ePublishing week in Brief – May 25th to June 1st, 2012
ePublishing week in Brief – May 25th to June 1st, 2012
Amazon, Publisher Settle Digital Books Dispute
A three month long dispute over the sale of digital books between Amazon.com Inc. and a leading independent book distributor has been resolved, both parties said Friday.
Amazon in late February stopped selling the e-books of nearly 5,000 titles distributed by the Independent Publishers Group, which represents more than 500 publishers, following a dispute over terms. Publishing terms generally cover such areas as wholesale pricing, advertising, and payment requirements.
“We’ve resolved our differences, but I can’t discuss terms,” said Mark Suchomel, president of IPG. A spokeswoman for Amazon added, “We’re pleased to reach agreement with IPG and we look forward to growing our business with them.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304840904577426830792316616.html
2 Publishers Deny Claim of E-Book Price Fixing
The government’s complaint “piles innuendo on top of innuendo.” It is based “entirely on the little circumstantial evidence it was able to locate.” And it “sides with a monopolist.”
These arguments were part of a response by two publishers, Penguin Group USA and Macmillan, to a Justice Department lawsuit filed in April that accused five major publishing houses of conspiring with Apple to fix the price of e-books.
Three of the publishers, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and the Hachette Book Group, denied violating antitrust laws but agreed last month to settle with the government.
Penguin and Macmillan, which declined to settle, filed responses in United States District Court in New York on Tuesday, not only denying that they had fixed prices but also taking direct aim at Amazon, the online retailer that has emerged as a significant threat to the longstanding business model for publishers.
In its 74-page response, Penguin called Amazon “predatory” and a “monopolist” that treats books as “widgets.” It asserted that Amazon, not Penguin, was the company engaging in anticompetitive behavior, to the detriment of the industry.
The Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit in April after a lengthy investigation of the publishing industry, saying that the five publishers had colluded with Apple to limit price
competition and caused consumers to pay tens of millions more for e-books than they would have otherwise.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/business/media/penguin-and-macmillan-deny-e-book-price-fixing.html
Publishing can sometimes be a board game
THERE is something very strange going on in the media, particularly in the Fairfax Group, about who should, or should not, have anything to say about editorial policy.
Apparently, the failure of Gina Rinehart’s attempt to get a seat on theFairfaxboard was based on her declining to agree to sign a document that prevented her from having anything to do with, or say about, the editorial in the company’s products.
To me this is a bit like telling the Qantas board it can have nothing to do with flying planes or buying aircraft. The fact is that editorial is the company’s product. It is the basis on which the company is judged, succeeds or fails, attracts advertisers and readers, determines demographics, attracts journalists and writers. The board has a responsibility, indeed an obligation, to make sure it is the best.
As in any corporation, the board needs a process by which this happens. You cannot have directors ringing journalists directly and telling them what they should or should not write.
Maybe a director with something to say is obliged to go to the chief executive, the editor or whoever, but directorial input into the company’s most critical output should be encouraged rather than the opposite.
And, it is the editorial product – the “content” in today’s jargon – that will determine the success or otherwise of the company’s digital media.
To take this issue to a ridiculous extreme, should the board remain silent in the event The Sydney Morning Herald starts publishing nude young women on page three? Or when one of the tabloids starts publishing front-page leads on interpreting the ruins ofEphesus?
Publishing barons: Free speech a ‘cloak for tawdry theft’
Chief hits out at those who ‘seek to erode copyright’
Search engines, internet service providers and the British Library are among a number of bodies trying to scale back the scope of copyright, the head of aUKtrade body has said.
Richard Mollet, chief executive of the Publishers Association, criticised the organisations, which, together with research councils, consumer watchdog Consumer Focus and digital freedoms campaigners the Open Rights Group (ORG) have all been “seeking to erode copyright” to varying degrees, according to a statement issued by the Association.
In recent months representatives of rights-holders in the creative industries, including the Publishers Association, have met with search engines, ISPs and Consumer Focus at government-chaired meetings to discuss measures to tackle piracy. Rights-holders have proposed voluntary frameworks for combating the problem, but to date search engines have yet to agree on them, while Consumer Focus has also expressed scepticism over the plans drafted.
The government is also considering introducing new exceptions to copyright, including for the use of works for educational purposes.
A Publisher’s View
To strengthen the library-publisher relationship, we must begin with dialogue
Librarians and publishers are not effectively communicating with each other. There, I said it. Many of us already know this to be true, but as someone who comes from the publishing side, I came to this realization during my yearlong process of selling ebooks across the country and through my many conversations with library directors, state librarians, and heads of consortia.
This disconnect didn’t really crystallize in my mind until I went to a session at ALA’s 2012 Public Library Association (PLA) national conference. While there, panelist Alan Inouye, director of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy, stressed the need for librarians to improve their communications skills, increase their investment in relationships, and—most importantly—upgrade their negotiating skills. And that’s when the light bulb went off: It’s not that we don’t want to talk with one another. It’s just that we don’t know how.
Ebooks: winners in the generation game
The growth of e-reading among older age groups shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise
Ebook consumption among older age groups continues to grow. Photograph: dbphots/Alamy/Alamy
New technology, like pop music or radical politics, is something you’re expected to lose touch with as you get older. This idea is encouraged by the young, who would rather their elders gracefully embraced luddism than try to befriend them on Facebook. What’s refreshing about e-reading is that it’s not just popular with traditional early adopters; their parents are getting in on the act too.
According to market researcher Bowker, while younger people’s ebook consumption is plateauing, in older age groups it continues to grow: more than a quarter of 45- to 55-year-olds and a fifth of over-55s bought an ebook in the six months to March 2012, up from 17% and 15% last November. A OnePoll survey last year found the over-55s were more likely to own an e-reader than 18- to 24-year-olds.
We shouldn’t be too surprised: older people tend to be heavier book-buyers and baby-boomers keen technophiles. But e-readers have qualities that could make them indispensable to an ageing population.
An obvious plus is the option to adjust text size and contrast. Until recently, people with dodgy eyesight had to make do with large-print books, which are hard to get hold of, have a woeful range of titles and – worst of all – don’t do much for one’s street cred. Now, not only can you read filthy books without anyone noticing, you can read filthy books in an 18-point font.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/27/ebooks-growth-older-age-groups