Amazon announced another changed in how they will compensate self-published authors who participate in the Kindle Unlimited subscription payment pool. In July the system switched from paying for every download to paying based on pages read — and now those per-page rates are becoming much more complicated, international, and opaque. Starting with the November fund payments, Amazon writes, “payouts per country will differ based on local country factors” as take “marketplace differences into account.” In other words, as Kindle Unlimited has rolled out to multiple countries — most recently India, where the subscription price is the equivalent of $3 a […]
Archives for October 2015
Subscription Service Blloon Closes
It’s no big surprise that European-based subscription service Blloon is officially closing at the end of October. The subscription program was spun out of ebook technology provider and platform txtr — which went insolvent earlier this year, before pieces of the operation and some of its personnel were picked up by retailer Media-Saturn — and both Blloon and txtr were run by Thomas Leliveld. The public notice says, “We haven’t been able to align with our partners to create a sustainable business.” An email from Leliveld to publishing partners notes their original model of providing limited reading based on points “was not […]
PW’s 10 Best of 2015
Also following tradition, PW goes early with their list of the 10 best books of 2015. Always a little quirky, this year’s list leans male (seven of the titles) and international (including three novels in translation): Nonfiction Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau) The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, Andrea Wulf (Knopf) Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan (Penguin Press) The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson (Graywolf) Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, Timothy Snyder (Tim Duggan Books) Fiction The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante, trans. by Ann Goldstein (Europa) Delicious Foods, James Hannaham (Little, Brown) Imperium, Christian Kracht, […]
Indie Next Lists Will Feature Highlighted Backlist “Revisit & Rediscover” Picks
The ABA announced a new initiative “to showcase and support favorite backlist titles,” as selected by panels of independent booksellers. Starting with the December picks, the Indie Next monthly and kids’ lists will feature the Revisit & Rediscover selections. For December’s Indie Next List, they are touting: Wild Swans, by Jung Chang (Touchstone) About Grace, by Anthony Doerr (Scribner) Lost in the City, by Edward P. Jones (Amistad) The January 2016 list features: Plainsong, by Kent Haruf (Vintage) The Devil’s Highway, by Luis Alberto Urrea (Back Bay Books) Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese (Vintage) And February will highlight: The Fire Next Time, […]
People
Mitch Hoffman will join the Aaron Priest Literary Agency as senior agent on November 30. Previously he was executive editor at Grand Central Publishing. Priest said in the announcement: “Mitch is a superb and caring editor with great knowledge of all aspects of the publishing business. All of these qualities will serve to make him one of the more significant agents in our profession.” Scholastic announced a number of recent promotions. In corporate communications, Morgan Baden is promoted to vp, internal communications and social media; Anne Sparkman moves up to director, corporate communications; and Erin Davis is promoted to creative director, […]
In Supreme Court Filing, Apple Claims Appeals Court Decision “Will Harm Competition And The National Economy”
Per the prescribed deadline, Apple filed its petition for a writ of certoriari with the Supreme Court late Wednesday, asking it to review the 2-1 decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the verdict finding Apple guilty of antitrust violations in launching the iBooks Store. Though the docket does not reflect the updated filing, we were able to obtain the 297-page brief, which expands upon the 7-page summary Apple filed with the court last month, with 35 pages of arguments, and many more pages of appendices. (Note this story is based a quick read of that filing.) Apple’s formal […]