Boon for Ebooks (?) as the Print Supply Chain Bogs Down
17 September 2021 (Quartz)
Supply chain problems have touched almost every aspect of book production, storage and delivery, mostly as a result of Covid-related bottlenecks. Printer capacity issues plagued the publishing industry last year, too, though 2021 is expected to be worse.
[Opinion, obviously]
Ebooks Are an Abomination
15 September 2021 (The Atlantic)
If you like ebooks, great. Enjoy your dim, gray screen in peace. If you hate them, don’t worry about it. Who says everything must involve a computer? Maybe it’s better, even, to protect the print-book market by building a firewall against ebooks’ expansion beyond their rule over genre fiction. Just give up and read normal books, like humankind has done for 2,000 years.
Pearson sues Chegg for copyright infringement
14 September 2021 (EdScoop)
The British-owned publisher and education services firm Pearson on Monday filed a copyright lawsuit against the textbook rental and “homework help” service Chegg, alleging the company is selling answers to question sets in its textbooks.
Edtech giant Blackboard to merge with Anthology
13 September 2021 (EdScoop)
Blackboard, founded in 1997, was an early educational technology provider that today serves more than 150 million users worldwide, both in K-12 and higher education. By merging with Anthology, the new company seeks to provide an “edtech ecosystem,” for higher education institutions modernizing their technology, according to the release.
Publishers, Amazon Move to Dismiss Booksellers’ Antitrust Suit
09 September 2021 (Publishers Weekly)
“…Plaintiffs new theory, in other words, attacks the very essence of robust and healthy competition that the antitrust laws overwhelmingly seek to promote. Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is baseless and should be dismissed.”
Former Student Sentenced for Selling Pirated e-Textbooks
10 September 2021 (TorrentFreak)
“The convict has now received a punishment for violating copyright law, and thus has a stain on her criminal record. A relationship that may matter to her for many years to come. Therefore, it is important to understand that even though it is easy to do so, it is a criminal offense to copy e-books without the permission of the author.”
US Judge Orders Apple to Ease Restrictions on App Developers
10 September 2021 (New York Times)
The decision could have major implications for thousands of businesses that pay Apple billions of dollars each year. A federal judge on Friday struck a serious blow to Apple’s control of its App Store, giving companies a way to avoid handing Apple a cut of their app sales and potentially upending a $100 billion online market. Apple counts on revenue from its App Store to fuel its expansive profits, and the decision could eat away at that money. It was a damaging loss for the company, which is facing increasingly pointed questions from regulators and politicians around the world about its business.
[Review]
The Publishing Ecosystem in the Digital Era: On John B. Thompson’s “Book Wars”
02 September 2021 (LA Review of Books)
“So what happens when the oldest of our media industries collides with the great technological revolution of our time?” That sounds like hyperbole — book publishing hasn’t exactly stood still since Gutenberg. A lot happens in 500 years, even without computers. But for an industry built on the time-tested format of print books, the internet understandably looked and felt like an existential threat as well as an opportunity.
[Profile]
An App Called Libby and the Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books
02 September 2021 (New Yorker)
The high prices of e-book rights could become untenable for libraries in the long run, according to several librarians and advocates I spoke to—libraries, venders, and publishers will probably need to negotiate a new way forward. “It’s not a good system.”
Apple to let reader apps steer users towards out-of-App-Store purchasing following Japanese watchdog probe
02 September 2021 (The Register)
Ebook, music, newspaper programs can now whisper of the universe beyond the iOS walled garden. The iPhone goliath will, from early next year, allow these applications to “include an in-app link to their web site for users to set up or manage an account”.
More here https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/kindle-for-apple-iphone-will-be-able-to-sell-you-ebooks-again
Salman Rushdie to bypass print and publish next book on Substack
01 September 2021 (The Guardian)
“I’ve been looking at [Keret’s] Substack and it’s so witty and enjoyable, and he’s clearly having a wonderful time doing it, I thought, ‘maybe I could do that’.” Substack provides a platform for readers to subscribe to individual writers, whose posts are sent to your inbox or can be read online. Writers often provide a mix of paid and free content, which is what Rushdie plans to do. “I’m going to kind of make it up as I go along…”
More Ebook Industry News (back to Aug 2017)
