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Round Table, SmarterComics Offer Free Downloads, More Nonfiction Comics
On the eve of the release of SmarterComics' line of adaptations of bestselling business and motivational prose titles, book packager The Round Table Companies has joined with SmarterComics to release the nonfiction comics titles as e-books, available for free download for 90 days beginning April 1.
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Authors Guild's Turow on Random's Agency Model Adoption
Authors Guild president Scott Turow has praised Random House’s announcement last week that it is adopting an agency model for selling e-books. "Book retailers have faced extraordinary challenges in recent years," he wrote, "a double whammy of recession and a shift to digital books that had cut many stores out. For anyone who loves bookstores, this is the best news out of the publishing industry in a long time. Random House's move may prove to be a lifeline for some bookstores."
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Game Changer? A Talk with Jane McGonigal
Last month, McGonigal published Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Just before SXSW kicked off, PW caught up with McGonigal to talk about who gamers are (you might be surprised) and the implications of gaming's swift rise for publishing.
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Ruckus Media Gets $3.5 Million in New Financing
Rick Richter's Ruckus Media Group has received an important vote of support in the form of $3.5 million in new funding. The Series A funding was led by Alsop Louie Partners along with private investors.
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Copia, CRA To Launch College Pilot Program
Copia, DMC Worldwide's e-reading software and book retail and social networking platform, announced an agreement with the Collegiate Retail Alliance, a coalition of 50 large independent college stores, to launch a pilot program at ten CRA member universities that will highlight Copia's educational utility. The Copia program will be branded to each individual store and will be accessible via laptops and desktop PCs, Windows 7 and Android smartphones, the iPad other tablet devices.
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Librarian Unhappiness Over New Harper e-Book Lending Policy Grows
The sometimes uneasy relationship between librarians and book publishers reached a new level of tension after HarperCollins—citing the explosive growth of e-book sales—announced a new e-book lending policy beginning March 7 that will limit the length of its library licenses.
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Random House Switches to Agency Model For E-book Sales
Random House, Inc., the last of the big six houses still using the wholesale model for e-book sales, announced plans to adopt the agency model effective March 1 and the company has begun implementing the switch with accounts today. A Random House spokesperson said the company is making the change now because it is the right time. The adoption of the agency model is "part commercial motivation for our customers; part investment in their digital sales growth and ours; part ensuring our authors that their e-books will be even more widely available anywhere anytime," the spokesperson said.
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The Week in Apps: February 25, 2011
This week, Holly Hunter reads the story of the three little pigs, and children’s book characters Horton (who hears a Who), the Little Mermaid, Fancy Nancy, and Biscuit come alive in digital format. Plus, another Berenstain Bears app, and apps spun off of books by children’s book author Hans Wilhelm.
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Going Digital: Nosy Crow's First Kids' App Hits the Market
Although founded by Kate Wilson, a veteran figure in British children's book publishing, Nosy Crow, a U.K.-based kids' publishing startup, is working to establish itself as an app developer focused on the children’s market. To that end, it has just released The Three Little Pigs, its first effort in producing a children's multimedia app for the iPad.
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The Week in Children's Apps: February 24, 2011
This week, Holly Hunter reads the story of the three little pigs, and children’s book characters Horton (who hears a Who), the Little Mermaid, Fancy Nancy, and Biscuit come alive in digital format. Plus, another Berenstain Bears app, and apps spun off of books by children’s book author Hans Wilhelm.
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Open Library Launches New “Digitize and Lend” E-Book Lending Program
Open Library, a group of more than 150 libraries led by the Internet Archive, has announced plans to lend browser-based digital editions of e-books, beginning with a new, cooperative 80,000+ e-book lending collection of mostly 20th-century books.
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Kindle, We Have a Problem: Amazon's Pricing Policies Affect Publishers
In the comics world, most of the digital conversation is about comic books as apps for tablets and smart phones. However, while there is a nascent market for comics on e-book readers like the Kindle and B&N’s color device, the Nook, Amazon’s recently introduced digital “delivery fee,” charging publishers 15 cents per megabyte to transfer a book’s file to the Kindle, has forced some comics publishers to rethink using the Kindle platform.
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E-books Boost Sales: From the AAP
The Association of American Publishers' domestic sales report for 2010 showed e-book sales jumping significantly from last year, rising 164.4%, with e-books bringing in $441 million at the 14 companies that reported sales, compared to $166.9 million in 2009.
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Reaching the e-Teen
As more titles become available and as device prices fall, a growing number of kids are jumping on the e-wagon. "I think [e-books] are the future for everyone," says Linda Braun, the immediate past president of the Young Adult Library Services Association. "They will take off because of ease of access and portability."
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The Week in Apps: February 18, 2011
This week, the three little pigs and five little monkeys go digital. There are also new apps for learning the 50 states, as well as a popular college guide.
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The Week in Children's Apps: February 17, 2011
This week, Britain's Nosy Crow debuts its first iPad app with an interactive version of the Three Little Pigs; Eileen Christelow's "Five Little Monkeys" are jumping... to the app format; and a new app helps kids learn about the 50 states.
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Perseus, NBC Release 'Roots' Enhanced E-Book
Coinciding with Black History Month, Perseus and NBC News have announced a new e-book for the iPad, Roots: The Enhanced Edition. The $15.99 e-book includes the complete original book and multimedia features such as video from the NBC News Archives, Haley family photos, recordings from the Haley Estate, and commentary from NBC News special correspondent Tom Brokaw.
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Hay House Partners with Vook for E-Books
Hay House, one of the leading publishers of self-help books, has contracted with digital publisher Vook to produce hundreds of enhanced e-books across multiple platforms, the first of which will be available this May. Hay House is the first publisher to utilize Vook’s MotherVook technology engine, through which Vook has already created 150 of its own titles and which is now being extended to other publishers.
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More Vendors, More Options In the Digital Comics Market
In the wake of last week’s launch of Diamond Digital, Diamond Comics Distributors new program to offer digital downloads through physical comics shops, digital comics vendors like ComiXology and iVerse Media have entered into the spotlight of digital comics distribution. While both vendors are among the frontrunners in offering digital comics, PWCW talked with a number of digital vendors also looking to compete in the digital comics distribution and retail marketplace.
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The Week in Apps: February 11, 2011
This week, there is a Facebook app based on the Princeton Review’s popular Best 373 Colleges, a literary guide to Melbourne, an app that collects reviews of children's books, and an e-bookstore app for kids.
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