Steve Jobs announced yesterday that iPad sales had risen to at least 450,000 units, and iBookstore downloads (not sales, as the paper of record had it) reached 600,000 books. Jobs also presented Apple’s new iPhone OS 4, available this summer. As hoped for, the company will bring the iBookstore and iBooks to iPhones and iPod Touches as part of the updated operating system. Like other reader apps, that move will allow consumers to read (and sync) their iBooks across iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads.
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Perseus Opens Up Digital Distribution Service; Will Aggregate for iBookstore
The Perseus Books Group is expanding their digital distribution service Constellation to make it an option for any independent publisher, now opening it up to clients who are not already customers of the company’s physical distribution services. In concert with that strategic move, Perseus has been named an approved aggregator for Apple’s iBookstore, joining the list of seven other companies that we covered earlier in the week. As is the case for existing Constellation publishers, new clients can choose which of the 20 Constellation partners they want to work with through the service–from the iBookstore only, to the full roster […]
Life Under Agency, Continued: Hybrids Aren't Just for Cars
We’re going to keep grinding our way through the idiosyncracies and challenges of life under the agency model, understanding that all of this is a constantly moving target. While Random House has gotten all the attention as the biggest trade publisher whose titles are not available via the just-launched iBookstore, it should be underscored that so far, very few companies of scale outside of the Agency Five have a presence there. In addition to those already announced–Perseus, Nelson, Workman, Sourcebooks, and F+W–we found lists of titles from Hyperion and Kensington (henceforth known as the Non Five). But the list of […]
Your iBooks Distribution Options
The distribution picture for getting your books into the iBookstore is becoming clear with a raft of announcements from service providers and an informational page at the iTunes site. While music and music video vendors can fill out an online vendor application for Apple’s review, it appears that book publishers currently have two options only. Either an iBookstore representative has issued you an “application code” to apply for the iBookstore directly, or else you are directed to a list of seven “Apple-approved aggregators.” As Apple notes, “if you choose to work with an aggregator to distribute your content on the […]
Oh, the Taxes You Might Owe
Steel yourself for what may be one of the most tedious yet important stories we have filed yet on the agency model. The scintillating subject matter: sales taxes. As we’ve mentioned in passing previously, one of the biggest transitional issues for the companies moving to an agency model across their account base is grappling with the new sales tax obligations. As Kobo evp Michael Tamblyn confirms, “of all the points of negotiation, issues related to sales tax were by far the most complex and the area of greatest concern for publishers once we got past the establishemnt of new agency […]
Tablet Days: Apple Says Oveer 250k eBooks On First Day
Apple resolved some of the guessing (and overheated estimates) by announcing this morning that they sold “over 300,000 iPads” on Saturday–including pre-orders and “deliveries” to partners like Best Buy. They say that “over 250,000 ebooks” were downloaded from the iBookstore on day one (presumably including free titles) along with over one million apps. Among third-party book apps, the Kindle and Kobo apps were indeed live and working on the iPad, though Barnes & Noble’s app is not yet available. Going by ceo William Lynch’s quote to WSJ, it’s not clear whether it’s the bookseller’s fault or Apple’s: “We don’t have […]