Bookstores report strong growth for ebooks as people are staying home

ebook retail stores and subscription servoces
Ebook sales growth at major bookstores and subscription services in April. Source: Publishdrive.

Year 2020 may be remembered as a pandemic year, but it may also be remembered as the year when ebooks made a breakthrough to the mass market in countries where print books dominated reading habits. Just like … Read >

Key trend: publishers are making readers pay for news in 2020s

reuters institute: primary revenue stream for news publisher
Most important revenue stream for my company going forward? (Source: Reuters Institute)

Reuters Institute has published a survey on news business that highlights the key trends for 2020. Overall, the results don’t feature any dramatic surprises, but rather reinforce the trends already happening. The most concrete, the most likely to … Read >

Scribd provides digests of nonfiction books for readers who have subscription

Boyue Likebook Mimas e-reader/writing tablet

Scribd is an online ebook service that lets people read as many books as they have time to (certain restrictions apply)after they have paid a monthly subscription fee. The difference between this service and many other book subscription services is that Scribd has more than one million paying customers and … Read >

Paywall business model for news doesn’t match readers’ expectations in the long run

Reuters Institute, Oxford Unversity: newspaper paywall study
A report titled Pay Models for Online News in the US and Europe: 2019 Update published in April 2019 by the Reuters Institute indicates that the number of newspapers that charge for access to their online news is slowly increasing. The study, conducted in association with the Oxford University, features … Read >

Ebook news digest: podcasts for writers, future of news reporting, ebook service with 1 million paying customers

News on ebooks, writing and publishing

woman typing on laptop, wearing headphones. photo by Christina Morillo.
Scribd has more than one million paying subscribers for ebooks

Scribd is a service that lets you read ebooks, listen to audiobooks, and read some magazines for a monthly fee of 9 dollars. I have subscribed to the service, and liked the selection of … Read >

Amazon Kindle Unlimited Is the Number One Ebook Subscription Service, but Which One Is Number Two?

We all know that Amazon is the largest retailer of ebooks in the world, but which online book subscription service has managed to attract the most customers? Amazon was the pioneer of ebook retail business, but it wasn’t the first company that provided customers with all-you-can-eat book service for a … Read >