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Local sources are reporting that Kindle Unlimited launched today in Brazil and France. Readers in those two countries can now subscribe and pay Amazon 10 euros or 19.90 reals per month for access to a catalog of over 700,000 titles, although given the limited number of local titles I am not sure they will want to do so. Actualitte broke the news that Kindle Unlimited launched in France with 20,000 titles in French. The service costs the same as in Germany, Italy, and Spain, and enables readers to read as many books as they like

It's a cheerful orange giant stuffed with fan fiction and smileys which can garner a billion reads for an erotic One Direction story - scoring 25-year-old Texan Anna Todd a six-figure publishing deal in the process. But Wattpad also has a serious side as a thriving culture of original writing, with a small but steady flow of authors finding mainstream success with Big Six publishers such as Random House and Harper Collins. Half a dozen of these authors are getting together in the real world mid-December, at Wattpad's first UK convention.

When Apple goes before a federal appeals court on Dec. 15, trying to overturn the ebooks price-fixing judgment the Justice Department won against it in July 2013, there will be an elephant in the room.

That would be Amazon, the much admired and greatly feared ­discounter, which is not a party in the case. Yet the unposed question hovering over the proceedings will be: Did the regulators target the right bully?

The case stems from events that occurred five years ago, when Apple was preparing to launch its first iPad. Apple's negotiator extraordinaire, Eddy Cue

"The book industry is in better shape than it ever has been and it's due to ebooks," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told an audience on Tuesday in a wide-ranging interview that addressed the company's drone plans, its campus culture and its indifference to pain of short-term shareholders. Speaking at a BusinessInsider event in New York, Bezos downplayed Amazon's recent high-profile spat with publisher Hachette as a run-of-the-mill fight with a supplier, adding that it's the essential job of any retailer to fight for the best price for its customers

As shoppers turned increasingly to Amazon (AMZN) for their Black Friday shopping needs, the company's hardware strategy appears to be paying off with Kindle e-reader and Fire tablet sales up significantly year over year.  Amazon announced that sales of its Fire tablets were up three times year over year on Black Friday, and Kindle e-readers did even better, growing four times from last year.

"This holiday there are going to be a lot of customers opening up new Amazon devices," said Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon Devices, in a press release.

If you were looking for a simile to describe Amazon's relationship with authors, you couldn't do better than picturing Amazon as King Kong and the authors it desperately and clumsily wants to court as Fay Wray. One compelling reason for this analogy is that the courtship between brute and beauty was destined to leave a lot of collateral damage in its wake. Amazon has been trying to get around publishers and win the affections of authors for some time. There were several strategic moves. Launching the Kindle-which coincidentally took place seven years ago today-was one. 

In the deal that Amazon and Hachette Book Group finally reached Thursday after months of bitter negotiations, we don't really know which side "won," if one side did. But one survivor - perhaps surprisingly - was agency pricing for ebooks, the practice through which the publisher sets an ebook's price and the retailer takes a commission. Hachette said in a letter to authors and agents Thursday:

Amazon is notoriously opaque. It does not reveal the number of devices sold or books sold or movies downloaded. It's hard to measure the success of any one program and the algorithms it uses to construct its bestseller lists are a closely guarded secret. There are those who guess but no one knows anything for certain.

But since the announcement of Kindle Unlimited, Amazon has shared (albeit reluctantly as you will see) actual numbers which show the performance of one of its most recent consumer launches. Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service

Thursday morning, The New York Times announced that after a bitter, months-long, highly public dispute, Amazon and Hachette have reached an agreement over how they will set e-book pricing. The mega-seller and the publisher did not immediately disclose the terms of the deal, but did reveal that Hachette now has the ability to set e-book prices, the original point of contention between the two companies. Michael Pietsch, the CEO of Hachette, called it "great news for writers," while Amazon executive David Naggar declared it "a great win for readers and authors alike." 

Amazon and Hachette announced Thursday morning that they have resolved their differences and signed a new multiyear contract, bringing to an official end one of the most bitter publishing conflicts in recent years.

Neither side gave details of the deal, but both pronounced themselves happy with the terms. Hachette gets the ability to set the prices on its e-books, which was a major battleground in the dispute.

"This is great news for writers," said Michael Pietsch, Hachette's chief executive. "The new agreement will benefit Hachette authors for years to come.