EBooks for Canadians: The Availability of the Globe & Mail Bestsellers
Corrected:
Shortcovers announced today that they would digitize publishers books for free at their discretion –or digitize at cost with the publisher paying and return the files. A huge step and one sure to buy them goodwill in the community.
Over the weekend I was curious to know how Shortcovers was doing with their product selection. I didn’t really have a scientific way of checking on this so I simply searched for The Globe and Mail Hardcover bestsellers. Ten of the 20 bestselling books aren’t available on Shortcovers. More importantly 6 of those ten are available at the rival Sony store. That is important because Canadians can buy ebooks from the Sony store. Buying from the Kindle store or the week-old Barnes and Noble ebook store is verboten ( rights issues), but I checked on their selection anyway. see below
The Shortcovers app is currently the 17th most popular free book app in the US iTunes stores. It is #4 in Canada. Product selection likely has a lot to do with that story.
Now that Michael Tamblyn has returned to Indigo hopefully their selection — and their US strategy — will rebound quickly.
| Title/ Author | @Shortcovers | @Sony | @Amazon | @B&N |
| Vision In White, Nora Roberts | N | Y | Y | Y |
| The Shack, William P. Young | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| The Best Of Times, Penny Vincenzi | N | Y | Y | Y |
| The 8th Confession, James Patterson and Maxine Paetro | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| The Host, Stephenie Meyer | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith | N | Y | Y | N |
| Dead And Gone, Charlaine Harris | N | Y | Y | Y |
| Still Alice, Lisa Genova | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| The Winter Vault, Anne Michaels | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Pygmy, Chuck Palahniuk | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Always Looking Up, Michael J. Fox | N | Y | Y | Y |
| Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| True Patriot Love, Michael Ignatieff | N | N | N | N |
| Shakedown, Ezra Levant | Y | N | N | N |
| The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch, with Jeffrey Zaslow | N | N | N | N |
| Tug Of War, Harvey Brownstone | N | N | N | N |
| The Ascent Of Money, Niall Ferguson | N | Y | Y | N |
| Payback, Margaret Atwood | N | N | N | N |
| Columbine, Dave Cullen | Y | Y | Y | N |
| A Lion Called Christian, Anthony Bourke and John Rendall | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Total | 10/20 | 15/20 | 15/20 | 12/20 |
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