Thursday News: Harlequin Escape royalty update; Kobo to power indie ebooksales;...

Jane Publishing News Agency pricing, Amazon, Kobo, Noble Romance

Harlequin ESCAPE – Transform Your World – I asked for a few more details from Harlequin Escape including the royalty structure. I heard back yesterday that it was 50% from the website and 40% from third party sales, both off net. This is apparently the same royalty schedule available at Carina Press as well. Harlequin Escape

Kobo And Independent Bookstores Join Forces To Expand eReading Across The U.S. – Kobo and the American Booksellers Association are partnering to provide ebook selling capabilities to the nearly 2,000 ABA member stores. Google previously enjoyed that role and then cut indies off  announcing that their partnership would end in January 2013. The indies can now sever their connection with Google as early as October.

In partnership with the ABA, Kobo has developed a unique program designed for independent booksellers and their customers. Booksellers will be able to offer a total experience for their customers including a full line of eReaders, eReading accessories, and ebooks from Kobo’s catalog of nearly 3 million titles. ABA members will share in the revenue on every sale. The program includes valuable training, in-store merchandising, marketing, sales, and logistics solutions to help independents be successful. ABA members will also be able to offer ebooks directly to their customers online. Kobo expects to launch with the first 400 bookstores this fall.
Press Release

Exclusive: Amazon NY signs deal to sell its ebooks through other retailers – Amazon NY, the literary fiction arm of Amazon’s publishing unit, has struck a deal with Ingram to source the Amazon ebooks to other retailers. There is no word whether the other retailers like Kobo, Apple, or B&N will agree to carry the titles. As Laura Hazard Owens notes, B&N originally refused to carry Amazon print books in its stores while the ebooks were not available to them. Now that the ebooks are available, will B&N back down? paidContent

The cheap alternative to Evernote’s new Moleskine notebook – So on Tuesday I profiled the expensive Evernote + Moleskin notebook application where you buy the $30 moleskin notebook, take a photo of it and Evernote creates a searchable index of your notes. Booksprung blogged about a much cheaper (ie no need for the $30 Moleskin notebook) to achieve essentially the same results by using deskewing (or straightening your notes) feature on your phone’s camera and emailing the photo to your evernote account with the requisite tags. Alternatively use apps like Abby Finereader for $3 to deskew and OCR (Abby Finereader’s OCR engine is one of the best). It’s a great article. Booksprung

A couple of Noble Romance authors have expressed ongoing frustration with the new management of Noble Romance. The authors assert that there were several contract breaches and failures to send appropriate tax documents.  The new management has not released the authors who requested reversion of rights and continue, according to these authors, to treat them unfairly.  I am not clear as to what the exact breaches are but suffice to say several Noble Romance authors are unhappy.

States’ Attorneys General released statements yesterday summarizing the proposed settlement which will see a pay out to consumers of around $69 million for books purchased between April 1, 2010 through May 21, 2012.  The proposed settlement was not available on Pacer when I checked last night but it should be available today.  The details I was able to glean seemed that the proposed settlement was basically the same as the DOJ’s proposed settlement only with a monetary component.  Friday, then, we will digest the proposed settlement.  According to a filing today, however, Judge Cote has accepted the briefs of the Authors’ Guild and has given Kohn until Sept. 4 to file a new 5 page amicus brief.  I actually view this as a good sign. If you are going to rule against a side, you allow all the argument in that you can so that the side you ruled against has less of an opportunity to cry “no fair”.