Episode 17 – 2010 Year in Review
Our colleague Kyle joins us to discuss 2010: the year of the eBook.
News
iFlow Reader HD
very cool scrolling, or screen-by-screen
store purchases only
mobipocket ending distribution for Kindle store in favor of DTP. Wait, what?
http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/mobipocket-will-end-publishing-for-distribution-in-the-kindle-store/
2010
January
Agency Model takes over eBooks (Amazon caves to Macmillan in January)
February
Bowker releases official position paper confirming practice of each format getting a unique ISBN
Ibis Reader goes live/li>
March
Joshua hires Toby — nepotism at its best (or worst)
Pew releases research stating internet now more popular than newspapers for news (didn’t this happen in 2002?)
April
iPad Released (wow!) — 450,000 sold in first week; predictable slew of iPad killers fail at “killing”
US GAO says most piracy studies are junk (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/us-government-finally-admits-most-piracy-estimates-are-bogus.ars)
Bowker releases numbers for 2009: Traditional books 288,355 — Non-traditional (self-published) books 764,448, 181% increase over 2008 (http://www.bowker.com/index.php/press-releases/616-bowker-reports-traditional-us-book-production-flat-in-2009)
Kobo eReader ships, world yawns
May
eBook Architects moves into new office, Chris starts
B&N announces PubIt!, author/publisher upload platform like the Amazon DTP
June
Clearwater High School in St. Petersberg, FL, announces plans to give every student a Kindle in 2010 Fall semester
iPhone 4 announced
Bowker says that the Kindle has become the dominant eBook platform (over computers) (http://www.thebookseller.com/news/120138-dont-be-handcuffed-over-e-books-bowker-warns-bea.html)
WiFi-only nook released, price war with Kindle starts
Plastic Logic Que postponed indefintiely
Kindle Android App released
Amazon starts offering 70% royalty on titles within certain price range (competing with Apple)
Amazon announces video and audio support in some books in the iPad and iPhone apps
July
Amazon awarded patent on Nook-like interface (large eInk, small LCD); Microsoft awarded patent on curling page turn
Cooler Reader in bankruptcy proceedings
Kindle eBook sales pass hardback books on Amazon
Apple announces support for HTML5 video and audio in iBooks
B&N releases Android app
Wilie Agency sidesteps publishers and offers some books on Kindle exclusively
Kindle 3 released
August
B&N starts looking for money, trying to put itself up for sale
Foxit eSlick discontinued
Plastic Logic Que got kicked to the curb — finally
Apple Pages supports ePub generation
OPDS hits 1.0
September
Cool-er reader comes back with new funding
US Court of Appeals says that re-selling digital licenses can be excluded by EULAs
B&N’s PubIt! system finally released — very good interface
October
Amazon rumored to be working on Android app store and tablet
(http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-rumored-to-be-preparing-android-store-tablet/)
Bluefire reader released on iPad
Study says that iPad sales are helping Amazon; Amazon has 76% of eBook market
(http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/10/cowen-and-company-ebook-kindle-ibooks-market-survey.html)
Kindle device sales surpass Q4 2009 sales
Kindle eBook sales surpass print (hardback and paperback) for top 10 bestsellers
Amazon begings talks about ebook lending
NOOKcolor released
November
Forrester Research releases some numbers on eBook reading: 35% read on a computer, 32% on Kindle, 15% iPhone, 12% Sony, 10% netbooks, 9% Nook, 9% iPad.
(http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/and-the-most-popular-way-to-read-an-e-book-is/)
Plastic Logic gets Russian funding to create a new business-focused eBook device.
New York Times will finally start ranking eBooks.
Copia goes live. eBook world yawns…
Havnon make color e ink devices, looks like Tammy Faye Baker in pastel
December
Google launches eBookstore finally — it’s in beta, even if they say it isn’t
Amazon announces Kindle for the Web will allow consumers to sell and view complete Kindle eBooks on the web. Fighting back against Google eBooks.
Amazon gives authors access to Nielsen BookScan data. Very cool.
Kindle sales in 2.5 months of Q4 exceed all of 2009. Looks like they will sell 8 million Kindles this year.
Predictions for 2011
iPad 2.0
Amazon Android? Tablet
Nook Color will Become a Tablet device
(http://nookdeveloper.barnesandnoble.com/)
People will still have christmas lights up in january
Sony will come out with another reading device no one uses
mirasol & pixel qi, or maybe havnon bigger in US
Kindle will lose a little bit of market share, but not significantly
Social media (Amazon Kindle app on iPad)
If you’re not following #ePrdctn on Twitter, you should be.
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