Sony

The eBook editions of J.K. Rowling’s bestselling Harry Potter stories are available now for the first time in French, Italian, German and Spanish (Castilian).  The seven eBooks in the series are on sale in these languages at Pottermore, the free-to-use website and exclusive retailer of Harry Potter eBooks and digital audiobooks, which is partnered by Sony.

Making the titles accessible to the widest range of international readers, the eBooks are compatible with all leading reading devices and platforms, including integrations with Sony’s Reader, Google Play, Amazon Kindle and NOOK® by Barnes & Noble.  Ensuring that the stories can be read at any time and anywhere, every eBook purchased can be downloaded for personal use on a range of devices and platforms, including personal computers, eReaders, tablets and mobile phones.  The result is a pioneering initiative for consumers: one retail source supporting multiple platforms and devices. 

Booktango™, the free DIY e-book publishing platform from Author Solutions, Inc., announced its new e-book cover designer feature is now available for Booktango users. With the WYSIWYG cover designer, authors can quickly and easily create custom cover art for their e-books with drag-and-drop simplicity.

OverDrive (www.overdrive.com) will announce at the London Book Fair (Booth X700) April 16-18, the first of a series of "Big Data" reports analyzing billions of eBook impressions and other data collected from across its network of 18,000 public and school libraries.

So publishing's 'Beatles moment' has finally arrived. All seven of J K Rowling's phenomenally successful Harry Potter books can finally be bought in e-book format, the first three priced at £4.99, the second four at £6.99. Chief technology officer Julian Thomas described it to me as "one of the biggest e-book retailing events in history".

The launch is slightly ahead of what was expected after the roll-out was originally delayed from last October. So what do we know?

What do Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook and Apple's iPad have in common? What about authors like Stephen King, Barbara Freethy, C.J. Lyons, Amanda Hocking and Michael Prescott? If you said they represent the changing book publishing industry, you would be right. The book business is going through a major transformation. Who will the winners and losers be among publishers, stores and authors?

Just as the iPod changed the music industry a decade ago, e-books are changing the publishing world right now.

Book Business' own Eugene G. Schwartz was on the scene at the third annual Digital Book World Conference. He filed this comprehensive report from the proceedings.

Attendees at the third annual Digital Book World Conference heard reports that while publishers are in fact healthy and thriving in the new digital age, a lot more work is needed to let go of the habits of the past and live in the new interactive, multi-platform and vertically patterned business world of the future.

The cohort of newly minted consultants in attendance—emerging out of downsizing and transformation—are witness to their price as well as their opportunities.

NEW YORK, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. consumers are finding the price of digital tablets dropping sharply, a trend that could continue, market analysts say. "If you have an uncompetitive product, you're going to have to take it and and move the inventory. And one way to do that is to lower price," said Avi Greengart, an industry analyst at Current Analysis. Greengart said RIM lowered its prices -- down to $299 for the 64-gigabyte BlackBerry PlayBook -- because the firm was planning to exit the market. Prices will also come down as software upgrades become available and because

E-book piracy has more than doubled in a year, with some titles available for free download before they are even officially released, and publishers are struggling to combat the illegal trade.

The Publishers Association in the UK issued 115,000 threats to rogue websites in 2011, up from about 50,000 a year earlier, The (London) Sunday Times reported.

Over the last few months, book publishing has been awash in a tsunami of e-book, e-reader, app and tablet-related news. There are two reasons for this deluge. One is that the consumer media views the rise of the e-book as a perfect storm, the convergence of shiny new thing (gadgets!) and massive cultural paradigm shift ("PRINT IS DEAD!" they shout). The other reason is that, well, there is a gadget- and e-book-related sea change afoot. A little tremor in the cold, digital depths of the publishing ocean has manifested on shore as an e-book tidal wave.

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.