By Siobhan O’Leary and Ed Nawotka The Börsenverein, along with numerous other European publishers, associations and international publishers, has put together a statement of objections against the Google Settlement. Buchreport.de summarizes the statement, which notes that the complicated 334-page Settlement was never made available in foreign languages for foreign class members to review. The objecting parties also point out that …
Top US/UK Trade Talk: Bookstore Sales Up for First Time in 09
By Edward Nawotka “For the first time this year, bookstore sales rose in June, increasing 3.4% compared to June 2008, to $1.10 billion,” but “for the first six months of 2009 were down 2.7% compared to the first half of 2008, with sales falling to $7.41 billion,” reports Publishers Weekly. Sony has announced it will convert its e-bookstore to the ePub format …
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: Parliamentary Support for Google
By Siobhan O’Leary The Research Services group of the German Parliament is now weighing in on the pros and cons of Open Access and Google Book Search. As reported in Boersenblatt, the group has issued a 19-page letter stating that opposition to the concept of Open Access is nearly impossible to comprehend. The report praises the transparency of Google’s compensation …
Top US/UK Trade Talk: B&N’s New Ebook Store, Copyright Earns $$$
By Edward Nawotka The big retailing news so far this month in the US has been the launch of Barnes & Noble’s ebook store, which will offer 700,000 titles for sale (a half million of those are public domain titles via Google). By comparison, Amazon offers approximately 300,000 titles, but does not break out public domain works. In conjunction with …
German Buch News: G+J’s Buchholz joins B’mann’s Exec Board
By Siobhan O’Leary Boersenblatt reports that Gruner + Jahr CEO Bernd Buchholz has been named to Bertelsmann’s Executive Board. He will continue as CEO of G+J and will receive no additional compensation for this new role. After a short stint in politics, Buchholz worked for G+J in various capacities starting in the late 1990s and has been CEO since the …
Hyperbolic Heidelberg Appeal Distracts from Real Issues in Germany’s Literary Future
Editorial by Rüdiger Wischenbart Is the glass half empty or half full? At the moment, German publishing circles are absorbed in a very public debate over the digital future, one that threatens to split the literary establishment from the younger generation of “digerati” and “digital natives.” The debate was prompted in March after literature professor Roland Reuss (at left) published …
UK Publishers Association’s Juden on Google Settlement, Copyright
By Edward Nawotka LONDON: “It’s the least bad outcome from where we got started,” says Simon Juden, Chief Executive Officer of the UK Publishers Association, with regard to the Google Books Settlement. “That is,” he reminds me, “a personal opinion.” “In continental Europe there is almost a religious opposition to the settlement,” continues Juden, “The UK reaction is much more …
Social Media Gurus Advise “Listen First, Sell Second”
By Edward Nawotka NEW YORK: “When you search for something on Google, 95% of the time it returns the same results for everybody,” said Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, due from Wiley in the United States in August. “Now, imagine what would happen if you searched for information among …