The relaunch of a pivoted Vook/Booklr/Byliner under the new name Pronoun.com that was announced in May is now live, at least for “early access” authors. The company’s author terms are posted; they require exclusive distribution to Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play as a group while authors work with them, but promise to pay through all receipts, with no conversion, posting or distribution fees — plus one free ISBN. For now they capture a bit of a float — paying “sixty days after the end of each financial quarter,” while promising that “we’re moving to a monthly payment schedule very soon.” […]
eNews
eBook Sales Trends and Yet Another Surprise (Newspapers Are Far From Dead)
The other day we learned that you can take something that isn’t news, put it on the front page of the printed NYT, and it becomes very important. While people who work in book publishing likely shrugged at the combination of well-established trends and selective interpretation — ebook sales for traditional publishers have been roughly flat for years — then you started hearing from relatives and friends who thought there was something here worthy of, say, congratulations. So “Print books not dead” now officially joins the pantheon of comic tropes, somewhere between the Monty Python sketch and Generalissimo Francisco Franco. But let’s […]
Oyster Shutting Down, In Google AcquiHire
Ebook subscription service Oyster announced late Monday afternoon in a blog post that the company would wind down operations “over the next several months.” Publishers told us to expect this development earlier in the day, as part of a sale of Oyster. The subscription company then confirmed to Re/code that “a portion” of staff are going to work for Google Play Books, and sources told the site that Oyster ceo Eric Stromberg, co-founders Andrew Brown and Willem Van Lancker are among those who will work for Google. Sources said Google is de facto the buyer, paying Oyster for the right to hire some of its […]
Amazon Confirms Release of New Tablets, From Small $50 Unit to New 10.1-Inch Screen
As indicated by the WSJ and others, Amazon announced a number of new devices on Thursday morning. At the bottom end is a new $50, 7-inch Fire tablet. (If for some reason one is not enough, they will sell you a six-pack of tablets for $250.) In the middle is a revised version of their special tablet for kids. Launched last year at $150, the new Fire Kids Edition is down to $100. At the higher end are their Fire HD tablets, now thinner, larger (in the screens), and HD-er. The 8-inch display sells for $150, while the 10+-inch display goes for $230. […]
Amazon KU Payment Drops 11 Percent For August
Amazon decided — as usual, in their sole judgment, based on undisclosed data — that they will pay KDP Select authors a total of $11.8 million for Kindle Unlimited subscription reading in August. That’s up from the $11.3 million pool divided up for July. But with the money being shared across 2.3 billion pages read, Amazon’s per-page payment dropped considerably. Going down to roughly $0.00514 per page (about half of one cent) from $0.005779 per page in July may look modest visually, but as authors were quick to note on online forums, that equates to an 11 percent decrease in the […]
Briefs: BitLit and Kindle Scout Expand, Scholastic UK Purchase
Amazon’s “reader-powered publishing platform” Kindle Scout is expanding beyond the US, welcoming author submissions from Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and India. The company says that so far, 75 titles have been picked up for publication by Kindle Press. Also expanding is BitLit, the company that helps enable print and ebook bundling. The start-up is working with Ingram to let publishers who use CoreSource Plus for digital asset management and distribution integrate with BitLit. In the UK, Scholastic Ltd. has acquired Troubadour, which operates as The Travelling Book Company. With a network of sales agents who work with schools across the UK and Ireland, […]