A NYT blog publishes a performance report from Bill Ackman to investors in Pershing Square. Even with the big run-up in Borders stock recently and the sweetheart deal in which Pershing got to reprice their underwater stock warrants to the bargain level of 65 cents a share in exchange for extending their $42.5 million loan, the hedge fund is still at a loss on their Borders stake. Ackman notes that the average cost of their position after the cheap warrants is still just under $7 a share. He writes, “while the economic environment and digital book readers continue to be […]
eNews
ScrollMotion's Reader Featured at Apple Conference
ScrollMotion was among the app makers to be featured at yesterday’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, gaining international attention for the new version of their Iceberg Reader, coming this summer when Apple updates the operating system for the iPhone. ScrollMotion will take advantage of Apple’s newly-added “in-app purchasing” capability so that users of its readers can buy books and magazine subscriptions directly from within the app. (Which means they will purchase through their iTunes account, and Apple will get a piece of the business.) ScrollMotion claims that they will build to offering one million books, along with 50 magazines and 170 […]
Google Believes Most Out-of-Print Books Are Not Orphans
Posted on the Automat last week but worth a little more attention on this quiety day, Google posted on their public policy blog regarding the pending settlement of the GBS lawsuits. “As ‘parent’ rightsholders claim their books through the Book Rights Registry, we think it will become clear that most out-of-print books are not actually ‘orphans.’… Furthermore, many books that some think are in-copyright orphans (including a large percentage from 1963 or before) are actually out-of-copyright, and Google is working to make more information available that can clarify their copyright status.” But they say they continue to support orphan works […]
eNews: Indigo to Launch Their Own Device
CEO of dominant Canadian retailer Indigo Heather Reisman disclosed after a TV interview today that the company is “in final talks with a number of e-book reader manufacturers and will be choosing one to launch as their own in Canada by the end of this year.” Reisman indicated that neither Sony nor Amazon will be their partner.CTV tech blog
eNews: A Little More on Google's Plans
For Google’s planned initiative to sell access to online (and browser-cached) versions of books starting later this year, the company tells the Wall Street Journal they reserve the right to discount ebook prices at their own expense, though publishers will set the list prices. Publishers have told us that the splits Google has been proposing for the direct sale of ebooks more or less mimics the 37/63 split for out-of-print books in the proposed settlement of the Google Book Search lawsuits. But the effort to enable sale through other online retailers that we described on Monday is positioned as requiring […]
eNews: Are You Cool with 6 Machines for Your eBooks?
Following Cool-er’s noisy launch at BEA, we’ve been trying to clarify some of the operational details about the start-up. Their e-store, which claims to have “over 750,000 titles,” is driven by Ingram Digital, at least for the paid downloads. Founder Neil Jones told us he “can’t formally comment on the public domain titles right now” because agreements are still being formalized, and said the same with respect to partnerships with suppliers in other territories. Leaving aside public domain titles, Jones says they have “about 260,000 ebooks” available–but “what is the number of actual of titles is questionable.” That’s because the […]