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 […]
New Business Models
Digital Briefs: Kobo In Holland, Public Radio/TV eBook Premiums, and More
Kobo has had a Dutch ebookstore since early 2012, launched in cooperation with local retailer Libris Blz, and now they have partnered with Bol.com, “the largest provider of ebooks in the Netherlands and Belgium.” BookShout has an agreement with premium supplier Forest Incentives that will enable public radio and TV stations to provide ebooks as gifts to their contributing members. Participating publishers include Harper Collins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and Workman. Open Road has published 17 ebooks of poetry by John Ashbery, 87. The NYT looks at how improvements in formatting have overcome the poet’s initial objections to how his […]
BEA Launches and Relaunches: Next Big Book (Data); Bookperk Redux; Mediander; New Strategies from Electric Lit and Coffee House Press
Music data start-up Next Big Sound has launched their second product, Next Big Book — promising to “analyze social, sales, and marketing signals to help you make smarter, braver decisions.” The “big data” service puts information from social networks as well as publicity triggers and author events together with public and private sales data into a single dashboard. The company has been working with Macmillan for the past eight months, and the NYT says the publisher will be giving both employees and authors access to the data dashboard “over the next few months.” Macmillan evp for digital publishing and strategic […]
Venture Capitalist Feld Starts Publisher
Longtime venture capitalist, co-founder of the TechStars program and author of five books (with Wiley) Brad Feld at the Foundry Group has started a publishing company. FG Press is launching with Eliot Peper’s techno-thriller UNCOMMON STOCK this month and lists about 7 forthcoming titles in all. Like some other we-know-better tech-driven presses, the books do not currently have common identifiers (like ISBNs) and are only available via the FG Press site for now. Similarly, the press’s descriptive copy relies on the standard issue publishing is broken but can be transformed with magically delicious tech dust theme. They “split everything 50/50” […]
In the UK, Harper and Foyles Dabble with Pricey Bundles
Harper has launched another modest experiment in the UK, offering bundles of print and ebook editions on 8 titles, exclusively through Foyles. The ebooks are redeemed through a printed voucher shrinkwrapped with the hardcover edition. The Bookseller reports that “Foyles said the price of the bundles will be around £5 more than buying the hardback title alone.” But that seems to compare the bundle price to the paper list price, rather than Foyles’ own selling price; the effective cost of the bundles looks to be much higher. On Foyles’ site, the bundle of Amy Tan’s Valley of Amazement at £22.99 […]
Scribd Joins the eBook Subscription Race
Scribd has officially rolled out an expanded version of their ebook subscription program, now promoted front-and-center on the site and boasting “the majority” of HarperCollins’ backlist among the available titles. Scribd’s program offers unlimited online access (and up to10 downloaded titles) for $8.99 month — including a free month’s trial. While the current deals are with US publishers, whenever rights are available the books are available to Scribd’s 80 million users across 100 countries. Harper has contributed “far more [titles] than the other two subscription deals that we did, which were about a couple of thousands titles,” ceo Brian Murray […]