In Germany, von Holtzbrinck and Verlagsgruppe Random House are backing a new ebook subscription venture, Skoobe, where customers pay 9.99 euros a month to borrow 2 ebooks in that 30-day period (with unlimited access to all content only between now and March 1, 2013.) Publishers supplying content so far include Droemer, DVA, Fischer, Goldmann, Heyne, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Lübbe, Luchterhand and Rowohlt. The Skoobe app is available for free for iOS devices, with an Android version to come at a later date. Penguin and the Economist (both owned by Pearson) are joining forces to publish a collection of reports entitled […]
Financing/Start-Ups
eNews: Open Source Textbooks from Rice University; Author Solutions Adds eBook Distribution Service; Hocking’s Market Share, and More
Rice University has launched OpenStax College, which will offer free, open-source course materials for five common introductory classes in biology, astronomy, and physiology. OpenStax is funded by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the 20 Million Minds Foundation and the Maxfield Foundation, and the program hopes to capture 10 percent of the textbook market that, in turn, would save students $90 million over the next five years. Inside Higher Ed reports that “In the past, open-source materials have failed to gain traction among some professors; their accuracy could be difficult to confirm […]
People, Awards, Etc.
Molly Barton will move up to global digital director at Penguin as of December 1. She takes over from Dan Ruffino, who is returning home to Australia. At HarperCollins, Beth Silfin has been promoted to the newly created position of vp, deputy general counsel, responsible for overseeing the contracts department in working directly with literary agents on contracts and rights negotiations. As a result of the change in how the legal and contracts department is organized, vp, associate general counsel Tom Ward will leave the company after more than 15 years. In addition, Cindy DiTiberio has been promoted to senior […]
eNews: Amazon Augmented Reality App; La Vanguardia’s New eBookstore; and More
Though Amazon’s ebook lending service for Prime members is the big story for the day, they also launched another service (through subsidiary A9.com) worth remarking upon. Flow Powered by Amazon is a free augmented reality iPhone app that, when pointed in the direction of any good with a UPC barcode (like video games, DVDs and books) will display Amazon product information, including the option to play multimedia content and read customer reviews. Release La Vanguardia, Spain’s 4th largest newspaper (and the top newspaper in Barcelona, where most of Spanish book publishing is located) announced on Wednesday that it is launching […]
eNews: Wiley Sues 27 BitTorrent Users Over Piracy; New Funding For Educational App Publisher Mindshare; and More
Last week Wiley filed suit in Manhattan federal court against 27 John Doe defendants who illegally downloaded various FOR DUMMIES titles from Ukraine-based Torrent website demonoid.me on October 18 and 19. The John Does are identified for now only by their IP addresses, all within the state of New York. Wiley claims in the suit that these defendants “are contributing to a problem that threatens the profitability of Wiley. Although Wiley cannot determine at this time the precise amount of revenue that it has lost as a result of peer-to-peer file sharing of its copyrighted works though BitTorrent software, the […]
Dzanc Aims to rEprint Over 500 Literary Titles Over the Next Year
Independent non-profit publisher Dzanc Books is another player gearing up to publish a significant line of classic and backlist works in ebook form. Deal-watchers will have noticed that the publisher has been listing some of those acquisition recently in our deal reports, but publisher Dan Wickett says the scope of the project is far larger than the reports would indicate. Dzanc’s rEprint series has “well over a hundred titles contracted for and in-process” with deals in process for a hundred more, and a goal of reissuing more than 500 literary titles “over the course of the next year.” Originated by […]