Late last week 16 more states, as well as the District of Columbia, joined the amended ebook pricing complaint against Apple and the ‘Agency Five’ publishers, bringing the number of states involved in the lawsuit to 32. Texas and Connecticut initially filed the complaint at the same time as the DOJ; among the new plaintiffs are Virginia, Indiana, New York, and Wisconsin. Page One Bookstore in Albuquerque, NM, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2011, said it expects final approval of a reorganization plan to move forward as a going concern “shortly,” according to the Albuquerque Journal. Owner […]
Pricing
eNews: Target Confirms Kindle Removal; Coehlo’s 99-Cent Backlist Promotion; Bundled Nooks With HMH Textbooks; and More
Target confirmed on Wednesday the report we mentioned in Wednesday’s issue indicating that that 1,800-store chain will stop carrying Kindle devices. Company executives wrote to vendors in January to protest moves such as Amazon’s price check app: “What we aren’t willing to do is let online-only retailers use our brick-and-mortar stores as a showroom for their products and undercut our prices.” Target was first big mass merchant to start stocking Kindle products in 2010. Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Staples are among the big retail chains that still sell Kindle products in their stores. Earlier this week Paulo Coehlo announced on […]
Corporate News: eSubscriptions from F+W; Princeton Review Sells Test-Prep Business; Hachette UK eBook Sales Now Over 20%; and More
F+W Media has launched the first of a series of ebook subscription sites across the company’s verticals. They are beginning with the Artist’s Network eBooks Book Club, a collection of over 100 full-color art instruction titles. An annual subscription costs $199. Impelsys’s iPublishCentral is their technology partner. CEO David Nussbaum says they hope to enroll “thousands” of subscribers in the first year. (The company already enjoys success with other subscriptions for this community, through their Artists Network Video Network.) The next F+W communities to launch ebook subscription plans will be writing, design, outdoors/weapons, woodworking, and romance. Princeton Review is selling […]
Google and Amazon Finish Playing with Each Other
It appears that Google Play’s 25-cent media offers were an introductory promotion rather than a standing feature, as the site tells visitors “today is the last day of our 7 Days to Play!” In ebooks, the promotion has been a boon to the selected titles, most because Kindle has matched the 25-cent pricing. Each of the designated ebooks took a turn in Kindle’s posted hourly top ten, and all five eligible ebooks appear on Kindle’s weekly bestseller list for the week ending 3/12, in this order: 3. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer 10. Fight Club, by […]
Random House Raises eBook Wholesale Prices Significantly
Random House announced their library ebook pricing, effective as of March 1, which will dampen some of the enthusiasm for the house’s commitment to the “unrestricted and perpetual availability of our complete frontlist and backlist of Random House, Inc.” in ebook form. The new prices, which librarians tell The Digital Shift represent up to a tripling, are calibrated to “bring our titles in price-point symmetry with our Books on Tape audio book downloads for library lending. These long have carried a considerably higher purchase price point than our digital audio books purchased for individual consumption.” The new price structure for […]
Random House Canada Moves to Agency Model
Exactly a year after Random House started selling ebooks on the agency model in the US, Random House Canada has done likewise, effective March 1. The company said in a brief announcement, “The agency model guarantees a higher margin for retailers than did our previous sales terms. We are making this change both as an investment in the successful digital transition of our existing partners and in order to give us the opportunity to forge new retail relationships. We are looking forward to continuing to work with all our retail partners – both digital and physical – on our joint […]