Former publishing-industry executive and subsequent business-sales-focused lawyer Martin Levin has a very interesting post on Publishing Perspectives looking at the economic theory of “creative destruction” and what it might mean for the publishing industry. In a nutshell, “creative destruction” means that as new business models are created, they effectively destroy the older models. Levin brings up a number of examples of publishing businesses and assets that have lost considerable value over the last few years. HarperCollins bought religious publisher Thomas Nelson for $200 million in 2011, but its prior owner, Intermedia, had paid $473 million for it only five...

On TechCrunch, Chris Velazco has an interesting little post about iKamasutra, a Kama Sutra-based appbook that was pulled from Apple’s app store and Google Play for explicit material (which consisted of a few suggestive lines without much detail). From my vantage point, [app developer] NBITE has complied with everything that Apple has asked of them (and more). Brown hair? Fixed. Potentially suggestive gray lines? Gone. So what exactly is Apple’s problem with the app now? Well, when Apple finally responded to the Cesur and the NBITE team, it was to say that there were too...

CNet has a piece about what a good deal the newly-discounted refurbished 4th-gen iPod Touches available at the Apple Store currently are: 8 gig discounted $30 to $169, 32 gig discounted $50 to $249, and 64-gig discounted $60 to $339. These are the models that have the double-resolution Retina Display, and would make great e-readers. If I didn’t have other demands on my money, I might very well scoop one of those up. Another CNet writer has argued that Apple should ditch the iPod Touch, saying that as a brand name the iPod had basically died out. But...

The anonymous sources have been awfully talkative about the Justice Department vs. publishers affair, haven’t they? The latest word, by way of Reuters, is that the Department of Justice might settle with some publishers and file suit against Apple as early as…tomorrow (Wednesday). The Justice Department, publishers, and Apple either could not be reached or declined comment. So who exactly are these anonymous blabbermouths, anyway? PaidContent speculates that they might be someone in the Justice Department, whose departing antitrust chief made some very gung-ho comments about certain unnamed businesses to the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks back....

Here’s an interesting iOS appbook, found via Wired: Robin Sloan’s “Fish: A Tap Essay”. Sloan was bemused by the way we constantly “like” or “fave” things on the Internet, as a way of calling our friends’ attention to them, but then don’t ever go back to them ourselves. Why would we? There’s so much distraction, so many shiny objects pleading for our attention on the Internet. The things we love, he points out, like favorite books, movies, and music, we go back to over and over again. But how often do we return to that funny LOLcat, Internet meme,...

The Wall Street Journal has some further news on the putative e-book pricing settlement in the US Justice Department and European Commission joint anti-trust investigation of the “Agency Five” publishers plus Apple. Anonymous sources have told the Journal that three publishers are inclined to settle and two others (plus Apple) are holding out. HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster reportedly favor settling, while Penguin and Macmillan (plus Apple) do not. (Random House, who waited a year to implement agency pricing, was not part of the investigation.) "The companies involved know very well under which conditions we...

Does proving a conspiracy require hard evidence? PaidContent reports that plaintiffs who have filed suit against Apple and the major publishers who implemented agency pricing say in their latest filing that indirect evidence of price jumps and other “plus factors” are all that is necessary, according to a 1939 Supreme Court precedent pertaining to movie studios who fixed film prices. The filing points out a number of events such as several separate deals finalized over just a few days, a trade association meeting when executives from Hachette and Macmillan were seen together in a bar, and the way that...

Ars Technica’s Charles Jade has a fairly long piece looking at what the new double-resolution retina display on the iPad 3 might mean for comics. Most interestingly, it has some comparison screenshots of comics at the old and new resolutions. While the resolution doesn’t make too much of a difference to the art, I was surprised how much clearer it makes the speech bubble fonts—at the old resolution, the letters are downright fuzzy, but at the new they’re much sharper and clearer. Jade also talks to Jeremy Tarney, CEO of the comic book store Ultimate Comics, about the effect...

Reuters has a report from a couple of anonymous tipsters close to the Justice Department talks with Apple and the major publishers regarding the antitrust investigation into agency pricing. According to Reuters’s sources, the negotiations may be within weeks of reaching a settlement. The settlement is expected to eliminate Apple’s “most favored nation” status, which currently allows Apple to lower its prices for an e-book to match the lowest price the book is available elsewhere. (Though the article doesn’t say whether Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which have a similar contract clause, would have to give it up as...

Well, the Harry Potter e-books are out, and they’re making a splash. There are a number of reactions being reported on the web to various aspects of the announcement, and it interests me to look at some of them. For starters, Tim Carmody at Wired calls attention to the fact that Amazon and Barnes & Noble are both unprecedentedly referring customers to Pottermore to register and buy the books, then automatically adding them to their respective e-reader accounts. (And both of them are promoting the Potter e-books on their respective front pages as if the sales were their own...

Although she did not mention any companies or business sectors explicitly, it is hard not to see departing Justice Department antitrust chief Sharis Pozen’s harsh words as aimed at the publishers and Apple who are under investigation for allegedly colluding on e-book pricing: "Competitors can't join together and make agreements on price," she says in an interview. "We're going to stop that." […] "We don't pick business models—that's not our job," Ms. Pozen says, without mentioning the case explicitly. "But when you see collusive behavior at the highest levels of...

Could Apple’s app store/iBooks store submission rules be stifling creativity in e-books? That’s the question posed by a FastCompany article by Adam Penenberg looking at a couple of interactive children’s books that the husband-and-wife team of Ellen Jacob and Kirk Cheyfitz have created for the iPad. Jacob and Cheyfitz take the approach that, while reading must come first, interactivity can be added in ways that enhance the story rather than distract from it. The problem is, books sold via the iBookstore have to be created on the iAuthor platform, which means they can only offer video and links. But...