Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s trade and reference division has created a Digital Strategy and Planning Group, led by svp Cheryl Cramer Toto (who had been the company’s vp of development and planning, a job that included leading the integration of Harcourt and Houghton Mifflin). Under Toto are vp of digital content development David Jost, vp of digital business development David Langevin, and Sanj Kharbanda, who has been promoted to vp of digital market strategy. He “will identify unique market opportunities for Houghton digital content and develop and implement innovative consumer-facing programs.” Yesterday the RAND Corporation announced they were lowering list price […]
eNews
Bezos: No Profits (?), No Color, No Stats
Missed during BEA madness was Jeff Bezos’s webcast speech to Amazon shareholders last Thursday. At least as interpreted by some, Bezos seemed to indicate that Kindle isn’t making money for the company yet (despite wild analysis by Wall Street analysts who don’t understand the business). Bezos said the company “is investing very heavily” in its digital business but “I don’t want people to think it’s a big cash-flow generator for us.” Speaking of the company’s businesses in China and cloud computing he said they were in “investment mode” and added, “we continue to plant these seeds and our experience — […]
Closer Reading of Google Edition
The NYT reported on Google’s continuing discussions with publishers of their plans to sell online access to the full text of some books currently available for searching and limited reading in their Partner Program with publishers. An offline component, similar to Google Gears, will allow purchased books to be cached in the browser. And Google has indicated to publishers that they will allow some form of limited printing (done a single page at a time) and limited copy and paste privileges, probably in the range of 20 percent of a book’s content. Now dubbed Google Edition, this initiative is the […]
Screen-Maker PVI to Acquire E Ink for $215
Here’s a sign of the actual (and anticipated) growth of the market for e-readers: Prime View International, the company the manufactures the screens for both Kindle and the Sony Reader, is buying E Ink. “The new company will expand capacity and develop improvements for ePaper display screens that are easy on the eyes, long-lasting, and highly portable.” (PVI bought Philips Electronics’ ePaper business in 2005.) Interestingly, the company quotes in their press release iSuppli analyst Vinita Jakhanwal, saying “the market for electronic book devices such as the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle is forecasted to grow from 1.1 million units […]
Secret Publishers Cabal on GBS Settlement in Javits Basement (Not)
On Friday, at the invitation of the AAP and Google I moderated a panel discussion with John Sargent from Macmillan and Richard Sarnoff from Bertelsmann that had the modest and focused goal of illuminating for publishers some of the basics of the proposed settlement of the Google Book Search lawsuits. The session was strictly limited to publishers only, which was apparently just the stimulus to make a number of people (mostly press) want to attend, only to get turned away at the door. Sargent’s opening statement addressed head-on the question of what will happen if the settlement is not approved […]
Amazon to Integrate BookTour.com–Which Will Promote Physical Stores
While interviewing Softbanks’s Eric Hipeau for a BEA panel today, author, magazine editor and founder of BookTour.com Chris Anderson let slip that soon his company’s author tour information will be integrated into Amazon. The etailer took a minority stake in BookTour, reported in April (though at the time it wasn’t clear if there were other investors; Anderson was the only funder.) Amazon is due to start integrating BookTour’s information about author appearances across the country soon, starting with relevant data for Amazon’s “Author Pages” feature. Anderson and BookTour ceo Kevin Smokler made it clear that Amazon will not edit or […]