Book site Bookish launches

| By Charlotte Williams

Book retail website Bookish has launched, featuring content including book recommendations, extracts, articles by a dedicated editorial staff, and partnerships with the Onion and USA Today which are aimed at driving readers to the site.

The initiative is backed by Hachette, Penguin and Simon & Schuster in the US. Users can sign up to receive newsletters, book and author news and create personal bookshelves, and share content over social media and email.

The recommendation engine on the site is fed by Bookish editors, authors, book editors and publishers.

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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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Australia launches Stella Prize for women’s writing

|By  Benedicte Page

Australia’s first major literary prize for women’s writing, the Stella Prize, said to be “inspired by the hugely successful UK Women’s Prize for Fiction”, will be awarded in 2013.

The $50,000 prize, named after My Brilliant Career author Stella Maria Miles Franklin, will be open to fiction and non-fiction books by an Australian woman published in 2012. The inaugural founding patron is Ellen Koshland and the Koshland Innovation Fund.

Stella Prize chair Aviva Tuffield said the prize hoped to “erode the self-perpetuating cycle of underrepresentation that confronts all women writers.”

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BISG a.g.m. focused on change

| By Gayle Feldman

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) looked energetic and focused at its annual meeting in New York last week. That was not always the case. There’s nothing like life-changing challenges to concentrate collective minds on the role an industry-wide organisation can play.

In the past year, BISG added 32 members and expanded the board; the executive leadership now includes Safari chief Andrew Savikas and Wiley sales vice-president George Stanley. Hachette c.o.o. Ken Michaels has just taken over as board chair, having co-chaired with indefatigable Sourcebooks founder Dominique Raccah. One of the most high-profile accomplishments of Raccah’s tenure is the BookStats project—at long last, instead of individually producing data that often conflicted, BISG and the Association of American Publishers are working together to produce data that is useful.

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Beijing ban on Japanese books ‘may spread’

| By Michael Fitzpatrick

Books by Japanese authors and titles about Japanese topics have been removed from bookshops in Beijing, and authorities are pressuring Chinese publishers not to translate and publish Japanese content as tensions escalate between the two countries over a territorial dispute.

On 14th September Japan renewed claims to the Senkaku islands, known as the Diaoyus in China. Shortly after, officials at the Beijing Municipal Press and Publications Bureau—the body that oversees publishing in the capital—told Chinese publishers to “refrain from releasing and selling books related to Japan”. The body has also demanded a halt to any books written by Japanese authors—as well as books related to Japan—planned to be published in China.

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US independents urge DoJ to protect agency model

A group of independent publishers in America have written to the Department of Justice in support of the agency agreement, warning that abolishing it would reduce competition in the market.

The nine indie presses – including Grove/Atlantic, W. W. Norton and Perseus Books Group – joined forces to warn that the DOJ abolishing the agency agreement would lead to Amazon taking a monopoly in the e-bookselling market because it sold e-books at below cost.

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French trade revolt over VAT

France

| By Barbara Casassus

The French book trade has reacted badly to the government’s decision to raise the reduced VAT rate on books from 5.5% to 7% on 1st January as part of a financial package to help shrink France’s mushrooming public deficit.

The French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l’Edition, SNE) and the French Booksellers Association (Syndicat de la Librairie Française, SLF) condemned the move, as did several members of parliament and the opposition Socialist party. The party warned the book sector was in imminent danger with “little hope” for publishers and independent booksellers. It said the budget-saving measure was ridiculous.

The SNE said it regretted the absence of consultation over the move while the SLF warned that it could cut average net profits from 0.3% of sales to 0.2% and lead to the closure of hundreds of bookshops. Alexandre Bompard, c.e.o. of French cultural products chain FNAC, was reported as saying that the increase threatened the fragile book sector, which was already under pressure.

He was backed by the Syndicat des Disributors de Loisirs Culturels (SDLC), which comprises Decitre, FNAC, Cultura, Le Furet du Nord and Virgin Stores. The rise would “generate large losses” on stocks acquired with 5.5% VAT, and “create insurmountable problems” in a market where prices are printed on books, he said. Already the decline in sales of books by bricks and mortar stores this year is undermining chains, which are having to absorb higher overheads, it added.

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US Authors Guild attacks Amazon over Kindle Lending

   15.11.11 | Graeme Neill

The US Authors Guild has accused Amazon.com of “boldly breaching its contracts” with publishers by signing them up to its new Kindle Lending programme without permission.

It claimed it is doing this to drive sales of its Kindle Fire, which is up against the Apple iPad and Barnes & Noble Nook in the US’ increasingly fraught e-reader wars.

The lending service was launched in the United States earlier this month although none of the “big six” publishers – Random House, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan – have signed up to it. US Kindle owners with Prime membership can download one book per month for free, but only borrow one at a time.

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Google E-Books comes to Canada

 | By Graeme Neill

Google has launched its e-book store in Canada, with the regional arms of Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin and Simon & Schuster signing up to the digital service.

The publishers join Canadian houses such as D&M Publishers, House of Anansi Press, McClelland & Stewart and Dundurn Press.

The e-book store launched in the United States in December 2010 and in the UK early last month. Scott Dougall, director of product management for Google Books, said there were a number of factors behind the international roll-out. He said: “Google is used to rolling out globally platforms that are free and available to everyone, but once you start rolling out a platform where you are selling paid goods, there’s a lot more legal requirements to conform to. There’s territorial rights, there’s copyright rules, there’s tax rules and tax rules meant that there are legal rules about what we display on the receipts and how we communicate with our users.”

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Australian competition body backs TBD takeover

The Book Depository

| By Graeme Neill

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has joined the UK’s Office of Fair Trading in giving the go-ahead to Amazon’s acquisition of The Book Depository.

In its ruling, it said “the proposed acquisition was unlikely to substantially lessen competition in any relevant market”. It argued the merged firm would continue to face competition from Australian and overseas-based retailers.

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