Online Sales
January 28, 2015
I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon. Chances are you do, too.
I used to feel pretty good about the e-tailer. Now, increasingly, I feel a little dirty every time I patronize it. For one thing, its nearly yearlong price-setting war with Hachette -- which quietly wrapped up in December with Amazon more or less folding and allowing the book publisher to determine its own e-book prices -- still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
January 28, 2015
In a brief brief order this week, Judge Denise Cote ruled that plaintiffs in a second e-book price-fixing case cannot depose HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray.
The plaintiffs in the case (Australian upstart DNAML; Lavoho, LLC, a "successor" to the Diesel eBook Store; and Abbey House Media, formerly BooksOnBoard) had asked that Murray be required to sit for a deposition, but in her order, Cote sided with Harper attorneys, who argued Murray has been deposed three times in connection with the Apple price-fixing case
January 26, 2015
Tesco will close its e-books service blinkbox Books at the end of February after talks with Waterstones to buy the platform broke down.
All 60 core staff who work on the blinkbox Books platform are now expected to enter a consultation period over their jobs and are likely to be made redundant.
Waterstones was in exclusive talks to but the e-book platform, but a satisfactory deal could not be reached, The Bookseller understands.
A spokesperson for Tesco said: "We have taken the decision to close our e-book service blinkbox Books. We've learnt a lot since launching
January 26, 2015
Tom Kabinet may be best known for its ongoing legal fight over its used ebook marketplace, but that's not all there is to this startup. Founder Marc Jellema announced at a pitch at the Startup Bootcamp on Friday that he plans to launch a subscription ebook service later this year.
Details are still limited, but we do know that the service is expected to open in the third quarter with a cost of 5 euros per month. Jellema hasn't revealed the specific terms of the subscription, but he plans to expand the service
January 21, 2015
The Competition Bureau is seeking "records and written returns" from Indigo Books and Music Inc. and Japanese e-reader maker Kobo Inc. as part of a broader probe into alleged anti-competitive behavior in the Canadian ebooks industry.
A hearing is scheduled for Federal Court Wednesday when a judge is to rule on the independent agency's request filed with the court Friday for information from the companies likely related to ebook pricing.
Last February, the court granted the bureau's request for records from ebook publisher Penguin.
January 20, 2015
Last week Aerbooks picked up a huge amount of traffic from Neil Gaiman when he tweeted out to his 2 million followers that he books were now available directly from the HarperCollins website. As it happens, HarperCollins is using the Aerbook Flyer service "to broadly integrate HarperCollins books into the fabric of the mobile and social web - delivering a mobile and tablet-optimized extended reading experience on any website and within any social stream." The service "includes a buy button that allows customers to directly purchase titles from www.hc.com or other e-book retailers,"
January 19, 2015
The new year hadn't even had a week to catch its breath before the first year-end numbers for 2014 appeared. The definitive numbers-if you can call any numbers "definitive" in traditional publishing-won't show up until late February or early March. But the early numbers reveal quite a bit.
Publishers Weekly spent the first full week of 2015 reporting the numbers, but Publishers Marketplace actually analyzed them. Publishers Marketplace is an online trade journal for the traditional publishing industry. The links I have here may or may not get nonsubscribers to the articles in question.
January 19, 2015
In light of Amazon’s growing dominance in the book market and its recent and very public negotiations with Big 5 publisher Hachette, Intelligence Squared -- a global forum for debate -- hosted a live stream event on Thursday, January 15, 2015, asking four panelists to support or reject the statement, “Amazon Is the Reader’s Friend.”
January 16, 2015
Apple's iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, which launched to the public this fall, come with iBooks pre-installed. That decision has paid off: iBooks has averaged one million new customers every week since mid-September.
Keith Moerer, the director of iBooks at Apple, revealed that statistic in a rare public appearance at the Digital Book World conference in New York City on Thursday. It's startling to anyone who dismisses Apple as an also-ran in the ebook market and might encourage publishers and authors who haven't focused on the platform to begin doing so
January 14, 2015
Day two of the Digital Book World Conference + Expo is underway, gathering book publishers and providers from all levels of the supply chain to discuss the most pressing issues in the industry. Perhaps today's biggest attention-grabber was the Q&A session with Russ Grandinetti, VP of Kindle content at Amazon. The discussion, moderated by Mike Shatzkin, conference council chair and founder and CEO of The Idea Logical Company, and Michael Cader, founder of Publishers Lunch was wide-ranging, touching on author relationships, subscription, and pricing strategy, in an effort to pin down how this retail giant plans to position itself in an evolving book industry.
