Daily book biz round-up: Borders pop-up stores; Kobo goes wireless; and more

Today’s book news:

• Borders comes up with terrifying new strategy: seasonal pop-up stores
• Kobo finally introduces wireless e-reader
• Annabel Lyon names the top 10 books on the ancient world
• News flash: Canadian athletes willing, able to read books
• Chapters.ca banner finally comes down

Daily book biz round-up: Borders closure; B&N closure; and more

Special death-of-bookselling edition:

• Borders closes major San Fran location!
• B&N closes major New York location!
• Borders cuts price of Kobo e-Reader to $129!
• Staples to start selling Kindle!
• And finally: Dick and Jane and Vampires

Daily book biz round-up: e-readers creating reader utopia; six-year-old lands book deal; and more

Today’s book news:

• Are e-readers encouraging people to read more? Survey says yes
• News to make aspiring authors cringe: six-year-old lands 23-book deal
• New HarperCollins thriller selling more digital copies than hard copies
• Weird: Random House releases “community sourced” audiobook of The Wizard of Oz
• Why the “ads in books” scare is a bunch of horse pucky

Price drop rumored for Kobo eReader

When it launched in May, one of the Kobo eReader’s big selling points was that it was one of the cheapest e-reading devices on the market at $149. But now, with Barnes & Noble selling the new wi-fi Nook for $149, and Amazon selling the new wi-fi Kindle for $139, the Kobo eReader – which requires a Bluetooth connection – suddenly has a lot less to recommend it. No surprise, then, that a Kobo price drop appears to be in the works. Though nothing has been announced officially as of yet, a current online-only piece in The New Yorker suggests that Kobo will be lowering prices very soon.

Reporting on a swanky rooftop party Kobo recently hosted in Toronto, The New Yorker had this to say:

Kobo is perhaps the scrappiest and most focussed player in the e-book war. Its online store has a vast and rapidly expanding catalogue of e-books that can be read on almost any mobile device (notable exception: the Kindle). And its own e-reader’s simplicity and affordability (it will reportedly be down to $99 in time for Christmas) has spawned a cult following. In Amazon’s rear-view mirror, Kobo is quickly gaining ground.

When asked by Q&Q to confirm the $99 rumor, Kobo vice-president of content, sales, and merchandising Michael Tamblyn said he wasn’t currently at liberty to comment on future pricing.

British e-reader company Interead folds

Interead, the British start-up that created the colourful Cool-er e-reader, is folding just over a year after it launched. The Guardian reported that a Liverpool high court ordered the company to “wind-up” over a month ago.

According to Wired, which reviewed the Cool-er in May 2009, the device sold for about $250 U.S., was thin and lightweight, but had no “truly stand-out” features. “Its appeal is in that it is a reasonably good looking e-book reader at an attractive price.”

As for the companies recent troubles, The Guardian reports:

Earlier this year Interead reportedly said it had 20% of the e-reader market in Britain and before Christmas claimed it had already broken into profit. Since then, however, the business has failed to win essential support for its expansion from its bank, HSBC, under the government’s enterprise finance guarantee, according to sources close to the company.

Meanwhile, Interead claims an order for 17,000 Cool-ers from a high-profile American retail group was cancelled at the 11th hour, plunging relations with its Taiwanese manufacturers into crisis.

Daily book biz round-up: Andrew Wylie gets serious; Nicole Krauss gets touched; and more

The links du jour:

• Andrew Wylie threatens to cut publishers out of the equation
• Indigo to offer self-published authors in-store placement
• What will future e-readers look like? (They’ll look like Fruit Roll-ups, apparently)
• Bookseller Otto Penzler not “a rich guy”. (“I’m not rich! I just lives in disgusting luxury!”)
• David Grossman touches Nicole Krauss at the place of her own essence
• A possible method for selling e-books in physical stores

Daily book biz round-up: e-reader pricing war; Stieg Larsson no feminist; and more

Tasty news bits:

• E-reader pricing madness! Nook goes down to $149! Kindle goes down to $189!
• Kooky inventor dude Ray Kurzweil invents e-reading software
• Stieg Larsson sorry excuse for a feminist, argues EW
• Geoffrey Hill wins Oxford professor of poetry position; no controversy ensues
• Why has the Google Book Search settlement stalled?
  

Wanted: one universal e-book format

E-books and e-readers have moved out of the fringes, and publishers and readers want a standard format that will work with all devices.

In a Reuters story, Kobo chief executive Michael Serbinis said the battle between companies like Amazon and Apple  for the biggest virtual store and most popular e-reader only distracts us from the real changes coming to the book world. Kobo books can be read on most devices, and the forthcoming Google Editions promises the same.

From Reuters:

“Today you can buy a book at Barnes and Noble and you can buy a book at Walmart and you don’t have to keep them in separate rooms in your house,”Serbinis said. “You buy a book from Apple and Amazon and you have got to keep it tied up with your Apple universe or your Kindle universe.”

David Shanks, chief executive of leading publisher Penguin U.S. also weighed in on the subject, telling Reuters: “Our fondest wish is that all the devices become agnostic so that there isn’t proprietary formats [sic] and you can read wherever you want to read.”

Daily book biz round-up, April 6

The day’s news, in convenient bullet form:

• Random House has its iPad cake and eats it, too
• Salon’s Laura Miller hearts the iPad
• Just how green is that e-reader, anyway?
• Controversial children’s author William Mayne dies
• J.D. Salinger betrayed

Daily book biz round-up, March 15

What you missed over the weekend:

• Yet more op-ed pieces about Amazon setting up shop in Canada. Michael Geist argues for. Morley Walker argues against. (Oh, and some writer from the Calgary Herald rips the Canadian Booksellers Association a new one)
• Still no decision on Amazon from Ottawa
• E-reader that nobody cared about to be delayed
• Doug Wright Awards finalists named
• Spanish author Miguel Delibes dies
• Norman Mailer’s son posts e-book “that explores post-Katrina New
  Orleans from the perspective of strippers”
• The evolution of Joan Thomas
• Scottish author A.L. Kennedy doesn’t want to be part of club that would have her as member
• Does iPad text-to-voice function violate an author’s audiobook rights?
• The Millions on how to get started in publishing
• St. Martin’s to publish sordid, tawdry details of Dame Judi Dench‘s life