Macmillan has fulfilled ceo John Sargent’s end-of-year promise and will start making ebooks available for library lending for the first time, beginning “before the end of the first quarter.” Macmillan will offer 1200 backlist ebooks from its crime and mystery fiction imprint Minotaur through several distributors, including at launch 3M, OverDrive, and Baker & Taylor. Each purchased title will be available for 2 years or 52 lends, whichever comes first. All of the books in the program will have the same digital list price. That price was not included in the publisher’s announcement, but InfoDocket reports they will sell for $25 […]
eNews
eNews: NYPost’s First eBook (With Harper’s Help); Apple Sells 22.9 Million iPads; Kindle Paperwhite Available in Canada; and More
The New York Post has entered the ebook market, publishing with their corporate sibling HarperCollins, starting with Tricks of the Trade by Ashley Dupre, the paper’s sex advice columnist and former escort who became famous from the Eliot Spitzer scandal. NY Post publisher Jesse Angelo said in a release the ebook, available on various platforms for $5.99, “is a unique and fun book — the perfect way for the Post to enter the market…We expect it will be the first of many Post e-books to come in partnership with HarperCollins.” Digital Book World is offering its first ebook, Finding the […]
eNews: Random Joins MyiLibrary, Book Scout (Officially), and Total Boox
Ingram will add over 36,000 titles to their MyiLibrary ebook platform in February from Random House, Inc. as well as the publisher’s distribution clients. As we were first to report last Friday, Random House formally announced their new Facebook app Book Scout, which launched last week. Random’s svp digital marketplace development Amanda Close says in the press release, “By creating BookScout, Random House is helping to encourage conversations about books on Facebook, and broaden the social discovery of books in the digital space.” Mashable covers the early beta of Total Boox, which lets users download entire books for free, and then […]
People, Etc.
At Random House, Inc., Christopher Dufault has been promoted to vp, director, international marketing and British Commonwealth sales. Fiona Kenshole has joined Transatlantic Literary Agency, where she will represent children’s authors and illustrators. Previously she was vp, development acquisition at animation studio Laika and before then, publishing director for OUP Children’s. Random House mentioned at DBW yesterday that they have soft-launched a Facebook app–BookScout–which will be formally announced and ready for outside traffic new Tuesday. Another effort to help improving discovery of new books through one of the internet’s most popular platforms, the app provides book recommendations and promises to […]
Sizing the UK eBook Market
The Bookseller obtained 2012 unit sale data on ebooks from six of the UK’s largest publishers, leading them to postulate that the total British ebook market comprised £235 million in publisher sales last year. (If their estimate is correct, it would mean that the top publishers have a much smaller share of ebook market in the UK than the US.) Reported to them by publishers (akin to AAP sales reports), Random House sold 11.2 million ebook units; Hachette 8.7 million; Harper UK 7.2 million, and Pan Macmillan 4.5 million. Some of those units were driven by the deep-discount 20-pence promotional […]
DBW: Howey Gave Up Exclusivity “Because of the Hate Mail”; Agents on Helping Clients Self-Publish
In a Thursday morning Digital Book World panel, bestselling self-published author Hugh Howey addressed why he moved from Amazon’s exclusive program–KDP Select–to distribution across multiple platforms, even though it meant reduced revenues from his Amazon sales. “I did it because of the hate mail,” Howey said. “I was getting emails from people who owned other devices” and wanted to read his book. “It was hard to explain to them the loss in revenue, but I understood the argument,” Howey noted. “You want to serve your customers; I totally support that now. It is a tricky situation for authors where they […]