Thursday News: Apple withheld app approval from Random House says DOJ; Self published book shortlisted for Commonwealth prize; Trade sales up because of ebooks
Annoying song but fun music video using animated romance covers. Pretty interesting how they manipulated the photos to animate them.
U.S. Now Paints Apple as ‘Ringmaster’ in Its Lawsuit on E-Book Price-Fixing – Apple is the only party left standing in the DOJ’s lawsuit over price fixing. Emails alluded to in filings from the DOJ suggest that Apple was willing to use its app store approval power to cow at least one publisher into agreeing to Agency pricing.
In July 2010, Mr. Jobs, Apple’s former chief executive, told the chief executive of Random House, Markus Dohle, that the publisher would suffer a loss of support from Apple if it held out much longer, according to an account of the conversation provided by Mr. Dohle in the filing. Two months later, Apple threatened to block an e-book application by Random House from appearing in Apple’s App Store because it had not agreed to a deal with Apple, the filing said.
After Random House finally agreed to a contract on Jan. 18, 2011, Eddy Cue, the Apple executive in charge of its e-books deals, sent an e-mail to Mr. Jobs attributing the publisher’s capitulation, in part, to “the fact that I prevented an app from Random House from going live in the app store,” the filing reads.
The newly released documents also quote David Shanks, chief executive of Penguin, as saying that Apple was the “facilitator and go-between” for the publishing companies in arranging the agreement. “
Apple rejects this and argues that it negotiated with each publisher individually. Yes, I can’t wait for the trial to start on June 3. NYTimes.com
Self-published book among Commonwealth regional winners – A Jamaican self published author won the Carribean category for the Commonwealth Book Prize. His book “Disposable People” published through Createspace, along with 20 other shortlisted regional titles, will compete for the best first title with the winner announced at Hay Festival later this month. The Bookseller
Trade Sales Rose 6.9% in 2012 – According to BookStats, a collaborative project from Association of American Publishers and Book Industry Study Group, rising ebook sales have helped to offset the flat revenue stream from print books. (That the revenue stream from print books is flat rather than declining has to be a positive)
“Total e-book sales rose 44.2% in 2012, to $3.04 billion and accounted for 20% of trade revenue in the year, up from 16% in 2011. The gain in e-book sales offset a flat performance by print sales which held virtually even at $12 billion between 2011 and 2012.”
Brick and mortar stores are losing out to online retailers
According to BookStats, sales through online retailers rose 21.3% in 2012, to $6.93 billion, while sales through bricks-and mortar outlets fell 7.0%, to $7.47 billion. Publishers Weekly
Microsoft Corporation MSFT Employee Says Barnes & Noble, Inc. BKS NOOK Deal ‘Not Happening’ – Insider Monkey – Insider Monkey says that Microsoft is definitely not buying Nook because Nook is too closely embedded into Android. To which I say bull crap. Like porting an app to Windows 8 would be so challenging as to prevent an acquisition barrier. It’s not that I don’t believe Insider Monkey received some kind of insider word, but the excuse it is putting out there is highly unbelievable.
“NOOK is closely integrated with Android (hence their recent Google Play feature) and there is no way it could be ported to Windows 8. This was simply something TechCrunch rushed to report with no fact-checking.”
I mean, seriously. HA HA HA. Tech reporting is so damn bad these days. Insider Monkey
I’d love it if self-publishing gave us a way to read romance written for other countries. I watch foreign films on airplanes (alas, for years the cinema I frequent the most). Indian films might lack the production values of Hollywood and sometimes the pacing, but they variety of plots and the interesting worlds they show (which I assume are pretty average for India) more than make up for it. I’d imagine that a fairly run-of-the-mill Harlequin set in India and written by an Indian for Indians would be fascinating. Or, a Jamaican romance written for and by Jamaicans.
@SAO – there are a couple of Harlequin Mills & Boon written by Indian authors. I think Sunita has read one.
In this, the first year that many RWA chapter contests have allowed self-published titles into their ‘published’ contests, a fair number of self-published books are making the finals, and winning. Bookseller’s Best Award, the PRISM, the Winter Rose (overall winner was self-published, as well as winning her category), the Write Touch award, etc.
There are many fabulous self-published books that can stand up to anything NY publishing puts out, and this is the proof.