Archive for the ‘publishers and ebooks’ tag
James Bond gets ebooked in UK – but not by Penguin no comments
The Telegraph is reporting that the estate of Ian Fleming will be making all of the James Bond titles available as ebooks for the first
time in the UK this week. The 14 novels will be published by Ian Fleming Publications rather than by Penguin, which publishes the pbooks.
The Bond novels were first published back in the 1950s, before digital rights were an issue or a clause in a publishing contract. The James Bond series has sold more than 100 million books.
All 14 of Fleming’s Bond novels are already listed both at Amazon UK
Possibly Related Posts:
Ken Auletta on Fresh Air no comments
Fresh Air has an interview with Ken Auletta which is worth listening to. The title is Can the iPad or the Kindle Save Book Publishers? and follows Auletta’s article in the New Yorker entitled Publish or Perish of a few days ago. The Auletta segment on Fresh Air lasts about 20 minutes.
Possibly Related Posts:
Latest Fas-Fax Report – Newspaper e-Editions on the Rise no comments
The ABC Fas-Fax report of newspaper circulation was out yesterday and Paid Content reports that while daily circulation was down by 8.75 percent compared to last year, the number of digital editions sold by the top newspapers rose significantly. Paid Content also has a table of the top 25 newspaper daily e-editions that compares 2009 and 2010 digital circulation figures.
Editor & Publisher reports that while ad revenue was still falling for many newspapers, it was at least falling at a slower pace. Circulation of p-editions also continues to fall but did not accelerate its slide and indeed the decline is somewhat less severe than last fall’s 10.6 percent year-over-year decline.
Definitely digital subscriptions on devices such as the iPad and ereaders are going up, but how much it will help to prop up sagging newspaper and magazine publishers it is still too early to tell.
Possibly Related Posts:
Macmillan CEO John Sargent Writes About the Agency Model no comments
In a rather long article this morning Macmillan CEO John Sargent writes about the agency model and about Macmillan’s ebook pricing strategy. I’ll just quote an excerpt below:
We will price our e-books at a wide variety of prices. In the ink-on-paper world we publish new books in different formats (hardcover, trade paperback, and mass market paperback) at prices that generally range from $35.00 to $5.99. In the digital world we will price each book individually as we do today. Generally e-book editions of hardcover new releases will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99; a few books will be priced higher and lower. This is a tremendous discount from the price of the printed hardcover books, which generally range from $28.00 to $24.00. E-book editions of New York Times hardcover bestsellers will be priced at $12.99 or lower while they are on the printed list. E-book editions of paperback new releases will be generally priced between $9.99 and $6.99.
For physical books, the majority of new release hardcovers are published in cheaper paperback versions over time. We will mirror this price reduction in the digital world. It is too early to estimate the timing of the price reductions for those cases in which we do not issue a paperback edition. If we do issue a paperback, we will drop the digital price to $9.99 or lower at publication date (if not before). The price differential between the book and the e-book will become smaller at the lower price points.
There has been a lot of concern from e-book readers that $9.99 books will no longer be available. Most Macmillan e-books will still be priced below ten dollars. Our e-book sales over the last year clearly indicate that only about a third of our e-book business is in the digital versions of new release hardcovers. Unit sales of older books far exceed our new release hardcover sales, so the $9.99 and lower prices will continue to represent the largest portion of our business.
In short, we will continue to do what we have always done: provide the reader with a vast selection of great books over a wide range of prices.
It remains to be seen whether or not Macmillan will indeed adjust their ebook prices over time to reflect the actual selling prices of pbooks. So far the track record is not stellar.
Possibly Related Posts:
A Couple of Interesting Articles no comments
I’ve come across a couple of interesting articles today that are worth sharing.
Could a Kindle tablet running Windows 7 Mobile be in the works? Last week Microsoft and Amazon announced that the two companies had entered a cross-licensing deal allowing access to each other’s patent portfolios. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but payment of an undisclosed amount by Amazon to Microsoft was part of the deal.
There has been much speculation on the implications of this agreement. Patents related to the Kindle, which uses Linux, were included in the agreement. Was Amazon just trying to cover its bases vis-a-vis Microsoft’s contentions that many Linux implementations violate its patents? Or is Amazon laying the groundwork for a Kindle tablet to go head to head with the iPad? Does Microsoft plan to release an ereader, and is the Courier tablet for real?
On a ZDNet blog post Jason Perlow speculates that Amazon might have plans to ditch Linux and switch to a Windows 7 powered Kindle, possibly even with a Pixel Qi display:
Imagine a Windows 7 Phone Series device scaled up to a 10.1 inch screen, with Wireless-N networking, Microsoft’s Zune/Amazon MP3 music service, Kindle’s e-book store and the Microsoft’s developer base behind it. A synthesis of the world’s largest Internet retailer, ebook reseller and the world’s largest software company.
Such a device could also go well with Amazon’s video on demand service.
More Publishers vs Ebooks
Writing in the NY Times, Motoko Rich estimates the comparative costs of publishing a pbook vs an ebook and explains the ebook pricing controversy pretty much from the publisher’s point of view.
Citing concerns that ebooks will further pressure already beleaguered brick and mortar bookstores, Rich quotes Mike Shatzkin who is CEO of a consultant company to the publishing industry, “If you want bookstores to stay alive, then you want to slow down this movement to e-books. The simplest way to slow down e-books is not to make them too cheap.”
My thoughts would be that even if we didn’t have ebooks the bookstores would sadly still be in trouble. For one thing dedicated bookstores face similar problems as other smaller specialized shops have in recent history. How can they compete with the likes of Walmart, Costco or online stores such as Amazon? By the time that ebooks become a significant enough percentage of the total number of books sold to become a serious threat to bookstores it will most likely be far too late for many of these stores anyway.
In addition people read less than before because we are so busy and there are so many other forms of entertainment competing for our scarce leisure time. While it is of little benefit to pbook stores, ereaders have the capability to help reverse the decline in reading by making it much more convenient.
Rich also mentions the common publishing industry argument that “the industry is based on the understanding that as much as 70 percent of the books published will make little or no money at all for the publisher once costs are paid.”
In other words bestsellers subsidize the rest of the books that are published. Well, if all books were published digitally this would not be an issue. No physical bookstore can afford the shelf space to stock all of those 70 percent of books that are not bestsellers. How can titles that are slow sellers even be bought if most bookstores cannot stock them? Online pbook stores can stock much more than brick and mortar stores, but there is still a limit.
Shelf space is not an issue for ebooks. The long tail made up of the 70 percent of titles that do not sell well would cost almost nothing to stock in digital format and because they could be made readily available as ebooks they would even sell more copies than they do now. Publishers could even turn their out of print books into a revenue stream by rereleasing them as ebooks.
Rich closes by quoting Anne Rice “The only thing I think is a mistake is people trying to hold back e-books or Kindle and trying to head off this revolution by building a dam. It’s not going to work.”
Possibly Related Posts:
New Photos of the Notion Ink Tablet; A Couple of Interesting Ebook Related Posts no comments
Technoholik has some more photos of the Notion Ink Adam tablet, as well as a chart with the specs. It seems that Notion Ink may plan to release a Pixel Qi version as well as a model with a regular LCD screen. As of yet no definitive prices or availability have been announced, though in an earlier interview at Technoholik a June launch in the U.S. was mentioned.
Slashgear also has a video of the Adam which shows the camera that swivels to the front for webcam use and to the back for taking photos.
The Adam is looking pretty interesting.
A Couple of Interesting Posts About Ebooks and the Publishing Industry
In Towards A World of Smaller Books Ezra Klein notes that many non-academic non-fiction paper books start out as essays and are then padded out with repetitive material to achieve a desirable length for publishing on paper. He speculates that as ebooks predominate this will change and we will see more shorter format work with less bloat. You can read the post at Crooked Timber.
Dan Agin writes an eloquent criticism of the book publishing industry and its apparent inability to adapt to digital publishing at the Huffington Post. Agin seems to think that the whole paper book industry will mostly disappear, and that paper books will some day become relatively rare and costly ( read his response to comments ). I can imagine this happening eventually, but not in our lifetimes. Then again, all it would take is a couple of generations growing up reading mostly digital books and schoolbooks.
£149.00
£109
