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 »
Amazon disappointed investors with its second-quarter earnings Thursday, reporting plunging profits and results below Wall Street expectations. The company reported $12.83 billion in revenue, up 29 percent over last year but missing estimates of $12.9 billion, and predicts an operating loss for Q3. Read more at paidContent »
Self-publishing company FastPencil will begin pitching some of its authors’ books to Barnes & Noble buyers, which could give them a better chance of ending up in stores or in promotions of Nook e-readers. But it’s not a guarantee that self-published titles will end up on shelves. Read more at paidContent »
Random House and Bertelsmann sister company Fremantle Media are partnering to launch a new initiative, Random House Television, that will develop TV shows based on Random House books. Random House authors will also be invited to develop original TV programming. Read more at paidContent »
There are the big success stories of the past decade, like the iPhone and the Kindle, Facebook and Twitter. And then there is the much longer list of things that flopped. Here are some of those. Read more at paidContent »
Remember when Friendster was the hot social network, publishers doubted that ebooks would ever sell, and Netflix thought DVDs in red envelopes was the future? We do — that was that state of digital media when paidContent launched in 2002. Read more »
Personalized reading app Zite is adding additional publishers to its three-month-old publisher program. New additions include The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Hearst’s “Harper’s Bazaar,” the International Business Times and others. All will have their own sections within Zite. Read more at paidContent »
Community-writing site Wattpad says over 70% of time spent on the service comes from users on tablets or smartphones. One of its most requested features is the ability to write and edit stories from mobile devices. So the company is rolling out “Create” functionality for Android. Read more at paidContent »
This weekly feature examines certain ebooks’ paths to bestseller-dom, and highlights bestselling titles that are selling more copies in digital than in print. This week: Flappers, chaperones and the power of the Kindle Daily Deal. Read more at paidContent »
Zola Books, a startup social ebook retailer that aims to sell titles from all publishers when it launches publicly this fall, has hired Seale Ballenger, formerly at HarperCollins, and Mary Ann Naples, formerly at OpenSky. Read more at paidContent »
Three authors are filing a class-action suit against romance publisher Harlequin for the deprivation of royalties on ebooks. Read more at paidContent »
Digital publishing company Say Media, which is home to brands like ReadWriteWeb and Remodelista, has raised $27 million in funding. The company will use the funding to acquire more brands and expand its platform. Read more at paidContent »
Book publisher Penguin is embracing self-publishing with its acquisition of Author Solutions for $116 million. The acquisition lets Penguin “gain skills in customer acquisition and data analytics that will be vital to our future,” said Penguin CEO John Makinson in a statement. Read more at paidContent »
Pocket, the web-content-saving company formerly known as Read It Later, has raised $5 million in a Series B funding round and will use the money to expand its platform. The company now has nearly six million users. Read more at paidContent »
Trapit, an AI-based discovery engine for Web content from the group behind Siri, is releasing its iPad app Thursday after launching a Web version last November. Trapit wants to compete against news reading apps like Flipboard by offering better content. It’s planning publisher partnerships, too. Read more at paidContent »
The New Yorker has acquired humorist Andy Borowitz’s parody news site “The Borowitz Report.” “This is the first person we’ve hired primarily for his blogging,” NewYorker.com editor Nicholas Thompson says. The magazine is also launching another humor blog today, based on its “Shouts and Murmurs” column. Read more at paidContent »
The Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple and major book publishers “sounds plausible on its face, [but] could wipe out the publishing industry as we know it, making it much harder for young authors to get published,” New York senator Charles Schumer writes in a WSJ op-ed. Read more at paidContent »
Print books still dominate, but a new report reveals that in 2011, ebooks made up 15 percent of all trade book sales. In addition, digital is now the most popular format for adult fiction. Despite the massive growth of digital, though, bricks-and-mortar stores are still the largest sales channel for publishers. Read more at paidContent »
About a year after Amazon launched Kindle Cloud Reader, Barnes & Noble is finally getting into the cloud-based reading game with Nook for Web. The platform is limited to PCs and Macs for now and doesn’t work on iPad. Read more at paidContent »
Popular blogger and Brazen Careerist founder Penelope Trunk has a new book, “The New American Dream,” and she’s gotten a lot of attention because of a post that she wrote about that book last week. This attention, she said, surprises her. Read more at paidContent »
Digital publisher Open Road is partnering with Good Books, the publisher of series like the bestselling “Fix-It and Forget-It” cookbooks and Linda Byler’s Amish romances. The partnership will digitize many Good Books titles for the first time. Read more at paidContent »
As St. Martin’s prepares to reissue the first 12 books from Francine Pascal’s beloved 1980s series “Sweet Valley High” this October, the publisher hopes to draw readers in with a new series of e-singles. The first one was released July 15. Each e-single is $1.99. Read more at paidContent »
Tech blogger Ben Brooks was tired of running an ad-supported site. So he decided to add a modified paywall to his website, The Brooks Review. For inspiration, he looked to the New York Times. Read more at paidContent »
This weekly column examines certain ebooks’ paths to bestseller-dom, and highlights bestselling titles that are selling more copies in digital than in print. This week: Self-published young adult romance takes off again. Read more at paidContent »
Some of the stories people are talking about this morning… Read more at paidContent »
New York-based startup Open Air Publishing, which sells original books for iPad, has raised $800,000 in seed funding and is expanding to the iPhone. Read more at paidContent »
In an effort to make ebook gift-giving more spontaneous and fun, Los Angeles-based startup Livrada is partnering with Target to sell gift cards for bestselling ebook titles like “50 Shades of Grey” and “Gone Girl” in the chain’s 1,771 stores nationwide. Read more at paidContent »
In response to an attorney’s letter criticizing the delayed publication of comments on the proposed ebook pricing settlement, the Department of Justice says it received over 800 comments and is “working expeditiously” to make them available to the public by July 20. Read more at paidContent »
Women’s online writing network She Writes, which has about 20,000 members including well-known authors like Roxana Robinson and Francine Prose, is now a book publisher, too. The company has launched She Writes Press, which it calls a hybrid between self-publishing and traditional publishing models. Read more at paidContent »
The Department of Justice was supposed to publish all of the letters it has received about the ebook pricing settlement by June 25. Its failure to do so violates the Tunney Act, attorney Bob Kohn tells the judge presiding over the case in a letter. Read more at paidContent »
Some of the stories people are talking about this morning… Read more at paidContent »
Los Angeles-based entertainment blog network Buzz Media, which owns over 40 sites including Stereogum and Just Jared, has acquired music publication Spin, including its print magazine, website, iPad app and events business. It’s unclear whether Spin will survive in print. Read more at paidContent »
Judy Blume’s Forever, which was originally published in 1975 and tells the story of two teenagers having sex for the first time, is also now an ebook for the first time. Simon & Schuster is running a social media campaign, “Do you remember your first time?” Read more at paidContent »
Next Issue Media’s tablet magazines are finally available for the iPad, three months after the platform launched on Android 3.0. Users can read popular magazines like People, Vogue and the New Yorker for a flat monthly fee. So is the cost worth it? Read more at paidContent »
Conference organization TED already publishes ebooks. Now it’s selling them through a new app, Ted Books for iOS. Readers can also buy subscriptions. Read more at paidContent »
Some of the stories people are talking about this morning… Read more at paidContent »
Former Republican presidential candiate Herman Cain is launching a web TV channel, “CainTV,” tomorrow for the 4th of July. It promises “whether you are looking for commentary, comedy, or culture, CainTV delivers it all in an Informed, Inspirational, and INtertaining way.” (Sic?) Read more at paidContent »
