E-Books

An interesting media meme has emerged in the last month: that there are unique opportunities for indie booksellers in a society of hyper-connectivity and technological saturation.

This week, ABA CEO Oren Teicher wrote to Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, to urge him to refocus his office’s recently announced inquiry into agreements between the industry’s major publishers and Amazon.com and Apple, Inc.

Much of the reaction to the Wylie Agency's creation of a publishing subsidiary that will sell e-books exclusively through Amazon's Kindle platform addressed the disadvantage that independent bookstores and other retailers now face.

Last week's news of literary agent Andrew Wylie's exclusive agreement with Amazon.com to publish Kindle editions of 20 backlist titles by notable writers represented by Wylie provoked strong reactions among some major publishers and elicited extensive industry discussion regarding the implications of this potential disintermediation.

21,919 industry professionals at BEA; Above the Treeline launches Edelweiss GeoSearch; PBS NewsHour features industry discussion on e-books; Lambda Literary Foundation names 2010 award winners; 2010 Arab American Book Award winners announced

The opening session of ABA's Day of Education at BEA featured ABA's Oren Teicher and six other industry leaders debating "the value of the book."

Google Editions offers a "a new, exciting twist on e-books," ABA COO Len Vlahos told a standing-room-only audience at Tuesday afternoon's session featuring Tom Turvey, director of strategic partnerships for Google. The session was part of ABA's Day of Education, sponsored by Ingram.

ABA Meets With Ingram and Publisher Partners for Wi5 Debrief

On Thursday, April 8, ABA senior staff met with representatives from Ingram and 18 publishing houses in order to garner publisher feedback on January's ABA Winter Institute, in San Jose, California. About half of the almost four-hour meeting was devoted to an in-depth discussion with the 29 attendees about the three-day institute, which offered a wide range of educational programming free of charge to ABA bookstore members.

On the cusp of the April 1 switch to an agency model for e-books, negotiations were ongoing between five major publishers and wholesalers, including Ingram, and others in the supply chain. In a communication to IndieCommerce participants, ABA COO Len Vlahos explained that a short-term consequence of the switch would be the delisting of e-books from Hachette, HarperCollins (including Zondervan), Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster on IndieCommerce websites.

Toadstool Bookshops owner Willard Williams recently found out what more than 400 of his customers think about e-books and e-readers.

Williams received more than 400 responses to an online survey sent to customers of his three New Hampshire bookstores. Among the key findings: Ten percent of the survey respondents own e-readers. In addition to asking customers whether they own e-readers, the survey also asked questions about e-books, the store's e-commerce site, and the physical bookstores.

When Follett Higher Education Group announced a new textbook rental program open to independent bookstores, "we instantly had people signing up," said senior vice president of intellectual properties Gary Shapiro.

Daniyal Mueenuddin Wins The Story Prize

The winner of the sixth annual Story Prize was announced on March 3 at an awards ceremony in Manhattan. Debut writer Daniyal Mueenuddin accepted the prize for his collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Norton), a book of eight connected stories set in southern Pakistan and centering around the estate of a feudal landowner.The other two finalists were Victoria Patterson (Drift, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and Wells Tower (Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, FSG).

Daniel Clancy, director of Google Books, offered a keynote presentation at the Winter Institute's Technology Day that provided booksellers with insights into plans for Google Editions, launching later this year, as well as a deeper understanding of the challenges of the e-book marketplace.

While booksellers were at the Winter Institute a lot was shaking in the e-book world. With something as elemental as what constitutes a book being debated, it's not surprising that distribution models are also in flux. Amazon.com and Macmillan had their very public negotiations over e-book pricing (which saw Amazon suspend sales of Macmillan titles for a time), and Hachette also announced that they, like Macmillan, would base pricing of e-books on an agency model. Here's a quick recap.