Children still prefer reading physical books, finds Scholastic

By Charlotte Williams

The number of children who have read an e-book has almost doubled since 2010 but children still prefer reading books for fun in print, according to Scholastic Inc’s Kids and Family Reading Report, 4th Edition.

The publisher surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,074 US children aged six to 17, and their parents, to compile the research on children’s reading habits.

Forty-six per cent of children responding to the survey said they had read an e-book, up from 25% in 2010. Meanwhile, 41% of the parents had read an e-book, a big leap up from 14% in 2010. Fifty-one per cent of children who have not read an e-book are interested in doing so.

However more than half (58%) of respondents aged 9-17 said they will always want to read books printed on paper even if there are e-books available, though this was a slight decrease from 66% in 2010. Eighty per cent of children still read mostly print books.

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Kobo to launch in South Africa

| By Lisa Campbell

Kobo is to launch in South Africa in partnership with Pick n Pay hyperstores and supermarkets.

Amazon already sells Kindle devices in South Africa and now Kobo will attempt to win market share from the digital reading giant with the Kobo Touch device.

The Kobo South Africa website says it will offer popular literature by “notable local authors”, with books in both English and Afrikaans.

 

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EU investigation: publishers ‘concede e-book discounts’

Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette Livre and Macmillan owner Verlugsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck have offered to allow retailers including Amazon to sell their e-books at a discount for two years in a bid to end an EU antitrust investigation and stave off fines, according to a Reuters report.

Apple, with which the publishers have entered into agency pricing agreements, is also said to have agreed on the concessions. Penguin, a fifth publisher which employs agency pricing on e-books, is not identified as having offered the concession.

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Publishers and Apple want delay in settlement agreements

16.08.12 | Philip Jones

Publishers and Apple fighting the US’ Department of Justice over agency pricing have hit back, with new filings submitted to the Southern District of New York on Wednesday afternoon (15th August) calling on the trial judge to deny the government’s efforts to ratify the settlement agreements, or defer ruling on them until after trial.

Though it is not clear how much these latest briefs will sway Judge Denise Cote’s decision-making, the submissions do add new colour to the proceedings, with Penguin’s response beginning: “The Emperor has no clothes.”  Interestingly, though Judge Cote had previously asked the parties to set out their opposition to the settlement agreements during the public comments period, they have done so in these new submissions in response to the government’s request for the court to wave through consent.

Most serious is Apple’s assertion that its agency agreements with the settling publishers— Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group USA, and HarperCollins—cannot be terminated without a trial: “The Government is seeking to impose a remedy on Apple before there has been any finding of an antitrust violation.”

But Penguin and Macmillan also argued against “consent” being given, claiming that the new deals were not in the “public interest”. Penguin said the settlement agreements were “far from typical and reach beyond its claims against the Settling Defendants to impose a regulatory scheme on industry participants who have nothing whatsoever to do with the claims in this litigation”. Macmillan argued that the DOJ’s analysis was faulty, suggesting that the “DOJ’s cavalier assumption that its settlement terms will not result in re-monopolization is also mere ‘speculation’”.

Central to their arguments was the view, as put forward by Penguin, that the DOJ was “cherry-picking” e-book pricing data to support its case and ignoring wider market data. Macmillan argued that the government had “Failed to Consider the Negative Consequences of the Proposed Final Judgment” [sic].

Both Penguin and Macmillan maintained that there was no evidence that e-book prices rose during the period that agency existed, as had been the DOJ’s contention. Macmillan said that the government had not provided “a single economic study or analysis showing why its mandated pricing scheme is necessary to undo the effects of the alleged collusion, or why it is in ‘the public interest’.”

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Microsoft to launch tablet

 |By Philip Jones

Computer giant Microsoft is to launch a tablet device competing head-on with Apple’s iPad, for the fast-growing tablet market. The Surface, which offers a slightly larger screen than the iPad, will “be priced like comparable tablets”.

The new device was unveiled by Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer at an event for journalists last night (18th June), though some seemed disappointed by the lack of specific details, including a launch date or price.

The move could, however, provide a fillip for Barnes & Noble, which went into partnership with Microsoft earlier this year. The tablet will operate Windows 8, on which B&N is providing the e-reading platform and store-front.

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Self-publishing: ‘under 10% of authors earn living’

 |By Philip Jones

Self-published writers who have an agent, or who use the DIY route to get a traditional deal, earn much more than the average self-published writer, according to a survey of more than 1,000 self-published writers. But only a minority (less than 10%) make enough to live off their earnings.

The survey, conducted by the Australian publisher and authors’ services business Taleist, found that just 97 of the 1,007 respondents indicated they could live exclusively off their royalties. In fact, half the respondents failed to reach $500 in royalties in 2011, with a quarter of the books facing the prospect that they will not cover their production costs.

On average, the respondents earned just over US $10,000 from their self-published books in the year. However, the survey also found that a “two-track economy” existed, whereby a small group of self-publishing authors were earning about 75% of the reported revenue. Two-thirds of these “top earners” were women, and though they are roughly the same age as the average self-published writer (roughly 40), the data showed that they had been taking writing seriously for slightly longer than the rest of the group.

Nearly three times as many top earners had an agent (29% as compared to 10%), but most did not. While having an agent was not a necessity for the majority of self-published writers—even those who earned the most money—the survey found that having an agent was associated with earnings more than three times higher than unrepresented peers.

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Tor UK follows US in abandoning DRM

 |By  Philip Jones

Tor UK is to follow its US sibling by taking Digital Rights Management (DRM) off its e-book titles. US science fiction list Tor become one of the first mainstream imprints to say it intended to put its books out without DRM. Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape and Tor Teen—all parts of Macmillan USA—said that from July 2012, its entire list of e-books would be made available DRM-free.

The move to abandon DRM on e-books has built up recently with industry observers believing that such a move could help to break Amazon’s hold over the fast-growing e-book market, while enabling e-book lovers to shift e-books more easily between devices.

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Rankin tells Orion: ‘Authors need publishers’

Ian Rankin

|By Charlotte Williams

Author Ian Rankin stressed that authors “really need publishers”, especially “as more content floods the market, of varying quality”, as his own publisher Orion celebrated its 20th anniversary at a reception at the Natural History Museum in London last night.

Rankin, who was one of the original authors to join Orion 20 years ago along with Lady Antonia Fraser and Maeve Binchy, said in a speech to the assembled company that publishers were needed by authors to produce “well put together, well edited, displayed and marketed” stories to “fans of the written word in all its forms”. He said: “Publishers need authors but authors really need publishers, especially as more content flood the market of varying quality”. He himself had signed another two-book deal with the publisher earlier in the day, he added.

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Apple launches self-publishing app, partners with textbook publishers

By Lisa Campbell

Apple has announced a new multimedia app called iBooks Author, allowing writers to create their own e-books, in a move to rival Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing.

At an event taking place in New York’s Guggenheim Museum today (19th January), Apple’s Phil Schiller said the free app was “the most advanced, most powerful, yet most fun e-book authoring tool ever created” designed to simplify the process of designing and selling digital textbooks through the iBookstore.

Authors can simply drag a Word file into a book creation space and the app will automatically design the book, creating appropriate sections and headers. Users can then drag and resize images within the text and add terms and definitions – and film can even be added to the ibook.

The app was announced at the same time as a new textbook experience for iPad, iBooks 2, a free app which includes a new ‘textbook’ category.

So far publishers Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have partnered with Apple to supply content for the textbook category, which the company said will eventually include “every subject, every grade level, for every student”.

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Google Books and ActuaLitté launch out-of-copyright library

Google

23.12.11 | Barbara Casassus

Google Books and the French online publication ActuaLitté have launched a digital library of out-of-copyright books that have been scanned by the US firm.

All the titles in the Google Books catalogue will be available through actualitte.com/bibliotheque for free downloading in PDF or ePub format.

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