As anticipated, Lexcycle’s Stanza Reader for iPhone/iPod Touch will license PDF and EPUB rendering technologies as well as support for Adobe’s eBook content protection technology. The capability will launch “next quarter.” That opens up a significant world of books to the platform, comprising “a wide variety of commercially published eBooks from major publishers.” And it contrasts to Kindle 2, which still does not offer native support for PDF files. In a presentation this morning at TOC, Lexcycle’s Neelan Choksi said “the one thing we’ve focused on from day one is that it’s all about the readers.” A survey of users […]
Borders to Cut Music Further
Borders to pushing music and DVD suppliers to change their trading terms, Billboard reports. “At the best, it wants vendors to go to scan-based trading payment terms, which means paying for product when it is sold…or it wants 365-days ‘dating,’ the term for payment scheduling. At the least, it wants more dating for slower moving titles. Sources say Borders is giving vendors about 10 days to come back to the chain with proposals. Borders plans a similar move for video, although its slightly less drastic than its plans for music.” (NB that a fight over scan-based trading is part of […]
Grisham Coming Soon to eBooks
Agent David Gernert tells the WSJ that he is close to finalizing an agreement with Random House to make John Grisham’s 22 novels available in electronic form for the first time. “There was a period when John and I felt it was a good idea to watch the world of e-books evolve before diving in. Now that it’s a more mature marketplace, he will be available very soon in all digital formats.”WSJ
Harper Children's to Close Bowen Line
In another paring at HarperCollins, Susan Katz announced that “to further streamline our publishing operations, we will close The Bowen Press.” Katz says “as the book world becomes increasingly challenging, we must continue to be extremely cost conscious.” The unit will also move offices, to join the rest of Harper at 10 E. 53 street. Spokesperson Eric Crum says there is no firm date for the move yet, since they are upgrading the offices first.
Harper Closes Collins
Following rapid expansion under Steve Ross, HarperCollins is “closing the Collins Division and realigning the imprint” and president and publisher of the division Ross is now leaving the company. In other realignments (see below), William Morrow publisher Lisa Gallagher is leaving the company as well. The Harper imprint, under Jonathan Burnham, will absorb the Collins general non-fiction list (which will be published as Harper titles), along with Collins Reference, which retains its name as an imprint, and Collins Business, which will publish as Harper Business going forward. Bruce Nichols remains as publisher of Collins Reference and will also serve as […]
Kindle Day 2: King is "Publisher"; Does Read-Aloud Infringe? Waiting for Mobile
Things to say about Kindle 2 on day two are a lot more interesting than yesterday’s first shot. An Amazon representative explained after yesterday’s press conference that Stephen King is acting as publisher of the Kindle-exclusive “Ur,” through the company listed as Storyville LLC on Amazon’s site. The etailer says that the “digital list price” of $3.99 was set by Storyville, and Amazon is discounting the product to $2.99 in the same way that they discount other ebooks. Amazon says it is distributing Ur electronically in partnership with Storyville, and that the publisher is selling them the ebook at a […]