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...

Amazon Fights to Keep Secrets in eBook Trial (Publisher's Weekly) Amazon attorneys last week filed a letter with the court asking that it be allowed to redact sensitive business information about its Kindle e-book program gathered as evidence for the upcoming Apple price-fixing trial. --- CourseSmart Enhances its eTextbook Offerings (Good e-Reader) With some reports showing that the Android platform currently holds about 68% of the market for applications, digital content creators are taking steps to increase their current offerings to meet these customers where their devices are. CourseSmart, a leading provider of digital educational materials and textbooks, has been available on the Android...

Yahoo confirms $1.1 billion Tumblr acquisition (CNET) Yahoo announced the news on Monday, saying that it "promises not to screw [Tumblr] up." Yahoo paid $1.1 billion for Tumblr, and the company has confirmed that "substantially all of which is payable in cash." When can a book be digital-only, and when does it need to be print too? (paidContent) Book publishers discussed digital-first and digital-only initiatives at the Making Information Pay conference this week. OverDrive & SourceBooks Test Lending Same eBook to Millions of People (AppNewser) OverDrive has launched a pilot program that will allow millions of library patrons to check out the same eBook all at once...

India's OMICS Publishing Group threatens scholarly critic with $1 billion lawsuit, jail time (Boing Boing) OMICS Publishing Group, an Indian scholarly publisher has threatened to sue one of its critics, Metadata librarian Jeffrey Beall, for $1 billion, and has threatened him with prison time over posts he made to his prominent Scholarly Open Access site. Changes at The New York Times Book Review (New York Observer) The New York Times Book Review is modernizing under the editorship of Pamela Paul, who was appointed to the position in early April. The Astoria Bookshop to Open This August on 31st Street (We Heart Astoria) I’ll just let that title sink in...

Digital Public Library Raises Questions of Ownership, Permanence, Access (Media Shift) Why would anyone want to attend a party to celebrate the opening of a virtual repository of metadata? A better question might be — what is a virtual repository of metadata? --- The Web Giants Are Rising Above Humans and Their Petty Rules, and that Worries Me (GigaOM) The titans of the web are rebels, playing by their own rules. That is to be applauded at times, but we should also be thinking about the wider, long-term implications for society and fair competition. --- Report: Kids Tend to Read More Digital Than Print (Good e-Reader) The...

Are We in a Rut? Explaining the Increasing Homogenization of Scholarly & Scientific Publishing (Scholarly Kitchen) When the Internet stormed onto the scene, all bets were off — this revolutionary technology with limitless potential would generate all sorts of creativity, from new article presentations, new forms of peer review, new capabilities, and an end to the status quo. Fast-forward a decade and a half, and it seems little has changed when it comes to our intellectual outputs as well as the general business environment. --- Digital Signings Help Authors Grow Careers (Digital Book World) Book signings are an age-old tradition, but is it really...

'Unbundling' in the Book Business: The Fourth Big Trend (Shatzkin Files) A few weeks ago, I wrote that there are three big forces driving the future of publishing: scale, verticalization, and atomization. I was wrong. eBook Spending on the Rise (Digital Book World) In 2012 ebooks accounted for 11% of all book spending, according to a recap in Publishers Weekly... OverDrive Unveils Big Library Read Pilot Project (Good e-Reader) Overdrive has gained the support of over 3,000 libraries for a new pilot project to take ebook accessibility to an entirely new level. The intention behind this new initiative is to create a global “library book club.” Amazon Acquires Samsung Colour...

What News Organizations are Learning from their eBook Efforts (Poynter) News organizations have responded to changes in readers’ habits by moving beyond the newsstand and toward the bookshelf, zeroing in on ebooks as a new revenue source and a way to explore genres not typically found on front pages or home pages. Back to the Future: What if the Mass Media Era was Just an Accident of History? (Paid Content) We are used to thinking of a “mass media” market made up of large newspapers and TV networks as the normal state of affairs in media, but what if that was just a...

Barnes & Noble's Nook Dilemma (Dear Author) What's left if B&N sells the Nook business to Microsoft? (Forbes) Free Books for Mother's Day (GalleyCat) Now Amazon is selling bongs, nitrous oxide, and deadly hallucinogenic drugs (Business Insider) Kindle Daily Deals: 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (and 3 others)...

Is it the Best of Times or the Worst of Times for Journalism? Yes (GigaOM) Library eBooks: The Role of Libraries in the Book Discovery Process (Sourcebooks) The Cover That Launced a Thousand iBookstore Sales (GalleyCat) In Nook, Microsoft Sees a Chance to Compete Against Amazon and Apple (Paid Content) Kindle Daily Deals: The House of Rumour by Jake Arnott (and 3 others)   ...

"Fair Use" Takes Centre Stage at Google Books Appeal (Paid Content) Businessman Closes Product, Community Enraged! The Death of Tools of Change (Scholarly Kitchen) Smashwords Releases Data from eBook Sales Study (Good e-Reader) The Year of the Bookstore (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) Kindle Daily Deals: Captive in Iran by Maryam Rostampour (and 3 others)  ...

Indie Authors Help Each Other with Book Promotion (Good e-Reader) How Graphic Novels Became the Hottest Section in the Library (PW) The Publishing Industry's Secret Sauce is You (Wired) eBook App Creation Demystified: A Case Study (DBW) Kindle Daily Deals: The Ghost Writer by John Harwood (and 3 others) ...