Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary

This week has been bereft of news links because of our giveaways like “Save the Contemporary” and the “ACE/ROC Giveaway”.  This does not mean that news hasn’t been happening so here’s my two bit summary:

Overzealous copyright enforcement results in harmful and crazy results. First example is OK Go. EMI, the record label of [...]

There is a superlative article at Publisher’s Marketplace about the windowing, agency model, pricing, and the future of digital books.  Most of the comments are made by Madeline McIntosh by Random House.  She talks in a very thoughtful and meaningful way about the challenges publishers are facing today and how quickly the landscape is changing. [...]

Here’s a recap if you don’t know what is going on. Macmillan’s contract with Amazon was up.  Macmillan decided that it wanted one of two things:
1. Old pricing scheme in which it would sell to Amazon at list and Amazon would decide at what price point to resell to consumers but Macmillan would [...]

Per the message boards at Amazon:
Dear Customers:
Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.
We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of [...]

Please note:  I am not an expert in antitrust law.  I’m giving my own interpretation of the law.  There are a myriad of legal issues implicated by this situation, not the least of which is Amazon’s own publishing ambitions and possible anti competitive behavior.
Macmillan announced yesterday that it would be selling all of its ebooks [...]

You can read the full text for free here but essentially it sounds like this dispute is not one that will end happily for readers. Macmillan wanted to sell the books via an agency model wherein the publisher sets the price and the retailer gets a cut. In an open letter to Authors, Illustrators, [...]

On Friday, blogs noted an exchange between Walt Mossberg and Steve Jobs about ebooks.  Steve told Walt that publishers hate Amazon and that they would be withholding their ebooks from Amazon.  Late Friday, the “buy it now” button has disappeared from books by Julia Spencer Fleming, Lisa Kleypas, Louisa Edwards, Lora Leigh, and virtually every [...]