Apple

Millions of out-of-print books and historical videoclips, black-and-white movies, nearly forgotten TV shows and pop songs are all available with a credit card or in many cases for free. It used to be that, for economic and techno­logical reasons, this cultural history was locked away. Libraries and corporate archives kept a small subset of it available, but the rest was in storage, out of reach. The reversal has happened in just the past decade.

Apple Inc. (AAPL) faces as much as $840 million in state and consumer antitrust claims related to electronic-book deals with publishers that led to a U.S. lawsuit and court-ordered monitor. State attorneys general and consumers who sued the world's most valuable technology company over its e-book pricing are seeking $280 million in damages and want that amount tripled, a lawyer for them said in a filing yesterday with the federal judge in Manhattan who presided over the U.S. case against Apple.

While Apple shipped 26 million iPads in its latest quarter and Samsung shipped 14.5 million tablets, both up from last year, IDC is warning that the overall tablet market in the US appears to be reaching saturation. "It's becoming increasingly clear that markets such as the US are reaching high levels of consumer saturation and while emerging markets continue to show strong growth this has not been enough to sustain the dramatic worldwide growth rates of years past," warns IDC's Tom Mainelli.

News Corp.'s (NASDAQ:NWS) (NASDAQ:NWSA) HarperCollins, one of the world's largest publishing companies, recently requested that Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) remove search engine links to some of its own books on Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iTunes in what appears to be a poorly executed attempt to fight online piracy, reports TorrentFreak. HarperCollins made the takedown requests through Digimarc (NASDAQ:DMRC), a company that provides anti-piracy protection for publishers and authors. As seen in the screenshot above, Digimarc's takedown requests included eight links to HarperCollins e-books offered through Apple's iTunes Store. The eight targeted books are all mystery novels written by Agatha Christie

Oyster has grown its library of books available to its all-you-can-eat subscribers to more than 100,000 titles. CEO Eric Stromberg told CNET how it happened, and how the company is changing the world of reading.

The world in which people have to rent movies one at a time from a video store, or buy individual songs from iTunes has come and gone. These days, Netflix, Spotify, Rdio, and other services are making it easier and easier for people to subscribe to all-you-can-eat plans.

Despite the fact that Amazon clearly dominates book and eBook sales, a significant portion of the digital book publishing industry makes its home inside Apple's ecosystem. Many of those involved in books within the Apple App Store and iBooks Store come from the tech, design or app development side to things. Here, the book format is blended together with the app builder's mentality - make your book do something, make it flexible, updatable, and discoverable

A federal appeals court on Tuesday gave Apple Inc a temporary reprieve from being subjected to an external monitor appointed to ensure it complied with antitrust laws, after the company was found liable last year for conspiring with five publishers to fix the prices of e-books.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York granted Apple an "administrative stay" of the court order appointing the monitor, Michael Bromwich, while the company seeks permission for a longer stay during its appeal.

Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has had a decent reception in its return to the public markets, with a solid gain since its November 2013 initial public offering. The company was a victim of the changes sweeping the book-publishing business, including a shift to digital distribution delivered via e-readers and tablets, which has generally led to lower product pricing and profit compression for publishers. After a trip through bankruptcy court in 2012, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has reemerged more focused and lighter, having rid itself of close to $3 billion in debt. So, is it a worthwhile play for investors?

There are plenty of reasons for the stunning decline of the once-promising Nook. Barnes & Noble has found itself unable to compete with the likes of Apple (AAPL) and Amazon in the broader arena of multipurposed tablets. The New York-based retailer has also been undermined by the continuing migration of its customers from physical stores to online book-buying and by the desire of its risk-averse institutional shareholders to support deep, profit-draining, long-term investments in new frontiers.

All across the planet, particularly in more computerized nations, bookstores are facing increasing challenges, from the dual competition of e-books and Amazon, or both simultaneously.

Amazon beats local bookstores on price, and beats them on digital sales completely. Most people think local bookstores don't stand a chance. Plenty have done well enough, but there's a way out of this mess anyway. We can fix bookstores so they survive for decades to come.