National Library of NZ produces its first ebooks
The National Library of New Zealand’s book digitisation pilot program has produced its first ebooks, the library has announced on its website. Thirty-six titles have been converted into PDF and EPUB files,...
Harlequin announces ebook partnership with ‘Cosmo’
Harlequin Australia has announced a partnership with Cosmopolitan magazine that will involve the publisher launching a digital romance fiction program called ‘Cosmo Red Hot Reads from Harlequin’. The partnership will...
HarperCollins partners with Autography
HarperCollins has partnered with US technology company Autography to use its digital book-signing technology. The patent-pending technology, which can be used on a wide variety of ereading devices, inserts a...
Amazon patents supplementary content for ebooks
Amazon has been granted a US patent for supplementary content attached to ebooks, reports Wired, which compares the patent to ‘DVD extras’. The patent ‘Customized Electronic Book with Supplemental Content’, which...
Apple loses ebook price-fixing case; ACCC to ‘continue to follow developments’
A US court has found that Apple conspired with publishers to raise the retail prices of ebooks. Over the three-week trial, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) sought to prove...
Online sales ‘almost half’ of Hachette UK’s trade sales
Almost half of Hachette UK’s trade sales are made up of online sales of print books and ebooks, with ebooks representing over 25% of the publisher’s trade sales in 2013...
SPN partners with Ingram for digital distribution
The Small Press Network (SPN) has announced a digital distribution partnership with Ingram’s CoreSource platform, which will replace its current Digital Distribution Service. SPN is offering CoreSource to its members at...
International Library News
ALA launches Authors for Library Ebooks campaign The American Library Association (ALA) has launched a new campaign to improve access to ebooks in libraries at its annual conference in Chicago, reports Publishers...
Australia among top markets for US print, ebook sales in 2012
Australia is ranked in the top three international export markets that contributed to English-language print and ebook sales for US trade publishers in 2012, according to the American Publishers Association...
Booku to stay open
Online bookseller Boomerang Books has reversed its decision to close its ebookstore Booku, announcing this week that the store will continue to trade. As previously reported by Books+Publishing, Boomerang Books...
Ebook platform Bkclb relaunches as Tomely, offers pay-what-you-want ebook bundles
Australian ebook retail platform Bkclb, which launched in the second half of 2012, has been relaunched with the new name Tomely. The platform, which is aimed at authors and small publishers,...
Judge says issues ‘have shifted’ as DOJ ebook pricing trial draws to a close
Testimonies have concluded in the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) ebook pricing trial against Apple, which began on 3 June, with Judge Denise Cote commenting that the issues over the...
Booku ebookstore to close
Online bookseller Boomerang Books has announced that its ebookstore Booku will close on 30 June. In a letter sent to customers this week, Booku said that customers who have purchased...
Australian Publishers Association and RR Bowker Launch TitlePage Plus
Enhancements to TitlePage offer brand new products and services for booksellers to attract and keep customers in Australian stores. The Australian Publishers Association (APA) and RR Bowker have teamed up...
Bowker research shows 20% of genre ebooks sold are self-published
Bowker Market Research has found that self-published titles accounted for more than 20% of crime, science fiction, romance and humour ebooks sold in the UK in 2012, reported the Guardian....
Ebooks make up half of Hosseini’s first-week sales in the UK
In the UK, 50% of first-week sales for Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed (Bloomsbury) were for ebooks, with 10,000 copies sold in each format, reports the Bookseller. Bloomsbury UK...
DOJ ebook pricing trial underway; Apple describes publisher contracts as ‘contentious and hard-fought’
The US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) ebook pricing trial against Apple kicked off on 3 June and is expected to last for three weeks, reports paidContent. As previously reported by...
Penguin to avoid trial after settling ebook pricing cases with states and consumers
In the US, Penguin will not participate as a defendant in the Department of Justice’s long-awaited ebook pricing trial after reaching a settlement in the ebook pricing case with US...
Hayes joins Copia as merchandising and marketing manager
Antonia Hayes has joined ebook provider Copia in the role of Australian merchandising and marketing manager. Hayes, who started in the role this month, is responsible for Copia’s local merchandising,...
Australian libraries participate in Big Library Read project
A number of Australian libraries are participating in the Big Library Read project, a two-week ebook data experiment run by OverDrive and Sourcebooks. As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the project...