In the UK, Faber has entered in an audio co-publishing venture with Canongate (which acquired audio publisher CSA in 2010). Canongate will produce and sell audio editions of up to about a dozen Faber titles annually, the Bookseller reports. (Faber will continue to publish audio versions of their poetry books independently.) In the US, Hay House has started a blogger review program, BookNook, that is similar to Thomas Nelson’s Book Sneeze initiative. They aim to create “one central place for bloggers to share their thoughts and experiences about Hay House products,” providing free review copies in exchange for “an honest […]
Audio
Audible Launches $20 Million Fund for Authors, and Services to Promote their Audiobooks
Audible.com is announcing a fund comprising $20 million to be paid out directly to authors (and not shared with publishers), accompanied by a set of marketing and merchandising services. In fact, the fund is a reward for enrolling in the Audible Author Services program. The company says “the honorarium is a direct payment from us to you, a way for us to reward you for promoting your work.” Any author who registers and has an audiobook available via Audible in the US or UK becomes eligible to share in the fund, which pays the author an additional $1 “honorarium” for […]
Corporate: Indigo Raises Co-Op Again; Dutch Investor Buys Selexyz; and More
When Canada’s dominant book chain Indigo made comprehensive changes to its co-op program last year, local publishers were not exactly happy. Now they are upset again over further co-op increases that went into effect on April 1, but are only beginning to register with some publishers. Quill & Quire reports that Indigo “raised co-op fees from 4 to 5 per cent for books sold online or in its brick-and-mortar stores – an increase of 25 per cent.” In an email to publishers and distributors obtained by Q&Q, Indigo vice-president for adult trade Bahram Olfati said the co-op fee increase was […]
Audible Lines Up Film Stars for Audiobooks; Hay House Launches Film/TV Divisions
Audible is going Hollywood, enlisting a number of accomplished actors–including Annette Bening, Colin Firth, Dustin Hoffman and Kate Winslet–to narrate a new line of audiobooks, featuring many classic works selected by the performers. Scheduled for release beginning in early 2012, the offerings include these pairings: Kim Basinger (The Awakening by Kate Chopin) Annette Bening (Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolfe) Jennifer Connelly (The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles) Colin Firth (The End of the Affair by Graham Greene) Anne Hathaway (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum) Dustin Hoffman (Being There by Jerzy Kosinski) Samuel L. Jackson (A Rage […]
Audible Looks to Jump-Start Audiobook Production with Entrepreneurial ACX
After a series of industry previews, Audible.com has gone live today with an ambitious new platform designed to both significantly expand the number of published books available in audio and to give rightsholders and audiobook talent a bigger stake in process. Called ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange), the site is a marketplace for matching the vast pool of books not yet adapted for audio with acting talent and producers, in an entrepreneurial model that lets participants on both sides of the equation work at fixed-rate buyouts or a 50/50 share of back-end proceeds with no upfront costs. Royalties escalate from 50 […]
Amazon Will Finally Work with OverDrive to Let Library Patrons “Borrow” Kindle Books
Library ebook lending looks ready to receive a significant lift as Amazon announced this morning that they will finally work with Overdrive to enable Kindle ebooks for library patrons. The program launches at an unspecified date “later this year.” They say the initiative will work on all Kindle devices as well as of their free ereading apps. (Up until now, Amazon’s Kindle files have been incompatible with Overdrive’s system, which relies on EPUB and Adobe Content Server–neither of which is supported by Amazon.) If a library user creates annotations or bookmarks in a borrowed ebook, those will be preserved by […]