ePublishing Week in Brief – March 26th to 30th

 

Harry Potter novels available in ebook format

J.K. Rowling’s best-selling Harry Potter novels are available for the first time in ebook format on the new Web site dedicated to the boy wizard adventures.

 The seven stories, which have sold an estimated 450 million copies worldwide and spawned a successful eight-film movie franchise, went on sale on Tuesday at the Pottermore site set up by Rowling.

The Web site’s online store (shop.pottermore.com) is the exclusive retailer of Harry Potter ebooks and digital audiobooks, which have been launched in English only.

French, Italian, German and Spanish editions are expected in the coming weeks with further languages to follow.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com Inc. said on Tuesday that the Harry Potter ebooks are now available to read on the company’s Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablet.

Amazon said it struck a distribution deal with the Pottermore Shop.

Amazon customers can search for the Harry Potter ebooks in the company’s Kindle Store, but will be directed to the Pottermore Shop to buy them and add them to their Kindle library, the company said.

The main Pottermore Web site is expected to be up and running in early April, several months later than initially anticipated owing to technical problems.

Designers hope to allow readers to explore elements of the Harry Potter world that have not appeared in the books and to interact with the stories and characters.

More about Harry Potter ebook

Kindle Fire 6.3 Update Makes Ebooks More Social

Amazon has issued its latest software update for the Kindle Fire with a change that makes reading ebooks a lot more social.

The 6.3 Kindle Fire software version, released Thursday, lets device owners share favorite passages and notes from their ebooks on Facebook and Twitter. Passages and notes can already be highlighted and seen by other Kindle Fire readers viewing the same book, but Amazon wanted to bring the sharing and conversation online.

Among the new updates is a feature called Book Extras. This allows users to see supplemental material — from character descriptions and a glossary of common terms and locations used in the book to author information — without leaving the book. This feature can be accessed by tapping the top of the screen to bring up the toolbar and menu button, where Book Extras is located.

In addition, users who write, take notes, highlight passages and create personal documents within the device can store them in the Amazon Cloud and access them at any time via the Kindle Fire.

Amazon also announced an upgrade for its Kindle Fire browser, Silk. The browser can now load certain text on a website and isolate it from the rest of the crowded page.

“Silk will load the body of the page in a reading-optimized, single screen view (even for multi-page articles),” Amazon said in a press release. “The full page is still available in the background, allowing the reader to easily toggle back to a traditional view to see other interesting features on the page.”

More about Kindle 6.3

Does Agency Pricing Lead to Higher eBook Prices?

The U.S. Department of Justice is considering suing Apple and five large U.S. publishers for allegedly colluding to raise the price of ebooks.

At the heart of the issue, I suspect, is concern over the agency pricing model. Agency pricing allows the publisher to set the retail price of their book.

Retailers don’t discount agency books. Retailers earn a commission of 30 percent of list price for acting as the seller’s agent, and then the seller (in this case the author, publisher or distributor) earns 70 percent of the list price.

When Apple launched its iBookstore in early 2010, it brought with it the agency pricing model. Large publishers, eager to find a white knight counterbalance to Amazon’s then 90 percent market share in ebooks, embraced the agency model with gusto. Concurrent with the launch of Apple’s iBookstore, five large publishers held a gun to the heads of all the ebook retailers: Give us the same agency pricing terms or we’ll stop supplying our books to your stores.

Retailers at the time were none too-pleased with the ultimatum. In the end, all the retailers relented rather than risk losing access to these bestselling books.

More about Agency Pricing

Australia and India join e-book adoption race

Australia and India have joined the UK and the US as world leaders in e-book adoption rates, according to Bowker Market Research’s Global eBook Monitor (GeM). Adult fiction is the main target of book buyers in the UK and Australia, while in India and South Korea the concentration is on professional books and academic textbooks.

According to the research, 24% of respondents in India had bought an e-book in the six months prior to the survey, putting that market ahead of Australia (21%), the UK (21%), and the US (20%). Respondents in France and Japan were the least likely to have purchased an e-book, at 5% and 8% respectively. The survey also found that more than 80% of respondents in each country know it is possible to digitally download a book.

The report reveals that the market for e-books is set for a rapid increase in Brazil and India. Over 50% of respondents from these two countries said that they were likely to buy an e-book in the next six months, a prediction that would double the number of e-book buyers in India, and triple the number of e-book buyers in Brazil. About a third of respondents in the UK and US said they had plans to purchase an e-book soon, compared to one in five in France, and one in seven in Japan.

More about ebook adoption race

Bowker Survey Tracks Global E-book Patterns

Bowker Market Research has released the results of a survey of e-book usage in 10 countries. The results are based on the responses from 1,000 consumers in each country who responded to an online survey in early 2012 and show that adoption rates are highest in Australia, India, the U.S. and U.K. and lowest in France and Japan. In addition to already having one of the highest penetration rates, India is also seen as a country where e-book sales are expected to increase the fastest since over 50% of respondents said they intend to buy an e-book in the next six months (the other country with similar expectations is Brazil).

In general consumer awareness of e-books is high with at least 80% of the online respondents saying they know it is possible to download an e-book. With the exception of the U.S. and U.K., men were more likely to buy and e-book than women (in Brazil and Spain the percentages were even). In almost all markets, the older the respondents, the report found, the less likely they are to have recently purchased an e-book.  Purchase rates in India, Brazil, the U.K., U.S. and France are highest in the 25–34 age group, with Australia, Spain, Germany, South Korea and Japan highest among 18-24 year olds.

 More about Bowker Survey

eBook Sales Up in January, AAP Reports

The American Association of Publishers debuted a new monthly report in January and the news is good.

Sales of adult eBook titles rose 49.4 percent in January ($99.5 million vs $66.6m), while eBook sales in the children & young adult segment shot up 475 percent over last year ($22.6m vs $3.9m). eBooks made up 17.5% of the children trade segment, and a startling 31 percent of the adult trade segment. The trade market as a whole also grew to $503.5 million in January, up significantly from $396 million in January 2011.

More about AAP report