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 […]
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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 […]
Some Numbers of Self-Published eBooks
The Washington Post has a piece on the ebook self-publishing “gold rush,” but they include some balancing facts as well. For all the stories of impressive success, Smashwords founder Mark Coker says, “We have less than 50 people who are making more than $50,000 per year. We have a lot who don’t sell a single book.” Amazon’s Jeff Belle concurs: “There are a lot of books, even low-priced, on Kindle that are not selling at all.” Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble says PubIt, launched in October, features 14,500 authors and 90,000 titles (some of which come from Smashwords and others like […]
The Week In eBook Sales
Publishers reported a lot of ebook numbers this week. Just to line them all up together: Hachette Book Group USA 22 percent HarperCollins US 19 percent Simon & Schuster (worldwide) 17 percent $26 million Harlequin 13.6 percent $15.7 million (CA) HarperCollins (worldwide) 11 percent Random House UK 8 percent Hachette UK 5 percent Simon & Schuster UK 3 percent (approximately)