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Amazon is playing hardball with book publishers. The Seattle online bookseller says it will give authors a 70% cut of the sale of e-books sold for its Kindle readers, essentially offering writers a way to bypass traditional book publishers.

"Although Apple won plaudits from the book publishing industry for offering it more control over pricing and a richer split of sales - publishers retain 70 per cent of sales and have control over the customer pricing of books - the revenue sharing plan makes less sense for recurring charges such as subscriptions, publishers said. The concept of giving away close to a third of subscription sales over an indefinite period was difficult to accept, publishers said. "Thirty per cent forever changes the economics," one media executive in discussions with Apple said. "You can imagine we feel less good about it. Should (subscriptions) be treated differently than single item sales?""

Former children's laureates Quentin Blake, Anne Fine and Jacqueline Wilson, bestselling authors Jeffrey Archer and Louis de Bernières and critical favourites Thomas Pynchon, Zadie Smith and Jeanette Winterson have all opted out of the controversial Google book settlement, court documents have revealed. Authors who did not wish their books to be part of Google's revised settlement needed to opt out before 28 January, in advance of last week's ruling from Judge Denny Chin over whether to allow Google to go ahead with its divisive plans to digitise millions of books. The judge ended up delaying his ruling, after receiving more than 500 written submissions, but court documents related to the case show that more than 6,500 authors, publishers and literary agents have opted out of the settlement.

Provides breakdown of publishing costs for hardcover books vs. e-versions. Authors get screwed, while publishers struggle to cover their overhead costs and maintain profitability.

With the impending arrival of digital books on the Apple iPad and feverish negotiations with Amazon.com over e-book prices, publishers have managed to take some control - at least temporarily - of how much consumers pay for their content.

Experts say e-books have the potential to rewrite the publishing business model.

ROME-Google Inc. on Wednesday said it will scan ancient Italian literary texts ranging from Galileo Galilei to herbal medicine manuals as part of the Internet company's first publishing partnership with a national government. The deal involves digitizing up to one million books held in the National Libraries in Rome and Florence.

Amazon is conceding to Macmillan's price hikes on e-books rather than pull Macmillian from its digital and physical catalog.

The federal judge overseeing the proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed against Google by groups representing authors and publishers heard from a handful of supporters and a parade of objectors to the deal at a hearing Thursday in Manhattan.

"J.K. Rowling has been named in a lawsuit alleging she stole ideas for her wildly popular and lucrative "Harry Potter" books from another British author. The estate of the late Adrian Jacobs added Rowling as a defendant in a lawsuit it filed in June against Bloomsbury Publishing PLC for alleged copyright infringement, according to a statement released by the estate's representatives, who are based in Australia."

In a kind of Wikipedia of textbooks, Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which will allow college instructors to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes.

In another blow to Google's plan to create a giant digital library and bookstore, the Justice Department on Thursday said that a class-action settlement between the company and groups representing authors and publishers had significant legal problems, even after recent revisions.

FT Press, taking a hint from the twitter/blog/rss trend and came up with a business plan to dice up their best book content into smaller, downloadable formats.

Columnists are struggling to survive in today's media landscape. At best, they are hanging in there. Only about 20% are actual employees of newspapers rather than free-lance writers. Some columnists are writing blogs and books instead. But, like we mentioned in class last week, it is very very difficult to generate income from blog writing.

A group of experts examine the environmental impact of print media versus electronic media. Counter-intuitive findings. It may be (not for sure though) that newspapers are actually a greener option. They use recycled paper, whereas using the computer uses energy and contributes to e-waste. This just doesn't seem right...

Discusses how the Kindle and iPad will impact the quality of book content by changing existing business models in the publishing industry.

Network television and cable networks have a bright future, despite the inroads of TiVo and the threat of free video on the Web. And book publishers may also see growth in the years ahead, if they can learn to relax and love the e-reader. Newspapers, however, can pretty much pack it in.