Tartarus Press is "a small, British independent press founded in 1990. We specialise in collectable hardback limited editions of literary supernatural/strange/horror fiction, and we also publish paperbacks and ebooks. We have been the recipient of three World Fantasy Awards, and in 2010 received a Stoker from the Horror Writers Association." TeleRead recently spoke to Tartarus co-editor and co-publisher Ray Russell about the press's e-publishing program, and how it fits with the rest of its business. TeleRead: You sell your e-books off your own site, in EPUB and Kindle/Mobi format, without DRM. What decided you on that policy? Ray Russell: Tartarus has always been about publishing...

After long campaigns carrying the fight for e-books to the print-only diehards, I’d like to turn back for once to something that can never be put into electronic format and will forever remain print. And for very good reasons. And yet it had to wait over a century until 2004 before appearing in the form its author originally wanted. And it is available online. The work is Un coup de Dés (A Throw of the Dice) , or in full, Un coup de Dés jamais n'abolira le Hasard (A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance), French Symbolist poet Stéphane...

Laura Hazard Owen of paidContent brings us this great story about Open Road Media, an e-only publisher that specializes in backlist republications of titles which were not yet available in e-book form. Along with the history lesson on the history of this unique publisher, the article offers six 'lessons' other publishers can learn from what Open Road has done. The lessons include having a marketing plan, playing nice with retail partners, using video for effective promotion, being flexible to changes in the market and in the marketing plan, and knowing when to use good ol' paper. From the article: “The speed of what’s happened...

An interesting report is circulating the book blogs, alleging that e-book sales in Canada are down almost five percent. I've seen reporting on the Booknet Canada report on at least 3 blogs (for example, here and here and here, but nobody seems quite sure what to make of it. We're selling lots and lots of devices here in Canada, aren't we? We're Kobo's number one country! So what, exactly, are we reading? Are e-book sales on the decline? Here are a few thoughts about what may be going on here: 1. Device Availability is Limited This is partly because the retail scene is limited! We've only just gotten Target here, and it opened...

As already noted in TeleRead, author Ted Heller has recently been bemoaning his woes as a self-publisher in Slate. He's now followed up with a further bulletin on his tribulations as an e-reader, first run on The Weeklings and also aired since on Slate. In particular, he cites the demise of that mobile billboard, the book jacket. Heller takes issue with the fact that Kindles and their ilk never show others your reading choices. "The Kindle tells you nothing about the book that’s being read and therefore nothing about the person reading it," Heller observes—though I'd object that this comes down...

Apple Deems 55 Digital Comics too Hot for in-App Buying (Good e-Reader) On Tuesday, comiXology announced, via its blog, that several comics had been removed from the apps “In order to comply with the Apple App Store guidelines regarding adult or inappropriate content, some new releases were rejected for our iOS app this week. In addition, certain previously released titles that fall outside of these guidelines were also rejected and will be removed from sale.” --- 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novelist Awards Finalists Announced (GalleyCat) Amazon Publishing has revealed the five finalists in each category of its sixth Breakthrough Novel Award competition. --- eBooks on the Decline in...

I guess I'd forgotten. Now that all the the publishing players have settled, abandoning agency pricing and returning to the wholesale slums, the DOJ/e-book antitrust case, which popped up again in everyone's news feeds this week, feels a little anticlimactic. The DOJ, perhaps simply because it's what it found, or perhaps because there's no one left to pick on, is framing the last defendant standing, Apple, as the "ringmaster" in the price-fixing suit, according the New York Times. With the case set to go to trial June 3 in New York (and what a fine note on which to end BEA), I find myself wondering: At...

UK press, politicians and public all seem heated up about Amazon’s tax bills in the UK—or lack thereof. Seems those deceitful corporations have been daring to incorporate and structure across jurisdictions, rather than standing meekly inside good honest British borders and reaching their hands into their pockets whenever that nice Mr. Osborne tells them to. Whisper it not, but rumor has it that some of them even have profit motives. Scandalous, I know. Politicians eager for scapegoats to fling before an electorate grumbling under the weight of misgovernment have seized on Amazon, Google, et al, as a Godsend. Watching them posture...

Much publicity has surrounded the record prices fetched for poetry manuscripts at an auction held by Bonhams in London as part of The Roy Davids Collection of Poetry, Poetical Manuscripts and Portraits of Poets. The sale made a total of £750,000 ($1,141,550). The draft of Christina Rossetti’s ‘Remember me when I am gone’ fetched £33,650 ($51,217), almost ten times its presale estimate and over twenty times the previous record for her drafts. Modern Brit Philip Larkin’s ‘Love’ fetched £7,500 ($11,415) in his first outing at auction. The news aired on Seattlepi.com—the website of what was once the Seattle Post-Intelligencer daily newspaper—under the headline ‘Digital Backlash’: “If we need any...

I wrote previously about Star Dispatches, an e-book subscription service being produced by the Toronto Star. According to this article on The Star's website, they're being recognized for this series with two Online Media Awards. The service has an intriguing set-up where, for a nominal fee, subscribers get a new e-book sent to them every week. There is no à la carte purchase, but the weekly fee is so affordable that subscriber retention has been high. From the admittedly self-congratulatory write-up: "We’re extremely proud of the stories being told in our weekly eRead format, our subscribers are highly satisfied and the business model has...

The Real Costs of Publishing a Book (Media Shift) At every writers conference or self-publishing panel the question that almost always inevitably comes up is: “How much will self-publishing really cost me?” --- New Bookstats Report Shows Spectacular Growth of eBook Market Since 2008 (The Digital Reader) The American Association of Publishers announced their latest annual BookStats report today, and while the full report won’t be up for sale for another week or so, I got an early look at some of the data. --- eInk Announces New e-Paper Technology Called Mobius (Good e-Reader) E Ink has just unveiled a new large screen e-paper display screen that will soon...

Futurebook is reporting that Pottermore, JK Rowling's portal for all things Harry Potter, was a big winner at The Bookseller Industry Awards. As author Philip Jones explains, the thrust of the message they are hearing now is that there is no longer such a thing as 'digital strategy.' It's all just strategy now. So, what do they think Pottermore is doing right? They identify four things Pottermore did incredibly well "for which the words 'game changer'" apply: 1. They created a commercial e-book platform that was at least as good as Amazon's 2. They set their own prices, and sustained them in the face...