Amazon announced that for those using Kindle Direct Publishing, the 70 percent royalty has expanded from a top price of $9.99 up to $12.99, effective July 7, “with equivalent changes in other KDP marketplaces” around the world. That is the first increase in the price band since 2007. As the Authors Guild notes, “This move also brings Amazon closer in line with its competitors: Apple Books and Barnes & Noble Press pay a flat 70 percent at every price point, and Kobo pays 70 percent on any ebook priced at $2.99 or above.”
eBooks
After-Market Trading Takes BN Shares Above Offering Price; Liberty Expects to Spend $500 Million
As we wrote last night (a couple of times), Wall Street views Liberty Media’s offer of $17 a share for Barnes & Noble as the opening price, not the price at which a transaction will close. Shares rose past that point by the close of the after-market last night at 8:00 and opened regular trading this morning at more than $18 a share. A number of factors are driving the share price now–some having to do with revised assessments of Barnes & Noble’s value now that someone else wants to go steady, and some relating to technical trading factors. Despite […]
Europe Develops e-Readers
Germany’s Spiegel reports that Deutsche Telecom is developing its own e-reading device to compete with the likes of Kindle and the Sony Reader (neither is currently sold in Germany). One engineer says their device is likely to be larger and have a flexible display. France Telecom’s Orange also has an electronic reading device in development.Story translated/summarized in Bookseller
eBook Updates
Amazon announced a ramp-up in titles from Christian book publishers available for the Kindle, saying that Augsburg Fortress, Crossway Books & Bibles, David C. Cook, Gospel Light, Group Publishing, NavPress, Strang Communications, Thomas Nelson, Tyndale, Wm. B. Eerdmans and Zondervan “have committed to making the majority of their catalogs of books available to Kindle owners by the end of 2008.” VP of Kindle Ian Freed confirms last week’s new pseudo-stat: “Of the 135,000 books available on Amazon.com as a physical book and on Kindle, Kindle books already account for over 12 percent of units sold.”Amazon release Separately, UK chain Waterstone’s […]
eBooks for Apple iDevices: Game On
With the release of Apple’s ambitious App Store today, the company puts themselves in the ebook business without having to go through the messiness of dealing with publishers. Among the free app downloads is Fictionwise’s eReader software (bundled with free copies of the public domain books, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans). As indicated in the comments section of the TeleRead blog, the software was coded by Peanut Press co-founder Lee Fyock and another ex-peanut developer, Chris Eplett. Fictionwise’s Steve Pendergrast notes in the same thread that “in the coming […]
Harlequin's "Enriched" eBooks
Harlequin has announced the launch of what they call “enriched editions”: ebooks containing “interactive buttons that hyperlink to Web sites containing photos, historical commentaries, illustrations, sound effects, maps, articles and more, bringing the world of the novel to life without the reader having to leave the computer or the current screen page.”Press release