At this morning’s Publishers Launch Frankfurt conference, Bowker’s Kelly Gallagher announced two important data initiatives. In the US, Bowker is rolling out PubTrack Digital, a service to track actual ebook unit sales for (and from) participating publishers. Bowker’s way of getting around the unwillingness so far from retailers to share data in a common system is to work with publisher’ own invoices for their ebook sales. They take each publisher’s own data and integrate it into their aggregated data pool. Since they are working from publishers’ billing accounts, that means the data lags the marketplace by roughly five weeks–but it […]
eNews
At PLC Frankfurt, Mondadori to Launch Translated eBooks In US, and More World Views
Some information and highlights from this morning’s Publishers Launch Conference, eBooks Go Global, in Frankfurt. One of the premises of today’s conference was an expectation the ebooks will lead to new ways of publishing more fluidly around the world. Riccardo Cavallero confirmed this in the morning’s opening panel of international trade executives in two announcements. “We’re going to launch our authors in English directly into English-speaking markets” in ebook form. “We will keep paper rights free,” so if their translations find a market, “we will able to convince some reluctant North American publishers” to take over the English rights. Cavellero […]
Amazon Opens Kindle Store in France
Amazon has opened a Kindle store in France at Amazon.fr with more than 35,000 titles in French (and 800,000 more, primarily in English), a French-language version of its budget Kindle for 99 Euros, and the introduction of local Kindle Direct Publishing. The store will also offer graphic novels, more than 4000 free French classics, and top French newspapers. It is their second Kindle store in a language other than English, following the German store they opened in April. “French customers are passionate about books and reading, and just as we’ve seen in the US, UK and Germany, we believe they […]
eNews: BN Pulls Graphic Novels Over DC’s Kindle Fire Deal; Crown and RealClearPolitics Partner on Campaign eBooks; and More
DC Comics’ plans to make 100 graphic novels available in digital format exclusively on the Kindle Fire did not go over well with Barnes & Noble, which should not come as much of a surprise. As a result, Bleeding Cool reports, B&N sent an email to their stores instructing them to remove editions of those graphic novels–including the popular WATCHMEN, V FOR VENDETTA, and SANDMAN–from their shelves. The books can still be ordered from BN.com. Similar to Random House’s summer announcement that it would partner with Politico to produce a number of ebooks chronicling the 2012 presidential campaign, now Crown […]
Where the eBookstores Are
With two international announcements this week and more a possibility at next week’s Frankfurt Book Fair, we’ve prepared a recap of recent international expansions of the big ebookstore platforms: Amazon launched their first non-English Kindle store in Germany in April. As part of their international expansion, the company added a general Amazon store in Spain last month (and they opened a general store in Italy in November 2010). Kindle stores are expected soon in both Spain and Italy, where advertisements have been seen for Kindle positions. Among other countries on Amazon’s horizon, Brazilian publishers have reported discussions for both a […]
Google eBooks Launch in the UK; Weltbild Adds German Readers
We’re glad we won’t have to spend the early days of the Frankfurt Book Fair wondering when Google will launch their long-expected UK ebookstore: it is live now. It looks just like the US version, except when visited from US IP addresses you mostly see blank carousels, so there is not a lot to check out. (We infer the store is IP restricted, since UK visitors report seeing a regular store display.) Strategic partner development manager Jason Hanley told The Bookseller, which has the first story on the store, that the Australian and Canadian versions will launch “soon.” As announced […]