If you own an iPhone or iPad, you've likely had a notification appear on your home screen from Apple Books over the past couple of days. The company is giving users in the United States a free audiobook or ebook to help keep them entertained during the quarantine, though they can't pick whatever they want from the service's full catalog. The offer is available for a limited time.
It would appear that Star Wars lore just cannot stay solid as, just this week, Rey's parentage changed yet again. As events and details in the novelization of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker showed, the official word on the origin of Rey's parents is not exactly what you might've assumed, given the details present in the film. Further, it would seem that the actor who played Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) shed some light on an earlier version of the films' script, after the impenetrable wall of Lucasfilm NDA fell at the film's premiere. This is where I say SPOILER ALERT if you'd like to remain unspoiled.
For the first time, Pokemon graphic novels will be available through schools and public libraries around the world as ebooks. The content will be made available through the Rakuten OverDrive platform, the popular platform used by many facilities to provide free access to ebooks, audiobooks, and videos. The digital Pokemon content will be available through schools and libraries that support the service.
As George R.R. Martin said multiple times in the past, television and novels are two very different mediums. Game of Thrones the television series followed the books pretty spot-on to start - and stuck with a lot of the eventual deaths and lives of the characters in a very general way. Now that we've reached the end of the television series and have two more novels in the Game of Ice and Fire left, what's left to change? And what's changed already? Also note: This post is absolutely riddled with spoilers, so watch out!
Amazon has announced the launch of support for Traditional Chinese language books on Kindle. The collection includes more than 20,000 books in Traditional Chinese available across the Kindle platform, including on the Kindle mobile apps, Kindle Fire, and Kindle eReader devices. The selection includes translated bestsellers and works from popular authors like Liu Cixin and Qiong Yao.
Scribd, the document-hosting company that slowly transformed into an ebook destination, has launched its own original content. Simply called Scribd Originals, the new roster includes original content from a selection of authors, all of it available exclusively through Scribd. The launch is akin to Amazon's Audible Originals program, which offers original audiobook content exclusive to its platform.
Microsoft is shutting down its ebook store, a move that may frustrate a few users but probably leave many more people surprised that the books category existed in the first place. The software giant warned its ebook users today that, not only would the virtual store be closing, in a few months time they wouldn't be able to access any books they'd purchased.
We're going to talk about two contrasting studies here today centered on e-books, print books, parents, and toddlers. One study was published this week by Tiffany G. Munzer and colleagues who found toddlers interacted with parents more with print book reading than they did with e-books. Their study was done with 3 formats of book in a videotaped, laboratory-based, counterbalanced study of 37 parent-toddler dyads.
The price of the Kindle Paperwhite 2018 is right on point for what it offers. That's just so long as you're not looking for something other than an e-ink display and Amazon's own UI instead of a more open OS. If you're only comparing e-readers, this might well be the best choice in the world on the market right this minute. Today we're reviewing the Kindle Paperwhite 2018, the newest version of Amazon's midrange (just right) e-reader device.
Earlier this year, Walmart announced a partnership with Rakuten Kobo as the first step in a plan to launch its own ebook service in the US. The fruits of that partnership are now live in the form of Walmart eBooks, a new service that offers digital books, as well as audiobooks at a subscription rate that undercuts Audible. The service takes on Amazon, which has long dominated the ebook and ereader market in the US.
It would seem that Apple isn't the only one looking to shake up the ebooks scene. Walmart, as odd as it may seem at first blush, announced today that it will begin offering ebooks in the US as well. It won't be doing this alone, either, as it'll be backed by Rakuten, an e-commerce company operating out of Japan.
By now, Amazon's stranglehold on the ebooks market is fairly obvious. By and large, when people are looking for an ebook, they're going to Amazon, and while that obviously isn't true for everyone, it certainly is for many people. Apple is looking to do something about that dominance, renewing its focus on ebooks by working on a revamped Books app.