eNews

One way the Apple store will ramp up with content is through a new agreement with Ingram’s CoreSource as a “preferred partner,” announced this morning. The release says that “Ingram will help manage the relationship between publishers and Apple. This will enable a publisher’s catalog to be ingested, converted into ePub, Apple’s required format, and submitted to the iBookstore.” Since some publishers reported initial problems in uploading their titles to Apple, this could indicate that a smoother process is on the way. It’s also possible that it could solve some of the problems related to Apple’s executing contracts with thousands […]

The NYT self-appointed “Ethicist” Randy Cohen disturbed a number of publishing folks over the weekend in declaring that downloading a pirated ebook version of Stephen King’s Under the Dome after purchasing a print version was “not unethical” though still “illegal.” And he declared a new “right to enjoy”: “buying a book or a piece of music should be regarded as a license to enjoy it on any platform.”NYT Meanwhile, former Random House ceo Peter Olson has been having fun teaching an unpublished Harvard Business School case study on “The Random House Response to the Kindle.” Unfortunately this HBS site features […]

Shoppers created long lines outside of official Apple stores around the country, but in the New York suburbs (and elsewhere, according to Twitter) you could skip the long lines and score an iPad at some Best Buy locations, which had more inventory on hand than was originally promised. Among third-party book apps, the Kindle and Kobo apps are indeed live and working on the iPad, though Barnes & Noble’s app is not yet available. CEO William Lynch tells the WSJ, “We don’t have an exact date, but it will be there within the next two weeks. Apple certifies all apps, […]

We’ve been writing that it appears very few publishers aside from the Agency Five will be ready to go from day one in the iBookstore, and David Pogue confirms that assessment in an early review of the iPad today. For doubters: “There’s an e-book reader app, but it’s not going to rescue the newspaper and book industries (sorry, media pundits). The selection is puny (60,000 titles for now). You can’t read well in direct sunlight. At 1.5 pounds, the iPad gets heavy in your hand after awhile (the Kindle is 10 ounces). And you can’t read books from the Apple […]

It’s no joke: the agency model arrived today, at least in part, and as previously reported and predicted, there will be at least a few discrepancies and business interruptions along the way as systems and contracts are switched. Most notably so far, buy buttons for the Hachette Book Groups’ ebook titles disappeared today, first reported here, including current top sellers such as Nicholas Sparks and Stephenie Meyer. But HBG’s print books remain available directly from the site. In a site post, Amazon said that they have signed a new agency agreement with the publisher, however: “We recently signed an ‘agency’ […]

Penguin USA ceo David Shanks wrote to agents this morning on the current state of play as they move to an agency model: “In recent weeks we have been in discussion with our retail partners who sell eBooks, including Amazon, to discuss our new terms of sale for eBooks in the U.S.  At the moment, we have reached an agreement with many of them, but unfortunately not Amazon – of course, we hope to in the future.” As a result, “your newly released eBook is currently not available on Amazon, but all of your eBooks released prior to April 1 […]