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We now face a lack of constraints in publishing. Once upon a time, printing provided a natural constraint, as editors met to see what merited the space they had available. Now, with no obvious boundaries, we have new possibilities emerging in response — mega-journals, cascading titles, data supplements, and more papers in existing journals, many of these published online-only.

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.

The Barnes and Noble Nook division is one of the most longstanding and successful brands in the e-reader and tablet sector. The bookseller jumped into the eBook revolution in 2009 with an online store and their own flagship device. Their first few devices sold like wildfire, but sales have tapered off with each subsequent release. Nook Media has been losing money each quarter for over a year and most of their executives in charge of books, hardware and accessories have all left the company.

Fast Company has profiled the most innovative companies in education and several publishers and ebook solutions providers have made the top ten list. Read who's leading the way in education here.

While most companies would be satisfied with filing a patent on a single hardware design, not Google. The search engine giant revealed a patent last week for a family of ereaders with a variety of screen configurations.

Patent application 20140035794 was initially filed in November 2011, and it was published last week by the US Patent Office. It covers not just a dual-sided ebook reader or even one which folds in half, it actually covers a wide variety of possible configurations including having 2 screens on the front of the device

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.

Thema is a new global subject code scheme meant to standardize how publishers, booksellers, and others describe book content. It’s something the U.S. publishing ecosystem should be paying close attention to.

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.

Global education leader Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) today announced a partnership with Google to deliver K-12 core curriculum for the first time through Google Play for Education. Already established as a trusted resource for students and teachers in the higher education space, Google Play for Education will now provide access to a broad range of HMH's market-leading K-12 education content across multiple devices.

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