HarperCollins is considering selling interactive ad space in factual e-books, New Media Age reports. The ads would be limited to books that convey factual information, rather than fiction titles. HarperCollins group digital director and publisher David Roth-Ey explains: “Certain kinds of books create immersive reading experiences whereby ads would be too interruptive for readers, and publishers and even advertisers aren’t likely to put a premium on that. But information books, for example a Collins birds guide, could provide very valuable real estate for contextual advertising - in this case potentially a binoculars manufacturer.” Other...

At FutureBook, Philip Jones has a look at the current status of digital royalties. There appears to be some ambivalence going around the publishing industry at the moment, as even though some agents are reporting getting rates better than the current 25% industry standard, publishers are still largely adamant that they will go no higher. This makes Amazon’s self-publishing operations, offering 70% royalties on the e-books they sell, look more attractive. HarperCollins’ Worldwide chief executive Brian Murray points out that the 25% royalty rate is better than the 16%-18% authors traditionally get on print books, and that there should...

Digital Book World has a ten minute video interview with Brian Murray, CEO of HarperCollins, where he talks about how the publisher is experimenting with new business models in the digital age. It's worth watching the full interview, but this is what he has to say about HarperCollins' controversial library lending policy: Libraries are a really important channel for HarperCollins. We’ve talked about discovery of books and libraries are where a lot of discovery happens in many communities across the country. So HarperCollins is committed to that library channel. The challenge is that we’re trying to balance the needs of all...

Any time you turn on the news, odds are good you will see something about the News Corporation voicemail-hacking scandal which has again exploded onto headlines in the last few days. It stood to reason that sooner or later some corner of it would reach into the e-book world. Yet, strangely enough, it is not something related to Murdoch’s feud with Google or obsession with paywalls. In this case, it comes by way of agent Andrew Wylie, who made a big splash in the publishing world last year with his abortive backlist self-e-publishing operation (which by and large mysteriously...

The publishers' long-running line of early childhood reading books, featuring characters such as the Berenstain Bears, Frog and Toad, and Splat the Cat, have been converted into digital versions with professional narration and word highlighting. The ebook editions are only avaiable through Apple and Barnes & Noble. Here's more info from their press release: HarperCollins Children's Books announced today the launch of the I CAN READ program on Apple's iBookstore and Barnes & Noble's NOOK Bookstore. I CAN READ is the first complete early reader program available digitally, with eighty titles out now and many more to come. I CAN READ...

Publishers Weekly takes a long, interesting look at the question of library e-books and what they mean for both the publishing and library industries. To some librarians’ surprise, library e-books are proving extremely popular with patrons. "It's amazing," says Diane Eidelman, administrator for member services at the Suffolk Cooperative Library System, a consortium of over 50 libraries on New York's Long Island. "We just can't keep up with the e-book demand. We'll purchase an enormous amount of content, and within 24 hours it's all checked out." Indeed, the numbers tell the story....

The Bookseller’s FutureBook blog is carrying a post by e-book distributor OverDrive, touting the benefits of multi-channel distribution for e-books. Concentrating solely on e-book stores such as those for Kindle and Nook ignores readers who buy from other places or borrow from libraries, OverDrive notes. In 2010, 718 million book and title catalog pages were viewed via OverDrive “virtual branch” library pages, but only 15 million digital titles were checked out, meaning that readers are viewing information about books through their libraries before making purchases elsewhere. But libraries are just a start. Adding titles to retail...

Reuters is carrying a story on publisher Nicholas Callaway, who has been publishing beautiful coffee-table books since 1980, has recently decided that books that used to belong on the coffee table will work better as interactive apps on a tablet. Whereas it used to be that huge pages with detailed pictures were the way to go, now Callaway is more interested in smaller screens. "This is revolutionary," he says, stroking his finger at the iPad's glass surface and prodding to open an app he has developed. "This is the Looking Glass. This is Alice in Wonderland....

On the blog of The Society for Scholarly Publishing, The Scholarly Kitchen, Rick Anderson has a pretty good summary of the HarperCollins library e-book uproar, in which HarperCollins imposed a 26-checkout limit before library e-books would have to be repurchased. Yesterday I was talking about the ways publishers are failing to connect with consumers, and this turns out to be another example: How has HarperCollins responded to the uproar? Awkwardly. In a remarkably tone-deaf “open letter to librarians” , HarperCollins explained that “our prior e-book policy for libraries dates back almost 10 years to a time...

HarperCollins President of Sales Josh Marwell posted a response to angered librarians on the Harper Library blog (which ironically features a header graphic with flowers and butterflies and the words “Library Love Fest”) concerning its recent imposition of a 26-checkout limit for library e-books. Marwell explains that HarperCollins is “committed to libraries” but concerned that unlimited library e-book lending could “undermine the emerging e-book eco-system, hurt the growing e-book channel, place additional pressure on physical bookstores, and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors.” He points out that twenty-six...

Library Journal reports that HarperCollins has issued new terms to Overdrive for how many times a library e-book can be loaned out. Library Journal reports that HarperCollins has declared a library-purchased e-book may only be loaned 26 times before it must be re-purchased. This bears a certain similarity to agency pricing in that not just Overdrive but any library e-book provider dealing with HC will be required to abide by those terms. The publisher also issued a short statement: "HarperCollins is committed to the library channel. We believe this change balances the value libraries get from...

Publishers Weekly reports that, out of 150 titles HarperCollins is releasing as audiobooks this spring, only two are getting CD audio releases—the rest are digital downloads only. The story notes that sales of CDs have been declining, but no other major publisher has yet moved away from CDs to such an extent. Harper insists that it is not abandoning the CD format—it may choose to bring out a few more of those 150 titles as CDs later in the publishing process—but that in recent years its listeners have more and more moved over to digital audio. A Simon &...