Apple

Surprising new information about consumer and student e-book reading habits capped off this year's International Digital Publishing Forum conference at the Javits Center in New York.

This week's mediaIDEAS onPoint chart shows the gender of Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad owners.

Remember all those complaints about Apple’s new in-app purchasing policy when it first launched? Those have somewhat died down, but they haven’t stopped altogether: The developers of the iPhone, iPad and iPod e-reading app iFlowReader have weighed in with a public complaint about Apple’s ways, announcing that it will be closing for business at the end of the month.

The executive who is steering Ann Arbor-based Borders Group Inc. through bankruptcy said in an exclusive interview with AnnArbor.com that he is confident the bookstore chain can emerge from court protection as a viable company.

But he also acknowledged that the company’s future is dependent on the willingness of publishers to agree to new terms under which they would continue to ship books to the company’s remaining stores.

“All I can tell you is that we are here fighting to the end,” Borders Inc. CEO Mike Edwards said in a rare interview.

Bertelsmann AG has acquired cutting-edge digital media agency Smashing Ideas, Inc. for its Random House, Inc. division, the world’s largest English-language trade book publisher. ... Smashing Ideas is renowned for offering strategic marketing solutions and creating immersive, interactive content experiences, from games to branded sites to story-based applications, across multiple digital distribution channels, including online, smartphones, tablet devices, and iTV.

If the iPad was supposed to be a magic bullet for e-books, why hasn’t iBooks made more of a splash in the e-book market? Jason Bennett asks the question in an entry on Melville House Publishing’s blog, pointing to the much higher Kindle (24%) than iPad 1 (13%) ownership among those waiting in line to buy an iPad 2, and Apple’s overall cageyness about iBooks sales in its quarterly report.

Here's a look at some 
specific companies in varying industry segments and where they stand on the e-book sales spectrum.

While C&T's niche hasn't changed in more than 25 years of publishing, the company has changed, adapting its business models to reflect a transforming book marketplace.

The Marriott Marquis, Times Square, New York, was abuzz April 4-6 with more than 1,200 publishing industry executives attending the Publishing Business Conference & Expo.

Approximately 40% of iPad owners "have not used the device to read a single e-book," according to a press release issued yesterday from research firm Simba Information.