Unconfirmed “tweets” online this morning indicated that the parties have asked the judge for a little more time, until the auspicious Friday the 13th of November. Meanwhile, consistent with his earlier decisions to swat away those who wish to intervene or otherwise delay the consideration of the settlement, last week Judge Denny Chin denied the motions by a variety of individual photographers and photography organizations. Chin writes, “the proposed settlement does not concern the rights to their pictoral materials and it binds them in no way. The movants are free to initiate their own litigation, and to invest the time, […]
eNews
Briefs: High Demand for Nook; Harlequin Launches Digital-Only Carina Press; IDPF Moves Conference to BEA
Barnes & Noble spokesperson Mary Ellen Keating tells the WSJ that “demand for the nook in our stores and online has surpassed our expectations.” While the first wave of pre-orders will ship to customers on November 30, those who purchase the units now are being told their orders will ship on December 11. Keating says “we are working hard to meet demand for the holidays.” Harlequin announced the launch of Carina Press, a digital-only publishing house that will sell directly to consumers and “operate independently of their traditional publishing businesses.” Angela James is joining the new operation as executive editor. […]
Sourcebooks Hopes to Make Poetry Speak More Broadly Online
Following the success of their line of Poetry Speaks books, Sourcebooks is moving to dominate–and more importantly grow–the poetry “vertical” with their PoetrySpeaks.com web site. While the beta version of the site has just launched, it represents over five years of development work and an estimated $250,000 of investment from Sourcebooks. As ceo Dominique Raccah says, “When I did Poetry Speaks [the book] I honestly didn’t know if I was going to sell 2,000, 20,000 or 200,000 copies. What I see as an entrepreneur is that engagement drives sales. And if we get people excited and participating, we’ll find a […]
Lulu Adds An eBook Store—with Real Authors
Lulu.com announced in a press release the addition to their site on an ebook store they say features over 200,000 titles from mainstream publishers and authors. While the company hopes to sell some of those titles to its site visitors, they are also clearing hoping to use the established titles as bait to attract more self-publishing customers–already said to be producing “nearly 15,000 new titles a month.” Sic. On the site, Lulu says that for self-publishing customers, on a $13.99 ebook they will pay the creator $10 per title sold. On titles from other publishers, they appear to sometimes offer […]
Simon & Schuster Launches Their Own Electronic Galley Program
Simon & Schuster has expanded and remade the experimental GalleyGrab.com site they used earlier this year to elicit interest in pre-BEA physical galleys into their own electronic galley service for “reviewers and media, booksellers, and other key publishing trade contacts.” The service works on most non-Kindle electronic reading platforms, from Sony Reader and nook to computers–using Adobe Digital Editions and its DRM. And the electronic galleys “will expire on the book’s publication date.” Access is provided by “invitation”–S&S staff will send links to particular electronic galleys to selected contacts. The program begins with a galley of Free Press’s march release, […]
Internet Archive Experiments with Online Scan-and-Lend
The Internet Archive’s expansive ambition for their recently-introduced Bookserver continues to cause a range of excitement and confusion depending upon whom you speak to, in part because the scheme is in its very early stages. A profile of Archive founder Brewster Kahle in the new issue of Forbes magazine, titled Lend Ho!, tipped us to yet another aspect of their intentions: “Kahle hopes libraries will use the new Bookserver technology to scan and electronically lend orphans. Kahle reasons that libraries can scan and electronically lend their orphans without violating any laws, just as they lend those volumes today…. It also […]