Mediabistro’s Galleycat makes note of a two-page letter sent by the Authors Guild to its members in reference to letters that Random House and HarperCollins have sent its authors. It seems that those two publishers are trying to get their writers to lock into 25% royalty rates on e-books. While this might look better than the 15% going rate on hardcovers, the Authors Guild warns that the terms may not be entirely desirable: Authors and publishers have traditionally split the proceeds from book sales. Most sublicenses, for example, provide for a 50/50 split of...

And so a third pebble joins those of Macmillan rolling downhill and Harper-Collins teetering on the edge. Jason Boog at Galleycat and the Wall Street Journal report that Hachette Book Group has announced it is shifting to the agency pricing model. Hachette stated that, apart from protecting the marketplace and its authors, this means it can release e-books simultaneously with the first print editions of its books. There is no indication yet whether Amazon is going to pull Hachette’s books, too. Meanwhile, TechDirt links to an interesting Washington Post article about turbulence in the e-book industry. In...

Here's a condensed version of an e-mail Q & A that TeleRead conducted with spokespeople for Plastic Logic and LibreDigital. The latter company's tech platform will serve books, magazines and newspapers for the Plastic Logic e-reader. Q. What's meant by "serve"? A. LibreDigital’s focus has been to give publishers one platform to distribute their content in any format to all of the digital content stores, eReaders, mobile devices, search engines and social networks that connect content to consumers. LibrieDigital is already doing this for hundreds of book, magazine and newspaper publishers like HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette, The New York...