Google stops auto-discounting authors’ ebooks
11 Aug 2019 (The Digital Reader)
Google announced a new pricing policy for its ebookstore, Play Books. Anyone who accepts the revised ToS will now earn 70% royalty on ebooks sold in the USA, Canada, and Australia. Their ebooks will be immune to Google’s irritating policy of automatic price cuts.
(US) Authors Guild: Publishers Are Losing $300 Million Annually To Ebook Piracy
28 Jul 2019 (Forbes)
Pirates seemed to deny that stealing digital works could result in the same financial loss as stealing physical books would, saying they, “believe real life and the internet differ” or that, “culture should be free to all.” The UK’s Intellectual Property Office found in 2017 that 17% of all ebooks consumed that year were pirated.
Hachette says ebooks account for 8.2% of their revenue
28 Jul 2019 (Good Ereader)
Ebooks brought in $109 million in sales.
Online book-selling scams steal a living from writers
26 Jul 2019 (LA Times)
+Well over half of full-time, published authors now earn below the individual poverty level from their writing. While there are many reasons for this, one factor is the surge in book-selling scams: counterfeiting, author “doppelganging,” title cloning, ebook piracy, cut-and-paste plagiarism and other rip-offs — many of which take place on digital platforms like Amazon, Ebay and Google. The variety and cleverness of these cons is breathtaking.
Macmillan to embargo all ebooks to libraries by 2 months
25-Jul-2019 (Good Ereader)
Starting on November 1st, 2019, Macmillan is going to launch a two month embargo on all ebooks to the public library. Under the publisher’s new digital terms of sale for libraries, will be now be allowed to purchase a single—that is, one—perpetual access e-book during the first eight weeks of publication for each new Macmillan release, at half price ($30). Additional copies will then be available at full price (generally $60 for new releases) after the eight-week window has passed.
Audible is adding audiobook captions and publishers are mad
19 Jul 2019 (Slash Gear)
Amazon plans to launch Captions in September, but a number of publishers, agents, and authors are heavily opposing the plan and raising questions over whether the company has the rights to reproduce and provide text from these audiobooks. Captions is currently in beta and not available to publishers at this time.
Pearson pivots to digital
17 Jul 2019 (Newsweek)
“Over half our annual revenues come from digital sales so we’ve decided, a little bit like in other industries like newspapers or music or in broadcast, that it is time to flick the switch in how we primarily make and create our products,” Pearson plc CEO John Fallon told the BBC.
(US) Court Questions Whether Ebook Pirate Site Operator Can Be Sued
15 Jul 2019 (Torrent Freak)
Earlier this year, author John Van Stry sued Travis McCrea, the former leader of the Pirate Party of Canada, over his eBook download platform, EBook.bike. The US-based author sued McCrea in a Texas court demanding more than $200,000 in damages and costs.
(US) Will trade publishers block new releases in public libraries?
9 July 2019 (American Libraries Magazine)
ALA is concerned over recent changes in publisher strategy. At this time, none of the Big Five employs an embargo, but this might change with Macmillan testing the waters with an embargo trial. “It is time for ALA to ramp up engagement on the library ebook lending front.”
(CN) Amazon China Closes Paper Book Section In Favor of Ebooks
4 July 2019 (PanDaily)
Amazon China no longer sells its own paper books, and third party paper books will also be taken down from shelves starting July 18. Although this is just another step in shutting down Amazon’s China businesses, cross-border e-commerce and Kindle digital books will not be affected.
(NL) Dutch agency hammers facebook ebook pirates
4 July 2019 (TechNadu)
Four Facebook users agreed to pay a settlement amount to BREIN, after having pirated thousands of eBooks.
(US) S&S latest publisher to change digital book lending terms
3 July 2019 (Books+Publishing)
Simon & Schuster has become the fourth of the Big Five publishers to change its digital book licensing terms for libraries in the past year, reports Publishers Weekly. In a statement sent to libraries, S&S officials confirmed that its ebooks will be available for two-year terms on a one copy/one user model as of 1 August.
(CA) Big 5 publishers changes library sales business model
30 June 2019 (CBC)
The last of the so-called Big 5 publishers — Hachette Book Group — will stop giving libraries neverending access to its book titles as of Monday, according to the Canadian Urban Libraries Council. Instead, the publisher will make libraries purchase ebooks and digital audio books for two-year terms, increasing the costs for libraries to build up their long-term digital collections in the same way as their hard-copy collections.
(UK) ebook sales increased by 5% in 2018
29 June 2019 (GoodEreader)
Ebook sales actually increased by 5% in 2018, which is good news for the format. It has been in state of consistent decline in the US for a number of years, but it looks like Brits have rediscovered digital audiobooks and ebooks. These two formats combined brought in over £653 million in sales last year.
(US) 1 in 4 units sold to online channels were eBooks
26 June 2019 (Forbes)
Of publishers’ sales to online retail channels, trade print books represented the largest chunk at 45.1%, but eBooks and downloaded audio were popular as well, as 24.5% of publisher’s sales to online channels were eBooks and 13.7 were downloaded audio.
(UK) Ebook sales decline 2% in 2018
26 June 2019 (Guardian)
Overall, the digital book market, which as well as audiobooks includes ebook sales and subscriptions to services such as Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, rose 4.6% to £653m. Consumer ebook sales continued their slow decline, down 2% to £251m. Sales have fallen 20% since 2014.
Barnes & Noble’s Nook Revenue Down 17%
19 June 2019 (The Digital Reader)
Nook revenues totaled $92 million for the fiscal year. Fiscal 2019 net earnings were $3.8 million compared to a net loss of $125.5 million in the prior year.
ebook sales decrease by 4.5% in the first quarter of 2019
17 June 2019 (Good E Reader)
One of the leading factors is the rise of digital audiobooks. In the first three months of the year the format increased by 35% and it brought in a respectable $133 million dollars. The decline in ebooks is good for the traditional print industry. Hardcover book sales saw a 7.8% ($594 million) increase in revenue and paperback sales saw a respectable 3.1% ($553.6 million).
Legal lessons from the ebooks antitrust debacle
10 June 2019 (Apple Insider)
Responding to a question about risk in the law and how you avoid it, Apple’s former legal counsel said that there are reasons to look for risk. “Steer the ship as close to that line as you can,” he continued, “because that’s where the competitive advantage lies.”
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