Google

Apple had a field day with Google in court here on Thursday.

Apple started to pick away at the Department of Justice's claim that the tech giant conspired to inflate e-book prices by repeatedly and rapidly firing questions at a key Google witness.

The tactic paid off for lead Apple attorney Orin Snyder, who began to wear down on Thomas Turvey, director of strategic relationships for Google. Turvey appeared increasingly frazzled and frustrated as the afternoon went on.

Apple and the Department of Justice gave their opening statements in the e-book price-fixing case United States of America v. Apple Inc. The government presented a position based on interpretations of direct quotes from relevant documents where Apple allegedly discussed ways to raise e-book prices not only on its own platform, but across the industry. Apple defended itself by saying that it acted in no one’s business interests but its own … and the government is “trying to reverse engineer a conspiracy from market effect.”

In an opening session intended to be provocative, Macmillan CEO John Sargent and outgoing American Booksellers Association president Becky Anderson, co-owner of Anderson's Bookshops in Naperville, Ill., may not have necessarily covered "Publishing, Bookselling, and the Whole Damn Thing," but they definitely got the conversation going, which was Sargent's goal.
"We need to talk. We need to have a relationship where we can talk with our partners so we can understand," he told booksellers during an hourlong q&a, Talking, he said, and overcoming "the victim effect," where "everybody in the industry is afraid of the Department of Justice or legal

Canada’s book publishing market is shrinking. It’s facing competition from online retailers and electronic books that you can read on phones, tablets and dedicated e-readers.

Here’s a sign of the decline. Wiley Canada is suspending its local operations — except for sales and marketing — and centralizing its professional and trade publishing in the United States.

“This is difficult news to deliver and absorb,” said an email last week from long-time Wiley editor Karen Milner, who will lose her job on May 31.

An upcoming update will bring a web browser, email and update store app to Barnes & Noble’s super affordable Nook Simple Touch line of e-readers, which will begin rolling out June 1 according to a source close to the matter who wishes to remain anonymous. The 1.5.0 update was created in response to the positive critical and customer response to the recent Nook tablet update that brought Google Play to B&N’s Android-powered devices.

The Nook Simple Touch and Simple Touch with Glowlight will be receiving the over-the-air update starting next month…

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

Amazon offers a range of hardware, including its Kindle e-readers and tablets, but now it’s looking to expand the line with two new smartphones and an audio-only device that streams music, according to the Wall Street Journal. The phones include a high-end one with a glasses-free 3D screen, as well as another about which details were not included in the report, which presumably would be a more traditional design.

Amazon has been rumored to have been working on a phone for a while now,

Microsoft is reportedly interested in buying the digital assets of Barnes & Noble's Nook Media for $1 billion. But analysts are divided over whether the deal makes sense.

Microsoft already has a 16.8% equity stake in the Barnes & Noble subsidiary, which includes the bookseller's digital book and college book businesses. Microsoft invested $300 million in Nook Media in April 2012, valuing the new company at $1.7 billion at the time. Microsoft and Barnes & Noble completed their strategic partnership last October. Education and news publisher Pearson  subsequently took a 5% stake

Shares in America's biggest books retailer Barnes & Noble climbed nearly 20% yesterday after a report that Microsoft is considering an offer to acquire its Nook business - B&N's tablet and e-book business and a rival to Amazon's Kindle.

The technology website TechCrunch reported that Microsoft, which already owns 17% of Nook Media, was proposing a $1bn offer to buy Nook's digital assets.

The increasingly tricksy hacker known as ‘Guccifer’ has struck again, this time posting links to the first 50 pages of an unpublished novel by Sex and the City author, Candace Bushnell.

True to his or her established credential-sniffing methods, the hacker appears to have found a way into the author’s Earthlink email account before discovering the 37,000 words of the novel Killing Monica as a document attached to an email sent to a publisher.

Extraordinarily, the hacker was also able to hack into the author’s Twitter account in order to post links to screengrabs…