E-Books and Interactive Publishing

Borders and Sony are teaming up on a partnership that the companies hope will help ignite e-book sales in the United States. The agreement includes a new, co-branded version of Sony’s online store for e-book downloads, which is expected to be launched in October. In addition, Borders will expand the sale of the Sony Reader––the e-book reading device launched by Sony about 10 months ago––to more than 500 of its stores nationwide beginning next month. Currently, the Reader is on sale in approximately 270 Borders stores. The announcement comes at a time when e-book sales are booming in Japan, but remain underwhelming by most accounts in

Avon Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, has introduced a new e-book featuring embedded video starring the book’s author. “Lady Amelia’s Secret Lover,” a historical romance novel by Victoria Alexander, was made available for purchase Tuesday for $3.99 through the HarperCollins Web site (www.harpercollins.com/ladyamelia). According to the publisher, this is the first published e-book to include video. As readers navigate through the e-book, Alexander pops up onscreen at various points to discuss plot points and characters. “Through Avon’s many successful online initiatives, we’ve learned that romance readers want to foster a relationship with their favorite authors,” says Liate Stehlik, publisher, Avon Books. “The publication

An interview with CreateSpace Co-founder and Managing Director Dana LoPiccolo-Giles on her company’s new service Founded in 2002 as an on-demand distributor of DVDs, CustomFlixLabs Inc. was acquired by Amazon.com in 2005 and later added a CD on Demand service to its growing portfolio. Last month, the company experienced another growth spurt, announcing a new company name, CreateSpace, as well as the launch of a new Books on Demand service for self-publishing authors. The service allows authors to offer their works for sale through Amazon.com, the CreateSpace.com site and via their own free, customizable eStore without inventory, setup fees or minimum orders. CreateSpace manufactures on-demand

The New York Times reported that Amazon.com will unveil the Kindle, an electronic book reader, next month. According to the report, the Kindle will be priced at $400 to $500 and will wirelessly connect to an e-book store on Amazon’s Web site––a significant advancement over older e-book devices, which must be connected to a computer to download books or articles. The device also will feature a Web browser and a keyboard for note-taking. Amazon would not comment on the Kindle, per the Times article.

In the first half of this decade, sales were skyrocketing for LeapFrog SchoolHouse—a division of LeapFrog Enterprises Inc. and publisher of interactive, research-based assessment and curriculum content for the PreK-8 education market. The Emeryville, Calif.-based company saw a boom in net sales from $8.8 million in 2001 to $55.2 million in 2004. In 2005, however, the company faced some hard (and controversial) times, and its sales began to drop. Last winter, LeapFrog SchoolHouse made a number of changes to get the company back on a growth track, including restructuring the organization, hiring a new president and focusing on its strongest segment within the

Books24x7—a SkillSoft Company located in Norwood, Mass.—is a provider of Web-based digital technical and business reference content, containing over 7,000 digitized reference books, research reports, documentation and articles. Books24x7’s hosted Web-based platform allows users to search, browse and read collections of content assembled through its partnerships with publishers. One publishing partner is AMACOM Books, the book publishing division of the American Management Association (AMA). The New York-based publisher specializes in critical business topics and leadership challenges of today and tomorrow. Book Business Extra interviewed Rosemary Carlough, vice president of marketing, about AMACOM’s partnership with Books24x7 and the services it provides for publishers. EXTRA: What

Coutts Information Services—-a book-supply, collection-management and shelf-ready services provider-—has announced an agreement with Stanford University. The Stanford University Library has acquired collections of eBooks from Coutts, to be hosted on the MyiLibrary platform. MyiLibrary.com is an Ingram Digital Group company, a global provider of digital content accession, storage, management and delivery services to publishers and other content owners. The acquisitions include approximately 7,000 titles from Oxford University Press, 3,000 Cambridge University Press titles and more than 12,000 titles from Springer. “This groundbreaking arrangement will send a strong signal to the academic library community that eBooks have entered the mainstream of book acquisition

As a writer, I have been a member of MySpace.com for several years and have been taking advantage of the social networking opportunities that exist. When I joined, the site had around 70 million members; today it has surpassed 183.7 million members. Many in publishing are realizing the value of making a connection via social networking. At this year’s Book Expo America, authors and publishing executives shared social networking tips at a session titled “MySpace for Authors and Publishers: Everything You Need to Know to Make it Payoff.” The panel included Richard Nash, publisher of Soft Skull Press; Barry Lyga, author; Josh Kilmer-Purcell, author;

The Association of American University Presses (AAUP)—an organization of nonprofit publishers whose members strive to advance scholarship through their offerings—believes that the university press segment’s fundamental mission has not changed since America’s oldest university press, The Johns Hopkins University Press, was founded in 1878. However, the landscape in which its members operate has changed greatly, and the forecast calls for additional change in the future. As throughout the rest of the publishing industry, driving this change are advances in digital technologies. A varying segment According to Steve Maikowski, director of NYU Press, the university press world is divided into four major sales groups

DailyLit.com, a Web site based in New York that currently offers a free service allowing users to read entire books via e-mail and RSS installments, recently announced plans for aggressive growth. DailyLit currently allows visitors to sign up to receive more than 370 classic and contemporary titles, free of charge, in installments designed to be read in less than five minutes. The contemporary titles used are available via Creative Commons, a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright, built within current copyright law, that allows you to share your creations with others and use music, movies, images and text online that’s been