Independent Publishers Group

BiblioBoard announces new partnerships with four major content delivery services: ePubDirect, Independent Publishers Group, CoreSource and Firebrand Technologies. These partnerships will better serve current and future publisher partners by creating a seamless file delivery process from the publishers to BiblioBoard.

CHICAGO, November 1, 2013-Chicago Review Press is proud to announce the launch of its updated website, www.chicagoreviewpress.com. The official launch date for the site is November 4, 2013.

CHICAGO, October 23, 2013-Independent Publishers Group (IPG, www.ipgbook.com), the second-largest independent book distributor in the United States, is thrilled to announce it has partnered with a wide variety of new independent publishers for both print and electronic distribution.

WILMINGTON, N.C., Sept. 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- eReatah (www.eReatah.com), a groundbreaking e-book subscription service that offers 80,000+ titles spanning every genre, launched its private beta today.  Available for all iPads, iPhones (iOS) and Android devices, the Web- and app-based service allows users to choose from three different plans and acquire e-books for 20 - 40+% less than their average retail price.

Last night, while the world was rushing to buy Mr. Popular Nate Silver's "The Signal and the Noise," Amazon's "buy" buttons for all Big 6 publishers experienced a brief "technical issue."

Laura Hazard Owen over at PaidContent has a great account of the atrocities, providing some context for Amazon's disappearing buttons. —Brian Howard

Quoth LHO: "The most notorious case of Amazon purposely turning off a publisher’s ebook buy buttons happened in January 2010, when the company turned off Macmillan’s Kindle buy buttons to protest the publisher’s implementation of agency pricing."

On PaidContent, Laura Hazard Owen has followed up with the Salon reporter who broke the story yesterday that the Big Six publishers may be refusing to sign Amazon’s newest contract. Owen contacted the Salon reporter, Alexander Zaitchik, for further details, and was told one source was “within the publishing journalism industry” and another was a contact at a major New York publishing house.

The terms causing the publishers to balk are “co-op fees,” which were traditionally fees publishers paid to bookstores to get them to plug their books in the store.

Oak Park, Ill.-based Marion Street Press has been acquired by Acorn Guild Press, a Portland-based independent press owned by Jim Schuette and Kel Winter. The sale was effective March 1; financial terms were not disclosed.

The "Best Book Publishing Companies to Work For" list is Book Business' annual ranking of companies that seem to embody the philosophy that a company's employees are the key to its success. But being a great company isn't just about offering a great benefits package (though that certainly helps). The companies that made the list this year create environments where employees are valued and respected professionally, but they also work to help enhance employees' personal lives. Whether it's through back-up childcare services, fitness centers, sabbatical programs or super-flex flex time, these companies go the extra mile to keep their employees happy—and it shows.

Ever since the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) hit upon the theme of “Making Information Pay” for its annual spring event several years ago, it has been filling the room with industry analysts and marketing and business development executives eager for new insights into the mysteries of our industry’s operation, well-being and future. The attendees are generally more interested, I think, in road signs pointing to where we’re going than in measures of where we are—more acutely aware that, in some ways, the information camera may not focus as well on today’s industry snapshots. Useful and reliable industry information always has been hard to

“We are leading the pack by building a digital warehouse, which is the digital equivalent of our print warehouse,” commented Jane Friedman, president and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers, in the May issue of Book Business. This is the ultimate sign-off on the industry’s embrace of the future, and its take-back of content control from trailblazers such as Google, Amazon and Yahoo. For some years now, various technology vendors have enabled publishers to deliver electronically formatted versions of their titles for special purposes. These have included applications such as conversions to XML formats (e.g., Publishing Dimensions), proprietary e-book reader formats (Mobipocket), sight-impaired applications (National