Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary » Link Round Up

Tuesday Midday Links: Harlequin Horizon’s, A self publishing venture

Jane — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:58:10 +0000

Harlequin is launching Harlequin Horizons through a partnership with Author Solutions, Inc.

Through this strategic alliance; all sales, marketing, publishing, distribution, and book-selling services will be fulfilled by ASI; but Harlequin Horizons will exist as a division of Harlequin Enterprises Limited. Harlequin will monitor sales of books published through the self-publisher for possible pickup by its traditional imprints.

My guess is that if an author is selling well by herself, then Harlequin will see that and offer to bring it to a larger audience. It’s like a reader run slush pile. Some authors are dismayed by this, feeling it will hurt the publisher brand. I’m not so sure that they are wrong about this. From a reader point of view, since I buy primarily by line and author, I’m not certain if it affects me. Thoughts?

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A Canadian high school is the first to go all digital. Each student will be provided a Sony Reader with all the textbooks preloaded. The students will be using the Sony Reader Touch edition which has a 6″ touchscreen and the ability for a student to write on the device. Indigo books is estimating that 10% of book purchasers in 2010 will be in digital format. It’s possible. Currently the number is 5% and the sales of digital books has increased 170% over last year. Crain’s New York reported (paid link) that through September 2009, Simon & Schuster digital sales on the Kindle alone were over $22 million. Last year at the same time, Kindle sales for S&S had only generated $2.9 million.

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The Kindle is available in Canada!

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Wednesday Midday News Roundup: historical fact v. entertainment

Jane — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:11:56 +0000

Generation Y women like social networking and sharing their thoughts on the products that they buy. This is, apparently, news. It is not something that ebook manufacturers have caught on yet, though. The current ebook reader enthusiast is a 47-year-old married man with a household income in excess of 6 figures. But! researchers believe that the ebook market won’t take off until the women get a hold of it. Frankly I think the current ebook reader is the 47 year old male because that is whom the product was initially marketed toward. Ironically, as the article sent to me by Leah notes, women and romance fiction is pushing the ebook market forward.

But to go truly mass-market, e-books will have to appeal to women, who tend to be warier of new technology and more price-conscious, Epps says.

Harlequin, purveyor of those lusty supermarket bodice-rippers, has dipped into the market with an e-book subscription service for some series, like Silhouette Desire, “delivering the provocative passion you crave.” And no one can see you put it in your shopping cart!

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GalleyCat asks the question of whether an author needs an agent in the future. Meriam Goderich responds that any serious author needs a good agent. I see agenting in the future as more of a business management position that will include hooking the author up with a good editor (maybe a contract editor) and providing publicity vehicles for authors. Speaking of publicity, this Miami Herald article looks at all the publicity an author needs to do particularly if you are self published.

As the Miami Book Fair International gets underway, more than 400 authors have discovered they must be there to push their books, either by nailing a spot on a panel, hosting a session, or shaking as many hands as possible to get noticed. Of course, there’s the social media component, too. They must write on blogs, reach fans through Twitter, even make online and the usual in-person book club appearances.

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Macleans discusses historical fiction and whether it needs to be faithful to historical fact by looking at the Booker prize winning novelist’s work which is very faithful against the Governor’s General Award nominee Kate Pullinger. Pullinger says “Surely it is the role of all novelists to uncover the untold stories, the undocumented lives; surely this is a legitimate way to demonstrate and elucidate ‘historical truth’ (a concept that is itself notoriously unreliable).” Hilary Mantel, the Booker winner, has a different view, ““I stick with the facts until the facts run out. I don’t try to improve on them.” It’s a fascinating difference, no?

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Kristie J has found another new romance blogger: Jessica at Book Bound.

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Did you know that Hachette sells digital books straight from its website? Me neither but this article in PW suggests that it does. I went over there and clicked around and saw no ability to purchase ebooks on the site. What am I missing?

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Tuesday Midday Links: Amazon’s Charm Offensive

Jane — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:00:00 +0000

The new draft of the Google Book Settlement was due yesterday but the parties asked (and was granted) until Friday to present a new settlement agreement. Given that the biggest part of the GBKS were orphan works and that was what drew the biggest complaints, I wonder how any new settlement could address this.

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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.

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Friday Midday News Roundup

Jane — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:31:01 +0000

[Show picture list]

[[Show as slideshow]]

I ordered a bunch of Harlequin Stationary goods that feature the vintage covers. The stationary goods include little matchbook notepads, bound composition notebooks and address books. I liked the address books the least. They have a spiral binding and I found them to be a little too bulky. My favorites are the little matchbook notepads. They come three to a box. The composition notebooks are nice as well and feature very hard cardboard front and back covers so it would be easy to write on a non hard surface.

The postcard tins are a great gift item but I don’t have anyone to send snail mail to. Should I start up a prison correspondence?

I’m going to give the notebooks and the address books away on the blog (am keeping the notepads myself). Just as a disclaimer or non disclaimer, I purchased these myself and Harlequin, which does many nice things for Dear Author, did not pay for them or give me any kind of discount.

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Simon & Schuster saw sales increase in the last quarter to $230.4 million which is up 2.4%. The improvement in sales was offset by “higher write offs of advances for author royalties” which I understand to mean that there were a number of author royalties that ended up being a loss for S&S. Ebook sales are about 4% which matches that of HarperCollins. CEO of S&S is disappointed by the fall sales. Read more at PW.

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Internet users aren’t actually more isolated than not internet users according to PEW.

Instead, researchers found that online participation and mobile phone usage leads to people having larger and more diverse core discussion networks. (Discussion networks are defined as being the places where we can discuss “important matters” with friends and confidants.)

I know I’ve often read comments from readers stating that the internet has allowed them to find other romance readers and that their reading interests have grown and not diminished because of the online romance communities.

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New Fiction blog notes that the BN prices for ebooks are more expensive, almost uniformly more expensive, than the prices for ebooks at Amazon. If you buy a lot of books this will add up. I noticed this last week when I was purchasing some backlist titles that the Amazon books were almost $1.00 cheaper than Barnes and Noble except for BN’s promotional pricing. I did receive an email today from BN proclaiming that it has reduced pricing for over 100,000 books and that it is upping its affiliate program to 8% commission. I find that the BN affiliate program is difficult to use so I doubt I’ll change. (I’m far too lazy even for an extra 2%).

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Jessica, at the Dystel & Goderich blog, notes that online promotion can be effective well past the initial release date and that it can help move beyond publishing’s reliance on the blockbuster model:

Connecting an author with communities of like-minded readers on-line requires about as much virtual legwork as finding these folks in the real world, but especially as traditional media contracts, it’s well worth exploring. On-line promotion does not necessarily rely on a rolodex of producers and editors. Anything that helps move the industry away from the blockbuster model, which makes failures of far too many books, is, in my eyes, welcome.

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A recent study out of the UK claimed that file sharers represented the largest portion of legitimate music purchasers. This has flustered media and IFPI, an international music trade group put out a release to counter the study. Ars Technica notes that few outside the music industry actually believes that file sharing is the main cause of revenue decline including folks at the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media. However, this has not stopped many countries in engaging in treaty talks about copyright under the guise of stopping counterfeiting.

News of the secret treaty talks leaked earlier this week and present a real shocking list of super restrictive copyrights which seem to be to overturn the fundamental concept upon which our criminal justice system is premised as well as poses unreasonable responsibilities on the shoulders of ISPs which will result in much higher internet costs. Apparently the secret treaty would like to dispose of fair use ; block internet access; take down websites on accusations (not proof) of infringement; criminalize copyright infringement even when there is no commercial gain; ban any legitimate circumvention (like cracking the DRM so you can read a book on your iPhone as well as your laptop); and so on. It’s pretty frightening.

On the one hand, I find it outrageous and on the other, I hope it gets passed. Restrictive copyright helps large corporations and not content creators. Restrictive copyright actually works to chill creation and I can see this ultimately leading to fiction being primarily work for hire. Copyrights will be too valuable for individual content creators to have them (much like comic books).

See you all over at fanfiction.org, that is unless you’ve watched a Youtube video with a song overlaid on it because then you’re internet will have been cut off. Actually, there won’t be a Youtube. Maybe I’ll buy those postcards after all.

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Thursday Midday Links Roundup: Education is moving toward digital

Jane — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:00:52 +0000

How good is Harlequin doing? Pretty good. In a dismal economy that sees revenues at its parent company dropping, Harlequin is bringing in the profit. David Holland, the interim CEO at Torstar, said that the decline in newspapers and digital were offset by continued growth at Harlequin. (Actually Holland stated it the other way around but I decided to put the positive spin on it). Harlequin posted $122.5 million in revenue which was up 3.7% from third quarter of 2008.

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After a dismal few quarters, HarperCollins experienced a small rise for the fiscal first quarter. Sales were slightly down (1.5%). Sales of ebooks accounted for 4% of the adult group revenue. Most of the profit came from restructuring and not from sales.

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The Wall Street Journal accuses Amazon of stockpiling cash by paying late on its bills by up to 72 days or longer. I understand that late payment is fairly standard in the industry and the writer of the article asserts that Amazon has never made a profit, something the SEC filings for the past five years would dispute. However, if Amazon’s posted profitability rests solely on delaying cash payments, it seems, as Jose Furtado notes, that “Such things won’t flow Amazon’s way forever.”

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Companies are trying to get easier access to ebooks for students including text to speech enabled ebooks which will help students with physical or learning disabilities. I think this is great and I hope the content creators will see that this is a social good that won’t create economic harm for them. Persona Non Data writes that K-12 online learning will mushroom in the next few years. My tot’s fine motor skills need some help. She has a hard time using the mouse. That’s a fair impediment to online learning.

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Sarah Weinman discusses the New York Times article by Motoko Rich about the rising influence of Glenn Beck as a mover of books. Beck apparently is a big thriller fan and he’s been having a steady stream of thriller authors on his show and those thriller authors are then selling many books. It’s a double edged sword for some authors. Andrew Gross reported having received emails calling his work “lefty bullshit” and accusations that associating with Beck means that the reader would not buy another Gross book.

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I’m really beginning to salivate over the MS Courier. Gizmodo has more exclusive design and function leaks. My fear is that this device will be too expensive, much like what I think killed the UMPC market before it even got off the ground. With the rise of netbooks, I think consumers don’t want to pay in excess of 3 figures for a computing device.

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Jill Myles has a quiz for the Nalini Singh fans over at the Oddshots. If you want to hump things into submission, you are a Changeling.

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Tuesday Midday Round Up: Winners and Lawsuits

Jane — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:07:51 +0000

The winners of the CL Wilson, Queen of Song and Souls are as follows:

Pamk
stephanie
Rexe
Julie
Sharon

I have sent you an email.

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Inside the Higher Ed blog has another piece on technology and scholarship. This time, Alex Golub laments the shift of readers from paper texts to digital texts arguing that scholarship includes making the texts part of your physical environment, something that the current slate of ereaders do not foster:

Except textbooks. I have to admit I am scared silly by the idea of a generation of students so alienated from material they are supposed to be immersed in that they rent digital textbooks that they do not intend to keep, cannot dog ear and underline, and otherwise feel totally alienated from. Even the current trend of students not underlining in books so as to preserve their resale value strikes me as appalling. Taking ownership of your education — and indeed, just learning how to read closely — means making your books part of your physical environment.

I never marked up my textbooks. I always took notes in a separate notebook and was religious in keeping my texts as clean as possible. The digital textbook would have appealed to me if I had the option because I would have interacted with the text at a higher level. Possibly I never attained true communion with literature and reading as Mr. Golub suggests is achievable. What is an immutable truth, however, is that the current state of the hardware market does not yet meet the needs of students. Dedicated devices are really for the leisure reading market.

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Jason Boyett pointed out the really restrictive guidelines for the Harlequin Steeple Hill line and author Tess Mallory chimes in about how the Christian Book Association is suppressing good Christian fiction. Funniest comment, to me, was Jen’s who said that her childhood was a Steeple Hill romance. Mine too, Jen. Mine too.

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Simon & Schuster, who is struggling to get into the black this year, has hit on a new way to sell books: chapter by chapter. Starting with the non fiction book by Dr. Michael F. Roizen and Dr. Mehmet C. Oz, S&S will sell individual chapters for $2 to $3. Best part? Those digital chapters will be encrypted with some kind of DRM. I’m not totally opposed to S&S’s new business venture. There are some craft books in which I would just like one chapter or a cookbook where I want just one recipe. What works for non fiction, though, would be disastrous in fiction. The serial was lauded for its inexpensive nature.

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Two things happened to Barnes and Noble yesterday. First, it had a conference call with investors trying hard to convince them that as the reading public moved toward ebooks there was still space for retailers like BN. Second, BN was hit with a lawsuit from Spring Design who had presented an idea of a dual screened ebook – eink on top and lcd on the bottom – reader based on Android operating system to Barnes and Noble under a non disclosure agreement (NDA). If you click on the link you can see how visually similar the two devices are even though there is some difference in functionality. I would think that Spring Design would file for injunctive relief and if successful, it would halt the sales of the nook which is currently the best selling item for Barnes and Noble.

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Cindy S and Jessica posted about where they get their books. I love these posts and hope I see more of them around the internet.

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Borders is offering an “in stock guarantee” which means that any book that is not in stock but is listed on the Borders.com site will be shipped to the customer for free. Not sure exactly how this is going to work, but it’s a nice offering for readers and customers.

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Fun links:

Christopher Walken reads Lady Gaga
Artist makes a dragon sculpture using real bones. This looks awesome.

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Thursday Midday Links Roundup

Jane — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:59:31 +0000

Amazon filed for and was recently granted a patent to change words in a book in order to track down the source of pirating. John Scalzi called this a stupid idea because it violates his creative control over the work.

I think Amazon has the right idea. A change to the html css stylesheet, for example, could randomly create some kind of near invisible change that would allow the source of the pirated material to be tracked down. Courtney Milan suggested something like an italized period as that would be virtually unnoticeable. You could place the substitutive words in the Author’s Note or in the ordering of the metadata tags.

This type of social DRM could create an impediment to that “casual piracy” that content creators fear. I.e., how many people are you going to share a book with if that file contains something that can be tracked back to the original user. While the Amazon concept might seem like an anathema to some authors, I do think it’s a step in the right direction. I hope publishers and vendors can work together to create something like this that would remove the impediment to legitimate uses of an ebook while placing a staying hand on oversharing.

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Kristen Nelson puts out some disturbing news for authors. Fewer books are being bought today.

If editors don’t see something as a big book, they are passing. Or my other recent favorite, if it doesn’t fit into a very narrowly prescribed genre of what has worked for them (oh let’s say something like dark YA angsty romance), then they are also passing.

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Macmillan is signalling something here but we are not sure what. Macmillan, the parent company of Tor and St. Martin’s Press, among other imprints, is moving to a standard contract. The ebook royalties will be 20% off the net, instead of 25%. Additionally, direct to consumer sales will result in a higher royalty. 10% off the first 10,000 sales and 15% for sales in excess of 10,000. In the past, that royalty rate was 5%. Tor already has a direct to consumer sale mechanism in place with its Tor Store. This leads me to wonder if there will be more publisher imprint stores? One thing I do know, free shipping is often a deal breaker for me. The direct to consumer sale has to offer a good price and free shipping or there won’t be a reason for me to break away from buying in store or at Amazon or Book Depository.

Of course, if Macmillan tries to undercut the pricing at Amazon, it might result in Amazon trying to punish them. Will Macmillan be willing (or able) to suffer economic loss for long term gain? Amazon was willing to suffer through 7 years of loss in order to gain its market dominance today.

I’ve often thought that one way to increase profits in a market that is moving away from brick and mortar purchases to online retailing is to cut out the intermediaries. SB Sarah has some words for Macmillan regarding their ebook strategy.

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Karen Scott has another lovely letter from New Concepts owner and president, Madris De Pasteur. I wonder, like the commenters, why any author would publish with New Concepts.

We’re currently working on designing a new webpage for NCP to be launched early next year. Due to the fact that the unhappy have made a nuisance of themselves reminding us repeatedly to remove their books upon expiration, we’ve inadvertently removed some books by authors who wanted to roll over.

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The nook won’t be available at every Barnes and Noble store, merely the ones with high traffic/volume. You might want to check with your local store to see if they are going to get the display and/or the devices to sell.

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Film Studios are looking to block DVD Rentals for the first month of the release, hoping this will force more purchases. Rental companies are filing suit.

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The next Stephen King book won’t be released as an ebook for almost one month after the release of the paper format and it will be priced at $35.00. SW Vaughn notes that King has stated the $35 ebook price is incorrect.

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Random House has caved to threats of a lawsuit by the NBA over the tell all book by Tim Donaghy regarding star treatment (yes, it happens); fixing of a game to get to the holy grail of ratings (game 7); petty bets controlling referee behavior and basically how the NBA is no better than the WWE only the WWE admits that it is selling entertainment and not unadulterated athletic endeavors.

Random House was prepared to sell this book up until 2 weeks ago when the NBA came knocking. Either it didn’t fact check or its caving under pressure. Either one is a black eye on Random House.

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Monday Midday Links Roundup: ABA Wants DOJ to Investigate Discount Pricing

Jane — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:12:38 +0000

Mobile adoption is occurring at a faster rate than any other adoption of internet in the past. Further, at the leading edge of mobile adoption is the growth of the iPhone/iTouch market. Morgan Stanley is essentially telling investors that those that can anticipate and deliver products to the mobile space are those who will be winning the future.

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Dovetailing this report are the findings that Greystripe, a mobile ad network, is releasing about iPhone moms, mothers of young children who own iPhones. TechCrunch reports on the usage of the iPhone by moms. Moms are using iPhones to make their shopping easier (by locating stores nearest to them and keep track of shopping lists) to entertaining their kids (59% allow their children to use the iPhone) and for personal entertainment purposes.

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Brewster Kahle announced last week that over 1.6 million books have been scanned and digitized. All 1.6 million Internet Archive books to be available on the OLPC. Approximately 750,000 to 1 million people have OLPC. All books that have been scanned and digitized are in the public domain.

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The American Booksellers Association wants the government to save independent bookseller’s bacon. The organization has asked the government to investigate what it believes to be predatory pricing by Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target for its $9.00 hardcovers and the $9.99 ebook pricing.

Now I don’t know of any caselaw that would support this and essentially it seems like the ABA is asking the government to step in and save the hardcover business model. A government investigation in pricing would necessarily involve an investigation into the entire business model of publishing. Maybe we should welcome this. Publishers would be called to testify why they essentially gamble on books and hope to make up the gambling in large margins on hardcover bestsellers.

Publisher Michael Hyatt argues that this pricing isn’t good for anyone, arguing that the loss of hardcovers will result in lower advances, driving authors out of the publishing space. Commenter Mark McElroy points out that the digital market space can actually result in more authors being successful because of the elimination of the middle man.

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The FTC is changing its mind, again. It’s fairly difficult to keep up with these folks. According to reports from kidlitcon, Mary Engle, Associate Director for Advertising Practices at FTC, says that independent blogging reviewers do not need to disclose the provenance of their books but that affiliate links will need to be disclosed. The FTC will be providing updated guidelines or FAQs or clarifications soon (hopefully before December). We’ll be watching and will be sure to comply with whatever rules the FTC is going to implement.

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In summing up the take away from the Frankfurt Book Fair, Richard Nash blogs that publishers need to engage in reality based business decisions. This is a world where piracy can and does happen and will not go away. Conversely, the mobile market is expanding and this means growing business opportunities. Change is here and those that are most adaptable will succeed.

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According to the AAP, August sales were fairly flat, only increasing 0.9% over same sales last August:

Adult Hardcover = up by 12.3 percent ( $110.6 million); YTD down by 12.2 percent.
Adult Paperback = up by 3.2 percent ($152.7 million); YTD down by 9.0 percent.
Adult Mass Market= up 1.3 percent ( $70.4 million); YTD down by 4.5 percent.
Children’s/YA Hardcover = down 12.9 percent ($84.5 million); YTD up by 14.0 percent.
Children’s/YA Paperback = down by 0.2 percent ($69.4 million); YTD up by 1.7 percent.
Audio Book = down by 12.5 percent ( $12.9 million); YTD down by 25.1 percent.
E-books= up by 189.1 percent ($14.4 million); TYPD up by 177.3 percent.

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Tuesday Midday Tech Links: BN’s Reader Is Called Nook. Not a Joke

Jane — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:47:47 +0000

Barnes and Noble is launching its Nook today. Some people are saying it will be in stores this weekend for hands on fondling. It’s certainly one of the best of the latest crop of devices with its dual screen nature. The lower half appears to be a touchscreen LCD which will allow faster browsing of titles, input of notes, and color access. The price is $259.00.

Updated:

BN’s Nook has 3G connectivity and wifi.
You will be able to access an entire ebook for free while inside the BN store, just like a paper book.
The lending feature will allow readers to share their copy with another person using Nook or ereader. software for up to 14 days. You will not be able to access the book during this period of time.
The device will begin shipping November 30 and is available only through BN stores and BN.com.
There is no affiliate links for the nook, only for individual books and for the nook accessories.
Nook will accept DRMed versions of eReader and ePub.
You can load mp3s but not Audible books.

This video shows off an OLED display for a dedicated e-reader. Yeah, I am waiting for the next generation of ebook reader at this point which I believe will be a multi function device, perhaps a web tablet.

Patricia Cornwell is suing her financial advisors for losing some $40 million.

Cornwell accuses Snapper—who once allegedly told her that Anchin would “do everything for its clients including buying and delivering their toilet paper”—of a variety of misdeeds. These apparently include everything from purchasing goods and services on her behalf from favored Anchin clients, to mishandling rental properties, construction jobs, and tax returns, to cutting a check for $5,000 as a bat mitzvah gift for his daughter (“whom Ms. Cornwell has never met,” the lawsuit notes dryly).

The Internet Archive has launched Bookserver, a webserver that will craw the internet looking for every bit of information about a book, index it, and regurgitate the results in a helpful manner. Imagine typing in the name of a book and having the search results show you that it is for sale in print, digital, and audio form; and the place where you can buy it along with all sorts of other interesting information such as blurbs, covers, excerpts, related reviews and blog postings. Sounds awesome. You can read more from Fran Toolan on this here. This article talks about accessibility and delivery of books to the underprivileged.

The print price war is on. Target joined the fray yesterday by reducing the price of select number of hardcovers to $8.99 (with free shipping no less). The product of this type of pricing can be reframing consumer expectations. If 20 hardcovers are priced at the $8.99 price, who is going to want to pay more? Retailers are more able to withstand the loss leader pricing than publishers can withstand consumer expectations. As a consumer, the low pricing makes me stand up and cheer. But as a reading advocate, I wonder whether this type of pricing will a) lead to the erosion of hardcovers altogether and b) whether that means a loss of valuable voices in the marketplace. There’s a lot to discuss and ponder here and as one independent bookseller noted to Shelf Awareness, it’s time to have a conversation about this. Right now, though, Kindred in Death is available for $8.99 with free shipping from just about everywhere.

Sears is offering you a gift card for $9 for every qualifying book you buy from Wal-mart, Amazon or Target online. The gift card is good toward a purchase of $45 or more (but only on line). So the book is free, sort of. I can’t remember the last time I bought anything from Sears.

Penguin Publishing has some good news:

At Penguin, headline sales were up 12% (CER sales down 4%) as the expected tough retail market conditions were largely offset by a good publishing performance, strong growth in eBook sales (up almost fourfold and with almost 12,000 eBooks now available) and good growth in international markets such as South Africa.

CER apparently means Constant Exchange Rate which I take to mean that if the exchange rate weren’t fluctuating, the sales would be down 4%. The press release notes that 60% of Pearson’s sales are in the U.S. I saw another link indicate that Pearson was selling strong in India and China in both educational and trade markets. (I can’t seem to locate the link now).

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Friday Midday Links: Winsor Tributes & Print Price Wars

Jane — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:44:43 +0000

Jessica from Racy Romance Reviews put out a call for readers to list their top 16 romances books in honor of Kathleen Winsor, the author of the very first historical romance, Forever Amber. Forever Amber was roundly criticized for its sexual content at the Massachusetts Attorney General requested that it be banned. Many readers around the ‘net have participated and Jessica is trying to round them up at her blog. DA didn’t participate, but not because we don’t think this is a great idea, but because we’ve been planning our own list thing since August and we will be unveiling it in December.

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Wal-Mart started a price war with Amazon over the cost of hardcovers. To combat the $9.99 ebook price, Wal-mart decided to slash the price of hardcovers of its top 20 pre-order books (including J.D. Robb’s Kindred in Death) to $9.00 and will be reducing a total of 200 hardcover titles to $9.00 for the holiday season. Amazon price matched that thus throwing publishers whose entire business model rests on making money off of hardcovers into a tizzy.

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The race to the bottom of the pricing game presents a serious problem as illuminated by this Gizmodo piece about App prices for the iPhone. There is significant downward pressure on software developers to charge less and less for a piece of software, no matter its functionality. The question for the app developer is whether it can generate sufficient volume sales to make up for the lower price. For publishers, ebooks signal a downward spiral of prices that benefit the reader in the short term. In the long term, however, does that mean quality authors leave the literature space or does the new ebook market which removes the middlemen create opportunity? Probably a little of both.

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I’m sure that there is other news but I’m tapped out for today. I’m feeling rather lackadaisical today. If you have some news tip or interesting link, share it with us in the comments!

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Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary » Link Round Up

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