Text-to-speech startup iSpeech is rolling out tools for publishers that let them convert books and articles to audio. The first two clients are Pearson and Evernote. Read more »
Among the highlights from Pearson’s 2012 report: Financial Times digital subscriptions surpassed print for the first time, and ebooks accounted for 17 percent of Penguin’s global revenues. Read more at paidContent »
The U.S. Department of Justice has approved the proposed merger between Random House and Penguin, though it remains under consideration by international antitrust authorities. Read more at paidContent »
It’s only been a couple of months since Barnes & Noble downgraded guidance for its Nook business. Now the company is doing so again. Unfortunately, Nook Media is supposed to be the profitable part of the company. Read more at paidContent »
Educational-technology startups are poised to disrupt the trillion-dollar U.S. education market. Those companies that will succeed in helping change this space will offer tools and products that make learning a social, interactive experience students can access anytime, anywhere. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Starting Tuesday, Inkling is making its free digital publishing platform, Habitat, available to everyone. The company is also introducing an enterprise product, with publishers including Pearson and Wolters-Kluwer as launch clients. 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 »
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 »
German startup PaperC adds a twist to the idea of academic textbooks by letting people purchase a single chapter — or even just a page. Now, in order to raise funding it’s not going a traditional route: it’s holding a public auction. Read more »
iPad textbook publisher Inkling is partnering with college bookstore provider Follett. Starting this fall, Follett will sell hundreds of Inkling titles in its over 900 college bookstores — including Stanford and UC Berkeley — and on its website. Read more at paidContent »
Large book publishers’ most recent earnings reports reflect a new normal: Revenues are roughly flat, but profits are up — in large part due… Read more at paidContent »
The Economist is handing control of its website to its tablet magazines controller, in a bid to unite the previously competitive units. Read more at paidContent »
Pearson (NYSE: PSO) plans to let developers re-use more of its varied content, after its latest effort repackaged 2,500 recipes from its coo… Read more at paidContent »
Penguin UK and the Economist are partnering on a series of e-singles, “Penguin Economist Specials.” The partnership makes sense since Pengui… Read more at paidContent »
Financial Times CEO John Ridding rejects dinner-party chatter that the publisher may be sold to Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters.
Instead, he i… Read more at paidContent »
Pearson’s digital revenue grew 18 percent to £2 ($3.17) billion (a third of the total) through 2011, as its book publisher Penguin’s e-book… Read more at paidContent »
The Financial Times is still signing up new digital subscribers, but at the slowest rate since iPad lit up its business model in mid-2010. Read more at paidContent »
Here is a round-up of some of the latest executive-level hirings and exits in the world of digital media business… Read more at paidContent »
The Financial Times now reaches 2.2m people across the world on a daily basis, according to the latest Average Daily Global Audience (ADGA)… Read more at paidContent »
Here is a round-up of some of the latest executive-level hirings and exits in the world of digital media business… Read more at paidContent »
The battle for the college digital textbook market — including startups like Inkling and Kno — gets a fair amount of attention. But the K-… Read more at paidContent »
Pearson (NYSE: PSO) says it is putting cash made from selling its older businesses toward buying new ones in digital and emerging markets. Read more at paidContent »
Dorling Kindersley, the division of Penguin that publishes children, travel and reference titles, made a strong case for how it is moving to… Read more at paidContent »
As Thursday approaches, more details (or rumors) are leaking out about what Apple’s education announcement will entail: opinion appears to b… Read more at paidContent »
The Economist has given HTML web apps another shot in the arm by packaging its U.S. presidential election material in to a new Flipboard-lik… Read more at paidContent »
(This version corrects an error in the percentage for the price increase of the FT)
Every newspaper, magazine or website is working on a pa… Read more at paidContent »
The Financial Times has acquired London-based web and application developer Assanka, which made the web app on which the publisher has based… Read more at paidContent »
This may be the year where newspapers finally drop the idea of treating all news as a product, and all readers as customers.
One early sig… Read more at paidContent »
It may seem retrograde, but The Economist, like many publishers, is super-bullish about how digital tablets, more than websites, align perfe… Read more at paidContent »
Pearson (NYSE: PSO) is to sell its 50% stake in the FTSE International group to the London Stock Exchange for £450 million ($700 million) i… Read more at paidContent »
With mobile readers proving to be very avid readers of the Financial Times, the newspaper has launched a new version of its native Android a… Read more at paidContent »
On the heels of the Economist claiming one million monthly mobile readers of its magazine across Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Android devices, ano… Read more at paidContent »
The Economist said more than three million of its iOS and Android apps have been downloaded, as it reported six percent higher half-year ope… Read more at paidContent »
Consumption off the desktop is creating new audiences for The Financial Times before and after the working day. Read more at paidContent »
The Financial Times’ digital subscriber base grew by eight percent in the period during which it pulled its iOS app off iTunes Store, as our… Read more at paidContent »
The Economist will next week revoke premium digital subscriptions from some users after realising it had been accidentally servicing them fo… Read more at paidContent »
The Economist is finally moving to an iPad strategy compliant with Apple’s new developer terms, after what it calls “iOS bugs” under the new… Read more at paidContent »
The Financial Times is closing Tilt, its experimental pure-play online news service for emerging-markets finance professionals, 10 months af… Read more at paidContent »
What does content mean for online retailers, and how can publishers successfully work commerce into their websites? Those were the questions… Read more at paidContent »
The Financial Times may yet go on making hundreds of thousands of dollars through its existing iOS apps, despite having removed them from iT… Read more at paidContent »
