Are Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and Indigo making a wise move by not carrying the books from Amazon’s publishing arm, or are they cutting off their noses to spite their faces? This is the question that Mike Shatzkin addresses in his latest column. He notes that a reporter contacted him, undoubtedly expecting the same sort of attacks on the move posted by some major media outlets, and was rather surprised when Shatzkin said that, from a self-interested point of view, the decision made perfect sense. Shatzkin recapitulates the recent history between Amazon, the Big Six publishers, and...

Apropos of the HarperCollins v. Open Road lawsuit over the backlist e-book title Julie of the Wolves, legal blogger Passive Guy (aka contract lawyer David Vandagriff) has written a fairly lengthy post looking at the question of whether e-book rights are covered in pre-e-book contracts. Passive Guy writes: A fundamental legal question involved in construing a contract is what the parties intended at the time the contract was made. The intent must be manifest in some form in the written agreement. A secret intent by one party that the word tomato also includes avocado won’t bring...

Last week’s issue of Bloomberg’s Businessweek included an article titled Amazon’s Hitman. If you haven’t read it, you should. It is enlightening. The gist of the article is that Amazon is gearing up to challenge the publishing world on its own turf: the signing of and creation of big-name authors who sell hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of books. And this assault worries the Big 6 publishers — Hachette, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Random House, and Harper-Collins – with good reason: Amazon has more market value and disposable cash than they do combined. The article discusses the history of the relationship between...

From the press release: Copia, the interactive eBookstore, announced that music critic Will Hermes will answer reader questions inside his book, the acclaimed Love Goes to Buildings on Fire. Starting today, anyone who purchases a copy of Hermes's much-lauded book from Copia can use the site's free eReader app to post questions to the author in the margins of the eBook. Hermes will respond to the questions through Feb. 21, 2012. While users have always been able to create and share notes on any eBook purchased from Copia, thanks to the platform's app,...

From The Bookseller: Self-published crime writer Kerry Wilkinson claimed the top spot in the UK Kindle bestseller chart for the last quarter of 2011, Amazon has revealed, as speculation mounts that the online retailer is planning to open its own physical store to push its exclusive book sales. Wilkinson, from Lancashire, published his novel Locked In, one of a series featuring detective Jessica Daniel, using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing tool, and sold “hundred of thousands of copies” of it in the three months before Christmas, according to Amazon. The e-book is currently selling for 98p and...

From Inside Higher Ed: Cost-conscious students can of course save money with used or online books and recoup some of their cash come buyback time. Still, it’s a steep price for most 18-year-olds. But soon, introductory physics texts will have a new competitor, developed at Rice University. A free online physics book, peer-reviewed and designed to compete with major publishers’ offerings, will debut next month through the non-profit publisher OpenStax College. Using Rice’s Connexions platform, OpenStax will offer free course materials for five common introductory classes. The textbooks are open to classes anywhere and organizers ...

That's the title of an article in KQED Mind/Shift.  It contains a lot of information and links. Here's a snippet: Apple’s announcement last week about its new iBooks2 and authoring app created big waves in education circles. But smart educators don’t necessarily need Apple’s slick devices and software to create their own books. How educators think of content curation in the classroom is enough to change their reliance on print textbooks. As the open education movement continues to grow and become an even more rich trove of resources, teachers can use the content to make their own...

From the Taleist site.  It would be great if they got enough respndenets to be statistically significant.  (Blockquotes omitted) How are you doing as a self-publisher? It’s a hard question to answer isn’t it? What are you measuring against? We're taking a professional snapshot of the self-publishing industry There are self-publishing authors like JA Konrath, Amanda Hocking,  John Locke and (on a smaller but perfectly formed scale) Joanna Penn who are generous with their figures but they’re selling books from the tens of thousands to the millions. So does that mean you’re a failure if your figures are more modest? Or are you actually...

Some folks have asked me how I came to the idea of algorithmic culture, the subject of my next book as well as many of my blog posts of late.  I usually respond by pointing them in the direction of chapter three of The Late Age of Print, which focuses on Amazon.com, product coding, and the rise digital communications in business. It occurs to me, though, that Amazon wasn’t exactly what inspired me to begin writing about algorithms, computational processes, and the broader application of principles of scientific reason to the book world.  My real inspiration came from someone you’ve probably...

That's the title of an article in the [e-reads] blog: Despite the gloomy talk about the death of the book it’s pretty clear that printed books serve an essential function in our culture and will always be with us. For those who greet this statement skepticism, we reiterate that there is nothing wrong with printed books – just the way they are distributed. The big difference between the past and the present is that for the first time in history, printed books are optional. The implications of this fact are profound. Until very recently the only mode for publishers to introduce content was...

A new article by Peter Brantley from the Publisher’s Weekly web site. From the Article: There is a growing crisis in the academic monograph marketplace. College and university libraries are experiencing budget cuts; there are too many presses publishing too many titles; there’s growing pressure to figure out open access (OA) solutions, particularly in the face of the outrageous Research Works Act; and, aside from crossover or trade titles from the larger presses like Oxford, there is a sense that the barely adequate supply of funding will soon start to slide off a cliff. [Clip] Libraries, presses, and scholars are pressing forward with several interesting proposals...

Got the following email from Amy Edelman and I thought it would be worth reprinting as a lot of indie authors seem to read us: As we all know, indies--thanks to many of you--are finally staking their claim as legit, best selling books.  In order to demonstrate that--and in response to the fact that indie bestsellers weren't tracked anywhere else--IndieReader created "The List Where Indies Count", featuring the top 10 best selling indie titles, culled from sources including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Amazon and B&N.com.IndieReader recently created a widget...