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...

As Amazon goes, so goes Kobo? A report from CBC suggests that would seem to be the case. Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis says that Kobo is developing a publishing arm to offer complete publishing services (including editing and design) for authors who would like to publish through it. It’s not clear from the article whether this service just covers e-books, or is like Amazon’s new publishing division in offering both electronic and print publication services. Either way, it’s one more way e-book-based firms are competing with traditional publishers, though traditional publishers don’t necessarily seem to be worried just yet....

I have fond recollections of a particular series of children’s books with shiny foil spines. I expect anybody of my generation, those since, and probably several before do as well. Little Golden Books are some of the first books a child will ever read. Those books helped me win a prize for reading 104 books in a month in Kindergarten—I have little doubt most of those books were Little Golden ones. Of course, now that the younger generations are enthralled by portable electronic, Little Golden Books have to change with the times as well. Random House is releasing digital...

A couple of months ago, agent Sonia Land of the Sheil Land literary agency placed Catherine Cookson’s backlist titles directly on Amazon, without consulting their print publisher, Random House, or offering it a chance to be part of the deal. Now it would seem that Random House has struck back, closing a backlist e-book deal with author Tom Sharpe and bypassing Land, who is also his agent. On FutureBook, Philip Jones writes: Agents will fume: one said the gloves were now off. Anthony Goff, president of the Association of Authors Agents, told me that undermining the...

The Bookseller reports that in an address to the World e-Reading Congress, Random House’s deputy chairman Ian Hudson said that he expects e-book sales to exceed 8% of trade publishers’ sales in 2011, and possibly to reach 15% next year. He also reported that e-book sales in 2011 were so far outstripping 2010’s by a factor of 10 overall, though some titles sell better electronically than others. Hudson argued that traditional publishers are still going to be necessary into the e-publishing future because certain things such as editing will always be necessary to produce a readable book, and publishers...

Yes it is cool.  From Electric Literature: Our single sentence animation for Lynne Tillman’s “The Original Impulse,” featured in Electric Literature No. 5, may haunt your dreams. (Animation by Monica Garrison and music by Andrei Pohorelsky.) The sentence: "She roared here and soared there, dwarfed by three massive white columns as she and her best college friend mugged before a filmless camera." For some reason the embed code won't work, but you can watch it here....

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....

Audrey Watters at ReadWriteWeb takes a look at the contentious issue of e-book vs. paper pricing and whether it is likely to promote piracy. Mentioning Random House’s decision to join the agency pricing crowd, and the ongoing anti-trust investigation in Europe, she links to a Reddit thread discussing examples of e-books priced higher than their paperback or hardcover versions. The Reddit thread is kicked off by one person complaining about the prices on these books (“I love the kindle but this pricing stuff right now is making me question all of it. I have a hard time placing...

Raise your hand if you’re surprised. Apple Insider reports that Random House e-book titles have started appearing on the iBooks store, just in time for the launch of the new iPad today. It must have been in the offing for some time before Random House actually announced the change to the agency model. I’ll be watching the liveblogging of the iPad 2 launch event just like anyone, but will probably have to wait for this evening to post my thoughts on it due to my day job. ...

It’s the time of year when people and publications start making lists of things that happened during the rest of it, and Publishing Perspectives is kicking off a series on “the most dramatic events in publishing in 2010.” The first piece in the series is also posted at the website of its writer, publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin of IdeaLog. Shatzkin’s pick for the most dramatic publishing event of 2010 is the confrontation between Amazon and five of the big six publishers early this year over bringing an end to Amazon’s $9.99 e-book pricing scheme. Even in theory, Shatzkin writes,...

From the press release: Random House, Inc., the largest U.S. trade-book publisher, announced today a partnership with digital media agency Smashing Ideas to develop book-based children's Apps for mobile devices. Seattle-based Smashing Ideas is a cutting edge developer of immersive, interactive experiences for all screens, building digital products and destinations around brand characters in the children and youth markets. Random House Children's Books will work in close collaboration with Smashing Ideas' newly formed ePublishing group—led by the co-creator and developer of the smash hit, Alice for iPad—and with key Random House children's books authors, illustrators and brands to produce...

Publishing industry consultant Mike Shatzkin, whose columns are always worth reading even when I don’t mention them here, has a piece looking at new Random House CEO Markus Dohle’s contention that the publishing business (and Random House in particular) will be shifting from a B2B (“Business to Business”) emphasis to a more B2C (“Business to Consumer”) position. Shatzkin writes: Markus replied that he was fine being quoted because he was “convinced that publishers have to become more reader oriented in a marketing and trend finding/setting way rather than in a direct to consumer selling...