The Authors Guild blog has an interesting piece looking at Amazon’s growth in light of a decline in antitrust enforcement. For background, it brings up the Bloomberg Businessweek story I covered the other day, it moves on to excerpt a piece in Harpers by Barry Lynn that compares Amazon to the current state of other monopolized markets, such as the chicken-raising industry: Mr. Lynn makes the case that Amazon’s dominance isn’t just a story of an industry disrupted by online commerce and digital upheaval, it’s about the abandoning of New Deal era protections of retailers in...

Engadget has the press release from Kobo on the completion of its purchase by e-commerce company Rakuten. Kobo’s HQ will remain in Toronto, though Rakuten is based in Japan. Given that Rakuten owns a lot of popular e-commerce and other industry sites already (including e-tailer Buy.com), it has the potential to give Kobo a lot more expansion and marketing opportunities than its erstwhile partner, the late Borders. Will that be enough to let Kobo catch up with Amazon, or even maintain its lead in international areas Amazon doesn’t service yet? That remains to be seen. But if there...

eBookNewser reports that Kobo is selling $49 refurbished units of its Kobo Wi Fi reader, the non-touch-capable e-ink reader that it sold before the Kobo Touch. That’s a savings of $40 over list price. The reader appears to come with Kobo’s one-year standard warranty. I bought one of these readers when it was $60 at Borders’s going-out-of-business sale, and my Dad liked it so much he had me grab one for him, too and set it up for him (and now he uses it all the time). If you’re not interested in buying e-books from Amazon or Barnes...

Joseph Esposito of Scholarly Kitchen has a post looking at the demise of Borders and what it means for the publishing industry. Yes, I know, we’ve posted plenty of those looks before, closer to the time the demise actually happened, but this one brings a perspective I hadn’t thought so much about before. When we think of Borders going away, a lot of people tend just to think of 10% of the print book market evaporating, as if the number of books sold is all that matters. But Esposito points out that the closure points to a matter...

No, they weren’t, writes Sue Walsh at our sister blog Gadgetell. Walsh points out that if e-books were responsible for killing Borders, they’d have done in Barnes & Noble and Amazon as well. Many people, especially publishers, are quick to accuse ebooks of being harmful to the book industry when in reality they are breathing new life into it. I’ve lost count of how many people have told me they started reading MORE when they got their e-readers. Both new and established authors are embracing the new technology with many well known authors getting the...

The dispute over privacy terms in Borders’s asset sale to Barnes & Noble has been settled after the parties came to an agreement on how to resolve the matter, PaidContent reports. At issue was a change to Borders’ privacy terms of service that allowed sharing of information of customers who signed up after the change, but not that of customers who signed up before. Under the new deal, customers who signed up under the old, more restrictive terms will be notified by email and given 15 days to opt out of the information transfer. Both Borders and B&N will...

A Federal judge has placed a hold on the $13.9 million purchase of Borders assets by Barnes & Noble while he considers privacy issues involved with the sale. The issue at hand involves an earlier Borders privacy policy that did not permit the transfer of customer names. A third-party ombudsman recommendation stated that customers covered under the old policy should have to give explicit permission before Barnes & Noble can use their data. Lawyers for both Borders and Barnes & Noble have asked the judge to overturn those requirements, but the judge is concerned that such an action might...

I found out about this via a post by Jason Boog at GalleyCat.  Here is what the Help Es-Borders Employees site says about itself: If you know of a way to help ex-Borders employees, e-mail deadlanguages@gmail.com or chris@neverendmedia.com and we'll post it here. Or let us know if you want to be added as a contributor. All offers to help welcome. ...

Where Amazon had the Kindle and Barnes & Noble had the Nook, Borders chose to partner with Kobo for its e-book store and reader. In the wake of Borders’s bankruptcy, it has been assumed that the licensing agreement with Kobo would be one of the Borders assets that would be auctioned off. (At one point, Borders had an 11% stake in Kobo, though apparently did not as of the bankruptcy.) However, PaidContent reports that Kobo has filed papers with the bankruptcy court overseeing the auction to try to keep that from happening. Apparently Kobo is concerned about what a...

Though it doesn’t have that much to do with e-books, the most recent development in the Borders bankruptcy has a lot to do with electronic data of another form. Borders has filed suit against Next Jump, the company that manages its customer rewards program. Borders is accusing Next Jump of essentially stealing its intellectual property in the form of an e-mailing list of a half million customers, in that Next Jump is sending emails to Borders customers directing them to another Next Jump website, OO.com. In an email statement to paidContent, Next Jump denied it had...

CNet has a quick piece on the continuing Borders liquidation, covering the company that will be selling Border’s intellectual property. The IP includes Borders’s website, as well as a number of IPv4 addresses which have become increasingly valuable now that the hard limit on IPv4 numbers has been reached, It also includes the contractual agreements Borders had with Kobo, in which it owned a minority stake. The liquidator is Streambank, the firm that is also handling the liquidation of Circuit City’s intellectual property (which, despite the chain having closed two years ago, still hasn’t been sold yet). Sadly from...

When Borders announced liquidation last week, there was a brief glimmer of hope that thirty of the stores might still be saved under a deal with Books-A-Million. That hope is now gone, with BAM's CEO telling newspapers that his company couldn't reach a satisfactory deal with Borders in time (some of the stores had already started going-out-of-business sales). However, BAM may independently lease some of the store locations Borders leaves behind, like the former Borders store at Huntington Mall in Barboursville, West Virginia. Via Shelf Awareness (Photo: markhillary) ...