Former Questia founder Troy Williams, who joined Macmillan as general manager of New Ventures in fall 2010, tells Pando Daily that Holtzbrinck has allocated something over $100 million for him to purchase “ed-tech startups that will eventually be the future of Macmillan…as Macmillan transitions out of the content business and into educational software and services.” Williams indicates to them he “plans to do five deals this year and 10 to 15 over the course of the next five years.” Acquisitions so far include Prep-U, a student “quizzing engine,” i-Clicker, a mobile classroom polling company, and most recently Educational Benchmarking, a […]
Apps/iOS
eNews: Kobo Touch Available in Japan Next Month; Callaway’s HAPPY New Venture is A Lifestyle App; and More
The Kobo Touch will be available for sale in Japan as soon as July, according to a report from the Asahi Shimbun. Rakuten ceo and chairman Hiroshi Mikitani said the company plans to price the Kobo Touch reader at around 10,000 yen ($126) or cheaper, with plans to sell 50,000 ebook titles by the end of the year. “As a Japanese company, we cannot lose (to overseas rivals),” Mikitani told the paper. “With Kobo devices, we will be able to export Japanese content. The Japanese publishing industry will become a huge content industry.” Further details will be announced at a […]
AerBook Launches Simple In-Browser Platform to Build eBooks and Apps with Visual Content, and Much More From Publishers Launch
At Monday’s Publishers Launch BEA Conference, in the Publishers Launchpad segment highlighting interesting start-ups, Ron Martinez debuted his company’s Aerbook Maker and Aerbook Cloud Publishing product. They promise to enable the creation and publishing of graphical ebooks and native apps, made right in the browser through drag-and-drop, without any code writing. Martinez said up until now “the cost and complexity has literally made whole categories have to sit out the party,” and Aerbook’s product is designed to make it affordable for publishers to adapt children’s, how-to, travel, educational, photography, or any other graphical content for ebooks and apps all at […]
HBG App Drives Facebook Book Sampling
For a while now Hachette Book Group has been talking at conferences about their internal work to harness Facebook as a way for readers to sample and share books. Wednesday the company formally launched their ChapterShare Facebook app, which makes good on that promise. The app lets authors themselves as well as HBG staff post chapters onto Facebook pages from forthcoming books. Facebook friends can read and share the samples, as well as pre-order the titles. The first two excerpts are opening chapters from James Patterson’s forthcoming novel NYPD Red (October 8) and Michael Connelly’s The Black Box (November 26). […]
eNews: Hachette Testing Pilot Library eBook Programs with Two Distributors; The Atavist Will Launch Free Content Tool; and More
Hachette is set to test pilot ebook library programs with two unnamed distributors sometime this spring, according to the ALA, which met with the publisher last week. Hachette discontinued the sale of new ebooks to libraries back in April 2010 (though backlist titles remained on offer) and the ALA believes “these pilot programs will help HBG learn more about library patrons’ interests, usage, and expectations, and help the publisher devise the best strategy to reach the widest audience of ebook readers in libraries.” The Atavist will produce a free version of its online content platform this summer, the NYT reports, […]
Christian Literary Agency Alive Communications Launches ePublishing Company, Bondfire
Leading literary agency for Christian and inspirational books Alive Communications has announced a separate “sister” epublishing enterprise, Bondfire Books. In the vein of Diversion Books (Scott Waxman), Bedford Square Books (Ed Victor), Paperless Publishing (Objective Entertainment), and Rosetta Books (Arthur Klebanoff), Bondfire is a standalone epublishing company. Following the model of other epublishing start-ups, founder Rick Christian says in the announcement they are paying “a 50 percent net royalty” and “five-year renewable terms.” (Other formal enterprises involving literary agencies include Pan Macmillan’s Bello in the UK, a revival line which launched in partnership with Curtis Brown UK, and the back-in-print […]