Author Archives: Steve Weber

Amazon’s Android tablet — an iPad killer, or son of Kindle?

By Steve Weber | Published: September 28, 2011

A year or two ago, some experts were predicting that Amazon would junk the Kindle, and exit the hardware business entirely. Doesn’t look like that’s happening anytime soon. Amazon’s new tablet can be a huge win for them, and some great competition for Apple’s iPad. If Amazon can deliver a simple, intuitive Android app store, [...]

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Amazon’s digtal library, the chicken, and the egg

By Steve Weber | Published: September 12, 2011

A Netflix-like rental service for books via Amazon’s Kindle? I’ve always thought a subscription model made a lot of sense for the Kindle (or you get $200 worth of “free” books with the purchase of a Kindle, or make the hardware free if you agree to buy 20 books). It will be very challenging to [...]

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Author Claims To Manipulate Amazon Rankings By Buying Own Book (Consumerist)

By Steve Weber | Published: January 3, 2011

This is worth a chuckle: An author is buying multiple copies of his book each day and reviewing it himself each time — and bragging about it, too. If he spend half of this energy working on a book, he might get somewhere. Apparently Amazon caught wind of this and deleted the phony reviews: I’ve [...]

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Amazon announces Kindle book lending program

By Steve Weber | Published: December 30, 2010

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Amazon’s Kindle chief claims publishers who raise prices lose sales

By Steve Weber | Published: December 29, 2010

With no hard numbers to support his assertion, I don’t know how convincing this is: Russ Grandinetti, Amazon’s VP for Kindle content, claims that e-book publishers who have moved to the agency model and charge more than $9.99 per book are losing market share to publishers with lower prices. Have they? Many of the biggest [...]

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Mobipocket will ‘soon’ end Kindle publishing access in favor of DTP

By Steve Weber | Published: December 24, 2010

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Google asks eBook publishers for bank account information, sets monthly payment schedule

By Steve Weber | Published: December 22, 2010

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Q&A: Has Amazon stopped discounting Lightning Source books?

By Steve Weber | Published: December 19, 2010

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Q&A: Are book reviews on Amazon as credible as The New York Times?

By Steve Weber | Published: December 17, 2010

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Some marketers see e-books as free-advertising vehicle

By Steve Weber | Published: December 13, 2010

From the Wall Street Journal. Nice article, but I got a chuckle out of the line, “most books sell only a few hundred thousand copies…” The marketing world is drawing up plans to invade one of the last bastions of media that is largely advertising-free: books. As e-books proliferate, advertisers are experimenting with ways to [...]

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