Mar 08

Apple lands 5 publishers in hot water, and more.

BBC News updates a story that’s been running for over a year concerning a U.S. Department of Justice investigation in which five US publishers and Apple are now being threatened with legal action because of the way they ‘conspired to raise the price of eBooks.’  Apple and the publishers pushed for the Agency Model of pricing in which publishers could set the price of their eBooks and stop distributors and resellers from discounting it.

The end product was an artificially high price for digital versions of popular books. (Often priced higher than their paper counterparts.)

The publishers: Simon and Schuster, Hachette, the US arm of Penguin, Macmillan and HarperCollins Inc., are still trying to convince the investigators that they are not making anything extra by reselling ‘digital copies’ of their titles because they claim printing the actual books was a small part of the cost of the publishing.

So does that sound like an outright lie, or is traditional bricks and mortar publishing the most screwed up business model going?

And…

GoodeReader reports on Scholastic Publishing and Books’ contribution to the eBook Revolution: a reading platform called Storia.

The National Post has a story on Margaret Atwood’s release of a $2.99 short story.

Mar 07

New Apple iPad Rolls Out.

Read about the Retina Display on Apple’s new iPad (Hi-Def) here at CNN.

Mar 07

Google Play leaps into the digital content provider arena.

Remember Google Books (or Google Editions)? Sort of launched and left a bland taste didn’t it?

Well it seems the web search giant is finally making a push into the digital content arena, and they’re bringing Google Books with them according to USA Today. The multi-content platform is called Google Play.

Mar 06

American Library Association asks Random House to reconsider nasty price hike

PublishersWeekly has a statement issued by The American Library Association (ALA) that laments Random House’s recent decision to hike the price of eBooks it sells to libraries by up to 300%.

Mar 05

Amazon Publishing to allow its eBook editions to sell outside the Kindle store.

Engadget has a story on Amazon Publishing about to sell some of its new titles as print editions and eBooks outside of the Kindle store.

It will be interesting to see how this develops since the eBook giant’s print editions were recently pulled from Barnes & Noble book shelves because Amazon refused to sell the eBook versions at B&N, too.

Mar 04

Stories to start Read an eBook Week

Read an eBook Week runs March 4-10th. So get out there and read an eBook. eBookWeek has more.

The Digital Journal offers an Op-Ed piece by Paul Wallis on PayPal’s sudden move toward censorship when it ordered its client eBook publisher/distributor Smashwords to remove questionable fiction books from its catalog.

The Sacramento Bee reports on more pleasant news for Smashwords in which the world’s largest distributor of digital and physical books Baker & Taylor announced that it would now offer 100,000 of Smashword’s Indie eBook titles to the Blio store.

PaidContent updates us on Random House’s generous decision to continue making its eBook titles available for lending at public libraries. They’re going to charge libraries as much as 300% more to stock their virtual shelves.

Mar 02

Democratized publishing under attack.

Mathew Ingram of Gigaom has a thought-provoking piece on the present and future of the eBook Revolution, as the corporate eBook giants battle for control of the briefly ‘democratized’ playing field.

I believe that the basic uncontrollable nature of digital products and the Internet will eventually put these ridiculous attempts at market domination in the past where they belong.

Mar 01

eBook retailers prepare for the next round.

Mobiledia continues their feature on the fate of eBook pricing. Part Two looks at how eBook retailers prepare for a power play in the eBook Revolution.

Feb 29

eBook Pricing Unfair?

Mobiledia has an in-depth look at the ongoing debate about eBook pricing . We know why the publishers want to charge more, and we know why the public wants to pay less. Will there ever be common ground? (Or will it be up to eBook Pirates and file-sharers to decide?)

Feb 28

Harry Potter goes digital in libraries.

For a woman who resisted digital publishing and eBooks, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is certainly going ‘all-in’ having made a deal with the OverDrive Platform via the Pottermore website to bring her Muggle-filled franchise to 18,000 public and school libraries in more than 20 languages.

Slashgear has the story.

Rowling seems to get the eBook Revolution and we wonder now whether she was fighting the flow or biding her time. Libraries worked to promote sales of her series back in the paper and hard cover days, why wouldn’t they work now?