Makers of the slow-to-grow Espresso Book Machine On Demand Books announced a sales and marketing partnership with Xerox that could add some muscle to the company’s efforts. Together they will sell a high-speed Xerox copier/printer that they say can print approximately 40,000 300-page books a year, paired with On Demand’s finishing machine and software. That is a significantly higher capacity than is provided by the other printers that have traditionally been paired with On Demand’s finisher–though the new package is more expensive, too, adding approximately $20,000 to the roughly $100,000 cost of the current full package from On Demand. Presumably, […]
eNews
More Action in Online Textbook Rentals
Following yesterday’s announcement from Barnes & Noble College, Cengage Learning announced that their site CengageBrain.com is renting over 1,200 of the company’s textbooks at “up to 70 percent off the suggested retail price.” And they say they will add another 1,500 titles to the program by July 2010. Just as importantly, Cengage’s site already sells electronic textbooks and echapters, too. Inside Higher Ed suggests that a transition to a Netflix “play instantly” model is not far off in the textbook market: “Just as Netflix has begun making more and more of its inventory available for users to stream instantly on […]
CES Hilarity: How Quickly the Coverage Turns
After days of excited reports about the very latest demos of mostly non-existent but planned ebook readers, the press has now had enough and decided they are too many devices and the market is over. Gizmodo is among those writing: “The introduction of e-ink-based readers by many big tech companies and a handful of feisty little ones threatens to sow confusion in the market place, encourage piracy, and screw over any company who gets in and then can’t really hack it against Kindle and Nook. And all of it will be a pointless exercise when long-lasting slates are a reality.” […]
Borders Springs a Deal with Alex Reader
Borders ebookstore–powered by Kobo–has reached an agreement “in principle” to partner with Spring Design’s nook-alike Alex ereader. While it makes perfect sense–after all, Alex can’t use BN.com as their store partner like so many other readers while they are suing them–it’s an opportunistic victory for Borders as they play ereading catch-up on a limited budget. Reuters adds, “the Alex e-reader will give the borders.com e-book site top billing, featuring it on its initial screen, a Borders spokeswoman told Reuters, though shoppers will be able to buy and read books from other sources on their Alex e-reader.“ Though they did not […]
Lulu.com Eyes C$50M Initial Public Offering – WSJ.com
While big publishers wring their hands over whether it’s ok to make money from self-publishing, the dedicated self-publishers continue to be on a roll. Bouncing back from cutbacks in late 2008, Lulu.com is reported to have retained Genuity Capital Markets and CIBC World Markets lead underwriters for an initial public offering later this year, apparently on the Toronto stock exchange. Dow Jones says they hope to raise $50 million (Canadian) in capital. When forced to cut staff previously, founder Bob Young blamed “the credit and capital markets [as] frozen solid.”Dow Jones
Barnes & Noble Holiday Comps Down 5.4%; Earnings Guidance Reduced
The nine-week holiday selling period at Barnes & Noble was another rough one, with same-store sales down 5.4 percent at $1.1 billion (and bear in mind that the comps a year ago were down 7 percent from 2007). Sales at BN.com rose 17 percent however, at $134 million, in large part because of nook revenues recognized in that period. (BN.com had sales of $114 million in the same period a year ago. When the company reported second quarter earnings in late November, BN.com was up 9 percent for the period. So figure that recognized nook revenues are roughly between $10 […]