Apple

Apple (AAPL) pulled no punches in the 65-page brief it filed Tuesday, asking a higher court to overturn the controversial results of last year's e-book antitrust trial and placing blame for the outcome squarely on the shoulders of the judge who heard the case. In Apple's view, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote was not only wrong about the law when she ruled that the company orchestrated a conspiracy with publishers to fix the price of e-books, she was wrong about the facts as well.

Barnes & Noble (BKS) Inc., the struggling bookseller, received a proposal from G Asset Management LLC to acquire 51 percent of the company at $22 a share, valuing the total business at $1.32 billion.

G Asset also proposed buying 51 percent of Barnes & Noble's Nook e-book division at $5 a share as an alternative deal, according to a statement yesterday from the investment firm. It said it was confident that separating the business would unlock "substantial" shareholder value.

The finalists for the 34th annual L.A. Times Book Prizes were announced Wednesday morning: 50 books in 10 categories are in the running to win the L.A. Times Book Prizes, to be awarded in April. Two authors will receive special recognition: John Green with the Innovators Award and Susan Straight with the Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement.

Publishing Perspectives talk to David Fernández Payatos, CEO of Nubico, the Spanish ebook subscription service that is looking to acquire 30% of Spain’s e-reading market.

An abusive, alcoholic father; a snake-oil salesman; a predatory lion; Nazi Germany: These are some of the metaphors publishers invoke to express their feelings toward Amazon. In a massive, 12,000-word feature in this week's New Yorker, George Packer dives deep into the relationship between the book industry and the retail giant that represents both its most important sales channel and its most dangerous antagonist.

In the spirit of Amazon's corporate culture - wherein, Packer reports, it was the custom to refer to original writing only as "verbage" - let's ignore the overheated rhetoric for the moment

Amazon is a global superstore, like Walmart. It's also a hardware manufacturer, like Apple, and a utility, like Con Edison, and a video distributor, like Netflix, and a book publisher, like Random House, and a production studio, like Paramount, and a literary magazine, like The Paris Review, and a grocery deliverer, like FreshDirect, and someday it might be a package service, like U.P.S. Its founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, also owns a major newspaper, the Washington Post.

Apple Inc on Monday lost its latest bid to put a court-appointed antitrust monitor on hold, after a federal appeals court rejected its argument that the monitor's work was causing it irreparable harm.

In a brief order, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said that monitor Michael Bromwich may continue to examine Apple's antitrust compliance policies while the company pursues a broader appeal seeking to remove him altogether.

However, the court's order addressed some of Apple's concerns, making it clear that there are limits to the monitor's powers.

There is a comparison to be made (surprisingly, and even absurdly), between the growth of the publishing industry-aggregate commercial and indie-and the growth of Apple during its famous expansion from IPods to IPhones and IPads. Just like business analysts were surprised that Apple's (sometimes similar) products didn't cannibalize each other to a significant degree-and indeed, seemed to accelerate each others growth-the boom in best-selling indie titles has not hurt the mainstream publishing industry, but has potentially helped it.

Canadian ebook company Kobo, which was acquired by Japanese retail giant Rakuten in 2011, is replacing its founder and CEO Michael Serbinis with a Japanese executive, the company announced Tuesday. Takahito "Taka" Aiki, who was the CEO of Rakuten's telecom company Fusion Communications, steps into the new role effective immediately, while Serbinis remains involved with the company as vice chairman. According to Kobo's announcement, Aiki "was responsible for the online business of Japan's top bookstore and video rental company Tsutaya, where he helped grow its online membership by 250% in only two years"

Adobe has issued a proclamation that starting in July, the vast majority of e-reader apps and hardware devices will not be able to read purchased eBooks anymore.

This announcement stems from a massive upgrade to the encryption system Adobe has implemented in their new Digital Editions 3.0 and will have reverberating effects on ePub books all over the world. Unless thousands of app developers and e-reader companies update their firmware and programming, customers will basically be unable to read books they have legitimately purchased. In effect, Adobe is killing eBooks and e-readers.