they want it both ways...

"[...] Amazon and others are 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater' by removing too much of the self-published erotic content and complains that Amazon in particular is not giving authors sufficient explanation as to why their ebooks are being taken down. Another post at International Business Times reports on how readers of such content are up in arms, too, signing a petition to have content reinstated at their favourite ebook retailers. (Kobo seems to be at the centre of this scandal and has recently released a letter explaining its position and what it’s doing about it.)

     Each of these retailers have policies on what kind of content authors can publish and sell with them. [...] Barnes & Noble says in its content guidelines that it may remove any book that 'graphically portrays sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal.'
     Amazon’s policy is similar: 'We don’t accept pornography or offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts. What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect.'
     That would mean Fifty Shades of Grey, last year’s mega-best-seller (and the fastest selling book of all time), could be removed, which begs the question, who gets to decide what is and is not sold in bookstores?"
— Jeremy Greenfield, Forbes
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power reading... with 2013 Man Booker Prize judge Natalie Haynes

"Voldemort, Jeff Bezos and Darth Vader walk into a bar..."

From: verging on pertinence

"My anti-Amazon stance once made my sister cry. It was Christmas morning. She was talking enthusiastically about her Kindle and the freedom it gave her to read books and newspapers from around the world. I pounced, scolding her for supporting the Voldemort of the book industry.

     Didn’t she know Amazon was destroying our independent bookstores through its loss-leading low prices? Or that by locking Kindle users into buying from Amazon, and preventing them from easily reading their purchases on, say, the Kobo or Sony Reader, it had created a 'walled garden' that was giving it a frightening ebook market share (an estimated 60% in the US and 80% in Australia)?...
     [But] gradually, and very much in denial about it all the while, I have turned into my worst nightmare: an independent bookstore-loving bibliophile who shops mostly at Amazon.
     Whatever you do, please don’t tell my sister."
— Charlotte Harper, The Guardian
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Amazon (rainforest)

Brazilian rainforest (from: The Guardian)

"According to survey research by the Codex Group, roughly 60 percent of book sales — print and digital — now occur online. But buyers first discover their books online only about 17 percent of the time. Internet booksellers specifically, including Amazon, account for just 6 percent of discoveries. Where do readers learn about the titles they end up adding to the cart on Amazon? In many cases, at bookstores.
     The brick and mortar outlets that Amazon is imperiling play a huge role in driving book sales and fostering literary culture. Although beaten by the Internet in unit sales, physical stores outpace virtual ones by 3-to-1 in introducing books to buyers. Bookshelves sell books. In a trend that is driving the owner of your neighborhood independent to drink, customers are engaging in 'showrooming,' browsing in shops and then buying from Amazon to get a discount. This phenomenon is gradually suffocating stores to death. If you like having a bookseller nearby, think carefully before doing this. Never mind the ethics of showrooming — it’s self-defeating. You’re killing off a local business you like. (If you prefer e-reading, many independent stores have agreements with Kobo and Zola Books that give them a cut of e-book sales.)…
     By defeating its competitors, Amazon is choking off some of its own air supply. Barnes & Noble and independents are in one sense competitors for Amazon, but in another sense they are functioning as unwilling showrooms and sales agents for the online giant. As David Carr has suggested, Amazon should want them to survive, if only out of self-interest."
— Evan Hughes, Salon
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Why do e-book outfits love the letter 'K'? (Part 1)

From: Sesame Street
via The Official Cranberries Fanblog

"Looking to keep pace with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and the fast growing self-publishing market in general, Barnes & Noble is phasing out its PubIt! self-publishing service and relaunching it as Nook Press, an upgraded e-book self-publishing platform offering an array of new services to authors and publishers. B&N is partnering with the self-publishing platform Fast Pencil to supply Nook Press with its proprietary online authoring technology, while also offering Fast Pencil authors access to a variety of marketing opportunities via B&N’s Nook platform. […]

     Much like PubIt!, Nook Press will pay authors up to 65% of the e-book list price based on how much an author wants to charge for a book. The Nook Press platform is nonexclusive (authors and publishers can sell the e-book where they want) and, like PubIt!, Nook Press is free of charge and B&N takes a percentage of the list price when the books sell."
— Publishers Weekly
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Oops, sorry... wrong "Kobo" (photo from: kapok.com)

"Kobo, a small Canadian ebook and e-reading company now owned by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, kicked Google’s butt… when it comes to selling ebooks through independent bookstores, that is. […]
     The reason the program existed in the first place was to give independent bookstores a way to get involved in the growing market of ebooks and digital reading, to give them a chance to survive the ebook revolution.
     After Google announced that it was cancelling its program this past spring, Kobo swooped in and signed a deal with the American Booksellers Association to provide e-readers, tablets and ebooks for them to sell.
     In the first month of the Kobo partnership (Oct. last year), independent bookstores sold more ebooks than in the entire two years working with Google. The key, say bookstore owners, is being able to sell the devices along with the ebooks. It just makes more sense to customers."
— Jeremy Greenfield, Forbes
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Books in a Bind

"Kobo's decision to enter into competition with its own suppliers further complicates relations already strained by the decision of its part-owner, Indigo Books and Music, to promote Kobo e-readers aggressively in stores formerly dedicated exclusively to selling traditional books.
     Thousands of bookstores across North America have closed in the course of the digital revolution, falling prey first to online book sales and more recently to e-books that can be delivered automatically to such devices as the Kobo and Amazon’s market-leading Kindle. Some fear that traditional publishers will be the next to suffer as online operators move onto their turf.
     But Writers’ Union of Canada chair Greg Hollingshead welcomed the news, saying the new competition could encourage traditional publishers to pay more for electronic rights and to stop forcing authors to do 'what publishers are supposed to do – editing and promotion.'
     Traditional publishers generally remit 25 per cent of a book’s cover price as a royalty to authors, while Amazon pays as much as 70 per cent, according to Hollingshead. If the new e-publishers make good on their promise, he added, 'conventional publishers will need to look hard at how they treat authors and how they compete in the digital market.' " — John Barber, THE GLOBE AND MAIL
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Read more about Kobo here...