Baker Publishing

In a potentially major gain for the ebook-bundling concept, BitLit today is announcing its first deal with a Big Five publisher. HarperCollins (US) has entered what is being described as a pilot programme with the Vancouver-based BitLit to offer discounted ebook editions of print books that readers already own.

"This is not, obviously, HarperCollins' full list," Peter Hudson, BitLit co-founder, tells The Bookseller's The FutureBook. "This is a limited set of titles and it's going to be rolled out reasonably slowly over time, with new titles coming on board

The very public fight between Amazon and Hachette illustrates why it's never a good idea to become too reliant on one distribution channel. A bevy of startups are vying to establish a real alternative in the form of a subscription ebook service, with two of them, Oyster and Scribd, enjoying the most funding and press attention.

But in some important ways, it's the lesser known Entitle Books that leading the race. A tiny operation based in Wilmington, N.C., Entitle was the first to give its customers access to the full catalogs of two of the five biggest publishers,

The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) has announced the winners for the 2012 Christian Book Awards in seven categories, including first-time category for New Author. Presented annually to the finest in Christian publishing since 1978, the Christian Book Awards honor the highest quality titles in Bibles, Bible Reference, Non-Fiction, Fiction, Children, Inspiration, and New Author.

As the e‑book market evolves, so do publishers' internal processes for producing them. Book Business asked Baker Publishing, Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. and Hacket Publishing Co. to pull back the curtain on how they handle e‑book workflows, from editorial and design through conversion, formatting, proofreading and distribution. The answers are varied, but all demonstrate an ability to make the best use of existing internal talent while strategically investing in additional or outside resources to create e‑books expertly and efficiently.

Baker is the first major Christian publisher to make available substantially their entire paperback list to the EBM network. This agreement will enable Baker to reach more readers both in the existing Christian market and in broader trade and academic bookstores that are equipped with an Espresso Book Machine.

Last week, the High Court of Justice in London issued a Consent Order under which Andrew (Amue) Ansell admitted to infringing a large quantity of Christian theological works by displaying them on his websites, including biblecentre.net, and agreed not to post any copyrighted material in the future.

Today, the U.S. book industry passed a meaningful environmental threshold—approximately 50 percent of publishers now have environmental commitments in place–most with goals and timelines for vastly improving their environmental and climate performance

Maybe divine intervention will reverse the profit slide for religious book publishers. But industry experts believe it also would be prudent to consider scaling back on titles, reducing returns, making intelligent use of data, investing in digital opportunities and otherwise adapting business models for future success.

With a battered economy dragging down just about every retail sector, a salient fact making headlines has been the ability of discounters to maintain sales growth—a sure sign that the “Wal-Mart Effect” has permeated every corner of the business world, and that raising prices is probably not the way to realize profits. This leaves cost-cutting, which, for obvious reasons, book publishers would like to pursue aggressively without sacrificing either product quality or valued employees. Here are some tips from a cross-section of the publishing world for reining in costs without sacrificing too much in the process.

According to one of the better-known accounts in the compendium of humankind’s greatest achievements, it was in the year 105 that a Chinese man named Ts’ai Lun invented paper, mashing up wood from a mulberry tree with fiber from bamboo. Thus was born a technology that would literally change the world, making possible artistic, scientific and religious revolutions, democratizing literacy and learning, and ushering humanity into the modern age. In recent times, paper production has played a role in changing the world in other ways. The book industry alone required 3 million to 4 million tons of paper over just the last three years,