The University of Michigan Press announced today that it will shift its scholarly publishing program, responsible for producing up to 60 monographs a year, from being primarily a traditional print operation to a primarily digital one within two years. Michigan officials tell Inside Higher Ed that the shift reflects their belief that old scholarly publishing models don’t work and it’s time to stop trying. “I have been increasingly convinced that the business model based on printed monograph was not merely failing but broken,” said Phil Pochoda, director of the Michigan press. “Why try to fight your way through this? Why […]
eNews
Google to Supply 500k Public Domain Books for Sony Reader
Yesterday Google and Sony reached a deal to distribute half a million titles, all published before 1923 and in the public domain, through the Sony Reader at no cost. “We have focused our efforts on offering an open platform and making it easy to find as much content as possible – from our store or others – whether that content is purchased, borrowed or free,” said Steve Haber, president of the Digital Reading Business Division at Sony Electronics, in the accompanying release. “Working with Google, we can offer book lovers another avenue for free books while still providing a seamless […]
Apple Will Change the Rules for Selling eBooks within Apps
Apple previewed the many changes on the way in the next version of the operating system (version 3.0) for the iPhone and iPod Touch. (Apple says there are now about 30 million devices running this OS). Notably for publishers, Apple will now allow the sale of App Store content from within a paid app. SVP of iPhone software Scott Forstall said at the preview, “We’ve been listening, and some developers say there are other business models they’d like to support, such as subscriptions. Like magazines who would like to have readers renew their subscriptions, or, for instance, an e-book provider, […]
Discovery Sues Amazon, Saying Kindle Infringes Patent
Discovery Communications filed a patent suit against Amazon.com in Federal court in Delaware, alleging that the Kindle and the ways in which Amazon sells and delivers documents to the device infringes a patent filed for in 1999 and awarded in November 2007 for an “Electronic Book Security and Copyright Protection System.” Discovery general counsel Joseph A. LaSala, Jr. says in the announcement, “The Kindle and Kindle 2 are important and popular content delivery systems. We believe they infringe our intellectual property rights, and that we are entitled to fair compensation.” A Discovery spokesperson underscores that they do not want an […]
ABA "Action Plan" for Digital Opportunities
The ABA’s Len Vlahos posted a presentation to the ABA board about how “a meaningful digital content solution needs to be our top priority and main focus for the immediate future.” For now, however, the immediate recommendations calls for “further study” through a task force; continuing dialogue with Ingram, Symtio and other technology partners; and increased digital focus in the ABA’s educational programs.Report Bookseller Rich Rennicks had an interesting blog post on the topic of how to deal with ebooks in indie stores recently that was enriched by about 40 comments. Among the laments from booksellers there is that the […]
Remember this Day, For An Actual eBook Sales Number Was Published
The other interesting fact from Lagardere’s annual report merits this separate item and our congratulations on their disclosure. Reporting that ebook sales in the US rose 5.5 times during 2008, the company declared revenues–yes, actual revenues–of $4.7 million. Based on our rough estimate of Hachette Book Group’s total US sales for the year, that means that even with the exponential growth, ebooks comprised less than 0.75 percent of sales. (The conforms with Penguin USA’s recent declaration to us that, while they too experienced a nearly five-fold increase in ebook sales, it has yet to comprise one percent of revenue.) And […]