Thomas Allen and Cormorant Books have partnered for a new digital short story initiative called cStories, ePub files that can be bought through independent booksellers’ websites for $1.99. Transcontinental Media will manage downloads and digital warehousing, taking a 10 percent share of revenues. (Thomas Allen & Cormorant will take 50 percent, while 40 per cent will go to booksellers.) “This is our way of helping independent booksellers be involved in digital retailing,” Thomas Allen marketing manager David Glover told Quill & Quire. “We know if people begin to read these stories, they’ll want more.” In other eNews, Penguin Children’s is […]
Web marketing/promotion
An Off-Catalog Pelecanos Book, Priced for Discovery
Reagan Arthur Books is trying an interesting strategy with an unexpected George Pelecanos novel, which they will publish next January 23. The 272-page page WHAT IT WAS is a stand-alone, which will be published as a 99-cent ebook and a $9.99 trade paperback. And for staunch fans, they are producing a limited-edition, signed and slip-cased hardcover for $35, with all three editions releasing at the same time. (The new title was quietly listed on bookselling sites in August, though we didn’t realize the interesting price promotion strategy until this week.) Arthur says they wanted Pelecanos’ next regularly-published hardcover to be […]
Agents Express Concern Over Kindle Lending Library
As we reported yesterday afternoon, many of the trade publishers with books included in Amazon’s new Kindle Lending Library did not consent to that participation and therefore had neither notified nor consulted with agents in advance about the program and its terms. (At least some of those companies specifically declined Amazon’s earlier offer to participate.) The Association of Authors’ Representatives has issued a statement on the new initiative: “The agent and author community have not been consulted about this new sort of use of authors’ copyrighted material, and are unaware of how publishers plan on compensating authors for this sort […]
eNews: WSJ Adds eBook Bestseller List, Compiled By Nielsen; Amazon in Talks for Kindle in China; and More
Starting tomorrow, the WSJ’s Weekend edition will feature their own ebook bestseller lists. Like the NYT lists, the Journal will present both ebook-only lists for fiction and nonfiction, as well as combined print and ebook lists in both categories. All titles are eligible–self-published, children’s, backlist, etc.–as long as they have a minimum price of 99 cents or higher. Nielsen BookScan is aggregating the data for the WSJ, drawing on what the release calls “all major retailers,” said to include Amazon, Nook, iBookstore, Sony and Google eBooks among others. Like the other WSJ charts, the new lists will be positional only, […]
eNews: Open Road Launches YA Original Title; Lerner Develops iPad App
Open Road is launching their first YA original for publication next February and it’s a work conceived and created especially for the digital medium, Andrea Buchanan’s paranormal ghost story GIFT. The full version–the full feature-set of which will work only on Apple’s platform, though more limited versions will work on other major platforms–includes such features as: audio tracks and music videos written and performed by one of the novel’s main characters (so the Booktrack-soundtrack idea, expanded); sound and visuals that “triggered” at key points in the story; a graphic novel created by one of the characters that is revealed throughout […]
eNews: BN Pulls Graphic Novels Over DC’s Kindle Fire Deal; Crown and RealClearPolitics Partner on Campaign eBooks; and More
DC Comics’ plans to make 100 graphic novels available in digital format exclusively on the Kindle Fire did not go over well with Barnes & Noble, which should not come as much of a surprise. As a result, Bleeding Cool reports, B&N sent an email to their stores instructing them to remove editions of those graphic novels–including the popular WATCHMEN, V FOR VENDETTA, and SANDMAN–from their shelves. The books can still be ordered from BN.com. Similar to Random House’s summer announcement that it would partner with Politico to produce a number of ebooks chronicling the 2012 presidential campaign, now Crown […]