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Two digital days in Frankfurt

Submitted by Philip Jones on Tue, 10/09/2012 - 16:41

Ecosystems and the discoverability gap have been the main themes running through the two pre-Frankfurt digital conferences, Publishers Launch and TOC, with how publishers add value, pricing, piracy, and inevitably DRM not too far behind.
Concerns over the big tech players and their customer lock-in strategies were aired at Publishers Launch, where we learned that Amazon's market share of a customer's book purchases trebles once that customer acquires a Kindle (a worrying stat for Waterstones). Read more »

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Accessible Italian eBooks in the launching pad

Submitted by Marcello Vena on Sat, 10/06/2012 - 18:46

 

The LIA project – Libri Italiani Accessibili (Accessible Italian books) by AIE (Italian Publishers’s Association) aims at creating a service to increase the availability ebooks for blind and visually impaired readers, by exploiting the opportunities offered by technologies. The project promotes a cultural change in the way the publishing value chain actors deal with the issue of accessibility. Read more »

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Ebook publishing platforms are a joke

Submitted by Baldur Bjarnason on Wed, 10/03/2012 - 13:38

Over the last few months I’ve been preparing the launch of my ebook publishing experiment and taking notes on the process.

Studio Tendra, the first publishing experiment itself was launched a couple of weeks ago and, Heartpunk, the first book series, is off on a good start.

The first issue became obvious very early on and my experience over the first few weeks confirms it: existing ebook publishing platforms are a joke. Read more »

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To enhance, or not to enhance

Submitted by Philip Jones on Tue, 10/02/2012 - 16:37

SourceBooks, the innovative US publisher, is claiming to have mastered the enhanced e-book problem— whereby publishers spend too much money amplifying digital books in ways the reader does not want—by coming up with a range of iBooks based on William Shakespeare's plays: the nicely titled Shakespearience. Read more »

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DISCORDIA: ebooks in the hour of chaos

Submitted by Dan Franklin on Mon, 10/01/2012 - 12:04

 

DISCORDIA – words by Laurie Penny, illustrations by Molly Crabapple – is out worldwide today. For me it’s a key milestone in one line of publishing that I’ve been concentrating on since I joined Random House at the start of 2011. Read more »

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Brightline, Big City

Submitted by Sam Missingham on Wed, 09/19/2012 - 11:03

News comes out of New York overnight that Brightline, yet another new publisher, has entered the e-book market. Read more »

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Price War Could Kill Industry (And Indeed So Could Industry)

Submitted by Nick Harkaway on Wed, 09/19/2012 - 10:14

The Price War has begun (again) and ebook prices for some titles are approaching nothing. Read more »

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A hint of a slowdown

Submitted by Philip Jones on Tue, 09/18/2012 - 17:17

The Publishers Association's half-year e-book numbers show fiction e-book sales up 188% over 2011, helping to contribute to a market that seems remarkably robust. Read more »

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Orion makes room for murder

Submitted by Philip Jones on Mon, 09/17/2012 - 10:51

Orion is to grow its range of community based genre websites with the launch of The Murder Room for readers of crime fiction. It follows the publisher’s success with the SF Gateway, a community site for fans of science fiction that went live a year ago, and which is now to be upgraded. SF Gateway has attracted 27,000 unique visitors over the first 12 months, with e-books featured on the site generating 5% of Orion’s digital revenue in its first year. Read more »

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State of play in Italy.

Submitted by Salvatore Nascarella on Wed, 09/12/2012 - 09:54

According to AIE (the Italian Publishers Association), in Italy e-books represent 4.4% of all the titles published, accounting for a total of 13 million Euro in 2011. This data, presented at the 2012 edition of the Turin International Book Fair, seems encouraging, but the e-book sales revenue is still only the 1% of the total of trade turnover. Read more »

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