Initial accounts of overall retail sales on Black Friday were positive, with ShopperTrak estimating that sales were up 6.6 percent, setting a new record total and recording the strongest year-over-year gain since 2007. On Small Business Saturday, the Obama family went shopping at Kramerbooks on Dupont Circle, reportedly buying The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever, Tails, The Tiger’s Wife, The Phantom Tollbooth, Zen Shorts, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Descent into Chaos: the United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. For Cyber Monday, Open […]
eNews
Penguin Adds Opaque Statement Indicating Kindle Lending Restoration May Be Temporary
On Wednesday afternoon Penguin issued another statement on the Kindle library lending issue that showed further disagreement with OverDrive. The supplier had said earlier in the day (reported in Lunch) that Kindle lending for Penguin books had been restored–without noting that this was a temporary restoration “until the end of the year.” The two companies also disagree on exactly how the Kindle lending was suspended in the first place. OverDrive had said Monday they were “instructed to suspend availability of new Penguin eBook titles from our library catalog and disable ‘Get for Kindle’ functionality for all Penguin eBooks.” But Penguin’s […]
Kindle Lending Library Reaches Out to KDP Authors–With Cash
When Kindle launched their free ebook library for their prime customers–now called Kindle Owner’s Lending Library to clearly communicate it is for device owners only–it included titles from Amazon Publishing (138 by our exclusive count) but no self-published ebooks from the KDP program. As of December 1, Amazon intends to add KDP titles to the lending library. Authors approached by Amazon to participate say the company is offering a chance to share in a large pool of licensing cash–but requiring complete exclusivity in exchange. The money pool, according to those familiar with the offer, is $500,000 a month over the […]
Penguin Returns to Kindle Lending
OverDrive announced on its blog Wednesday that Kindle availability for Penguin eBooks already in library catalogs “has been restored as of this morning. Penguin titles are available for check out by Kindle users and the Kindle format will be available for patrons who are currently on a waiting list for a Penguin title. This does not affect new releases, which remain unavailable.” They added, “At this time, no further information is available. We hope to share more details in the near future.” Separately, Early Word asked Random House about their current view on library ebook lending, and received this tepid […]
An Off-Catalog Pelecanos Book, Priced for Discovery
Reagan Arthur Books is trying an interesting strategy with an unexpected George Pelecanos novel, which they will publish next January 23. The 272-page page WHAT IT WAS is a stand-alone, which will be published as a 99-cent ebook and a $9.99 trade paperback. And for staunch fans, they are producing a limited-edition, signed and slip-cased hardcover for $35, with all three editions releasing at the same time. (The new title was quietly listed on bookselling sites in August, though we didn’t realize the interesting price promotion strategy until this week.) Arthur says they wanted Pelecanos’ next regularly-published hardcover to be […]
Penguin Cancels Kindle Library Lending, For Now–Will Others Follow?
Overdrive announced Monday that Penguin “instructed” them to “disable ‘Get for Kindle’ functionality for all Penguin ebooks” that Overdrive supplies to libraries, in what the service calls an “abrupt change.” Penguin also told OverDrive “it is reviewing terms for library lending of their ebooks” and has suspended availability to libraries for the new ebook releases. Kindle users first started reporting the disappearance of Penguin titles from participating libraries on Saturday. Penguin’s own statement was more coy than OverDrive’s, insisting that “due to new concerns about the security of our digital editions, we find it necessary to delay the availability of […]