Simon and Schuster Inc.
July 23, 2012
Not surprisingly, book-store owners make up a large number of the people who filed comments with the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the government's antitrust case's against Apple and e-book publishers. The DOJ posted copies of the more than 800 comments on its Web site today. In April, the DOJ announced that it had filed an antitrust suit against Apple and five of the nation's largest book publishers. The government accuses Apple and of conspiring to raise prices and forcing Amazon and other retailers to follow suit. The government reached a settlement with three of the five publishers, Hachette
July 18, 2012
The Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple and major book publishers “sounds plausible on its face, [but] could wipe out the publishing industry as we know it, making it much harder for young authors to get published,” New York Senator Charles Schumer writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Schumer has been in touch with the WSJ about the ebook pricing suit for awhile. “Rarely have I seen a suit that so ill serves the interests of the consumer,” he told the paper in April. Schumer’s overall argument against the agency pricing lawsuit is that the lawsuit hurts competition by making
July 13, 2012
This weekly feature examines certain ebooks’ paths to bestseller-dom, and highlights bestselling titles that are selling more copies in digital than in print. Slammed by Colleen Hoover Hoover’s first book, Slammed, is self-published and hits the NYT ebook fiction bestseller list this week at #13. The young adult romance tells the story of an 18-year-old girl, Layken, whose family has to move across the country after her father’s death. When Layken meets her new neighbor, Will, romance and challenges ensue. Hoover tells me, “I hadn’t written anything in the past ten years until December [2011], when I got the idea for
June 25, 2012
Penguin, Macmillan and Apple must wait just under a year for the ruling on the e-book price fixing lawsuit, according to reports. The trial date for the 's e-book price-fixing lawsuit has been set for 3rd June 2013, with Judge Denise Cote choosing the date just under a year from now. The trial will test Apple, Macmillan and Penguin's case, which denies collusion and price-fixing over e-books.
June 15, 2012
In his letter to the Department of Justice on the proposed e-book settlement, American Booksellers Association president Oren Teicher calls Amazon a “classic free-rider” and argues that settling publishers Hachette, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins should not have to drop the agency pricing model as a requirement of the settlement. The end of agency will hurt indie bookstores Elimination of the agency model would “significantly discourage new entry, and will lead to the departure from the market of a sizeable number of the independent bookstores that are currently selling e-books,” Teicher writes. He says indie bookstores were only able
June 8, 2012
If you’ve been reading along with this blog, you know that I think antitrust enforcement has gone too far. New examples pop up every day, but perhaps none more bizarrely circular than the one that has reentered the news cycle today: the eBook antitrust lawsuit, wherein the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is beating up on book publishers for working together to get some leverage against Amazon. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a proud member of Amazon Prime and the UPS guy is the most frequent visitor to my home. But Amazon is the closest thing to a
June 1, 2012
Mardel Christian Bookstore today unveiled its newly-installed Espresso Book Machine® (EBM), a Xerox Solution- a cutting-edge technology that offers patrons instant access to more than eight million titles printed in any language, and allows area Oklahoma authors to self-publish their work on-site.
June 1, 2012
BookExpo America, the U.S. book industry’s largest trade event, hits NYC next week. Here are a few themes to look out for. Discoverability and the move to B2C Publishers are realizing that to compete with Amazon they have to be able to sell directly to consumers. One way they can do that is by making their books more discoverable. Joint venture Bookish is now almost a year late and nowhere to be seen, so startups are trying to fill the gap — for instance, Zola Books, a New-York based company that lets publishers and authors sell e-books directly, is launching
May 23, 2012
A group of attorneys general from 29 states filed documents last week, which included charts illustrating the many phone calls made between CEOs of the top publishing companies as Apple prepared to launch the iBookstore. Apple and the publishers are accused of conspiring to fix e-book prices. (Credit: Screen shot Greg Sandoval/CNET) commentary Amazon.com has outmaneuvered Apple in the e-books sector. Nowhere was this made more apparent than in court documents released last week. In antitrust lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and others, Apple stands accused of conspiring with five of the six largest U.S. book
May 18, 2012
In a new report produced by the Association of American Publishers and released today, US publishers in the Trade sector (fiction and non-fiction for adults and children) have seen significant sales increases worldwide in both print and e-format English-language books in the past year.
According to publishers who contributed 2010 and 2011 data to the report, factors for the recent growth include internet access to the full range of English-language titles, particularly those previously unavailable in many markets; the rise of eBooks globally and new readers; interest in US editions; and publishers’ strategic expansion in international sales, marketing and distribution.
