Michael Cader

When I reported on the story on Tuesday, I knew little more than that the negotiations had hit a snag.  The original BI article didn't include any direct quotes, just unnamed sources, but it was later updated to include this statement from Amazon:

I can't comment on that rumor. I can say that we have offered Harper the same terms for a contract that Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan have all recently agreed to.

I can also add that Publishers Lunch said that the contract negotiation had been going on for over a year.

Apple's iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, which launched to the public this fall, come with iBooks pre-installed. That decision has paid off: iBooks has averaged one million new customers every week since mid-September.

Keith Moerer, the director of iBooks at Apple, revealed that statistic in a rare public appearance at the Digital Book World conference in New York City on Thursday. It's startling to anyone who dismisses Apple as an also-ran in the ebook market and might encourage publishers and authors who haven't focused on the platform to begin doing so

Day two of the Digital Book World Conference + Expo is underway, gathering book publishers and providers from all levels of the supply chain to discuss the most pressing issues in the industry. Perhaps today's biggest attention-grabber was the Q&A session with Russ Grandinetti, VP of Kindle content at Amazon. The discussion, moderated by Mike Shatzkin, conference council chair and founder and CEO of The Idea Logical Company, and Michael Cader, founder of Publishers Lunch was wide-ranging, touching on author relationships, subscription, and pricing strategy, in an effort to pin down how this retail giant plans to position itself in an evolving book industry.

Coverage of the Hachette-vs-Amazon dispute has recycled various misconceptions about what's happening, as Michael Cader noted Wednesday in Publishers Lunch. But one of the most widespread fallacies you may hear, and not just relating to Hachette/Amazon, is that "e-books have been more profitable for publishers than print books," as Evan Hughes put it in Slate. The chunky margins generated by e-books, the thinking goes, are what the publisher and the 600-pound gorilla of bookselling are tussling for.

On the surface, it looked like business as usual at this year's Digital Book World conference in New York City earlier this week, with no groundbreaking announcements, no radical plans hatched to transform the book business as we know it. But as always, when publishers convene to discuss the state of the industry, a few ideas emerge.

Teens Not Reading for Fun

Of the news repeated over-and-over again in private conversation, it was that a recent Nielsen Books survey revealed 41% of teenagers aged 13-17 said that they do not read books for fun.

Sitting down? Good: There are more than 7,800 exhibitors from close to 100 countries listed for the 2013 Frankfurt Book Fair (October 9-13), the world’s largest publishing trade show, and the one that doubles as a showcase for the financial capital of Europe’s railway service.  You'll want to sit down and rest your feet before heading to Frankfurt to try to cover the show!