Looks like it’s that time again: time for some publisher to sue over backlist e-book rights. Open Road’s e-publication of Jean Craighead George’s young-adult novel Julie of the Wolves has HarperCollins howling. HarperCollins, which has sold 3.8 million print editions of the book since its 1972 publication, has filed suit against the e-publisher. It insists that its contract with George covers “such electronic means of distribution, which is but a technology-enabled variant for how consumers can read [the book]”, despite e-books having been strictly science-fictional at the time the contract was written. This isn’t the first time Open Road...

In the previous three articles I looked at publishers that were deliberately overcharging Australians in a big way.  There does appear to be a European common element to this, whether French, English or in combination. Therefore, to check this I decided to have a look at the American SF imprints to see what they were doing to us. Some quick browsing of the books available showed that it was clear they hadn’t become ridiculous ripoffs (although this could of course change going forwards given the price of a couple of newer books).   Another issue of interest to readers is fairness.  Especially...

It looks like it was a blowout Christmas for Smashwords authors at Barnes & Noble. I'm looking at the early sales results for December 25 and December 26 for the titles Smashwords distributes to Barnes & Noble. For these first two days, sales are running about 225% higher than the daily sales average for November through mid-December. While it's too early to draw definitive conclusions, I think the numbers speak well for B&N headed into January. FREE Smashwords books were also popular with B&N customers, racking up hundreds of thousands of downloads in two days. At the current download rate, our authors with...

Last week, I found myself wondering what my sizable network of fellow writers had digitally accomplished this year, especially if any had actually taken the ‘app’ bait (whether iPad/iPhone or Android) or, if had they gone the way of the “enhanced” eBook… specifically if they’ve utilized HTML5 and EPUB3. The responses to my queries were overwhelming in number and–as always—quite varied, but most indicated that they are either in the process, or at least have plans for one (or both) in the near future. The replies also indicated that most authors do not recognize any ‘fadish’ properties existing in or...

From his blog: I've sold 7000 ebooks in the last 36 hours, making over $14,000.For the next three days, I'm making 23 of my titles free on Amazon Kindle. You can find it here.Blake Crouch is also doing this, says Konrath.. Get them while they're free. :) ...

Ingram is an important player in the ebook market, being one of the major distributors of ebooks.  Education News has an interview with David Prichard, Ingram's President and CEO.  Here's a snippet: How do you see the playing field for books evolving in the next five to ten years? Three powerful trends in the last few years have been the growth of online retail, the rise...

From the press release: Data Conversion Laboratory, Inc. (DCL), a leading provider of digital publishing services, reports 70 percent of 411 respondents to a survey drawn from a cross section of the publishing industry cited 'quality' as the most important consideration when publishing an eBook. Another important finding is that 63 percent of the respondents plan to publish a digital book in 2012. "Eighteen months ago, more publishers were concerned about getting their information onto an eBook platform and quality was not the overarching theme it is now," said DCL President and CEO Mark Gross. "The survey demonstrates that the publishing industry...

From Inside Higher Ed: … a recently completed report on a yearlong pilot at Daytona State, comparing the satisfaction and success of students using all electronic texts with students using all print, has also complicated the picture. ... “Avoid top-down mandates,” the study’s authors wrote as their top recommendation. “Institutions that require all instructors to simultaneously go e-text might be courting disaster.” The majority of the students in the study who used exclusively e-texts came away dissatisfied. While they appreciated that there was no possibility of losing or forgetting their textbooks when they could be simply summoned to a device, the students told officials that...

Harper Collins’ takes a different approach from its competitors in its quest to ripoff Aussie readers.  Rather than massively overcharging Australians to prop up their foreign operations, they have gone for a more mixed, global price hike strategy.  This does, of course, involve over-charging Australians.  But hey, why not take a global stance by overcharging everyone.  Not that this should surprise anyone given HarperCollins is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s communications empire.   The price samples below come from an Amazon advanced ebook search by entering Voyager and eliminating the odd (not relevant titles) and books that did not have both Australian and...

I finally broke down and bought the very latest e-ARC of the Honor Harrington series, A Rising Thunder. And while it’s still a dozen or so posts down the road in my series of Honorverse e-book reviews, I will note that while I quite liked the book overall, the ending was…annoying. It didn’t so much end as it just stopped. There wasn’t a build to a climax, then a denouement. There was building toward a climax, and then…finis. It was as if the book had been cut off halfway through. As it turns out, that is exactly what did...

Here are just a couple of answers to questions posed by the Good E-Reader blog.  See the interview for the rest: E-Ink Triton had a ton of potential but we have yet to see a major company releasing a product. Of course we have Hanvon with their model and they made a deal with Ectaco to re brand it as the Jetbook color, why hasn’t it caught on yet? E Ink Triton meets the needs of applications such as eTextbooks and eNewspapers and we have seen customers such as Jinke, Hanvon, Ectaco publicly announce products using our technology. Other customers...

From The New York Times: Ms. [Maja] Thomas [a senior vice president of the Hachettte Book Group, in charge of its digital division] of Hachette says: “We’ve talked with librarians about the various levers we could pull,” such as limiting the number of loans permitted or excluding recently published titles. She adds that “there’s no agreement, however, among librarians about what they would accept.” [Clip] Robin Nesbitt, technical services director at the Columbus, Ohio, metropolitan library, says she does not object to HarperCollins’s limit. “At least HarperCollins allows me to have access to their titles,” she says. “I don’t mind buying a title and...