News Roundup: Kindle Price Drop and Rough Title Figures, Borders Goes Solo on New Web Site, Long-Term Google Questions

Mac Slocum
May 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Kindle Bits: Price Drop and Rough Title Sales Figures

Speaking at the D6 Conference, Jeff Bezos offered a glimpse into the Kindle's sales impact. From D6 Highlights:

On a title-by-title basis, [Bezos] says, Kindle unit sales now account for more than 6% of Amazon book sales for the 120,000 titles that are available on Kindle.

Amazon has also dropped the Kindle's price by $40 to $359. (Continue reading.)

Borders Goes Solo on New Web Site

Borders has separated its e-commerce offerings from Amazon and opened its own Web site. From the New York Times:

The new Borders site offers plenty to like, such as the Flash video-based "magic shelf" on the main page that recreates the experience of browsing the tables of new books at the entrance to stores. The site also ties in with the Borders reward card program and the physical book search kiosks in most Borders outlets, and offers video of author book signings and book discussion groups. (Continue Reading.)

Long-Term Questions Around Google and Content

Martyn Daniels offers long-view questions around Google's copying of content from publisher books:

Publishers have in many cases argued it is healthy to give them [Google] content as they drive up sales, others that they are stealing it. Whatever your viewpoint the question that must be answered is what do they intend to do with it tomorrow? Will they always us it as they do today? Can they re assign it to others, either in part or whole? Can the copyright owner revert rights, given or taken, if the copyright ownership of the original work changes? Can the originator object? History is littered with cases where the result was not what people expected to happen at the beginning and where market dominance created a new venture not previously envisaged.

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