eBookstores

Copia announced a major bit of news last week, and it looks like it was swallowed up by the 3 ring circus surrounding the Apple iBooks news. Move over B&N, step aside Google, there’s  new player in the college eBookstore market.

Over the next couple months Copia will be rolling out eBookstores in over 900 college bookstores across the US. Students will be able to buy textbooks, red them on the integrated apps, and use Copia’s social reading platform to collaborate with fellow students.

These bookstore partnerships are part of Copia’s new white-label strategy. The 900+ campus bookstores serve over half the college student population in the US (6 million students). By comparison, B&N College operates 624 bookstores.

Copia launched in early mid late 2010 with plans to be one of the best social reading platforms. They initially planned to support their eBookstore with integrated eReaders as well as their apps, but those were eventually dropped because of the B&N-Amazon price war.

Copia currently has reading apps for Windows 7, OSX, and the iPad. They have also been planning an Android app, but it has been delayed for over a year.

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Earlier this month one of the pioneers in eBooks shut down their eBookstore and got ready to turn off the lights. MobiPocket, after 12 years in the business, is no longer selling eBooks.

When Mobipocket launched, it quickly became one of the 3 common eBook formats, along with MSReader and eReader. It was a moderately successful company right up until 2005, when it was purchased by Amazon. That sale marked the beginning of the end. As you can probably guess from the launch and explosive success of the Kindle, Amazon bought Mobipocket in order to turn it into the Kindle platform. But Amazon only used some parts, and left some of the more interesting features on the cutting room floor.

To be honest, I’m sure most saw this coming. Mobipocket hadn’t released any new apps or software updates in several years, and Amazon quietly ended the Mobipocket library ebooks back in October. They’ve even been cutting back on staff for some time now, with publishers complaining about missed payments and the support forums being filled with spam.

Baen Books, an early pioneer in DRM-free eBooks, has joined the 21st century.

For many years now Baen Books has been selling their eBooks via a website called Webscriptions. This  eBookstore mainly stocked their titles as well as titles from a few other publishers, and you could buy the eBooks individually or as part of the monthly WebScriptions bundles.

The old site at Webscriptions.net is gone, and it now redirects to BaeneBooks.com. All existing accounts were also moved over to the new site, so all you’ll need to do to download your eBooks is log in again.

I don’t recall getting an email about the change, so if you missed the news then you’re not alone. But I’m glad that they made the change. Baen has used that same Webscriptions site since I first bought ebooks from them in 2004. The design was adequate for the day, but trust me when I say that it looked like something out of the 90s.

BaeneBooks.com

Amazon wasn’t the only one who had a great year selling eBooks. Bol.com, a Dutch gadget retailer and eBookstore, announced last week that they’ve sold their millionth eBook.

While that number may not be impressive on the scale of the US eBook market, the Dutch market is still far from catching up. Bol.com has been selling eBooks for just over 2 years, and when they started there was hardly an eBook market in the Netherlands.

To celebrate the news, Bol.com will be giving away a free eBook with each eBook purchased. The free eBook is Het huis waar jij van hield by Tatiana de Rosnay, and it’s available until 8 January.

Bol.com via eReader.nl

Your favorite indie eBookstore added a new feature last week. Smashwords has now joined Amazon, B&N, and Kobo, and now offers a way to give eBooks as a gift.

The Smashwords website has more details: “Simply click to the book you want to gift, and click the “give as gift” button. The shopping cart will ask you for their name and email address. The lucky recipient will receive an email with a hyperlink that allows them to claim their gift. If they’re already logged in to their Smashwords account, the book will appear in their Smashwords Library. If they don’t have a Smashwords account, they’ll be prompted to register.”

The process is still in beta, and Smashwords is looking to add more features based on user feedback. They’re planning to integrate review reminders into the gift emails, which should please authors, and other features are being considered.

 

The Chinese web retailer DangDang has just opened China’s newest eBookstore.

In additions to gadgets, media, and books, DangDang will now stock around 50 thousand Chinese language eBooks and they are planning to sign more publishers in the coming months. Customers can read the eBooks online or download the ebooks and read them on Android and iPhone apps.

“We are excited to break new ground with the launch of the e-book platform for our customers as we believe that the addition of digital content to our comprehensive online offerings will greatly enhance our customers’ online shopping experience and satisfaction,” said Guoqing Li, CEO of Dangdang.

There’s no mention of eReader plans, but it seems likely that DangDang will need to adopt one. This eBookstore launched in a market dominated by Hanvon and Shanda, and both companies have their own eReaders integrated into their respective eBookstores. Also, market research in the US suggests that eReader owners buy the most eBooks.

DangDang

The Australia and New Zealand eBook market got a little more crowded this week. FishPond, a NZ based web retailer, has just opened its eBookstore.

Fishpond opened the eBookstore with a soft launch, and that gives it a chance to work the bugs out before being inundated with customers. But it is open, and it currently stocks around 60 thousand titles in PDF and Epub. The eBooks are drawn from a number of publishers around the world, including Quercus, Harlequin, Wiley, and more.

It’s not planning to release an official eReader or app, but Fishpond does sell a number of different eReaders that support Epub. Its support pages also recommend the Bluefire app for iPad and iPhone.

It’s good that  Fishpond is working out the bugs, becuase some of the prices are rather expensive. For example, there are a few dozen books with rices of over a thousand dollars, and for most of them that has to be a mistake. Also, all the eBooks in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium series are priced at $18.99, and I hope that’s a mistake (it’s much cheaper here in the US).

When Kobo announced its new Android tablet a few weeks back, many readers were looking forward to the more diverse content made possible by the color screen and speakers on the Vox.It’s been just over a week since the Vox shipped and Kobo is already offering enhanced eBooks.

The new “Just for Vox” section of the Kobo eBookstore is now up to 357 titles in a variety of genres including cookbooks, travel, graphic novels, children’s books, and there’s even a section for eBooks with embedded audio. There are 35 enhanced eBooks in this section, and that’s bound to grow.

The eBooks come from a diverse group of publishers, including Crown, MTV Books, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Simon & Schuster. There’s also a surprisingly diverse group of topics covered, including a repair manual for the Starship Enterprise, travel guides, and even a few titles in Spanish.

Kobo

OverDrive announced today that it has signed Singapore-based Gajah Media International as a new retail partner.

Gajah will be selling eBooks in the Singapore market at its new eBookstore, Oaxis Books. With over 5 million residents in a limited amount of real estate, Singapore is an ideal opportunity for eBooks and Gajah will likely do quite well.

Gajah will also be selling its eBook readers in the eBookstore and they already have 8 models in stock. They all have either 5″ or 7″ LCD screens, and you can find them under the newly launched brand Xpringbook. This marks a major change for the eReader designers at Gajah; previously they had maintained a low profile. You wouldn’t have been able to find the Gajah brand on very many store shelves; it looks like that will now change.

As a designer, Gajah has partners in Australia, UK, USA, South Africa, and elsewhere. This company is perhaps one of the most widely distributed maker of eReader in the world, and until today I had thought it had preferred the anonymity.

A new ebookstore had its grand opening this past week, and it’s a welcome sight. Jewish-e-books.com, which opened in 2010, is going to focus pretty tightly on just a couple niches in the book market.

It currently stocks books that reflect the Jewish culture as well as an extensive selection of title in the Hebrew language. Jewish-e-books.com very likely has the best Hebrew collection of any Ebookstore.

The eBooks do have DRM, unfortunately, but on the upside Jewish-e-books.com only sells eBooks in Epub, and that means it can work with most reading apps and eReaders (Kindle and iBooks excepted, of course). The site also recommends that you use Bluefire Reader, the iOS reading app, and it offers trouble shooting tips on how to get it to work.

The store’s founder, Yossi Levy, is also planning to expand the store to provide eReaders and accessories. “Our customers are savvy,” he says. “They want a one-stop shopping experience; we’ll give it to them: competitively priced Jewish E-Books, the latest devices, and everything they need to build their Jewish digital library.”

Personally, I’m hoping that he also decides to offer a conversion service. I’m sure any number of people would find a Hebrew-as-a-second-language conversion service useful.