According to Montreal’s The Gazette, the Quebec government has treated print books as zero-rated for tax purposes since 1996, but ebook sales can still include the 9.5 per cent provincial sales tax.

Robert Hayashi, CEO of the digital publishing advocacy organization eBound Canada, disagrees with the discrepancy. “Just like there is a hardcover (print book) format and a softcover format, ebooks are just another format,” he told the The Gazette. “So if government is not taxing the hardcover book, we believe that government should also not tax the ebook.”

In another Gazette article, Kobo’s vice-president of finance, Daniel Budlovsky, lamented that Quebec consumers who purchase ebooks through Kobo are charged both provincial and federal sales taxes, while those who buy their ebooks through U.S. competitor Amazon pay no sales taxes.

Although Budlovsky said the discrepancy “should be atrociously viewed by the Canadian public,” Kobo isn’t ready to battle the Canadian government to change the tax laws.

“We accept the law for what it is and feel that it should be changed but that is a long and bureaucratic process,” Budlovsky said. “We work in a … fast-moving industry where we need to stay ahead of the competition by working on things that are under our control.”

In advance of the education-themed event, tech website betanews.com compiled a list of Apple’s potential U.S. competitors, which includes Amazon’s e-textbook rental program and online distributor CourseSmart.

Condé Nast tech website Ars Technica suggests Apple isn’t interested in becoming a content provider, but will announce production tools that will allow anyone to publish interactive e-books for distribution on Apple devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Last week, eBound Canada, the digital arm of the Association of Canadian Publishers, announced a partnership with Follett Canada that would give elementary and secondary schools greater access to titles by independent Canadian publishers.

Fast Company

According to the story, small press owner and erotica author Sharazade, suspicious of another top-selling author, Maria Cruz, began googling passages from Cruz’s books and discovered most of them were lifted directly from books such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But it’s not just well-known authors being copied. Free erotica-publishing websites such as Literotica are regularly pillaged for content. In fact, Fast Company journalist Adam Penenberg did a “down-and-dirty textual analysis” of author Robin Scott’s 31 titles in the Kindle store, and concluded that all were plagiarized from other sources.

Amazon doesn’t vet its self-published books, putting the onus on the aggrieved author to make claims of copyright infringement. But, as the article notes, it’s not just erotica, or Amazon, that is facing major problems with copyright and plagiarism. Canadian author S.K.S. Perry discovered someone else was selling his fantasy novel Darkside for $2.99 as a Kindle ebook, and several plagiarized titles from various sources have been removed from the Apple iBookstore. Penenberg says we shouldn’t be surprised:

Self-publishing has become the latest vehicle for spammers and content farms, with the sheer volume of self-published books making it difficult, if not impossible, for e-stores like Amazon to vet works before they go on sale. In 2006, 51,000 self-published titles were released; last year there were 133,036 self-published books, and that number is destined to climb. 

Writing a book is hard. All those torturous hours an author has to spend creating, crafting, culling until nonsensical words are transformed into engaging prose. It’s a whole lot easier to copy and paste someone else’s work, slap your name on top, and wait for the money to roll in. This creates a strong economic incentive, with fake authors.

Yesterday, Half-Blood Blues was listed 3,376 on Amazon’s bestsellers list for Kindle e-books. As of noon Wednesday, the book had risen to 360, a significant increase in sales overnight. In the Apple iBookstore, it is the third top-seller, just below the e-book and enhanced e-book versions of Stephen King’s 11/22/63. Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers (House of Anansi Press) is the only other Giller Prize finalist in the iBookstore’s top 10, at number five.

Giller finalist Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table (McClelland & Stewart) is the fifth best-selling e-book at Kobo, the only e-commerce site that is prominently merchandising Half-Blood Blues as the Giller winner.

Ondaatje’s book is also the top-seller in the new Canadian Google eBookstore, which launched last week. As part of its roll-out strategy, Google tailored the store for a Canadian audience, dedicating a section on its homepage for the Giller shortlist, however, Half-Blood Blues is conspicuously absent. According to David Glover, Thomas Allen’s marketing manager, the publisher is working with Google, and the title will be available soon.

Prices for the e-books also vary between websites. At the high end, Half-Blood Blues is available in the Apple iBookstore for $20.99. Kobo is carrying the e-book for $15.49, and Amazon, $9.60.

(Photo by Tom Sandler, courtesy of the Writers’ Trust)

Bloggers and tech sites have speculated about free Kindles from the beginning, some pegging the date for the change as early as next month. This week, San Francisco Web 2.0 blog GigaOM suggested that free Kindles could be a good thing for writers.

For example, content like Kindle Singles – “not-quite-books [that] can be written and uploaded by anyone” – could get greater exposure if more people owned a Kindle. From GigaOM:

Offering a free – or ad-supported – Kindle would presumably just provide even more of an avenue for these kinds of books to reach readers, and that in turn could (theoretically at least) make it possible for more writers to make a living from their writing.

There’s also the argument that free Kindles could boost the use of new apps and services – for a price. GigaOM writes:

A free Kindle could be just the beginning of an explosion of book-like content from Amazon and others: The company is already talking about a “Netflix for books” that would offer content for a monthly fee. Why not offer a subscription to an author, so I can automatically get whatever he or she writes, regardless of length or format? … I’d be willing to bet more people would read more as a result.

The Kindle Fire ($199) provides access to books, movies, TV shows, magazines, newspapers, games, and more with a colour touch screen. It uses a new browser called Amazon Silk, designed to load Web content rapidly, and provides free data storage in the Amazon Cloud. Kindle Fire also costs less than the iPad.

Other devices unveiled today include:

• The latest generation Kindle ($79), weighing under 6 ounces and designed to fit in your pocket.
• The Kindle Touch ($99), with a touch screen for turning pages or interacting with the new X-Ray feature, which instantly pulls up pre-downloaded reference material such as Wikipedia entries.
• The Kindle Touch 3G ($149), with all the elements of the current model as well as free wireless Internet access in 100 countries without a monthly fee or contract.

Prices are in U.S. dollars, with no word yet on what the new Kindles will cost or when they will be released in Canada.