As Sony has rapidly declined from their former position as the No. 2 ebookseller in the US, many publishers have been mystified by the company’s lack of innovation and response to market trends. In a small glimmer of reformation, their ReaderStore has announced that they will finally start adding cross-platform apps–just like every other major vendor already has in place–some time in December. For now, they are promising iPhone and Android apps only.Sony site
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eNews: Staples Reports “Very Good” Kindle Sales; Kindle Adds eBook Gifting; and More
In discussing quarterly earnings with analysts yesterday, Staples president of US stores Demos Parneros said he is “really excited about our launch of Kindle. It’s in all our stores and has been received very well. We’ve had very good sales on Kindle.” Looking forward, he said “December is going to be a big month for the Reader category. There is also some good innovation in the category. There have been several new products, bigger products in terms of size, different form factors. So we expect our good relationship to continue and to build that business.” He says they also “are […]
Copia Says
New service Copia says via spokesperson Trey Ditto that we got everything wrong yesterday. Ditto declined to tell us what the large “Windows Phone 7” header and logo means on their “apps & readers” page–but it does not mean that Copia is available on that platform. And we have now learned that you can get to their estore with one less click than described yesterday, as long as you know that “catalog” in the top banner strip means “store.” The company told PW yesterday that they have canceled plans to create and sell their own ereading devices (they had already […]
eNews Round-Up: S&S Wins Catch-22; HMH Offers Saramago eBundle; Nook en Espanol; Kobo Creates eBook Gifting; WH Smith Restores Some Agency Titles; Lagardere/Google Agreement Could Be a “Framework” for Others; Amazon Buys Toby Press List (Phew)
– Simon & Schuster has successfully negotiated terms with the Joseph Heller estate and agent Amanda Urban at ICM to issue an ebook version of the classic novel CATCH-22. Start-up Open Road had said a year ago that they would be publishing the title as an ebook, but that announcement was made prior to execution of a contract (unlike the William Styron and Pat Conroy licenses announced at the same time). S&S publisher Jon Karp tells the AP, “we both realized the benefits of coming to terms sooner rather than later, and happily we did.” Open Road spokesman Josh Raffel […]
Hachette Livre and Google Craft Their Own Settlement for French Books
Hachette Livre in France, which filed multiple objections to the still-pending Google Books Settlement, announced today “a memorandum of understanding that defines the terms for Google to scan Hachette Livre’s French language books” that effectively substitutes direct agreement for what the settlement had originally proposed for “commercially unavailable” books from around the world. The parties have six months of “fine tuning” to craft a binding agreement, and they envision the agreement as a template whose “basic terms and conditions will be made available to all French publishers.” Like the settlement, the agreement focuses on in-copyright, “commercially unavailable” works published by […]
Copia Opens, But They Aren’t Ready
Copia has finally “soft-launched,” moving from private beta to public beta yesterday though with no official announcement of the service’s debut yet. Among industry players they have partnered with in various ways are GoodReads, LibraryThing, and FiledBy, integrating content from those services. They also offer seven free books, all from Rosetta Books, to people who register for the service. The initial apps work on personal computers, the iPad and WIndows Phone 7, with Android and a Copia Touch App listed as “coming soon.” As promised way back in early January, the site is as much about social connections and discussion […]