eNews

At today’s iPad announcement Apple introduced a new ebook app, using epub, called iBooks. The logos of all of the big six were displayed on stage as participating partners, leaving aside Random House. (We could not reach Random House yet for comment.) Sample price baskets shown top out at 14.99 though they did not speak to price or business details at the event. The new iBooks bookstores was called similar to iTunes, and integrates with the iBooks reading app. Steve Jobs gave props to Amazon: “Amazon has done a great job of pioneering this… we’re going to stand on their […]

The morning keynote panel discussion at Digital Book World’s second day tried to answer a whole lot of very important questions on the digital front, like what percentage of e-book sales will be the disruption point, the relationship between digital growth and print decline (if there even is such a relationship) the messy ramifications of territory, whether an agency model will stick, and, more practically, what is each panelist’s preferred mode of reading. Moderator and DBW founder Mike Shatzkin was not shy in peppering his panel of “four smart eloquent guys” with his queries, and on hand to field them […]

During the final session of panels Tuesday, Don Linn assembled an eclectic mix of independent booksellers, digital publishers and entrepreneurs to delve into some of the new business models that may change publishing, once they are more well established. Because each presenter told their tales separately, so too will this report be separated out by individual: Chris Morrow of Northshire Books: “I’m here to remind you that physical bookstores still exist, and most of you still sell books through physical bookstores.” He went on to discuss why POD at the retail level is important (case in point: the store has […]

Following some of the earlier research findings from Verso Digital’s new consumer analytics business that we ran in Lunch prior to Digital Book World, Jack McKeown presented additional findings (and some suggestion conclusions and strategic inferences). Many of the slides were data-heavy–always hard to capture at a conference, but they are viewable now online. On the subject of piracy–addressed earlier in the day by Brian Napack–McKeown underscored their conclusion that approximately 80 percent of the population downloaded few or no titles illegally in the past year (just six percent of respondents were frequent downloaders). One interesting slide showed respondents favorite […]

This afternoon’s panel discussion sounded an optimistic note (one attendee called it “the most hopeful panel he’d heard in the last 2 years”) for publishing’s ability to be nimble on non-traditional book deal models, and moderator Lorraine Shanley took her panelists – HarperStudio’s Bob Miller, Mary Ann Naples of Creative Culture, Ira Silverberg of Sterling Lord Literistic and Vanguard’s Roger Cooper — through a series of questions addressing profit-sharing, increased author marketing, and how to make publisher, author, and agent happy with so many possible models in play – or potentially in the works. Caveat: these notes were more or […]