ENTRIES TAGGED "revenue"
For a Workflow Change, Support from the Top is Required
Last week Laura Dawson and I spoke about StartWithXML to a group of IT and operations people from publishers at the User Group meeting for Global Turnkey Systems, a company owned by one of our lead sponsors, Klopotek. We got some great questions afterwards. On reflection, we realized that they touched an important theme: the need for CEO-level support for…
Report: Random House Shifts Ebook Royalties to Net Receipts
Richard Curtis says Random House has announced a shift in its ebook royalties in a letter recently sent to literary agents. From E-Reads: Commencing December 1, 2008, the new royalty rate for sales of ebooks will be 25% of the amount received for all sales, Random's letter goes on to state. What does Random House actually receive? Most e-book retailers…
The Oprah Effect and the Kindle
Chris Nuttall from the Financial Times says Oprah Winfrey will likely "endorse" the Kindle on today's show: Amazon is featuring a trailer of her Friday show on its site with Oprah talking about her new "favourite gadget" which is "life changing for me." From a side-on view, the product she is talking about looks very [much] like a Kindle….
The Economic Value of Trust
Philip Meyer looks at the connection between consumer trust and publishers' viability. From the American Journalism Review: The best publishers have always known that trust has economic value. In "The Vanishing Newspaper," I reported that advertising rates increased by $3.25 per Standard Advertising Unit (SAU) for each one percentage point increase in the persons who said they believed what they…
Tracking Amazon's Dominance in the Book Industry
Morris Rosenthal says retail figures point to Amazon eclipsing Barnes & Nobles in U.S. book sales this year: The book selling wars that began four decades ago with the rise of the mall chains, followed by the growing power of the Barnes & Noble, Borders and BAM superstore chains, has been won by Amazon. Amazon sales are on track…
An On-Demand Night at the Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is letting its inner geek run free. Performances will soon be available as pay-per-stream feeds and subscription packages through The Met's Web site. From the New York Times: For $3.99 or $4.99 per streamed opera, users will have a six-hour window in which to listen to or watch a production, once it has started. A monthly…
Watch the YouTube Video, Buy the Product
YouTube's Content ID service, something we've covered in the past, gives publishers two options for handling unauthorized videos: the material can be removed from YouTube or it can be turned into advertising/revenue opportunities. An article in today's New York Times shows which option Google prefers — Content ID can now be used to associate "click-to-buy" links with video clips:…
TOC Recommended Reading
Direct-To-Fan: Radiohead, Marillion And The End Of Labels (Robert Andrews, paidContent.org) 80s rock group Marillion, hardly a Top 10 draw nowadays, engages its fans so closely that they funded its latest album to the tune of £360,000. Erik Nielsen, who masterminded the strategy as MD of Marillion's Intact Records business arm, told our London EconMusic conference: "About a decade…
News Roundup: Digging Around Amazon's Topaz Format, Twitter Novels, June Ebook Sales Up 87% Over '07
Digging Around Amazon's Topaz File Format Late Night Code is popping the hood on Topaz, that mysterious "other" file format used on the Kindle: Mobipocket files purchased from Amazon have an AZW extension (which presumably stands for Amazon Whispernet – the name of the Kindle wireless download service). Mobipocket files from other sources will have a MOBI or PRC…
June '08 Ebook Sales Up 87% Over June '07
Wholesale trade ebook sales accounted for $4.9 million in June '08, according to industry stats from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). This is an 87 percent increase over June '07. Year-to-date ebook sales are up 43 percent over last year. Note: The AAP/IDPF stats aggregate information from 12-15 trade publishers and reflect…