Macmillan Publishing Solutions
To better connect publishers with their audience (and give them a shot at acquiring new readers), Link.me has been forging partnerships with the top book publishers to launch trials, deals, promotions, and more through QR codes. In October, Link.me signed with its newest client, McGraw-Hill, and as an example of the kind of work they’re doing, one of the publishing company’s recent publications, “The Zappos Experience” embedded QR codes in over 15 individual chapters. The goal was, of course, to bring The Zappos Experience “to life."
Beyond short-term earnings, Amazon's lending library is just the latest innovation to raise big questions about the whole publishing ecosystem. In an environment where books are increasingly digital, what’s the most effective way to create value for readers, for authors and for intermediaries? And -- the biggest question -- which intermediaries will survive the transition?
In recent months Amazon has been hiring highly respected editors, and the company is putting out 122 titles this fall. Amazon is already the world's largest retailer of books. As a publisher, it will be selling its own products alongside products by the "big six" publishers — who are not only partners, but now rivals as well. The Big Six include Hachette Book Group, Harper Collins, Macmillan, Penguin Group, Random House and Simon & Schuster.
Publishers Monday scrambled to fill the Osama bin Laden book pipeline, hatching plans for digital titles they could publish almost instantly. Jon Meacham, an executive editor at Random House, is assembling an essay collection about the Al Qaeda leader—titled “Beyond Bin Laden: America and the Future of Terror”—that Random House expects to publish as an e-Book next week.
Others considering a new digital work on Mr. bin Laden include Free Press, an imprint of CBS Corp.’s Simon & Schuster publishing arm.
Macmillan has partnered with the Diesel eBook Store to sell its titles directly to the public through Diesel's Web-based bookstore.
Macmillan Publishers has launched Macmillan Films, a new shingle that will be spearheaded by Brendan Deneen.
Right around the time major news outlets were reporting on student protests regarding tuition hikes, a new kind of textbook publisher was letting scholars know that it had heard their cries for lower textbook costs. Less expensive, customized, relevant books now are available, announced DynamicBooks, a subsidiary of Macmillan Publishing.
Australia-based DNAML’s DNL eBooks and Macmillan Publishing Solutions’ (MPS) Global Reader have joined forces in an effort to accelerate publisher adoption of the DNL eBook format (.dnl) and the Global Reader mobile format. The companies are encouraging publishers to submit either a PDF or XML file (preferably .epub) to MPS, which will then produce a bundle of products at a special price that will include immediate access to both the DNL eBook and Global Reader sales platforms. DNAML has over 110 million DNL readers currently active on laptops and computers worldwide, while Global Reader is on 80 mobile carriers in over 160 countries and
Book publishing is not commonly identified with the sort of risk-taking that one would associate with, say, the Sergey Brins and Steve Jobses of the world. And, the last company one might expect to see out on a proverbial limb would be a publisher of dictionaries (a tradition-bound format if there ever was one)—yet it was no less a player than the stalwart Merriam- Webster that over a decade ago risked it all, so to speak, by putting its dictionary online for free. “One of the reasons we [offered early on] our biggest best-seller on the Web is that, if we take seriously that
“We are leading the pack by building a digital warehouse, which is the digital equivalent of our print warehouse,” commented Jane Friedman, president and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers, in the May issue of Book Business. This is the ultimate sign-off on the industry’s embrace of the future, and its take-back of content control from trailblazers such as Google, Amazon and Yahoo. For some years now, various technology vendors have enabled publishers to deliver electronically formatted versions of their titles for special purposes. These have included applications such as conversions to XML formats (e.g., Publishing Dimensions), proprietary e-book reader formats (Mobipocket), sight-impaired applications (National