HarperCollins

Recently, I asked the publisher of a major imprint what he thought of BookCon. "What's BookCon?" he asked. BookCon, I reminded him, is the latest effort by Book Expo America, the country's largest publishing trade fair (which starts Wednesday), to open up on its last day to the public, or whatever portion of it wants to pay $30 to spend a Saturday collecting autographs at the Javits Center. Its organizers, New York Comic Con managers ReedPop, aim to do for books what the ever-expanding universe of Comic Cons do for Marvel

Calling it a case of "blatant infringement," attorneys for HarperCollins have asked the court for a permanent injunction blocking Open Road from publishing its unauthorized e-book edition of Jean Craighead George's Julie of the Wolves, as well as more than $1.1 million in damages and attorney costs.

The request comes after HarperCollins's recent win in its copyright suit against Open Road, and after the parties were unable to come to a voluntary settlement to resolve the case. Under a court order, Open Road is set to file its opposition brief no later than June 20.

In the latest mash-up of old and new media, a division of Simon & Schuster, the Atria Publishing Group, has teamed with Hollywood's United Talent Agency to create a new imprint to publish books by Internet entertainers. Five deals have already been made with YouTube stars like Shane Dawson and Justine Ezarik.

Keywords Press, as the new endeavor is called, aims to release six to 10 titles annually, both in print and digital formats, ranging from "serious to comedic, fiction to nonfiction, practical advice to personal memoir," said Judith Curr

Epic!, a subscription app for children's books, just closed a deal with HarperCollins that will give its subscribers access to over 1000 books, including classics like The Chronicles of Narnia, Frog and Toad, and The Secret Garden. This comes on the heels of last night's announcement that Oyster has signed a similar - but much larger - deal with Simon & Schuster.

Epic! has only been available for two months, and has already landed deals with two of the five top publishers, the other being Simon & Schuster.

Very few publishing brands, in fact, mean much to consumers because publishers traditionally promote their authors, not themselves, as brands. But that approach and perspective needs to change. When a publisher's brand is indistinct, it diminishes the value that publisher brings to the books it publishes.

Two down, three to go.

Simon & Schuster announced Wednesday that some of its titles are now available on Oyster and Scribd, two of the leading e-book subscription services. The move makes Simon & Schuster the second of the Big 5 publishers to experiment with the relatively new e-book subscription market.

As part of the agreement, Simon & Schuster will make available its entire backlist of thousands of books, including works by authors ranging from Ernest Hemingway to Stephen King.

Friedman would eventually run the whole show at both Knopf and later, News Corp's HarperCollins. She left that CEO role in 2008 but wasn't yet done with publishing. In 2009, she jumped right back in-this time as an entrepreneur-taking advantage of the Amazon Kindle/Apple iBooks digital revelation to launch eBook publisher Open Road Media. "I'd always been entrepreneurial but within a corporation," says Friedman. " You go through your career and someone is always thinking that someone was protecting you. I wanted to do it on my own ."

News Corp.'s net income fell in its fiscal third quarter, but its results beat Wall Street expectations due to better book publishing thanks to thriving sales of the "Divergent" series, which was launched as a movie in March. The lift from books underlined News Corp.'s announcement last week that it would purchase romance fiction publisher Harlequin Enterprises for $415 million from Canada's Torstar Corp.

Chief Executive Robert Thomson told analysts on a conference call that there's "no doubt that book publishing is transitioning successfully to digital" and said Harlequin's

Oyster, the unlimited ebook subscription service, today announced their library of ebooks has reached more than 500,000 titles, including best sellers, award-winners and popular series. The milestone comes after an expanded partnership with HarperCollins to add 10,000 new titles from the publisher to the app, in addition to newly inked deals with more than 500 publishers. Oyster now features more than 1,600 publishing partners.

Today Oyster, the ebook subscription service that launched last year with 100,000 titles, announced that it has topped the 500,000-title mark. "This is the culmination of a lot of content acquisition that we've been doing over the last six months," says co-founder and CEO Eric Stromberg. Among those acquisitions are John Wiley & Son's For Dummies series, McSweeney's Time Out Guides, and Chronicle's Grumpy Cat and Boo. All three publishers are new to Oyster.