Brooklyn-based digital publishing technology player Atavist “has laid off half its staff and is looking for ways to cut costs and stick around,” Nieman Lab reports, after failing to secure additional funding. Seven people have been laid off over the past month and another three people left in the last quarter and have not been replaced. The company last raised $2 million a little over a year ago, as the separate but related IAC-backed digital publisher Atavist Books closed. At the time, ceo Evan Ratliff told us, “Atavist itself is currently stronger than ever, and we’re excited about the growth in both […]
eNews
Kindle Unlimited Reports First Rates By Territory
Amazon announced the retroactive rate at which they will pay self-published authors for pages read in November through the Kindle Unlimited subscription program, and it is the first month for which they are using the new system of indicating different payments for each country in which KU operates. As Amazon says in their latest post, “payouts will differ per country based on local country factors such as exchange rates, customer reading behavior, and local subscription pricing. The US rate is pretty similar to the universal rate from October — at $.00492 per page, or a little under half a cent. The […]
Penguin Random House Consolidates Library eBook Terms
With Penguin Random House unifying its adult library marketing teams under the leadership of vp, library sales Skip Dye, the company will also simplify its terms of sale for ebooks into school and public libraries in the US and Canada as of January 1, 2016. The Random House model will prevail companywide over the Penguin practice, and going forward all titles will be sold to libraries in perpetuity — at premium library prices — rather than sold for a term of one year, as has been the Penguin policy. (Titles are still limited to one patron at a time for each ebook […]
People, Etc.
Marion Garner has been promoted to deputy publisher, vp of Penguin Random House Canada, continuing to report to president and publisher Kristin Cochrane. (Garner has been deputy publisher for the Random House Canada imprints). In the new, broader role, Garner “will have input into acquisitions, oversee the inventory of all our imprints, work closely with the imprint directors and publishers, and will have a hand in the behind-the-scenes elements of our publishing efforts as they involve marketing, publicity and sales meetings.” She will also manage all of the paperback publishing. Lindley Boegehold has joined Clarkson Potter as editorial director overseeing the Potter gift line of products. Previously she was […]
Trick Rather Than Treat? Kindle Unlimited Changes the Payment Rules Again
Amazon announced another changed in how they will compensate self-published authors who participate in the Kindle Unlimited subscription payment pool. In July the system switched from paying for every download to paying based on pages read — and now those per-page rates are becoming much more complicated, international, and opaque. Starting with the November fund payments, Amazon writes, “payouts per country will differ based on local country factors” as take “marketplace differences into account.” In other words, as Kindle Unlimited has rolled out to multiple countries — most recently India, where the subscription price is the equivalent of $3 a […]
Subscription Service Blloon Closes
It’s no big surprise that European-based subscription service Blloon is officially closing at the end of October. The subscription program was spun out of ebook technology provider and platform txtr — which went insolvent earlier this year, before pieces of the operation and some of its personnel were picked up by retailer Media-Saturn — and both Blloon and txtr were run by Thomas Leliveld. The public notice says, “We haven’t been able to align with our partners to create a sustainable business.” An email from Leliveld to publishing partners notes their original model of providing limited reading based on points “was not […]