Chief Engineer for Google Books James Crawford didn’t reveal much news at his presentation Thursday morning on Seven Years of Google Book Search, but he did mention–in contrast to unsourced allegations on the interwebs recently–that he has grown the engineering team by 50 percent since Google eBooks launched in December. Google has big international hopes that most ebooks they add from around the world will be available worldwide with limited rights issues in most territories (presumably excluding English and Spanish), and Crawford pointed to cases where “the contracts between the authors and publishers are silent or ambiguous on digital rights” as […]
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Digital Accelerates At Bloomsbury, Which Announces Digital Drama Library with Faber
Bloomsbury, which is readjusting its fiscal year, reported results for the 14 months ending February 28. Since the publisher already disclosed 12-month results recently, we’ll only delve into the highlights and what’s new. Their ebook sales continue to accelerate. They were £1.5 million for all of 2010, and have now registered £1.1 million for the first two months of 2011. Chief executive Nigel Newton says in the release, “This is an exciting time for Bloomsbury: demand for digital delivery, including e-books, is increasing significantly; it will change the publishing business model creating one worldwide market. The recent organisation change is […]
Briefs: Bloomsbury & PFD Partner On Digital Imprint to Republish OOP Titles
Bloomsbury and PFD have joined forces to republish more than 500 out-of-print titles digitally beginning in September. The Bloomsbury Reader, as the venture is called, will bring back books into print from political diarist Alan Clark, Booker Prize winner Bernice Rubens, and poet & critic Edith Sitwell. Bloomsbury and PFD told the Guardian they hope other literary agencies will make use of the new service as well. 57 remaining Whitcoulls stores and five Borders shops were sold to Farmers Department Store owners the Norman family by administrator Ferrier Hodgson for an undisclosed sum. Owner David Norman told BusinessDay the company […]
Eisler’s Next John Rain Novel to Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer
At our Publishers Launch Conference Wednesday afternoon, Barry Eisler announced that, rather than self-publishing, his next John Rain novel THE DETACHMENT will be published by Amazon’s new mystery/thriller imprint Thomas & Mercer in both digital and print formats. “What Amazon has offered is everything that was so great to me about self publishing on the one hand, but everything you want from traditional publishing,” including marketing and distribution. “I get the best of both worlds,” he added. Amazon is also paying Eisler an advance, one “that was comparable to what St. Martin’s was offering in the deal I ultimately decided didn’t […]
Amazon Wants You To Know It Has a New Kindle, Too
With Kobo and Barnes & Noble having announced actual new models of ereaders, Amazon announced a new offer of their own on Tuesday night. For people who need their “special offers” on the go, now there’s a Kindle 3G version priced at $164. Kindle director Jay Marine said in the release that the 3G Special Offers, ready to ship on the day of the announcement, was created “in response to customer requests.” Among the forthcoming offers is “$1 for a Kindle book, choose from thousands of books including Water for Elephants and the Hunger Games trilogy.” In other Amazon news, the company […]
Yes, It’s A Panel On the Future of eBooks
A BEA panel convened by Google and moderated by Google Books executive Tom Turvey joined the many forums looking at “the future of ebooks.” Take this as a selection of the most provocative or interesting soundbites rather than an end-to-end chronicle of the panel: Evan Schnittman from Bloomsbury asserted that what’s selling in ebooks is what’s selling in print, which “is exposing that publishing does not know how to market ebooks yet.” He added, “let’s be honest, we’ve never marketed backlist before.”As Perseus Books Group ceo David Steinberger put it, “digital is very good for hunters, not so good for gatherers.” Later […]