004322 July 2020: $0.004294 June 2020: $0.004547 May 2020: $0.004203...

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Audible Escape is Being Shut Down on 1 November

Audible sent out an email on Tuesday, informing authors and users that it was shutting down Audible Escape subscription service. (Thanks, Isobel!) Here’s the email that was sent to authors: Audible Escape (formerly known as the Audible Romance Package) will end on 1 November per an email from ACX. Since November 1 2017, Audible Escape has provided...

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Morning Coffee – 14 September 2020

Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning. Dictionary.com has revised 15,000+ definitions. Evidence suggests blue-light filters do not actually help your sleep rhythms. Sarah Manavis fails to prove her argument that Goodreads is bad for books. The lawsuit over the Internet Archive’s piracy site is going to last over a year due to a lengthy...

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Amazon Launches “Book Clubs” in Beta, But Forgets to Add Any Discussion Features

I’ve just learned about an Amazon feature that, while not exactly new, is still relatively unknown and has not been officially launched. I was browsing Dale Robert’s Facebook group today when someone mentioned Amazon Book Clubs. Kevin Maguire posted this screensnap while mentioning to him that the feature was new to him.   A little bit of Google...

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Publishers Dismayed By 25% Increase in eBook Revenues in July 2020

Woe is me, cried the publisher! The Association of American Publishers announced on Wednesday that publisher revenue was down 9.4% for the month of July, and down 5.8% year to date. The decline is largely the result of steep declines in sales of educational materials for both college and K-12, while at the same time most other segments of the industry...

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Parabola Linux Has Been Ported to the Remarkable Tablet (video)

If you are looking for new things to do with your Remarkable tablet, I just heard that someone has developed a third-party firmware for it. It’s Parabola Linux, which opens up enormous possibilities for porting software, but at the same time it comes at a cost (Wifi is not supported). From Hackaday: Davis Remmel has been hard at work porting Parabola,...

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E-ink is Developing a Second-Gen ACeP Color ePaper (video)

A little over 4 years ago E-ink launched a 7-color epaper screen for the signage market. The 20″ and larger screens have not seen widespread use (although the tech has started to show up in the DIY market) but that hasn’t stopped E-ink from continuing to develop the technology. Digitimes reports that E-ink plans to roll out its next-gen Advanced Color...

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Amazon Has Retired KindleGen

I was just catching up with the #ePrdctn tag over on Twitter when I read that Amazon has removed the KindleGen ebook-creation tool from its website. Amazon has discontinued KindleGen. KindleGen is no longer available for download according to https://t.co/0TEAFg6h1Y I guess for command-line Kindle generation, Calibre is another option? https://t.co/p5UChD3ut5#kindle...

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