#AUDIBLE BOOKS ON MAC UPDATE#
The update includes other new features too, including: improvements to the X-Ray reference tool for textbooks and the ability to download an entire collection with a single tap. The best part is that you won’t be pulled out of Kindle and into the Audible app now when switching between text and audio.
The audio and text versions of the book will stay in-sync, pages turn automatically, and narration includes a x2 speed mode and sleep timer option. With the updated Kindle apps, users will be able to get narrations for 45,000 Kindle books and growing as well as purchase Audible upgrades for previously purchased Amazon Kindle books ranging from $1 to $4. That feature allowed users to switch “seamlessly” between reading and listening but required users to have both the Kindle and Audible apps. The service is an extension of the Whispersync for Voice feature that Amazon recently launched. “And the feature has gotten easier and easier to use, as this exciting integration into Kindle apps attests.” “We continue to hear from a growing number of Whispersync for Voice converts who tell us the innovation has profoundly changed the way they read-in fact, switching back and forth between reading and listening has become their preferred way of experiencing stories,” said Audible founder and CEO Donald Katz.
#AUDIBLE BOOKS ON MAC FREE#
After installing a free update landing today for the apps, users will be able to listen to Audible audio books without ever having to leave the app. However, don’t be surprised if ‘harmonization’ of tax rates for paper and digital books results in higher taxes on the former to pay for lower taxes on the latter …Īpple of course had its own legal troubles around ebooks, with its pricing model found to amount to anti-competitive practices.Īmazon announced today that it’s integrating the Audible audiobook service it purchased back in 2008 directly into the Kindle apps for both iOS and Android. The European Commission has said that there may be legal mechanisms through which countries can in future define their own policies, with an “extensive overhaul” of VAT rules to be completed next year. There is some small hope that sanity may prevail in future. The European Court of Justice said both countries must apply their normal VAT rate, which for France is 20% and for Luxembourg is 17%.Įurope already closed one ebook-related tax loophole: Amazon used to use its Luxembourg base as a reason to charge just 3% on ebook sales throughout Europe, but a change in the law forced it to apply the VAT rate applicable to the customer’s own country. Since 2012, France has applied a 5.5% VAT rate and Luxembourg a 3% VAT rate on e-books, the same rate as for paper books.
The WSJ reports that the EU has ruled that this is illegal.
The reasoning, such as it is, is that ebooks cannot be used without a physical device, and ebooks are a service provided to those devices.īoth France and Luxembourg have applied to ebooks the same reduced rate of VAT (sales tax) enjoyed by books made from crushed trees. Personally, I would love to pay Apple to stream audiobooks - and the service could have features that audiobooks in Apple Books doesn’t offer today.Įurope’s top court has declared that ebooks are ‘services’ rather than books, and that European countries are not allowed to give them the same favorable tax treatment as paper books. We’ve since seen iBooks become Apple Books with a redesigned app user interface, but no ‘Netflix for books’ yet. My colleague Ben Lovejoy wrote last year that Apple’s Texture acquisition highlighted the opening for an Apple ebook subscription service modeled after Kindle Unlimited. The lesson here may be that if there’s a digital good you can pay Apple for once, there’s likely an opportunity for a subscription service for that category with recurring payments.ĭigital books would qualify, and Apple would hardly be the first to rent ebooks for a monthly fee. There’s even a rumored App Store game subscription service.
New subscription services are rumored to debut this year, too, including Apple’s first original video content service and a separate service that integrates digital magazines in Apple’s News app based on Apple’s Texture acquisition. Between iCloud storage and Apple Music to the App Store and iTunes, there’s certainly no shortage of ways to give Apple your money for digital goods.