After announcing its cooperative arrangement with Hachette Livre for Google Books operations in France, Google has now said that it is in “notional” talks with UK publishers to come to a similar arrangement, The Bookseller reports. The company also announced Hachette had signed up with its forthcoming e-book program, Google Editions, and hoped to launch it “shortly.” Industry observers are pleased with the deal, which seems to have produced a similar result to the Google Books settlement without expensive, time-consuming litigation. However, the French Publishers Association is still skeptical, warning that Google "has never respected its commitments as regards...

Google has come to a settlement with French publisher Hachette Livre in regard to the scanning and use of scanned French books for its Google Books project. The deal apparently gives Hachette considerable control over what titles are scanned and used. Hachette will also get to use Google’s scans of its books for print-on-demand and e-book sales. The Bookseller’s FutureBooks reports on the settlement and posts the press release. The Bookseller itself has more backstory, noting that Hachette had filed an objection to the Google Books settlement with the US court in September. Google says that it does not...

The Bookseller’s FuturEBook blog has a piece by Philip Jones looking at ten conclusions about the way agency pricing is being introduced in the United Kingdom. Although Jones comes from a pro-agency point of view, he isn’t shy of pointing out that it is mainly aimed at keeping Amazon from taking over the e-book market and has been pretty badly implemented in the UK so far. Maybe there are reasons for this, mostly legal for sure, but retailers we've spoken to appear to be unclear why Hachette set a fixed 'D-day' for some, but not—most...

Independent French bookstores are eyeing e-books with fear, the Wall Street Journal reports (story behind paywall; to read the whole thing see this Google search). In France, as in much of the rest of Europe, laws forbid stores from marking down printed books much below standard cover price, to protect small bookstores from the greater economic heft of large chains that could otherwise undersell them quite easily (as Wal-Mart has been doing in the US with its $8 hardcovers). However, these laws don’t apply to e-books, which are routinely being marked down to 25% below cover. ...

The Bookseller is reporting that Hachette, in response to the removal of its ebooks by a number of seller, as reported here, has made the following statement: Hachette had declined to comment on the move but issued a statement overnight confirming that it was "in a short transition period from wholesaler terms to the agency model for our e-books". The statement added: "While the process of their introduction may seem a bit bossy, the point of agency terms if to create a level playing field for large and small booksellers alike and we believe most people will quickly come to understand that...

The Bookseller is reporting this response to Hachette going to the agency model. According to them, Amazon is still selling Hachette ebooks and is still setting its own prices as of Monday morning. In addition to the above, Tesco and WH Smith have removed Hachette's ebook editions from sale. Kieron Smith, managing director of The Book Depository, which is supplied e-books by Gardners, said the company had taken the decision to remove the books from sale and did not plan to sign the agreement. Smith said: "One of the many reasons is we want to apply consistency of offer to...

So reports The Bookseller. Starting on September 20, Hachette UK will be setting ebook prices on resellers websites. This will apply to all resellers, including Amazon and Apple. In an email seen by The Bookseller, Gardners, wrote to retailers telling them of this change from Hachette, which it said would be effective from Monday, 20th September. Gardners provides e-books for retailers including Tesco, The Book Depository and independent bookshops. In an attached agreement document for retailers, it said: "[Retailers] shall agree that it shall not alter the customer price of any e-book without [Hachette's] prior written consent." More information in...

1,141,273 in actual fact, according to his publisher Hachette Book Group. Worldwide, Patterson has sold over 205 million print copies. According to an article in The Bookseller, Patterson said: "Things have really changed in the digital space. With more and more people reading on iPads, Kindles, and Nooks, taking time to create interesting, user-friendly, enhanced ebook editions is becoming more and more important. And if e-books get people who might otherwise not be reading to pick up a book, then that makes me happy."...

The Bookseller notes that cheap and discounted e-books have been selling really well on Apple’s iBookstore. HarperCollins and Pan Macmillan are mentioned to have a lot of cheaper-then-print e-books on the bestseller list, whereas Hachette who prices e-books higher only has two books there. David Roth-Ey, group digital publisher for HarperCollins, said: "Our goal is to find the optimum price for our e-books to maximise value for ourselves and our authors, while giving consumers a fair deal and incentivising them to buy, rather than motivating them to fileshare our digital content." Roth-Ey...

CNet and the Wall Street Journal have a few (albeit not many) more details on the Texas Attorney General’s investigation into agency pricing which we previously mentioned had been reported in Publishers Lunch. Officials from Hachette and HarperCollins both told the Journal that they had been contacted by the Attorney General’s office, but neither would elaborate further. As the Journal notes, it is not entirely clear whether the AG actually is investigating agency pricing. It simply seems like the most likely possibility. The articles note that Apple has also been under Justice Department scrutiny lately concerning its music industry...

Remember how newspaper and magazine publishers got annoyed with Amazon because Amazon did not give them the subscriber demographic information they wanted? Well, guess what? As the Wall Street Journal reports, it seems that Apple isn’t any better. As electronic editions of magazines like Time and Popular Science sell like hotcakes even at the somewhat ridiculous newsstand price of $4.99 per issue (whatever happened to e- being cheaper due to distribution cost savings?), some publishers are trying to figure out their own alternate payment and distribution schemes to avoid having to give Apple a 30% cut of...

Mike Shatzkin reports on a Blogtalk radio interview with Hachette's CEO, David Young, and top digital strategist, Maja Thomas. Mike says, in part: Abbott’s [the interviewer] questions about the ebook backlist elicited some very useful new information. Young and Thomas explained that just about all of the straight text backlist at Hachette is now available as “straight” ebooks. There has been the impression promulgated by readers, and reported by Abbott, that a lot of backlist from big houses is not available. Not true from Hachette, they say. Young says there are only “a handful of authors” whose contracts were unclear enough...