All the news that warrants your attention
Pearson: US education unit remains a drag on sales
21 February 2020 (iNews)
Operating profit at the group was hit hard — halved from the previous year to £275m. Sales of physical books declined 30 per cent, with the growth of digital products only making up for it slightly with “modest” growth. Half of all learners now prefer eBooks, the company said.Publisher continues to target digital growth to increase revenue.
Simon and Schuster: ebook sales up for the first time in 3 years
21 February 2020 (Good Ereader)
Ebook sales were up 1% over 2018.
[Job] Print Production Coordinator, Hampshire, UK
19 February 2020 (The Bookseller)
Attractive salary and great company benefits. This is a permanent role and will support content project management for the Higher education and ELT print and digital products, through the production cycle.
Critical security vulnerabilities in Adobe’s Digital Editions fixed
11 February 2020 (HelpNet Security)
Adobe has released a security update for Adobe Digital Editions. This update resolves a critical and an important vulnerability. Successful exploitation could lead to Arbitrary Code Execution and Information Disclosure respectively in the context of the current user.
Eastern U. Senate considers textbook rental future
11 February 2020 (The Daily Eastern news)
The chief concern regarding textbook rental is the decreasing availability of hard-copy versions of books. Every year more publishers are ditching print versions of textbooks and going to exclusively digital editions of books. That change in supply has forced Eastern to re-think its current textbook rental model.
Ebooks experienced a 4.3% decline in November 2019
10 February 2020 (The Good E-Reader)
Digital book sales in the United States, fell slightly in November 2019. Major publishers from January to the end of November generated $913 million dollars, so they did see a strong return on their digital investments. Digital Audiobooks continue to be the lone brightspot, the format saw an increase in sales by 23% in November and from the same time period the format made $526 million dollars.
Top Hat Raises $55 Million to Take on Big Textbook Publishers
4 February 2020 (EdSurge)
The Toronto-based company has raised $55 million in a Series D round, led by Georgian Partners and iNovia Capital. Founder Mike Silagadze believes younger faculty members and future generations of college students will help drive institutions to adopt digital materials instead of print. “What sets us apart from a legacy player is we don’t have the albatross of print,” he says. “We start from a digital-first standpoint.”
[JOB] Associate, Ebook Production at Penguin-RH, New York
3 February 2020 (mediaBistro)
An opportunity for a full-time Ebook Production Associate at Penguin Random House. This role on the Ebook Operations and Development team will convert titles into electronic formats, distribute the electronic books (Ebooks) to retailers and maintain these products once they are in market. This opening is a great opportunity to learn about the production of Ebooks as part of a fun, energetic team working in a high-paced, rapidly changing environment.
Reviews & previews boost ebook sales by 30%
2 February 2020 (Forbes)
Exposure to an ebook review boosts the likelihood of a purchase by between 7 and 17%, and that’s the same effect that exposure to an ebook preview results in. But exposure to both of them escalates that chance of a purchase by 31%.
Authors have earned $1.1 Billion since the launch of Kindle Unlimited
2 February 2020 (The Good E-Reader)
Since the launch of Kindle Unlimited in 2014, authors have generated over $1.1 billion dollars and in 2019 authors earned more than $300 million from the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select Global Fund.
Macmillan banned from DBW conference over ebook embargo
31 January 2020 (Books+Publishing)
Digital Book World (DBW) has banned Macmillan employees from attending its 2020 conference in solidarity with the American Library Association’s (ALA) campaign against the publisher’s restrictions on new release ebooks.
[Job] Online Sales and Data Manager at Welbeck Publishing, London
28 Jan 2020 (The Bookseller)
Based in the very trendy Fitzrovia, close to Goodge Street and a stone throw away from Oxford Circus. £35k to £40k depending on experience.
JK Rowling made £31.5 million last year from ebook sales
25 Jan 2020 (Daily Mail)
Rowling earned £86,317 per day as profits more than doubled in 2019 ahead of the 20th anniversary of the first film. Profits at Pottermore Ltd – the Harry Potter writer’s firm – went from £3.4 million to £6.9 million last year.
Pirate ebook site shut down
24 Jan 2020 (Digi Statement)
As reported by Torrentfreak, the domain Ebookee.org seems to have suspended by the Public Domain Registry but it is not yet clear why the suspension has been taken. However, the website was on the radar of many big publications including Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Cambridge University Press, Amazon, and National Geographic for copyright infringement. The website has over 858,782 complaints registered under DMCA which can be seen on the Google Transparency Report.
Italy is experiencing a piracy problem with ebooks
23 Jan 2020 (Good E-Reader)
The Association of Italian Publishers recently conducted a study and they found that pirated ebooks account for €528 million in loses, which is around 23% of all digital sales.
Cengage Adds eTextbooks to Cengage Unlimited
22 Jan 2020 (Information Today)
Cengage today announced that it will offer an eTextbook option within Cengage Unlimited, giving students access to more than 14,000 ebooks, study tools and more for $69.99 a semester. A survey conducted by Morning Consult found that, after tuition, paying for textbooks and course materials is the biggest source of financial stress for students. In addition, almost three-quarters of students prefer access to ownership when it comes to their learning materials.
Ebook Pirate Risks Crippling Sanctions
19 Jan 2020 (TorrentFreak)
Because of pirate’s refusal to provide documents, the plaintiff is asking for a number of damning facts to be taken as a given in the case moving forward and it’s clear he wants no prisoners taken.
PRH Pulls Ebooks from European Subscription Services
18 Jan 2020 (The New Publishing Standard)
PRH titles are disappearing from the Storytel, Nextory and Bookbeat platforms.
The Bookseller to run weekly UK e-book chart
10 Jan 2020 (The Bookseller)
Data will be supplied by Bookstat, the sales tracking service that monitors titles on online retailers such as Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble. The chart is distinct from the publisher-supplied e-book charts that The Bookseller runs monthly and weekly.
E Ink’s New Electronic Paper Could Bring Colour to the Kindle
9 Jan 2020 (Gizmodo)
The company has managed to improve the technology so that a full page refresh can be completed in about two seconds, which, based on the demo I was given, feels more than fast enough for coloured E Ink to finally be adopted into devices such as the Kindle.
Why Ebook Subscription Services Will Finally Succeed In The Coming Decade
3 Jan 2020 (Forbes)
By the middle of the coming decade, one of the Big 5 (or whatever the number of major publishers is by then) will have done a full-catalog deal with a subscription ebook service. The other major publishers will follow at a safe enough distance to avoid antitrust scrutiny. By the latter half of the coming decade, we’ll finally be accessing ebooks as we do digital music and video.
More Ebook Industry News (back to Aug 2017)
