In concert with iPad launch, Faber and Faber ceo Stephen Page has an essay in the Guardian on what it means for publishers: “It’s clear that publishers must move faster to establish our compelling and useful role in the modern life of reading. While acquiring new expertise, we must assert the best of our traditional strengths; providing capital (in the form of advance payments), offering editorial expertise, and creating a readership by designing, creating, storing, promoting and selling the works of writers. But that’s not enough. Publishers also have to explain what value they are bringing to the relationship between […]
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More eNews: B&T Gets iPad Partner, BN Finally Releases iPad App
Originally outflanked by Ingram Digital, which is an aggregator partner with Apple for getting books into the iBookstore, Baker & Taylor announced today an agreement with another aggregator, LibreDigital. B&T will offer their publishing partners “a full range of digital services from LibreDigital” as part of the agreement, including access to the iBookstore. Separately, Barnes & Noble said this morning that their BN eReader app is finally ready for the iPad. They say that you can shop directly from within the app, though we have not had time to try it out yet. Through the library function, app users can […]
Survey Says A Quarter of Customers Likely to Buy An eReader in Next Year
At Verso Digital’s survey presentation earlier this week, they also shared new results on ebook use. They found that 6.8 percent of respondents (bearing in mind this that is an online-only survey, so may not reach the less technically-inclined) already own an ereading device, and a significant 24 percent are somewhat likely or very likely to buy one in the next six to twelve months. In terms of who already owns devices, they say that ebook buyers fit their profile of “avid readers,” with 25 percent expecting to buy 10 or more ebooks in the next year, and another 14 […]
Penguin Peace with Amazon; iBooks Allows Publisher Submission
Penguin executives David Shanks and Susan Petersen Kennedy report that the company has reached an agreement with Amazon.com, almost two months after the launch of the agency model and introduction of Apple’s iBookstore. Ebooks for the company’s titles released since April 1, which Amazon has declined to sell up until now, are in the process of being restored to Amazon’s site, though it will likely be a matter of days before all of those titles are available. Presumably all of Penguin’s ebooks sold by Amazon will also be repriced to reflect agency pricing. Abroad, Apple has begun launching versions of […]
Bezos Tells Shareholders No Color Screen Soon
Amazon ceo Jeff Bezos told the audience at the company’s annual meeting that their strategy for competing with Apple is the company looks to surge past Kindle in devices on the market is to stay focused on “serious reading households.” That strategy is said to drive the excuse for not adding a kolor Kindle any time soon. “Bezos said it would be easy to add a color LCD screen to the Kindle, but that it provided an inferior reading experience to the reflective E Ink Corp. technology that the device currently uses. As for color reflective screens, Mr. Bezos said […]
Data Says Most eReader Owners Will Pay More
Do consumers mean it when they say “I’ll never more than $9.99 for an ebook”? “That’s only half bullshit,” Michael Norris, senior analyst for Simba Information, told a full room at BEA. More than a third of people said they’d never pay more than $9.99 for an ebook, though three-quarters of people said they would if they “absolutely had to,” Norris said, quoting a survey on Kindle Nation Daily. If people invest in ebook readers, said Norris, they are not going to stop using them because the price of ebooks goes to $12.99 instead of $9.99. “Kindle users are very […]