Harper Collins Buys Newmarket Press

Harper Collins has acquired the rights to the majority of the titles published by Newmarket Press, the independent New York City publisher started in 1981 by Esther Margolis. Newmarket’s well-known film and entertainment titles will continue to be released under the Newmarket name which has become and part of HC’s It Books imprint, and Margolis is joining It has an executive editor.

Newmarket has published more than 200 books in the areas of film, theater, and performing arts, including official tie-in books for films that have garnered more than 300 Oscar nominations and nearly 100 wins. Among the films that Newmarket has published illustrated books are Milk; The Matrix; Gladiator; Moulin Rouge; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Chicago; Sense and Sensibility; Saving Private Ryan; and Dances with Wolves. The company has also released more than 100 titles in the fields of parenting, psychology, health, biography, history, business, and fiction. It’s best performing books include the What’s Happening to My body series that has sold more than 2 million copies and the recent bestseller,  Daphne Oz’s The Dorm Room Diet. All non-film-and-entertainment-related Newmarket Press titles acquired by Harper will be published as trade paperbacks under the William Morrow Trade Paperbacks imprint.

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Kobo to become a publisher

Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis has confirmed his company will move into publishing. Canadian-based e-book seller Kobo is following in Amazon’s footsteps and creating a publishing arm that will deal directly with authors, CBC News has learned.

Kobo, whose major shareholder is Indigo Books, will roll out its program sometime next year, according to CEO Michael Serbinis.

Like Amazon, which announced two weeks ago that it would be publishing 122 original titles this fall, Kobo will be offering complete publishing services for authors, including book editing and design.

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eBook lending: Libraries go digital

 (CNN) — Board a bus or a train today and chances are you’ll see several people with eReaders in hand. While most probably bought their electronic books on a popular website, you may find a few who borrowed the paperless books from the library.

EBooks accounted for 6.4% of all publishing in 2010, according to the American Association of Publishers, and 114 million electronic books were sold last year.

While the majority of eBooks sold today are bought by individual readers, a growing number of the paperless books are winding up in public library catalogs.

“Our popular e-content collection at ebooks.nypl.org currently has over 75,000 copies across more than 35,000 titles,” said Christopher Platt, director of Collections and Circulation Operations at The New York Public Libraries. He oversees the intake of more than a million new items every year.

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Subtext brings social and gaming to ebook reading

Since the release of the Amazon Kindle just four years ago, interest in reading digitally has skyrocketed. Users now have their pick of e-reading device, and apps for both the iPhone and iPad offer alternatives for those unwilling to spend money on separate hardware. The iOS platform also provides an opportunity for developers to expand upon the reading experience: One iPad app, Subtext, invites users to engage socially, spiced with a dash of reward-based gameplay.

Released Tuesday, the app aims to enhance users’ reading experiences with notes—embedded directly into the pages of an ebook—from authors, experts, and Subtext community members; and rewards points to users who contribute to the discussion. “We asked ourselves, how do we take social and gaming to transform the reading experience? How can we, as a community, enrich books?” Rachel Thomas, co-founder and vice president of marketing for Subtext, told Macworld.

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Amazon adds HTML5 ebooks in Kindle Format 8

Amazon is talking up the new features that it is adding to the Kindle Format 8 (KF8) upgrade for ebooks. The key feature is the support of HTML5 in the new format. That HTML5 support brings all sort of goodies with it that will make ebooks using the new KF8 format more interactive and exciting. HTML5 means support for CSS3, fixed layouts, embedded fonts, drop caps, floating elements, text on background images, lists and a bunch more.

KF8 will replace Mobi 7 and will is the format showcased on the Kindle Fire tablet. The big benefits of this new format won’t be your normal ebooks. The ebooks that benefit most will be children’s books and graphic novels that need lots of color and benefit from more interactivity. The update adds over 150 new formatting capabilities to the ebook bag of tricks.

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