After a series of industry previews, Audible.com has gone live today with an ambitious new platform designed to both significantly expand the number of published books available in audio and to give rightsholders and audiobook talent a bigger stake in process. Called ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange), the site is a marketplace for matching the vast pool of books not yet adapted for audio with acting talent and producers, in an entrepreneurial model that lets participants on both sides of the equation work at fixed-rate buyouts or a 50/50 share of back-end proceeds with no upfront costs. Royalties escalate from 50 […]
eNews
eNews: iFlow Reader Shuts Down, Blaming Apple’s New Policy; Kobo eReader Price Drop; and More
In advance of any official reckoning between Apple’s reinterpreted rule requiring “that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase,” the makers of the iFlow Reader app are angrily throwing in the towel. BeamItDown Software publisher Philip Huber announced that the company and its ereading app will cease operations on May 31. They launched their ebookstore in December 2010 and say in a posted letter to customers that “two months later, Apple changed the rules and put us […]
Random UK Goes Agency; Ed Victor Launches Publisher; and More eNews
There is a lot of ebook news from the UK, today. Random House UK has adopted the agency model, following a similar move at the beginning of March in the US. As of today, the company’s approximately 6,000 ebook titles are available for sale through Apple’s iBookstore in the UK as a result. Random UK spokesperson Maureen Corish says “We were the only major English language trade publisher not to have our ebooks on sale via the iBookstore, so today’s announcement sees us forging a new commercial relationship as part of our commitment to increasing consumer choice and making our […]
Thoughts from Makinson, Meacham
The WSJ interviews Penguin CEO John Makinson. On self-published Kindle bestsellers priced at $2.99 or less, Makinson says, “This is a new market that can’t exist economically in print. You can’t manufacture, ship and store a book at those prices. But we as publishers probably need to participate. We’ll look at new content that maybe we can popularize in different ways. We’ll also look at our backlist. Maybe there are customers for westerns at $1.99. What we need to be really careful of is ensuring that this new market doesn’t compromise the sales of Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, Patricia Cornwell […]
S&S Debuts Book Battle, a “Social Voting” Facebook App
S&S announced a new Facebook app called Book Battle, which they describe as a “social voting application” and “a fun way to engage with their favorite books and authors on all manner of book-related topics” but which the NYT more succinctly describes as “a literary version of hotornot.com.” The inaugural matchup features two YA novels by Cassandra Clare, The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices, and app users will be able to vote on their favorite of the two books, and which characters they prefer. Other match-ups at launch will feature the UGLIES series by Scott Westerfield and the NIGHT […]
Dorchester Tells Now-Disbanded Unofficial Creditors Committee It Does Have a Plan
Early last week Dorchester enthusiastically announced that they will resume publishing “a full trade line” next month. That hopeful message was preceded by a vote of no confidence from the authors whom Dorchester still is said to owe royalties (and in some cases, reversions of rights as well). On April 22, representatives of a group of authors and publishing professionals who had formed unofficial unsecured creditors committee told Dorchester they were disbanding. “The Unofficial Committee has taken this step,” said the representative from law firm Lowenstein Sandler in an email obtained by us, “because it has determined that Dorchester will […]