Digital Book World conference chair Mike Shatzkin began the ever-growing third annual gathering before an expected crowd of 1,600 people or more with a rapid-fire checklist of “the things publishers need to be thinking about in 2012,” many of which drove the agenda of the two-day conference. (As you know, Publishers Lunch and Publishers Launch Conferences are co-presenters of DBW.) Among Shatzkin’s points: “Publishers need to be at least as adventurous and experimental about pricing as authors are on their own.” He pointed out that, while XML has grown, “a lot of useful information is routinely lost between an author’s […]
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Some Things iBooks Author Is, and Isn’t
After Thursday’s morning press conference, Apple published some online documentation that cleared up at least a few details regarding their new iBooks Author software. Once books are created, they can be offered for sale in the iBookstore (under its standard revenue split) or given away there for free. All books must be no larger than 2 GB (and the software can easily create very large files). Creators can also turn iBooks Author files into PDFs or iBooks documents that they can distribute independently–but only for free. Apple requires that if the ebooks are to be sold, “you must do so […]
The Market’s Many Minds On Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble threw a lot of different, and in some ways contradictory, data points at the market yesterday, and reactions (as well as articles) are all over the map. The general confusion is well-earned, and a lot rests on how you tell the story. Here are some things to keep in mind: The Stock Plunged–But It Also Took Off At its low point yesterday, about 5 minutes after the market opened, Barnes & Noble’s stock was down more than 30 percent, to about $9.40 a share. In today’s volatile environment, that’s what happens when you miss or lower your […]
Print Sales Tracked By Nielsen Bookscan Decline Over 9 Percent in 2011
With a particularly light week after Christmas (perhaps because of those post-holiday ebook downloads), unit sales of print books as measured by Nielsen Bookscan declined 9.25 percent for 2011. At 651 million units, the total was 66.3 million units lower than the total for 2010. (Remember our point from earlier in the week: BookStats counted trade ebook sales in 2011 of 76 million units. If that number doubled or more in 2011, the ebook gain could meet or exceed the decline in print units measured by Nielsen Bookscan.) Trade paperback sales, by far the largest category, declined 6 percent, at […]
Remembering 2011
2011 was a lively, fascinating unpredictable year, and we’re expecting more of the same for 2012. Before we can make a fully fresh start, though, there are some things we need to let go of from 2011. The obvious “big stories” have been rehashed amply over the past few weeks, and every year we try to do something different with our year-end wrap-up. Therefore, we present: 2011: The Things We Need to Get Straight Edition * Major book publishers did not raise ebook prices in 2011. Or 2010. They actually lowered them. * Mill River Recluse was not the bestselling […]
eNews
The Politico collaboration with Random House has its first ebook bestseller in PLAYBOOK 2012: THE RIGHT FIGHTS BACK by Mike Allen and Evan Thomas, which hit the NYT eBook Nonfiction list at No. 8 and the Combined Nonfiction list at No. 32. By our tracking, this is just the second e-only title to make the NYT’s eBook Nonfiction list, after Sarah Burleton’s WHY ME?, a self-published memoir of an abusive childhood that has been holding steady on the bottom half of the list since mid-October. The short-form Politico work is priced at $2.99. Self-published digital titles, inexpensive short-form works and […]