One of the year’s interesting developments has been the emergence of some kind of market for short-form works sold through ebookstores. Among the highest visibility new players in this particular market is Byliner.com–which launched with a splash in April with free downloads of Jon Krakauer’s Three Cups of Deceit. Co-founder John Tayman reports at least vaguely on Byliner’s results so far in essay for the winter issue of Neiman Reports–which focuses on “how does a journalist make the journey to author” and includes numerous articles of interest. (Short-form reports also discuss The Atavist and Politico’s collaboration with Random House.) It’s […]
eNews
VAT Remains Taxing In Europe
EU nations continue to wrestle with disparities in sales tax on print and ebooks, and a general need to raise public revenues. On January 1, France will officially defy EU law and lower the VAT on ebooks to match the tax on printed books. That rate has been 5.5 percent–but is scheduled to rise to 7 percent in the new year, which is causing uproar from France’s network of over 3,000 independent bookstores. (VAT on most goods in 19.6 percent.) France24 In the UK, however, the House of Commons was told that under EU law the country cannot reduce or […]
Author News: Stockett, Ailes, Mina
Author of The Help Kathryn Stockett reports to CBS’s The Early Show on her new novel-in-progress. Originally due at the beginning of 2011, Stockett says “It’s not ready! But I’m working on it.” The new book “takes place during the Roaring ’20s in Oxford, Mississippi. … It’s about a group of women who have absolutely no marketable skills. We, as women of the 2000s, we go to college and prepare ourselves for the world. But these women did not, and the men fall away, so they have to find a different way to earn a living.” CBS Fox News head […]
eNews: Google Sponsors Library eBooks; Nook Update (and Snacks); Winchester and Touch Press Launch Skulls; and More
In the UK, Google is sponsoring free access for all public libraries to two “virtual bookshelves” of 20 digital books from Bloomsbury’s Public Library Online. One collection is 10 Shakespeare plays, with versions from Bloomsbury’s Arden Shakespeare; the other is a selection of 10 books on the environment. Libraries can enroll for the offer in January, and the access will be available for a year, through February 2013. Libraries that already have licensed these collections from PLO “will be able to pick from a range of alternate digital shelves.” Barnes & Noble’s promised software upgrade for their Nook Color units […]
eNews
The Politico collaboration with Random House has its first ebook bestseller in PLAYBOOK 2012: THE RIGHT FIGHTS BACK by Mike Allen and Evan Thomas, which hit the NYT eBook Nonfiction list at No. 8 and the Combined Nonfiction list at No. 32. By our tracking, this is just the second e-only title to make the NYT’s eBook Nonfiction list, after Sarah Burleton’s WHY ME?, a self-published memoir of an abusive childhood that has been holding steady on the bottom half of the list since mid-October. The short-form Politico work is priced at $2.99. Self-published digital titles, inexpensive short-form works and […]
We Didn’t Start the Fire…
After a premature wave of reports declaring the Kindle Fire a raging success before any consumers tried it, the press is now moving to the expected next phase of coverage: discovering the problems of a first-generation device. Today’s NYT has it both ways: Fire “is less than a blazing success with many of its early users” but “it would be foolish to underestimate Amazon.” Those poor early buyers “seem to have bought it on a mixture of faith and hype.” Gosh, where would that have come from? The news in the article is that, “in less than two weeks, [Amazon […]