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...

Instapaper Sold to Betaworks (Good e-Reader) What do readers really want from ebook frontmatter and endmatter? (Futurebook) Revenues Up 22% to 16 Billion at Amazon in First Quarter (Digital Book World) NYT Says New Products to be Profitable by 2014 (Paid Content) Kindle Daily Deals: Die for Me by Cynthia Eden (and 3 others)...

I've seen at least four stories today on the Scott Turow editorial in this week's New York Times (for example, here and here). Turow's editorial was a mishmash of all sorts of trending stories, offering his comments on used books, libraries, the Kirtsaeng decision, Amazon, and who knows what else. He has been derided, and rightly so in my opinion, for taking a somewhat extreme and out of touch view of the current marketplace. But what I think often gets lost in this knee-jerk reactionary stuff (both on the part of the originator and the various respondents) is that these pieces often do...

Libraries. The Internet. Pirate sites. According to author Scott Turow's recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, these things are all to blame for the "Slow Death of the American Author." Best-selling novelist and Author's Guild president Scott Turow discusses how all of these entities are creating an environment where authors will make less money, and entities such as Amazon will get to pocket it all. “But it is the latest example of how the global electronic marketplace is rapidly depleting authors’ income streams. It seems almost every player—publishers, search engines, libraries, pirates and even some scholars—is vying for position at authors’...

Last week The New York Times gave me an offer I couldn't refuse: 12 weeks of digital access for $5. No, that's not $5 per week. That's $5 for the entire 12-week period. See why I couldn't refuse? I'd been reading the Times' Top News on Flipboard for months, and I knew I liked it in that format. Now that I have access to the entire paper for a few months, I decided to try out the native Android and iOS apps and see which I liked better. Note that I purchased Tablet access, so I didn't test this out on my...

I read a great article today by Matthew Ingram where he explains the current difficulties facing the news media as a 'barbell' problem--entities on either side of the barbell are going to be just fine, he argues. It's the people in the middle who are going to get squeezed! Ingram's theory is this: If you are a top gun, like, say, the New York Times, you'll be fine, because you have both resources to fund new ventures and cash flow to wait it out until you see which of those ventures stick. Similarly, if you are a small-town paper--the other end of the barbell--where "forces...

Flipboard made my list of great productivity apps in a previous post I wrote for GadgeTell (one of TeleRead's sister sites), but until today I only used it on my iPad. Why? Because the New York Times was only available in the iOS version. Not only that, but previously, if you logged into Flipboard on Android, you lost Times access on your iOS device. No longer! As of today, you can get the Times in the Android and Kindle Fire versions as well. I just downloaded it and tested it out. The articles look great on my Nexus 7. Flipping is smooth. In fact, I think I like it better on Android. The Times in the iOS...

TeleRead was the recipient of a rather flattering honor earlier this week. On Wednesday, we were informed that we'd been featured on the just-published list of 100 Essential Sites for Voracious Readers, which is curated by Masters in English, "a site dedicated to helping students find the right graduate-level English program." "We built this list for our audience of aspiring graduate students in English literature and relevant fields," says MIE's Elizabeth Kelly. "But we think anyone who likes to get lost in a book will find something they love here. The list of 100 Essential Sites is split into five different categories; TeleRead...

By Arnold Zafra In a move to encourage more self-published authors to make their masterpieces available on the iBookstore, Apple has created an entirely new section, Breakout Books, where self-published e-books will be displayed prominently. According to Apple, Breakout Books is aimed at helping readers find the next reading sensation by way of this collection of books from emerging—and hopefully talented—writers. All e-books on Breakout Books are independently published and were rated and recommended by iBookstore customers. And as Leslie Kaufman opined yesterday in the New York Times' Media Decoder blog, this is clearly "yet another sign that self-publishing is making inroads into...

Did anyone else notice the fantastic Kindle Paperwhite infographic that ran in the New York Times' Business section on December 26? It appears to have been a dual effort on the part of tech reporter Brian X. Chen and graphics editor Frank O'Connell; the latter put together an equally gorgeous infographic about the Lytro camera back in February. We've reproduced a portion of the graphic for you below, but in order to access the "info" aspect of the feature, you'll need to click here to visit the Times' site. The piece essentially explains how the Paperwhite's "unique lighting system" works: "Rather than using a...

Last Friday, the New York  Times' Bits blog ran an interesting Q&A-style interview with John Lagerling, Google's Android director of business development, "about the company's strategy with the Nexus brand, one that revolves around lower prices," as the interview's intro explains. Lagerling, as it happens, was involved with negotiating the new Nexus line's decidedly low price points. "Basically," he says, referring to the Nexus 4, "we felt that we wanted to prove you don’t have to charge $600 to deliver a phone that has the latest-generation technologies." Regarding the low price of the new Nexus 7, he says this: "For Nexus 7, we were able...

Tech Dirt ran a great article last week (which was a reaction to this New York Times article) about the struggles Hollywood is facing as it attempts to 'remain relevant' while important content seems to be moving to cheaper, faster-to-market television. From the article: "The industry really only has itself to blame for continuing to churn out expensive remakes and sequels, rather than investing in quality—the continued quest for '$100 million films' rather than figuring out how to make good movies for less money." It's the same argument I feel like I've been making for years to the book publishing industry: If you want to compete, compete! I've...