The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries have reiterated their basic support for the proposed Google Books settlement, while also repeating concerns that the settlement live up to its promises in balancing market pricing and broad access when selling institutional subscriptions. (They note that “The likely demand among academic libraries for an institutional subscription is high.”) In a letter to the Department of Justice’s anti-trust division–following meetings with them as part of their investigation–the associations write “we believe that the Division itself should take a proactive role in the […]
eNews
Google's Clancy On How They See the Future
Expanding on the remarks we quoted from David Drummond at the NYPL earlier this week, Google Books engineering director Dan Clancy explained further at a session last night how they see the future of electronic books. In short: ebooks will be stored in the cloud, which means that cloud has to be managed by a large, trusted party; physical bookstores need to sell digital books; and you should be able to read your cloud-stored books through any device. “We’re trying to make what would be an open model that encourages competition.” For Clancy’s words: “I believe people want their books […]
People: Don Linn Leaving Taunton for eStartup Quartet Press
SVP and publisher at The Taunton Press Don Linn is leaving that post to join digital publishing start-up Quartet Press, overseeing finance, administration and general management. He notes, “I’m an entrepreneur at heart and I’ve been fascinated with this transitional phase of reading, writing and publishing for some time. So when the opportunity to create Quartet presented itself, it seemed the time was right to make the move.” Linn joins Kassia Krozser, Kirk Biglione, and Kat Meyer as a partner in Quartet, which expects to launch romance imprint Quench Romance! in fall 2009, followed by “additional categories and service offerings […]
Kindle Krunching: Week 2
With a second week of data, we’re still looking for the impact (if any) of Kindle sales as reflected in the broader USA Today chart. As was the case last week, Kathryn Stockett does seems to be getting a big Kindle boost. Almost every other title on the Kindle Top 10 declined overall in the USA Today list, though. Daniel Silva and Jennifer Weiner had the top two hardcover fiction titles for the week, but Weiner did less well relatively with the Kindle audience. Here’s our chart, ranking the books according to their position on the Kindle bestseller list, with […]
Google Settlement at the NYPL and In the NYT
If you were so inclined you could probably spend the better part of the next month on daily seminars and webinars related to the proposed Google Books legal settlement. Yesterday’s venue was the NY Public Library, moderated by David Ferriero (moments before he was reported as President Obama’s pick to be Archivist of the United States). A number of librarians expressed concerns about managing the single all-access terminal to be provided for each public library branch. Bertelsmann’s Richard Sarnoff suggested that on this and other matters, the settlement should be viewed as a starting point rather than a definitive rule-set. […]
LibreDigital Gets More Funding, and People News
LibreDigital has closed a $15 million Series B funding round, led by new investor Triangle Peak Partners and existing investor Adams Capital Management. (Existing investors include HarperCollins and the New York Times Comany.) They say the new capital will be used by “to expand marketing and development of the company’s digital platform, designed to help publishers go direct to consumers as they access, buy, read and share content across online and mobile platforms.” Rachel Dicker has joined Baker & Taylor as director, publisher digital services, reporting to Linda Gagnon, svp, publisher digital services and business development. She was formerly Director […]