Wednesday News: The Hobbit as scientific subject, Twilight tries to nix a parody, Target disses Beyonce, Amazon doesn’t publish its own bestsellers, and Entitle tempts readers
Publishing NewsAmazon / bestseller list / digital books / digital publishing / Entitle / Self-publishing / subscription / Target3 Comments
The hobbit — an unexpected deficiency – So apparently James Bond’s impotent alcoholism isn’t enough – now the Medical Journal of Australia has published its own holiday article on Gollum, arguing that one of the ways in which good triumphs over evil in the Hobbit books is via vitamin D deficiency in the evildoers. I find this “study” less annoying than the Bond one, in part because Vitamin D doesn’t, in and of itself, contain a moral judgment, making the real life “message” marginally less paternalistic. Also, this otherwise lighthearted investigation seemed to entail more than the mere counting of drinks consumed. Medical Journal of Australia
Movie Honchos Claim ‘Twilight’ is RACIST – What a surprise: producers of a film parodying Twilight (titled Twiharder), has received a cease and desist letter from Lionsgate, the studio that created the original. What’s interesting is the Twiharder producers have offered actual reasons they believe the parody is justified, including accusations that the original film is racist toward Native Americans, and promotes statutory rape and domestic violence. It looks from the article like the parody producers may be requesting a declamatory judgment. TMZ
Target refuses to sell ‘Beyoncé’ due to iTunes-first launch – Most of the news is in the title of this article, but it’s particularly interesting because Beyonce’s album is poised to sell at unprecedented levels, and the chain has had “strong ties” with Beyonce, who even had an exclusive Target version of her album 4. A Target spokesperson said, among other things, that “when a new album is available digitally before it is available physically, it impacts demand and sales projections.” Well, duh. And? The Verge
Amazon’s Multi-Million Dollar Publishing Experiment Fizzles as Indie Titles Claim Amazon’s Best-Seller List – Nate Hoffelder takes a look at Amazon’s list of their bestselling books of 2013 and notices a few interesting things. Namely, only one book actually published by Amazon, and quite a few books have been self-published. I’m not sure if/how much this weakens Amazon’s dominance, and I’m curious what the pricing was on all of these books. Still, it’s interesting.
“Nearly a quarter of the titles on the lists were published by independent authors. (What’s even more interesting is that 2 authors, Morgan Rice and Abbi Glines, took 6 spots on the YA list all by themselves.) That’s more than some of the major publishers can claim, but more importantly it’s more than Amazon can claim.” The Digital Reader
Entitle to use Netflix model with e-book service after receiving $5.3M in funding – With the success of services like Netflix and Spotify, Entitle (formerly eReatah) has started an ebook subscription service. One of the things that makes their service different from all the rest, though, is that subscribers actually get to own the digital books they acquire, even after terminating their subscriptions. CEO Bryan Batten believes that “there are still people who like the idea of owning something.” A single investor has given them $5.3 million for the venture.
“Batten also added that the company have partnered with major publishers, including Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, HarperCollins Christian, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. As such, subscribers will have access to over 100,000 professionally-published titles from authors like Stephen King, Dan Brown, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Crichton, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others, the report said.” Venture Capital Post
Just a note from Jane. You may notice that the Edit Comments feature has been turned off. We are running into resource problem. WP Engine has informed us that our back end hits are really really high. I have no idea what that means but one of the things that they suggested is that we turn off unnecessary plugins. We’ve had problems with the edit comments plugin before so I’m turning it off for some testing.
FYI? You’ve also turned off all the subscribe to comments options.
I don’t get the attraction of Entitle at all. They are offering 2 ebooks for $14.99. Which is a whole lot more than I ever pay for 2 ebooks at any other retailer. It seems to be basically a ‘discount’ retailer, with not great discounts and a required minimum purchase. I can’t see who is going to sign up for that.