Other Press Raises Digital Royalty to 50%

My start-up does the same for both print and digital. Full partnership with authors. PW: "With e-book royalty rates still a contentious, if lately less openly-debated, issue, indie house Other Press has announced it is raising its e-book royalty rate to 50%. (The reigning e-book royalty rate sits at 25%, though major publishers like Random House have adopted a shifting scale-rate, that can go up to 40%.)"

Digital Subscribers Way Up for News Corp. in UK, But Print Readers Steadily Down

Zacks: "News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation, which began charging readers for online content for The Times of London and Sunday Times of London, in early July 2010, witnessed a surge in the number of digital subscribers -- up approximately 60% during a four-month period, Bloomberg reports." BUT: Print subscriber numbers are down, a 12.1% fall in the past year. Digital readers pay considerably less than print readers. Digital subscribers pay 8.67 pounds per month, while newsstand buyers pay 8.70 pounds per week. FURTHER NOTE: The paywall in question is non-porous, as opposed to the one just launched by The New York Times. Very different animal. Much easier for would-be readers to "game" the latter without paying.

Surging eBook Sales Help a Shrinking Random House Find Profit

PW: "Led by a 250% increase in e-book sales, strong lists and favorable exchange rates, total revenue at Random House rose 6.1%, to 1.83 billion euros ($2.57 billion at current exchange rates), while earnings before interest, taxes and special items jumped 26.3% to 173 million euros ($243 million). In addition to top line growth profits benefited from cost controls, parent company Bertelsmann said. Random ended 2010 with 168 fewer employees than in 2009. ... "

Kindle Will Bypass New York Times Paywall

PCWorld: "When there's a paywall, there's a way, and there are no shortages of methods to dodge or dissemble The New York Times' new content subscription paywall. Even as the Old Gray Lady attempts to shut down loophole-exploiters, like the renegade Twitter feeds reposting NYT content so readers don't have to pay, more procedures sprout by the day. ... "

Diverging Digital Roads: Poetry and E-books

PW: "While digitizing poetry collections wasn't anyone's first priority, the time has come, and, in one way or another, most of the important poetry presses—Graywolf, Copper Canyon, BOA, Coffee House, Wesleyan—will make at least some of their books available as e-books by the fall."

Borders Liquidators Race Clock, Squeeze Cash From Doomed Stores

Businessweek: " ... The liquidators must sell as much as possible before their contract expires in order to maximize profit. Afterwards, their options are limited: They can sell stock to a non-retail customer, hang onto it and attempt to sell it later when liquidating other stores, or abandon it. They can’t sell to wholesalers or bulk purchasers who may return Borders stock to publishers, and thus Borders’s competitors. ... "

Amazon courting Apple's iOS developers to port apps to Kindle

AppleInsider: "Amazon is actively enticing Apple's iOS App Store developers to bring their efforts to the Kindle platform, particularly educational apps, in a strategy that attempts to push ebook readers up into competition with more sophisticated, general purpose tablets. ... "

Lessons for journalism from the Google Books decision, across Europe and here in the US

Nieman: "On Tuesday, US Judge Denny Chin rejected a settlement agreement between Google, the Association of American Publishers, and the Authors Guild for a 2005 lawsuit over the search giant’s full-text scanning and displays of copyrighted books. While Judge Chin’s decision makes the precise future of Google Books unclear for now, the issues it raises are already being felt by journalists, newspapers, and media creators of all stripes who are currently grappling with Google abroad. ... "

Barnes & Noble soon to add more tablet functionality to Nook Color

Chris Meadows, TeleRead:: "Barnes & Noble has announced a big update for the Nook Color e-reader coming in April which will include a number of new functions such as applications and email, essentially bringing the LCD e-reader closer to being a full-fledged Android tablet. ... "

No Buyers for Barnes & Noble at 60 Cents on Dollar

Businessweek:

Even with Barnes & Noble Inc. selling for 60 cents on the dollar, the cheapest retailer in America still isn’t cheap enough to entice private-equity buyers looking for cash. 

The bookseller founded by Leonard Riggio has fallen 28 percent since putting itself up for sale seven months ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Losses accelerated after the New York-based company eliminated its dividend in February, leaving Barnes & Noble at a 15-year low last week. The chain is the only U.S. retailer with a value of more than $500 million trading at a discount to its net assets, the data show. 

Barnes & Noble destroyed 80 percent of its shareholders’ value since rising to a record five years ago as Riggio, who bought the bookstore in 1971, fell behind Amazon.com Inc. in selling books over the Internet and starting an electronic reader business. Now, with Barnes & Noble piling money into its Nook reader to compete with the Kindle and Apple Inc.’s iPad and analysts projecting its first loss in a decade, the only buyer left may be Riggio himself as private-equity firms back away after the bankruptcy of Borders Group Inc., according to Wall Street Strategies Inc. in New York. 

“There’s not much to like,” said Brian Sozzi, Wall Street Strategies’ retail analyst. “One thing I’ve learned in retail is once the model starts to go against you it’s tough to pull yourself out. Assets on their books are losing value so quickly. Other than Riggio, I don’t know who else would want it.” ...

Nook Color Android app store coming in April along with Flash support

Crave - CNET: "While plenty of people have "rooted" their Nook Colors with custom firmware that allows them to access the Android Market and download applications, most Nook Color buyers have stuck with the official firmware that came with the device. If you're in the latter group, you'll be happy to note that you'll soon have access to Barnes & Noble's version of an app store, which is due to launch in April, according to the HSN Web Site, where the Nook is being sold for $299.90."

Once again, old-media publisher pays big advance in order to chase "the next big thing" - which is probably already over and done with

MinnPost: "Amanda Hocking, aka the 'Kindle millionaire,' has signed a seven-figure, four-book deal with St. Martins Press ... "

Audible.com Audiobooks Now Available (For Real - aka, via WiFil) On Kindle

CrunchGear: "You can now download more than 50,000 Audible.com audiobooks on your Kindle via your Wi-Fi connection. You’ve always been able to download Audible audiobooks from the site itself, then transfer them to your Kindle via a USB, but now you can do so wirelessly."

After Rejection, a Rocky Road For Google Settlement

Insightful analysis from Albanese, PW: "In the hours after Judge Denny Chin rejected the proposed Google Book Settlement, publishers and the Authors Guild said they were open to narrowing the scope of the proposed settlement in order to get a revised deal approved, while Google said it “would consider its options.” But after more than two years debating the settlement pros and cons, one thing is clear: the visionary arrangement once on the table is history. This morning, the parties will confront what comes next, and the rest of us what that might mean for the digitization of books. ... "

Google’s Next Stop May Be in Congress

NY Times: "SAN FRANCISCO — Now that a judge has curtailed Google’s ambitions to create a giant digital bookstore and library, the company is left with few appealing options. Google and groups representing publishers and authors were assessing their options Wednesday, trying to figure out whether they would remain allies or become enemies again. ... "

Major Publisher Investment Advances Inkling as the Future of Digital Textbooks

NY Times: "No matter where you set the target date for that tipping point, digital textbooks certainly just received a strong shove in that direction with a major investment announcement from the iPad textbook maker Inkling. The startup has raised an undisclosed round of funding, with participation from some of its initial investors including Sequoia Capital. More significantly, this financing involves significant minority investments from the two biggest educational content companies in the world, McGraw-Hill and Pearson."

Textbook Renter Chegg Becomes More Social

NYTimes: "Chegg is known as the Netflix of college textbooks. The Silicon Valley start-up, which has raised more than $200 million in debt and equity, allows students to rent costly college textbooks, rather than buy them. When the semester is over, they ship the books back and order new ones. The business, said Dan Rosensweig, the former Yahoo and Activision Blizzard executive who became Chegg’s chief executive 13 months ago, is booming. He said Chegg, which plants a tree for every textbook rented, has planted four million trees."

Portability: Does Apple's iBooks need to go Android?

Carnoy, CNET: "Amazon's app motto is, 'Buy once, read everywhere' and it ran a series of What if you switch?-themed TV ads promoting the concept. Barnes & Noble's app page screams: 'Read what you love. Anywhere you like.' It doesn't have quite as many app choices as Amazon, (B&N is missing Windows iPhone 7 and Amazon has announced a Kindle app for HP's Web OS), but it's pretty close. Kobo, too, has a set of apps for a wide variety of devices. iBooks, however, is relegated to Apple iOS mobile devices (we assume an OS X version is in the works), which is fine for all those people who just own Apple devices, but might seem limiting to those who would consider the possibility of dabbling in other platforms."

Barnes & Noble Struggles to Find a Buyer

Note: Kindle = 67% eReader market. Nook = 22%. BloggingStocks: "The biggest threat to Barnes & Noble emerged over the past few years as the more and more readers made the switch from actual books to digital books. The company's main competitor, Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) was quick to capture this market with its e-reader Kindle. Barnes & Noble have come out with their own e-reader, the Nook, but sources close to the company said that one reason buyers are backing away from a potential purchase of the company is due to the length of time it will take for the company to increase its digital sales. ... "

The Kindle-Killer That Wasn’t

TIME: "Throw away your iPad. Trash your Kindle. The future of reading is made of something far more innovative, and it's called 'paper.' The flipback is, according to Patrick Kingsley at the UK Guardian, an ingenious new kind of printed book designed for the iGeneration. 'Could this kill the Kindle?' the headlines asks. Err, no. ..."

The rejected Google e-books settlement: What it means and what comes next

LA Times:

More than a year after giving it preliminary approval, U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin on Tuesday rejected the Google Books Amendment Settlement Agreement, yet left a door open for the parties to try for a revision. 'The motion for final approval of the ASA is denied, without prejudice to renewal in the event the parties negotiate a revised settlement agreement,' he wrote.

What's more, in his decision, Chin detailed several possible revisions, providing a roadmap for the parties if they intend to attempt to revise the settlement.

Will they? It looks like they may try. ...

"Although I am persuaded that the parties are seeking in good faith to use this class action to create an effective and beneficial marketplace for digital books, I am troubled in several respects," Chin wrote. He brought up several key issues that seemed to point a way toward potential resolution of the agreement, including moving the issue of orphan works and international copyright issues to Congress, privacy concerns and inverting the structure of the ASA so authors interested in participating could opt in, rather than being included by default. ...

Books-A-Million sales slipped last year

In other words they are doing great, compared to Borders. Birmingham Business Journal:

Books-A-Million Inc. (Nasdaq: BAMM) reported a 2.7 decrease in sales for its last fiscal year.

The Birmingham-based book retailer said sales totaled $495 million for the year ended Jan. 29, 2011, according to a news release.

Comparable store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year, dropped nearly 5 percent and net income fell 35 percent to $8.9 million, compared $13.8 million in the previous fiscal year.

“The results for the fiscal year illustrate a dynamic and rapidly changing retail environment for booksellers,” said Chairman Clyde B. Anderson. “We are also pleased with our ability to manage inventories and maintain a strong balance sheet giving us flexibility to address the challenges and opportunities ahead.”

Anderson said the company successfully launched a partnership with Nook in the fourth quarter to sell e-readers and its toy and game and electronic accessories businesses performed well.

During the fourth quarter, Books-A-Million had a 2.6 percent decline in sales to $153.1 million and a 6.7 percent drop in comparable store sales.

Amazon Reinstates Kindle-Lending Startup Lendle

Business Insider:: "After a bit of press and consumer outrage, Amazon's team got in touch with them [Lendle] and they're back. They had to remove their book sync feature to get into the terms of service. It's hard to know whether Amazon's crackdown was just a fluke or was pushed on them by publishers or what. In any case it's impressive how fast they responded."

Judge Rules Against Google Books Settlement

Good decision: Agreement needs an opt-in rather than opt-out in order to fully protect copyrights. That would also help get around the inappropriate fact of a publishers' org and the Authors Guild presuming to have authority to negotiate for all authors of out-of-print works, which they don't. Puts power back into the hands of true copyright holders. paidContent: "A federal judge has ruled against Google (NSDQ: GOOG) in its long-standing attempt to expand a plan to scan and then distribute millions of books online. Google was sued by the Authors’ Guild and the Association of American Publishers back in 2004, with the writers’ groups saying that the company’s Google Books site broke copyright laws. The two sides settled their dispute in 2008, but revised that initial settlement in fall 2009 in response to objections from the Justice Department and competitors, who claimed that the initial settlement gave Google too much control over the electronic distribution of in-copyright, out-of-print books. In an opinion issued today, U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin said the new settlement remained too favorable to Google. 'The [settlement] would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case,' Chin wrote. ... "

That was quick: Four lines of code is all it takes for The New York Times’ paywall to come tumbling down

Josh Benton, Nieman Journalism Lab: "The New York Times paywall is costing the newspaper $40-$50 million to design and construct, Bloomberg has reported. And it can be defeated through four lines of Javascript." Read Josh's interesting piece and then check NYTClean. Couldn't be easier.

Google Says Microsoft Patent Lawsuit Threatens Innovation

PCWorld: "'Sweeping software patent claims like Microsoft's threaten innovation,' Google said in a statement. 'While we are not a party to this lawsuit, we stand behind the Android platform and the partners who have helped us to develop it.'"

Semantics: "Real" Books vs. eBooks

Get with the program. eBooks = BOOKs. Stop editorializing about how eBooks kill "real books." eBooks ARE "real books." eBooks are of course drastically minimizing (though not killing) paper-books, but the narrative (the REAL "real book") remains intact, regardless of the container. Thank you and have a great day.

Yet Another Tech IP Lawsuit: Apple Sues Amazon Over App Store Name

DailyFinance: "Apple says it holds the trademark to the 'App Store' name. That may be decided in court. The suit was filed in the federal court for the Northern District of California. The complaint stated that people might think the Amazon Appstore is owned by or associated with Apple."

Microsoft v. Android: now B&N Nook gets software patent lawsuit

Computerworld Blogs: "Microsoft is suing more Android device makers: now it's Barnes & Noble with it's partners Foxconn and Inventec. Steve Ballmer's gang doesn't like B&N's Nook e-reader, so has slapped them with a software patent lawsuit."

Amazon stymies Lendle e-book lending service

In the long run, Amazon is doing Lendle, eBook Fling and BookLending a favor, because they had shit business models anyway. That being said, I think it may be a strategic mistake for Amazon to look like it is trying to stifle lending. Carnoy, CNET: "It may be game, set, and match for Lendle. No, not Ivan Lendl, the former tennis great. Lendle, the newly hatched e-book lending service. Lendle first reported the news via Twitter: 'Amazon has revoked Lendle's API access. This is why the site is down. It's sad and unfortunate that Amazon is shutting down lending sites...According to Amazon, Lendle does not 'serve the principal purpose of driving sales of products and services on the Amazon site.''"

Waterstone's Managing Director: Academic bookselling at "crisis point"

The Bookseller: "Waterstone's has called for academic publishers to 'significantly' increase their support for the chain, warning bricks and mortar academic bookselling could vanish from the high street within a few years. The retailer's m.d. Dominic Myers told delegates at the Bookseller Association’s annual Academic, Professional and Specialist Bookselling Group conference last week that the academic bookselling industry was at a “crisis point,” in which 2011 would be a defining year. ... "

re: Borders UK meltdown

The Bookseller: "Waterstone's could be best placed to capitalise from a loss in market share by Borders, according to an influential retail analyst. In a wide-ranging note on entertainment retail, Paul Smiddy at HSBC said this week that between space re-allocation and store closures, Borders would lose market share over the next year, with Waterstone's in the best position to gain from this. ... "

What if Amazon released Android Kindle tablet?

Tech Gear: "Firstly, in the short term, any Android-based Kindle isn't about Amazon competing with iPad or other Apple iOS devices. Amazon's ambitions are much larger: Capitalizing on the enormous Android ecosystem of applications and devices and extending its core competency as a retailer. Amazon already does this on Android and other mobile operating systems with the Kindle app. But Amazon sells more digital content than just ebooks. Android Kindle -- as device or app -- would allow Amazon to better bundle other digitally downloaded products, like movies, music and TV shows."

Is Amazon working on an Android Kindle?

Nick Bilton of NY Times via NDTVGadgets.com: "Although Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive, has said in the past that a color Kindle is 'multiple years' away, new job listings on the Lab 126 Web site, the division of Amazon that makes the Kindle, show that the company is building up its team of Android developers, which might involve developing software for a color screen. At least five new jobs were added in the last week alone seeking developers with Android programming experience. Now this could simply mean that Amazon is hiring engineers to work on new software for other Android devices. But it could also pave the way for a Kindle that runs Android, which would in turn be a color device. The current Kindle runs the Linux operating system. It's still up for debate whether an Android Kindle would be good for Amazon, or better for Google. With tablets becoming a competition over the number of apps available for the platform, Amazon would have a lot of catching up to do if the company decided to introduce an entirely new tablet operating system."

No More NY Times Links

I'm going to stop posting links to NY Times articles on my blog, not because I dispute the Times's right to charge for proprietary content (I don't), but simply because the links will be of no use to readers of e-publishing, etc. who are not subscribers to the Times and have used up their 20-free-articles privilege for any given month.

Kindle to move to Android? [Rumor]

Android Community: "There’s talk going around that Amazon may be looking to take completely redesign the Kindle platform and base it on the Android OS. According to posts in the New York Times Blog, Amazon is looking for Android developers for 'Lab 126' which is Amazon’s Kindle development unit. That would make for a very interesting development and may signal Amazon’s concern that the NOOKColor is suddenly very popular with Android geeks looking for an affordable tablet option. There’s also the fact that with Amazon’s Android App Store that the book seller may simply be looking to evolve the Kindle to take advantage of Android apps they sell."

Kobo eBook app now available for Samsung Windows Phone 7 devices

Mobiputing: "Kobo has released an eBook app for Windows Phone 7, but it appears that at the moment it’s only available for phones from Samsung."

Paywall for The New York Times Set for March 28

ReadWriteWeb via NYTimes: "The New York Times has finally announced the terms and pricing for its paywall that will go into effect beginning March 28. The paywall is porous, meaning that you'll be able to read 20 articles a month without having to pay. ... "

Borders closing 28 additional stores, making final count 228

Reuters: "Borders Group Inc is set to close another 28 of its superstores on top of the 200 locations it is already shutting down as part of its reorganization under bankruptcy protection. Those locations will close by the end of April and include stores in Hollywood, California, and Stamford, Connecticut. The closings will leave Borders with only half of its superstores. 'We reached the determination about these stores after a further review of their ongoing economic viability,' Borders spokeswoman Mary Davis said in a statement. ... "

January E-book Sales Soar, Top Hardcover, Mass Market Paperback

PW: "The surge of e-book buying expected to take place in January following a round of holiday e-reader gift-giving did in fact materialize. According to preliminary estimates from the Association of American Publishers, e-book sales from 16 reporting companies jumped 115.8%, to $69.9 million in January. No other trade segment posted a sales increase in the month."

No breakthrough over author e-book rights in France ahead of fair

The Bookseller: "French authors have urged culture minister Frederic Mitterrand to intecede in order to break the deadlock in their negotiations with publishers over electronic rights. For the second year running, the Permanent Council of Writers (Conseil Permanent des Ecrivains, CPE) and the French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l’Edition, SNE) have tried and failed to conclude an agreement in time for the Paris Book Fair. ..."

Kindle’s "Real" Page Numbers - How They Did It

Per Amazon:

... With our massive selection and knowledge of print books, we were excited to be in a position to help solve this problem. We had to invent an entirely new way to match the streams of text in a print book to the streams of text in a Kindle book, and assign page numbers in Kindle books. There are hundreds of thousands of Kindle books (and growing every day), so to handle a job of this size, we turned to our Amazon Web Services computing fabric. We created algorithms to match the text of print books to Kindle books and organized all of this in the cloud, using our own AWS platform. The results of this work are stored in Amazon’s Simple Storage Service, where we track the complete history of every page matching file we’ve produced. We even found a way to deliver page numbers to books that customers had already purchased – without altering those books in any way, so customers’ highlights, notes, and reading location are preserved exactly as they were.

Some other e-bookstores have added virtual “page numbers” to e-books, but we’ve found that these approaches can be confusing and often inconsistent – they don’t map to the page numbers in physical books, and in some cases they don’t account for title pages, blank pages, and other nuances that we see in print books. We’ve already received a lot of great feedback from customers who like our approach. Real page numbers are already available in tens of thousands of our most popular Kindle books, including the top 100 bestselling books in the Kindle Store that have matching print editions, and we’re adding page numbers in more Kindle books every day. We want you to lose yourself in the reading, so page numbers are only displayed when you push the menu button. ...

B&N Pines for a Storybook Ending

WSJ: "It's never fun to realize, after starting a book, that the plot is so familiar it loses any element of surprise. The question for Barnes & Noble shareholders is whether they are living such a predictable tale. The stock's 47% plunge in the past three weeks, to below $10, its lowest point since the early 1990s, suggests investors feel that way. Last month's suspension of the dividend, to preserve cash for digital investments, likely sent income-oriented investors heading for the exits. But despite Barnes & Noble's claim to be 'now a growth company,' growth investors appear to be staying away—with good reason."

The chain gets smaller margin on eBooks than on physical books, the latter market shrinking as the former grows. It also has the brick-and-mortar monkey on its back, plus:

"It doesn't help that Barnes & Noble has taken on long-term debt for the first time in several years, partly to fund the $596 million cash buyout in 2009 of the Barnes & Noble college-store chain from Len Riggio, chairman and 30% shareholder. The price paid was more than Barnes & Noble's now-shrunken market capitalization. While the college chain's earnings have proved valuable as Barnes & Noble invests in digital, its sales at stores open more than a year have declined since the purchase. The deal would have looked better for Barnes & Noble shareholders if Mr. Riggio had taken stock rather than cash."

My late father-in-law Bill Bartkovick, a longtime Senior VP at B&N, founded the Barnes & Noble College Division. He would be the first to tell you that this division's days are numbered [see story below], and that the deal benefited Lenny and his family entirely at the expense of shareholders.

1 in 4 College Textbooks Will Be Digital By 2015

NYTimes: "Sales of digital textbooks still only account for a small fraction of the U.S. college market. But according to the latest report by the social learning platform Xplana, we have reached the tipping point for e-textbooks, and the company predicts that in the next five years digital textbook sales will surpass 25% of sales for the higher education and career education markets."

EU anger over ebook deal suggests hard times ahead for publishers

What'd I just say? Check the guardian.co.uk: "The perception that selling ebooks by the agency model is unfair (consumers) and illegal (EU) is a big worry for publishing firms ... "

French government says publishers should collaborate over e-book negotiations

The Bookseller: "French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand has urged French publishers to speak with one voice in forthcoming negotiations with Amazon over supplying their e-books for the Kindle. During a visit to Silicon Valley, where he met senior managers of Amazon, Apple and Google, Mitterrand told reporters that if publishers go into negotiations separately, 'in disorder and a climate of permanent rivalry and competition', Amazon would 'fairly rapidly dictate its law'. Publishers should establish common rules on fixed e-book prices and other issues, he added. Referring to the recent raids of five French publishers and the publishers association (SNE) by European Commission competition officials, he said: 'I don’t think that we are in a zone of conflict or zone of difficulty between the French State and the main partners and players. ... .'" Yeah, pal, but you will be in a "zone of conflict" with the European Commission very shortly if you keep advocating the fixing of prices.

Apple Keeps Right On Approving Amazon And Netflix Updates Without In-App Purchases

TechCrunch: "Remember when everyone was freaking out over the Apple in-app subscription changes? You should. It was just a month ago. And while some of the fears that arose do appear to be very real, the two things most people focused on were Amazon’s Kindle app and the Netflix app. Well guess what? Both received updates today [March 15th], and neither includes the supposedly mandatory changes."

Good Summary of the Current State of Business re: eBook Lending

Stu Woo, WSJ: "BookLending and Lendle opened in the past two months, while eBook Fling plans to start Monday. The sites' creators said they decided to launch the services after Amazon, following Barnes & Noble's lead, introduced the ability to lend Kindle e-books in late December. Analysts estimate that Kindle has about two-thirds of the U.S. market for e-books." BookLending and Lendle are just for Kindle users. The new eBook Fling provides service to both Kindle and Nook users.

Luddites Whining: The End Of Bookstores

Nicole Krauss uses the pages of The New Republic to moan about our losing a certain curatorial element which she believes can only be found in the brick-and-mortar bookstore.

Struggling States Try to Get Amazon to Collect Sales Tax

NYTimes: "Amazon’s skirmishes with states over whether it should collect sales taxes have been an ongoing battle. But the fighting has recently escalated, coinciding with the economic woes that have left a number of states struggling with multibillion-dollar deficits, and looking for money wherever they can find it."

Milestone - The Web (Finally) Surpasses Newspapers As Source for Americans' News

NYTimes: "That's according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, which has just released its latest report on the 'State of the Media.' The study finds that, 'By several measures, the state of the American news media improved in 2010,' but that improvement did not extend to one important sector - newspapers - which continued to see a decline in revenues, readership and newsroom jobs."

Publishers Declare War on Libraries - Brilliant Move

Elsewhere in the news: ski-makers declare war on ski-resorts (where skis are frequently rented).

I have previously noted Cory Doctorow talking sense on this topic.

For Borders, a Scramble to be Lean

Trachtenberg/Spector, WSJ: "In a bid to boost to its digital prospects, [Borders President Mike] Edwards said Kobo Inc., the Toronto-based e-book retailer in which Borders holds a stake, will begin sharing some of the proceeds of every Kobo e-book sold in the U.S. The move, said Mr. Edwards, will enable Borders to more effectively compete on the digital front with companies such as Amazon.com Inc., Barnes & Noble Inc. and Apple Inc. In turn, Borders, Ann Arbor, Mich., will put all of its online and in-store marketing and promotional muscle behind the Kobo brand. Mr. Edwards said that in addition to selling Kobo e-readers, Borders also will continue to sell readers from other makers." This is still a death watch. The restructuring = chemotherapy, delaying the inevitable while also prolonging the agony.

Kindle 3 Catapults Amazon to 48% eReader Market Share in 2010

IDC via Reviews Of Electronics: "Amazon scooped up 48% of the eReader market [in 2010], thanks predominantly to the Kindle 3."

Bloomsbury sees ebook sales leap

Telegraph: " ... the listed publisher of Harry Potter, is on course to make around a quarter of its revenue from ebooks in 2011 following a 600pc uplift in like-for-like sales of digital titles in the first two months of this year."

iPad 2 as e-reader: glare still an issue

CNET Reviews: "Later this year, we should start seeing anti-reflective color display technologies such as Mirasol hit the market. These types of displays don't appear to offer quite the color saturation that the iPad 2's display does, but they are viewable in direct sunlight, which is another complaint people have about the iPad and iPad 2: they just aren't as usable as they should be outdoors on a bright day. If you've seen Amazon's sometimes entertaining Kindle ads, you know that outdoor readability is a competitive advantage Amazon likes to tout. You can expect more of those ads."

Borders Meets with Publishers Over Terms; Conference Call Set

PW: "Ahead of a conference call set for Friday afternoon to give vendors an update on its business plan and restructuring, Borders merchandise executive have been in New York this week negotiating with publishers to resume direct shipments to the embattled chain. At present, Ingram is doing most of the shipping with publishers only shipping on a cash basis. According to sources, Borders is asking for cash in advance terms for a month with more regular terms afterwards."

Wall Street Journal Adds 200,000 Mobile-Device Subscribers

WSJ: "The Wall Street Journal has added 200,000 paying subscribers who access the newspaper via mobile devices such as Apple Inc.'s iPad and Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle."

Goodreads Buys Recommendation Service Discovereads

ReadWriteWeb via NYTimes: "Book-sharing service Goodreads announced today that they have purchased the book recommendation engine Discovereads. According to Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler, the acquisition addresses a frequently-requested feature. 'With their deep algorithmic book recommendation technology, we're going to be able plumb our database of 100 million book ratings from 4.6 million users to find general patterns of the kinds of books people read and to generate high-quality personalized recommendations.'"

Len Riggio: American trade on cusp of "transformational growth"

If I were Lenny, I wouldn't mention Borders either. The Bookseller: "Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio has said the American book trade is on the cusp of 'transformational growth' led by digital sales, in a bullish keynote address to the annual meeting of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), in which he stated that that the book chain remained 'committed now as ever to the future of [its] stores'. Riggio did not talk about B&N's falling share price or whether he might buy the company back; he did not mention Borders. ... "

Turow & Authors Guild Not Just Out of Touch on the Subject of eBook Pricing, but also ...

on DRM, "piracy," copyright and other things that go bump in the night. Last month, Mike Masnick @ Techdirt: " ... as the Authors Guild continues to have out-of-touch, fact-challenged people lead it, it's only going to serve to drive younger authors away from the Guild. Smart authors today recognize the maxim that obscurity is a much bigger threat than piracy, and many have come to figure out that piracy is nothing to fear if you have a smart business model. If Turow and the Authors Guild really wanted to help authors, they'd focus on helping them understand new business models, rather than supporting ever more draconian laws that will do nothing to help and plenty to hurt."

Scott Turow and the Authors Guild Still Don't Get It

In the end, the free market always wins. PW: "Authors Guild president Scott Turow has praised Random House’s announcement last week that it is adopting an agency model for selling e-books. 'Book retailers have faced extraordinary challenges in recent years,' he wrote, 'a double whammy of recession and a shift to digital books that had cut many stores out. For anyone who loves bookstores, this is the best news out of the publishing industry in a long time. Random House's move may prove to be a lifeline for some bookstores.' ... "

Rumor: Random House UK considering agency pricing switch

EBOOK MAGAZINE: "Random House UK could follow their US counterpart in adopting agency pricing for ebooks according to internet rumours which also suggest an announcement confirming the move could come as early as this week. ... "

Kobo Raises A New Round Of Funding

paidContent: " ... the Borders-backed e-books seller, has raised a new round of funding led by what the company says is a “major institutional investor.” Kobo doesn’t say who the investor is but does say that Canadian books retailer Indigo Books and Music, which spun off the company 15 months ago, participated in this funding round and remains its biggest shareholder. Borders, which put money in the company in December 2009 but filed for bankruptcy last month, isn’t listed as a participant in this funding round. ... "

Diesel eBook Store and Macmillan Form a Direct Partnership to Sell eBooks

Press Release: "The Diesel eBook Store announced that it has entered into a direct partnership with Macmillan – a global publisher – that will permit the retailer to sell the publisher’s titles directly to the public through its web-based bookstore. Up to this point, Diesel eBooks used a variety of third-party eBook distributors for encryption and fulfillment. ... "

Cory Doctorow: eBook durability is a feature, not a bug

guardian.co.uk: "HarperCollins' attempt to ensure ebooks in libraries can only be loaned out 26 times is indefensible ... "

As Borders Sinks, Barnes & Noble Scrambles to Remain Afloat on Troubled Waters

TIME: " ... the question is how long Barnes & Noble can stay ahead of the gradual shift from print to digital. Barnes & Noble still has 705 bookstores in the U.S., and those locations are less profitable than they used to be, though that drop seems to be slowing. Worse, its online operation continues to lose money. Overall, Barnes & Noble's profits in its most recent quarter, which ended in January, fell 25% from a year earlier to $60.6 million. In order to stem the losses, Barnes & Noble's executives decided recently to stop paying stockholders a dividend and invest the money in its online and e-books division to boost growth."

Dealtalk: Barnes & Noble auction gets case of writer's block

Reuters: "Barnes & Noble Inc's (BKS.N) efforts to find a buyer have slowed to a crawl, erasing recent gains in its stock price, as potential suitors question the bookseller's ability to compete against formidable rivals. ... "

Seven IT Lessons From The Borders Collapse

IDG : "We've all heard -- endlessly -- why Borders went bankrupt. But those things are just technology. What are the IT lessons? ... "

Gleick's "The Information" is to the nature, history and significance of data what the beach is to sand

Janet Maslin, NY Times: "The Information is so ambitious, illuminating and sexily theoretical that it will amount to aspirational reading for many of those who have the mettle to tackle it. Don’t make the mistake of reading it quickly. Imagine luxuriating on a Wi-Fi-equipped desert island with Mr. Gleick’s book, a search engine and no distractions. The Information is to the nature, history and significance of data what the beach is to sand."

Video: Neil Gaman Explains How Piracy Helps New Readers Discover His Work, and Thus Helps His Overall Sales in the Long-Run

Scorned librarians and the eBook piracy underground

Violet Blue, ZDNet: "E-books and the ability to share or not to share them: that is the question every publisher and distributor is agonizing over. But no one seems to be answering it with anything short of clutching their petticoats and jumping up on the nearest chair."

UK Research: Consumers expect lower prices for ebooks

Internet Retailing: "... research also revealed a strong consumer expectation to pay less for e-books than their printed equivalent, with nearly half (48%) of consumers saying they expect to pay less, and just one in five (19%) saying they expect to pay the same. Some 7% of Brits say they expect to pay less than 3 pounds, with 28% thinking it should be between 3 pounds and 5.99 pounds. Younger readers were the most likely to expect to pay less—reflecting, according to Mintel, their general experience of being able to procure digital product for less or free on the internet."

Barnes & Noble/Spring Design settle lawsuit over Nook feature

Yahoo! Finance: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Barnes & Noble Inc has settled a lawsuit brought against it by Spring Design, which had accused the top U.S. bookseller of illegally copying a screen design for its popular Nook electronic book reader. Under terms of the agreement, Spring is granting Barnes & Noble a non-exclusive license for all of its patents and patent applications. Other terms of the settlement were not disclosed."

AppleInsider | Random House books come to Apple's iBookstore for iPad, iPhone

Well, of course they have.

Crush or Get Crushed: Why B&N Needs to Be a Publisher

Michael Wolf: "Let’s face it, the total pie in books is going to shrink, and the long and unwieldy value-chain from writer to customer is going to collapse. Amazon knew this a long time ago, and that’s why they’ve been moving to disintermediate the publisher and the wholesaler in the e-book world by becoming, essentially, the entire value chain themselves. B&N should do the same, and do it quick. Sure, like Amazon, it launched its own self-pub platform in PubIt!, and it tinkered around with a few imprints on the print side for some time. But in the collapsing world of books, it’s every man for himself, and its time for B&N to accelerate its push into becoming a digital publisher."

European regulators are right: agency pricing = price fixing

Europe confirms raids on ebook publishers • The Register: "The European Commission has confirmed it raided several companies involved in ebook publishing. The regulators said it carried out 'unannounced inspections' at ebook publishing companies in several member states because it has reason to believe they may have 'violated EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and other restrictive practices'." They shot down the Net Book Agreement and, mark me, they'll bring down Agency Pricing.

HarperCollins's Open Letter to Librarians Shows That They Just Don't "Get It"

John Marwell's letter appears on Library Love Fest: "We spent many months examining the issues before making this change. We talked to agents and distributors, had discussions with librarians, and participated in the Library Journal e-book Summit and other conferences. Twenty-six circulations can provide a year of availability for titles with the highest demand, and much longer for other titles and core backlist. If a library decides to repurchase an e-book later in the book’s life, the price will be significantly lower as it will be pegged to a paperback price point. Our hope is to make the cost per circulation for e-books less than that of the corresponding physical book. In fact, the digital list price is generally 20% lower than the print version, and sold to distributors at a discount."

Will HarperCollins program print editions of books sold to libraries to spontaneously combust after 26 reads?

Another point: Setting aside the ridiculous notion of limiting usage on a sold edition of a book, the idea of digital prices being arbitrarily pegged 20% lower than hardcover or paper prices is equally absurd. In this way the cost of traditional print, paper and bind dictates the cost of e-editions? The tail wags the dog?

AppleInsider: Random House may soon join iBooks -

Well of course. Hell, agency model was the only issue between them in the first place.

Random House Switches to Agency Model, Joins Other Large Houses in Helping Small Upstarts Get a Jump on Them Pricewise

Thank God. The last thing I needed was RH not trying to gouge customers. PW: "In the agency model, publishers set the price and designate an agent—in this case the bookseller—who will sell the book and receive the commission. Adopting the model for e-books tends to mean e-book prices will rise, something both publishers and independent retailers applaud. Publishers believe low e-book prices devalue their books and cannibalize hardcover sales. Under the agency model once a price has been set it cannot be changed or discounted by the retailer and independent e-book retailers believe the higher prices of the agency model allow them to compete with big e-book vendors."

Do E-Book Users Need a Bill of Rights? (Librarians Think So)

NY Times: "Libraries may be on the front-lines of this latest battle, one that makes it clear that issues like DRM and lending policies can have troubling repercussions. Although the HarperCollins announcement impacts just lending through libraries, librarians are quick to point out that it isn't simply their institutions that will suffer."