Yesterday Kaplan released Lloyd Constantine‘s book Journal of the Plague Year: An Insider’s Chronicle of Eliot Spitzer’s Short and Tragic Reign, following a wave of pre-publication coverage. (It was originally scheduled for publication a month later.) The ebook lists at a discount of more than 30 percent off the $24.95 hardcover, priced at $16.99. The National Association of College Stores‘ subsidiary NACS Media Solutions will market the Espresso Book Machine to the college bookstore market, and will also “permission academic content for distribution” through all Espresso machines. Elsevier said in a press release they will launch between 8,000 and 9,000 […]
eNews
Announcements: Electronic
Samsung has announced “imminent availability” for their ereader, previewed at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, and Barnes & Noble will drive their electronic store. They say their electromagnetic resonance stylus pen is the device’s “most visibly distinguishing feature,” designed to allow more natural annotations and note-taking. When previously announced, the company indicated high price points, ranging between $399 and $699.ReleaseCompany page Edelweiss will create an online catalog of new titles being exhibited at BEA in conjunction with the convention organizers, and participation will be free to all exhibiting publishers. On his blog Michael Cairns has more information about new […]
Today's eNews
Engadget featured “exclusive” pictures of Microsoft’s Courier, a tablet/ereader–now called a “digital journal–that the company is working on.Link Amazon is said to have e-mailed its Colorado-based affiliates to notify them that their relationship with the etailer has been severed as of March 8 as the result of new state legistation “to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers.” The company writes: “The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to ‘voluntarily’ collect Colorado sales tax — a […]
Apple Adjusts, Clarifies iPad Release Dates
Apple announced this morning that they will start taking pre-orders in the US for the iPad on March 12, and the unit will arrive a few days later than originally planned, on April 3. (That’s for wi-fi models; 3G units will come in late April.) The company says that “all models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.”Release In other device news, the WSJ reports on plans by Sony to introduce “a portable device that shares characteristics of netbooks, electronic-book readers and handheld-game machines” later this year […]
Penguin's Makinson Demonstrates iPad Adaptations
Yesterday Penguin Group ceo John Makinson presented more of the company’s vision of how to present books on the iPad platform at conference. There vision is that they “will be embedding streaming audio, video and gaming into everything that we do.” Which means they are forsaking epub, which “is designed for narrative text but not this cool stuff that we’re talking about now” and “for the time being at least we’ll be creating a lot of our content as applications.” Makinson freely admitted that “we don’t understand at the moment what the consumer is prepared to pay for. We don’t […]
More eNews: iBooks Will Go International Once they Hire; Bloomsbury Expands Online Library, and More
* So far Apple has said the iBookstore and iBooks app will launch in the US only. But a company job listing has been spotted online seeking a manager “responsible for launching and growing the iBook business in Asia Pacific [later detailed as Australia, New Zealand and other countries] and Canada and building an extensive offering for customers.”Listing * In the UK, Bloomsbury has expanded their online library project and renamed it the Public Library Online, reflecting the new inclusion of books from other publishers. Joining them are Faber, Quercus, Canongate and Allison & Busby, “with more coming soon.” Built […]