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Watermelon Express Inks Test Prep Deals with McGraw-Hill, Cengage
Watermelon Express, a startup developer of interactive apps for iPhone and other mobile devices focused on test preparation for K-12, college and professional training, has signed content deals with McGraw-Hill Professional and Cengage Learning.
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MoMA Releases e-Book App for the iPad
The Museum of Modern Art has released MoMA Books, an iPad app that features a selection of five e-books from the MoMA publications department, and that will also allow users to link to the MoMA.org site to buy print titles and even MoMA admission tickets. The MoMA Books app lets readers see original layout of print titles and also connects them to the MoMA online store.
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Viz App Brings Manga to the iPad
Viz introduced its iPad app in November 2010 with five volumes of manga. Six months later, the app features over 100 volumes, and last week, Viz broke new ground by releasing vol. 4 of Bakuman on the app before it was released in print.
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Readum Combines Google, Facebook for Reader Comments
In an unusual social media venture that brings together Google and Facebook, BookGlutton.com founder Travis Alber is releasing Readum, a new social media application that allows readers to add comments and notes to books in their Google eBooks library and easily post them on Facebook for the general public or to specific groups.
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Communities The Key, Publishers Told
Digital marketing guru Mitch Joel kicked off BookNet Canada's Technology Forum, telling the 225 publishing industry attendees that marketing books in the digital realm means forgetting about the traditional goal of reaching as many people as possible. Rather than publishers promoting to a large group of people and hoping a small percentage will buy a book, social media centers on who you are getting your message out to, not how many.
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'Vanity Fair' Releases First E-book With Liz Taylor Title
Vanity Fair is releasing its first e-book, bringing together six stories from the magazine about the recently deceased Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor. The Best of Vanity Fair: Elizabeth Taylor--Eight Remarkable Stories About Hollywood's Most Beautiful, Most Controversial Star includes pieces by, among others, Dominick Dunne and George Hamilton, with an introduction from VF editor Graydon Carter.
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Sesame Street, Impelsys Produce e-Bookstore App for iPad
Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit producer of the Sesame Street TV show, has joined with digital content vendor Impelsys to produce a Sesame Street e-bookstore app for the iPad. The Sesame Street iPad app is free to download and offers subscription access to more than 150 Sesame Street books.
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Other Press Raises Digital Royalty Rate to 50%
With e-book royalty rates still a contentious, if lately less openly-debated, issue, indie house Other Press has announced it is raising its e-book royalty rate to 50%.
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O'Reilly, Fluidinfo Launch Writable API Contest
O'Reilly Media is joining with Fluidinfo, an online information storage and search platform that supports openly-writable metadata of any kind, to launch a contest to encourage software developers to write applications for the O'Reilly Fluidinfo "Writable API." APIs, or Application Programmer Interfaces, provide third party developers with a set of rules and permissions that gives them access to content owners' data and allows them to create apps and new information products quickly and easily.
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Samhain Launches New Line for Out-of-Print Romance
Samhain Publishing, the mostly digital romance publisher, has started a new fiction e-book line, Retro Romance, which brings back romances originally published in the 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and early ‘00s. Publisher Christina Brashear said the imprint is a way for the publisher “to bring these romances to a new reading public."
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Diverging Digital Roads: Poetry and E-books
This year the most pressing issue facing poetry publishers is the the digital transition. While digitizing poetry collections wasn't anyone's first priority, the time has come, and, in one way or another, most of the important poetry presses will make at least some of their books available as e-books by the fall.
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McGraw-Hill, Pearson Invest Big in Inkling Digital Textbook Platform
Inkling, a 2009 San Francisco startup specializing in creating interactive textbooks specifically for the iPad, has secured "multimillion dollar" minority investments from McGraw-Hill and Pearson with plans to produce versions of their textbooks in the Inkling multimedia platform.
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The Week in Apps: March 25, 2011
This week we take a look at apps for getting flat abs, travelers who fly United and Continental airlines, and students on the go.
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Brilliance Audio Adds QR Codes to Audiobook Packaging
Audiobook publisher Brilliance Audio announced plans to add two-dimensional QR Codes—a coded “Quick Response” graphic linked to additional audiobook content—to its packaging that will allow consumers to instantly access free audio excerpts of the audiobooks they are considering. Consumers with barscanner apps can use their cameraphones to snap a picture of the QR code that will link them to the free audio excerpt.
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Wowio Acquires, Relaunches Spacedog Digital Comics Imprint
Continuing to revamp and reposition its strategic business model, Wowio.com, an online hub for the aggregation, creation and distribution of digital content, is launching the newly acquired Spacedog Entertainment, a digital comics imprint with a library of original comics properties that include previously released print works as well as comics properties that have been adapted into feature films. Wowio plans updated versions of many Spacedog properties that will be serialized digitally through the Wowio/Spacedog website.
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Blio, B&T Ink Bundling Pact with T-Mobile
In the wake of the announcement of AT&T's planned acquisition of T-Mobile, e-reading software vendor Blio and its partner Baker & Taylor, announced an agreement with T-Mobile to preload Blio on selected mobile phones offered through the mobile carrier. The deal will focus on devices running the Android OS and give T-Mobile customers access to Blio's online storefront and inventory of visual and feature enhanced digital titles.
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NBM Turns Phil Yeh's 'Dinosaurs Across America' into iPad App
Created to give kids a fun way to learn U.S. geography, cartoonist Phil Yeh’s popular graphic novel Dinosaurs Across America has been published in hardcover by NBM since 2007, selling more than 15,000 copies. Now, the popular, full color work has been adapted into fully interactive iPad app and e-book for the PC available through the App store for $9.99.
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Google Settlement Is Rejected
In a stunning setback, Judge Denny Chin today rejected the Google Book Settlement, some 13 months after its final fairness hearing. "In the end, I conclude that the [Settlement Agreement] is not fair, adequate, and reasonable." Chin set a date of April 25th for a status conference, and suggested his concerns with the agreement could be ameliorated with one simple change. "As the United States and other objectors have noted, many of the concerns raised in the objections would be ameliorated if the ASA were converted from an opt-out settlement to an opt-in settlement. I urge the parties to consider revising the ASA accordingly."
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Backlist to the Future: Open Road Publishes Enhanced E-Book Edition of Gleick’s First Book, 'Chaos'
In his fascinating new book, The Information (Pantheon), renowned author James Gleick tackles the ever-growing flood of information and the digital technology that is rapidly changing our lives. So what better time for the author to re-publish his first book, Chaos: Making a New Science, a national bestseller in both traditional and enhanced e-book editions? Today, Open Road officials announced that an enhanced edition of Chaos is now available in Apple’s iBookstore and on Kindle AV platforms.
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The Week in Apps: March 18, 2011
This week brings apps based on Finding Nemo and Dora the Explorer’s new musical special; an app for kids to learn about world landmarks; a collection of illustrated children’s books; and an app from cartoonist Phil Yeh.
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