The European Union approved the merger of Random House and Penguin without conditions on Friday, saying it doesn’t pose a threat to competition. The U.S. approved the merger in February. Read more at paidContent »
In a lawsuit over the ebook rights to Jean Craighead George’s Julie of the Wolves, HarperCollins argues that its 1971 contract with George included the right to publish ebooks, while Open Road argues that isn’t possible. Read more at paidContent »
The EU will reportedly approve Random House and Penguin’s proposed merger without qualifications. The U.S. Department of Justice approved it in February. 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 »
The long-delayed Bookish, a website backed by Hachette, Penguin and Simon & Schuster and designed to promote book discovery and sell books, launched Monday night and is designed to be a one-stop shop for readers looking for their next book. Read more at paidContent »
Starting in October, libraries will pay an average of 220 percent more for Hachette’s ebooks. Hachette still does not make new ebooks available to most libraries; all the books affected were published before April 2010. Random House increased prices for librairies earlier this year. 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 »
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 »
Random House has promoted Madeline McIntosh, president of sales, digital and operations, to the position of chief operating officer, effective immediately. Read more at paidContent »
This week, the book industry gathered at the ugly, cavernous Javits Center in Manhattan for the largest book trade event in the United States. (“I feel like I’m in Costco,” actress-author Molly Ringwald told the AP.) Here are five digital lessons from the week. Read more at paidContent »
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 »
This weekly feature tells the backstory of how one e-book became a bestseller, and highlights bestselling titles that are selling more copies in digital than in print. This week: The next “50 Shades of Grey”? Read more at paidContent »
Our primer to today’s DOJ lawsuit against five publishers and Apple — how we got here and what comes next. Read more at paidContent »
The majority of U.S. public libraries now offer e-books, but libraries’ relationships with book publishers are fraught, says the American Library Association in its 2012 annual report. 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 »
As promised, Random House will continue to offer its e-books to libraries but as of March 1 has raised many e-books’ wholesale prices signif… Read more at paidContent »
The studio behind the famous Godfather trilogy is asking a court to make the franchise’s literary heirs an offer they can’t refuse. Read more at paidContent »
Random House is now the only big six publisher to allow unrestricted access to all of its e-books in libraries — and it said yesterday it w… Read more at paidContent »
Byliner recently announced that it has sold 100,000 original e-singles, and other publishers are finding similar success with the format: Th… Read more at paidContent »
OverDrive released its lists of the most-downloaded e-books from libraries in December 2011. These lists look pretty different from the curr… Read more at paidContent »
I asked publishers and authors how they’re promoting their e-books for the holidays and got answers from bundling and free samplers to Kindl… Read more at paidContent »
Condé Nast cooking site Epicurious is selling Random House digital cookbooks that users can import into their “digital recipe boxes.” Howev… Read more at paidContent »
$9.99 is often treated as a magic price–the cost of a New York Times bestseller on Kindle back in the good old days, before big-six publish… Read more at paidContent »
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Random House and Borders have proposed an amount the publisher is owed from the bookseller’s bankruptcy. Read more at paidContent »
It is surprisingly hard for an author to know how many copies his or her book is selling. Now Simon & Schuster (NYSE: CBS) is giving its aut… Read more at paidContent »
This summer, Politico signed a deal with Random House to publish four instant e-books about the 2012 presidential campaign. Now Politico has… Read more at paidContent »
As election season approaches, Random House’s Crown Publishing is teaming up with political website RealClearPolitics to publish a four-book… Read more at paidContent »
Publishers see transmedia–storytelling across a variety of platforms–as a key part of their future strategy: With many types of entertainm… Read more at paidContent »
Last September, Rick Richter, the former president of Simon & Schuster (NYSE: CBS) Children’s, launched Ruckus Media Group, a kids’ book app… Read more at paidContent »
Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) is moving from periodic e-book sales (like Sunshine Deals and Big Deals) into regular month-long Kindle promotions (alon… Read more at paidContent »
2011 is widely believed to be a year of explosive growth for e-books, but few statistics are available yet for this year. However, here’s a… Read more at paidContent »
Apple’s iBookstore originally launched with many major publishers on board, but Random House was a longtime holdout. Then, just over a day ago, Random House switched to the agency model for e-book pricing and today began populating the iBookstore with its titles. Read more »
Timed perfectly for the eve of the Jewish New Year, Old Jews Telling Jokes, which launched in January 2009, today debuted its 200th episode in conjunction with a book published by Random House. Producer Eric Spiegelman reveals the show’s two secrets to success. Read more »
Bookseller Kobo has entered into an agreement with Fairmont Hotels to provide loaner eReaders to guests of its Fairmont Gold properties. Guests can pick up a Kobo eReader loaded with bestsellers from Random House to read for the duration of their stay at the hotel. Read more »
The emergence of a commercially significant electronic book (e-book) market in the past three years has been the result of two quite-recent technological developments. The first, and most critical, has been a breakthrough in the technology for manufacturing reflective electronic paper displays (EPDs), allowing for the introduction of affordable, lightweight and portable e-book readers such as Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader.
The second has been the rollout of reliable “3G” wireless broadband networks, which have made it possible to deliver digital books directly to reading devices without the intermediate steps of downloading files to a PC and then transferring them to a reader. Direct-to-device sampling and delivery, particularly with Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPhone, have enabled impulse-driven e-commerce, which has been critical to early consumer adoption of e-books.
The technology for e-books, however, remains nascent. The Kindle and its ilk are very much first-generation devices that deliver the minimally acceptable experience. Further development of the business will be closely tied to future technological developments, including flexible and color displays, format standardization and rich-media applications. As the market grows, there are numerous opportunities for other technology players, from social networks to cloud service providers and more. This report examines the trends and opportunities ahead. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Random House has shown surprising savvy in using online video to promote their recent book releases. First, they sponsored a seven-minute short video collaboration between filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron and Naomi Klein to promote the latter’s latest Random House release, The Shock Doctrine. The clip was played […] Read more »
