ENTRIES TAGGED "amazon"
Publishing News: Penguin settles, Macmillan holds its ground
Apple and Macmillan stand alone against the DOJ's ebook lawsuit, PressBooks opens up, and Amazon may be inviting disruption.
Here are a few stories from the publishing space that caught my attention this week.
And then there were two
In headline news this week, the Penguin Group announced it had reached a settlement agreement with the Department of Justice. Jim Milliot reports at Publisher’s Weekly that the “[t]erms are nearly identical to agreements reached with Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins, but according to the government, if the Random House-Penguin merger is approved the newly formed company must abide by the agreement.” Milliot notes that as Random House is not involved in the DOJ lawsuit, it can continue conducting its ebook business under the agency agreement in the meantime.
Laura Hazard Owen reports at PaidContent that “Penguin is discussing a similar settlement with the European Commission and that the DOJ’s case will continue against remaining defendants Apple and Macmillan.
Publishing News: Tech industry history could inform bookstores’ road to recovery
Co-opetition and the future of bookstores, Amazon gets kid-friendly, and the EFF's 2012 e-reader privacy report is out.
Here are a few stories from the publishing space that caught my attention this week.
A Kindle developer’s 2013 wishlist
Despite a huge leap forward there's still plenty of room for improvement
2012 was a good year for Kindle developers. With the unveiling of the first-generation Fire tablet in late 2011 and the release of the KF8 Mobi format in early 2012, designing beautiful ebooks for the Kindle platform became a reality. KF8 introduced a fixed-layout specification for Kindle Fire, which opened the door to graphically rich titles—children’s books, graphic novels—in Mobi format. KF8 also greatly increased CSS2 compliance for standard reflowable ebooks, implemented a handful of CSS3 features (text shadow, rounded borders), and added support for embedded fonts. The subsequent rollout of KF8 to Kindle eInk readers running firmware 3.4 (including the new Kindle Paperwhite) and KF8’s support for @media queries to enable fallback styling for non-KF8 devices helped to increase rendering parity within the diverse Kindle ecosystem.
Publishing News: Traditional publisher tests self-publishing waters
Simon & Schuster launches Archway Publishing, BitTorrent wants to reinvent itself, and publishers can't win playing against Amazon's wallet.
Here are a few stories from the publishing space that caught my attention this week.
Simon & Schuster ventures into self-publishing
The headline news this week was Simon & Schuster’s deal with self-publishing company Author Solutions to launch Archway Publishing, a new self-publishing house. Leslie Kaufman reports at the New York Times that the company is looking to distinguish itself by offering premium services that go beyond what other self-publishing options offer — such as access to a speaker’s bureau that will assist with speaking engagements, and video production and distribution services for book trailers — in addition to editorial, design and distribution services.
The premium services come at a premium price as well — Kaufman reports that packages range “from $1,599 for the least expensive children’s package, to $24,999 for the most expensive business book package.” She also points out that Simon & Schuster personnel will not be involved in the new company, nor will Simon & Schuster attach their name to any of the final products. They will, however, mine the self-publishing author pool for talent. Kaufmann writes: “Adam Rothberg, vice president of corporate communication for Simon & Schuster, said that another attraction of Archway was that Simon & Schuster would be carefully monitoring sales of books completed through the new venture and would use it as a way to spot authors it might want to sign to a contract.”
Global ebook distribution complexities
Google's Arabic collection is just one example
A publisher at the Sharjah International Book Fair asked me about Google providing access to ebooks in Arabic. How could they do so without asking Arab publishers for permission, he was wondering. This was a simple question requiring a complicated answer.
Creating reader community with open APIs
The connections between readers and potential readers matter most
I spoke at the “Frankfurt Digital Night” at this year’s Frankfurt Book fair, making essentially three points (see slides embedded below): first, publishing requires – and has always required – a commitment to creating and courting communities of readers. Second, there are new digital tools emerging for creating and courting these communities. Third, in this context, openness in terms of APIs is becoming a feature.
Amazon and Wall Street
Investor confidence is likely buoyed by past performance
I’m a big fan of The Week news magazine. It’s one of the last print products I still subscribe to (and I prefer the print version over the digital one). They deliver short summaries of what’s happening around the world and they’re careful to provide all sides of every story. Most of the content delivered in The Week is excerpted from other news sources.
TOC Trifecta: This week’s must-reads (11/8/12)
Fixing what's broken, avoiding the commodity trap, Amazon as publisher
TOC’s Global Ebook Market report
The only resource you need for current conditions & future projections
One year ago we published the first edition of our Global Ebook Market report. We focused on the major English language territories but also featured coverage of several other popular languages as well.
How the DOJ ruling could affect ebook prices
One unintended consequence might be increased consumer frustration
The proposed final judgment in the ebook case says that settling defendants may enter into contracts with ebook retailers that prevent the retailer from selling a settling defendant’s ebooks at a cumulative loss over the course of one year. What does that mean for the future of ebook prices?