Archive for the ‘wylie backlist kindle store’ tag
eReader & Tablet News – 8/25/2010 no comments
The fracas that the Wylie Agency brought about last month when it decided to unilaterally publish 20 classic (but still under copyright) ebooks via its new Odyssey Editions exclusively through the Kindle Store has apparently come to an end. A joint statement by Markus Dohle , CEO of Random House and Mr. Wylie indicated that they had come to an agreement on the matter.
Reportedly Amazon will remove 13 of the 20 books released by Odyssey, but the ebooks should return to Amazon under Random House’s auspices, although that may mean Amazon will loose its exclusivity. I just checked a few of the titles and all were still available and still shown as published by Odyssey Editions.
Random House will also resume a normal business relationship with Wylie, which had been suspended during the dispute.
So it looks like Random House has won, but Wylie’s move hopefully will do something to speed up the digital publishing of publisher’s backlists, which would be a win for readers.
For more on this see the WSJ.
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Samsung will reportedly be stopping production of e-paper based ereaders, citing the high cost of the displays. The company is not completely abandoning the ereader space though, as it plans to launch an LCD-based ereader next year.
Samsung has also released a teaser video of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which is below. According to the video the Galaxy Tab will be at IFA 2010 in Berlin.
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Ok, this is rather morbid. At last there is an iPad version of the trivia game “Celebrity Dead or Alive.” This is a game that “tests players knowledge and know-how of which stars are still the life of the party and which have permanently retired their dance cards.” $0.99 at iTunes. Great.
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Hanvon Technology Co., the largest Chinese ereader manufacturer, has announced that it will be using Freescale Semiconductor’s i.MX51 applications processor for its next generation ereaders.
The first Hanvon ereader to use the new 
processor is the E-800, which sports an 8-inch e-ink screen with 1024 x 768 resolution and weighs “only” one pound.
Freescale’s flagship i.MX51 processor delivers a compelling blend of features and functionality to meet the stringent requirements of eReader products. The processor combines an 800MHz ARM Cortex–A8 CPU with a large L2 cache memory to deliver high performance for fast rendering and page turns. It also includes advanced power management features to help extend battery life and increase usage between charges, while innovative ultra-low standby power schemes extend battery standby time.
In addition to i.MX technology, Hanvon’s eReader will also incorporate Freescale’s MMA7660FC low-power capacitive accelerometer and MC13892 power management IC, resulting in highly advanced eReader products that deliver extremely low power consumption in a slim, ultra-thin design.
In other Hanvon-related news, the Daily Yomiuri newspaper yesterday reported that the company will start providing Japanese content to Chinese readers. Tokyo-based Creek & River Co. has contracted to supply Japanese manga, novels and magazine articles to Hanvon.
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ebrary, which is a provider of digital content and technologies, announced today that it has partnered with CHOICE to offer digital editions of more than 1,000 of Choice’s recent Outstanding Academic Titles (OAT). CHOICE is the premier source of scholarly reviews. More from the press release:
Spanning all academic subject areas including Business & Economics, Education, History, Language & Literature, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, and Sciences, ebrary’s CHOICE selection features leading publishers including Cambridge University Press, Duke University Press, Harvard University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, University of California Press, University of Chicago Press, Wiley, and Yale University Press. The titles may be previewed at http://site.ebrary.com/lib/choicetitles.
Additional key features and benefits:
- Available anytime through any web enabled device including the iPad—no cumbersome downloads.
- Ability to subscribe to and purchase additional titles that seamlessly integrate.
- 24/7 web-based training with a real person.
- Free MARC records.
- COUNTER-compliant usage statistics.
- Powerful tools for easy researching:
- Multiple options for searching, navigating, and browsing.
- ebrary InfoTools™, which turns every word into a portal to additional information on the web. InfoTools can be customized to link patrons to the resources of libraries’ choice.
- Notes and highlights that are automatically stored on a personal bookshelf.
- Ability to copy/paste and print text with automatic citations and URL hyperlinks back to the source.
- Personal bookshelves with moveable folders that can be shared with others.
- Much more!
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eReader & iPad News – 7/25/2010 1 comment
The announcement last week by the Wylie Agency of its Odyssey Editions and the exclusive distribution of content through the Kindle Store may have made Kindlers happy, but the move has resulted in a firestorm of protest from other publishers.
The main points of contention are that:
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Competition: Wylie will now be competing with other publishers.
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Possible conflict of interest: Wylie is a literary agent; being a publisher at the same time could result in conflicts of interest.
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Content is restricted to the Kindle Store rather than being device agnostic. This is less of an issue for readers now that the Kindle reading applications are available on many platforms, but it is of course an issue for Amazon’s competitors.
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Disputes over ebook rights: Older contracts between authors and publishers (such as those governing the titles released by Odyssey Editions) were made before ebooks were around. The authors of the Odyssey ebooks had pbook contracts with other publishers. Whether or not these older contracts also apply to ebooks is still unsettled and is probably the major reason we don’t have more backlist and out-of-print books published digitally.
Random House, which usually seems to have a relatively progressive approach to ebooks, questioned Amazon’s legal right to sell the Odyssey titles. Random House also says that as Wylie is now a publisher and therefore a competitor they will not conduct any new English-language business with Wylie on a worldwide basis.
There is a possibility that the Odyssey Editions may end up being pulled from the Kindle Store. As an avid reader, and since ebooks are my delivery method of choice, I want to see all of the backlists and out-of-print and hard-to-find titles available for me to buy and read. At the very least, Wylie has put the issue of ebook rights of these older books on the front burner. Most publishers do not seem to be much interested in doing this, even though digitizing their backlists and out-of-print books would be a way for publishers to monetize these titles and better serve their customers.
For further reading see: the Guardian – here and here, John Sargent at the Macmillan Blog and Konrath at A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.
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Arrow Publications, LLC, which is the publisher of MyRomanceStory.com, has announced that their romance graphic novels will soon be available through LongBox, Inc.
LongBox will provide comics and graphic novels to readers on computers, ereaders, gaming systems and other handheld devices via its forthcoming LongBox Digital ereading application. Currently LongBox appears to still be in beta, but should be open for business soon.
Graphic novels from Arrow can currently be read on your computer and iDevices and are available from the above link and at iTunes.
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The iPad continues its takeover of the educational market. XanEdu, which claims to be the leading faculty-preferred provider of CoursePacks and custom textbooks, has launched an iPad publishing application.
Instructors will use the XanEdu CoursePack Management System to publish materials that students will then be able to access on an iPad. This capability is in addition to being fully integrated into popular learning management systems on campus. XanEdu’s iPad platform also enables students to take and share notes for a more collaborative, engaging learning experience.
“XanEdu, as the largest independent provider of Harvard Business Publishing material is a trusted partner and consistent innovator,” said Maureen Bestes, VP of Higher Education of Harvard Business Publishing. “In the fall, we’re launching interactive spreadsheets for financials cases with XanEdu.
XanEdu publishes over 15,000 titles annually at over 2,000 institutions and is the largest provider of custom coursepacks in North America.
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Kindle Store gets Exclusive Titles from Wylie Backlist no comments
Amazon announced today that Odyssey Editions – a new imprint of The Wylie Agency – will be publishing 20 iconic books from the publisher’s backlist. This is the first time that these titles have been published digitally, and they will be exclusive to the Kindle Store for two years.
The 20 ebooks from Odyssey Editions:
- "London Fields" by Martin Amis
- "The Adventures of Augie March" by Saul Bellow
- "Ficciones" (Spanish Edition) by Jorge Luis Borges
- "Junky" by William Burroughs
- "The Stories of John Cheever" by John Cheever
- "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
- "Love Medicine" by Louise Erdrich
- "The Naked and the Dead" by Norman Mailer
- "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov
- "The Enigma of Arrival" by V.S. Naipaul
- "The White Castle" by Orhan Pamuk
- "Portnoy’s Complaint" by Philip Roth
- "Midnight’s Children" by Salman Rushdie
- "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" by Oliver Sacks
- "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson
- "Rabbit Run" by John Updike
- "Rabbit Redux" by John Updike
- "Rabbit is Rich" by John Updike
- "Rabbit at Rest" by John Updike
- "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh
These titles are available at the Kindle Store
This is a nice step in the right direction. All publishers should be publishing their backlists digitally. Physical stores can only stock so many pbooks on their shelves, and this is a way for publishers and authors to be making money from their backlists and out-of-print titles, as well as providing readers with easy access to these books.
