By Hannah Johnson The best of the blogosphere and social media… Twittered and blogged about from every corner of the internet yesterday, the Kindle version of The Lost Symbol is outselling the hardcover version on Amazon.com despite the retailer’s hardcover discount of nearly 50%. Publishers have been reluctant in the past to release ebook and hardcover versions simultaneously because they …
Global Trade Talk: Deep Symbol Discounts; Scribd-to-Bestseller Novel
By Hannah Johnson The Bookseller alerted us that The Book Depository dropped its price on The Lost Symbol to £4.99, a reduction of nearly 75% off the retail price of £18.99. This was temporarily the lowest price in the UK. Hours later, Amazon UK dropped its price match. Both booksellers have managed to beat the price set by grocery stores …
German Buch News: Read a Mystery and Learn German, Amazon.de Breaks Embargo on Raunacht
By Siobhan O’Leary Read a murder mystery and learn some German in the process. That’s the idea behind Cornelsen Verlag’s latest iPhone and iPod Touch app, produced in collaboration with textunes, for the book Liebe bis in den Tod (Love Unto Death). According to BuchMarkt, the app is part text and part audio book. It features interactive exercises, definitions, and …
Top US/UK Trade Talk: Ex-HC CEO Friedman Raises $3 milliion; Amazon to Fine UK Publishers
By Edward Nawotka In the US, former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman has raised $3 million for a new venture called Open Road Integrated Media — a company few seem to know much about other than it will be involved in e-book marketing and promotion. The above video, in which Friedman is filmed in a recent conversation with former CEO and Chairman of the …
Top US/UK Trade Talk: More Google Confusion, Gaming Amazon, B&N Gets Bigger
By Edward Nawotka Last week William Morris Endeavor (WME) said it was advising its clients to opt out of the Google Settlement because they objected to the seemingly indefinite royalty terms their clients would be bound to accept. This week, the Author’s Guild – one of the organizations leading the initial fight against Google – says that WME is wrong, …
Bonus Material: The Size (of Your E-Book Store) Doesn’t Matter
By Edward Nawotka It has seemed like every week this summer there has been a new announcement about a large quantity of titles being added to one e-bookstore or another. Whether it’s Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Sony or Google, the message has been consistent: “My e-book store is bigger!”, “No, my e-book store is bigger!” It’s a bit like children …
German Buch News: Amazon’s New 500 Euro Fine
By Siobhan O’Leary Amazon.de has announced that as of August 24th, it will be charging German publishers a penalty of 500 Euros for any form of non-compliance with the terms of its Vendor Manual and operational policies, particularly regarding shipping instructions. One unnamed publisher from a well-known house complained to BuchMarkt that publishers should not have to pay for simple, …
German Buch News: More on Amazon v. Orwell; Bookface.de
By Siobhan O’Leary The German trades are full of talk about the Amazon Orwell deletion. Among the most notable is the short opinion piece by Boersenblatt editor Holger Heimann which compared the deletion to a bookseller sneaking into someone apartment to reclaim books that have already been purchased. “Disaster is inevitable. A precedent has been set,” he wrote. Buchreport.de highlights …
Top US/UK Trade Talk: Searching for Superheroes; Earnings Reports
By Edward Nawotka The Wall Street Journal looked at the shifting focus of movie producers at this weekend’s Comic-Con. They are moving away from mainstream superheroes (who are all accounted for) and looking toward the fringes for new, unheard of talent. PW focused on earnings reports: Lagardere Publishing was up 11% in the first half of 2009, to just over …
Indonesian Publisher’s Sales Spike Post Terrorism, Credit the Long Tail
By Edward Nawotka JAKARTA: “These bombings have been very disturbing,” says Mark Hanusz, owner and publisher of Equinox Publishing in Jakarta, Indonesia. “Four years ago, when the Australian Embassy was bombed, it didn’t affect me so much, but this time it has impacted me much more personally. Of the people injured in the Marriott Hotel, I knew four of them …