As we reported yesterday afternoon, many of the trade publishers with books included in Amazon’s new Kindle Lending Library did not consent to that participation and therefore had neither notified nor consulted with agents in advance about the program and its terms. (At least some of those companies specifically declined Amazon’s earlier offer to participate.) The Association of Authors’ Representatives has issued a statement on the new initiative: “The agent and author community have not been consulted about this new sort of use of authors’ copyrighted material, and are unaware of how publishers plan on compensating authors for this sort […]
eNews
Barnes & Noble Set to Launch Nook Tablet; $99 eReader with “No Annoying Ads”
Engadget has obtained a number of internal Barnes & Noble documents in advance of Monday’s Nook press conference. The materials indicate the company will launch a $249 fully-featured media tablet with specs that meet or exceed the Kindle Fire. With Amazon’s tablet releasing November 15 and Kobo’s new Vox already out, the Nook tablet it set to arrive in stores for demonstration on November 15 and be available to customers on November 16. The internal spec documents indicate it will have double the ram of Fire, a faster processor, and twice as much internal storage, at 16 GB. They are […]
Kindle-Lent, Without Consent
As publishers and agents have started to realize with exasperation today, a number of titles in the Kindle Lending Library program–including some of the bestselling, prominently-promoted titles on the program’s home page–are part of this new initiative without the consent or affirmative participation of the publishers and rightsholders. Not only that, but at least some come from companies that directly turned down Amazon’s initial offer over the past few months to license a broad selection of backlist for a flat fee. Multiple participants were only told by Amazon yesterday (or found out themselves this morning) that this was happening. How […]
eNews: Amazon Augmented Reality App; La Vanguardia’s New eBookstore; and More
Though Amazon’s ebook lending service for Prime members is the big story for the day, they also launched another service (through subsidiary A9.com) worth remarking upon. Flow Powered by Amazon is a free augmented reality iPhone app that, when pointed in the direction of any good with a UPC barcode (like video games, DVDs and books) will display Amazon product information, including the option to play multimedia content and read customer reviews. Release La Vanguardia, Spain’s 4th largest newspaper (and the top newspaper in Barcelona, where most of Spanish book publishing is located) announced on Wednesday that it is launching […]
Amazon Launches Prime eBooks Benefit Plan, Now Called Kindle Owners’ Lending Library
As we reported in September, after months of trying to enlist publisher participation in an ebook library for Amazon Prime members, the etailer has launched that initiative with a modest base of about 5,000 titles. Called Kindle Owners Lending Library, it makes available selected, mostly backlist titles, with promoted books coming from publishers including Scholastic, Norton, Bloomsbury, Grove/Atlantic, Workman/Algonquin, F+W Media, Lonely Planet, and Amazon’s own publishing imprints. Rosetta Books tells the WSJ they alone are contributing about 200 titles. None of the six largest publishers are participating (and when we discussed it with them in September, none of the companies […]
Briefs: Opening Week Sales for STEVE JOBS; The Numbers on Amazon Publishing; and More
Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs sold more than 382,000 print copies in its first week on sale in the US, with an additional 37,244 copies sold in the UK, according to Bookscan numbers obtained by the Bookseller. The numbers make STEVE JOBS the 18th bestselling book of the year after just six days on sale, based solely on the outlets Bookscan reports from. It is not known yet how many digital copies Simon & Schuster has sold so far. Amazon Publishing has released 149 titles to date from its various imprints (with at least another hundred to follow in […]