WSJ:

In sum, Google is tracking every move you make and connecting it together. If you watch a Youtube video, google logs this and then analyzes it against the searches you’ve made and the emails you send. To avoid this, you must be logged out and by default, Google logs you in. To make sure you are logged out, look at the black bar at the top right corner. If it says you are logged out, you should be.

Of course, with these companies, who knows. The FTC head has indicated that they’ll be watching these monoliths like Google and Facebook as it relates to the privacy of user data.

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Maggie Stiefvater may believe that bloggers are non professionals writing non reviews and therefore are not afforded respect by authors, but Reed Business who owns and runs Book Expo America apparently disagrees. It has purchased the Book Blogger Convention and beginning in 2012, the Book Blogger Convention will be part of BEA.

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Speaking of non reviews and bloggers, this one author and publisher are seeking a contractual arrangement with reviewers. Insane Hussein posts a copy of a Book Reviewer contract. Sign it and you give the author/publisher various rights to use the review in whatever way they wish. Not so bad, right? But then there are the terms. The review must be graded on an unbiased 1 to 5 scale. It must answer five questions. It must be 400 words or longer exclusive of the answers to the five questions.

No book is worth that trouble. Not one.

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Julian Sanchez takes a look at the dollar loss claimed by the entertainment industry as a result of piracy. The numbers are so outrageous as to be laughable yet most of Congress (and many in the entertainment industry) take these numbers as truth.

[H]ere’s the upshot: The $200–250 billion number had originated in a 1991 sidebar in Forbes, but it was not a measurement of the cost of “piracy” to the U.S. economy. It was an unsourced estimate of the total size of the global market in counterfeit goods. Beyond the obvious fact that these numbers are decades old, counterfeiting of physical goods imported in bulk and sold by domestic retail distributors is, rather obviously, a totally different phenomenon with different policy implications from the problem of illicit individual consumer downloads of movies, music, and software. The 750,000 jobs number had originated in a 1986 speech (yes, 1986) by the secretary of commerce estimating that counterfeiting could cost the United States “anywhere from 130,000 to 750,000? jobs. Nobody in the Commerce Department was able to identify where those figures had come from.

…..

Does that mean online piracy is harmless? Of course not. But the harm is a dynamic loss in allocative efficiency, which is much harder to quantify.

Source: How Copyright Industries Con Congress.

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For the UK and UK rights territories (which I think includes Australia and New Zealand), Piatkus is starting up a digital only line to release digital versions of popular books

The first titles will be released on Valentine’s Day, 14th February, with e-books including Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, 11 Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart, 10 Ways to be Adored When Landing a Lord by Sarah MacLean, and Winning the Wallflower by Eloisa James, as well as paranormal romance novella Eternal Blood by Laura Wright.

Novels will be priced £2.99, with novellas available at a lower price point. The imprint will also publish into omantic suspense, historical romance, paranormal romance and fantasy fiction, and contemporary women’s fiction genres.

Prices look good to me. UK readers?

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Remember how Apple just became the most profitable company in the world and is sitting on about 400 billion cash? Right, well, its devices are made in factories that treat people like animals. See NYTimes.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

NYTimes tweeted yesterday asking the question whether consumers would be willing to pay more for a device made in the US under humane conditions. Another person tweeted back and asked if Apple would be willing to have a lower margin than 44% to produce devices under humane conditions.

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There’s an article in Bloomberg’s Business Week that is worth a read because it is gossipy and insider-y about Amazon’s once rosy relationship with publishers and how it all fell apart when Amazon knifed them in the back and started selling digital books at a sub $10 price point. Larry Kirshbaum, the head of Amazon’s NY Publishing arm, once well liked, is now reviled according to Mike Shatzkin. Does Larry mind? I doubt it. I’ve heard that Kirshbaum’s checkbook is virtually bottomless and authors only hesitations might be their doubt that Amazon can get its books into brick and mortar stores. Amazon has signed a deal with Houghton Mifflin to print their books and distribute them but will Barnes & Noble agree to do so? After all, BN responded by pulling all the comics off the shelves when DC Comics made an exclusivity deal with Amazon. It won’t carry the digital versions of any of the Amazon publications. But if Amazon were to sign someone like Janet Evanovich or Steven King or the like, could BN say no?

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File this under “Skeptical” file, but Anobii is saying that DRM should be eliminated. The reason that this might be important is that Anobii is “backed by big publishers.”

In a speech this afternoon at the Digital Book World Conference in New York, Berlucchi argued that digital rights management technology, or DRM as it is known, prevents more readers from buying e-books and may actually encourage piracy of copyrighted material.

Industry observer Mike Shatzkin, who is also chairman of the Digital Book World Conference called the argument “significant” because Anobii is partially owned by the UK arms of three major publishing companies, HarperCollins, Penguin and Random House.

As I’ve said before, elimination of DRM would actually help to loosen Amazon’s grip on digital book sales because you could shop anywhere and use a Kindle.

Related posts:

1. Wednesday Midday Links: Amazon’s Silk Privacy Policy Satisfies EFF
2. Friday News Roundup: Positivity in the face of poor quality is cruelty of its own
3. Monday Midday Links: Amazon Questioned About Privacy by Congress

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Amazon engaged in a “charm offensive” by flying out a number of top flight agents to its Seattle headquarters last week, as reported by Crains.   This wooing of the agents seemed quite odd (has it ever been done in the past).   One nugget was that agents and Amazon seem to be in agreement that publishers can make more money selling ebooks than hardcovers.   I don’t know if that is true but it seems like publishers may be headed that route regardless.   Certainly Harlequin has been able to be profitable without a hardcover division.   But what to make of Amazon wooing agents? It means something.

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Speaking of Harlequin, Quill & Quire wrote up a piece about Carina Press.   It notes that authors for Carina Press will need to play an active role in promoting their books and included this line about DRM.   Q&Q, DRM doesn’t prevent authors’ works from being copied or downloaded illegally either.

And Carina does not offer digital rights management to prevent authors’ work being copied or downloaded illegally.

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The nook is so popular that Barnes & Noble doesn’t have enough stock to meet demand. Therefore, if you order one now, it won’t come until December 11.   Of course, this presumes that the Spring Design suit doesn’t result in some injunction.

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Richard Nash asks why the sponsors for BEA don’t want to include the public. You know, the people the sponsors sell books to.

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Blogcritics makes the case why you should read debut novels. I thought this was a great blog topic and we’ll have a “best debut novel” recommendation thread later this week.

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A visually impaired gamer sues Sony for not making its games more accessible.   The gamer had sent several emails to Sony requesting “reasonable accommodations” (that’s the legal language of the law) for people with similar disabilities.   I can’t help but think that ebook readers will be subject to this type of legal scrutiny as well.    Of course, the suit would have to be directed at the publishers. If the suit is directed toward Amazon or the nook, they would open up access but the suit cannot impact those not a party, i.e., the publishers who are requiring Amazon to turn off Text to Speech.

Related posts:

1. Tuesday Midday Review Links: Kindle is everywhere but Canada (WTF?)
2. Tuesday Midday Tech Links: BN’s Reader Is Called Nook. Not a Joke
3. Tuesday Midday Links

Smart Bitch Sarah attended the Harlequn Art Show.   Harlequin had awesome swag including vintage covers on matchbook type notepads.   She (and Harlequin) are giving away two bags full of this awesome swag.

Publishers Weekly had these articles that I found interesting although almost all were worth a read:

• Publishers and Booksellers agree that things are bad in publishing but there are few solutions.   One suggestion from Bob Miller of HarperStudios was that booksellers start publishing.   Praveen Madan, a bookseller, asked for a digital catalog of publisher books to assist booksellers in selling online.   Dominique Raccah asked for independents to give more shelf space to small and mid sized presses which account for 54% of all sales (as opposed to the big 6).
• There was a packed house to hear the blogger panel which was composed of all women and quite a few YA bloggers.   Katiebabs attended this panel and said that much of what the bloggers were pushing for had already been accomplished in the romance blogging community.   (Visit Kate’s site for more BEA musings. It’s worth a read).
• Amazon is reaching out to small print publishers outlining all the “free” benefits that Amazon offers while also pushing its premium features like Search Inside the Book; it’s POD program; and Kindle publishing.

Edward Champion:

• During the “book reviews 2010″ panel, sponsored by NBCC, the panelists and moderators largely ignored the question of “whether book reviews were even worth saving.”   Champion was dismayed by the lack of passion for books (and the topic) exhibited by the panelists.
• The Big Ideas panel by Chris Anderson and Lev Grossman was also a disappointment (heard on Twitter that Champion wasn’t alone in this sentiment.
• It wasn’t all doom and gloom for Champion who suggested that the best way for BEA to survive (and possibly publishing) is that “It has become vitally important for us to listen to the opposite perspective. We can’t just keep to the comfortable corners of the room.”

Teleread had wonderful pictures and commentary:

• Publishers are spending a lot of money on generating take down notices but not enough on filtering software to use technology to prevent the infringing work from even appearing on sites like Scribd and Wattpad.
• Smart Bitch Sarah looked great at the Blogging Signing Booth sponsored by Firebrand Technologies.
• Amazon and Sony, however, didn’t spend much money in enticing the BEA crowds.

Related posts:

1. What Goes on on the Internet, Stays on the Internet?
2. Internet Sales Leveling Out
3. Barbara Bauer’s Lawsuit Against the Internet Starting to Gain Some Traction

The article appears to conflates booksellers and publishers because it implies that booksellers fear the Kindle because Amazon’s market power may leverage lower publisher prices. I would think booksellers would welcome a lowering in its inventory cost, but worry that ebooks would eat into their market share. Conversely, publishers see a rise in revenue from increased ebook sales given lower operating costs, but would not want to lower its prices upon pressure from Amazon.

Ebook sales are increasing. According to the article:

Nearly all publishers say their sales of electronic books are growing exponentially. Carolyn K. Reidy, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster, said its sales of electronic books will more than double this year compared to last year, after growing 40 percent in 2007 from 2006. David Shanks, the chief executive of Penguin Group USA, said his company sold more electronic books in the first four months of 2008 than in all of last year.

Ultimately, I think ebooks are the wave of the future and brick and mortar stores will have to rethink how to monetize their businesses.

Via New York Times (thanks Tina B).

Related posts:

1. A Step Up for Ebooks and Step Back for Amazon
2. No Kindle Exclusivity for Readers of Harlequin, Simon & Schuster, Random House, or Hachette Books
3. Booksales Down Overall for Year 2006