By Nermin Mollaoğlu • In the wake of Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel and Turkey’s appearance as Guest of Honour at the 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair, Turkish publishers have recently taken a greater interest in foreign rights and in expanding their international presence. • 50% of books published in Turkey are translations, and agencies like Kalem are now a bigger part of …
Kindle Books Outsell Hardcover Books on Amazon.com
By Hannah Johnson The Kindle and other e-reading devices have gotten lots of news coverage recently as retailers continue to drop the price of devices in order to gain a larger share of the growing e-book market. The Kindle is now priced at $189 (down from $259), and both the Kobo Reader from Borders and the Nook from Barnes & …
BookSwim.com Aims for Sweet Spot of American Readers
• BookSwim’s proprietary data shows that 80% of its users are library users and high income suburban women who read between 40 and 50 books per year — and buy as many as 30. • An analysis of reading habits reveals that BookSwim’s subscribers don’t tend to read in isolated silos. Instead, readers are just as likely to sample numerous …
German Book Sales Stall, Drop 5.5% So Far in 2010
By Siobhan O’Leary Much as the weather was unseasonably cold in Germany in May, book sales experienced a bit of a chill in comparison to last year. Due in part to the fact that there was one fewer shopping day this year and that the May 1st holiday fell on a Saturday — meaning stores were closed on a typically …
It’s Official: Everyone is an Author…or at Least One Million Americans Are
By Edward Nawotka We’ll it’s confirmed: Yes, everyone really is an author. According to Publishers Weekly’s report on the annual publishing stats compiled by R.R. Bowker, 2009 saw a whopping 764,448 titles were produced in 2009 by “self-publishers and micro-niche publishers.” PW says the “number of ‘nontraditional’ titles dwarfed that of traditional books whose output slipped to 288,355 last year …
Amazonian: Brazilian Booksellers, Publishers Begin Big Digital Push
By Maria Fernanda Rodrigues and Ricardo Costa of PublishNews.com.br SAO PAOLO: For the past several years Brazilian booksellers and publishers have watched and waited, content to let their colleagues abroad debate the positives and negatives of digital publishing. But two events in 2009 changed things. First was the Jornada de Nacional de Literatura de Passo Fundo (National Literature Journey of …
US E-book Sales top $30m in January, Matching Kids Hardcovers
By Edward Nawotka Perhaps fueled by people filling up the new e-readers they received over the holidays, e-book sales in January jumped a drastic 261.2% over the same period last year in the United States, according to the most recent statistics released by the AAP. As a category e-book sales equaled that of children’s/YA hardcover book sales, which fell 41.6%, …
PW Says 2009 Bestsellers Lost Ground to the Long Tail
By Edward Nawotka PW has posted its annual analysis of the top selling book titles of the previous year, in this case, 2009. In summary, PW’s Michael Coffey noted, “bestsellers don’t sell in the numbers that they did in the past,” adding that the “numbers are rich with anecdotal surprises and bald truths.” The most telling paragraph comes toward the middle …
French Expect E-books to Push Book Prices Down
By Siobhan O’Leary A study conducted in France and reported in Livres Hebdo shows that 83% of French people “ignore” fixed book prices (i.e. are not aware of them) when making purchasing decisions. In fact, they think that that brick and mortar bookstores are a more expensive sales channel in comparison to online retailers when, in reality, book prices are …
No Surprise: Apple Users Most Likely to Buy iPads
By Siobhan O’Leary One thousand German Internet users were asked by the market research institute Yougovpsychonomics if they plan to buy an iPad this year. As reported in the Boersenblatt, 20% of them answered “yes,” with 4% saying they would definitely purchase one and 16% saying it was very probable. The interest was greatest among people who already use Apple …