Sourcebooks launches their latest experiment today, a subscription plan for romance readers the company is positioning as an ebook club and community. Discover A New Love offers subscribers one of four featured romance titles a month, at $9.99 for a six-month plan (so about $1.67 per book). Members can purchase additional titles at discount, and some club selections are available a month before general release. While the initial hook is value, Sourcebooks sees the long-term appeal as discovery and community. Editorial manager Deb Werksman says in the announcement, “Readers have a hard time figuring out what they should try next. […]
Subscription
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 […]
eNews:Skoobe eBook Subscription Service in Germany; Penguin and The Economist Join Forces for Digital Shorts;
In Germany, von Holtzbrinck and Verlagsgruppe Random House are backing a new ebook subscription venture, Skoobe, where customers pay 9.99 euros a month to borrow 2 ebooks in that 30-day period (with unlimited access to all content only between now and March 1, 2013.) Publishers supplying content so far include Droemer, DVA, Fischer, Goldmann, Heyne, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Lübbe, Luchterhand and Rowohlt. The Skoobe app is available for free for iOS devices, with an Android version to come at a later date. Penguin and the Economist (both owned by Pearson) are joining forces to publish a collection of reports entitled […]
eNews: Another Textbook Reader (From Chegg); eBooks Are 28% of Sourcebooks’ Sales; Cemetery Dance’s Digital Subscription; and More
Taking advantage of interest around Apple’s press conference tomorrow, textbook rental company Chegg is wading into the morass of too many proprietary ereading platforms for students with yet another product. Their cloud-based eTextbook Reader is HTML5-based, developed by 3D3R, an engineering team recently acquired by Chegg. The app is currently optimized for iPads and computers, though the company says other platforms are on the way. Their product uses publisher-supplied PDFs, and the company says they have about 40,000 textbooks available from all of the major publishers. (The WSJ says Kno claims about 150,000 titles, with options to either purchase or […]
Amazon Launches Prime eBooks Benefit Plan, Now Called Kindle Owners’ Lending Library
As we reported in September, after months of trying to enlist publisher participation in an ebook library for Amazon Prime members, the etailer has launched that initiative with a modest base of about 5,000 titles. Called Kindle Owners Lending Library, it makes available selected, mostly backlist titles, with promoted books coming from publishers including Scholastic, Norton, Bloomsbury, Grove/Atlantic, Workman/Algonquin, F+W Media, Lonely Planet, and Amazon’s own publishing imprints. Rosetta Books tells the WSJ they alone are contributing about 200 titles. None of the six largest publishers are participating (and when we discussed it with them in September, none of the companies […]
eNews: HBG Joins Net Galley; RoyaltyShare Adds Price Monitor; Dzanc’s eBook Club; Scholastic Adds Nintendo Games
– Hachette Book Group is now working with Net Galley to distribute digital galleys and press kits. – Working with HBG in a different context, RoyaltyShare has added a “sales feed price validation” tool to their ebook sales and royalty tracking service. The new addition is particularly useful for agency publishers in order to determine “whether reported eBook transaction prices are accurate” and “allowing them to potentially recoup tens of thousands of dollars of revenue that might otherwise never be identified.” HBG coo Ken Michaels says in the announcement, “The ability to identify pricing anomalies on a transaction-by-transaction basis in […]