Amazon made their monthly report to KDP Select publishers over the weekend, electing to add $2.5 million to the compensation pool for October reads/borrows through Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner’s Lending Library. But the most closely watched number by authors — the amount paid per read — declined again, to $1.33. That’s the lowest amount paid per read since KOLL began in late 2011. Authors were paid $1.52 per read for September (on 3.29 million reads), and $1.54 per read for August, the first full month of the Kindle Unlimited subscription program. As usual, authors’ opinions are mixed on Amazon’s forum and Kindle […]
eNews
“Predicting” the National Book Awards
Last month BookVibe took credit for “predicting” the Booker Prize winner and promised to return with a set of forecasts for the National Book Awards. The company monitors and evaluates Twitter discussions, which is an interesting dataset for certain things, that it can’t possible tell you conclusion five judges together in a room will come to, which is how the NBAs are decided. But maybe you can take it as an indication of where influential online readers are leaning, if they had the vote. In their assessment, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and Station Eleven by Emily […]
Amazon Resumes Limited Hachette Pre-Orders and Restores Some Discounts
For the first time since late May, Amazon customers can pre-order at least some titles from Hachette Book Group — principally Little, Brown books, set for imminent release (such as Kevin Pietersen’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY, publishing December 1) as well as books not scheduled until spring 2015 (including Cathy by John Carder Bush in April, and books by Susanna Gregory in February and March). From our searches Wednesday morning the restored pre-orders apply only to Little, Brown and have not been extended to Grand Central, FaithWords, Orbit or other HBG divisions. In addition, all of the prominent forthcoming releases highlighted on HBG’s own web site (James Patterson’s November Hope to Die and […]
Barnes & Noble Launches Bundling Promo (“Sync Up”), and Adds POD to Nook Press
After a number of quiet experiments over the years bundling print books and ebooks together, Barnes & Noble has launched an extensive holiday bundling promotion under the banner “Sync Up,” letting in-store customers add an ebook version of eligible titles for $4.99 when purchasing the print editions. Seventy “select paperbacks” are eligible, including Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep, Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, Christina Baker Kline’s Orphan Train and Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. The savings on the bundle vary by title — with the King ebook selling regularly for $14.99, while the Kline and Gabaldon ebooks already sell for […]
Amazon Wins .Book Domain Auction
Amazon’s Luxembourg subsidiary has won the auction for the .book domain. The company prevailed over nine competitors, including Google and Bowker, the latter reportedly the last to drop out, according to the Register. Terms of the auction were not disclosed but it is understood to have been “between $5 million and $10 million.” Though not reported elsewhere, according to the ICANN database, Amazon also appears to be the only contender for the .author domain as well, listed as “in contracting” (which has its own peculiar meaning for ICANN). When Amazon first applied for the .book domain in early 2013, the company said it would run it […]
Scribd Adds Audiobooks to Their Subscription Plan
Scribd substantially expanded their subscription reading service on Thursday morning, adding a collection of more than 30,000 audiobooks titles, available for unlimited streaming and downloading as a part of their regular $8.99 subscription service, alongside the ebooks they have offered since October 2013. In contrast to the ebooks, which are mostly backlist titles, the audiobook catalog includes frontlist titles as well from many of the participating publishers. The biggest named participants are HarperCollins and also Scholastic from the trade publishing side (so the Hunger Games trilogy is there), as well as Blackstone Audio and Naxos. The audio collection is supplied […]