Amazon announced yesterday that their Kindle Owners Lending Library will expand to the UK, Germany and France “later this month,” available to Prime members (as is the case in the US). They promise “over 200,000 books to borrow,” which probably means the large collection of exclusive self-published titles (and Amazon Publishing imprint books) that form the core of the program in the US, alongside the Harry Potter books in multiple languages. They promise “thousands of local-language titles” as well, but did not indicate how many European titles are being contributed by publisher license rather than by Amazon paying per “borrow.” […]
eNews
New Sylvia Day eBook Sells 286k Copies In First Week
Sylvia Day’s REFLECTED IN YOU, the follow-up to her bestselling BARED TO YOU, sold 286,000 ebooks in the US in the first week on sale, Berkley reported. It sells for $9.99. The publisher says the trade paperback, which does not go on sale until October 23, will have a 630,000-copy printing.
Corporate: Swann Steps Down as CEO of WHSmith; Final Suitors for McGraw-Hill Education;HarperCollins Moves to Streamline Global Publishing Infrastructure; and More
Kate Swann will step down as ceo of WHSmith on June 30 after more than nine years, the company announced Thursday. She will be replaced by current managing director of Smith’s high street business Steve Clarke. “It is an opportune time to make a change of leadership, and I am sure that the company will continue to thrive under Steve,” Swann told the FT. She didn’t elaborate further on future plans but said she “certainly doesn’t intend to retire.” The news was announced in tandem with the release of WHSmith’s preliminary full-year results, in which pre-tax profits rose 9.7 percent […]
eNews: Consortium Launches Thema Global Codes Standard
In an attempt to streamline book category and classification codes into a unified standard, a group of book industry representatives from 15 companies are joining forces on Thema, which continues the work already begun by the iBIC project jointly owned by Nielsen and the Book Industry Communication. Both entities donated the iBIC intellectual property to Thema’s board of directors for the creation of the global standard. For now, Thema will function alongside such national book-categorization standards as BIC, BISAC, and CLIL, but the plan is to move all involved markets, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Spain, and […]
Social Reading Company Tries Again with Book Locker–Will They Get Locked Out?
With an opaque TOC Frankfurt appearance and vague press release, founder of struggling social-reader-and-more company ReThink Books Jason Illian announced his expanded BookShout! site from Frankfurt. Yes, it still has social reading (even though iniatives for broad social reading outside the major platforms have had almost no consumer uptake); yes, he wants to be an ebookseller (with only about 100,000 titles or now, and of course no device line); plus BookShout! also aims to be a third-party universal book locker where consumers can access ebooks they bought from multiple sellers (readable via iOs and Android apps, which means usable on […]
Kobo Acquires French Digital Service Company Aquafadas; Expands Self-Publishing and Adds New Zealand Partners
Kobo has a definitive agreement under which they intend to acquire Franch-based digital services and rich media provider Aquafadas, which develops software for digital publishing to tablets and smartphones, and user-friendly software for Flash, HTML5, photo and video editing. Their AveComics is used by French publishers and other to publish comics to tablets and smartphones. Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis says, “Digital Reading is rapidly evolving now to new rich media categories. This transaction will strengthen both Kobo’s and Aquafadas position in our current markets and allow us to accelerate the growth of rich media with the Aquafadas Digital Publishing system.” […]