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On Tuesday, novelist Danielle Steel released 71 of her works, including the new "One Day at a Time," as digital downloads on Amazon.com and The eBook Store by Sony, representing the largest online release by an author in a single day. This is the first time Steel's books, which are published by Random House division Bantam Dell, have been made available in digital format.
When Amazon.com introduced its Kindle 2 last week, one of the most touted new features of the second installment of the e-reading device was its "text-to-speech" capability. By utilizing the "text-to-speech" function, Kindle 2 will read aloud to users in an electronic voice. Users can choose to be read to by a male or female voice, and at varying speeds.
Amazon.com Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced the arrival of Kindle 2, the second version of the online retailer's electronic reading device, at a press conference in New York City Feb. 9. The new device is available for pre-order for $359 at http://www.Amazon.com/kindle2 and will ship Feb. 24.
White River Junction, Vt.-based independent publisher Chelsea Green received strong criticism from retailers, both large and small, last August after it made a deal with Amazon.com to exclusively sell one of its new titles, Robert Kuttner’s “Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency,” for the first few weeks of its release. In response, Barnes & Noble cut its initial order for the book, selling the title online, but not in its stores, while some independent booksellers vowed not to order from the publisher again.
When espresso was first popularized in America, in the 1950s, it had all the qualities of a fad—commanding a lot of attention, then quickly fading out. The drink roared back into popularity in the ’90s on the back of a killer app called Starbucks, proving itself indispensable among a digital generation partial to need-it-now energy solutions. Who today can imagine life without it?
Judging from the prognostications that Pat Schroeder remembers hearing at publishing conferences a decade ago, most people today ought to be reading e-books and regarding print as a quaint relic of the past. That hasn’t happened, of course, and the president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) sees that fact as a useful caution when trying to predict the future of the industry. It’s easy to identify key factors, but misjudge their effect; trends that seem vitally important now could fade into obscurity, and the course of publishing could be shaped by things currently on no one’s radar screen.
There is no doubt that the industry is in a period of significant transition. What can we expect 10 to 15 years from now?
One might think that all other problems fade into the background when there’s a recession, but for university presses, that’s certainly not true. Questions about changes in education funding and student habits rear up alongside concerns about preparing for the digital future; still, the country’s economic woes are plaguing university presses, and the stress is not likely to disappear anytime soon.
Amazon.com will introduce a second version of its Kindle e-reading device in New York City on Feb. 9, reported The New York Times (http://Bits.Blogs.NYTimes.com/2009/01/27/amazons-kindle-2-will-debut-feb-9/). The online retailer sent out e-mail messages to the media this week announcing a news conference on that date to be held at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. According to the Times, Amazon has confirmed that CEO Jeff Bezos will host the event. No other details have been released.
Margo Baldwin, publisher and president of independent publishing company Chelsea Green, has worked for a quarter of a century not only to publish books about sustainable living, but also to run her business with the same strong environmental focus. An example of this environmentally focused mission, the company's Green Partners program offers discounts and other perks to retailers that purchase books on a no-returns basis. According to Baldwin, the response has been extremely positive, and she hopes the program will continue to grow as more book-sellers sign up in the coming year. Here, Baldwin discusses details behind the program with Book Business Extra:
