In an article prompted by the House Judiciary Committee's discussion of the Stop Online Piracy Act, The Hill carries a piece by two professors from Carnegie Melon University.  They conducted research into the windowed release of movie DVDs: … our research suggests that Hollywood is leaving money on the table — and is in turn failing to address a root cause of piracy — by preserving its separate release windows. Based on our analysis of seven large nations, we find that in most countries, every week customers have to wait before they can buy a DVD translates into, on average, 1.8...

One area where the rise of ebooks has upended traditional publishing is in the 12-month window between hardcover and paperback editions, suggests The New York Times. For new releases, even a $15 ebook edition can be considerably cheaper than the hardcover, and that has some publishers concerned that price-conscious customers who would have bought a trade paperback might be choosing the digital format because they don't want to wait a year. Does this mean ebook editions actually cannibalize future paperback sales rather than (or in addition to) hardcover? The newspaper notes that customers, and therefore bookstores, love paperbacks, which suggests that...

On The Bookseller blog, John Blake offers what he apparently believes is a novel solution to “saving” bookstores from the encroaching press of e-books: delay selling the e-book until later. He writes: The idea of simultaneously publishing an exciting new title both as a hardback and as an e-book seems totally crazy. If only publishers could publish the book as a hardback initially, then put out the e-book some months later, bookshops would be given a sporting chance to stay in business, and the dizzying decline of book sales could almost certainly be slowed. ...

Windowing—the practice of releasing some book formats first and others (such as e-books) later—has been poorly received in the e-book world, even though it’s an extension of the long-held practice of separating hardcover and paperback releases in order to make the most money possible out of those willing to shell out for a hardcover book. Now, in a blog on The Bookseller, bookseller Martin Latham wonders whether it might not be time to get rid of the hardcover/paperback windowing practice. He points out that all the marketing dollars associated with a book are spent to drive the hardcover release,...

Received the following email from B. Scott Andersen and I thought it should be brought to your attention: Slashdot has a pointer to an article on TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/17/hollywood-dvd-rentals/ that quotes Paramount Home Entertainment President Dennis Maguire about Paramount's reversal of their policy of "windowing" (delaying) new releases to DVD rental outfits like Redbox. The following is from the article: Why is Paramount taking such an old school stance? Because they actually did some tests and realized these stupid windows will do nothing to help them sell more DVDs. Imagine that. And it’s not just that — giving new releases to services like Redbox have actually...

The Bookseller.com reports on a study presented at the Book Marketing Limited conference that suggests price is a key driver for e-book sales in the United States. Kelly Gallagher, Bowkers’s VP for publishing services, noted that free content was also an important factor. A survey of 750 consumers indicated that 44% were reading e-books on a computer, as opposed to 36% using the Kindle. However, they expected the iPad to bring about a shift in these demographics. Another point that was raised is one I’ve suspected to be true all along: Simultaneous print...

Remember when we covered the New York Times article about Macmillan’s pricing change, with a quote from author Douglas Preston about the “sense of entitlement” present in readers who want $9.99 e-books? TechDirt has a link to an io9 article talking about the backlash Preston has experienced from those remarks. Readers reacted to being told they were “entitled” about the way one might have expected: with angry one-star reviews on his book Impact (which is being windowed by the publisher, so no e-book is available yet) and lots of angry e-mail. (Of course, given e-book readers’ reactions to...

More information has emerged about the Amazon/Macmillan spat I mentioned last night, in which Amazon pulled almost all Macmillan titles from its store. An update to the New York Times “Bits” blog article I originally linked adds that, according to the blogger’s colleague who spoke to someone at Macmillan: Macmillan offered Amazon the opportunity to buy Kindle editions on the same “agency” model as it will sell e-books to Apple for the iPad. Under this model, the publisher sets the consumer book price and takes 70 percent of each sale, leaving 30 percent to the...