Rakuten is trying to inject some black ink into its struggling e-book business with the acquisition of OverDrive Holdings, one of the largest providers of e-books for rent to libraries and schools.
The holiday shopping season wasn't merry for Barnes & Noble's Nook division, which experienced plummeting sales of the Nook e-reader as well as content and accessories for the device.
Samsung is moving deeper into e-book and multimedia sales with Barnes & Noble, with which it jointly built a custom Nook tablet that's available now for US$179.
Sony is stopping e-reader production following the transfer of its e-book business outside Japan to Canada's Kobo.
Even the most voracious readers will take a few months to get the most out of Amazon.com's latest offer: access to 600,000 e-books and 2,000 audiobooks for a monthly fee of US$9.99. What publishers and authors will get out of it remains to be seen.