Having stopped shipments to Borders Group, publisher John Wiley writes off $9 million, doesn't expect payment

Crain's Detroit Business Mobile: "With Borders Group Inc. now into its third month of withholding payments to some landlords and publishers, a New Jersey-based publisher is giving up on getting paid by the bookseller. Last Friday, John Wiley & Sons Inc. (NYSE: JWA) filed a disclosure stating that it is recording $9 million in bad debt because of nonpayment by Ann Arbor-based Borders. Wiley based its reporting of bad debt on 'the status of our current business relationship with Borders Group Inc. and potential future adverse financial events that may affect this customer,' according to the 8K document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. ... "

Amazon adds "real" page numbers to Kindle eBooks

PC Pro:

... At the moment, Kindle eBooks show the percentage of a book a reader has finished, as well as the 'location' - usually a number reaching into the thousands.

Because the location number doesn't correspond with page numbers in physical printed copies of books, it makes it difficult to use the Kindle as part of classes or book groups.

"Our customers have told us they want real page numbers that match the page numbers in print books so they can easily reference and cite passages, and read alongside others in a book club or class," the company said in a post on the Kindle blog.

"Rather than add page numbers that don’t correspond to print books, which is how page numbers have been added to eBooks in the past, we’re adding real page numbers that correspond directly to a book’s print edition." ...

What's to stop ...

iPaders from buying Kindle books not through app but direct thru browser in Amazon, and only then opening app to read? I'm probably missing something obvious. But, anyway, that's my question.

Hands-On With The Daily (Sure Doesn't Feel Like The Future of The Newspaper)

Audrey Watters dissects The Daily, and doesn't like what she finds: "The launch event for Rupert Murdoch's new iPad-only newspaper The Daily was full of rhetoric about the future of journalism, heralding the app as a 'this changes everything' sort of moment. But having had a chance to download and read today's inaugural issue, it doesn't seem that the user experience matches the rhetoric. That may not be a surprise as plenty of people have long predicted The Daily would be a flop. But it still feels like a shame, considering the resources (some $30 million from Murdoch himself) that have been poured into the endeavor and considering the promise for a reinvented and reinvigorated journalism. That's just my opinion, of course, as are these first impressions of the new app ... "

The Daily vs. Flipboard - Which Wins?

Richard MacManus prefers Flipboard: "Last week Rupert Murdoch's iPad-only newspaper The Daily was launched. The Daily is a newspaper app available to U.S. users on the iPad for 99c per week (the first 2 weeks are free; non-U.S. people can download it for trial via this method). The Daily has been touted as the 'future of the newspaper' by News Corp. Audrey Watters wrote our initial review of The Daily and she was underwhelmed. In my own testing, I've found The Daily to be inferior to my current iPad 'newspaper' of choice: Flipboard. Here's how I came to that conclusion..."

Android Powered Archos 70 Joins eReader Market

At $149, serious competition for the Nook. EverythingUSB: "Archos will begin shipping a new Android device which will undercut every other 7 inch tablet available now. The Archos 70 tablet unassumingly sports the usual feature set of lower end tablets. Marketed as an eReader, the Archos 70 is an a capable tablet that ‘should’ come with all the abilities of any Android device. In the past, Archos has chosen to disable some of the Android features in order to focus users on their intended features; Music,Video and eBooks. These lockouts are usually quickly undone by the modding community. ... "

Big Brains on eBooks

Of these "big brains," only Judith Regan and Bill Lynch have anything to say that's relevant, or based in reality. Newsweek: "The transformation of the book industry has reached a tipping point. Electronic books now outsell paperbacks on Amazon, the retailer recently announced. And Borders, the second-largest bookstore chain in the United States, is reportedly considering a bankruptcy filing. With books evolving at warp speed, we polled some literary brains on the future of reading ... "

Apple rumored to hold "small event" in March to usher in new iPad

AppleInsider: "Apple may be planning a smaller than usual event to introduce its second-generation iPad as early as next month, according to a scant report, as rumors that the new device will include NFC technology persist. ... "

AOL to Buy The Huffington Post for $315 Million

Pay nothing for content; aggregate that content; build brand; sell franchise for $315 million. And there you have it. Huff Post's profitability, however, remains an unknown. But AOL seems only to have paid about seven times gross revenue, so from that perspective the price is quite reasonable. NYTimes: "The deal is AOL’s biggest since separating from Time Warner in 2009, and showcases the company’s intent to focus on original content. (In September, AOL bought TechCrunch, the influential technology blog founded by Michael Arrington.) But it also represents a major media move by The Huffington Post’s co-founder, Arianna Huffington. ... "

NYSE Warns Borders Stock Price Too Low For Continued Listing

WSJ: "Borders Group Inc. (BGP) said Friday the New York Stock Exchange warned that the price of its stock needs to rise above $1 a share in the next six months to continue its listing. Shares were down 2% at 39 cents in after-hours trading. Through the close of trading Friday, the stock has declined 67% in the last year, with shares particularly struggling in recent weeks as investors question the bookseller's ability to restructure outside bankruptcy court. The NYSE, a part of NYSE Euronext (NYX), notified Borders Thursday that the average closing price of its stock has failed to meet a $1 minimum over the last 30 trading days. In order to continue its listing, the company has six months to return the stock price to compliance. ... "

E-Book Sales Rise in Children’s and Young Adult Categories

NYTimes:

Something extraordinary happened after Eliana Litos received an e-reader for a Hanukkah gift in December.

“Some weeks I completely forgot about TV,” said Eliana, 11. “I went two weeks with only watching one show, or no shows at all. I was just reading every day.”

Ever since the holidays, publishers have noticed that some unusual titles have spiked in e-book sales. The “Chronicles of Narnia” series. “Hush, Hush.” The “Dork Diaries” series.

At HarperCollins, for example, e-books made up 25 percent of all young-adult sales in January, up from about 6 percent a year before — a boom in sales that quickly got the attention of publishers there. ...

Digital Publishing Collateral Damage: H.B. Fenn, Canada's Largest Distributor, Goes Bankrupt

PW: "Canadian publishing was shaken yesterday by news that H.B. Fenn and Company, Canada’s largest book distributor and a stalwart in the industry for 30 years, had begun bankruptcy proceedings and appears to be shutting down, leaving its clients and authors scrambling. Fenn issued a brief statement Thursday, saying that it had filed a Notice of Intention to Make a Proposal under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. That could mean a restructuring proposal to allow the company to continue operating, but in the statement CEO and founder Harold Fenn said, 'My heart goes out to our over 125 employees and to the many publishers we represent, as well as the customers that have supported us over the years.' And indeed, according to sources, Fenn staff were told to pack up their belongings yesterday. ... "

Springer Starts Online Review Program

PW: "Springer has started its own online book review program, making 10,000 of its titles available for review on springer.com. The online book review copies includes all English-language e-books that have been published since 2006. According to Springer, the service is designed for journalists, editors and book reviewers who are granted temporary reading access."

Want to Read The Daily? No iPad, No Problem!

Yeah, but what lesson will the Times take away from this info? NYTimes: "Well, that didn’t take long. The Daily, Rupert Murdoch’s big push into iPad-based publishing, was introduced on Wednesday. And on Thursday morning, an unsanctioned Web site appeared with links to every article in The Daily, free on the Web. ... "

Digital Magazines Hindered by Long Download Times

NYTimes: "This morning I decide to try a little experiment: I opened up my iPad, clicked on the little Wired icon and purchased the magazine’s latest digital issue. After I agreed to fork over $4, it began downloading. For the next phase of the experiment, I grabbed my car keys, left my apartment and drove about 12 blocks to a local magazine store in Brooklyn, where I also purchased the latest issue of Wired magazine, this time in print. ... "

Apple sets deadline for Amazon's Kindle app to change

Tecca:

Apple has now taken the next step in its attempt to enforce the app store policy of not allowing iOS apps to use content which was purchased from an outside source. It's announced that as of March 31st, all apps must make the content they use available for purchase from within the app itself — paying Apple the customary 30% which it receives from every app store transaction.

To illustrate what will be changing, we'll use Amazon's Kindle app for iPhone and iPad as an example: Prior to the change, Kindle customers could purchase their reading materials straight from the Amazon website, and then load and read them via the Kindle app on their iPhone or iPad.

Apple's problem with this setup seems to be that it isn't seeing a cut of the money; Amazon distributes the app for free and all transactions are made directly through Amazon. After March 31st, Kindle users will need to be able to purchase their reading material through the Kindle app itself, which means Apple will receive 30% of the revenue.

What happens next is anyone's guess. Amazon could comply with the decision, and either absorb the hit to its Kindle proceeds, jack up the price of app-purchased reading materials to offset Apple's cut, or simply call Apple's bluff and allow the app to remain the way it is. Whatever their decision, it's going to be an interesting and tense couple of months between Amazon and Apple.

Authors Guild vs. The Free Market

PW: "To mark the one-year anniversary of what it calls 'the Great Blackout'--when Amazon pulled the buy buttons from Macmillan’s titles to protest the publisher’s adoption of the agency model--the Authors Guild is doing a series of member alerts looking at 'the state of e-books, authorship and publishing. ... " Want to survive the sinking of a ship? Swim away from it before the suction drags you down. The Authors Guild seems to like the Agency Model a hell of a lot more than does the British Office of Fair Trade.

News Corp. Launches "The Daily" iPad Newspaper

NYTimes: "Rupert Murdoch on Wednesday pushed the send button on The Daily, a news application designed for the iPad that he hopes will position his News Corporation front and center in the digital newsstand of the future. ... "

Analysis: Amazon Positioned for 50% Overall Market Share by End of 2012

Stephen Windwalker, Seeking Alpha: "... the low-margins interpretation [of Amazon's performance] misses another, much more dramatic story. The big story is that in just three years Amazon has positioned itself to triple its overall share of the U.S. book business for all formats. Before the end of 2012, Amazon could own more than half of the U.S. book business across all formats. ... " I agree with the above analysis and that Amazon will continue to be a great story over time, but I think the stock has gotten way ahead of itself from a P/E point-of-view. No reflection on the company, however, or its strategy.

EXCELLENT Interview with O'Reilly eBook Guru Andrew Savikas

John Martellaro, The Mac Observer: "Recently, I’ve been exploring and writing about ebooks, something of great interest to me. In the process of leaning more about ebooks — and purchasing a technical ebook from O’Reilly which came without DRM — I bumped into Andrew Savikas, interim CEO of Safari Books Online and the VP of Digital Initiatives at O’Reilly media. According to his bio, he’s also 'the Program Co-Chair for O’Reilly’s Tools of Change for Publishing conference, and is a regular contributor to the O’Reilly Radar blog on digital publishing issues.' I asked him some questions that have been on my mind as I’ve been learning more about ebooks, and he kindly provided some thoughtful answers. ... "

Wiley Launches New Program of Open Access Journals

PW:

In a move it says will increase “author choice,” Wiley ... announced the launch of a new line of peer-reviewed open access journals. Under the program, dubbed Wiley Open Access, the publisher will collaborate with professional and scholarly societies, which will appoint an Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board responsible for ensuring quality, beginning with disciplines in the life and biomedical sciences, including neuroscience, microbiology, ecology and evolution.

The journals will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. Publication will be supported by an author fee, payable on acceptance of their articles, although Wiley officials have not yet announced how much that fee would be, only that they will “introduce a range of new payment schemes,” including institutional agreements." ...

Apple: Nothing Has Changed. Except For This One Thing ...

Jason Kincaid, Techcrunch:

Last night the New York Times published a report stating that Sony’s E-Reader application had been rejected from Apple’s App Store, because it used a transaction system other than Apple’s In-App Payments. What’s worse, Apple was apparently blocking applications from downloading content that had been purchased outside the application — which could spell bad news for Amazon’s Kindle platform.

Now an Apple spokesperson has given us this statement:

“We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines. We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.”

Huh?

At first glance it looks like the NYT article was simply mistaken — Apple is saying that its terms and guidelines are the same. Except now it’s apparently choosing a different way to actually enforce those terms, which makes the report seem accurate after all.

The most relevant passage from Apple’s developer guidelines — which were only published in September, mind you — appears to be section 11.2, which states:

Apps utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an app will be rejected.

Now, Amazon’s Kindle app doesn’t conduct its purchases through the app itself — users are instead kicked off to a browser where they actually buy their books, and that content is then synced to the Kindle app. Apple’s rule is worded vaguely enough that it can claim this workaround is in violation of the guidelines. But it obviously hasn’t been enforced like this before now, so the notion that nothing has changed is clearly false.

It also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense from the user’s perspective. Apple is effectively telling developers that they can offer two purchase flows for content: one through the browser, and another via in-app purchases. Apple is obviously assuming people will prefer the latter because it’s quicker and simply requires the user to enter their Apple password. But developers have an incentive to push users toward the browser flow so that they don’t have to give Apple a 30% cut of each purchase. Which could mean we start seeing some bizarre checkout flows that are anything but user friendly.

UK: eBook agency pricing investigation begins

TechRadar UK: "The Office of Fair Trading is investigating how ebooks are priced after receiving 'a significant number of complaints'. The complaints pertain to pricing arrangements between book publishers and retailers which could breach competition rules. ... "

On eve of 'The Daily' launch, rival iPad apps offer previews

AppleInsider:

Ahead of News Corp's unveiling of The Daily digital newspaper on Wednesday, developers showed off competing iPad apps, including a social news app from The New York Times and a digital book platform from a former Apple designer. ...

News Corp's iPad publication could also be the first to implement an iTunes subscription feature that Apple has reportedly been working on. Publishers have pressed Apple for an iPad subscription agreement that would automatically send content to paying customers.

Competitors, however, haven't been idly watching The Daily's development process. The New York Times, in collaboration with Betaworks, is working on News.me, a social news app that will aggregate article links from Twitter streams and link sharing site bit.ly, TechCrunch reports. The approach is worlds apart from News Corp's, which focuses on producing custom content.

Also making headlines Tuesday was Push Pop Press, a startup from former Apple designer and Delicious Monster founder Michael Matas. The startup, which aims to create a "new breed" of interactive digital books, launched a teaser site Tuesday. ...

Apple denies claim that Sony Reader, Kindle in danger on iOS App Store

AppleInsider:

... Wall Street Journal blogger John Paczkowski has reported official comment from Apple spokesperson Trudy Miller, who said the company has not "changed our developer terms or guidelines," while noting that "we are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase."

That would be the reverse of the situation reported by the Times, and also makes more sense. Pulling popular titles such as Kindle, and similar content-access apps including Dropbox, Hulu , Netflix and Pandora, would do little to benefit Apple.

That would be the reverse of the situation reported by the Times, and also makes more sense. Pulling popular titles such as Kindle, and similar content-access apps including Dropbox, Hulu+, Netflix and Pandora, would do little to benefit Apple.

In-app option required, but not exclusive

Instead, as Paczkowski explained, "Apple wants its cut on sales enabled by its iOS devices, it has an established guideline that allows it to take it and that’s what it’s doing.

"Developers are still free to send customers to their own Web stores, but they must also offer them the option of purchasing content within their apps themselves, and they must route those sales through Apple which will then take its percentage."

This harmonizes with Apple's previous policy, enabling users to buy through iTunes (and allowing Apple to earn a cut for facilitating the convenience) without forcing all content to be purchased within iTunes. For example, Amazon can sell Kindle-DRM ebooks directly from its website or through its own Kindle device, and iOS Kindle app users can sync those purchases to their iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. ...

Harper's Publisher Rejects $50K in Union Pledges

Jeff Bercovici - Mixed Media - Forbes: "Tens of thousands of dollars in pledges raised by the staff of Harper’s magazine won’t save any jobs — or benefit the magazine in any way. That’s because publisher John 'Rick' MacArthur has informed the magazine’s newly-formed union, which organized the pledge drive, that he will not accept the funds.... "

Apps Customize How Users Read Content Online

NYTimes:

One popular tool, Readability, strips articles to the bare minimum of text and photographs with a single click. But now, Readability wants to give something back to publishers.

On Tuesday, the developers behind the tool will unveil a service that requires a subscription fee of at least $5 a month. The service, also called Readability, plans to distribute 70 percent of that fee to the news outlets and blogs that each subscriber is reading.

For example, if a subscriber is a regular visitor to the gadget blog Gizmodo and the women’s news site The Hairpin over the course of a month, Readability will calculate what percentage of her payment should go to each site and send them checks.

“We were never about stripping ads or being an ad blocker,” said Richard Ziade, who created the original Readability tool as well as the second-generation version. Instead, he said, the company has been wondering: “Can we come up with a mechanism to make the experience of reading on the Web better, but also support content creators and publishers?”

Readability is one of many services experimenting with the future of reading. A wave of applications, including Pulse, Flipboard and My Taptu, are responding to changes in how people prefer to read on the Web, putting articles and blog posts into cleaner or more attractive visual displays. ...

Apple's Sony app rejection poses serious questions

eBook Magazine:

... It’s a brave man who second guesses Apple but I can’t see them suddenly pulling the rug from under the likes of Kindle – the PR fallout would be disastrous for them.

On the other hand, if Apple were to move to make iBooks the only/default ebook app now’s probably the best time to do it. The iPad has sold fantastically well but its successor – now probably only weeks away from launch – is likely to sell even better.

Cutting third party ebook stores adrift before a new wave of iPad owners take delivery of their devices compartmentalizes the fall out.

As is always the case when Apple extends the higher of the wall around its garden, some speculate about legal action any disgruntled third parties might take.

The problem here is that the biggest potential loser if Apple were to kick ot third party ebook apps is Kindle, yet could Amazon really ask any court to rule against a closed, single retailer ebook platform without creating an instant case for opening up the Kindle to other retailers? ...

More re: Apple App Store restrictions

Money quote: “This sudden shift perhaps tells you something about Apple’s understanding of the value of its platform,” said Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. “Apple started making money with devices. Maybe the new thing that everyone recognizes is the unit of economic value is the platform, not the device.” ...

AppleInsider:

... Analysts were taken aback by Apple's new restrictions, as they represent a shift away from recent attempts to be more collaborative.

Last fall, after receiving criticism for App Store restrictions that were viewed as "anti-competitive," Apple removed its ban on third-party development tools. With the more open licensing terms, Adobe resumed development of its Packager for iPhone tool for porting Flash to iOS.

Rival Google also gained from the changes, as its Google Voice application was accepted into the App Store. After Apple pulled Google Voice-enabled iPhone apps from the App Store, the US FCC launched an investigation of Apple and AT&T. ...

Apple clips publishers' wings

A strategic miscalculation on Apple's part, especially if the policy extends to the Kindle app. The Register: "Apple is cracking down on applications that provide access to paid content, rejecting anything that looks as though its trying to bypass handing over 30 per cent to Cupertino. Apple gets a 30 per cent cut of anything purchased on the iPhone, or iPad, but iOS applications such as Amazon's Kindle reader and some newspaper clients provide access to content that was paid for elsewhere: something that Apple is apparently no longer going to tolerate. Sony is one of those affected, the New York Times reports, having had its Sony Reader software rejected by Apple on the basis that customers can buy a book on one device and view it on another. Apple has no argument with that concept, as long as both devices are running iOS and under the complete control of Messrs Jobs & Co, but if you buy a book on a desktop computer and then read it on your iPhone then Apple won't get its pound of flesh – and that's not acceptable. ... "