06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Been so busy reading e-books that you haven't had time to keep up on the week's news? Here's some of what you've been missing:

E-Book General - News

• Ruth Rendell dies aged 85
• Author Earnings sheds light on ebook Agency redux
• EU plans to allow lower VAT rate on ebooks

04:25 AM by pdurrant in E-Book General | News

According to a report at Ink, Bits & Pixels, The EU Commission (having just spent the past four years suing France and Luxembourg for reducing the rate of VAT they charge on ebooks) plan to introduce changes to the VAT rules to allow countries to charge their lower rate of VAT on ebooks!

Unfortunately, it seems likely that it'll be some years before the rule changes actually get implemented.

04:19 AM by fjtorres in E-Book General | News

Author Earnings.com just dropped their quarterly "state of the US ebook market" report.

http://authorearnings.com/report/may...rnings-report/

As usual, the source has clear, very large charts and the raw data. Plus lots of analysis and insight.
Well worth the trip there.

Summary:

Publishers fought hard to take back control of ebook pricing from Amazon. This was a stated intent by Hachette to its investors in 2014, and it was touted as the end result of their lengthy negotiations. What has that control brought?

By our data, which matches industry reports, this control has brought higher prices to consumers, lower sales for publishers, and less earnings for their authors. It has also brought greater market share for self-published authors, which is why many were pulling for publishers to get their way during negotiations with Amazon.

If it seems unlikely that publishers would have fought so hard for such disastrous results, it might help to be reminded that it isn’t the first time. In the lawsuit against publishers for conspiring to raise ebook prices in 2009, it was shown that the agreement they fought to win with Apple resulted in a reduction of profits per ebook sold (pg 53). Lawyers were also successful in showing at trial that a move to agency pricing resulted in a sudden and drastic shift upward in ebook prices, harming consumers, but also harming publishers (pg 94).

One does not need to theorize on why publishers would make these decisions. One CEO of a Big 5 publisher wrote in a note to herself that higher prices would slow ebook adoption and casual purchasers, protecting retailers (pg 47). So speculation is not required. This was the same conclusion reached by the judge in the collusion case, whose reading of Big 5 CEO emails showed a willingness to erode Amazon’s market share at any cost, even to themselves.

Key numbers:

BPH prices up 17% over the last 15 months.
BPH unit market share over the last 3 months down 18% (interesting number--sounds like a tipping point was crossed).
BPH titles in ebook bestseller lists down 26%.
BPH reader spend ($-based market share) down 7% over the last 3 months. They now command less than half of gross ebook sales.

Interesting factoid:

Market share of other tradpubs (small/medium publisher, Amazon Publishing) has remained constant. The net shift has been BPH to Indies.

Ominous note:

Barnes & Noble’s Nook store’s well-covered collapse appears to be accelerating. It is now possible to hit the overall Top 50 Best Seller list on Nook.com with fewer than 100 sales per day from a standing start. It takes around 1,500 sales per day to hit the same benchmark on Amazon.com. We currently calculate B&N’s ebook market to be in the single digits, perhaps even the low single digits. No author should be happy with this development, as the more healthy markets that exist for our works, the better.

11:13 PM by alanHd in E-Book General | News

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32564813

06:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

We know, you're busy. You'd like nothing more than to keep up with the witty kids at MobileRead live and in real-time but, it's tough. We understand. Here is our weekly round-up:

E-Book General - News

• Publisher behaving badly
• Free ebooks for poor low income kids

E-Book Readers - Alternative Devices

• NoteSlate is back! (Or is it?)

05:07 AM by fjtorres in E-Book General | News

From NBCNEWS:
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/...e-kids-n351101

President Barack Obama will go to a public library in one of Washington's poorest neighborhoods on Thursday to talk about a plan to give low-income children access to 10,000 e-books.

Working with publishers and libraries, the White House sees the modest plan as part of a strategy to address inner city problems by increasing educational opportunities for kids -- woes brought into focus with recent riots in nearby Baltimore.

Kids will need computers and devices to read the e-books.

No mention if it's 10,000 titles or total copies.
Given the "modest" adjective and the BPH involvement, it might be the latter.
Politicians are tricky that way.

Of course, kids with the necessary hardware already have access to a lot more than 10,000 titles.

09:06 AM by fjtorres in E-Book General | News

From the Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...0-year-old-man

The high court has ordered the British publisher of Jonas Jonasson’s smash-hit novel The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared to stop selling it, following an alleged failure to pay royalties.

Hesperus Press was ordered, after a hearing on 24 April, to cease publishing, printing and selling the English translation of Jonasson’s bestselling Swedish novel and to return copies to Hachette Book Group, which owns world English rights and which brought the legal action against the independent publisher.

Most, interestingly, the book has sold 500,000 print copies and 700,000 ebook copies since 2012. (Interesting ratio) No royalties received since 2012. The author and agent only recently noticed it.

“If I am to focus on my artistic ability, I need to stay away from it all. But I’ve always felt proud when I think of how popular the book has become in the world. And I remember when the book filled the whole shop window in Waterstones’ flagship store in Piccadilly in London. It felt great that a Swede could become so popular in English. But it’s a mental collision between that experience and the feeling of how I have been handled by Hesperus Press.”

Hugo Gernsback would be proud of these guys:

Jonasson is not the only Hesperus author looking for answers. All four members of staff at the small publisher have resigned from the company in the past few months. Jordan-based chief financial officer Ayman Al Asmar said that a “formal release about next steps and future plans would be issued ‘soon’”, according to the Bookseller, but gave no further details. Attempts to reach Al Asmar and director Gabi Sharbain, were unsuccessful today.

Those boys didn't just rip-off a bunch of naive authors (check the source for further details and quotes) but a giant multinational. That takes guts.

Of course, it *is* Hachette, not the Randy Penguin, but still.
I'm thinking... beach balls!

They should sell their movie rights to Mel Brooks if they get away with it.

08:29 PM by Jmirko in E-Book Readers | Alternative Devices

Nate at Ink, Bits and Pixels wrote earlier this week about the return of the NoteSlate:

http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/0...will-cost-199/

The updated website is here:

http://noteslate.com/

The question is: should we believe them this time? These Czech guys already pranked us in 2011... If anyone pre-ordered, let us know your experience! Once they take your money, it gets a bit more serious...