Group items tagged

"As the demand increases for materials of all types to be available on mobile devices, publishers, authors and documentation managers are challenged with providing a quality eBook experience while managing costs and standards. Your participation in this survey has proved invaluable to us as we continue to provide the highest level of service and educational support in the industry while meeting your growing demands."

"I'll be blunt. Ebooks and EPUB are to the publishing industry what Blu-Ray is to the movie industry: a solution to yesterday's problem made irrelevant by broader change in the industry. Both have a couple of years left in them, and there's good money to be made while the kinks get worked out from the alternatives, but the way the wind is blowing is clear. Whenever someone proposes EPUB as a solution, ask yourself a question: what's the problem they're trying to solve? As a standard drafted by the IDPF, a self-proclaimed "organization for the Digital Publishing Industry", EPUB is built squarely to address the industry's biggest headache: ensuring that, in the digital age, they retain the ability to charge money for distributing content. The best interests of authors or readers simply do not figure in the equation."

"Last week the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) concluded two new agreements with private companies to digitze over 70.000 old books, 200.000 sound recordings and other documents belonging (either partially or as a whole) to the public domain. While these public private partnerships enable the digitization of these works they also contain 10-year exclusive agreements allowing the private companies carrying out the digitization to commercialize the digitized documents. During this period only a limited number of these works may be offered online by the BnF."

"While DRM has largely been defeated in downloaded music, it is a growing problem in the area of ebooks, where people have had their books restricted so they can't freely loan, re-sell or donate them, read them without being tracked, or move them to a new device without re-purchasing all of them. They've even had their ebooks deleted by companies without their permission. It continues to be a major issue in the area of movies and video too."

"This week, ebook lovers got yet another reminder of why DRM (Digital Rights Management) is terrible for ebooks. While attending a library conference in Singapore, Jim O'Donnell lost access to the titles in his Google Play Books app. Apparently, the app detected that he was in a country where Google Books aren't available and subsequently denied him access to his books. Stories like this crop up every now and then, each time highlighting some crazy ebook restriction or policy that most people aren't even aware of. The way things are set up, you kind of need to protect the digital books you buy from the companies that sell them. There are a growing number of ways and reasons why Amazon, Google, or a book publisher might strip you of your digital library. The best way to protect yourself is to break the DRM on your ebooks for the purpose of keeping a local, personal backup."

"Random House U.S. is teaming up with Flipboard, a social media-driven platform for curated content, to produce custom digital magazines for two of its authors: Maragaret Atwood and George R.R. Martin. The Atwood magazine will be devoted to her new novel, MaddAdam, while Martin's magazine will be centered on his Song of Ice and Fire series. Both magazines will feature interviews, inside information and other material designed to attract their fans."

"Amazon has a 78% market share of Hachette Livre e-book titles in the UK and a 60% share in the US, an Investor Day presentation by Hachette Livre has revealed. [...] The report said that 60% of digital sales of Hachette titles are through Amazon in the US, followed by Barnes & Noble with a 19% share and Apple iBooks with a 13% share, while "others" including Kobo and Google share 8% of the pie."

"Libraries - at least public libraries in the U.S. and Canada - are not private companies. Their goals are not on profit and not built upon those who can afford to pay for the services. Rather, public libraries are one of the few institutions where any and all citizens, regardless of their income or abilities to pay, may receive equitable access and service. It doesn't matter whether you park a Ferrari or a used car in the library parking lot or you walk or take public transit to the library. When you walk in that door, you are treated equally and you are able to do and access the same things as everyone else (minor restrictions apply based on individual libraries, but those are special cases and not the norm). It is not the goal of the library to make money. Nor is it the goal of the library to create levels of service so that those who can afford to indulge will receive more while those who can't, don't. Instead, libraries work to ensure their services reach as many facets of their community as possible. Libraries want to offer what they can to those who have nothing and those who maybe have everything. The library is the center and the heart of community."

"The Canadian publishing industry has been embracing digital in a big way. In a few short years almost everyone is putting out e-books the same day the print version is available. Booknet Canada released new information and the report states that the percentage of publishers producing e-books in 2014 increased slightly to 93% (vs 89% in 2013). Of those producing ebooks, close to half have digitized more than 50% of their active titles, and almost a quarter have converted over 75% of their backlist titles. The majority of publishers (65%) choose to publish print and e-book formats of a title simultaneously, while 29% delay the e-book edition until after the print version is available. When asked for the main reasons to publish ebooks, the most popular response was to increase sales (77%), followed closely by to meet customer demand (63%). Only 5% cited "as a mechanism to lower costs" as a reason to produce e-books-a noticeable drop from 15% in 2013. The development of enhanced e-books and apps remained fairly steady from 2013 to 2014, whereas more publishers are publishing digital originals: from 27% in 2013 to 35% in 2014."

"Digital books stagnate in closed, dull systems, while printed books are shareable, lovely and enduring. What comes next?"

"It's safe to say that e-books disrupted the publishing industry. But sales have leveled off and not entirely for the reasons some have reported." Extrait : "VLAHOS: The most voracious readers are now - they're really reading in multiformat. And I think it took a while for that to settle down. And I think now that it's settling down, I think there is probably a little bit of relief just that it's becoming a slightly more predictable market."

"Jusque-là allemande, la plateforme Tredition a annoncé qu'elle étendrait son offre au Royaume-Uni et aux États-Unis. Les deux pays vont donc pouvoir profiter des services d'autopublication pour auteurs et de distribution pour les petits éditeurs."