Okay, maybe this post title is a little misleading. Ebook sales slowed down in November 2011, but overall were still on their way up. This is according to the Association of American Publishers.

Here’s an article posted by EContent:

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) released statistics that show ebook growth slowed somewhat in November, although it is still high overall. Ebooks are still up 65.9% over Nov. 2010. In the same November-to-November window, trade sales were down 3.5%. Slower growth could be due to a pre-holiday sales lull, as consumers waited for new e-reader devices to come to market.

It’s interesting to note that the slight decrease in ebook sales might have been due to customers waiting for new eReaders to hit the market. With the pace of eReaders and tablet computers hitting the market though, one shouldn’t have to wait very long. Hopefully when we see the ebook sales numbers for the beginning of 2012, they’ll have skyrocketed again.

Apple introduced iBooks 2 for iPad today that adds a new e-textbAfter ook feature that will allow students to interact with the material, not just read it.

These electronic textbooks are enhanced for graphics, videos, interactive features, students notes, highlights and anything else you can think of to make a boring subject like chemistry tolerable.

I found a cool video on engadget that demonstrates all the features mentioned above. Take a look for yourself:

One thing that still annoys me about ebooks is the lack of quality control. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been reading an ebook, only to find that there is a page missing, a duplicate page, bad formatting, duplicate paragraphs, or other obvious errors.

This begs the question: Where is ebook quality control?

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Publishers Weekly is reporting ebook sales figures for the month of October, and as usual, it looks really good.

I’ll let the PW article speak for itself:

E-book sales rose 81.2% in October, to $72.8 million, at the 20 publishers who supply e-book figures to the Association of American Publishers monthly sales report. The 81% increase was the first time this year that e-book sales did not double over the same month in 2010. For the first 10 months of the year, e-book sales were up 131.1%, to $807.7 million.

With eReader prices falling and more consumers jumping onto the ebook bandwagon, it seems we’ll see this trend continue into the foreseeable future.

The ebook industry is coming under heavy scrutiny from US and European officials investigating antitrust allegations. The justice department, states attorney general and EU officials are seeing whether or not several publishers fixed prices when they inked a deal with Apple before the launch of the iBookstore.

Central to the investigation is the “agency model.” This allows publishers to set ebook prices while giving Apple or Amazon (for example) a percentage of the sale. The agency model prevents ebook retailers from setting prices too low, thus devaluing the ebook (or so publishers say).

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The Authors Guild isn’t holding anything back in their criticism of Amason’s Lending Library. The library program is available to Amazon Prime members, who pay $79 per year for membership.

The Authors Guild’s main complaint is that Amazon is lending out ebooks for free without the publisher’s permission, or even the author’s permission.

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I should first state that I’m firmly against ebook piracy. The reader should pay the price that is set by the author or publisher. Or, if the option is available, borrow the ebook on the Kindle or Nook from a friend/family member or check it out from the library.

There are a lot of ways to gain access to the ebooks you want to read without pirating them. There have been many times in the past when I purchased an ebook for a price I thought was too high. But I paid it anyway because I really wanted to read the book.

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As expected, ebook sales were up again in August. This time, sales jumped 116%. Not too shabby. There’s really not much more to add here. I’ll let the Publishers Weekly article speak for itself:

E-book sales from publishers that report to the AAP rose 116.5% in August, to $88.8 million, compared to August 2010. The gain marked an acceleration in e-book growth compared to July when sales of the format increased 105%, the slowest in 2011. All trade print segments had a decline in August sales with the largest coming in mass market paperback where sales from reporting companies fell 36.4%. Sales of digital audio rose 30.2% at 12 digital audio publishers.

For the first eight months of 2011, e-book sales increased 144.4%, to $649.2 million, from 18 reporting publishers to the AAP monthly statistics program. Sales were off by double digits in all trade print segments in the January-August period, although sales in the religion category were up 9% in the year to date at the 22 reporting houses.

Steve Jobs really was a genius. And I’m not just saying that because of his recent passing (RIP). The products Apple comes out with are always beautifully designed and surprisingly simple.

But Jobs’ genius didn’t just extend to making great products, he was also a cunning businessman who knew how to give Apple a leg up on the competition.

A great example of this is how Steve Jobs single-handily forced Amazon’s hand when it came to ebook pricing. He looked at how Amazon’s was pricing their ebooks and basically said their business model was stupid.

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Amazon wants authors to deliver their books directly to readers by cutting out the middleman: Large publishing houses. The largest online retailer has been doing just that for a few years now by allowing authors to self-publish their ebooks and sell them in the massive Kindle ebookstore.

But Amazon is getting into the “traditional” publishing game. They are scouting for authors, offering them contracts, and then promoting and selling their books. Amazon is the agent, publisher and bookseller – all wrapped up into one.

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