The Sony Reader will launch in France next month, in an exclusive partnership with retail chain Fnac, along with publisher Hachette Livre (two Hachette books are included in the 300-euro price). A press conference is scheduled for next Tuesday to announce the launch. In the meantime, France’s Virgin Megastore is speaking out, claiming to be concerned that “exclusive arrangements hamper the development of supply for legal downloading.” The Bookseller says that subsidiary VirginMega is “working on a digital book project that would be open to all publishers.”Bookseller Separately, Business Week looks at a trial program in the country through France […]
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Sony UK Stats
The UK launch of the Sony Reader has taken a page from Amazon’s playbook, with excitement over unspecified numbers and demand. Waterstone’s, which has a two-week exclusive on initial sales before the device rolls out among other retailers, has–you guessed it–“sold out” of their initial stock of “the thousands of Readers supplied for launch” (e.g. their initial order.) But there are more on the way: they are “working with Sony to ensure regular deliveries of stock to stores – no one will have to wait very long to get their Reader.” Commercial director Neil Jewsbury tells the Bookseller “we’ve also […]
First Lady Bios, First on Kindle
Globe Pequot is releasing biographies of the two potential First Ladies Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama as Amazon Kindle exclusives in advance of the print releases. Elizabeth Lightfoot‘s Michelle Obama: Grace and Intelligence in a Time of Change is available electronically today, with an announced print release date of November 26. Alicia Colon’s Cindy McCain: Elegance, Good Will and Hope for a New America will be available on Kindle on September 15, but “will only go to print if John McCain wins the election.” Amazon release
New Adobe Software Protects ePub Files
Adobe announced their Content Server 4 for release on September 22, “a new server software solution that copy protects downloadable eBooks for Adobe Digital Editions” in pdf and ePub formats. Developed “in concert with” over 30 publishing-related partners, the new software “improves file security and flexible permissions, as well as retail and library lending support.” The ePub support is billed in particular as allowing publishers to “securely distribute reflowable digital content to the smaller screens of mobile devices.” Press release
Since They Aren't Selling, Let's Give Them Away
John Warner, editor of McSweeney’s online, author of So You Want to Be President? and Fondling Your Muse, and “Creative director of the struggling TOW Books” writes on Maud Newton’s blog about his new initiative to give away PDFs of four books from his humor imprint to help spread the word. “The sad fact, and I’m afraid that it is a fact, is that the reason we’re struggling is because very few people even know our books exist…. After two years of, let’s call it, non-success, I understand that the problem is at least as much about publicity and distribution […]
Next: Newspaper-Sized eReader
A company called Plastic Logic will announce a new electronic reading device the size of a standard sheet of copy paper, billed as having “a lightweight plastic screen that mimics the look of a printed newspaper.” The price to consumers, and partners enrolled in displaying papers on the device, will not be announced until the CES show in January, and “the reader will go on sale in the first half of next year.” The NYT says it has “a screen size that is 2.5 times larger than the Kindle, weighs just two ounces more and is about one-third the Kindle’s […]