Walter Isaacson discussed his forthcoming book THE INNOVATORS with Slate publisher Jacob Weisberg Friday morning at BEA. The book, which traces the lineage of technological innovation from Ada Lovelace (“I didn’t know much about her until my daughter introduced me”), Charles Babbage and Alan Turing to the founders of Intel to Twitter’s Ev Williams, was an antidote to his biography of Steve Jobs. “Almost every great innovator in the book had a great collaborator,” Isaacson said, adding he wanted to show “three to four great types of leaders” as opposed to the singular, uncompromising vision of Jobs. “People would come […]
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ABA’s Teicher Says “The Book Industry Is Being Held Hostage” By Amazon; Celebrates Indies’ Gains
ABA ceo Oren Teicher addressed the organization at their annual membership meeting on Thursday afternoon in an enthusiastic vein: “I could not be more pleased to be able to reiterate – the indie bookstore resurgence has continued.” At the same time, he noted how “the aggressive discounting and strong-arm tactics of the dominant online retailer continue to cause havoc. Its recent bullying assault of a major publisher is just the latest example of a unilateral and shortsighted strategy. To put it plainly: the book industry is being held hostage by a company far more interested in selling flat screen TV’s, […]
BEA Data: BookBub Survey Shows Promotion Buyers Are Regular Power Readers
Josh Schanker of fast-growing BookBub presented some data intended to profile “price-sensitive ebook readers” at a BEA panel, based on a random survey of thousands of BookBub members earlier this month. The company “believes BookBub members are representative of bargain readers as a whole.” By their account, bargain ebook buyers are female (84 percent), 45 or older (70 percent); empty-nesters (58 percent); with higher-than-average income (64 percent); who read four or more books a month (59 percent). And most of them buy regularly-priced ebooks (77 percent) as well as discounted ones. Interestingly, their “platform share” is 49 percent Kindle; 26 […]
At BEA, Booksellers Further Contemplate Bundling
The closest thing to an opening keynote program on a generally quiet conference day at BEA was an afternoon panel on The Future of Brick and Mortar Retailers — moderated by Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks and featuring John Ingram of Ingram Content Group; Joyce Meskis of The Tattered Cover; Michael Tamblyn of Kobo; Mike Hesselbach of Readerlink; and Oren Teicher of the ABA. The session’s applause line came at the end, when Teicher reminded everyone, “We want to make books of all publishers equally available, all the time.” And the session’s laugh line when Tamblyn followed up by noting Kobo […]
Fall/Winter BEA Book Buzz Preview: Fiction
As usual, our free Buzz Books samplers both open with Sarah Weinman’s broader surveys of over 100 notable books from the forthcoming season. We’ll be running portions of those overviews the next few days to help round out your BEA radar — and you can read the complete previews anytime in the new editions of Buzz Books. Download yours now from any major ebookstore — including Kindle, iBookstore, or Nook — or get the “trade edition” here as an EPUB or through NetGalley or Edelweiss. With thousands of downloads already, it’s the “big book” of BEA, letting you grab 30 […]
Target Plans eBooks, with Librify
In another BEA-timed announcement, Target plans to pair with start-up Librify to offer some form of ebook club/subscription service, though an “official launch is still several months off,” USA Today reports. As a result, the details are opaque for now, with Target indicating they will reveal more this summer. “The service will be targeted at women, especially young professionals and moms of the coveted Millennial generation.” Target spokeswoman Erica Julkowski says, “We are proud to partner with Librify to offer a differentiated experience, which focuses on social connectivity and book clubs. She adds, “It is a great solution for bringing a […]