At Chronicle, Laura Lee Mattingly has been promoted to senior editor, while Sarah Billingsley moves up to senior editor, food & drink. Brendan Coyne has joined the Pennsylvania State University Press as director of sales and marketing. He was formerly associate sales director at Johns Hopkins University Press. Penguin Random House UK group UK sales director Garry Prior is retiring at the end of the year, after 35 years with associated companies. Co-founder and former chief technology officer of The Book Depository Emad Eldeen Elakehal will launch ibiidi.com, a global international bookselling website selling titles in multiple language and focusing […]
eNews
New Devices from Nook/Samsung and Kobo
Following Samsung’s release of the Galaxy Tab S2 8-inch tablet, as expected Barnes & Noble has announced their parallel release of a Galaxy Tab S2 NOOK version. As with earlier co-branded tablets, Nook’s $400 device includes an offer for free ebooks and magazines, and in-store at BN stores. Earlier in the week, Kobo announced a refreshed version of their eInk reader, the Touch 2.0, promising “a sleeker design with more internal storage memory and a battery life that lasts up to two months depending on individual usage.” The $90 reader goes on sale next week in the US and Canada, and rolls out elsewhere “later […]
Then There Were Five (Or More): Penguin Random House Returns to Agency
The one significant factor in Penguin Random House’s US performance not mentioned in yesterday’s half-year report from Bertelsmann was the artificial boost to ebook sales while the house stood alone since mid-April as the only big trade publisher that still allowed significantly discounting on their ebook prices. (Harper returned to full agency in mid-April; HBG on February 1; and Macmillan and Simon & Schuster in early January.) But as of today, September 1, PRH has followed their peers in returning to full agency ebook pricing in the US (except, as required by the court, Apple retains discretion to discount, and competitors […]
Google Play Books Cleans Up
The NYT’s Haggler columnist helps out an author whose book was pirated wholesale on the Google Play Books store. Google spokesperson Matt McLernon confirms that the company disabled enrollment of new self-published authors in May to combat significant levels of pirated ebooks on the site (e.g. unauthorized clones of real books by third parties). “At the same time, a team of employees went through all of the complaints filed by publishers. Pirate accounts were deleted. (The company eventually plans to restart the program.)” Or maybe not all the complaints. It took the attention of the Haggler to get the unauthorized version […]
Simon & Schuster Tries A Kindle Unlimited Experiment
Since Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription program launched just over a year ago, agency contracts have prevented the etailer from putting the five largest publishers’ books into the initiative without consent — though that hasn’t stopped Amazon from pulling in selected books from non-agency publishers without permission, paying for them like any other sale. But earlier in August, Simon & Schuster initiated the first known “big five” KU experiment, albeit a very modest one. Vince Flynn’s first Mitchell Rapp thriller Transfer of Power and the late author’s most recent installment The Last Man (published in 2012) have both been available for […]
Next, Scribd Curtails Unlimited Audiobooks
Following substantial reductions in their catalog of romance titles at the end of June, Scribd announced in a blog post last Friday a substantial curtailment of the distinctive unlimited audiobooks included in their monthly subscription offering. As of September 20, subscribers will be limited to a single audiobook per month from one part of the collection. To listen to a second audiobook within the same subscription month, members will have to pay the equivalent of another month’s fee — positioned as purchasing an “audio credit” for $8.99. At the same time, Scribd says they will keep some kind of catalog […]