It’s official: the batch of knockoff eInk ereaders that never appeared this spring and summer has turned itself into a wave of faux-tablet LCD color readers landing this fall. We reported earlier on the two models headed for CVS and Copia’s repositioning of their not-yet-released line, and now Sharper Image has announced their own version of the same concept, the Literati Reader. With a $159 price tag, it’s slated for release in national chains including Best Buy, Macy’s, Kohl’s, and Bed Bath & Beyond. (The units actually come from MerchSource; the Sharper Image brand is just that–a licensable name.) Like […]
eNews
Wylie’s Odyssey: Behind the Deal and Across the Business
Following yesterday’s announcement of the resolution of the dispute between Random House and The Wylie Agency over the electronic rights to 13 titles published by Andrew Wylie’s start-up Odyssey Editions (see below for the full text), the publisher has said publicly that the Wylie Agency was not offered preferential terms and the deal is “consistent with agreement we’ve reached with other literary agencies for other backlist e-book rights.” And indeed, sources confirm to us that the royalty rates agreed to between Random House and the Wylie agency are no greater than what the publisher has agreed to for other titles […]
Random House Tames The Jackalope; Wylie Drops Amazon Titles
The company released this statement from ceo Markus Dohle on Tuesday afternoon: “We are pleased to announce that The Wylie Agency and Random House have resolved our differences over the disputed Random House titles which have been included in the Odyssey Editions e-book publishing program. These titles are being removed from that program and taken off-sale. “We have agreed that Random House shall be the exclusive e-book publisher of these titles for those territories in which Random House U.S. controls their rights. The titles soon will be available for sale on a non-exclusive basis through all of Random House’s current e-book customers. Random House is resuming normal business […]
eNews Today: More Cheap Readers/Tablets; Open Textbooks Rise; Connecting People Through Books
On their web site, Borders is taking pre-orders for two units from Micro Cruz in the mode of the recently-panned Pandigital unit. One is color touch screen ereader that looks like a tablet; the other adds an Android operating system to actually work as a cheap tablet.Borders Also taking the cheap-looks-like-a-tablet route is drugstore chain CVS. According to advertising materials found by Engadget they intend to sell a different 7-inch color ereader for $179 from LookBook. The store for the reader is powered by Kobo. It will be interesting to see whether this new wave of machines expands the market […]
How Can the UK Be Surprised By eBook Price War?
From this side of the Atlantic it looks obvious, but following the launch of the local Kindle store and price competition from WH Smith, at least some UK trade people are both upset and somehow surprised by the turn of events. Upset enough to give colorful quotes to the Bookseller, but not so firm on principle as to be identified by name, a “senior publisher” declares “it’s absolutely absurd to devalue our product but I’m not surprised because our industry is populated by nincompoops.” It’s not exactly clear who falls into this colorful category, since the same executive who is […]
eNews: Rice Digital Press Experiment Folds, As Inkling Launches to Adapt Textbooks to iPad
University press publishing can be difficult regardless of the medium, and Rice University has decided to end their four-year experiment with a digital-only press. The former provost who authorized the venture originally Eugene Levy says, “The hope was that, without the burden of having to maintain a print inventory, the press might sustain itself largely on revenues from print-on-demand book sales. Unfortunately, book sales remained very slow, and projections discouraged the anticipation that revenues would, in the foreseeable future, grow to a level that could materially cover even minimal costs of operations.” The press had closed once before, in 1996.http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Rice-U-to-Close-Its-Digital/26342 […]