The link below is to an article that takes a look at how bookshops/bookstores can combat showrooming, a practice where books are viewed in a shop and then purchased online.
For more visit:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/how-booksellers-can-combat-showrooming_b74866
In a quarter when Amazon’s (S AMZN) stock price hit a record high, the company delivered a loss in its earnings report Thursday afternoon even as revenues rose. Earnings were -$0.02 per share, or a loss of $7 million, on revenue of $15.7 billion, compared to earnings of $0.01 per share, or $7 million, on revenue of $12.83 billion this time last year.
Analysts had expected earnings of $0.06 per share on revenues of $15.7 billion.
Amazon’s operating income, which analysts watch closely because they worry about Amazon’s razor-thin margins, fell 26 percent to $79 million. This time last year, it was $107 million.
Amazon’s stock rose to a record $308.69 earlier this month. This wasn’t precipitated by one big event, but July was a good month for Amazon in part because a U.S. federal judge found Apple (s AAPL) guilty of conspiring with publishers to fix ebook prices at…
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Apple (s AAPL) could get smacked with a $500 million bill from the states and class action lawyers in the ebook pricing suit, based on the amounts that the settling publishers have already paid out.
Earlier this month, federal judge Denise Cote found Apple guilty of colluding with five publishers to fix ebook prices at the launch of the iBookstore. The five publishers named in the case — Hachette, Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster — have already settled and paid damages to the states and in the class action suit. In a document that the court made public Tuesday, the Texas attorney general provided Judge Cote with a chart showing the amounts that the states have agreed to pay. The red markup is by me:
The chart shows that the publishers have paid out over $166 million so far. Earlier this month, a lawyer from Hagens Berman…
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Amazon (s AMZN) on Thursday launched “The Kindle Singles Interview,” a series of “major long-form interviews with iconic figures and world leaders.”
First up is an interview with Israeli president Shimon Peres by journalist David Samuels, a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine. The interview, which retails for $0.99, was produced in association with Tablet Magazine, an online daily that focuses on Jewish news and culture. An interview with the president of Israel does not seem like a particularly splashy way to launch the series, but this program could be a way for Amazon to team up with various media outlets and get more content from them in the future.
Kindle Singles, which Amazon launched in 2011, focuses on “compelling ideas expressed at their natural length” and sells works that are generally longer than a magazine article but shorter than a book, most priced between $0.99 and $2.99. There are now 400…
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Over six months after the European Commission reached an ebook pricing settlement with four publishers and Apple (s AAPL), the EC has approved a similar settlement with Penguin. Penguin, which was trying to clear the decks for its upcoming merger with Random House, had offered its proposed settlement terms in April.
According to an EC press release:
“Penguin offered substantially the same commitments as those proposed by the other four publishers and made legally binding on those companies in December 2012…They include, in particular, the termination of on-going agency agreements and the exclusion of certain most-favoured-nation (MFN) clauses in Penguin’s agency agreements during the next five years. Penguin also offered to give retailers freedom to discount e-books, subject to certain conditions, during two years. After a market test (see IP/13/343), the Commission is satisfied that the commitments offered by Penguin remedy the competition concerns it had identified.”
The…
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The link below is to an article that takes a look at Amazon and its weaknesses.
For more visit:
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/is-amazon-invincible/
The link below is to a book review of ‘How to read Literature,’ by Terry Eagleton.
For more visit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jul/26/how-read-literature-eagleton-review
In time for the back-to-school season, Google (s GOOG) will start selling and renting digital textbooks through the Play store in August, the company announced at a breakfast in San Francisco this morning.
The main point of the breakfast was two bigger announcements: The Chromecast, a $35 dongle that lets you stream internet video to your TV, and a new Nexus 7 tablet. Nonetheless, getting into the textbook market helps Google compete against Amazon (s AMZN), Barnes & Noble (s BKS) and Apple (s AAPL), all of whom have already entered the digital textbook space. In general, Google has struggled to gain ebook market share against those companies.
Google says it’s working with the five largest textbook publishers — Cengage, Wiley, Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Macmillan — and that students will be able to purchase digital textbooks or rent them for up to six months. It also said that prices…
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Hoopla wants to make borrowing material from a library as convenient as streaming content on the web. The company, launching to the public today after several months in beta, offers patrons of participating libraries access to on-demand streaming movies and TV shows, as well as audiobooks and music that can be streamed or downloaded. There’s no waiting, and patrons don’t have to remember to return the digital materials: After a set period of time, they expire. Titles can be streamed on Hoopla’s website or its iOS (s AAPL) and Android (s GOOG) apps.
The service launches at a time when libraries are increasingly making ebooks available to patrons. Seventy-six percent of U.S. public libraries offered access to ebooks in 2012. But offering access to other types of digital materials is still fairly new. It’s unclear how many users want them, but since Hoopla lets libraries pay per use, it…
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At the BookShelf 
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