Kobo recently filed in opposition to the agency pricing publisher settlements in Canada, objecting to the rapid 40-day timeframe in which they need to renegotiate major publisher contracts, but also arguing that the newly-imposed terms will make them “suffer significant unrecoverable losses” if “Kobo accepts the amendments and shifts its operations to an Agency Lite model.” They write that “a ban on Agency, even in the short term, will have a lasting and irreversible negative impact on the market for E-books in Canada.” More broadly, Kobo argues the arrival of agency in Canada was different than in the US and not the result of […]
eNews
Announcements: Vook Dashboard, and More
Vook is rolling out more broadly their ebook sales tracking tool, that lets you aggregate sales data from author/publisher accounts at multiple major ebookstores into a consolidated dashboard. The Frankfurt Book Fair is working with Zappos ceo Tony Hsieh’s The Downtown Project in Las Vegas on the VivaCo:Lab, “an event platform and community.” Tony Hsieh. Their “goal is to accelerate innovation in storytelling and set the stage for a more profitable future for publishers and all creative media industries.” Crown Forum has announced a marketing partnership with Cox Media’s Rare.us, “to bring conservative writers to a new and broader readership.” […]
Ingram Unit Buys CourseSmart
Ingram’s VitalSource announced Monday it has acquired the assets of CourseSmart, the online textbook venture created in 2007 by a coalition of the field’s dominant publishers, including Macmillan, Cengage Learning, Wiley, McGraw-Hill Education and Pearson. CourseSmart has millions of users around the world and “offers access to over 90 percent of core higher education titles as e-textbooks along with the largest catalog of e-resources and digital course materials.” Ingram says “CourseSmart’s strengths in inventory, instructor sampling and analytics will be integrated with Vital Source’s reader platform and global, scalable distribution network. By combining the two organizations, Vital Source will offer the world’s largest […]
People, Etc.
Sanj Kharbanda has been promoted to svp, digital markets at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In his expanded role “he will be responsible for driving digital market strategy across all consumer facing touchpoints in the corporation,” looking beyond trade to include their K-12 and consumer markets. Grand Central Publishing announced a number of recent promotions. In editorial, Emily Griffin, Michele Bidelspach, and Alex Logan have been promoted to senior editor. Megha Parekh has been promoted to associate editor, while Libby Burton and Lindsey Rose move up to assistant editor. Sonya Cheuse has been promoted to deputy director of publicity, while Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski […]
Audible Reduces ACX Royalty Payments
As of March 12, Audible is reducing the royalties it will pay out on audiobooks created through its ACX program. Currently rightsholders earn between 50 and 90 percent depending on the terms, but going forward they will receive a flat rate of 40 percent if the audiobook is distributed exclusively by Audible (both on the site and through Amazon and iTunes) and 25 percent for nonexclusive audiobooks. For royalty share deals, the amounts will be split evenly between the rightsholder and the producer. Audiobooks produced or contracted for before March 12 will still earn the original royalty rates. ACX is […]
Venture Capitalist Feld Starts Publisher
Longtime venture capitalist, co-founder of the TechStars program and author of five books (with Wiley) Brad Feld at the Foundry Group has started a publishing company. FG Press is launching with Eliot Peper’s techno-thriller UNCOMMON STOCK this month and lists about 7 forthcoming titles in all. Like some other we-know-better tech-driven presses, the books do not currently have common identifiers (like ISBNs) and are only available via the FG Press site for now. Similarly, the press’s descriptive copy relies on the standard issue publishing is broken but can be transformed with magically delicious tech dust theme. They “split everything 50/50” […]