NPD’s DisplaySearch analysis subsidiary, which covers the entire display screen market, has begun tracking electronic paper display (EPD) shipments as a component of their quarterly reports on small and medium screens. In the recently-released report, they say EPD shipments worldwide in 2009 hit 5 million units, up from 950,000 units in 2008. By their count, Kindle comprised 66 percent of screen shipments last year, or 3.3 million units. That leaves about 1 million units for Sony, and 700,000 units for the other players. (Note that they are tracking shipments to the ereader vendors, not sales to consumers, which are presumably […]
Archives for April 2010
People and Announcements
At Random House, Vintage Espanol publishing manager Jaime de Pablos will take over the position of director being vacated by Milena Alberti as she joins the company’s corporate development team. de Pablos will report to Vintage and Anchor publisher Anne Messitte. Milkweed Editions has received underwriting from Amazon.com for the publication Fancy Beasts by Alex Lemon and Extra Indians by Eric Gansworth. OverDrive has launched their first audiobook for Apple devices, which allows library patrons to download audiobooks from participating libraries as well as purchase from retailers. (Library audiobooks expire automatically.) They already have BlackBerry, Android, and Windows Mobile. Penguin […]
LBF Attendance Down By a Third
London Book Fair officials estimated that total attendance for the ash-stricken show declined by about a third. Given that typically 45 percent of attendees are from overseas, if you presume that UK-attendance was down slightly based on cancellations, that means international attendance was likely down by two-thirds. Show director Alistair Burtenshaw sent a letter to exhibitors dangling a vague promise of making some kind of amends to exhibitors because of the impairments to the typical fair experience but no further explanation was offered for how. He wrote: “I would not want you to be under the impression that we have […]
BEA's CEO Panel Will Open Conference Day
BEA has rescheduled their “CEO Panel” discussion to make it the opening session on the morning of Tuesday, May 25 (the conference day before the show floor is open to all). For the first time, it will be the opening event for both the American Bookseller Association’s day of meetings as well as BEA’s own Big Ideas conference, bringing booksellers and the rest of the trade together in the room. Farrar, Straus publisher Jonathan Galassi will moderate a discussion of the Value of A Book, featuring: New Workman group publisher Bob MillerICM evp Esther NewbergIngram ceo Skip PrichardPenguin USA ceo […]
Oxford Launches Vertical Web Guides
Oxford University Press has launched an ambitious set of “ultimate online reading lists” under the banner of Oxford Bibliographies Online. With 50 to 100 entries per subject area–launching with sections on Classics, Islamic Studies, Criminology and Social Work, and adding ten to 12 new areas over the next year–the effort exerts the power of vetted curation over the confusion of the ever-exploding web. It’s a paid service, available for $29.95 a month. Oxford has drawn on hundreds of scholars to create an editorial board and editor-in-chief for each subject area. Each entry “provides expert recommendations through key literature on a […]
Some iBookstore Pricing Data
The folks at O’Reilly Media have ingested and arranged pricing data from the iBookstore for the top 50 sellers across the 21 subject categories. Lo and behold, the mean price the for top 10 bestsellers is a $10.66. In the highest-priced bracked, for titles ranked 21 through 30, the median price moves up to $11.81. In the fiction categories, which typically lead ebook bestseller lists, average prices for the top 10 titles in the categories look like this:Fiction & Literature: $11.84Mysteries & Thrillers: $11.02Romance: $8.64Sci-Fi & Fantasy: $9.16 The highest mean prices are found consistently in “cookbooks, food & wine,” […]