Meanwhile, on the continuing story of Aletheia Research and the Yucaipa Cos. toying with bookselling stocks, in the first three weeks of January (and especially on January 20), as Ron Marshall was closing his deal to run A&P and discussing his experiences at Borders, Aletheia bought another 268,000 or so share of Barnes & Noble. That boosts their stake to 15.71 percent of shares.SEC filing Deputy president of Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division Fujio Noguchi said at a press conference their Reader sales “quadrupled on a year-over-year basis” in 2009. It was the bestseller at their Sony Style online store […]
eNews
More Google Objections
New filings logged on the Court’s web site in the Google Books Settlement case include objections from the state of Connecticut, Microsoft, and AT&T. The Connecticut attorney general asserts that, even with modifications designed to appease the many states that objected to the previous settlement agreement, it “continues to unlawfully misappropriate unclaimed funds for the maintenance of the Book Rights Registry.” Microsoft, repeating many earlier arguments, also adds that the curtailing of some of the settlements’ new revenue models “does not help. Not only do these permitted future uses remain sweepingly broad, they would constitute new types of infringement that […]
Steve Jobs Makes It Quite Clear How This Will Work
Further to our own reports on how publishers hope/expect to the deploy the agency model of selling terms broadly across their ebook accounts to retake some measure of control over the pricing of new releases, Apple’s Steve Jobs essentially confirmed the plan to the WSJ’s Walt Mossberg in a brief video interview. Mossberg wondered why someone “should buy a [b]book for $14.99 when you can buy one from Amazon for $9.99 on the Kindle or Barnes & Noble?” A confident Jobs replies, “That won’t be the case…. The prices will be the same.” How in the world will prices be […]
They're Back: Amazon, Hachette and Others File New Google Books Objections
With today’s filing deadline, the court has registered a wave of new opt-outs and objections to the revised Google Books settlement agreement, though so far it’s a fraction of the over 400 objections to the original agreement. Though Judge Denny Chin made it clear that he wanted to hear objections to the revised provisions only, some parties couldn’t help themselves and have repeated earlier points lightly clothed in new language. Amazon’s objection follows a middle line, reiterating many basics points from their first filing but also addressing some of the new issue. They believe the agreement continues to constitute illegal […]
The Five-Minute iBooks Presentation
“We’re going to open up the floodgates for the rest of the publishers starting this afternoon.”
Random House On their Ongoing "Conversations" with Apple
Random House welcomes Apple’s iPad and iBooks app and we look forward to our continuing conversations with them about how we might best work together.