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This Week in Apps: June 17, 2011
This week in apps offers cooking instruction, animal games, money education, a Disney adventure, and interactive dance.
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New E-Book Company Takes Flight in Minnesota
FlyingWord, a Minnesota company that began in 2010, has announced it has developed an interactive e-book platform designed to enhance the experience of reading for 21st-century tween, teen, and adult readers.
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This Week in Children's Apps: June 16, 2011
This week in apps offers animal games, money education, a Disney adventure, interactive dance, and "Weird Al" Yankovic.
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Unbridled E-book Sale a Great Success
Unbridled Books' "25 for 25" e-book sale, in which 25 titles were offered for a 25 cents each, has been deemed an "unparalleled success," according to the American Booksellers Association.
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Horror Film 'Playback' to Release Prequel e-Novella
Del Rey Books will publish an original 99 cents e-novella this summer that ties into the new movie, Playback, starring Christian Slater, Johnny Pacar, Toby Hemingway, and Ambyr Childers. The e-novella, Playback: Light and Shadow, to be written by two-time Bram Stoker Award winning author Elizabeth Massie, will serve as a prequel story to Playback, a new horror film from Bennett Robbins Productions, written and directed by Michael A. Nickles. Michael Braff, of the Del Rey editorial group, will edit.
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Throwaway Adds 'Calypso' to 'Ulysses Seen'; Releases 'The Wasteland' App
Throwaway Horse, the company behind Ulysses Seen, the Web comics adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, will update the Web Comic with "Calypso," the 54-page fourth chapter of the novel and release a comics app adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland created by British cartoonist Martin Rowson.
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OR Books, Just World Books Ink Partnership Deal
OR Books, the e-book and POD-only startup that sells direct-to-consumer, has entered into a partnership with Just World Books, a similar startup POD publishing house specializing in serious nonfiction, launched by jounalist Helena Cobban in 2010. OR Books will provide JWB with production, marketing and rights sales and assist JWB in speeding up the growth of its e-book list.
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Will the 'First Printing' Become a 20th-Century Relic?
For decades, the "first printing" has been a number publishers have slapped on the covers of their advance reading copies, put in bold on the pages of their catalogues, and touted to reporters. The number, though known to be inflated, offered a palatable way for publishers to announce their expectations for a book. Now, in an era when first printings are down because e-books can account for as much as 50% of sales on frontlist titles, the term "first printing" sounds more and more out of place. The question is, do publishers have a replacement term for positioning different books on their lists?
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Now You See It: What Is the Internet Hiding from You? PW Talks with Author Eli Pariser
There was a time when the Internet promised to offer us a vibrant cultural milieu that would expand our horizons.
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This Week in Apps: June 9, 2011
This Week in Apps offers a look at Nickelodeon's Olivia and a journey to the bottom of the sea.
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'Revival 2.0' Coming as E-book
Bestselling Obama biographer Richard Wolffe's next piece on the president will be an e-book. Crown will publish Revival 2.0: How the Obama White House Is Making Its Political Comeback June 10 as a 99 cents e-book, available from all online retailers. In November, Crown released Wolffe’s Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House.
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Skyreader, Leslie McGuirk Ink Mobile Content Development Deal
The Skywriter Media and Entertainment Group has reached an exclusive agreement with popular children’s author/illustrator Leslie McGuirk to be the company’s first resident-author for its Skyreader mobile app development platform. McGuirk will work with the company to create original interactive e-book titles for the iPad in addition to transforming her own titles into interactive digital works for the iOS platform.
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Open Letter Starts Selling E-books
On Tuesday Open Letter, which publishes literature in translation, unveiled nine titles that are now available as e-books. To promote the digital books, the press is offering discounts through the end of the month, selling each title for $4.99 until June 30.
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ABDO to Offer Marvel e-Books; Free Comic Book Reader Guides
Educational and library publisher ABDO announced an agreement to license and offer e-book versions of Marvel comic books beginning in the Fall 2011 school year. In addition the publisher--ABDO has long worked to highlight the utility of comics in education--has created a series of free downloadable teacher guides focused on vocabulary building and based on ABDO’s Spotlight pop culture line of comics licensed from such publishers as Marvel and Dark Horse.
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Cinram Expands to Enter the Mobile Content Marketplace
Cinram International, an international provider of multimedia services and pre-recorded DVDs, CDs and Blu-Ray discs, announced plans to expand its business in the fast-growing e-publishing and enhanced book app market, working through the expanded Cinram Digital Media Group and newly acquired subsidiary 1K Studios, which specializes in creating enhanced content and mobile and tablet apps for digital download.
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Gantec Publishing Launches e-Book Conversion, Distribution Service
Gantec Publishing Solutions, a software and technology firm focused on media, backend production and digital distribution, has launched eBooks2go.net, an online platform for data conversion and international digital distribution aimed at both large and small publishers as well as individual authors. To promote the launch of eBooks2go.net, the company is offering new clients free services to convert PDFs to ePub until September 30.
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Kno Releases Textbook App for iPad
After scrapping plans to produce an unusual oversized dual-screen educational tablet device, Kno Inc., an educational startup focused on reinventing the textbook, has shifted its focus to creating educational software for the iPad. Now the company has released a beta version of the Kno app for iPad with a retail site offering more than 70,000 digital textbooks for sale at up to 50% off print list price, as well as course management, note-taking and social media functionality.
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Open Road in Deal with Penzler's New MysteriousPress.com
Fresh off receiving a new round of financing, Open Road Integrated Media has formed a partnership with mystery maven Otto Penzler to publish and promote digital editions of titles developed by Penzler’s just-launched MysteriousPress.com.
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This Week in Apps: June 2, 2011
This week there's a new app for potty training, as well as the classic tale of Snow White.
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Concord Free Press Launches Concord ePress
The Concord Free Press, an unusual writer-founded house that publishes print titles to give away to readers in exchange for donations to charity, has launched The Concord ePress, which will, in effect, release e-books to support the press’s book giveaway program.



