The Perseus Books Group

In his previous life as a consultant for Accenture, Perseus Books Group CMO Rick Joyce helped clients in the media industry grapple with this digital upheaval. One lesson Joyce learned from working with a range of media and entertainment companies is that creating digital access alone will not stabilize the bottom line. Providing digital content with unique value and conveying that value to consumers is just as important. Otherwise, as Joyce witnessed in the music industry with iTunes' 99-cent song pricing, digital books will be homogenized and valued accordingly.

Big ideas are new ideas. Big ideas are bold ideas. Sometimes big ideas are small ideas. Often, big ideas seem wrong at first glance because they present such a different way of doing things. 

These are the types of ideas we’ve tried to capture with the Book Business Big Ideas Issue. Industry thinkers -- and readers and supporters of Book Business -- contributed mini-essays, exploring what they think are the imperatives for a thriving, progressive, effective book business.

Remember that Amazon/Disney dispute that was supposed to be yet another harbinger of the doom Amazon was looking to bring down upon all its suppliers? Well, that's over. Or at least negotiated to a point Amazon was willing to reinstate preorders and such on Disney products. So much for the doom. It lasted a little under two months.

There's also this little tidbit from the same Wall Street Journal article:

"A similar dispute between Amazon and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. in the spring lasted several weeks.

The Hachette Book Group's deal to acquire the independent publisher Perseus has collapsed after months of negotiations, representatives from each company said on Thursday.

The three-way agreement among Hachette, Perseus and the book distributor Ingram had been in the works since February and was announced in late June. Under the proposed arrangement, Hachette would have acquired Perseus's 10 publishing imprints, and Ingram would have taken on Perseus's distribution business, which distributes books for more than 400 independent publishers. The sale was scheduled to be completed in late July.

In the New York Times coverage, for example, the fact that hundreds of indie publishers were part of the deal doesn’t show up until — well, it doesn’t really show up at all. The fact that Perseus even had a “distribution arm” doesn’t appear until paragraph seven, but you’d have to know what “distribution arm” meant to really get it, and even then it only merits half a sentence: “Under the terms of the deal, Hachette would keep the Perseus publishing business,

Hachette Book Group is bulking up and diversifying, steps that could improve its long-term negotiating position with Amazon, the giant online retailer.

The publisher said on Tuesday that it had agreed to acquire the Perseus Books Group, the country's sixth-largest trade publisher.

Michael Pietsch, Hachette's chief executive, said in a phone interview that the deal was part of Hachette's "strategic long-term plan to grow in the U.S. market," and was not related to its monthslong standoff with Amazon over e-book pricing.

The book publishing industry just finished its annual convention, called BEA (BookExpo America.)  For three days in New York City, publishers exhibited their new and forthcoming titles, and occasionally took orders from the dramatically dwindling ranks of independent bookstore buyers.  Yet there was a feeling of optimism in the hall.  The question was: why?

"Print is like Yiddish; it has been on its deathbed for 400 years," said Harold Clarke, the President and Publisher of Reader's Digest Trade Publishing.  Clarke, one of the more thoughtful and certainly the funniest man in publishing

Oyster is the self-proclaimed "Netflix of books" - an apt description, easy enough to explain to friends and family.

But has the casual reader heard of it yet? Chances are probably not. Subscription numbers are not public but a glance at the number of Facebook app users is telling.

DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. is diversifying into children's books, creating a publishing unit that this year will issue titles based on such DreamWorks movies as "Kung Fu Panda" and "Madagascar."

DreamWorks Press, which will publish books in print and digital form, is the latest part of an effort by the animation studio to diversify beyond the high-risk movie business. Previous steps involved theme parks, a consumer-products business and the acquisition of an online video network.

If you're like most digitally connected folks, you probably have access to a video subscription service like Netflix NFLX +0.15%, or maybe a music subscription service like Spotify. In that case, new services that do the same but for ebooks want you.

Oyster, Scribd and Entitle (just re-branded from eReatah) are all new ebook subscription services that are competing for your business. Lately, the battle has heated up.

Early this week, Entitle relaunched to the public with a new name and lower prices. It offers a catalog of about 100,000 ebooks and users can read