In the second big pre-tablet announcement this week from Amazon, the company has announced plans to allow the creation of the Kindle version apps, which they are calling “active content,” later this year. For now they are just inviting interested parties to register for a limited beta of the Kindle Developer Kit, which will be available for download sometime next month. Like Apple’s App Store model–and the new self-publishing Kindle royalty option announced yesterday–creators of active content will receive 70 percent of the revenue, minus delivery fees of 15 cents per megabyte. Small apps of less than 1 mb can […]
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AAP Prepares Guidelines for Meetings with File-Sharing Sites
The AAP’s Online Piracy Working Group is close to finalizing recommendations of best practices to encourage file-sharing sites “to be more proactive to prevent infringements” of books. The group hopes to move these sites beyond simply responding to takedown notices, “to install filters or take other measures to stop unauthorized copies of books from appearing on their services,” the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. The AAP’s Ed McCoyd says they plan to meet with several file-sharing sites over the next few weeks to present those recommendations. Legal director for Wiley Maria Danzilo says “The whole point of these best practices […]
BookLocker Settles Amazon POD Lawsuit
BookLocker announced today that they have settled the lawsuit they brought against Amazon over the company’s announced policy, first posted in early 2008, requiring print-on-demand books sold on the site to be printed by Amazon’ facilities “for reasons of efficiency” or sold via their Advantage program. (The signed settlement is dated December 16.) Amazon, while denying the allegations and not admitting any liability, will pay BookLocker’s legal fees of $300,000. On their blog BookLocker says they could have exacted a cash payment but Amazon would not allow them to indicate their intention to donate the funds to charity–nor, they claim, […]
Amazon Offers 70% Royalty–If You Self-Publish Inexpensively, and Comprehensively
Amazon has created a 70 percent royalty option for authors and publishers self-publishing on Kindle via their digital text platform as of June 30–as long you meet these conditions: * It should be not too cheap and not too expensive–priced between $9.99 and $2.99–and the digital list price has to be “at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the print book” * It has to be available for sale in all territories in which the author or publisher has rights * It has to be available for text-to-speech, and whatever other new features Kindle adds * […]
Big Six Negotiate with Apple, Ready New Business Model for eBooks
The WSJ reported lasted night that HarperCollins is negotiating terms with Apple for making ebooks available on the company’s forthcoming new device, along with unnamed other publishers. Which is correct, but is just a sliver of the story that is emerging, albeit changing all the time. Apple, whose representatives are in New York for meetings this week, is acknowledged by participants as currently negotiating with nearly all (and most likely all) of the six largest trade publishers, though those negotiations were supposed to be confidential. Multiple participants caution that negotiations are complex, far from complete, and may be hard to […]
BISG Surveys eBook Consumers
The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) has released headline results from their first survey of Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading, conducted among approximately 550 people from Bowker’s PubTrack Consumer panel who said they had purchased an ebook within the past year. Computers were still the top ereading “devices,” cited by 47 percent of respondents, followed by the Kindle at 32 percent and other ereaders at 10 percent. “Roughly one-fifth of survey respondents said they’ve stopped purchasing print books within the past 12 months in favor of acquiring the e-book editions.” One question asked how, for a favorite author, consumers would […]