After months on the block, with a number of bidders dropping out and an asking price that nobody wanted to meet, RCS is officially selling French publisher Flammarion to Gallimard — the front-runner all along — for 251 million Euros, nearly 50 million below that original asking price. Reuters reports that RCS will receive about 230 million from the sale, and will post a consolidated gain of 88 million euros. The deal is expected to close in September. A number of publishers met with the European Commission in Brussels Tuesday to call for the streamlining of taxes on ebook purchases […]
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eNews: Warner Bros. Scripts Turned Into eBooks; DemiBooks’ New Children’s Appstore; and More
Warner Bros. announced it would sell four of the movie studio’s classic scripts — CASABLANCA, BEN-HUR, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, and NORTH BY NORTHWEST — as enhanced ebooks for Kindle, Nook, and iPad. It’s the first part of a large-scale initiative in which they hope to turn hundreds of scripts into ebooks. The WSJ reports each title will retail for $10 and “includes the film’s actual shooting script and rare historical documents from the Warner Bros. archives.” President of Warner Bros. digital distribution Thomas Gewecke told the paper the company “had been looking at a variety of ideas to leverage […]
Inkling Launches New Authoring Tools With Habitat
At Tools of Change Tuesday morning e-textbook firm Inkling announced the details of its new free cloud-based authoring tool Habitat, which will allow for the creation of interactive digital content for tablet computers and for the Web when it’s widely available later this year. Habitat will allow publishers to produce and publish content that includes guided tours, 3-D exhibits, interactive quizzes, and high definition video, in addition to text. Inkling calls Habitat the “only strictly schematic publishing platform” as part of its attempt to employ a software-based (and evidently, more rapid) model of publishing. But of course it joins a […]
eDeals: Google + Pottermore; Cookstr eBooks; Princeton Review Adds eBooks; Lee Child’s eStory; Gollancz to Bring Thousands of Sci-Fi/Fantasy Titles Back as eBooks
Google announced that their Google Checkout will be the “preferred third-party payment platform” for Pottermore.com (which will also accept debit and credit cards). The site will use YouTube for global video broadcasts and the Harry Potter ebooks will work just fine via Google eBooks in the US. Google blog Cookstr is looking to monetize digital recipe collections with the launch via the iBookstore of recipe sets of varying sizes–offering 10 recipes for $.99; 50 recipes for $3.99; and 250 recipes for $9.99. Starting with Rozanne Gold’s 1-2-3 Collection, they have 31 different options on sale at once. The company says […]
Scholastic’s Social Network for Readers, Peroozing Favorite Novelists’ Recommendations, and More
Scholastic launched a social networking site “for readers around the world,” called YouAreWhatYouRead.com. In addition to building community around lists of favorite books they call Bookprints–with a stream of comments, news and reviews to be added soon–the site features celebrity Bookprints from 125 notables, including Scarlett Johansson Jodi Picoult, Malcolm Gladwell, Judy Blume, Bill Clinton, and others. Pitched for readers of all ages, it includes a separate community for younger readers “that provides kid friendly information about books and other activities.” Scholastic executive Maggie McGuire says in the announcement the site is “a celebration of the books that bind us […]