Consortium

Despite the popular [mis]conception that digital textbooks haven't taken off, the educational ecosystem-particularly in higher ed-is where some of the most active digital developments are happening. Most college textbooks have associated online resources and are often available as ebooks or online.

Berkeley, CA (July 8, 2013) — PGW and Grove Atlantic announced today that they have entered into a multi-year extension of their existing print and digital sales and distribution agreement. “PGW’s long standing partnership with Grove Atlantic is a testament to the mutual respect and admiration we have for each other,” said David Steinberger, President and CEO of The Perseus Books Group. “We are gratified that Grove has chosen to extend their relationship with PGW and look forward to their continued success.”

New York, NY, May 8, 2013 – From May 29-30, 2013, the best minds in digital publishing will convene in the Javits Center in New York City for the highly-anticipated, perennially sold-out at IDPF Digital Book 2013 conference (http://idpf.org/db13). This year’s theme, Advancing Publishing in a Digital World, has already drawn an enormous crowd, with seats expected to sell out soon.

Some featured speakers and session insights include:

• Otis Chandler, Co-founder and CEO of Goodreads will share an update and tackle questions from the crowd, including: what’s next for Goodreads now that it’s owned by Amazon? What does the recent sale mean for the 17 million members, 530 million books and 23 million reviews?

• Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author and staff writer for The New Yorker will speculate on the digital future with Brad Stone, Bloomberg Businessweek writer and author of the upcoming The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

The PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced last week the winner of the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: Benjamin Alire Sáenz received the award for his collection of short fiction, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club. The book was published by El Paso-based independent publisher Cinco Puntos Press.

Yesterday, Book Business had a chance to speak with John Byrd, Marketing Director and CFO of the family-run business. He’s had a few days now to absorb the news, celebrate, watch some college basketball, catch a cold, and recover. Now he shares his publishing insights with BB.

How are things playing out since the award was announced?
It’s been real nice. It’s been kinda hectic for us, especially for Ben [author Benjamin Alire Sáenz], who has made a lot of friends in the literary world in the 20 or 30 years he’s been publishing. He’s getting lots of phone calls and congratulations from people.

Springer and the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library Consortium (SHEDL) recently signed a ground-breaking agreement for access to electronic journal subscriptions and eBooks on Springer’s platform SpringerLink. Every SHEDL member will now have access to an enormous database of content consisting of nearly 2,000 journals and over 40,000 eBooks.

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced the availability of the Lipid Structures (beta) app on SciVerse Applications. The app was developed in collaboration with LIPID MAPS, a multi-institutional consortium aimed at increasing understanding of lipid metabolism, and the SciVerse Developer Network.

Ignoring your digital readership potential is not an option; and treating e-books as an afterthought by offering up a recycled printer's PDF is not a digital strategy. For some types of highly formatted content, a PDF version may be useful, but if that's all you do, you'll be leaving significant distribution and enhancement options (aka revenue) on the table.

Editor's note: Huffington Posts' Anis Shivani interviews publishing visionary Richard Nash. Check out Richard Nash's Guest Column in the September/October issue of Book Business, coming soon!

I've been intrigued by Richard Eoin Nash since the time he ran the indie press Soft Skull Press in the 2000s. His new enterprise is Red Lemonade/Cursor, a reader/participant-oriented publishing venture hoping to take full advantage of the social potential of new media. I recently had the opportunity to talk to him via email about the future of publishing in a rapidly changing landscape.

The Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) announces the five new members of the 2011-13 Board of Directors.

With companies such as Twitter, Financial Times and InMobi all recently committing to HTML5, the technology-in-the-making appears to be picking up steam at a faster pace.

HTML5 is actually a loose term referring to a group of new technologies – many not launched yet – that are intended to improve the Web browsing experience through richer interactivity. While the belief has been that HTML5 is several years off, the fact that a growing number of companies are embracing it now brings this into question.