There is a lot of ebook news from the UK, today. Random House UK has adopted the agency model, following a similar move at the beginning of March in the US. As of today, the company’s approximately 6,000 ebook titles are available for sale through Apple’s iBookstore in the UK as a result. Random UK spokesperson Maureen Corish says “We were the only major English language trade publisher not to have our ebooks on sale via the iBookstore, so today’s announcement sees us forging a new commercial relationship as part of our commitment to increasing consumer choice and making our […]
Financing/Start-Ups
Penguin Introduces Book Country, A Community for Genre Fiction Writers
Today Penguin launched the public beta of Book Country, a new subsidiary company and website whose aim is to build a writing community and social network centered around genre fiction, especially romance, science fiction & fantasy, and mysteries & thrillers. Membership is free and allows writers to post unpublished manuscripts and receive detailed feedback–ranging from genre categorization to more focused comments on specific craft aspects–from community members, essentially acting as an ongoing online workshop. Starting this summer Book Country intends to generate revenue by having members to self-publish print and e-book editions of their work for a fee, and in […]
Kobo Finalizes $50 Million Financing
Kobo has closed an investment round that raised $50 million in new financing. For those paying attention, note that it’s actually the second announcement about the same funding round. In early March they disclosed new financing led by Fidelity Investments, without releasing the amount raised. Tuesday’s announcement revealed the amount, but pretended to keep Fidelity’s name of out it. Indigo invested $13 million, and current investor Cheung Kong Holdings also contributed a nominal amount, with Fidelity adding approximately $37 million. Indigo’s investment has been diluted from 58 percent down to 51 percent, so they still have control of the company. […]
Briefs: Billy Joel Cancels Memoir; Open Road Projects $10M in Sales in 2011; and More
A little more than two months before HarperCollins was due to publish Billy Joel‘s memoir The Book of Joel, with a finished cover unveiled and a manuscript draft turned in, the book deal is off. “It took working on writing a book to make me realize that I’m not all that interested in talking about the past, and that the best expression of my life and its ups and downs has been and remains my music,” he said in a statement. Spokeswoman Tina Andreadis said that Joel’s memoir “was well into the editing process, but that Joel had not approved […]
Amazon API Returns to Lendle; Inkling Gets Investment From McGraw-Hill and Pearson; and More eNews
After what turned out to be a brief hiccup, Amazon has now reinstated access to its API access for ebook lending service Lendle. The problem turned out to be Lendle’s BookSync feature, which syncs a user’s Kindle books with their Lendle account and which Amazon said violated its terms of service. Lendle has now disabled what it termed a “very useful, but non-essential feature” and added “we need to work towards a Lendle product that does not rely on APIs provided by Amazon or any other third party.” Lendle statement Interactive textbook company Inkling secured “significant minority investment” from […]
eNews: 6 Million Readers in Fourth Quarter; GoodReads Acquires Rcommendation Service
IDC has released the headline data from their fourth quarter tracking of shipments (not consumer sales) of media tablets and ereaders. They say that over 6 million ereaders shipped during the holiday quarter, over the twice the volume from the end of 2009, with a tabulation of 12.8 million ereaders shipped worldwide in 2010. IDC gives Kindle a 48 percent share for both the quarter and the year, comprising about 2.9 million units in the final quarter and 6.15 million units for 2010. Pandigital “edged out Barnes and Noble for the number 2 spot” in the last quarter, “although the […]