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Sourcebooks Sells Early E-Installments of 'Days of Our Lives' Books
Sourcebooks is testing a new model in which it is selling early access to books connected with the soap opera Days of Our Lives. Although CEO Dominique Raccah said "very few" people have paid $9.95 to become members of the DaysInsider Early Access program so far, it's "significantly more than we expected."
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Literature, Plugged In
A parable: once upon a time, a farmer named Noah noticed a frightening change in the weather. A practical man, he began building a great ark with which to preserve his family and the creatures of the world. Until, one day, Noah’s boss saw what he was up to. “Noah, what the hell are you doing?” the boss asked.
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LibreDigital Debuts SkyShelf Reader
Digital distributor LibreDigital has teamed up with Starbucks and Yahoo! to show off the LibreDigital SkyShelf HTML5 Reader, a new wireless technology that will initially supply e-book content to the Starbucks Digital Network. Much like the long-delayed Google Editions service, LibreDigital's SkyShelf HTML5 technology will allow consumers to read e-books through the web browsers of any kind of device, and LibreDigital plans to launch a broader range of SkyShelf-powered partnerships by early November.
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Audiobook Publisher Iambik Launches
Another new audiobook publisher opened for business Wednesday: Iambik, which purports to be "different from traditional audiobook publishers." The Montreal company, headed by Hugh McGuire, who founded the free public domain audiobook project LibriVox, is partnering with print publishers and authors and working with audiobook makers around the world to provide online downloads.
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Dreamscape, New Audiobook Publisher, Launched
The audiobook industry gained a new member yesterday when Dreamscape Media began to distribute its first 10 titles in both digital and CD formats. The Chicago-based company was founded by Brad Rose, who hopes to release over 85 titles next year with an emphasis on the library market.
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Why Some E-books Just Don't Look Right
There are a couple of major issues that need to be dealt with if e-books are to approach print standards.
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Borders, BookBrewer Offer New Self-Publishing Service
In a move that will make it even easier for writers to self-publish, Borders is launching Borders—Get Published Powered by BookBrewer, an online service that will allow writers with blogs, websites or any kind of written content to easily convert it into an e-book that can be sold through Borders.com or other online book retailers. The BookBrewer service will launch on October 25.
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E-book Sales Jump 172% in August
While sales in the print trade segments shrank in August, e-book sales had another strong month, jumping 172.4%, to $39 million, according to the 14 publishers that report sales to the AAP's monthly sales estimates. For the year-to-date, e-book sales were up 192.9%, to $263 million. AAP said that of the approximately 19 publishers that report trade sales, revenue in the January to August period was $2.91 billion, making the $263 million e-book sales 9.0% of trade sales. At the end of 2009, e-book sales comprised 3.3% of trade sales. The mass market segment, where sales were down 14.3% in the first eight months of 2009, represented 15.1% of trade sales through August.
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FastPencil Signs More Established Authors
Self-publishing start-up FastPencil is continuing to attract established authors: this week it announced it has landed some of its biggest authors to date. Mark Victor Hansen of the Chicken Soup for the Soul franchise and Legend of Bagger Vance author Steven Pressfield are some of the established authors who have signed on to self-publish their works through FastPencil Premiere.
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Open Road Media in Deal with Albert Whitman; Adds More Mysteries
Children's book publisher Albert Whitman & Co. has reached an agreement with Open Road Integrated Media to publish all 150 titles of Whitman's Boxcar Children Mysteries series in e-book format.
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Frankfurt 2010: Our Digital Future with Evan Schnittman
After eight years as vice president of corporate and business development at Oxford University Press, Evan Schnittman left in August to become Managing Director of Group Sales and Marketing, Print and Digital at Bloomsbury.
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Univ. of Chicago Press Sticks with Giving Away E-books
Through links on its Facebook page (The Chicago Manual of Style) and Twitter feed (@ChicagoManual), the University of Chicago Press continues to give away a free e-book each month. According to Garrett Kiely, UCP's director, the strategy was launched as a marketing vehicle to advertise its e-book list.
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B&T in Pact to Offer Dutch, Flemish e-Books via Blio
Baker & Taylor announced an agreement at the Frankfurt Book Fair with Dutch wholesaler Centraal Boekhuis to distribute Dutch and Flemish digital content on Blio, the newly released digital reading software developed by technologist Ray Kurzweil and his firm, KNFB Reading Technology.
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Shambhala Titles to be Available on Espresso
On Demand Books, creator of the Espresso Book Machine, and Shambhala Publications have entered into an agreement to distribute all of Shambhala's titles via Espresso. The agreement includes new and backlist titles from the publisher, which is known for books on Eastern thought, psychology, self-help, crafts, and parenting.
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Sunday Press To Bring McCay's 'Little Nemo' to the iPad
Launched in 2005 to produce full-size hardcover reprints of classic broadsheet newspaper comics strips, Sunday Press Books is now going digital. The specialty publishing house plans to offer Windsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland along with a free mini-book preview, Little Nemo In Christmasland, as applications for the iPad in November.
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Open Road Announces E-riginals Debut List
Open Road Integrated Media has announced its first list of E-riginals--books that it will first publish as e-books and then as trade paperbacks. Four titles are on the first list in addition to Negotiating with Evil by Mitchell Reiss that was released September 7.
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Shanower's Age of Bronze to Become Web Comic, iPad App
Eric Shanower, creator of Age of Bronze, an award-winning series that retells the epic story of the Trojan War, is teaming up with literary web publisher Throwaway Horse, the online venture launched by the creators of Ulysses Seen, a web comic adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses, to relaunch it as a color serialized web comic and application for the iPad.
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Abdo Launches Digital Division
Midwestern library and educational publisher Abdo has organized its digital publishing lines into Abdo Digital, a Web-based division that offers online access to e-book versions of Abdo print titles as well as new educational database products.
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Reading in the Digital Age By the Numbers
41: Percentage of parents who say increased use of digital devices has reduced their child's time reading for fun
39: Percentage of 9–17-year-olds who believe online information is always correct
25: Percentage of 9–17-year-olds who believe texting constitutes reading
25: Percentage of 6–17-year-olds who have read a book on a digital device -
Agents, Publishers, Others Talk Digital Royalties and Strategy at PW Panel
At PW’s panel on e-book rights Tuesday morning at Random House, questions swirled about digital royalty rates and the place of traditional publishers in a fast-digitizing book market. While panelist Neil DeYoung, director of digital media for Hachette, and the only panelist representing a big six publisher, asserted repeatedly that the creation of digital books is a costly one for houses. Other panelists, including copyright attorney Lloyd Jassin and executive director for the Authors Guild Paul Aiken, contested that notion with questions and, at one point, a little math.
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