Tag Archives: publisher

Amazon’s Exclusive New Publishing Deal Threatens to Fracture E-book Market

By melissa | Published: July 23, 2010
The Wylie Agency has signed a deal to bring the e-book editions of 20 classic titles, including Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man , exclusively to Amazon ’s Kindle Store for two years, the company announced Thursday. Publishers were, unsurprisingly, less than pleased. Today, Random House declared in a statement that the trade publisher would “not be entering into any new English-language business agreements” with the agency, which represents such illustrious authors as Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie, “until [the] situation is resolved.” “The Wylie Agency’s decision to sell e-books exclusively to Amazon for titles which are subject to active Random House agreements undermines our longstanding commitments to and investments in our authors, and it establishes this agency as our direct competitor,” a spokesperson for the publishing company said. The problem is that it’s still unclear — at least to Random House — who has the rights to publish the electronic versions of older titles, whose contracts don’t specify those rights because e-books simply didn’t exist when they were drafted. Random House sent a letter to literary agents in December 2009 asserting ownership of those rights, citing clauses in older agreements that allow the company to publish texts “in book form… in any and all editions.” Agents and authors were surprised to receive the missive, given the outcome of a lawsuit between Random House and RosettaBooks LLC in 2001.
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How the Fashion Magazine Industry Plans to Profit from Digital This Fall

By admin | Published: July 20, 2010
After collectively losing nearly a quarter of their ad pages in 2009, fashion magazines are poised to make a big comeback in ad sales in 2010 — but the recovered revenue may not come from print sales. Instead, the publishers of major U.S. fashion magazines are ramping up their digital and mobile offerings to meet advertisers’ increasing demands to reach consumers on those platforms. “Digital platforms are increasingly attractive to advertisers who demand accountability and want compelling, innovative programs that make consumers pay attention,” InStyle Publisher Connie Anne Phillips explained
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Fear, loathing: embargoes control game reveals, exclusivity

By admin | Published: June 14, 2010
When you write about games, your calendar will soon begin to look like a maze of embargoes. When you agree to play a game or see a presentation before a title is released, you are stuck agreeing to the publisher's schedule, which dictates exactly what you're allowed to talk about and when you can talk about it. This is par for the course, and when you see a rush of reviews all at the same time, you'll know an embargo has lifted. The problem is not that embargoes make everyone equal—it's that some websites are more equal than others.
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Brightcove and FreeWheel Team Up For HTML5 Ad Solution

By admin | Published: May 12, 2010
Brightcove and FreeWheel are announcing a partnership today that will bring better ad-management and tracking data to publishers that want to utilize HTML5 video. This move further blurs the lines between Flash and HTML5 , at least in the context of web video. We spoke with Doug Knopper, the co-founder and co-CEO of FreeWheel and Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Brightcove, about this new partnership and what it means for content publishers. However, as we saw last month when talking to mDialog , ad platforms that utilize HTML5 and HTTP Streaming are starting to appear on the market. What Brightcove and FreeWheel Are Doing Brightcove is a leading online video platform used by major publishers like The New York Times, the Discovery Channel, A&E and Sony Pictures
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Climatologist sues, wants paper to erase all traces of libel

By melissa | Published: April 25, 2010
It's probably an unfortunate measure of the quality of modern journalism that few of us would be surprised to hear that an editorial on a politically controversial topic contained significant factual inaccuracies. But climate change seems to have reached the point where even some apparent facts have become points of contention, and at least some reporters have become comfortable with simply making things up and ascribing their imaginings to credible scientific sources. Apparently fed up with similar practices in editorials produced by Canada's National Post , a climatologist has now sued the publisher for libel and defamation.
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The New Digg Is Coming: Redesigned Buttons and Widgets Released

By anthony | Published: March 23, 2010
Ever since Digg revealed the completely overhauled version of its website at South by Southwest (SXSW), there has been a lot of anticipation surrounding the completely overhauled interface. Now we’re one step closer to the launch, as Digg has just released redesigned Digg buttons and a new version of the widget generator . If you’re a regular reader of Mashable, you’ve seen the new buttons by now; we implemented them not long before Digg’s big announcement at SXSW. The buttons feature a thumbs-up, rather than the “Digg it” of the past. The thumbs-up is a more universal symbol, which makes it ideal for the new Digg: Anonymous users will be able to digg stories once the new version rolls out
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Apple vs. Amazon: The E-Book War Rages On

By anthony | Published: March 19, 2010
The e-book war between Amazon.com and Apple is getting uglier . Dennis Johnson cites a report in Publishers Marketplace (subscription required) that alleges that Amazon.com is telling publishers that if they switch to an agency model (ala Macmillan ) , they will lose Amazon as a platform for both e-books and print. This battle, which in many ways mirrors similar struggles between record labels and online music stores, underscores some of the challenges that moving into widespread digital distribution for a formerly non-digital product can bring. The Agency Model Conundrum Recently, Macmillian’s CEO John Sargent explained the agency model, as it relates to e-book sales, in his blog : “Starting at the end of March, we will move from the ‘retail model’ of selling e-books (publishers sell to retailers, who then sell to readers at a price that the retailer determines) to the ‘agency model’ (publishers set the price, and retailers take a commission on the sale to readers).” In other words, Macmillan wants to be able to control how much digital books are sold for on a per-book basis. Much like music publishers fought (and eventually won) the right to sell certain digital tracks or digital albums for more (or less, in some cases) than the $0.99 per track/$9.99 per album standard, publishers want that same control
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Web Publishing Startup DocStoc Now Offers Branded Viewers To Users

By melissa | Published: March 15, 2010
Web publishing startup DocStoc is launching a customized document viewer today, allowing anyone to create easily embeddable, branded document viewers. The new feature is open to all DocStoc users and offers the ability to customize the logo, buttons, links, and color of the viewer. The viewer itself is fairly sleek and resembles DocStoc’s normal document viewers. Users can directly download documents from the viewer and DocStoc will automatically convert any convert historical embeds with Docstoc. For example, all of the documents we’ve embedded with our TechCrunch DocStoc account will now include our branded viewer.
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Can E-readers and Tablets Save the News?

By melissa | Published: February 18, 2010
Sales are robust for e-readers and there is no shortage of tablets yet to launch, including the new Apple iPad . But will strong sales translate into a boost for the media industry? If media organizations do it right, the potential could be there for e-readers and tablets to become a viable revenue source. However, it may take a dramatic shift in the way publishers view digital content and their online business models
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Facebook Launches New Privacy Settings for Facebook Apps

By anthony | Published: February 17, 2010
Facebook has added new privacy options to give users more control over their Facebook applications and websites using Facebook Connect. The new changes follow December’s controversial privacy overhaul . In an announcement on the Facebook Blog, the world’s largest social network revealed that it has added more “granular” control to content shared through apps. The changes are meant to allow users to change which of your friends see updates from certain apps, but it also extends to third party apps and Facebook Connect websites. Seesmic , for example, will soon offer more detailed privacy features, specifically allowing users to post status updates only to the friend lists you specify.
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