NetLibrary

Unpacking Books: E-books have matured but questions remain about digital rights, access models and what a scholarly e-book really means today
April 15, 2012

Nine experts weigh in on scholarly publishing and ebooks:

Suzanne BeDell, managing director, Science and Technology Books, Elsevier:

When we talk about e-books we mean books to be read on devices and e-readers, which all our books are, in all e-book formats. One third of our e-book sales last year came through Amazon but access on the iPad is increasing. Our e-books are also available through the B&N platform on the Nook device and through Google Books too. It requires considerable work and investment to manage and support the different feeds…

Publishers' Outlook 2012: The Industry's Next Bold Move
January 1, 2012

The year 2011 may well go down as the annum of the e-reader. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Sony and Kobo went all-in for holidays to get their e-readers, tablets and apps into as many hands, purses and briefcases as possible. In 2012, we'll see the results of that push, as publishers anticipate the next step in the digital evolution. Book Business interviewed executives across a wide swath of the industry, from giant trade publishers to university presses, educational outfits and upstart indies. We found that while digital is on the march, print is far from dead, and the next bold move in the industry may be maximizing the synergies between the two.

Ingram Content Group Announces New Organization
June 18, 2009

NASHVILLE – David "Skip" Prichard, President and CEO of the recently formed Ingram Content Group Inc., today announced the organizational structure designed to make it easier to do business with the new company.The creation of Ingram Content Group was announced three weeks ago by John R. Ingram, Chairman, who said the change would "fully integrate"…

Gene Therapy: Climbing Aboard the E-book Bandwagon
August 22, 2008

With the advent of electronic ink, or e-ink, the Sony Reader, the Amazon Kindle and the .epub formatting protocols, the era of the e-book in the United States may be on its way. If you are a publisher or book producer, sooner or later you will be delivering electronic versions of all of your titles for distribution through a burgeoning network of electronic channels—if you’re not already doing so. It may be tomorrow, it may be next year or possibly later, but I guarantee the need to do so will be thrust upon you by the marketplace. While it is true that complex

Distribution Goes Digital
August 1, 2007

“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

Digital Full Color Opens New Book Markets
June 1, 2006

While digital toner and inkjet based color has been available for years, Lightning Source’s announcement at Book Expo America of its four-color one-off production line exponentially expands the base for untapped publishing business opportunities for mid-range, independent and high-end publishers. It also shines the light on the transformation of manufacturing business models in the past 10 years, providing a price-list-based, sophisticated manufacturing service that simplifies the supply chain process without sacrificing quality controls. Buying color in Asia or Europe in sufficient quantities to bring the unit cost down and allowing for the weeks of turnaround time need no longer be a barrier to the

Creating Online Products with Bottom-Line Impact
June 1, 2006

For Roger Hall, determining how to extend a successful print publishing business online is no academic exercise. Hall, the senior vice president of scholarly book and journal publisher Haworth Press, has overseen the expansion of the company’s operations from a handful of publications to more than 100 books and 226 quarterly journals. Hall says Haworth succeeds because the company identifies social, behavioral and library science niches, among others, and uses a flexible printing strategy to extract the maximum return from small print runs. “You don’t need to have 20,000 subscribers to a journal to make a profitable business,” Hall says. “Four hundred to 600

E-books' Impact on ROI
January 10, 2004

After several reboots, e-book publishing is seeing signs of growth. Recent sales figures compiled by the Open eBook Forum (OeBF) have given publishers an indication of what the future holds. And that future might be now. For the first quarter of 2004, e-books posted double-digit growth (28 percent), and though revenue is projected to be a modest $13 million for the year, sales are rising, and the OeBF, an international trade and standards organization for the electronic publishing industry, began tracking sales of trade titles via a monthly bestseller list in March. Given all the optimism, publishers have taken a harder look at their

Publishers at The E-Book Starting Gate
March 1, 2000

by Rose Blessing How many e-book content distributors should a publisher partner with? Which books should be made into e-books? How should the process be managed? What are the pitfalls? If it's your job to figure that out at your company, take a tip from Kate Tentler, a publisher at Simon & Schuster Online in New York City who has been arranging to make Simon & Schuster books available digitally for about a year. Tentler's approach is to keep things simple, with an eye to the long term. For example: how are online distributors chosen? Simple: They are evaluated one by one. Among the