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Ingram, Recorded Books Team for Digital Audiobook Service
Ingram is teaming with Recorded Books to launch a new downloadable audio service for libraries. Under the agreement, Ingram will move its downloadable audio content to Recorded Books' OneClickdigital platform.
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Open Road Media To Release e-Books of Six Terry Southern Titles
Open Road Media plans to release e-book editions on May 3 and June 7 of six novels by the late Terry Southern, a formerly popular satirist, bestselling novelist and journalist as well as the screenwriter for such films as Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider. Open Road Media is working in parallel with Digital Book Works, an academic program at the University of Colorado focused on culture, multimedia and business design, that launched an unusual campaign at the recent SXSW festival to revive public interest in the iconic writer.
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E-Bells and E-Whistles for 'Silver Palate' and 'Asian Dumplings'
Of the many reasons most cookbook users still prefer print to digital, layout may be one of the most important. But digital cookbooks have their perks, allowing authors to demonstrate techniques with audio and video. Here are two ways publishers have made their e-cookbooks more appealing.
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Karen Hunter Launches First One Digital Publishing
Launched in January as an independent digital venture headed by Karen Hunter, publisher of the S&S imprint Karen Hunter Publishing, First One Digital Publishing is an ambitious digital-first venture looking to create a new model for book publishing. Focused on releasing a list of fiction and nonfiction written by both veteran and emerging authors, First One Digital Publishing has released 11 e-books so far as it gears up for a new set of e-book releases and the launch of a major marketing and promotional compaign for its titles.
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The Week in Apps: April 15, 2011
This week we take a look at apps based on a new book about the history of the Earth, the classic children’s book Pat the Bunny, a bestselling cookbook for athletes, and a collection of darkly humorous poems.
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The Week in Children's Apps: April 14, 2011
This week we take a look at apps based on the classic children’s book Pat the Bunny, and on a collection of darkly humorous poems.
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Hyperion Releases Enhanced E-Book for Royal Wedding
It’s typical for a royal wedding to spark a rush of books on the engaged couple, but the April 29 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is allowing publishers to utilize the benefits of technology in ways not seen before. Hyperion has just released A Modern Fairy Tale: William, Kate, and Three Generations of Royal Love, an original enhanced e-book that contains text by novelist Jane Green, video from ABC’s archives, and dozens of photos.
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Digital Manga Guild Ramps Up Quickly With New Licenses
Hikaru Sasahara, CEO of Digital Manga Publishing, first floated the idea of the Digital Manga Guild—recruiting manga fans to work in teams as translators—less than six months ago, and the idea is starting to take concrete shape. Sasahara has acquired 508 manga titles and hopes to start signing agreements with translation groups this week.
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More Graphic Textbooks from Flat World Knowledge
After introducing the college world to graphic textbooks with his Atlas Black management series, Texas Tech University management professor Jeremy Short returns with two new textbook/comics titles: Tales of Garcon: the Franchise Players and University Life: A College Survival Story, his latest efforts using comics to create textbooks for college level students.
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Rosemary Wells Teams with Auryn, Fourth Story to Develop Kids' Apps
Bestselling children's book author Rosemary Wells is teaming up with app developer Auryn Inc. and the multimedia story producer Fourth Story Media to launch a series of story apps for children.
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Kobo Plans Expansion of European e-Book Business
E-book retailer and e-reading software vendor Kobo is using the London Book Fair to launch an expansion of its business into Europe, announcing plans to open local content stores in Germany and Spain beginning in May with plans for more countries to follow. The new stores will market a variety of content targeted to European readers that will be readable on a wide range of personal computers and mobile devices.
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New Wharton Digital Press Aims for Global Reach
In order to reach business leaders not only in the U.S. but across the globe, one of America's best known business schools, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has launched Wharton Digital Press. To produce and distribute its titles in different digital formats as well as through print on demand, Wharton has signed with Perseus Book Group’s Constellation service.
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The Week in Apps: April 8, 2011
This week we take a look at apps that help middle schoolers gain confidence and deal with bullies, take kids on an “a-maze-ing” adventure, teach children about colors and painting, and let kids pretend they're a part of a spy series.
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The Week in Children's Apps: April 7, 2011
This week we take a look at apps that help middle schoolers gain confidence and deal with bullies, take kids on an “a-maze-ing” adventure, teach children about colors and painting, and let kids pretend they're a part of a spy series.
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Random House Inc. Invests in Flat World Knowledge
Flat World Knowledge, an open source textbook publisher that offers its texts for free online, while selling ancillary products based on them, has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Random House Inc. The investment is separate and additional to the $15 million in funding Flatworld Knowledge received in January from Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, a unit of Bertelsmann, RH’s parent company, and Bessemer Venture Partners.
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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.



