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"With this update, we're providing specific information about Amazon's objectives. A key objective is lower e-book prices. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there's no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out-of-stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market -- e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can be and should be less expensive. It's also important to understand that e-books are highly price-elastic. This means that when the price goes up, customers buy much less. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. "

"How much should an e-book cost? Publishers set the retail price for a current e-book, like James Patterson's "Invisible," at $14.99. That's a lot less than a hardcover copy of the book ($25.50), but it's still more than Amazon thinks a reader should be paying for an e-book; Amazon says the price tag should be $9.99. "A key objective is lower e-book prices," Amazon wrote in a blog post last week. The company made its case for $9.99 e-books, explaining that "For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99." Certainly publishers would like to sell 1.74 times as many books as they do now. And Amazon provides an example that sounds very tempting: "if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000." What author doesn't want to make $1.7 million? But before running to cash that hypothetical check, let's look at what Amazon, which declined to respond to our questions about the statement, is and isn't saying."

"One of the best things about the internet is that it makes everything available. The down side of that is how you navigate 'everything' to find what's really good and will resonate with you. This is a real issue when it comes to finding books and explains why we rely so much on the recommendations of people whose opinions we know and trust. The internet may be changing publishing but the way we choose the books we read still relies on that same principle. Of course lots of websites now give you the chance to read reviews of books that other people have read but unless you know more about the individual reviewer and their own perspective there's a limit to how valuable their opinion, whether positive or critical, will be. There is a way of making everyone's opinion resonate with you no matter how their tastes and backgrounds might differ from yours however, and that's if they were only allowed to recommend their very favourite books to you and explain in each case why that book matters so much to them. There's no guarantee that you will share their passion for any one particular book but that personal insight will give you the context for that opinion and it may be enough to persuade you to give that book a try."

"Don't you think it is more crucial to make the web ready for books, than to make books ready for the web ? To make the web ready for books will improve it. To try to make books perfectly ready for the web will make them run the risk of losing what makes them books. The real challenge is to keep the best of both worlds, not to merge them. And if new forms are invented, new kind of ways of sharing thoughts - and it's already the case : that's perfect."

"It's beach time, and you've probably already scanned a hundred lists of summer reads. Sadly overlooked is that other crucial literary category: the summer non-read, the book that you pick up, all full of ambition, at the beginning of June and put away, the bookmark now and forever halfway through chapter 1, on Labor Day. The classic of this genre is Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time," widely called "the most unread book of all time." How can we find today's greatest non-reads? Amazon's "Popular Highlights" feature provides one quick and dirty measure. Every book's Kindle page lists the five passages most highlighted by readers. If every reader is getting to the end, those highlights could be scattered throughout the length of the book. If nobody has made it past the introduction, the popular highlights will be clustered at the beginning."

"My dream bookstore would sell browser-based, open, standardized, interoperable, web-enabled ebooks. But right now, customers don't know they want that. It may be that Amazon is building towards some of these features (without the ISO and W3C standards, of course, because they don't want a platform that makes it easier for customers to buy their books at other stores). Amazon is a world unto itself. And customers seem to like it that way. [...] Another thing is that we were 20-odd bookish people in the room (with more watching via webcam). And we couldn't figure it out. We are insiders - collectively, there must have been hundreds of years of experience in the book business sitting around that table. As with most cases of disruption, it isn't going to happen from inside. But the third thing I realized is that Jeff Bezos was "not a book person". He may love books, but until he founded Amazon, he didn't work in the industry. Now he actually is in the industry, and has been for 20 years. He's one of us. If a major disruption is not going to happen from inside, then "inside" includes Amazon - and any major disruption by definition will disrupt Amazon too."

"Digital Rights Management (DRM) is any technological constraint on what a user can do with a document. Usually, DRM involves some kind of encryption that locks a document to a user's identity, so that they can't share it with anyone else. Whether you choose to use DRM on your ebooks is up to you, and should depend on your sales and distribution strategy for each book or list of books. At Electric Book Works we always recommend not using DRM; but we know not everyone agrees with us. The question you should ask yourself is not 'Shall we go DRM-free' or 'What DRM should we use', but 'Do we need DRM on this?' That said, if you do choose to use DRM, at some point you'll have to choose DRM settings for an Adobe Content Server. Read on for guidance."

"Amazon is at war with Hachette, and it sometimes seems as if it has always been that way. As a negotiating tool in the battle, which is over the price of e-books, Amazon is discouraging its customers from buying the publisher's printed books. After six months of being largely cut off from what is by far the largest bookstore in the country, many Hachette writers are fearful and angry. So this week, they are trying a new tactic to get their work unshackled. Authors United, a group of Hachette writers and their allies, is appealing directly to Amazon's board. It is warning the board that the reputation of the retailer, and of the directors themselves, is at risk."

"Le prochain #aperonum aura lieu le mercredi 5 juin 2013 à 18h à l'Arald (Villa Gillet, 25 rue Chazière, 69004 Lyon). Ce rendez-vous convivial et ouvert est organisé par l'Arald et la Région Rhône-Alpes. Ce quatrième apéronum' sera l'occasion de revenir sur trois événements liés au livre numérique : - Tools of Change 2013 de New York ; - If Book Then 2013 de Milan ; - Congrès IDPF 2013 lors du Salon du livre 2013. Trois intervenants viendront présenter les éléments à retenir de ces trois événements majeurs pour le livre numérique : formats, standards, design, lecture numérique, usages, écosystèmes, Web..."

"Today we're pleased to announce our newest publishing partner, Penguin UK. If you're anything like us, you can surely count many of your new and all-time favorite books among Penguin UK's vast catalog of award-winning titles."

"Graphic novel and comic publisher 2000AD is making all of its titles available DRM-free. Readers will be given access to DRM-free copies of books and comics by 2000AD, even if bought through stores such as the iOS and Android app. A new ID system will link together all purchases, meaning that a title can be bought on one system, but will be made available on other systems. 2000AD said it planned to expand this to Amazon Kindle and Windows apps in future."

"When Kindle Unlimited launched in the US 4 months ago there were many questioning whether it was good or bad for authors, and if the chorus of complaints over the past few days are any indication then the answer will be no. HM Ward kicked off the discussion on Friday when she revealed that she was pulling out of KDP Select, the program Amazon uses to funnel indie ebooks into Kindle Unlimited. Ward withdrew her books not because the average payment had dropped to only $1.33, but because her total revenues had fallen by 75%."

"Self-publishing authors are the new Beanie Babies: everyone wants to grab them and cuddle with them/make money off of them. But what if you don't have the editorial chops, design talent, or artistic skills to make a pretty or readable book? Reedsy is there to help. Created by Emmanuel Nataf and Richard Fayet, the company is, to be fair, another in the long list of DIY publishing outfits. Like Tablo and Softcover, Reedsy offers a one-stop-shop for writers. However, the team has decided to create a services marketplace for authors who are looking for interior and cover designs as well as editing help."