With the continuing rollout of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription program to additional territories, the total payout to participating authors continues to grow, even as the per-borrow payment remains near its lowest levels. Every month on or about the 15th, Amazon tells authors how much they will be paid on a retroactive basis, still terming the payment a “bonus” rather than something they earned and are entitled to receive. For January borrows, Amazon said they are adding $5.5 million to the payout pool, for a total fund of $8.5 million. That works out to just under $1.38 a book (covering approximately 6.175 […]
Subscription
Scribd Adds Comics, Jeb Bush Samples Book of eMails
Scribd‘s latest addition to their subscription catalog is a comics vertical, with over 10,000 comic books and graphic novels from publishers including Marvel, Valiant, IDW/Top Shelf and Archie. CEO Trip Adler says in the announcement, “We are very excited to take this step in expanding our subscription service beyond books. This addition gives comics readers the freedom of unlimited reading, while also giving our ebook and audiobook lovers the opportunity to discover comics and graphic novels.” For a different type of ereading, Jeb Bush has posted a PDF of first chapter of his forthcoming ebook, which chronicles his time as governor of Florida […]
Announcements: Oyster Adds Harry Potter, R&L Buys Chase’s
eBook subscription service Oyster announced on Wednesday morning that they have added the Harry Potter series to their collection, along with 3 Hogwarts Library titles. Amazon first licensed the Potter books from Pottermore for borrowing in May 2012, originally on an exclusive basis “at least until 2014,” for inclusion in their Kindle Owner’s Lending Library across five languages. When the company launched their broader ebook subscription service Kindle Unlimited in July 2014, the Potter books were featured prominently in that program as well. Chase’s Calendar of Events, a fun, quirky property databasing all manner of holidays, daily observances and commemorations that […]
Macmillan Signs Up For Subscription Test With Scribd, Oyster
Macmillan has made good on ceo John Sargent’s reluctant promise in his end-of-2014 letter to “test subscription” program. The company will make available 1,000 titles — including science fiction & fantasy novels by Elizabeth Bear, Orson Scott Card, and Ursula K. LeGuin, to novels and nonfiction by Michel Foucault, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Louis Menand — on both Scribd and Oyster‘s ebook subscription services. In his December letter to authors and agents, Sargent had written that they would focus on “backlist books, and mostly … titles that are not well represented at bricks and mortar retail stores.” Macmillan has already making ebooks available for sale on Scribd; […]
Briefs
Following Macmillan ceo John Sargent’s indication that they will, with some reluctance, “test subscription in the coming weeks,” Oyster announced that their collection now includes over 1,000 titles published by Bloomsbury. Harper UK has disclosed their annual results for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014. Sales fell to £179 million, down £11 million from the prior year, while profits rebounded from terrible to just low, with pre-tax earnings of £7.2 million (still, much better than £2.8 million the year before). The company said profits were held down by £3.5 million related to their planned relocation to new offices in 2015. The Bookseller […]
Digital: News from KU, Kobo, Scribd and Curtis Brown UK
Amazon has launched Kindle Unlimited in France and Brussels. Kobo is bringing “three-for-two” deals from the trade paperback tables to the ebookstore — starting with a promotion in the US with Hachette Book Group, good only through December 15. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is now participating in Scribd‘s ebook subscription service. (HMH is one of the few trade publishers actively participating in Kindle Unlimited as well.) Curtis Brown UK is launching another digital publishing initiative next March, called Studio 28, covered here by the Bookseller as if it’s the agency’s first run at such a venture. They expect to publish 12 […]