Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

This week’s news post its a bit of a jammed packed one with interesting announcements and drama!

First up – this was so going to happen, especially since it was no real secret that Amazon has made its ambitions into the world publishing. Amazon has announced that it will launch an imprint that will focus on romance and its debut release will be Connie Brockway’s, The Other Guy’s Bride which will be slated for release in November. It will be interesting to note how this imprint fares but since Romance is a huge and best-selling genre it was no brainer that would have started an imprint for one. This isn’t the only Imprint for Amazon which also has launched, Amazon Crossing, AmazonEncore and Powered by Amazon which is the self published line. I’d also like to note that …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

I hope everyone had a fantastic Easter/Passover break! This week has been an interesting one for WTFERY and developments.

An interesting report from the US has found that ibooks store is not the success that Apple aims it to be, this is partly due to the fact that people who have ipads aren’t using it to primarily read ebooks and that only 40 percent of ipad users have read a book. Another 45 percent has stated they would prefer reading an ebook on their macs or PCs.

Agents are now stipulating that price escalators for ebook royalties should be implemented more widely, due to the rise of ebooks, especially when they have overtaken Mass Market print books earlier this year. 

Self Published author Stephanie Mcafee has joined the ranks of Amanda Hocking into mainstream traditional publishing as she scored …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

Welcome to this week’s newsy post which is a bit brief because its been a bit quiet this week but we do have some interesting tidbits and goodies for y’all!

First up – some interesting new developments from Amazon which may help the Kindle to become the prominent format/reader in the DRM and format wars.
Amazon has announced that it will team up with Overdrive who hosts and offers e-books to libraries. Previously epub was the only format that was available for library ebook lending. I think this will herald the Kindle/Mobi as the winning format since one of the main reasons for getting an epub book was borrowing ebooks from libraries and it looks like Amazon has offered another arrow in their quill for choosing a Kindle!

It looks like the rumours about a tablet is gaining …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

Well this week we have had some interesting developments with Amazon and some goodies with new covers and blurbage from long awaited books!

First up – Amazon is going to offer a new Kindle that will be cheaper than the current Wifi/3G models the Kindle will be around $114 which is $25 cheaper. But to make up with the lower price it will host ads in the screensaver mode or at the homepage. They have stated that the ads wont be intrusive and will hope to reach a wider audience with a cheaper price. Now I am not sure about this because I am not a fan of ads even if is on a standby mode and I am not sure if this will catch on because its only 25 dollars cheaper but who knows!

February wasn’t a …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

A few weeks ago, I reported that Amanda Hocking had signed a huge deal with a major publisher for her upcoming series. Not only this produced headlines and a change of direction with the indie self pubbed author, another interesting tidbit emerged during the bidding process. Amazon who is traditionally an online vendor for books and ebooks although they offer self published authors to sell their books via their site. However it was recently known that Amazon teamed up with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt during their bid for Hocking’s new series, with HMH offering the print rights while they would offer the world ebook rights. The combined bid actually beat out St Martin’s Press’ offer – but this is just another sign that Amazon is focusing more on the publishing end of things.

I think right now there will …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

Well after last week’s bonanza of news – things are pretty quiet this week, but I have some fantastic books/covers to watch out for and a few tidbits that will please a few people.

We have a bit of an update of Trisha Telep and the Wicked Pretty Things anthology.More authors have pulled out , Brenna Yovanoff, Seanan McGuire , along with Karen Mahoney and Lesley Livingston, Lisa Mantchev and Jessica Verdey. While Melissa Marr has announced she does not want her name to be associated with this anthology in any manner to recommend it. But that is not all, authors Ann Aguirre and Saundra Mitchell have also pulled out in a different anthology again edited by Telep. I definitely think now, Wicked Pretty Things anthology wont go ahead with its current form with only 7 of …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

Wow this week has been choc-a-bloc with news, Google book developments and even a WTFERY or two. We also had major announcements from a popular author going indie/self pubbed route while an indie self pubbed author has recently sold a 4 book series in a MAJOR deal to big publisher plus a lot more!

The major news that broke this week was Google Books settlement has been rejected due to a class action suit about the scanning books and the automatic opt in issue with orphaned works. Dear Author covers the ruling comprehensively and lays out why it was deemed illegal in a great summary here.

This wont be the end of the matter but it has probably thrown a spanner in the works for their plans of scanning books especially with the matter of orphaned works.

I find this …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

This week in the blogosphear we have Goodreads questionable policy and trashtalking galore for Dabwaha which has commenced this week in style. (Note this year has been brutal and if anyone follows Dabwaha on twitter – I apologize with the penis pics and the altered tweets which has led to cries of foul cheating!) But good luck to everyone who has entered Dabwaha!

Lauren Dane has highlighted another issue with Goodreads. She noticed that more and more star ratings are given to books that have hardly been written, and contacted Goodreads about this issue because it wasn’t realistically reflective of a book’s ranking. Goodreads replied with the following:

“Thanks for writing in with your feedback. While I can understand your frustration, it is not a requirement that …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

Welcome to this week’s news post which I almost forgot to write, because for me it has totally zoomed past for me. This week its been pretty quiet although last weekend was pretty eventful with a new brouhaha online about authors and reviewing again and a mysterious non existent YA Mafia group. This has reignited the debate again about who can and shouldn’t review books and I suspect this issue will arise again and again in a different way and in a different genre – although it could be Ninja mystery writers lurking in the wings when the next hoopla happens. But for a good summary and insights, check out Dear Author’s post as well as Katiebabs and Smexybooks write ups.

This actually links up to Goodreads implementing a new rule about authors responding to negative …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

Wow this week we have had major news shaking up publishing and ebooks, so it is a bit jam packed issue in today’s news post.
The biggest and most contraversial announcement though has to be HarperCollins’ announcement that their ebooks would be restricted with a 26 borrowed limit. As you can imagine this has ignited the ire of many librarians and their patrons about this because the limit is set at such a low level.

HarperCollins have responded in an open letter to libraries and library users to explain this new measure by saying this would be a way to protect ebook growth and market. Below is an extract of an open letter explaining this and click here for the full statement:

We have serious concerns that our previous e-book policy, selling e-books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine …