Dear Author » acquisitions

Monday Midday Links: It Is All Gloom and Doom (today at least)

Jane — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:22:36 +0000

Disney bought Marvel Comics for $4 billion. Disney will now own the rights to over 5,000 Marvel characters including Spider Man, X-men, Ironman, and the like. One key element of copyright law that people tend to forgot is that the longer copyrights benefit corporations like Disney more than any one else, even the individual copyright holder.

Barnes & Noble will be distributing Smashword books via the BN ebook store. Authors who publish through Smashword receive 85% off the net. The partnership allows for greater visibility of Smashword books. I’m not sure if BN is accepting all the Smashword books or some selection as the press release mentions a “Premium Catalog.” Given that Smashwords is a self publishing tool, I would think that either BN or Smashwords would have to curate the content to some extent or risk degrading the useability of the BN ebook reading store.

SF Guy has a spectacular list of Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, and SFF book releases for the month of September. You know, in case you were looking around for something to read.

Apple announced that the theme for its September news conference is “Rock and Roll” which seems to given credence the rumors that the Tablet will not be released this fall. It, instead, will be all about the new iTouches and Apple’s new music container.

Hachette’s CEO talks about how publishers will have to stand “big” against retailers in the downward pricing of ebooks. Further, Hachette is looking at acquiring other houses. The article suggested that Hachette is in a good position to acquire Simon & Schuster should CBS need to sell it. S&S quietly laid off one book editor last week and this article suggests that there are more “workforce reductions” coming.

Cleantech Group suggests that if you are reading and buying more than 23 books over a five year period that it is greener to go digital.

Lori Drew’s conviction for cyberbullying was nullified by judicial dismissal of the suit. While Drew’s harangue of a teen that led to the teen’s suicide was awful, the use of the terms of service to provide grounds for criminal charges would have led to much abuse.

Random House, despite laying off people and reorganizing its business divisions, still managed to lose money for the entire first half of 2009. Profits were down the first half of 2009 by 35.5% worldwide. RH did see an upturn in sales over the summer and have high hopes for the Dan Brown book.

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

Sandra Guy of the Sun Times writes about a recent study projecting the closure of over 10,000 retail stores in 2009 including about 400 bookstores. The downturn in the economy is affecting the decisions people make about non necessary goods and apparently books are in that category.

Wal-Mart is looking to be a one stop online shopping portal akin to Amazon. Friends of mine admit that they could buy books places other than Amazon but that they order so many non book related items that they can’t leave Amazon. Wal-Mart wants to have customers like those. Wal-Mart has dabbled in music downloads and I have to believe that if they want to be a one stop shopping portal that digital books will be available at some point through Wal-Mart.

Thursday eBook Tech News Round Up

Jane — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:06:16 +0000

I’ve been criminally negligent in not keeping up with the news in the past few weeks but real life intruded. We’ll have a similar black out at the end of the month here, but in the meantime, here’s some choice bits of ebook tech news:

Barnes and Noble acquires Fictionwise for $15.7 million.
Gaming industry foresees physical distribution disappearing in the near future. (ebooks anyone?)
Allison Brennan expresses fear about the rise of ebooks given that piracy is destroying musicians. Unfortunately Brennan doesn’t see the real problem behind the music industries lack of response to Napster. It wasn’t the failure to educate, but the failure of the music industry to respond to the changing market and allowing one entity, Apple, to come in and dominate the void, creating a monolopy share of the digital download market (80%).
More publishers are getting into the free ebook content game: F&W Media and Random House have created free content libraries.
Stephen King’s Kindle exclusive, UR, has reached sales of five figures in three weeks.
Gizmodo thinks that the Apple tablet isn’t likely and doesn’t make sense. SB Sarah reported that an Apple rep told her that there would be no Mac Mini (ala the Asus or HP Mini). How does that square with the recent rumors that Apple wants in on the ebook market?
Asus showed off a prototype dual monitor laptop. Is this the answer for reluctant ebook readers?
Not content to sell content, Hearst publishing is developing its own e Ink device that will deliver its content. Whee! Another closed system, I bet. Makes lots of sense. Not.
Ebooks is the fastest growing category in the Apple Store. I bet some of that is due to the “Classics” app being featured in one of the iPhone television commercials but that the Kindle App will contribute to this number growing in the future.

Fictionwise Buys eReader from Motricity

Jane — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:42:35 +0000

Teleread.org reported that Fictionwise has purchased eReader store from Motricity. I think this is pretty great news and not because consolidation is good, but because as David Rothman points out in his article, the Brothers Pendergrast who own and run Fictionwise, are very plugged in to the e-community and offer a number of books on its site free of DRM.