This is kind of a good news/bad news story. The good news is that Hachette is going to be offering its full catalog to libraries, including new releases. No windowing! The other piece of good news is that the books won't expire, unlike library books from HarperCollins, Penguin and Macmillan. I really like the no-expiration part. I always fee a bit guilty when I check out a HarperCollins book, start it and realize I don't like it. There went one of the 26 lends... The bad news is the pricing, although it's not all bad news, considering that the books won't expire. The...

Retailers are finally discounting Macmillan-published e-books - nearly two months after it settled its Department of Justice’s price fixing case. Prices of e-books have been lowered on sites such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, according to Publishers Lunch. This includes books such as Silver Linings Playbook, Killing Lincoln and Ender’s Game. That leaves Penguin as the lone publisher that settled with the DOJ as to not have books discounted. Amazon is still hanging on to “This price was set by the publisher” tag on the site for Penguin books. The Macmillan discounts have ranged from about $1 to $2 off the original price. Silver...

Book Promotion Strategies That Actually Worked (GalleyCat) Amazon Refuses to Publish First Cornish-Language eBook (Tech Dirt) What Walled Gardens do to the Health of the Web (Boing Boing) HarperCollins and Hachette Disband Agency Model for UK (Good e-Reader) Kindle Daily Deals: The Flight of the Century by Thomas Kessner (and 3 others) ...

While it’s odd to think of an organization backed by the  Penguin, Hachette and Simon & Schuster as a startup, Bookish, the new book-recommendation and -discovery site is essentially that. After two years in development under three CEOs, Bookish is now a reality, a place where users can get recommendations—based on titles or groups of titles they know they already like—and then, importantly, purchase them. Like the Random House project BookScout, the idea, on one level, is to facilitate discovery across the industry, for the good of the industry. And while users can discover just about any book, the books they can purchase...

Apple is now the lone hold-out. As you may recall, three publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster—immediately settled, leaving Penguin, MacMillan and Apple to fight it out in court. Penguin settled in December, probably to protect their pending merger with Random House. And now Macmillan joins its fellows. Macmillan CEO John Sargent cited financial reasons for the settlement, according to this story on Publishers Lunch: "Our company is not large enough to risk a worst case judgment. In this action the government accused five publishers and Apple of conspiring to raise prices. As each publisher settled, the remaining defendants became responsible not only...

Why Magazine Apps Suck (Techcrunch) Kindle Free Time Unlimited Gives Access to Thousands of Kids' eBooks (Good E-Reader) Hachette Has Dropped Agency Pricing on eBooks (The Digital Reader) Six Essential Issues in Any eBook Contract Negotiation (Digital Book World) Kindle Daily Deal: Gathering of Waters by Bernice L. McFadden {and} Animal Fair by Ponder Goembel * * *    ...

If you're one of the many e-book customers who's expecting a payment or credit as a result of the 49 states' recent $69 million settlement with HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster, you should be aware that "the states have slightly modified the way those payments will work," according to Paid Content reporter Laura Hazard Owen. In a post filed this morning, Owen detailed two of the latest modifications to the payments that were filed by the states' attorneys. (Click here to view the six-page document on Scribd.) As for the changes to the way credits will be disbursed, those modifications are fairly minimal; they probably...

J.K. Rowling's first adult novel hit stores (and e-book readers) today, and almost immediately, the lukewarm reviews trickled in—not for the content of the book itself, but for the Kindle formatting: a glitch on the tech end (which this article attributes to an unspecified 'issue' on the end of Hachette, the publisher) made it impossible for Kindle readers to adjust the font size to their preference. You had to read it in either Really Big or Teeny Tiny, with no in between. Curiously mixed in with these complaints was an outcry over the e-book price: $17.99, based on a discount off the...

It seems as if a new chapter in the Big Six's war with libraries has been written. Beginning on October 1, libraries interested in acquiring backlist e-books from Hachette will have to pay approximately 220% more than they would today. Infodocket's Gary Price seems to have been the reporter who broke the story late last week; he apparently obtained an explanatory email that was sent from OverDrive to a number of its library partners. (To read that email, see below.) As for the acquisition of any new Hachette e-books, libraries remain out of luck: If a Hachette title was published after April 2010, you won't see...

            >> Soon You'll be Able to Go to CVS and Print a Book (Paid Content) >> Hachette Increases Cost of Library Ebooks 220% (Good E-Reader) >> Author Invites World to Watch Her Write Novel Via Google Docs (The Digital Reader) >> Netflix Exec on Canada's Broadband Caps (GigaOM) >> Kindle Daily Deal: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (and) Savvy...

¶ Hachette Looks Ahead After 8% Drop in Sales {Good E-Reader} ¶ Ownership in the Digital Age, Part 1 {Dear Author} ¶ Print Version of Nintendo Gamer Folds {Nintendo World Report} ¶ Amazon, Online Retailers Start Collecting Pa. Sales Tax {NewsWorks} ¶ UK's Boxette Wants to Put E-Books on Bookshelves {DBW}  ...

Over the past few days, a wealth of information has surfaced regarding the $69 million settlement three of the so-called 'Agency Five' publishers will be paying to 54 states and U.S. territories for the alleged price-fixing of e-books. Still, information regarding what we consider to be two of the case's more immediately fascinating aspects—the cash refunds due to consumers, and the supposed changes this settlement (and the DOJ case in general) will ultimately have on the e-book industry—are still proving a bit tough to come by. For instance, in regards to the refunds that some consumers will be receiving: How much money, exactly, will they receive? How and when will they...