The New York Times

Can you believe those...those...those...sons of bitches at Amazon? After launching almost 20 years ago and making virtually every book-new, used, dead-tree, electronic, audio, and I'm guessing any day now, olfactory-available to everyone in America at good-to-great prices, the company's true character now stands revealed. It's not pretty, folks. Despite a huge market share, Amazon apparentlystill wants books, especially the e-books that everyone agrees are the future of the medium, to be cheaper than what publishers and big-name authors want you to pay for them.

RALEIGH, NC--(Marketwired - May 28, 2014) - Lulu.com, the pioneer in independent publishing, will host actress and musician Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, and best-selling authors Dr. Juanita Bynum and Peter H. Reynolds at Book Expo America 2014 on May 31 in booth 1457 to meet fans and readers, and sign their books and art. Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, currently…

For the first time, BookExpo America - the United States' primary publishing event - focused its Global Market Forum on the topic of translation, rather than on a specific country. And from the beginning, the sessions rang with overlapping themes of missed chances, an ever-expanding marketplace, and the changing avenues toward translation.

The conference's keynote speaker was Rüdiger Wischenbart, director of International Affairs for BookExpo America, who noted, "This year, translations are a genre that are a true destination at BEA,

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.

When you're trying to figure out what will happen in the book publishing business in the years to come, any prediction depends on how things work out that are beyond the control of the business, and sometimes well outside it. This will be increasingly the case if the book business, in what has remained a fairly lonely expectation of mine, is increasingly the domain of people who aren't publishing or selling books as a primary commercial activity, but as an adjunct or complement to some other principal objective.

Half a century before e-books turned publishing upside down, a different format threatened to destroy the industry.

Here's a little perspective: In 1939, gas cost 10 cents a gallon at the pump. A movie ticket set you back 20 cents. John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the year's bestselling hardcover book, was $2.75. For a nation suffering 20 percent unemployment, books were an impossible expense.

But in just one day, Robert de Graff changed that. On June 19, 1939, the tall, dynamic entrepreneur took out a bold, full-page ad in The New York Times

The international media company Bertelsmann invested heavily in expanding its businesses in 2013, as the company increased its revenues, operating result and Group profit. Investments in implementing the Group's strategy amounted to €2 billion, including financial debt assumed, up from €655 million in the previous year, and its largest sum since 2005. Group profit increased by 42 percent to €870 million. This is the highest Group profit since 2006, and is well above the latest expectations.

Oyster is the self-proclaimed "Netflix of books" - an apt description, easy enough to explain to friends and family.

But has the casual reader heard of it yet? Chances are probably not. Subscription numbers are not public but a glance at the number of Facebook app users is telling.

Customers who bought agency-priced ebooks between 2010 and 2012 are receiving credits for those books as a result of the publishers' settlements with the states. Kindle customers appear to be the first to get those credits.

Book publishers, as part of a price-fixing settlement with state governments, agreed to pay small credits to consumers who bought eligible ebooks between 2010 and 2013. Those credits started showing up in Kindle customers’ accounts Tuesday. Barnes & Noble also says credits will start showing up for Nook customers today.

Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader published a blog Tuesday hyping a U.K.-based survey that bears good news for ebook lovers. According to UK reading charity Booktrust, ebook adoption is at 29% among respondents. Good news, right? Perhaps, but in light of a more worrisome number, I'm less ecstatic.