Archive for the 'Publishing News' Category
Apple introduced a new iPhone yesterday called the Apple GS (S stands for speed). The new models go on sale on June 19 for $199 at 16GB and $299 for the 32 GB. The current 3G model at 8GB will be priced at $99.
Apple’s new iPhone software (3.0) will feature in app purchases. Scroll Motion was highlighted during the keynote speech as having 50 magazines and over 1,000,000 books. Current Scroll Motion prices for books have been very high, sometimes almost 2x as high as the Kindle pricing.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that while e textbooks are welcome by colleges and universities the hardware devices are not meeting the students’ needs for tables, illustrations, ease of use. Â
The Kindle Dx, an education aimed device, is selling out. Â According to Teleread.org, there is now a delay in shipping of the Kindle. Â Also at Teleread.org is the news that the Kindle Dx store, full of textbooks one presumes, will go live July 1.
The Kindle could be pushed aside by cheaper, better technology that could address the concerns of the students in the first article. Â The Pixel Qi is an LCD screen that has two modes: color and transreflective. The transreflective LCD is nearly eink like and uses much less power than the color LCD screens. Also, it is much cheaper to produce. Â Coming soon to netbooks this fall. Â
The Guardian takes to task inaccurate industry figures over piracy. Â While it is unstated, the key here is that overstated piracy figures hurt the fight against piracy. Â
Michael Cader, of PublishersMarketplace, takes on BISG and its methodology and number projections. If the numbers are inaccurate and the publishing industry is relying on them, …
Pirate Bay was found guilty last month of assisting piracy and sentenced to fines and incarcerated time. To combat this, Pirate Bay did not think appeal; instead they thought revolution. In elections that took place on Sunday, Pirate Party of Sweden won enough votes to secure a seat with European Parliament.
Read more at Ars Technica.
Update: The Wyndham is preparing a statement that will be posted at RT (and I’ll repost it here) that will have additional contact information.
Many (possibly hundreds) of people who attended RT convention in Orlando and stayed at the Wyndham have been the victims of credit card fraud. The hotel has launched an investigation and is asking that any victims contact them, and RT has been asked to be notified as well.
Wyndham contact information:
8001 International Dr
Orlando, FL 32819
(407) 351-2420
RT via Jo Carol:
jocarol at rtconvention dot com
This is a fascinating interview by Billboard with Hilary Rosen who was the industry head of RIAA at the time that Napster got shut down. She resigned in 2003.
The take away from the article is that digital downloads brings the consumer closer to the manufacturers of the product and that interoperability should have been an adopted standard before iTunes came along. Rosen’s response for piracy:
What’s your reaction to the recent Pirate Bay verdict?
There is a sad irony there that they get a similar verdict and they’re similarly powerless to stop the piracy. For many years, I argued to deaf voices that the industry needed to do some public education campaign about music appreciation. That there wasn’t enough sense that music had value, that it mattered. The record companies themselves weren’t used to being companies that were answerable to the public. Chalk it up to the old flavor of rock and roll, which is “against the man.” Since artists were always against the man, and record labels always represented the man, it didn’t matter that they were giving the artist millions of dollars in advances, they were still the bad guy. Essentially, fans adopted that
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Pennsylvania Senate voted to approve a 50% cut in library funding. If you live in Pennsylvania you might want to check out this article at DailyKos that gives you information on how to reach your representatives.
One of the Egyptian reporters today said that the biggest danger in the larger world is ignorance and that education can reduce ignorance which can, in turn, reduce violence. Libraries are an important part in the fight against ignorance.
As an avid reader, my eyesight is one of my most precious assets. In the “what limb would you give up first” game, the eyes are the last to go so any cure or treatment for blindness is always welcomed with great relief. Earlier this year, there were reports that stem cell research had developed a cure for macular degeneration. Now comes the news that contact lenses cultured with stem cells are curing blindness. What a miraculous breakthrough this is.
All three patients were blind in one eye. The researchers extracted stem cells from their working eyes, cultured them in contact lenses for 10 days, and gave them to the patients. Within 10 to 14 days of use, the stem cells began recolonizing and repairing the cornea.
Via Gizmodo.
An anonymous author, JD California, sold his manuscript to Nicotext, a Swedish publisher who owns UK-based Windupbird Publishing. 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye is billed as an unauthorized sequel to “Catcher in the Rye.” It’s written in the same style and features the same main character: Holden Caulfield.
JD Salinger has not published since 1965 (and has no need to do so as Catcher in the Rye sells hundreds of thousands of copies per year). On Monday Salinger filed papers enjoining the publication and sale of the Coming Through the Rye. It will be interesting to see what the courts will say as to whether this derivative work is creative enough to be a fair use or whether its infringement.
David Eddings, fantasy author, has passed away at the age of 77.
Eddings is best known for The Belgariad series, the first installment of which, The Pawn of Prophecy (1982), prompted Lester del Rey to tell him, “You’ve written a classic.” The series introduced many to fantasy, and inspired some to write themselves (including Stephen Hunt, whose tribute to Eddings is here). Eddings was himself inspired by the success of The Lord of the Rings, which he was startled to discover was in its 78th printing when he encountered a display copy in a bookstore.
According to a post at likesbooks.com, Edith Layton has passed away. Layton wrote her first book at the age of 10 and went on to have an award-winning career with more than thirty novels and numerous novellas to her credit.
Layton blogged at Word Wenches and there will be a memorial post to her tomorrow.
Lisa Hendrix sent this Boing Boing link to us displaying highlighted passages of word for word verbatim copying by President of Jacksonville State University, William Meehan, in his dissertation.
As another recent story suggests, plagiarism seems to be governed by a sliding scale, with consequences lessening as the wrongdoer’s status rises.
Yes, I am looking at my feed this morning. Gizmodo has a video of another impending eink device, this time from Plastic Logic. I suspect that Plastic Logic is the hardware manufacturer behind the reader coming from Barnes and Noble. The thing that might set this device apart is the ability to doodle on the screen.
Gizmodo takes a look at the Pixel Qi news of its impending fall 2009 release of a e paper like lcd screen. Not only is it in color, but lcd screens are much cheaper than the current eink technology from Vizplex. Maybe that $100 color eink screen isn’t too far off. 2010 would be my best guess.
This article by James Love is worth a read.
I am attending a meeting in Geneva of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This evening the United States government, in combination with other high income countries in “Group B” is seeking to block an agreement to discuss a treaty for persons who are blind or have other reading disabilities. …. The main aim of the treaty is to allow the cross-border import and export of digital copies of books and other copyrighted works in formats that are accessible to persons who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic or have other reading disabilities, using special devices that present text as refreshable braille, computer generated text to speech, or large type. These works, which are expensive to make, are typically created under national exceptions to copyright law that are specifically written to benefit persons with disabilities.
 Loading ... Book Expo America is underway. It is one of the largest (if not the largest) trade shows for the publishing business. Â For those of us stuck at home, we can follow along the attendees activities on twitter by searching the hashtag #bea09. Â
Conventions are a mainstay of the science fiction/fantasy genre but only in the past few years have various romance related conventions started up. Â Lora Leigh has a very popular reader appreciation weekend called RAW and Lori Foster hosts a similar reader/writer convention. Â There is the RT convention I just attended and the RWA convention in DC coming up in July. Â Have you attended a convention and if so did you enjoy it?Would you go again? Â What are you looking for in terms of a convention?
For me, I’m more interested in the cutting edge of publishing so I plan to attend Tools of Change next year and possibly BEA.
On Saturday, September 26, 2009, President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama will host the National Book Festival on the National Mall. This is the ninth annual event and the last two years saw crowds of 120,000 plus. Somehow I think that DC better order up a whole fleet of porta potties for the crowd that is likely to descend.
Former first lady Laura Bush, a retired teacher and public school librarian, started the festival in 2001, modeling it after events she held as first lady of Texas.
This year’s festival will feature about 70 award-winning authors, poets and illustrators in pavilions dedicated to specific genres of writing, ranging from history and biography to mysteries, thrillers, poetry and prose, and books for families and youngsters.
Julie B sent me a link to this article regarding romances. It cites some of the old statistics with Harlequin’s fourth-quarter earnings up 32% but also indicates that romances are still up into the second quarter of 2009.
For the week of May 10, romance book sales overall were up nearly 2.4 percent compared with the same week last year, according to Nielsen BookScan, which covers 75 percent of retail sales.
Of course, Bookscan counts James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, Emily Giffen and Kate Jacobs.
Bookscan, however, did show a decline in almost every other division of books in May:
Travel book sales were down 16 percent, detective/mystery and self-help were each down 17 percent and adult fiction overall, of which romance is a subgenre, was up 1 percent.
The article quotes a number of NY editors. It’s a quick and interesting read.
Harlequin is celebrating its 60th Anniversary this year and are exhibiting THE HEART OF A WOMAN: HARLEQUIN COVER ART 1949 – 2009. Per the press release. “These pieces offer a unique insight into the profound political and societal changes that have occurred in women’s lives over the past six decades and will give you a glimpse of what to expect at the gallery.”
The WHERE: Presented at Openhouse Gallery
The WHEN: May 29th to June 12th, 2009
Report back if you go. I’d love to hear what it looks like in person.
Random House and Penguin are creating mobile platforms for their ebooks. Of course, this means just one more DRM but who cares about that right? Joe Wickert noted on twitter an article that announced Random House had launched its own iPhone App.
Most significant of all for Random House is the launch, today, of its own app. Download it to your iPhone or iPod and any book from the Random House e-book list can be yours. The app allows you to customise the size of the text and the colour of the text, the font, the look, the feel of the electronic page. It’s reading all right, but not as we know it. With 2,500 Random House titles available by the end of the year, many with ‘rich’ content, these steroidal ’super-books’ are making a serious play for literary attention and our cash.
This is great, but the fact is I can’t find the app anywhere in the iPhone store. Neither can Joe Wickert.
Bookseller.com reported Penguin has partnered with Mobcast, the operators of mobile platform Gospoken.com. GoSpoken has relationships with Vodafone, 3UK, and Orange. There is also a Blackberry App. No Iphone or Android App yet. …
NetGalley has come up with a creative way to get publishers, authors, agents, and others in the industry to meet and great bloggers. At BEA, you can stop by Booth 4077 to meet a blogger and enter a drawing for a Sony Reader.
“It’s a new twist on an age-old publishing idea, and it’s stirring up lots of chatter in the Twittersphere.
This week at BookExpo America, NetGalley will be hosting continuous “blogger signings” in Booth 4077. Nearly 45 bloggers covering a multitude of genres will be on hand to meet-and-greet, exchange ideas and even blog live. The complete schedule is available from NetGalley’s Follow the Reader blog at: FollowtheReader.
Borders sent out a press release updating the world on its improved financial status. It has reduced debt by 44.9% by the end of the first quarter even though sales were down by 12.1%. Read more at Personanodata.
The new CEO, Ron Marshall, plans further changes to Borders stores, increasing the children’s section and focusing on cooking and health section while reducing or eliminating the music and movies. Further changes include ordering only two weeks worth of books at a time instead of the normal twelve week supply. This will wreak havoc with print runs at publishing houses as the publishers rely on orders in determining how many books to print initially.
Read more at Publishers’ Weekly.
Publishers Weekly looks ahead to the upcoming books in the paranormal subgenre, some featuring romantic threads and others that are true romances. It starts out with statistics for Sherrilyn Kenyon’s books. She has over 17 million copies of her books in print in 35 countries and has managed six #1 placements on the NYT bestseller list in over a year.
After paying homage to Kenyon, the article turns toward the pesky problem of labeling but provides the following for differentiation between the multiple sub genres dealing with other worldly creatures.
Avon executive editor Erika Tsang explains: “In paranormal romance the relationship between the couple is the focus of the main plot. In urban fantasy, the world that the couple exists in is the focus.”
The article notes a number of releases upcoming include the Pamela Palmer ones which I’ve heard to be JR Ward like for werewolves. (not sure about the crackiliciousness of the books only the plot and strange naming conventions).
Capitalizing on a growing global market (or maybe just exploiting the existing one), Harlequin is making comic book adaptations of its novels for mobile digital distribution in China. The digital comics are currently distributed by SoftBank Creative Corp., a leading Japanese digital content provider. Currently, nearly a million Harlequin digital comic files are downloaded each month by Japanese consumers. Given that the Chinese population is exponentially larger than Japan, this could be hugely profitable for Harlequin.
The digital comic titles sold in Japan are now translated into simplified Chinese characters and made available in Celsys’s ComicSurfing format for mobile digital distribution on a Wireless China mobile site. Wireless China is one of the largest mobile portal and E-channel providers in China. Launch titles include comics based on books by New York Times bestselling authors such as Debbie Macomber, Sharon Sala and Betty Neels.
Harlequin Comics are digitalized into a ‘frame-by-frame’ format utilizing innovative new technology that allows the user to see each comic frame individually and then slide forward to the next frame. Each frame can be easily enlarged or shrunk via the touch screen.
Fortune takes a closer look at Amazon’s vision for the future of publishing but doesn’t come up with anything new. As the article states, Bezos is “relentlessly on message.” The article is worth a read, however, as it confirms that Amazon is aiming to be the gatekeeper of written word.
Fortune suggests that not all Amazon experiments have been successful with internal sources indicating that the music and video download programs have been failures thus far. Kindle’s success has been its wireless program and price point.
If the success of Apple’s iTunes Store offers any guidance to Amazon’s grand plan, it’s that consumers will pay for content when the bar is set low enough. Sure, there’s still plenty of piracy, but for many of us the ease of buying digital music has rendered file sharing a quaint anachronism, a past transgression stored away next to memories of that drug-fueled summer following sophomore year.
Apple has decided to get into the censoring business. It refuses to approve the Eucalyptus ebook reading application because you can view a Project Gutenberg book on there about sex! It’s not like Apple hasn’t approved ebook reading applications with the same power before: Stanza, Bookshelf, and Kindle. Further, there are far more naughty books that can be bought and viewed with existing Apple applications including books about butt sex and orgies.
Apple is said to be reading a device that might shock and awe the reading crowd but the reading crowd hates censorship. Just don’t do it.
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Open Threads at Dear Author. Want to know what new releases are out this month and what readers are excited about reading? Check out the threads below. 
We don’t like to censor comments nor do we endorse the comments of any poster. We do reserve the right to moderate comments but most of the time will not, believing, as Justice Brandeis did, that the greater good is in “more speech, not enforced silence.”
