Arts Council England has issued a report outlining what it thinks the impact of technology on culture will be in the next decade, ebook platforms expand in Europe, unstaffed bookstores are with us, and it has been a very sad week in the indie community as cyberbullying has dominated much of our discussions on social media.
Streetlib launches a marketplace for authors and service providers, the Audible Romance controversy rumbles, on, and we look at the differing trends in ebooks across the globe.
Initial royalty payments from Audible Romance are distinctly underwhelming, Amazon sponsors DigitalBookWorld, and Publica announces a blockchain-based alternative to DRM.
Hachette's CEO claims that ebooks are a stupid product but admits publishers are partly to blame, while Amazon's own imprints look strangely dominant in its bestseller charts, and sales of ebooks in Germany stagnate.
Wattpad are giving viewers the chance to decide if they like the look of a series with short pilot adaptations taken from the site, while a court rules if you embed copyright-infringing content from elsewhere on your website, you may be liable, and Book Expo gets a makeover but may have forgotten a key ingredient in its core business...authors.
Amazon moves into from-your-doorstep delivery and releases a Wordpress plug-in to turn your blogs into podcasts, the EU fails to do away with geoblocking, and earning a living through self-publishing non-fiction on Medium proves tricky.
Eyewatering sales figures for Amazon and Apple, new EPub possibilities with Libre Office, new features from Barnes and Noble, and independent bookstores in the UK talking about forming an alliance.
Amazon has finally opened its first staff-less shop to the public, Wattpad has secured $51m funding to expand its machine learning, and several platforms have expandd their offerings to readers.
Facebook has changed the way it decides what shows up in your newsfeed to avoid content from businesses, but what does that mean for indies? And Amazon has been tinkering with KDP.
New opportunities open up for indies in Arab reading markets while Barnes and Noble have another bad period and a new crowdfunding site launches for author services.