With an opaque TOC Frankfurt appearance and vague press release, founder of struggling social-reader-and-more company ReThink Books Jason Illian announced his expanded BookShout! site from Frankfurt. Yes, it still has social reading (even though iniatives for broad social reading outside the major platforms have had almost no consumer uptake); yes, he wants to be an ebookseller (with only about 100,000 titles or now, and of course no device line); plus BookShout! also aims to be a third-party universal book locker where consumers can access ebooks they bought from multiple sellers (readable via iOs and Android apps, which means usable on […]
Archives for October 2012
Quercus to Try Again With Freestanding US Line
The UK’s Quercus will try again with a US publishing operation after their first effort, a joint venture with Sterling called Silver Oak, withered at Sterling after that company lost its ceo and some of the focus of its parent company Barnes & Noble. The new freestanding Quercus US venture will be run out of a New York office of their own and sold and distributed by Random House, aiming to launch in fall 2013. They plan to launch with 40 titles from across the Quercus UK list. When announced in September 2010, the Sterling joint venture was set to […]
Kobo Acquires French Digital Service Company Aquafadas; Expands Self-Publishing and Adds New Zealand Partners
Kobo has a definitive agreement under which they intend to acquire Franch-based digital services and rich media provider Aquafadas, which develops software for digital publishing to tablets and smartphones, and user-friendly software for Flash, HTML5, photo and video editing. Their AveComics is used by French publishers and other to publish comics to tablets and smartphones. Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis says, “Digital Reading is rapidly evolving now to new rich media categories. This transaction will strengthen both Kobo’s and Aquafadas position in our current markets and allow us to accelerate the growth of rich media with the Aquafadas Digital Publishing system.” […]
People
At OverDrive, Don Fabricant has been named general manager, education and chief sales. He previously held executive posts at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Eduventures and Thomson Learning. Suzanna Bainbridge has joined Sourcebooks as editorial manager for Sourcebooks EDU. Previously she was a development editor at Cengage Learning. In addition, Sarah Henry has been hired as a marketing associate, working on Sourcebooks new digital initiatives. She was most recently an editorial assistant at McGraw-Hill. Former Books-a-Million executive Douglas Markham followed his allegations against his former employer with a lawsuit, alleging wrongful termination due to his military service. The suit, filed October 5, […]
German Bookstores Are Down 4.7 Percent; Fnac’s French Owners Reported to Look for Sale At Any Price
Even with ebook adoption in its very early stages outside of the English-language world, brick-and-mortar bookstores all over are feeling the pressure of a changing world. As head of the Association of German Publishers and Booksellers Gottfried Honnefelder said at the opening press conference of the Frankfurt Book Fair, so far this year the German book market as a whole is down two percent, but physical bookstores are down 4.7 percent and “one of our leading retailers said 50 percent of the retail space [for books] has to be abolished.” eBooks are not yet to blame, as they are expected to double […]
Txtr Targets Cellphone Companies with Simple, Lightweight Reader Projected to Sell for Less Than 10 Euros
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, German-based txtr (part owned by 3M) announced an ebook strategy that aims to both shake up and expand the market for eInk readers and ebook sales internationally. While telecoms and cable companies worldwide have been looking at ways of entering the ereader market, txtr has a proposition to make that happen now. “We want to unlock new groups of customers” and “liberate reading,” the company said. They are launching a nearly-free ereader–projected to sell for less than 10 euros–that is also the “world’s smallest” at five inches and what they say is the lightest reader as […]