Kobo is joining the ereader/tablet movement with their just-announced Vox, dubbed “the People’s eReader.” Selling for $199.99 and shipping as of October 28, it runs Android 2.3 and promises easy web browsing, e-mail, and access to “over 15,000 hot music, video and game apps.” It weighs 14.2 ounces (lighter than Nook Color or Kindle Fire), and a vibrating Kobo pulse icon signifies pages with more social activity. Kobo says it comes with three free color ebooks. Berkley/NAL has announced a digital imprint (actually they call it an “e-initial eBook imprint”) launching in January 2012, InterMix. The line will debut with […]
New Business Models
eNews: Kobo Pairs with Fnac in France; BlueFire Goes International; and More
Kobo has announced their next international ebook alliance, with France’s top bookselling chain Fnac. Set to launch “within the fourth quarter” of this year both online and in 81 Fnac stores, the bookseller has committed to having “ereading experts on hand to give personalized in-store demonstrations,” taking a cue from Barnes & Noble’s Nook boutiques. They promise “the largest catalog of ebooks in France” without specifying a number of titles on a platform that will be called “Kobo by Fnac.” (Amazon launched their Kindle store last week with about 35,000 titles in French. This time a year ago, Fnac said […]
Random House Means to Play (in Transmedia), Partnering with Blacklight
Random House continues to push deeper into the murky but promising frontiers of “transmedia.” A few months ago the RH Publishing Group’s intellectual property development group was quietly christened Random House Worlds–meant to represent their broad development of content for multiplatform implementation, across books, interactive, film, TV, mobile, and more, working with partners from various media. RH Worlds is an evolution of what started as a unit to develop videogame properties in March 2010 under director of creative development Keith Clayton. Spokesperson Theresa Zoro says they regard the unit as “a service/development area, as opposed to an imprint.” In the […]
Bloomsbury Readies Digital Distribution Service
As Perseus expands their digital distribution to agents and authors, Bloomsbury is preparing a direct competitor to Constellation, Faber Factory and other ebook distribution platforms for publishers. Launching soon, the new service, called Bloomsbury Connect, has been in development for months under the direction of managing director, group sales and marketing Evan Schnittman. It’s a companion to the Bloomsbury Reader program, announced in April, which launched last week with almost 600 titles. As Schnittman explains, Bloomsbury Connect is a “service solution,” focused on publishers, while Bloomsbury Reader is a full “publishing solution” for out-of-print titles, focused on agencies and estates. Bloomsbury Connect […]
People, Etc.
Ed Park is joining Amazon’s New York-based trade division on October 3 as a senior editor, where he will acquire and edit literary fiction. Park is a founding editor of The Believer, a former editor at the Village Voice and the Poetry Foundation, and author of the novel PERSONAL DAYS (2008). At media relations firm Cave Henricks Communications, Jessica Krakoski has been promoted to associate director of publicity. In addition, Claudia Dizenzo Mueller joins the company as publicity manager (she was at Basic Books) and Kimberly Griggs has been hired as social media coordinator. VP and publicity director Dennis Welch […]
Details on Amazon’s Prime eBooks Benefit Plan
Last week there was a new round of intensification in Amazon’s long-brewing efforts to enlist publisher participation for an ebooks free-access model as part of the benefits package for their Prime members, as we heard from multiple publishers. The WSJ ran with a brief story last night with only modest details, which may have inadvertently given the venture the appearance of broader scope than it has acquired so far. Meanwhile, core trade people we’ve spoken to on background-only have provided a colorful range of metaphors invoking pigs with wings and a frozen underworld–even as some whose businesses focus more on […]