Amazon.com

2007 might well be remembered as the year when, a few months after the final installment of “Harry Potter” hit the shelves to blockbuster acclaim, the “To Read or Not to Read” report was issued by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The report raised serious concerns about the future of reading in this country: Amount and proficiency are on the decline, the report found, especially among young adults and older teens. Then, there are new U.S. Census numbers, released in December 2007, that show that the number of hours per person spent reading consumer books has been basically flat over the

5.4 million Number of items Amazon.com sold on its busiest day of the 2007 holiday season, Dec. 10, which translates to 62.5 items per second. Top sellers in books included “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert, “The Dangerous Book for Boys” by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden, and “I Am America (And So Can You!)” by Stephen Colbert. 40% Percentage of luxury consumers who visited a social networking Web site, such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube, in the past three months. The finding is based on a survey conducted among affluent consumers in October 2007. The average income of respondents was $150,200, and the

After months of media anticipation and speculation, Amazon.com introduced its portable reader, Amazon Kindle (http://amazon.com/kindle), to the marketplace Nov. 19. With Kindle, users are able to wirelessly purchase, download and read books, newspapers, magazines and blogs without a computer, access to a Wi-Fi hot spot, or syncing. The Kindle wireless delivery system, Amazon Whispernet, uses the same nationwide high-speed data network as advanced cell phones. Amazon pays for the wireless connectivity, so there are no monthy wireless bills, data plans or service commitments for customers. “We’ve been working on Kindle for more than three years. Our top design objective was

When your stock-in-trade is information that drives innovation, people expect you to be on the leading edge. And so it is with the scientific, medical and technical (STM) publishing sector. While the STM market faces similar challenges to the rest of the publishing industry, its willingness to embrace electronic platforms and develop innovative revenue streams has positioned it well in the face of new competition brought about by the expansion of digital media. “The biggest challenge has been mastered, and that is the transition from paper to electronic for STM content,” notes Derk Haank, CEO of Springer Science + Business Media, the world’s

Ever since the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) hit upon the theme of “Making Information Pay” for its annual spring event several years ago, it has been filling the room with industry analysts and marketing and business development executives eager for new insights into the mysteries of our industry’s operation, well-being and future. The attendees are generally more interested, I think, in road signs pointing to where we’re going than in measures of where we are—more acutely aware that, in some ways, the information camera may not focus as well on today’s industry snapshots. Useful and reliable industry information always has been hard to

In business since the 1970s, Nolo––a Berkeley, Calif.-based trade publisher specializing in legal publications––established a presence on the Web in 1994 and has been aggressively pursuing online opportunities ever since. Mary Randolph, the company’s vice president of editorial, recently spoke with Book Business Extra about Nolo’s stance on controversial topics such as Open Access and Google Book Search, and why the company believes in giving away a lot of its content. Extra: What do you feel are the biggest challenges your publishing segment is facing right now? Mary Randolph: We are primarily a trade publisher, and our main markets are bookstores and libraries. As we

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.

Martin Rowe labels his view of the book business “cynically optimistic.” The director of publishing for Lantern Books, a relatively small, independent publisher of spiritual, social, environmental and animal advocacy titles, Rowe draws upon a diverse career that has led to his well-rounded view of the business of book publishing. And this view, he says, is changing as rapidly as the industry itself. Prior to co-founding New York-based Lantern Books with the company’s CEO and president, Gene Gollogly, Rowe held positions in distribution, research and promotions, as an author, and in a handful of other roles that even included a job in a bookstore.

“We are leading the pack by building a digital warehouse, which is the digital equivalent of our print warehouse,” commented Jane Friedman, president and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers, in the May issue of Book Business. This is the ultimate sign-off on the industry’s embrace of the future, and its take-back of content control from trailblazers such as Google, Amazon and Yahoo. For some years now, various technology vendors have enabled publishers to deliver electronically formatted versions of their titles for special purposes. These have included applications such as conversions to XML formats (e.g., Publishing Dimensions), proprietary e-book reader formats (Mobipocket), sight-impaired applications (National