Sometimes a writer creates a universe so compelling that others feel the need to join and help flesh out that world with their own tribute fiction. And sometimes you make something crappy like Gossip Girl and loads of people want to write using those characters and that world anyway. Now Amazon is introducing a way to let writers profit from their fan fiction, via “Kindle Worlds.”

Worlds joins Kindle Singles and Kindle Serials as a way for authors to earn money from digital publishing, and the best part is that in this case you don’t even have to be all that creative – the idea is to let fans create stories around original properties from other authors, offering them up for purchase on the Kindle book store. Amazon then pays out royalties to both the original rights holder, as well as to the fan fiction author, with the author making around 35 percent of all net revenue for works over 10,000 words.

There’s also a new revenue model aimed at shorter works, which would be between 5,000 and 10,000 words and will typically sell for under a dollar. Under this scheme, the author’s cut will be a digital royalty of 20 percent.

Fanfic writers can sign up now at the official Amazon Kindle Worlds website, and the company expects to launch the Worlds storefront in June. There will be over 50 commissioned works included in the store at launch, Amazon says, and then it’ll be launching its self-serve submission platform for all authors to add their own completed works for consideration.

This is a very shrewd business move on the part of Amazon, since it leverages existing popular properties in a way that would never be possible with just one series author (or even a small list of a few running a title), and since it taps into the existing massive market for fan-created fiction that already exists on the net. Heck, I’ve still got an extremely bad and extremely long Star Wars extended universe manuscript hidden in a closet somewhere. If I can find that, read my childish scrawl well enough to transcribe it, and if Amazon ever secured those rights from Disney, I’d consider throwing it up on Worlds for some easy cash.

Amazon says it’s in the process of securing licensing deals from a variety of sources, including TV, movie, books, games and music properties. The only question I really have about this to be honest is why did this take so long to happen? If you want a near-bottomless supply of written content, fanfic is where it’s at.

XOXO, Gossip Girl.

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An upcoming update will bring a web browser, email and update store app to Barnes & Noble’s super affordable Nook Simple Touch line of eReaders, which will begin rolling out June 1 according to a source close to the matter who wishes to remain anonymous. The 1.5.0 update was created in response to the positive critical and customer response to the recent Nook tablet update that brought Google Play to B&N’s Android-powered devices.

The Nook Simple Touch and Simple Touch with Glowlight will be receiving the over-the-air update starting next month, and this marks the first time that Nook’s entry-level readers get official access to web browsing capabilities. Amazon’s competing Kindle devices have shipped with an “experimental” web browser since the Kindle 2, but have not offered an email client on anything except for the Kindle Fire tablets.

Making Nook hardware a little more flexible for users is a good way for Barnes & Noble to help counter flagging sales of dedicated Nook hardware, which were shown to be weak in recent quarterly results. Nook weakness probably ended up prompting the bookseller to offer promotional giveaways with on-hand inventory.

When B&N announced that Google Play would be coming to Nook tablets, I praised the decision as a key step in helping the company position them as affordable, fully-featured Android tablets, as opposed to just glorified eReaders that could do a bit more than most. The Nook Simple Touch is still pretty focused on eBooks, but as an email triage device and basic browser, especially for text heavy content, it probably becomes a lot more attractive to an audience that mostly wants books but would like a little more general use value as well. Especially for older buyers, I imagine a simplified device with a cheap price tag has the potential to carry appeal over a much more expensive full-fledged tablet.

Will a browser and email client be enough to right the Nook ship? Probably not on their own, but B&N is at least expending effort in the right direction to combat flagging consumer interest in dedicated eReader devices.

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I’ve heard some suggestions that our extreme fascination with Google Glass is more a symptom of desperation for some kind of genuine gadget innovation than anything to do with the product’s merits, and a new gadget from Sony (via The Verge) has me wondering whether or not other companies are flailing about for something novel. Sony introduced a new 13.3-inch e-ink prototype reader device today, which seems new but also remarkably old and washed up all at once.

The device is called Digital Paper, and is a flexible 13.3-inch display that uses the battery sipping e-ink tech we’re used to in dedicated e-readers like the Amazon Kindle. The large display is more like the one you’d find on a MacBook Air than the one on a typical e-reader, however, which is one of its most unusual qualities. Big-screened e-readers don’t exactly have a super-successful track record, you might recall, as the Kindle DX was seen by most as an overly expensive, overly large iteration on the core Kindle concept, and two offerings in the category that were even larger from Skiff and Plastic Logic hit the deadpool prior to even launching at all.

Sony wants to change things up a bit with a capacitive touch panel and stylus to give users plenty of input options for a change. That’s bound to come in handy for taking notes in class, as this is aimed at the education market and will be entering trials at three Japanese higher ed institutions over the course of the next year. But even with a pen strapped to it, it’s still a big, dedicated e-reader, and it’s hard to see that offering much value for users in a world full of much more feature-rich, multipurpose devices like smartphones and tablets.

When the e-reader first debuted as a product category, it made sense, in that it was a bridge device for users who had grown up with paper books and were looking for a format that closely mirrored that experience. But now, for students especially, devices and digital media are a long-accepted fact. Digital natives don’t need devices that harken back to older tech, even if they do offer longer battery life and a format that may or may not be easier on the eyes, depending on which study you trust.

Education has shown a keen interest in devices like the iPad and Kindle Fire, and Sony is barking up the wrong tree with an e-reader device as an attempt to appeal to that market. Still, if nothing else it should be interesting, which seems to be the main thing driving consumer device innovation these days.

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Amazon quietly launched its Appstore in China this weekend in a surprise move that paves the way for the rollout of Kindle devices in that country.

At the same time, Amazon also debuted its Chinese-language Web site for developers (link via Google Translate), promising that they will soon have access to customers in 200 countries.

A Sina Tech article (link via Google Translate) outlined why the Amazon Appstore might be an attractive alternative to Google Play for Chinese developers. Reasons include: easier access (Google Play isn’t widely available in China and most developers sell through third-party app stores); a more open and “friendly” environment (the article cited Kongregate’s 2011 ban as an example of problems with Google Play’s TOS); a worldwide customer base; and an attractive revenue sharing model.

China had not been included in the list of 200 countries, including Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea, that Amazon recently said it would bring the Appstore to. In addition to the Kindle reading app and e-books, messaging apps are currently available for download, as well as popular games like Angry Birds and Temple Run. Amazon says it will offer popular games and apps from Chinese developers like Tencent and Sina.

The launch of the Amazon Appstore in China comes less than a month after the company rolled out Cloud Drive there. The Kindle Store was launched in China at the end of last year, at the same time the Kindle iPhone and iPad apps became available to download for users in that country.

There have been years of speculation that Amazon will finally release Kindle hardware in China, but the launch of its Amazon Appstore there is the most concrete step so far. Another clue is the possibility that a $99 Kindle Fire 7″ tablet will begin shipping this year. The low price point would help the device compete in China, where tablets are often sold for less than $100.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

According to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek, e-commerce behemoth Amazon is preparing to launch a set-top box this fall, in hopes that you’ll consume all of your content through its spin on the now-common device. The company is already working hard to push its Kindle line to consumers, and this box would be for people who don’t want to deal with the fanciness of Apple products, the gaming nature of Microsoft’s XBox, the half-baked Google TV or the little engine that could, Roku.

Yes, this is a crowded market, but Amazon has something that these other companies don’t have, which is warehouses full of things to sell to people while they watch TV. I imagine that you’ll be able to shop as you would online or on your mobile device, right on your TV set. That means that the temptation to pick up that new TV, while you’re watching your old crappy one, could overcome you during a show. One button click and a new TV could be on the way.

Think of it as Home Shopping 2.0. With some interesting programming to watch, of course.

Instead of acquiring a smaller company that already has its own product in the wild, Amazon has decided to build this in-house, under its Lab126 umbrella in Cupertino.

Amazon has been building up its content viewers by bundling it with Amazon Prime shipping for free, trying to entice anyone who is already spending regular money with them to try other things out. What shipping has to do with free movies and TV, I don’t know, but customers seem to be happy with it thus far.

Reasons for doing a set-top box are obvious, with its original content being the most popular on the platform since it launched. As Amazon finds its way to more niche shows that it can present exclusively, the reasons to grab an Amazon-branded device for your TV makes more sense. In the same way that Apple leverages each of its devices to sell new ones, Amazon is learning how it’s done. It also doesn’t help that it has millions of shoppers visiting its site daily looking for new things.

Some could say that Amazon is late to the game, but I see Jeff Bezos and company taking smart, calculated steps to capitalize on mistakes made by others, much like it did with the Kindle, staying close to a purer paperback-esque reading experience.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

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Mobile advertising firm Velti has released its monthly report on advertising impressions across its network. The iPad is far and away the leader when it comes to the tablet market, and is gradually chipping away share from the iPhone in terms of overall dominance among mobile ads. The iPad mini remains a much smaller factor, but is growing steadily, and on the Android side it’s pretty much all about the Kindle Fire.

Velti’s data found that the iPad accounted for 91.6 percent of all tablet ad impression during the month of March, and only lost share to the iPad mini, which gained a full percentage point to come in at 6.2 percent during the month, firmly in second place. The Kindle Fire was the next strongest device, with a comparatively small piece of the pie at 1.6 percent. The Kindle Fire still dominates the Android tablet segment, however, with only the Galaxy Tab line of devices anywhere close. Amazon’s and Samsung’s tablets made up 73.4 percent and 26.2 percent of all Android tablet share, respectively.

Among phones, the iPhone still leads the pack, with the iPhone 4 still leading all handsets with 13.3 percent of the impression share. iPhones accounted for eight of the top 10 devices, with the Samsung Galaxy S II and S III coming in at 8th and 10th place, respectively. Samsung is running away with the Android market in terms of ads served according to Velti’s figures, with 68.2 percent of all Android impressions. That’s no surprise given the company’s clear continued dominance in terms of hardware sales.

In March, most mobile app usage took place during weekends, with a much greater deviation between Friday/Saturday/Sunday and the rest of the week than Velti had seen previously, which perhaps indicates that more people were settling down to do serious work during the month. Finally, Velti also saw click-through-rates continue to grow on Android and shrink on iOS. This means that despite having a much smaller share of overall ad impressions, the ones that are viewed on Android are more likely to convert into some kind of customers action.

That may be due to the more relaxed rules about what types of advertising and campaigns can appear within Android apps vs. those on iOS. Stil, iOS was better in terms of eCPM, but the gap narrowed between it and Android, meaning iOS users resulted in just a little less revenue on average than did Android users for advertisers.

The picture shows a fairly stable overall relationship between ads and the dominant mobile platforms, however; the needle hardly budged in terms of overall impressions. Will a flock of new devices coming to market affect this relationship in the coming months? Too soon to tell, though legacy handsets like the iPhone 4 and 4S, and the Galaxy S II still seem to be firmly entrenched.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

E-commerce giant Amazon looks like it is gearing up for the latest chapter in its international expansion: an operation in Russia. According to this article in Forbes (in Russian) the company has opened its first office in the country, headed by Arkady Vitrouk. Vitrouk is the former general director of ABC-Atticus, a publishing group owned by media barron Alexander Mamut.

Forbes cites unnamed sources but notes that the appointment, and the office opening, have not been confirmed by Amazon itself. However, Vitrouk’s LinkedIn profile does confirm his as director of Kindle Content for Amazon in Russia.

It looks like right now Amazon is hiring for at least three other positions for Russia specifically for its Kindle business and the sourcing of local content: a senior product manager for Kindle content pricing, and a principal for content acquisition for Kindle Russia, and another content acquisition manager.

A visit to amazon.ru currently redirect’s to the company’s main page for Europe, with links to other countries’ local sites, including the UK, France, Spain, German and Italy. We have contacted Amazon and Vitrouk himself for more detail and will update this story as we learn more.

The news comes in the same week that Amazon announced that it would take its Appstore business international — extending it to nearly 200 countries, another sign of how the company is gearing up for more scale.

Russia is currently Europe’s largest internet market, according to a recent study from comScore, with an online audience of 61.3 million users.

That, combined with Russia’s rapidly rising middle class, has led to a boom in e-commerce. Morgan Stanley believes the Russian e-commerce market will be worth $36 billion by 2015, up from $12 billion in 2012.

Russia has been a noticeable hole in Amazon’s footprint, but that has spelled opportunity for local players, too.

Ozon — commonly called the “Amazon of Russia” — has raised $121 million in funding and has been building up a very Amazon-like business. That includes an extensive logistics network to deliver a soup-to-nuts range of goods. As we’ve pointed out before this is especially important in a country like Russia, which didn’t have an excellent pre-existing delivery infrastructure. That, and the lack of credit card penetration, has meant that companies like Ozon and fashion/home goods site KupiVIP (itself flush with $120 million of funding) have built out fleets of their own delivery trucks, with drivers who take cash on delivery for goods (KupiVIP, focusing on clothes, will even wait until the recipient tries something on, so that it can also get returned on the spot).

Like Amazon, Ozon has also been eyeing up a move into cloud services. Unlike Amazon, Ozon’s strategy has yet to include any products or services like Amazon’s Kindle operation.

This is where Amazon could come in. In another BRIC market, Brazil, Amazon has been building out a business based on its non-physical goods — Kindle books and Kindle devices.

This could be one route to how Amazon decides to tackle Russia, at least in part. In that sense, it’s interesting that the Forbes report specifically names as the head of Amazon in Russia someone whose immediate experience lies precisely in publishing, rather than e-commerce or retail, and that he’s already heading up business for the company there in that vein.

P.S. I write “at least in part,” because it turns out that it’s also hiring for other Russia-related expansion plans as well. Online fashion e-commerce site Shopbop, owned by Amazon, is seeking a marketing manager for a new rollout it is planning in Russia. Amazon has also been headhunting in Moscow for software engineers — although these would be for relocation to Seattle.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Microsoft just scored a coup on the patent royalty front, with a new deal with Taiwanese phone maker, Hon Hai, which owns Foxconn.

Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft will get paid a flat fee per Android and Chrome-based device that Foxconn makes. And there are a lot of those. A whopping 40 percent of the world’s phones come from the firm’s China-based factories. Foxconn is an ODM, or “original design manufacturer”, and makes Android devices for clients like Acer and Amazon (it makes the Kindle Fire).

It’s famous for making iPhones and iPads as well.

The exact patents licensed were not revealed, but Microsoft has been famously litigious on the patent scene. With regard to the Android OS, legal documents filed in 2010 against Motorola and against Barnes & Noble in 2011 give some clues.

One of its patent claims is against a way that long and short file names are implemented, and is linked to the FAT16 file system used by older Microsoft OSes like MS-DOS and Windows.

Other patents include data management, across flash drives and another in contact databases. Microsoft’s user interface patents are also involved.

Microsoft said that over 50 percent of the world’s Android phones come from manufacturers that already have patent agreements in place with it. These include Samsung, LG and HTC, for example. Adding Foxconn to that list will give it a huge boost to these royalty payments, an already huge sum—in 2011, Microsoft was estimated to be making more from patent royalties from phone makers than its own smartphone business.

Other behind-the-scenes manufacturers similar to Foxconn such as Quanta and Pegatron also have licensing agreements with Microsoft.

Microsoft going after manufacturers has been referred to as “extortion” by Google. It made this statement in late-2011 after Samsung and Microsoft decided to cross-license their patents. Probably because Samsung was sick of all the lawsuits with Apple.

Hon Hai is the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, and holds some 54,000 patents globally.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google chairman Eric Schmidt today denied that there is any tension between his company and Samsung, the world’s biggest handset maker and the biggest OEM partner for Google’s Android mobile OS. “They have hundreds of millions of phones coming out on Android and I don’t think you will see much of a change there,” he said of the Korean handset maker, during an interview at the D:Dive Into Mobile conference. “Obviously we want to see competition but the Samsung relationship has turned out to be a defining one.”

During the last Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, there were reports, citing sources close to the matter, that Samsung’s size and “heft” were worrying Google. “We spend lots of time with Samsung and I can confirm that this is not correct,” Schmidt said today.

While Google played down its presence at in Barcelona in February compared to years before (no Schmidt, no Android stand, no pins), Samsung was near-ubiquitous, including stands in many of the exhibition halls and even in the subway station near the venue.

Schmidt’s comments came in the context of other questions about Android competitors, including the one now owned by Google itself, Motorola. On this he was predictably confident, but also realistic:

“Motorola has a new set of products I’ve seen that are phenomenal, but they are in a tough space… [but] what you see in this next generation of technology is very impressive,” he said.

Nevertheless, with companies like HTC struggling for critical mass on the platform, and more OEMs looking for ways of differentiating themselves with customized launchers (like Facebook Home) or forking altogether (as in the case of the Kindle Fire tablet from Amazon, or many “Android” handsets in Asia), there remains a question about how those Android handset makers who are not Samsung will eventually make decent margins on their hardware businesses.

When there’s a will, there’s a way, seemed to be Schmidt’s mantra.

“Those smartphone makers are capitalists,” he said. “I’m pretty sure they will all be making money. If you tell me there is a billion consumer opportunity people will make money on that, [just] in different ways.”

One way might be with aggressive pricing across a wide range devices.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

After the U.S. cleared the deal, the European Commission has officially approved the proposed merger between two of the biggest book publishers in the world, Random House and Penguin. The two owners Pearson and Bertelsmann announced the joint venture back in October. As it is seeking “new digital publishing models,” the merger has been widely commented on as a way to counter Amazon’s influence on the ebook market.

Penguin Random House will become the world’s largest publisher, ahead of book publishers — Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster in size. Bertelsmann will own 53 percent of the new entity, while Pearson will own the remaining 47 percent. With only five major publishers left, the book industry will get much more traction against distributors, such as Amazon, traditional bookstores and ebook retailers (Kindle Store, Nook Book Store, Apple’s iBooks Store).

The price-fixing case against those major publishers and Apple was widely commented. According to the DOJ, Apple’s introduction of iBooks led to a price increase in the ebook market because Apple signed an agreement with publishers.

The so-called agency model partially disappeared with the settlement of Apple and those book publishers. Book publishers now have a very thin margin to negotiate with Amazon to increase ebook pricing. According to publishers, the $9.99 standard created with the introduction of the first Kindle is not enough for newly released bestsellers.

That’s why the Penguin and Random House merger makes sense. The new entity will leverage its size to dictate its own terms. The company could even create a new distribution channel, with exclusive content from Penguin Random House. In other words, it could create a publisher-owned Kindle Store competitor, something that is highly needed to end Amazon’s dominance on the ebook market.

Comparatively, the music industry now only works with three major companies, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. Back in 2009, those companies managed to end the $0.99 price tag on the iTunes Store to introduce more flexibility. Popular songs now sell for up to $1.29.

The first attempt to create an agency model in the ebook industry failed because Amazon didn’t play ball and Apple benefited from better terms from the publishers. If Penguin Random House threatens to remove its entire catalog from the Kindle Store, Amazon will have no choice but to agree to higher prices again.

(Photo credit: Tracey Tutt)

Article courtesy of TechCrunch