Flipboard’s new curation tools for creating custom magazines may appeal to individual users, but they will likely also appeal to advertisers and other brands — and therein lies the potential for real media disruption. Read more at paidContent »
Google is trying to paint a new German law regulating news excerpts as a victory, just as it did with the deals it cut with France and Belgium . But it feels like Google is losing more than it is winning. Read more at paidContent »
So far, the only publisher participating is Hearst. There’s no set standard for how early a look each Newsstand issue will offer, Hearst told AllThingsD. Read more »
The government uses anti-trust law to stop cartels and ensure products can be bought and sold freely. This makes sense for ordinary consumer goods like gas or long distance phone calls, but does it make sense for cultural items like books? Read more at paidContent »
After seven years of legal battles, Google has finally reached an agreement with American book publishers that will let it scan and digitize books. The deal stands to make things better for readers and publishers — although Amazon is probably not happy about it. Read more »
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 »
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 »
Penny Arcade, a webcomic publisher and event producer, is trying to use Kickstarter to finance its web operations for a year so it can replace traditional banner advertising with a reader-centric model. Could traditional publishers learn something from this crowdfunding experiment? Read more »
According to Parse.ly CEO Sachin Kamdar, the problem with shares data is solvable. And as accurate social data becomes increasingly important, the first publisher to fully take advantage of this information will reap massive benefits and potentially reinvent how editorial decisions are made. Read more »
German e-reading service txtr hopes to take on Amazon and Apple by becoming the biggest provider of third party reading apps — and a deal with four major American publishers and a New York office could be the latest steps in that journey. Read more »
In the latest court filing in the ongoing Justice Department e-books price-fixing suit, Apple says it did not conspire to fix the prices of digital books to hurt competitors and its business strategy around pricing was “perfectly proper,” according to a Reuters report. Read more »
Book publishers are trying hard to argue that e-books cost almost as much to produce as printed ones, and therefore prices for e-books should be higher — but the bottom line is that consumers don’t care what a publisher’s costs are, nor should they. Read more »
Apple says it had to cut an agency-pricing deal with publishers in order to weaken Amazon’s monopolistic control over the e-book industry. But wait — didn’t Apple behave exactly the same way towards the record labels as it is accusing Amazon of behaving towards book publishers? Read more »
The Justice Department has at last filed an anti-trust complaint in New York against Apple and five publishers over an alleged price fixing conspiracy. Read more at paidContent »
Anti-trust investigations are supposed to be tight-lipped affairs in which all sides lawyer up until the case settles or goes to trial. Well, that’s how it’s supposed to work at least. But in the case of book publishers and Apple, people are tossing legal duties to the wind in the hopes that press leaks will shape a settlement. Read more at paidContent »
European antitrust regulators have announced the launch of a formal investigation into the relationship between Apple and five of the world’s largest publishers, in a move that could reshape the digital book market. Read more »
As Amazon and other e-book distributors like Kobo transform themselves into publishers, does that mean traditional publishers are extinct? No. But it does mean they have to work harder to try and add value for authors, who now have more ways to reach their readers directly. Read more »
Just as it did with book retailing, Amazon has its sights set on lowering the barriers between authors and readers, both via the Kindle and through its own publishing deals — and in many cases, the biggest barrier between authors and readers is a traditional publisher. Read more »
The impact of digital technology has shattered long-established monopolies and ways of making money in the newspaper publishing industry. Today, publishers must find ways to subsidize content-creation costs directly, and this report examines a few different approaches, from more flexible paywalls to charging users directly for access and mimicking the business models of other industries, such as online gaming. Companies mentioned in this report include Ford, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Apple’s latest move to try and convince more media companies to play in its sandbox is Newsstand, a digital storefront just for newspapers and magazines that the company announced at WWDC. But will it help convince more publishers to play by Apple’s rules? Read more »
Apple won over two new publishers to its iOS subscription plans late Wednesday, including newspaper The Daily Telegraph and the real big fish, major magazine publisher Hearst. Hearst is behind many popular magazine brands, including O (The Oprah Magazine), Esquire and Popular Mechanics. Read more »
OnSwipe founder and CEO Jason Baptiste says apps are good for some things, but when it comes to publishing content, “they suck.” So the startup gives publishers the same features as an app, but using the web — and it wants to do that for advertisers too. Read more »
Apple is catching a few fish with vinegar, if the slow but steady stream of magazine publishers who’ve opted to accept the company’s new in-app subscription rules is any indication. Monday Bloomberg’s Businessweek joined the growing coalition of those willing to accept Apple’s prickly terms. Read more »
Considering the controversy surrounding Apple’s new in-app purchasing rules, Steve Jobs was bound to provide an email response to a concerned user/developer at some point. And he has, replying to one troubled dev that the new rules apply strictly to publishers, not to SaaS apps. Read more »
This week Apple caused a storm by announcing their new iOS App Store terms and conditions for publishers. In a nutshell; long-awaited in-app subscriptions are here, and publishers are worried about their bottom lines. But maybe what they should be thinking about is content. Read more »
Apple today finally released official details regarding App Store subscriptions. The system is the same one that launched alongside News Corp.’s “The Daily” on Feb. 2. Subscriptions in the App Store will be sold using the existing in-app purchasing system found in iOS. Read more »
Despite Amazon’s knee-jerk banishment and reinstatement of its books following a price increase of its books, publisher Macmillan isn’t the only one looking to introduce a new, more lucrative pricing structure. HarperCollins is also eager for renegotiation, and now, Hachette Book Group has also joined the […] Read more »
One of the strongest pieces of evidence in support of the existence of an Apple tablet has come into question today. Reports that Condé Nast, publisher of many magazine titles, including The New Yorker and Vogue, was preparing a digital format specifically for the Apple tablet […] Read more »
Over the holidays, I ended up reading an awful lot using my iPhone/iPod touch. I started with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, just to determine whether or not I wanted to cough up ten bucks to go see the Brad Pitt movie, and then, since […] Read more »
