ePublishing Week in Brief – January 20th to 25th, 2014
ePublishing Week in Brief – January 20th to 25th, 2014
Amazon Launching New Christian Publishing Imprint, but Will Believers Buy?
The online retailer is venturing into the God market but may face backlash from some strict Christians
Waterfall Press will be Amazon’s 15th publishing brand and will publish faith-based non-fiction and fiction.
The question is whether Christians will buy. Amazon thinks so, of course, as does the head of one major Christian publication.
“The breadth of Amazon’s opportunities creates a dynamic bridge between the author and reader that can move the content conversation to a growing global audience,” said Harold Smith, president and CEO of Christianity Today, in a statement released by Amazon. Christianity Today will be a publishing partner on several of the press’ initial books.
How the ‘Netflix of books’ won over the publishing industry
Oyster has grown its library of books available to its all-you-can-eat subscribers to more than 100,000 titles. CEO Eric Stromberg told CNET how it happened, and how the company is changing the world of reading.
The world in which people have to rent movies one at a time from a video store, or buy individual songs from iTunes has come and gone. These days, Netflix, Spotify, Rdio, and other services are making it easier and easier for people to subscribe to all-you-can-eat plans.
As slow and painful as it has been to get the media giants on board, they’ve come around. But not in every industry. Take the book publishing industry, for example, which has been even slower than its counterparts to move into a subscription system.
Still, even the book publishers are now finally coming around. Over the last few months, a number of services have launched that offer monthly subscription plans, and access to tens upon tens of thousands of books in return for a monthly fee. Even better, they are on board with making those titles available across multiple devices (essentially any running Apple’s iOS 7), finally seeing that there’s a way to make money, even while providing customers with the access they actually want.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57617713-93/how-the-netflix-of-books-won-over-the-publishing-industry-q-a/
HOW HARPERCOLLINS’S CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER USES BIG DATA TO MAKE PUBLISHING MORE PROFITABLE
AS MORE READERS FAVOR KINDLES AND IPADS OVER PULP-BASED BOOKS, CHANTAL RESTIVO-ALESSI OF HARPERCOLLINS IS MINING DIGITAL DATA TO DETERMINE HOW PUBLISHERS CAN MAXIMIZE PROFITS.
The music establishment made mistakes, she admits. “In the early days, it was a lot of resistance in participating in the new business models,” she added. But because of that unfortunate experience, Restivo-Alessi, who has worked on the business side of various creative industries, is primed to guide the publishing giant into its inevitable future–hopefully, without losing paying customers. “If you lose young consumers to piracy it is extremely hard to compete with zero,” Restivo explained as one of the main lessons she learned from her days at EMI.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3025254/most-creative-people/how-harpercollinss-chief-digital-officer-uses-big-data-to-make-publishi
Stieg Larsson trilogy publisher up for sale
Quercus, publisher of the Stieg Larsson crime trilogy, has put itself up for sale after worse than expected Christmas trading forced it into discussions with its banks.
The group, which made £5.9m in pre-tax profits in 2011 when the Millennium trilogy topped the best-seller list, had been forecast to make pre-tax profits of up to £3m in the year to December. But last week Quercus warned it was likely to make a “very significant trading loss”.
This week the board – backed by Pentland, the private group which owns brands such as Speedo as well as 47 per cent in Quercus – decided to throw in the towel and find a buyer.
Quercus announced in December it had acquired the rights from Stieg Larsson’s estate to publish the English version of a fourth book in the Millennium series. However, the book, which is being written by Swedish author David Lagercrantz, will not be published until 2015. In the meantime, said Mark Smith, chief executive, conditions for small publishers such as Quercus have become tougher.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9670c0c4-8360-11e3-aa65-00144feab7de.html#axzz2rPY0mYuv
Printed books still set to dominate publishing in SA
PRINTED books will still dominate the consumer and educational publishing market for some years, but e-books and other digital products present a new way to the market, Vicki Myburgh, entertainment & media industries leader for PwC Southern Africa, said on Tuesday.
Much like their global counterparts, South Africa’s booksellers and publishers are adapting to digital reading, which many predicted would be the death of print.
But the e-book is just another format of the book and a different distribution channel, and to stay relevant publishers need to release digital versions of everything they produce.
In South Africa, e-readers and tablets have gained greater acceptance in the middle- and higher-income market segments. Apart from the cost of e-readers, bandwidth constraints make downloading books wirelessly difficult in some areas.
http://www.bdlive.co.za/business/2014/01/22/printed-books-still-set-to-dominate-publishing-in-sa