Penguin Adds Self-Publishing To Writing Community Site Book Country

Aspiring writers come to Book Country, Penguin Group USA’s online genre fiction community, to post and workshop their romance, science fiction/fantasy, thriller and mystery manuscripts in progress. Now Book Country is adding a self-publishing option, with packages ranging from $99 to $549. While companies like HarperCollins have launched their own writing communities, Penguin is the first “big six” publisher to add self-publishing tools to its offerings.

Penguin launched Book Country in April. The site is overseen by Penguin global digital director Molly Barton and has about 4,000 members who have published 561 books. A “small number” of Book Country members have found agents, Penguin says. The rest can now choose “a new kind of self-publishing that offers a more professional product and provides guidance that isn’t currently available from other players,” Penguin CEO David Shanks said in a statement.

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Authors Guild gives lousy review to Amazon’s lending library

Amazon and the Authors Guild are again locked in a public squabble.

This time the source of discontent is Amazon’s new e-book lending program, which the guild sharply criticized as “Are any of the books in Amazon’s new e-book subscription/lending program properly there?,” a statement put out by the guild asks rhetorically.

The organization subsequently described the program as “nonsense” as well as an apparent breach of contract. “This is an exercise of brute economic power,” according to the guild.

The program allows Amazon Prime members to download for free onto their Kindles any of the titles on a list including approximately 5,000 books. Customers are limited to one book per month and one book at a time. But the guild says that even though publishers rebuffed Amazon’s attempts to win their approval for the program “Amazon went ahead and enrolled many of their titles in the program anyway.” It said that none of the industry’s so-called “big six” publishers – Random House, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan – signed up with Amazon.

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Publisher considering ads in ebooks

Publisher HarperCollins is considering running advertising in ebooks, according to a report.

The publishing house said “contextual advertising” wouldn’t be a problem for non-fiction readers, although it has already ruled out ads in novels.

“Certain kinds of books create immersive reading experiences whereby ads would be too interruptive for readers, and publishers and even advertisers aren’t likely to put a premium on that,” said HarperCollins group digital director David Roth-Ey…

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Twitter Founder Reveals Publishing Plans

Jack Dorsey says Square’s real mission is to turn the humble receipt into a lucrative new publishing platform.

Jack Dorsey, known to his 1.7 million followers at @jack, is trying to invent a new form of publishing again. The last time he did that, he helped to create Twitter.

For a few years now, Dorsey has been working on Square, a company he founded that offers a dinky card reader that makes it possible for anyone to accept credit-card payments on a phone or tablet. In conversation with David Kirkpatrick at the Techonomy conference in Tucson, Arizona, today, he explained that Square is actually a publishing company, too, and that creating a new publishing medium is a big part of where his new company’s profit potential lies.

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The Publishers Association And Booksellers Association Launch Professional Shadowing Scheme

The Publishers Association (PA) and the Booksellers Association (BA) have today launched a new scheme for members that will see publishers and booksellers offer work placements to one another, as part of an exercise to further boost understanding and awareness within the two industries. The BA/PA Professional Shadowing Scheme will allow publishers and booksellers to shadow each other for a day or potentially more, taking effect in its pilot stage from January 2012.

Publishers who have already signed up to the scheme include Little, Brown; Penguin; Dorling Kindersley (part of the Penguin Group); Profile Books; and Simon & Schuster, whilst booksellers include Caxton Books and Gallery; Mabecron Books; Jaffé and Neale Bookshop and Cafe; The New Bookshop; and Victoria Park Books. More publishers and booksellers offering placements will be confirmed shortly.

Publishers are giving bookseller applicants the opportunity to meet the staff and attend sales, marketing and acquisitions meetings. Booksellers in turn will involve publisher applicants in the processes of book ordering and searching, as well as customer liaison.

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Ebook platform partners with independents

Ebook platform Booki.sh has created online stores with five prominent Australian independent book retailers – Gleebooks in NSW, Mary Ryan in NSW and Queensland, Fullers in Tasmania, Books for Cooks in Victoria and Avid Reader of Queensland.

Booki.sh says it competes with global giants like Amazon, Apple and Google by keeping its focus simple: providing the most delightful and accessible reading experience possible.

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E is for Enhanced: 8 Enhanced Ebooks Worth Checking Out

Ebooks are no longer relegated to just text on a screen. The books we read on our edevices are changing thanks to enhanced features like audio and video.

When the first Kindle came out in 2007, many of us wondered at its ability to fit dozens of books on such a small device. Over the past four years, Amazon and other ebook reader manufacturers, like Barnes & Noble, have continued to impress us with each update. And then, of course, there’s the Apple iPad, which changed everything for ereaders when it came along in 2010. Allowing for video and audio playback, the iPad could do things other ereaders could not. Publishers started taking into account the vast amount of features these new tablets could handle, and the “enhanced ebook” started making its way onto the scene.

Enhanced ebooks can include video, film clips from news reels or major motion pictures, drawings, author interviews, original music, diagrams, photos, and more. In most cases, you can think of an enhanced ebook as an ebook with that extra bonus disc of features you get when you buy a DVD. Until the Kindle Fire is released on November 15, an iPad or B&N Nook Color is still the best way to take advantage of the video elements. Still, there are plenty of enhanced Kindle books out there that use hyperlinks within the text instead of embedding the content inline.

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