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."