ePublishing Week in Brief – November 11th to 15th, 2012
ePublishing Week in Brief – November 11th to 15th, 2012
Book publishing underpins Lagardere Q3 sales
PARIS (Reuters) – French media-to-aerospace group Lagardere (LAGA.PA) kept its annual profit target on Tuesday, as strong book publishing sales helped it limit its third-quarter revenue decline to 1 percent.
The book publishing division, which accounts for a quarter of group revenue, was boosted by the launch of new books such as J.K. Rowling’s “The Casual Vacancy”, and this partially offset a 17 percent sales slump in Lagardere Active, the group’s magazines and radio division.
Lagardere, which competes with Pearson Plc (PSON.L) and Bertelsmann AG (BTGGg.F) in radio and book publishing, said it still expected its core 2012 media profit to be stable compared to 2011.
Third-quarter revenue was 1.96 billion euros ($2.5 billion), compared with analysts’ expectations of 1.95-2.00 billion euros, according to a poll of six analysts.
In late August, Lagardere predicted that the second half of the year would be stronger than the first, after which it posted a 30 percent slump in core profit on stable revenues.
Lagardere Active, which publishes magazines like Paris Match and owns radio stations in France and Belgium, accounts for roughly a fifth of the company’s revenues and is the most sensitive to the advertising cycle.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a8f285ee-2370-11e2-bb86-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2CTaGwbyD
Publishers’ task to unlock ebook market
While the book publishing world has so far weathered the shift to digital better than other media, the decision by Penguin and Random House to merge signals an underlying anxiety about future profitability.
For though technological innovation has made it easier than ever before for readers to buy books, there is a catch: a single retailer – Amazon– dominates the digital distribution channels. Its power is set to become stronger as ebooks eat into print book sales.
The question for book publishers is whether, through mergers and acquisitions, they can retain enough market power to avoid being squeezed by Amazon and its tough negotiating tactics.
The rising popularity of ebooks poses a particular challenge for publishers. Amazon has about 25 per cent of the physical book market in the US, but it commands a 60 per cent share of the US ebook market.
In the UK, about 90 per cent of ebooks are sold through Amazon, giving it great influence over how they are priced and promoted.
Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of The Idea Logical Company, a New York-based consultancy to many of the world’s biggest publishers, says Penguin, which is owned by Pearson, the parent company of the Financial Times, and Random House, owned by Bertelsmann, the German media group, will be better able to negotiate with Amazon by joining forces.
“Being bigger gives them strong power,” he says. “It’s all about negotiating power with the retailers.”
If the merger of Penguin and Random House gets regulatory approval, the venture will publish about a quarter of the world’s English language books, with a roster of best-selling authors from Jamie Oliver, the chef, to EL James, whose erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey – popular on discreet ereading devices – this year became the UK’s biggest-selling book of all time.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a8f285ee-2370-11e2-bb86-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2CTaFMeOe
The story gets better for publishers
Nobel success reflects a plotline of growing confidence, report Mei Jia in Beijing and Wang Kaihao in Jiangsu.
Mo Yan’s Nobel prize has sparked a global wave of interest in Chinese literature and the foreign book market is hungry for China-themed publications.
It’s all a far cry from the days when the country’s publishers felt the task of selling books overseas was so hopeless that they devised a “kidnapping” strategy. The trick was to invite representatives of foreign publishers to meetings offshore for a few days of bonding on a boat. According to a joke doing the rounds at the time, the foreign businessmen weren’t allowed back on dry land until at least one deal had been signed.
That’s an exaggeration, of course, but even when deals were agreed the odds were always stacked heavily in favor of the foreign companies. In 2002, for every Chinese book sold abroad, 15 were imported in return.
Lu Jiande, director of the Literature Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, praised Mo’s talent and contribution to Chinese literature, but said he believed the writer’s Nobel triumph reflects the strength of modern Chinese writing as a whole and the recent transformation of the country’s publishing industry.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-11/15/content_15929553.htm
With Amazon Publishing Stonewalled By Retailers, Tim Ferriss Taps BitTorrent To Market His New Book
Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, and a stalemate between Amazon and big retailers, including Barnes & Noble, over the sale of books from the online giant’s publishing imprint is giving a fillip to BitTorrent — once a hotbed of piracy, and now a straight-laced and legal content distribution network — as a platform for marketing books. Tim Ferriss, one of the authors signed to the Amazon imprint, has inked a deal with BitTorrent to promote his latest work, The 4-Hour Chef, a publishing deal first announced in August 2011 for hardover, e-book and audio editions of the book.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
BitTorrent says it currently has 160 million monthly active users — “more users than Hulu, Netflix and Spotify combined,” it claims, driving between 20% and 40% of all internet traffic. It has been building up a marketing business it calls Bundles, in which it offers users content related to a recent launch of an entertainment or media brand. It looks like Bundles have mainly been used for music launches for groups like Counting Crows, Pretty Lights and Death Grips.
Kansas State Library’s Facebook campaign targets top publishers’ e-book policies
The Kansas State Library has launched a social-media campaign against what it says are unfair practices to keep bestselling electronic books out of the hands of libraries and their patrons.
Library officials have started a page on Facebook, www.facebook.com/thebig6ebooks, “bringing attention to the titles publishers are refusing to sell (as) e-books to libraries, price gouging or limiting checkouts per copy purchased.”
The site names six large publishing firms, Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster; and Random House and Penguin Group, which recently announced that they are merging their operations. The companies publish most of the popular bestsellers in the country, the librarians said.
“Writing to publishers and complaining to each other about the publisher/library e-book conflict wasn’t enough,” State Librarian Jo Budler said in a statement. “We needed a (social media) platform of our own to come together with the public and really take a look at the content not available.”
E-books have become an increasingly popular way for library patrons to check out books, which they can read on computers, tablets or phones.
Book Publishing: Effective marketing makes best sellers
Publishing a book is every author’s dream. And self-publishing can be the easiest way to make that dream into a reality, but it can be easily turned into a nightmare when trying to sell the book. Services from Agora Publishing.com provide ways for-self publishing authors to make their book become a best seller.
For writers, getting their book published is the main objective. But that’s not an easy thing to achieve. Even a very good manuscript will not guarantee that it will be published. Because the competition is fierce, there are millions of authors out there, the publishers receive hundreds of scripts on a daily basis. It needs every ingredient to be perfect for a script to be picked for publishing, including a big chunk of good luck.
Getting published is a battle for new authors. You are constantly sending your manuscript to publishers, and all too often getting rejected. Even many big authors experienced publisher’s rejection before they eventually succeeded.
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/news/review/2012/11/13/4848.html
Book publishing crisis: Capitalism kills culture
Publishing teeters as Random House and Penguin plan to merge. It’s time for a government policy to protect the arts
Around the same time a devastating hurricane smashed and flooded its way up the East Coast, leaving millions homeless or without power, another storm collided into a professional subculture based in New York City. While the second storm is only metaphoric, the transformation of publishing could have far-reaching consequences not only for those who work on Union Square, but for readers and writers across the English-speaking world.
As with Hurricane Sandy, it will take a little while to discern the long-term consequences of the Penguin and Random House merger, the news of which was somewhat obscured by the storm and the election. But the short-term impact is not pretty — and it follows other recent bad news from the books world. The Free Press, known primarily for smart, contentious nonfiction from Emile Durkheim and Francis Fukuyama but also the publisher of Aravind Adiga’s best-selling Indian novel “The White Tiger,” just collapsed. Several well-regarded editors are now out of jobs as the imprint is merged into Simon & Schuster
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/10/book_publishing_crisis_capitalism_kills_culture/