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,...

Last week Google announced plans to wind down the reseller component of their eBook service. As Google put it, the program "has not gained the traction that we hoped it would", so they're pulling the plug next January. Like any well-focused company, Google is smart to reinvest in successful products and kill ones that aren't working. I don't question Google's decision to end the reseller program but I do question whether they invested enough to give it a chance. Google seems to have a corporate philosphy of planting a product seed and assuming others will embrace it and help it bloom....

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...

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...

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...

From FUTUReBOOK: ... First, the Harry Potter brand still carries a great deal of muscle, but not enough to get Apple to change its terms. According to Charlie Redmayne, chief executive, the company has done some "groundbreaking deals" with Sony, Google, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, whereby the e-books will be featured on their sites, but the customer will be sent to Pottermore to handle the transaction. "This is the first time Amazon and B&N have driven customers off their platform to another site, and then given the ability to push that content back to their device." Redmayne would not be drawn...

If you want to buy anything from iBookstore, you have to do it either via iBooks or iTunes app. But you can actually use your web browser, without the need to switch to any of the Apple’s apps, to find ebooks there. Some time ago I shared tips on how to search iBookstore from a web browser. It’s basically about using a relevant search phrase in Google. The other way is to go to a special subpage of Apple’s site, called iTunes Preview – Books. It’s hard to call it a store – it’s rather a technical directory of links, a sitemap. Luckily,...

On Mashable, Lance Ulanoff posts about the trend toward self-publishing through Amazon and other e-book shops. Amazon, he writes, has a huge potential audience, and both known and unknown writers are finding audiences for their books there. And Apple just unveiled iBooks Author, which makes creating e-books easier than ever. Of course, there are concerns over quality, especially given that many e-books may not have been professionally edited. Whether you use Amazon or Apple, these platforms tear down the traditional publisher barrier and put control firmly in the hands of you and me. I wonder how...

An update on that story from a couple months ago about a coalition of Chinese authors planning to sue Apple over their works being sold in the iTunes store without authorization. China’s state-owned news agency Xinhua reports that the coalition has grown to 22 authors, who are claiming that 95 of their works have been sold without their permission. The story doesn’t really have many details about how these books got into the store. It does say Apple was “too slow” to remove them after the authors complained, though doesn’t say just how slow it was. A local Apple...

It's best just to quote the letter: Letter from Scott Gurow:  Grim News Dear member, Yesterday’s reports that the Justice Department may be near filing an antitrust lawsuit against five large trade book publishers and Apple is grim news for everyone who cherishes a rich literary culture. The Justice Department has been investigating whether those publishers colluded in adopting a new model, pioneered by Apple for its sale of iTunes and apps, for selling e-books. Under that model, Apple simply acts as the publisher’s sales agent, with no authority to discount prices. We have no way of knowing whether...