Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

This week has been pretty interesting with some surprising and not so surprising news!

Barnes and Noble has announced their recent profits from the last 3rd quarter, although there was losses compared to the previous year, growth of their ebooks sales have risen that they have claimed that they are now selling more in that format than in print. In fact they have also claimed that they are selling twice as many ebooks in any print format in their site. So according to their press release this means they have cornered 25 percent of online sales of ebooks? Because like Amazon who have claimed they have 70/80 percent of market shares of the market, although both have not offered hard data/figures to corroborate this claim. But it does seem that Barnes and Noble will be hopefully …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

After last week’s epic news post and the authors gone HULK, things have been quite subdued this week, with some depressing and sad news of bankruptancy and deaths.

The biggest announcement has to be Borders filing for Chapter 11 insolvency and will be entering administration. Sadly 200 of their 600 megastores will be closing and around 6000 employees will face redundancies. This will also affect publishers which Borderes owes millions of dollars of debt and in turn as this article highlights will affect authors, because the majority of books being sold are via stores like Borders.

Another struggling mega store chain owner REDgroup is also facing bankruptancy, but this time its in Australia. Ironically enough they also own the Australian arm of Borders as well as, Angus and Robertson and Whitcoulls in New Zealand. This shows that traditional brick …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

Wow this week has been pretty major with surprising book news, Author CAPSLOCKFESTOS and meltdowns and covers galore – so no further ado let me layout these babies!
(Note: Due to breaking news about another brouhaha with another author gone mad – Book Lovers Inc is going to dedicate an entire post on this- this post canna take all the drama Cap’n)
Earlier this week the author, L.J Smith who is behind the successful YA books, The Vampire Diaries has announced that she wont be writing future books in the series because she does not agree to the new direction that the new series is heading. Alloy Entertainment who have creative control over the series as well as the rights will be concentrating on the relationship with Elena and Stefan instead of Damon. Smith has said she was deeply saddened …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

Welcome back to the first News Post after our Big Birthday Bonanza! Hope y’all enjoyed it!
Well this week we have had some interesting developments in the world of ebooks and Agency Pricing and we have some great upcoming books and covers that was unveilled!

Agency pricing seems to be heading into some rough territory this week especially in the UK. The Office of Fair Trading will be investigating the legality of this move after receiving complaints. I am not an expert but in the early 1990s the Net Book Agreement (NBA) which disallowed any kind of discounting on print books was deemed illegal and uncompetitive and was replaced with Recommended Retail Price which allowed retailers to discount books from their recommended price. A lot of people in the industry feel that Agency pricing is very similar and may …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

Nora Roberts has joined the Million copies sold on Kindle club and joins the ranks with Stieg Larrson and James Patterson. The Bookseller reports that she has sold more than 1,170,539 Kindle books under her Nora Roberts and J.D Robb pseudonym! Way to go Nora! 

According to Price Waterhouse in the UK, they have predicted that the UK ebook market growth will increase ten-fold during the next five years. However there is a caveat warning stating in their report that that growth will be sluggish compared to their US counterparts who are more open to the digital format whilst the the UK publishers are reluctant in embracing this new market. Personally I think with agency pricing emerging in both the US and the UK, I doubt that point is right but I do think that non agency publishers will …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

USA Today reports that its bestselling list will begin to feature ebooks this week and notes that since the holidays which many people have been gifted with an ereader for Christmas. That the top six books on the list, the ebook versions outsold their print counterparts while in the top 50, nineteen books sold more ebooks than print. Whether this trend will grow or remain static remains to be seen but it does lead credence that Ebooks are becoming the new Mass Market as the print sales for that format has fallen in recent months.

A few weeks ago an author claimed and wrote a book that there was a way to manipulate Amazon Kindle charts, however this would involve buying your own book everyday as well as posting reviews and voting for them. I personally didn’t think it …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

According to Publishers weekly over 20 percent of readers, now own an ereading device and buying more books due to this. In a few years from now this figure will almost double and just adds credence that ebooks will be a popular format, compared to print books.

The Bad Sex Awards winner was announced, and Rowan Somerville has won the dreaded award for describing a nipple a ‘nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing in the night.’ – From his book The Shape of Her. Somerville personally accepted the award, and stated – 

“There is nothing more English than bad sex, so on behalf of the entire nation I would like to thank you.”

Past winners include, Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer. I do find it interesting and ironic the majority of winners have been men and …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

Publishers are going to offer book apps with interactive content aimed at Christmas. Publishers like Penguin and the Hachette group are hoping to capitalise on the popularity of ereading devices like the ipad/iphones and to increase and expand on the interactivity of ebooks.

Scientists have made a breakthrough with e-ink technology by making it cheaper and actually disposable. This could make printing documents/texts a thing of the past and has wider implications and possibilities with other products and tech. 

Barnes and Noble is having an awesome sale right on ebay, for Black Friday sales, with the Wifi Nook going on sale for $99 – the 3G version is slightly higher at $119.

The cover for the next Sookie Stackhouse book has been posted! Dead Reckoning is slated for release next May.

Sourcebooks will …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

In the next latest twist and turns of publishing, Amazon has made overtures to agents by bypassing publishers to reach and negotiate new deals that bypasses publishers. I suspect that this is in part of the new agency agreements that is in place due to the publishers but also another move that shows Amazon is becoming more interested in publishing directly to their customers/

More shakey news from Dorchester, their chief CEO has departed John Priebich has departed the trouble-ridden publisher although a new CEO was announced to take his place. Publishers Weekly stated that Robert who was formaly CEO of Backe Marketing will take his place.

A Forrester Research study has announced that e-books will become the default format by 2015. This year’s growth of ebook sales have surpassed expectations and like I highlighted …

Around the Bookish World: News Week-in-Review

This week we have some major announcements from the New York Times and some fun tidbits from long-awaited books!

The ereading market has reached and broken the 1 billion dollars barrier. The growth of ebooks in the past year is the fastest growing section publishing and there is projected figures that it will reach $3 billion dollars by 2015.

Another sign of the increasing popularity and growth of ebooks – The New York Times has announced that it will start to count ebooks in their bestseller list, which will start early next year. They will compile data from retailers and publishers as well as other sources.

The New York Times have also reported the FPD tradeshow in Tokyo this week, a Chinese company called Hanvon will be producing and releasing the first colour e-ink screens for their ereader. …