Yesterday the NYT reported that both Perseus and Workman had signed on with Apple to make ebooks available for the iPad, meaning, from what’s been previously reported about Apple’s contract, that they have agreed to the company’s agency model and its most favored nations requirement. Both moves were confirmed first by Apple’s side, and while Workman hasn’t issued anything on the record yet, Perseus CEO David Steinberger said in a statement that the company was “working with Apple to make books from the Perseus Books Group and the independent publishers we represent available on the iBookstore starting on April 3. […]
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Kindle for iPad on the Way, But Not In Time for Launch; More on B&N iPad app
Amazon gave the NYT a sneak preview of its Kindle-for-iPad app, which touts “two new ways for people to view their entire e-book collection, including one view where large images of book covers are set against a backdrop of a silhouetted figure reading under a tree.” Screenshots are available at Amazon’s website, but the app, which also “allows readers to slowly turn pages with their fingers”, will not be available in time for the iPad April 3 launch date because Amazon hasn’t been able to test it on a real device. Instead, according to VP for Kindle Ian Freed, Amazon […]
People, Awards, Distribution and More Announcements
Matt Martz has been promoted to associate editor at St. Martin’s, continuing to report to Kelley Ragland, editorial director of Minotaur. Brigid Pasulka won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for her debut novel A LONG LONG TIME AGO & ESSENTIALLY TRUE. Columbia University awarded the Bancroft history prize to three books: Linda Gordon’s Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits; Woody Holton’s Abigail Adams; and Margaret Jacobs’s White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940. Penguin Children’s announced a one-million-copy first printing for the May release of John […]
Buy Button Bingo
With the launch of the iPad and its accompanying iBookstore just over two weeks away, the transition to an agency model for ebooks remains both contentious and uncertain. It is not at all clear whether any significant number of independent publishers will be signed with Apple and available for direct sale in their store on launch, just as it remains uncertain whether other publishers will experience interruption in their business with Amazon as Macmillan did while negotiating their transition to the new model. At least one independent publisher of scale was told categorically by Amazon in a recent phone call […]
Amazon Warns Connecticut, Adds Cookbooks
Amazon vp for global public policy Paul Misener told a Connecticut legislative committee in written testimony that if the state adopts a proposed law which “sets a nexus test of $2,000 in quarterly sales generated over four consecutive quarters by in-state affiliates,” Amazon would “would simply sever affiliate advertising relationships with Connecticut residents.” The etailer just took a similar step in Colorado. One association estimates that approximately 2,000 Connecticut small businesses are Amazon affiliates.Connecticut Mirror In a press release, Amazon says that they have been adding more cookbooks to their Kindle store, including the release today of books from Mark […]
eBook Releases from Grisham and Baldacci
Over a year after first announcing John Grisham’s intention to release his backlist in ebook editions, today Knopf Doubleday put on sale ebook versions of all twenty-three of Grisham’s titles. They are available in the US and Canada. The publisher also confirmed that Grisham’s new book, coming this October, will be another legal thriller. Separately, when David Baldacci’s new book DELIVER US FROM EVIL is released on April 20, Hachette Book Group’s editions will include an “enriched” electronic version they’re calling the Writer’s Cut eBook. In the release, HBG ceo David Young says, “For David Baldacci’s fans, this is a […]