The folks at O’Reilly Media have ingested and arranged pricing data from the iBookstore for the top 50 sellers across the 21 subject categories. Lo and behold, the mean price the for top 10 bestsellers is a $10.66. In the highest-priced bracked, for titles ranked 21 through 30, the median price moves up to $11.81. In the fiction categories, which typically lead ebook bestseller lists, average prices for the top 10 titles in the categories look like this:Fiction & Literature: $11.84Mysteries & Thrillers: $11.02Romance: $8.64Sci-Fi & Fantasy: $9.16 The highest mean prices are found consistently in “cookbooks, food & wine,” […]
eNews
Now Joining the Publishing Math-Challenged: Yes, the New Yorker
Ken Auletta dramatically “reports” a portion of that which already happened–the emergence of Apple as a seller of ebooks and the introduction of the agency model–and he and the magazine’s vaunted fact-checking department join the ranks of those who misconstrue the economics of publishing. This one is a whopper, erasing all the margin in hardcover publishing by misunderstanding how returns work: “Traditionally, publishers have sold books to stores, with the wholesale price for hardcovers set at fifty per cent of the cover price. Authors are paid royalties at a rate of about fifteen per cent of the cover price. On […]
Agency Tax Tables
The story about the sales tax implications for publishers selling under the agency model is starting to spread. Further ratifying our earlier piece in which we explained that individual publishers have different interpretations of states where they have “nexus” and are required to collect and pay sales tax, Amazon has now added a list by publisher of states where sales tax will be added to purchases. The etailer’s own digital services arm collects tax only for Kentucky, North Dakota, New York and Washington. Hachette Digital, Inc. collects tax in 24 states; Macmillan does so in 21 states (unlike Hachette’s list, […]
People, Announcements, Etc.
Wylie O’Sullivan has been promoted to senior editor at Free Press, where she started in 2001 as an editorial assistant. Christina Biamonte will join Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division as new Content Account Manager, eBooks. She has been Subsidiary Rights Manager at Houghton Mifflin. At Sony, she will forge new publisher relationships and act as relationship manager for existing publishing partners. On Tuesday, Zondervan laid off 30 employees as part of a “streamlining [of] our operations,” with a total workforce of 374 people. At the same time, the company is hiring for its digital and multimedia operations, with the Grand […]
People and More
At Scribner Anna deVries has been promoted to associate editor. Georgia Cool will join Mary Evans Inc. as an agent on April 19. In addition to developing her own list, she will oversee foreign rights for the agency. She has been assistant editor at Farrar, Straus and, prior to that, was at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment. John Rudolph‘s position as executive editor at Putnam Children’s was eliminated with the arrival of Jennifer Besser and he was laid off. He can be reached at: jrwr123@yahoo.com. Though some publishers are having trouble reaching Apple to try to make arrangements to sell directly […]
Strong Demand Makes Apple Delay International iPad Release
Apple said today they will announce pricing and begin to take pre-orders for international versions of the iPad starting May 10, for delivery at the end of the month, a one-month delay from the original plan. “We know that many international customers waiting to buy an iPad will be disappointed by this news, but we hope they will be pleased to learn the reason–the iPad is a runaway success in the US thus far.” The company says that US “demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks.” They […]