Kobo has launched their subscription reading service Kobo Plus in Canada, three and a half years after starting with subscriptions in Holland and Belgium. The company notes, “Rakuten Kobo recognizes books as the next frontier for subscriptions in Canada. Further, Kobo has seen demand for this service in global markets.” It is priced at $9.99 a month (CA). They say that in Holland, the program brought new readers and customers to digital (or at least to their service): “60 per cent of the country’s Kobo Plus subscribers had never before purchased an a-la-carte eBook from Kobo.” They say it has […]
New Business Models
Briefs: Diversion Spins Off Radius Book Group; Marie Force Launches Publisher; and More
Diversion Publishing is launching a new self-publishing division, Radius Book Group, led by vp, business development Mary Cummings and managing editor Fiona Hallowell. Radius will sell aspiring authors packages ranging from DIY options through Ingram Spark to comprehensive publishing services. Bestselling self-published author Marie Force is launching a new contemporary romance company, Jack’s House Publishing. Force says in the announcement, “Jack’s House came about after many authors contacted me to ask when I was going to get into the publishing business.” She notes, “I had all the players already in place after four years of running my Formatting Fairies business, which I founded […]
Harvard Common Press Sold to Quarto; Put Me In the Story Expands at BN; More From Basford
Quarto has completed their acquisition of The Harvard Common Press, as of February 1, adding hundreds of titles to their backlist along with over 25,000 recipes. HCP will become an imprint of Quarto, with editorial and production run out of Quarto’s office in Beverly, MA and editorial director Dan Rosenberg keeping the same role. Harvard Common Press president and publisher Bruce Shaw and associate publisher Adam Salomone will no longer have daily operational positions, but will “remain in advisory roles with Quarto.” The two are partners at Salt Venture Partners, investing in food-related start-ups, and co-founders of The Food Loft. Shaw says in the announcement, “I’m pleased […]
Scouting the Bad and the Very Bad in Kindle’s Reader-Powered Platform
Katy Waldman at Slate has a look at some of the featured titles in the recent Kindle Scout initiative, where readers are supposed to sample excerpts from unpublished manuscripts and recommend them for publication through Kindle Press. Her theme is: “This kind of writing is unabashed. It is breathtakingly, gloriously bad. And it raises a question: What do we mean when we talk about bad books?” In particular, Waldman writes, “I am not here to talk about the democratizing heroism of self-publishers and crowdsourcers. Or about the growing centrality of the consumer, who is able to customize her reading experience by […]
Scribd Adds Audiobooks to Their Subscription Plan
Scribd substantially expanded their subscription reading service on Thursday morning, adding a collection of more than 30,000 audiobooks titles, available for unlimited streaming and downloading as a part of their regular $8.99 subscription service, alongside the ebooks they have offered since October 2013. In contrast to the ebooks, which are mostly backlist titles, the audiobook catalog includes frontlist titles as well from many of the participating publishers. The biggest named participants are HarperCollins and also Scholastic from the trade publishing side (so the Hunger Games trilogy is there), as well as Blackstone Audio and Naxos. The audio collection is supplied […]
Amazon Rolls Out Kindle Unlimited In UK, At £7.99 A Month
On Wednesday Amazon launched their Kindle Unlimited subscription program in the UK, charging more on a relative basis, priced at £7.99 a month (or a little over $13, or 30 percent more than the US version). The offering is otherwise very similar to the US version, featuring a licensed deal for Harry Potter and a pay-by-the-book deal for Hunger Games, but no Lord of the Rings (which is controlled by Harper in the UK, rather than Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Most of the books are KDP self-published titles and Amazon Publishing books, with some titles from independent, non-agency UK publishers. We […]