A year after the showdown between Amazon and Macmillan over the publisher’s switch to agency terms that left most Macmillan titles unavailable for sale for about a week at the etailer, the companies’ joint move to make financial amends to authors has become public. In a letter from Macmillan ceo John Sargent to authors and agents, he explained their Amazon Kindle Outage Adjustment. (Most of the supplementary compensation was already paid in the prior royalty reporting period last year.) “We believe it was not fair that authors should suffer from the Amazon buy button takedown imposed on us for a […]
Archives for February 2011
Briefs: Flynn is Fighting Cancer; Judy Moody Movie Gets Summer Release; and More
Author Vince Flynn said in a note on his website that he is battling prostate cancer, after being diagnosed in November: “At the end of my last tour, I was diagnosed with Stage III metastatic prostate cancer. Just a few years ago, this diagnosis would have been a death sentence. Today, specialists are making great strides in the areas of hormone therapy and immune response, and there are several very promising drug trials that are changing the landscape of how prostate cancer is treated. My treatments are working very well, and my near term prognosis is extremely good. In other […]
Some Unclear Clarification from Apple, and a Bull Market In Speculation
Further to the original story about Sony’s Reader app being rejected by Apple for their app store, Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller provided a brief statement: “We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines. We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.” That of course raises more questions than it answers. The big one for our world is whether Apple will try to impose that requirement on existing ereader apps from the major […]
WSJ Puts Borders Bankruptcy On Slightly Slower Timetable Than Bloomberg
A quick headline and then a brief story moved by Bloomberg right before the end of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday had an outsized impact. Bloomberg wrote that Borders “may file” for bankruptcy protection “as soon as next week, according to three people familiar with the matter.” In the final 10 minutes or so of trading, the market slammed Borders shares down 35 percent, to less than 50 cents a share, continuing to fall further still in after-market trading. This morning shares were trading under 37 cents a share. On the same timetable, Barnes & Noble […]
Mohamed ElBaradei’s Book Moved Up to Late April Release
Metropolitan Books has moved up their June release of Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei’s THE AGE OF DECEPTION: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times, to an international publication date of April 26, citing “recent events and bookseller demand.” They signed the book in March 2010.
Apple Rejects Sony’s Reader App
Here is the actual news: a year late to the game, Sony finally developed a Reader app for the iOS platform, and that app has been rejected by Apple. On their web site, Sony says “with little notice, Apple changed the way it enforces its rules…. We opened a dialog with Apple to see if we can come up with an equitable resolution but reached an impasse at this time. We’re exploring other avenues to bring the Reader experience to Apple mobile devices.” Sony’s Steve Haber gave the NYT the impression that “Apple told Sony that from now on, all […]