02:11 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Today the account of one of our moderators was compromised. As a result an attacker used this account at 8:41 AM EDT and injected malicious cross-site-scripting code into our forum software with the goal to gain access to the database. At 9:19 AM EDT team members discovered and removed the code and locked down the compromised account. Due to existing safety measures, access to the database did not occur.

Given the nature of this attack, we contacted everyone who loaded the malicious code (around 30 members) with the suggestion to proactively change their user passwords.

Our apologies for the inconvenience.

Cheers,
Alexander

MobileRead Team

08:14 AM by charmian in E-Book General | News

http://gigaom.com/2014/02/26/as-barn...nother-tablet/

Summary: Nook revenues down 50% from last year. Retail store revenues down 6.3%, but profits are up. Nook lost 26% of employees. They are talking to hardware partners to launch a new color device in early fiscal 2015, to "reverse the content sales decline."

I wonder what the price of this new tablet will be and whether they intend to offer two sizes as they have in the past.

04:42 AM by fjtorres in E-Book General | News

Not much needs saying by now:
http://authorearnings.com/the-bn-report/

In our first two reports, we concentrated on Amazon’s e-book sales. We analyzed the top 7,000 e-books in three bestselling genres [link]. Then we followed up with a look at all 54,000 ranked bestselling e-books on Amazon in a single day snapshot [link]. We now turn our attention to the next bestselling book and e-book retailer, Barnes & Noble. The methodology is the same. Barnes & Noble’s online store lists overall ranking for their e-books, and as with Amazon, current rank generally correlates with daily sales.1 We determined sales rates based on the sales of our own books and from data gathered from other authors. In all cases, the rates we collected were within 20% of each other. Adjusting rates even beyond this margin of error does not alter the percentages of market share shown in our pie charts — it simply adjusts the overall size of the pie.

Last year, Barnes & Noble reported that 25% of the Nook market was made up of self-published works [link]. We were curious to see if this meant 25% of the bestselling titles were self-published, 25% of the sales came from self-published e-books, or if self-published e-book sales accounted for 25% of the gross dollar market. As always, our primary concern here is where authors are doing better, sale for sale. It doesn’t help authors to say that 70% of the book market is in print if only a small fraction of that money ends up in authors’ pockets [link]. What we want to see is the combined effect of royalty rate, sales volume, and sale price. These three factors combine to give us a true picture of comparative earnings, as shown in our pie charts.

Basically: no, it's not just Amazon.

But, since this is B&N, there are caveats:

There are two reported issues with the e-book rankings on B&N.com that we feel obliged to point out. The first is reports that Barnes & Noble leases top spots on its charts to major publishers, much as it merchandises books in favorable positions in its stores. The second issue is that indie authors writing in the romance and erotica genres have reported suppressed ranking due to the covers or content of their works. If either of these issues are at play in our data, they would cause our graphs to err in favor of Big 5 publishers, as merchandised books would count for more than they ought to and suppressed self-published books would account for less. Our conclusions are only strengthened if such manipulation is taking place, which is why we are comfortable reporting our findings without taking them into account. As can be seen in the charts above, self-published authors can afford to give up advantages wherever possible while still coming out on top.

11:50 AM by Dopedangel in E-Book General | News

Russian handset maker Yota Devices has revealed details of its second generation e-ink display equipped YotaPhone today at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona.

The new device follows in the footsteps of the original, but shows a maturation of the technology concepts it was showing off first time around. For example, while the new model does still sport two screens, with one of them being a low-power e-ink affair, both are now full touchscreen displays allowing for easier control and extra functionality.

http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2014/0...y-back/#!w3cGE

Now that the new version can be fully run on the eink side only this makes it very interesting. The rest of the phone specs also match most top of the line android phones.

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Once again, our weekly roundup of highlights from the past seven days of MobileRead:

E-Book General - News

• Amazon/Liquavista Hiring Process Engineers
• WSJ: 32% of the 100 top selling e-books on Amazon each week, on average, is self-pub

E-Book General - Reading Recommendations

• March 2014 Book Club Nominations

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Announcing the Windows Devices forum

06:35 AM by Top100EbooksRank in E-Book General | News

Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...98604044404682

In 2013, self-published books accounted for 32% of the 100 top selling e-books on Amazon each week, on average

B&N (April 9 2013):
http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/pre...s_release.html

Customer demand for great independent content continues to dramatically increase as 30% of NOOK customers purchase self-published content each month, representing 25% of NOOK Book™ sales every month.

12:13 AM by WT Sharpe in Reading Recommendations | Book Clubs

MobileRead Book Club
March 2014 Nominations

Help us select the book that the MobileRead Book Club will read for March, 2014.

The nominations will run through midnight EST February 28 or until 10 books have made the list. The poll will then be posted and will remain open for five days.

Book selection category for March is:

Travel/Adventure

In order for a book to be included in the poll it needs THREE NOMINATIONS (original nomination, a second and a third).

How Does This Work?
The Mobile Read Book Club (MRBC) is an informal club that requires nothing of you. Each month a book is selected by polling. On the last week of that month a discussion thread is started for the book. If you want to participate feel free. There is no need to "join" or sign up. All are welcome.

How Does a Book Get Selected?
Each book that is nominated will be listed in a poll at the end of the nomination period. The book that polls the most votes will be the official selection.

How Many Nominations Can I Make?
Each participant has 3 nominations. You can nominate a new book for consideration or nominate (second, third) one that has already been nominated by another person.

How Do I Nominate a Book?
Please just post a message with your nomination. If you are the FIRST to nominate a book, please try to provide an abstract to the book so others may consider their level of interest.

How Do I Know What Has Been Nominated?
Just follow the thread. This message will be updated with the status of the nominations as often as I can. If one is missed, please just post a message with a multi-quote of the 3 nominations and it will be added to the list ASAP.

When is the Poll?
The poll thread will open at the end of the nomination period, or once there have been 10 books with 3 nominations each. At that time a link to the initial poll thread will be posted here and this thread will be closed.

The floor is open to nominations. Please comment if you discover a nomination is not available as an ebook in your area.

Official choices with three nominations each:

(1) The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Amazon US / Project Gutenberg

(2) On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads by Tim Cope
Amazon US / Kobo

(3) Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: Kindle / ePub

(4) Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
No links provided.

(5) The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
Amazon Ca / Amazon US / Barnes & Nobel / Kobo

(6) South: The Endurance Expedition to Antarctica by Ernest Shackleton
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: Kindle

(7) Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Amazon US / Kobo

(8) Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum
Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub

The nominations are now closed.

10:23 AM by pilotbob in Miscellaneous | Announcements

Mobileread is happy to announce that we have added a forum section specifically for discussing reading on Windows Devices.

Windows Devices Forum

With the release of Windows 8, the Surface and also Windows Phone 8 there is now a large and growing market of these devices. Due to this it was time to provide a home for our members to discuss reading with these devices, and also device selection and other issues.

Feel free to discuss Windows Tablet, Phone and PC reading software and other tips and tricks.

Mobileread Team