Hachette Book Group to Acquire the Perseus Books Group – It always amuses me that autocorrect persistently tries to change Hachette to Machete. Heh. Anyway, Hachette and Perseus finally managed to complete a sales deal that they have been working on for several years. The new acquisition for Hachette adds a ... more >
German Authors Join Protest Over Amazon’s Tactics in E-Book Dispute – With over 1,000 author signatures, a German petition is drawing more attention to the situation between Amazon and Bonnier, claiming, among other things, that Amazon is tailoring recommended reads and delaying shipment of certain books. Although the German book ... more >
Publishers’ Acquisition Activity Picks Up – An interesting piece from Publishers Weekly that lists the acquisitions and mergers publishers have taken between January and June 2014. According to the article, the last time this much publishing activity took place was 1929 (aka the start of the Great US Depression). And ... more >
Judge Says Price-Fixing Suit Filed by Retailers Can Proceed – Judge Cote has ruled that an antitrust suit brought by independent bookseller DNAML against Apple et al can move forward, likely in tandem with Lavoho, LLC and Abbey House Media (formerly Diesel and Books on Board). Question: Will these publishers ... more >
Internal Apple presentation on the iPhone: ‘Consumers want what we don’t have’ – A very interesting post, based on Apple’s internal slides from the Samsung-Apple legal morass, which shows that the market spot that the iPhone controls is basically outside what consumers want on both price (less than $300) and ... more >
In 1970 George Akerlof (Nobel Prize winner in Economics 2001) wrote a scholarly article called “The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism.” In true academic fashion, the article was deemed trivial by the top journals and he finally landed it in a highly-ranked but not flagship publication. ... more >