Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is adjusting its royalty payments for writers who publish with its Kindle Direct Publishing platform to encourage addictive page turners. AP
The e-commerce retailer says it will pay its authors for books read with its Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners Lending Library service based on the number of pages read, starting July 1.
Kindle Unlimited is a $9.99-a-month service that lets users read an unlimited amount from a selection of about 800,000 books.
Kindle Owners Lending Library is a service for Amazon’s $99 annual Prime membership program that lets members borrow books to read for free.
Presently, Amazon pays its authors based on their share of total qualified borrows — borrowed and at least 10 percent read — under these programs.
Since page sizes are different across devices and font sizes, Kindle developed a Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count based on standard settings to measure pages read.
Amazon sets a Kindle Direct Publishing Select Global Fund each month to pay writers for books leant out. Writers get a share of it depending how many times their books are read.
If the monthly fund was $10 million and 100 million pages were read that month, the author of a 100-page book that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $1,000.
Amazon said it’s making the changes based on author feedback who wanted to better align payout with the length of books and how much customers read.
Seven months ago, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) introduced Echo, a new category of device designed around your voice. Echo was accessible on an invitation basis to customers who wanted to assist shape the device as it evolved.
“The customer response to Amazon Echo has been incredibly positive, and we’ve been working hard to build more as quickly as possible. We are grateful to our early customers for their incredible engagement and for providing us with invaluable feedback to assist shape Echo as it evolves—with their assist, we’ve been able to add features like Audible, Pandora, home automation, sports scores, calendar, and more,” said Greg Hart, Vice President, Amazon Echo. “We’re excited to get Echo into the hands of even more customers and continue to invent new features and experiences.”
Echo is designed around your voice and is hands-free and always on—ask for information, music, news, traffic, weather, and more from across the room and get results instantly. Echo uses far-field voice recognition with an array of seven microphones to clearly hear you around the room. Advanced beam-forming technology combines the signals from the individual microphones to suppress noise, reverberation, and even competing speech. Echo’s advanced audio design comprises dual downward-firing speakers that produce 360˚ omni-directional, room-filling audio.
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) operates as an online retailer in North America and internationally. It operates in two segments, North America and International. The company serves consumers through retail Websites, such as amazon.com and amazon.ca, which primarily comprise merchandise and content purchased for resale from vendors and those offered by third-party sellers.
BlackBerry Limited (BBRY) slipped as much as 4.2 percent after posting a wider-than-anticipated quarterly loss and handsets shipments at the lowest since 2007 even as the new keyboard-equipped Classic phone went on sale. Bloomberg
Although BlackBerry’s renewed focus on software is starting to take hold, the company still has a long way before businesses like security-focused software make up for the slump in smartphone sales.
Software revenue jumped 153 percent to $137 million in the period ended May 30, initially sending the shares up as much as 11 percent in early trading. The stock then reversed to a drop, as analysts asked for details on software revenue growth not taking into account acquisitions and intellectual-property licensing during a conference call. Adding to investors’ jitteriness, Chief Executive Officer John Chen told shareholders at the annual meeting that the company isn’t for sale “at this price.”
“There was some initial excitement over the software number but that proved to not have reflected the core business,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial LP.
BlackBerry Limited (BBRY), which used to dominate the world of mobile business, has seen its share of the global smartphone market slip to less than 1 percent after rivals like Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. came in. The Canadian company has since narrowed the target audience for its phones to financial professionals and government workers who demand a rigorous level of security.
BlackBerry Limited (BBRY) stated financial results for the three months ended May 30, 2015.
Q1 Highlights
- Software and technology licensing revenue of $137 million, a 150% enhance over Q1 FY15
- Positive free cash flow of $123 million in the quarter
- Cash and investments balance of $3.32 billion at the end of the fiscal quarter, an enhance of $50 million over Q4 FY15
- Non-GAAP loss of ($0.05) per share, improving on a loss per share of ($0.11) in Q1 FY15
- Basic GAAP earnings of $0.13 per share
- Non-GAAP operating loss of ($7) million, improving on a non-GAAP operating loss of ($41) million in Q1 FY15
- Non-GAAP gross margin of 50.3% and GAAP gross margin of 47.1%
- Adjusted EBITDA of $157 million, a 5% enhance over Q1 FY15
- Attained WatchDox, a leader in high-security document synchronization, sharing and administration
- Launched the BlackBerry Leap in April, with availability in 22 markets
- Reached joint development deals with Wistron and Compal for devices, in addition to the Company’s existing partnership with Foxconn
BlackBerry Limited provides wireless communications solutions worldwide. The company offers BlackBerry wireless solutions, which comprise the sale of BlackBerry handheld devices; and the provision of data communication, and compression and security infrastructure services enabling BlackBerry handheld wireless devices to send and receive wireless messages and data.
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