Kobo chief executive Mike Serbinis finally addresses their issues with self-published books personally, in an interview with the UK’s Telegraph. Meanwhile, WH Smith has managed to get their website back online and open for business — though it appears they are only selling print books and have not restored sales of Kobo ebooks yet. The Telegraph reports that “Kobo hopes that the majority of its catalogue – minus the offending titles – will be back online by Saturday 19 October.” As Serbinis indicates indirectly, part of the problem is that they look to technology to screen titles rather than direct […]
eNews
Macmillan Expands eBook Library Lending to Total of 11,000 Backlist Titles
A little more than 6 months after entering the digital library market with a pilot program including 1200 backlist Minotaur titles and other titles from romance imprint Entangled, Macmillan has expanded its digital library offerings to include an additional 9,300 backlist titles across all company imprints. That brings the total number of backlist Macmillan titles available for digital lending to approximately 11,000. The news was first reported on Twitter by 3M collection development coordinator Heather McCormack, and Macmillan president of sales Alison Lazarus told us in a statement that “as part of our ongoing evaluation of eLending we have decided […]
eNews: Kobo Disabled at Whitcoulls; Scholastic’s Ed-Tech; Scribd’s Subscriber Report; and More
WH Smith still has not restored service to their website in the wake of controversy over some of the Kobo ebooks they were offering for sale. In New Zealand, retailer Whitcoulls “has suspended the sale of eBooks through our website.” They write in a site note: “This suspension will remain in place until we can guarantee that any inappropriate material, that has been available through self published eBooks, has been removed from the Kobo eBook catalogue.” But Australian partner Angus & Robertson is still selling what appears to be the full and unexpurgated Kobo catalog (at least judging by a […]
Self-Publishing Takes Down WH Smith
On Saturday the UK’s Mail on Sunday ran a sensational article focusing on the “disturbingly graphic content” available in abundance through major online bookstores, including WH Smith, Amazon, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble, generally as ebooks. The prime focus of their piece was WH Smith, where children’s ebooks and pornography were freely mixed under the first page of results for a search for “daddy.” (The story appears to have begun with a tweet during the week and an article in The Kernel that focused on Amazon.) In response, WH Smith took their entire website offline, and it remains still closed […]
People, Etc.
Karrie Witkin will join Abrams on October 21 in the newly created role of editorial director, Gift and Paper Products. Previously she was senior editor and publishing manager for Potter Style. In addition, Maya Bradford has been promoted to publicist, adult trade. At Atria, Sarah Cantin has been promoted to editor. Sulay Hernandez has left Other Press. She can be reached at SulayHernandez.Ed@gmail.com. Random House Children’s Books announced that RJ Palacio‘s WONDER has crossed the 1 million copy sales mark in North America. PGW has added seven more clients to its distribution list, including the Los Angeles Review of Books, Patagonia […]
Books Versus Other and the Rise of eBooks, Around the World
By next year (if not by now already) more than half of all books will be purchased online in the US rather than in physical stores, and Amazon executive Russ Grandinetti told the audience at Publishers Launch Frankfurt that the UK is only another year away — and he believes the same trend is “not more than three years” away for most of “the rest of Europe.” (At the same time, however, Bowker US survey data for the first half of 2013 actually shows online sales actually declining by a few percentage points, for the first time — though that […]