eNews

Google Book Search rolled out a variety of refinements and additions yesterday, including a years-late-in-the-making answer to the abundance of book widgets. Finally, anyone can grab copy-and-paste code to embed previews of publishing “partner” books and full views of public domain books on a blog or website.Google blog Also, the Copyright Clearance Center has posted both audio and a full transcript of their interview earlier this week with Michael Healy about the preparatory work he is doing in connection with the established of the Book Rights Registry. An admitted “something of a standards geek,” Healy says, “when you look at […]

Building social networks around college textbooks has already showed promising results, and now Simon & Schuster had developed a book-focused social networking site for teens aged 14 to 18 called Pulse It. Site members can read one book a month online for free. S&S says books “will be  a combination of titles that have just been released or are soon-to-be published.” Participants earn points for reviews and other posts and site actions, and can win free books and other prizes. Simon & Schuster says the site was a natural outgrowth of their Pulse It Advisory Board, which provided 3,000 teens […]

At least once daily. Today in Amazon’s world, their latest acquisition is iPhone app maker SnapTell–the bane of physical retailers, whose app takes a picture of physical goods like books and then connects you to the online price and availability. SnapTell says on their blog, “One of the most heard requests was how we could integrate better with Amazon’s fabulous shopping experience.” In an e-mail reproduced on TechCrunch, Amazon has warned affiliates in North Carolina under their Associates program that if the state legislature passes a new sales tax law shortly as expected, “that would leave Amazon.com little choice but […]

The NYT reports more remarks from Jeff Bezos at the Wired conference: “The device team has the job of making the most remarkable purpose-built reading device in the world. We are going to give the device team competition. We will make Kindle books, at the same $9.99 price points, available on the iPhone, and other mobile devices and other computing devices.” In other words, he both perpetuates the $9.99 is our top price fallacy, and commits the company to losing money on Kindle files even when it isn’t making money on the device sales. As for why they don’t sell […]

Next week’s Time magazine considers Amazon’s expansive publishing ambitions in a long piece. They conclude: “Imagine a world where publishing has two centers rather than one: a conventional literary center, governed by mainstream publishing–with its big names and fancy prizes and high-end art direction–and a new one where books rise to fame and prominence YouTube-style, in the rough and tumble of the great Web 2.0 mosh pit. The two centers will affect each other gravitationally and swap authors back and forth between them, but they’re not likely to eat each other. With any luck, they’ll energize each other. “Which is […]