eReader news round up
Jinfo Blog

By Nancy Davis Kho

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With the holiday season fast approaching, eReader vendors are amping up production and marketing efforts to capture consumer attention. New devices, new titles, and new distribution channels are providing a plethora of choice, and point to an ever-increasing rate of market penetration for eReader technology.

Canadian eBook retailer Kobo has jumped into the device game with the introduction of its new Vox eReader, which they call "the People's eReader". Available for shipping as of 28 October, the device runs Android 2.3 and provides a tablet experience with web browsing, email, and access to music, books and games. At US$199.99, the colour eReader is lighter than either the Nook Color or Kindle Fire.  

In the distribution world, a number of publishers are jumping on the eBook bandwagon, including Berkeley/NAL which announced an "eBook imprint" to launch in January 2012, and InterMix which will reopen its Signet Regency imprint to produce three digital titles per month. It's no wonder that Bowker, which provides business research on book market, has announced a major global study to assess "device adoption, attitudes, and purchasing habits of eBook consumers in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North and South America". The new annual study commences in January 2012.

The race to get those digital titles into the hands of readers is heating up as well. This week Google announced it would be opening its first eBookstore in the UK, and plans to add Australian and Canadian stores in the near future. As noted in a story from paidContent.org, the US version of the Google Bookstore still lags behind Kindle and Nook in sales.

In fact, it's looking like international markets are where the real action will be in the months to come.  This week France Telecomm Orange announced plans to create a digital bookstore to compete with Amazon. Its unique advantages? A wide range of French language content, and the ability for users to pay for digital downloads as part of their mobile bill, making book purchases friction-free.

Amazon's not sitting out the global race, though: it announced last week that it will roll out an international version of the Kindle to more than 100 countries, including China. And at the same time Amazon is making it harder for lower priced device manufacturers to eat into its market share by dropping the price of the device in the US to $259, down from $359 a year ago.

With all these vendors racing to grab market share, this may well be the best holiday ever - for the eReader consumer!

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