HarperCollins

Only two of the 5 major US trade publishers have shown an interest in the ebook subscription market, and Macmillan is showing signs that they could be the third. Late last week Macmillan announced, via their German parent company Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, that 1,500 Macmillan titles are now available through Skoobe. a German ebook subscription service.

The 1,500 titles are drawn from the US and UK based SF publisher Tor Books. All of the titles are in English, including Ender's Game, Mistborn, and Children of the Mind. As the first and (so far)

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The book world is once again in a state of high dudgeon over the "thuggish" behavior of Amazon, which has begun slow-walking customer orders for books published by Hachette (James Patterson, Malcolm Gladwell, a.k.a. J.K. Rowling) in an effort to win more favorable terms in its next contract with the publisher. In a series of breathless commentaries, Amazon has been likened to Vladimir Putin, Tony Soprano and Darth Vader, and accused of pursuing a "scorched-earth capitalism" designed to drive all publishers and competing booksellers out of business

The Competition Bureau says it has struck a deal with four publishers that should lower the price of e-books for Canadian consumers.

The federal agency has struck a deal with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster that will "allow retailers to discount e-books published by four of Canada's largest e-book publishers," it said in an email in response to queries by CBC News.

The publishers will also eliminate what is known as "most-favoured-nation" clauses in their agreements, which links the price, cost or commission of e-books sold at one retailer

The very public fight between Amazon and Hachette illustrates why it's never a good idea to become too reliant on one distribution channel. A bevy of startups are vying to establish a real alternative in the form of a subscription ebook service, with two of them, Oyster and Scribd, enjoying the most funding and press attention.

But in some important ways, it's the lesser known Entitle Books that leading the race. A tiny operation based in Wilmington, N.C., Entitle was the first to give its customers access to the full catalogs of two of the five biggest publishers,

A prominent industry analyst, Mike Shatzkin, has been arguing for some time that publishers ought to raise e-book royalty rates. For him, the point is not that this would be the fair thing to do; he just thinks it would be the best move strategically. By leaving royalty rates where they are, publishers have left their nice digital margins hanging out there for everyone to see. And when Amazon sees someone else’s healthy profits, it’s like a dog smelling a steak. As Jeff Bezos has said, “Your margin is my opportunity.”