By Emily Williams The Public Knowledge blog responds to Wikileaks’ revelations that had been reported by El País, namely that Spain’s proposed piracy law that drew such vehement protests a year ago (as we at PP reported here) was likely influenced by direct pressure from the U.S. government, then under the George W. Bush administration. Though this pressure had evidently been in place …
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B&N’s NOOKBooks en Español Gives US Retailer Unique Position in Global E-book Market
By Emily Williams There has been a lot of talk about digital content in Spanish-language publishing over the past three years, and publishers have started the e-book ball rolling with major digitization and e-distribution initiatives, but one key link has still been missing: the final retail connection with the consumer. The booksellers in Spain seem to be dragging their heels, …
Could the US Co-opt Global E-book Sales?
By Emily Williams and Edward Nawotka Todays’ lead story looks at the aggressive development of US retailer Barnes & Noble’s Spanish-language e-bookstore and it’s broad ranges of international partnerships. The underlying assumption of a lot of conversations, whether people acknowledge it or not, is the question of whether or not, with the US’s eventually come to dominate the global e-book …
Amazon Launches Italian Site Amazon.it
By Emily Williams Amazon announced today the launch of Amazon.it, the first time the company enters the Italian market with a dedicated portal. According to the press release, the store launches with more categories than any Amazon site has ever launched with, focusing for now on video games, music, DVDs, toys, computers, electronics, small appliances . . . and “over …
In Spain, Two Special Alliances Form to Tackle E-Books Head On
By Emily Williams In Spain, a pair of intriguing publishing alliances promises to bring unique digital content to Spanish readers. The first is Unebook, a digital platform created by 62 of Spain’s university presses to digitize and sell their content. With the help of digital distributor Publidisa , the group has created a direct-to-consumer website www.unebook.es where titles from the participating publishers …
Spain’s Prisa Group “Gets a Hand from a Homeless Billionaire”
By Emily Williams We’ve written before about the financial troubles plaguing the Prisa Group, owner of Santillana, one of Spain’s largest publishers. The Economist, in its colorful way, now reports that the group has traded a big chunk of its family ownership in return for a lifeline investment from Liberty Acquisitions, an investment group whose sponsors include Nicolas Berggruen, “an art …
Anagrama’s Premio Herralde Goes to Colombian Writer Antonio Ungar
By Emily Williams Publisher Anagrama announced this week that the 2010 winner of the house’s prestigious Herralde Novel Prize (worth €18,000) is Colombian writer Antonio Ungar for his novel Tres ataúdes blancos, or Three White Coffins. The novel is set in the fictional Latin American country of Miranda, where by mistake the protagonist is installed as leader of the political opposition. Ungar, …
The Future of Rights: Standards and Shared Metadata
By Emily Williams The paper book is an object of beauty and simplicity. This neat package has allowed books to conceal for many years the increasingly complex tangle of copyrights they each comprise: rights to text and images, limitations by territory and term of contract, restrictions on the reader. Then came the digital transition, books stripped off their paper packages, …
TYPA’s Gabriela Adamo Talks Argentine Lit at Home and Abroad
By Matías Fernández (translated from the Spanish by Emily Williams) Gabriela Adamo worked for a number of years as a literary editor for the celebrated imprint Sudamericana, now part of Random House Mondadori. When she left her editing post, she started off the new millennium working with TYPA, a non-profit institution that specializes in connecting Argentinian writers with editors abroad. …
Barnes & Noble’s Patricia Arancibia Hunts for International E-books
By Emily Williams For Patricia Arancibia, Manager of International Content at US bookseller Barnes & Noble’s Digital Group, the e-book revolution is all upside. A native of Buenos Aires who moved to New York a decade ago, Arancibia started out at B&N buying international titles in print, primarily in Spanish, for the company’s online store. While selling these titles online …