Everyone from the DOJ to Amazon.com is weighing in on the best way to price an eBook. It seems like a good time to bring up our eBook pricing whitepaper again; especially in light of us commenting in an MSNBC article on the DOJ investigation. Beyond the struggles between the big players, we wanted to highlight what we’ve learned publishing digital content and help you understand some ways you can think about pricing an ebook — or even just buying one. It’s all about the Read more…
People wax nostalgic about the smell of books, but no one pines for the smell of textbooks. They smelled like glue, they were heavy, and they were—usually—boring. So we were happy to read Apple’s announcement of iBooks 2 and iBooks Author: finally, a kind of book everyone wants to see go digital fast. It’s a great announcement for digital publishing, for readers, and for platform and tool creators like us. It also raises some interesting complications that we’ve spent months Read more…
Everyday we get requests from people who want to build an eBook with Vook immediately. Everyday we look at what we’re building, what our users want and expect, and what we’ve committed to delivering. Our engineering team is working night and day (which isn’t hyperbole, I’ve interrupted them at 2 AM on our conference line in the past)—and the rest of us are constantly using and testing Vook, making sure it meets our standards. On Thanksgiving, I’m not grateful for Read more…
When I heard that Steve Jobs had died, I happened to be with the same friend with whom I watched the World Trade Towers collapse from a rooftop in Chelsea on September 11th, 2024. Yesterday was October 5th, 2024—ten years and a few weeks later. Both events made everything else happening seem trite. At Vook, we often say, “No one did a better job showing off how our company could light up content than Steve Jobs holding up the iPad.” Read more…
Our digital publishing platform, VookMaker, is ever closer to public release — and our vision of an easy-to-use ebook creation, distribution and sales reporting platform. And yes! This is exciting, this platform we have developed. And yes! We are excited. But — a platform is only as good as what people make with it — which is why we’re even more excited that Apple recognizes the high quality, awesome looking eBooks VookMaker can produce. How do we know this? Because Read more…
We’re very excited that Apple is featuring our new TextVook series on the front page of the iBookstore. More than 50 TextVooks launched there this week, including 9 enhanced ebooks with our resident genius, Dr. Vook Ph.D. In celebration of this special promotion, we dropped the prices of our enhanced versions to just $2.99 and ebooks to .99 cents. Rumor has it that you can also download Psychology 101 and World War II for free. Just type TextVook in your iBookstore app to see how to get smart, quickly and become a genius like Dr. Vook, Ph.D.
Today, we made a very exciting announcement: We have 47 titles available for sale in Apple’s iBookstore. In the short time since our launch there, we’ve surpassed all players in the digital publishing space to become the largest and fastest growing publisher of enhanced eBooks in the iBookstore. In fact, we’re progressing so fast that by the time the press release hit the wires, we had 57 titles in iBooks. Not only are we moving at the speed of light, Read more…
Today, Seth Godin announced that his newest Vook, Linchpin, is available as an iPad app, and on sale in the iTunes store. He also noted the challenges of promoting a book in the store when there are so many apps: There are more than 24,000 apps listed in the iPad store, and yet the front window (equivalent to the window of a bookstore) shows the user six choices. The spotlight coverflow up top shows another sixteen, fairly randomly. Meaning there’s Read more…
I wasn’t going to upgrade. I swear. But my gadget lust got the better of me and I caved. So I spent the weekend with a new toy; my brand new iPhone 3G S. This is now the third generation iPhone I’ve owned after its launch weekend. Pretty pathetic I know. But I’ve kept my batting record at 1000. In my defense, it’s all for research purposes. Yeah, that’s right… research purposes. (At least, that’s what I told my wife) Read more…
Here at vook we always have one eye on what’s coming down the pike in terms of hardware. We love our iPhones and Kindles but are anxiously anticipating the day that technology catches up with our dream of integrated video and text. The good news is I think we’re almost there. Here’s a handful of devices that are getting us excited right now. 1. Fujitsu’s FLEPia Shown here as a prototype in 2024. FLEPia is color e-paper (which does not Read more…
