Working conditions at Amazon’s seven distribution facilities in Germany has been in the spotlight since a German TV documentary investigation aired last week. The show focused on the treatment of temporary holiday workers–who are citizens of other European countries–and cited harsh practices from black-uniformed guards employed by security sub-contractor Hensel European Security Services (hired on Amazon’s behalf by an employment agency, the BBC says). Germany’s Deutsche Welle explains, “Instead of being employed by Amazon, as initially promised, the workers are employed by a temp agency, which normally means lower wages. While working, the temp workers are subjected to strict observation […]
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Google Said to Plan Retail Stores; Reader’s Digest Files Pre-Packaged Bankruptcy
9to5Google cites “an extremely reliable source” as confirming that Google “is in the process of building stand-alone retail stores in the U.S. and hopes to have the first flagship Google Stores open for the holidays in major metropolitan areas.” The stores would sell Google-branded electronics–tablest, netbooks and phones. But the WSJ adds, “it isn’t clear when or where any stores would open, and one of the people said the Internet giant might not move forward with the plan this year.” The company already operates smaller in-store boutiques under the Chrome brand in Best Buy in the US and PCworld/Dixon’s in […]
Finally, An Internet Guy Is Reinventing Publishing
As you know, there’s a bull market for overblown startups claiming to reinvent publishing. NetMinds is the latest of those to make a media tour, with a press release timed in conjunction with today’s TOC conference and their first book set for publication in March (though the company was founded in 2011 and has announced itself previously). On the one hand, the company is somewhere between harmless and hilarious: check out their web site. Would you want to engage with a publishing enterprise that has so much trouble explaining what it does, while wrapping it in so many layers of […]
Barnes & Noble Warns of Bigger Nook Loss, and Lower Sales than Projected
Barnes & Noble continues to suffer–but the pain is coming from their shiny new growth business that isn’t really growing that much. The company said after the close of the market on Wednesday that “based on current forecasts” it “now expects its fiscal year 2013 Nook segment EBITDA loss to be greater than it was in fiscal 2012 and expects fiscal year 2013 Nook Media revenues to be less than $3 billion.” Just over a month ago, when reporting lower than expected Nook sales, BN had reduced sales expectations for Nook Media (which combines Nook and BN College) to “approximately […]
Corporate: DailyLit “Joins Forces” With Plympton: Rowman & Littlefield Reorganization
DailyLit, founded in 2006, is “joining forces” with Plympton, the original serial fiction start-up created by Jennifer 8. Lee and Yael Goldstein Love. Plympton is taking over DailyLit and aims to expand it and “bring the DailyLit experience up-to-date” for mobile devices and tablets. DailyLit founders Susan Danziger and her husband Albert Wenger (a partner at Union Square Ventures) are now investors and advisors to the combined company. DailyLit has digitally serialized almost 1,000 titles. Rowman & Littlefield reports that their book publishing sales for 2012 were $50 million, up 6 percent from 2011, while their distribution businesses NBN and […]
Inkling Announces They Have An Announcement (The Tool They Announced A Year Ago)
You may be seeing a lot of stories on the interwebs about Inkling right now. Is it because they have announced something surprising and important, or is it because they engineered an embargoed release with ahead-of-time press interviews, fiery positioning (“Inkling Takes Dead Aim at Apple and Amazon”) and a “private event” at Jazz at Lincoln Center Monday night in advance of this week’s TOC conference? The announcement is the unveiling of their tool for building media rich ebooks on their platform. The tool is called Inkling Habitat; it works with the Inkling Content Discovery Platform. The tool already exists, […]