The Aura HD is “only for those people who really, really care about reading in their lives,” Michael Tamblyn, the company’s EVP of content, sales and merchandising, told me. (Kobo’s marketing materials call it “the Porsche of e-readers.”) According to Kobo’s customer research, Tamblyn said, 90 percent of its e-reader users intend to purchase a new e-reader in the next year and “want to see what the next generation of e-ink looks like.” Thirty-six percent of Kobo e-reader customers, Tamblyn said, also own a tablet but “an e-ink device continues to be the primary way they do their reading.”

The Aura HD has a larger screen than most e-readers — 6.8 inches, compared to the standard six-inch screen. Like the Glo, it has a built-in light. The screen’s resolution is 265 DPI, which Kobo says is the highest resolution of any e-ink screen on the market. (Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite also has a high-resolution screen, but Amazon doesn’t state the number of pixels, saying only that it has “62 percent more” of them.) Storage is 4 GB and is expandable. The device is designed to be extra-comfortable to hold. Battery life is up to two months with the light on or off.

The Aura HD is available for preorder in North America at Kobo.com starting April 16, and will be available in stores in Canada and the U.K. on April 25. It should be in U.S. stores in May or June, though the company couldn’t get more specific than that. Kobo says it will announce international availability soon.

At $169, the Aura HD is more expensive than any of Kobo’s other e-readers and more expensive than the competition (the Wi-Fi Kindle Paperwhite is $119 with ads and $139 without; the Nook Simple Touch with Glow Light is $119.) The company will continue to focus on the $129.99 Kobo Glo as our “widest-adoption device,” Tamblyn said. But “for those readers who are most passionate about reading, they weren’t necessarily interested in finding the cheapest device possible…These are people buying hundreds of books every year and often reading several books a week. For those people, price is simply less important.”

Kobo touts global growth, insists e-readers aren’t dead

Toronto-based e-reading company Kobo announced that it doubled its e-reader device sales in 2012; up by “nearly 150 percent” in December and over 12 million registered users. Citing the super-sketchy Taiwanese tech site DigiTimes, Kobo also claimed it has 20 percent of the global e-reader market. Whether or not that’s true (and DigiTimes is forecasting e-ink device share, not the share of ebooks sold), the company is clearly expanding rapidly — to Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Japan, Spain, South Africa and the Netherlands in 2012, with plans for Russia, India and China in 2013.

At Digital Book World, Kobo’s Michael Tamblyn provided some updates on the company’s partnership with independent bookstores in the U.S. As reported by Publishers Lunch (paywall), Tamblyn made

“a clear case that the ‘indie store’ ebook customer is very different than Kobo’s standard US customer to date. ‘They buy more expensive books’ and “have a completely different price tolerance’ than the traditional U.S. book buyer. Half their sales are at $9.99 and above (versus only 30 percent for the average customer), and those customers ‘also buy different books’…Their indie bookstore ebook bestseller list also ‘looks very different–much more like a print bestseller list, and less like an Amazon top 25.’”

Penguin: Embracing POD, as Book Country adds free option

Penguin U.S. will make its books available through On Demand Books’ Espresso Book Machine (PDF), the print-on-demand machine that appears in around 70 bookstores and libraries globally. (Its technology is also integrated into some Kodak Picture Kiosks in retail chains like CVS.) “Penguin is always looking for new ways to bring our writers to readers and On Demand Books gives us another channel to further fulfill that mission,” Penguin EVP, business operations Doug White said in a statement. The Penguin/On Demand release also noted that the Espresso Book Machine’s software will soon allow users not just to create files for printing but to “convert print files to the EPUB format suitable for e-readers.”

Separately, Penguin is changing the self-publishing options that it offers through its community writing site Book Country. When Penguin launched Book Country’s self-publishing arm at the end of 2011, many complained that it was overpriced and greedy, taking too large a share of authors’ ebook royalties. (Simon & Schuster’s self-publishing offering has received similar criticisms.) In response, Book Country has rolled out a redesign and a host of changes to its self-publishing services, and will relaunch the community writing site later this year. Publishers Weekly reported:

Book Country has increased the author royalty to 85% from 70%, added a free tier to Book Country’s self-publishing services and reduced fees for all its tiers. Now Book Country offers self-publishing packages that start at free, $59, $149, $249 and $399 (which includes 100% royalty if sold through the Book Country retail channel) for its top-tier, which was originally $549.

Inkling opens up to Google

iPad publishing platform Inkling is making its titles — just 400 of them so far, with about 1,000 more expected in 2013 — fully indexable through Google Search. It will also sell those books in chunks. “We’re going to bring people in before they ever get to Amazon,” CEO Matt MacInnis told me. It’s a bullish goal — especially because Google hasn’t been a source of book discovery up until now. At Digital Book World this week, Codex Group’s Peter Hildick-Smith presented research showing that while the majority of frequent book buyers visit Google regularly, less than 1 percent discovered the last book they bought through a search engine.

The acquisition will help Kobo, which just announced a new tablet called the Arc, compete against Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple, all of which sell their own enhanced content. (The new self-publishing tools could also be Kobo’s answer to Apple’s iBooks Author.) “This radically improves our ability to bring illustrated content like magazines, graphic novels, manga and children’s books into a compelling reading experience,” Michael Tamblyn, Kobo’s EVP content and merchandising, told me. “We see a lot of companies trying to do quick and dirty digital magazines that lose the potential richness of that experience. We wanted to find something that made the  format as compelling in digital as it already is in print.”

Aquafadas could also help Kobo quickly convert foreign publishers’ illustrated books into ebooks. Aquafadas already works with international publishers like Egmont International, Lagardere and Mondadori.

Aquafadas tools will be available to authors through Kobo’s self-publishing platform Writing Life, though Tamblyn didn’t specify when the tools will roll out. Writing Life is available in new languages as of Wednesday — German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch — and the company said authors from 82 countries are now using it.

Separately, Kobo announced that it is expanding its presence in New Zealand. The company partnered with New Zealand bookstore chain Whitcoulls in 2010 and has now partnered with New Zealand independent booksellers association Booksellers NZ and book and stationery chain Paper Plus Group. The new agreements bring Kobo devices to over 300 stores in New Zealand.

At the Publishers Launch conference here on Monday, retailers discussed what they are seeing so far…

Windows to new markets

Barnes & Noble is quickly expanding its library of global digital content. The company is being “very aggressive” about expanding its offerings and “shaking that content from the trees internationally”, VP of digital content Theresa Horner said.

And she said Barnes & Noble’s partnership with Microsoft, which spins off B&N’s Nook and college businesses into a separate company called Nook Media, gets ebooks to more international readers. “The Windows 8 partnership allows us to be in markets where we can’t get our own device there,” Horner said. “It removes hurdles to us setting up storefronts.”

Partnership choices

Michael Tamblyn, Kobo’s EVP of content sales and merchandising, described lessons learned as the company expands into more foreign countries…

Partnering with local bookstore chains has been key, he said, and is central to Kobo’s international strategy: “The infrastructure of selling ebooks is a global endeavor, but bookselling is fundamentally a local experience.” So far, Kobo has partnered with UK bookstore chain WH Smith, France’s FNAC, Canada’s Indigo, Australia’s Collins and New Zealand’s Whitcoulls. ”It turns out that even though they are bricks-and-mortar retailers, they can do some of the most important parts of e-bookselling very well.”

Kobo had planned to expand to 12 new countries in 2012. It’s likely to reach that goal — Tamblyn said the company will announce new partnerships at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week. But, in some instances, that expansion was slower than the company had predicted. ”Book retailers take the ebook partnership shockingly seriously,” Tamblyn said. “It’s the most important decision a bricks-and-mortar bookseller will make in the next five to 10 years.”

Tamblyn didn’t explicitly mention British bookstore chain Waterstones’ partnership with Amazon, which many in the industry have found baffling. But local retailers have to ask themselves, “‘Who am I willing to trust my customers to?’” Tamblyn said. “It’s a momentous decision.”

Matter of fact

As Kobo chose the countries it wanted to expand to, it looked at several factors, Tamblyn said: literacy, disposable income, reading market size, internet availability, WiFi availability, availability of digital content, and local partners.

While North American and many European countries fit those requirements, after that, markets become more fragmented and smaller. “The fiction-driven ebook market we’ve become very used to through North America and Europe is not going to remain the prominent theme for selling outside of those markets,” Tamblyn said. Rather, as digital reading expands to countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China, expect to see “more educational-instructional content” and a greater role for independent players.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Borys Shevchuk

Self-publishing, part I: “There are no unrealistic expectations anymore”

Self-publishing platform Smashwords announced this week that it’s making self-publishing faster: Smashwords authors who sell e-books on Kobo and Apple will see faster “shipments” to those platforms, meaning that if they update their e-book’s price the change is reflected in near-real time. “We try to listen to people with unrealistic expectations,” CEO Mark Coker told me, “because their unrealistic expectations are the leading indicator of where we need to go.” Near-instantaneous price changes would allow an author to, say, sell an e-book “at $0.99 for the next five hours only.”

Smashwords is now working with library distributors 3M and Baker & Taylor’s Axis360 so self-published authors can get their e-books into libraries. Right now, the libraries buy Smashwords books at list price (publishers like Random House, meanwhile, charge more for the e-books they make available to libraries). Soon, Smashwords will allow its authors to set special pricing for libraries, Coker told me. “A lot of them are going to want to offer libraries lower pricing,” he said, or “will want to offer their books for free to libraries.”

Smashwords will soon let authors specify the countries where their books are distributed. Right now, authors (and the agents Smashwords works with) have the rights to sell their e-books in some territories, but not others. With the changes, for instance, an author could define that his or her e-book should be distributed “globally, except for commonwealth countries.” Smashwords will also let authors specify their prices by currency — a change from now, when authors have to price in dollars and retailers convert the currency automatically.

Also, Coker said, Smashwords will start accepting EPUB files (as opposed to Word files) later this year. With EPUB 3, that means the company could “potentially take more sophisticated books or enhanced books.”

Getting rid of DRM: This is going to take forever

Macmillan’s Fritz Foy announced at the Publishers Launch BEA conference that the company’s sci-fi/fantasy imprint Tor/Forge will launch a DRM-free digital bookstore this summer, and it may include DRM-free e-books from other publishers too. Meanwhile, distributor IPG announced that it will give client publishers the option to sell e-books DRM-free, and Kobo will give authors the option to sell DRM-free through its new self-publishing platform Writing Life. Still, publishers are moving slowly and it looks as though changes are going to happen in trickles.

Penguin global digital director Molly Barton said at Pub Launch that “Penguin is interested in methods of file security that would allow greater interoperability between platforms,” but Random House president of sales, operations and digital Madeline McIntosh called the DRM discussion “a red herring in a publishers panel at the IDPF conference, Publishers Lunch reports (paywall). She noted DRM’s not the only thing that keeps readers using a particular digital bookstore’s platform: “We have to be clear about what the goal is and commercial reason [to remove DRM].”

Self-publishing, part II: It’s getting closer

“We saw that seven percent of the units sold [on Kobo] were coming from self-published authors,” Kobo EVP of content and merchandising Michael Tamblyn told me, making those authors “collectively the size of a major publishing house,” so we “wanted to get closer” to them. Thus the launch of Kobo’s new self-publishing platform Writing Life. Authors using it get a 70 percent royalty on e-books priced between $1.99 and $12.99 and a 45 percent royalty on books below $1.99 or above $12.99. By “looking at how e-books sell in general,” Tamblyn said, “we know that after $12.99 there’s a drop…and after that it’s difficult to generate significant demand.” So the royalty structure “encourages authors to stay within that space.”

Amazon took up a lot of floor space, with separate sections for Amazon Publishing and self-publishing platforms Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace. At KDP, the company set up rows of chairs and, all day long, self-published authors gave presentations on why they use KDP. “I also sell on Nook [Barnes & Noble's self-publishing platform is PubIt],” I heard one author say, but Barnes & Noble doesn’t rent a public booth at BEA — which seems kinda dumb considering both Amazon and Kobo’s emphases on self-publishing at the show. Kobo, too, had the self-published authors participating in the beta launch of Writing Life speaking at its booth.

Startups: Maybe we’ll find a better way next year

The Javits Center’s vastness makes it tough for publishers and startups to randomly encounter each other, a lame “Digital Discovery Zone” is removed from the rest of the floor, and terrible or nonexistent WiFi prohibits quick demos or many interactions you need the Internet for. (Can I throw in one more complaint? There’s no WiFi in the press office and the woman who runs it yelled at me for “drinking all the water.”) The founder of one fairly well-known startup told me he was finding it tough to meet with the publishers who could get use out of his product. Despite a few panels that try to bring traditional publishers and newer companies together, BookExpo America remains, primarily, an event where publishers and authors pitch new books to librarians and booksellers. Maybe that’s what it should be, but since it’s also the largest book industry event in the United States, it’s not surprising that digital companies arrive with expectations about who they’ll meet and leave wanting more. It seems as if there should be a more efficient way to make these meetings happen — stay tuned on that.

Don’t hold your book party on a rowboat

OK, this one’s not digital. Author Robert Sullivan took BEA-going booksellers to the Hudson to promote his upcoming book “My American Revolution,” which is about the historical importance of New York Waterways. As the New York Times reports, “two rowboats – built at the boathouse to imitate 19th-century New York Harbor craft known as Whitehall gigs – left the pier loaded with booksellers, volunteer coxswains and local residents.” Unfortunately, one of the boats “struck a pier” and flipped, “dumping three BookExpo conventioneers, two instructors and two others into 60-degree water.” Five were able to climb onto the pier. “The other two drifted 100 yards away.” There were no fatalities.

See also

Social reading, discoverability and other unsolved problems at BEA 2012

Kobo launches e-book self-publishing platform, Writing Life

Macmillan’s Tor/Forge will launch DRM-free digital bookstore this summer

Wattpad raises $17 million to become the YouTube of writing

Photo courtesy of BEA

Writing Life is in beta tests with 50 authors now and will launch in English by the end of June, “with new language and country-specific support added in the coming year,” it said in a blog post.

In a separate press release, Michael Tamblyn, Kobo’s EVP content and merchandising, says, “When we started working on Kobo Writing Life, the first thing we did was ask authors what they felt was most important in a self-publishing platform. They were incredibly clear: openness, control, great royalties, incredible reporting and global reach. It should be powerful but drop-dead simple.”

On its website, Kobo takes a jab at Amazon: “Unlike some self-publishing portals we could mention, Kobo doesn’t bind you to us. Publish to Kobo and take your ePub to your adoring fans, no matter where they might be. You’re free to sell your eBook the way you want.” To be fair, Amazon’s KDP doesn’t require exclusivity, but its KDP Select (which lets self-published authors include their titles in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library) does. The main difference between Kobo and Amazon is outlined in the press release:

Unlike competitive self-publishing tools, Kobo allows authors to set their book price to “FREE” at any time without restrictive exclusive agreements, in addition Kobo pays 10% higher royalties on sales in many growing international markets and allows authors much more freedom on pricing.

Jane Litte at Dear Author reports that Kobo is paying a 70 percent royalty on e-books priced between $1.99 and $12.99, and a 45 percent royalty on e-books below $1.99 or above $12.99. By contrast, Amazon pays a 70 percent royalty on KDP e-books priced above $2.99 and a 35 percent royalty on those below $2.99. And she notes that authors can sell their books with or without DRM.

Writing Life also gives authors an analytics dashboard showing real-time sales stats, including sales by country. “The ability to see the performance of my books across different markets helps me to understand how my advertising and promotions are influencing sales so that I can engage with more readers around the world,” self-published author Bella Andre, who is beta-testing the program, says in the release.

Kobo’s international growth: Now 8 million users in 190 countries

Separately, Kobo released some year-on-year growth stats (though no actual numbers): e-book downloads up 400 percent, e-reader device sales up 160 percent and the number of people reading internationally with Kobo up 280 percent.

Kobo was acquired by Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten for $315 million in November and says it “will be launching in Japan, with subsequent launches planned for Portugal, Spain, Italy, with more launches to follow. These markets have distinct needs for digital reading and Kobo intends to provide access in regions where printed books are inaccessible and where electronic devices can be more easily obtained.”