The University of California Press has decided to suspend the publication of its poetry book series New California Poetry after it publishes 3 titles in 2012. Director Alison Mudditt told the LA Times that the decision came about because of budget cuts – it expects to see 10 percent in funding reductions from the university – as well as the “shifting marketplace” for books and publishing. LAT The Office of Fair Trading has been in the headlines of late because of mounting opposition to Amazon’s acquisition of The Book Depository (so much so that UK trade organizations are taking the […]
eNews: BookLamp’s Recommendation Engine Enlists Publishers; UMich Press Serializes Novels on Facebook; and More
Book recommendation service BookLamp will reportedly launch in August after a lengthy development period, with more than 20,000 available books from Random House, Kensington and other publishers. The idea is to search through full-text books and analyze them in order to make reading recommendations. Ceo Tom Stanton told Mashable that he doesn’t anticipate selling books or advertising on the site. BookLamp’s efforts at text analysis and recommendations have been underway since 2008, focused on science fiction and fantasy books to start, and according to site postings have mostly lacked a sufficiently large database to search against and analyze. A video […]
Where Will Borders Shoppers Take Their Dollars?
Now that Borders is moving towards liquidation, we thought it might be useful to look back at our special item from last month featuring consumer survey data elicited exclusively for Publishers Lunch readers by Bowker PubTrack Consumer on where regular Borders customers might take their book-purchasing dollars if the chain goes out of business. Some of the results are likely to differ now, since the data comes from the roughly 10 percent of surveyed book buyers who indicated buying a book from Borders in April, but it addresses critical questions on the minds of all publishers and authors right now. […]
Borders Will Submit Liquidation Plan to Court; Has Bid for 30 Stores; Kobo Objects to Any Sale of Their Stock or Services
Borders announced Monday afternoon that “in the absence of a formal proposal from a going concern bidder, it did not require an auction” as scheduled for Tuesday. The company will submit for court-approval on Thursday the liquidation plan from Hilco and Gordon Brothers. Borders ceo Mike Edwards said “we are saddened by this development” in a statement, but wants to make sure you know it’s not their fault. “We were all working hard towards a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry, eReader revolution, and turbulent economy, have […]
eNews: Kindle Textbook Offers; Sony Denies Exec’s Comments on New Devices
Amazon is entering another new market with Kindle Textbook Rental, making available textbooks to students at up to 80 percent off list prices for a usage period of between 30 and 360 days (paying only for the time needed, with the option to extend the rental period or buy the textbook outright.) “Tens of thousands” of textbooks from Wiley, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis are available through the program, whose announcement would seem to anticipate Amazon’s long-rumored tablet plans for the fall. Release Meanwhile, it seems as if Sony has some explaining to do in-house, as the company denied VP […]
International News: PA and IPG Want to Block Amazon/Book Depository Merger; Competition Commission on the Pearson/REDGroup Case; and More
As expected, the UK Publishers Association and Independent Publishers Guild are asking the government to block Amazon’s purchase of The Book Depository, calling for a wider public investigation into the competition between the online and bricks and mortar bookselling market. What’s less expected is that their request is a joint one, which PA ceo Richard Mollet said in a statement “reflects the strength of feeling among publishing companies that the OFT should block this merger.” Bookseller Meanwhile, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will conduct an ‘informal review’ of Pearson’s proposed acquisition of REDGRoup Retail’s online business. The closing […]