Barnes & Noble will sell its Nook e-readers in the UK starting this October, but at the beginning they will only be available through a website, nook.co.uk. B&N says it will announce partnerships with “leading retailers” soon. Read more at paidContent »
Amazon announced that “The Hunger Games” is now its bestselling series in the United States, beating Harry Potter. Publisher Scholastic said last month that the trilogy has sold over 50 million copies in the United States since its publication in 2008. Read more at paidContent »
This weekly feature looks at the books that are selling better in digital format than in print. This week’s pick: Nordic noir title “The Boy in the Suitcase.” Read more at paidContent »
Men’s lifestyle site Thrillist Media Group, which includes daily email newsletters and group-buying site JackThreads, has raised $13.1 million in Series A funding. The company plans to use the new funding to build out content and expand its presence in mobile and e-commerce. Read more at paidContent »
In June, the U.S. State Department was close to a $16.5 million, no-bid deal with Amazon that would have provided Kindles to overseas programs. State has now withdrawn its request for proposal. It plans to “conduct additional market research” and open up to more vendors. Read more at paidContent »
Along with Apple, publishers Penguin and Macmillan and the Authors Guild submitted filings criticizing the DOJ’s proposed ebook settlement on Wednesday. They argue that the DOJ has not provided analysis of Amazon’s ebook pricing and say the settlement goes too far. Read more at paidContent »
Apple says the DOJ’s proposed settlement with three publishers is unlawful because it requires Apple — which is not settling — to terminate its contracts with those publishers. A trial is needed, Apple says, as well as more scrutiny of Amazon’s role in the lawsuit. Read more at paidContent »
Amazon launched a “Send to Kindle” extension for Google Chrome that lets users send articles to their Kindle. Other services, like Pocket and Instapaper, can do the same thing. Which one should you use? Read more at paidContent »
Market research firm IHS iSuppli shows that iPad shipments surged in Q2 2012, as Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablets saw major drops. Kindle Fire’s share of the media tablet market fell to 4.2 percent, with B&N’s at 1.9 percent. Read more at paidContent »
In an amicus brief responding to the DOJ’s proposed ebook pricing settlement against Apple and publishers, attorney Bob Kohn says the DOJ unwittingly showed that Amazon used predatory pricing on ebooks, and asks that the DOJ’s investigation of Amazon be turned over to the court. Read more at paidContent »
Google is acquiring Frommer’s Travel Guides from publisher John Wiley & Sons for a reported price of $23 million. Wiley has been seeking to sell the brand off since the spring. Read more at paidContent »
AOL is hoping that the Huffington Posts’s new streaming video network, HuffPost Live, will set itself apart from competitors because of its focus on user participation, twelve hours of live programming daily from New York and LA, and a varied group of hosts. Read more at paidContent »
Barnes & Noble dropped prices on its Nook Tablets and Nook Color on Sunday, bringing the price of the Nook Tablet 16 GB in line with Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Google’s 8 GB Nexus 7. The bookstore chain has failed to gain much tablet market share. Read more at paidContent »
Google will tweak its search algorithm to push pirated content further down in search results — a move welcomed by the film and music industries. Read more at paidContent »
The current Kindle Touch models are either unavailable or shipping in 8 to 9 days on Amazon, suggesting that new models are coming soon — possibly including a front-lit Kindle to compete with Barnes & Noble’s Nook with GlowLight. Read more »
Digital self-publishing site Smashwords is making it easier for self-published authors to get their ebooks into libraries. The site is allowing certain libraries to buy Smashwords titles in bulk, and is also adding custom library pricing options for its authors. Read more at paidContent »
A company that aims to release ebooks into the Creative Commons through crowdfunding has had to halt operations after Amazon Payments withdrew support for crowdfunding payments. Kickstarter, which also uses Amazon Payments, remains unaffected for now. Read more at paidContent »
Image-sharing site Pinterest, which has been invite-only since its launch in 2010, has now opened up to everybody. The site had nearly 20 million unique monthly visitors as of March 2012, according to comScore, and raised a $100 million funding round in May. Read more at paidContent »
The New York Times is in discussions to sell information site About.com to Answers.com for a reported $270 million. Read more at paidContent »
As a verdict on the DOJ’s proposed ebook pricing settlement with three publishers approaches, Apple has requested and received permission to file another response to the settlement. Apple has also requested a hearing on the settlement, which the DOJ opposes. Read more at paidContent »
Random House UK announced that E.L. James’ erotic novel “50 Shades of Grey,” which started out as self-published Twilight fan fiction, is now the bestselling book of all time in the country — apparently beating out any single Harry Potter title. Read more at paidContent »
Demand Media announced the promotion of Michael Blend to president and COO this afternoon. Blend replaces Charles Hilliard, who stepped down in June. Separately, the company broke even for the first time, with revenues up 17 percent. Read more at paidContent »
Digital-replica magazines doubled their share of the North American market in the last year, while printed titles shed a tenth of newsstand sales. But lectronic editions remain just a sliver of an industry that, when it comes to subscriptions, is holding up fine. Read more at paidContent »
Amazon is now renting print textbooks in addition to Kindle textbooks. In doing so, the company seeks to compete with Barnes & Noble as well as with startups like Chegg and BookRenter. Read more at paidContent »
Author tours have never been a guaranteed way to sell books, so many publishers have cut back on them. Togather, a new Brooklyn-based startup, hopes it can reinvent the author tour by guaranteeing that a certain number of books will be sold in advance. Read more at paidContent »
A little over a year after Amazon announced that it was selling more ebooks than print books in the U.S., the company has hit the same milestone in the UK. Another surprise: “50 Shades” author E.L. James has sold more books than J.K. Rowling on Amazon.co.uk. Read more at paidContent »
The bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series contains over 200 titles, and now 160 of them are available as ebooks through Open Road. Read more at paidContent »
This weekly feature examines certain ebooks’ paths to bestseller-dom, and highlights bestselling titles on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists that are selling more copies in digital than in print. Featured this week: R.L. Mathewson’s “Playing for Keeps” and “Perfection.” Read more at paidContent »
Facebook Stories, a new original content site that will focus on a different theme each month, is intended to highlight Facebook users’ stories. But with a former Time magazine reporter overseeing an editorial team, does the company have something bigger in mind for Facebook Stories? Read more at paidContent »
Jonah Lehrer’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is running digital ads telling booksellers to send back copies of “Imagine.” After it was discovered that Lehrer had fabricated Bob Dylan quotes, HMH stopped shipping physical copies of the book and the ebook is no longer for sale. Read more at paidContent »
Research from the Newspaper Association of America shows that most newspapers with paywalls are using a metered model, and free digital access for print subscribers is not a given. Read more at paidContent »
The American Booksellers Association and Barnes & Noble say the DOJ’s proposed ebook pricing settlement is so harmful to booksellers and consumers that they want to file their own brief in the case. Presiding Judge Denise L. Cote has said they may do so by August 15. Read more at paidContent »
Rupert Murdoch’s struggling iPad newspaper The Daily is laying off 50 of 170 employees and also implementing other cost-saving measures, including decreasing opinion and sports coverage. The changes will help the publication “be more nimble editorially,” editor-in-chief Jesse Angelo said. Read more at paidContent »
Mobile analytics companies provide app publishers with data about their users. Hiptype, a Y Combinator startup, wants to do the same thing for ebooks. That could be huge for data-starved book publishers — except that for now, Hiptype only works on platforms that support HTML5. Read more at paidContent »
In a move aimed primarily at users of its textbooks, iPad publisher Inkling is making all of its titles available for the iPhone. The company’s interactive ebook publishing platform, Habitat, now works for iPhone as well. Read more at paidContent »
Science writer Jonah Lehrer is resigning from his position as a staff writer at the New Yorker, following the discovery by Tablet magazine that Lehrer fabricated Bob Dylan quotations in his bestselling book “Imagine.” Lehrer’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, will stop selling the book. Read more at paidContent »
Barnes & Noble is skipping out on Google Maps for tablets and is partnering instead with Berlin-based mobile map company skobbler. skobbler’s ForeverMap 2 app is available in the Nook store today, and Nook will open up to location-based app developers later this year. Read more at paidContent »
Though the U.S. travel industry brings in $2 billion a year and employs 100 million people, Rafat Ali says there’s no one website where industry execs and business travelers can go for information. So he’s launching Skift, a website focused on travel news, data and services. Read more at paidContent »
Christian Family Stores’ new e-reader, the color-screen edifi, is a low-end version of Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color — and $10 cheaper, at $149.99. Can features like safe-search web browsing and Christian apps entice shoppers to buy the edifi over more mainstream devices? Read more at paidContent »
This weekly feature examines certain ebooks’ paths to bestseller-dom, and highlights bestselling titles on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists that are selling more copies in digital than in print. Featured this week: Bella Andre’s “Sullivans” series and Courtney Walsh’s “A Sweethaven Summer.” Read more at paidContent »
