"Destroy Amazon!": Rakuten Kobo and Kodansha's Tokyo Love-in The ground shifts in Japan, as giant firm Rakuten, owner of Kobo, uses the gift of a tee-shirt displaying the slogan to telegraph a new partnership with big publisher Kodansha against the internet retailer.
Links of the week July 16 2012 (29)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
23 July 2012
TOKYO: The keynote panel discussion at Tokyo's E-Book Expo, as part of the Tokyo Book Fair last week, wasn't expected to get the pulses racing despite the presence of Mikitani-san, whose company Rakuten has acquired Kobo, and Noma-san, the leader of the giant publisher Kodansha. We feared that the dot-com arriviste and the bastion of traditional Japanese publishing would do little more than exchange platitudes. Such an exchange would signal that the publishing establishment had pigeon holed Kobo alongside the much reviled Amazon and that the prospect for the whole industry getting out its digital limbo was slim. At the local train station, the poster reads: "A reading revolution. Whole new ways to enjoy books. (From) Rakuten Kobo" That's what we expected. Instead, we got a Rakuten Kodansha love-in, which heralds a sea change in Japanese publishing.
How I got a big advance from a big publisher and self-published anyway In Penelope Trunk's blog she relates the not very impressive story of her encounters with publishers who can't tell her anything about promoting her book.
I have a new book out today. It's called The New American Dream: A Blueprint for a New Path to Success. You will notice that the link goes to Hyperink. They are an independent publisher. I sold this same book, two years ago, to a mainstream publisher.
16 July 2012
The Incredible Resilience of Books Veteran American publisher Peter Osnos says that despite challenges faced by the publishing industry and past predictions, the written word has not seen its last day.
In the mid-1980s when I joined Random House as an editor, there was widespread angst in the publishing industry about the growing role of mall-based bookstores -- Walden and Dalton were then the major chains -- because they emphasized bestsellers and genre categories such as science fiction and romance over literary titles and serious nonfiction. A trend toward discounting, led by Crown Books based in Washington, was another worry, opening the way to price competition instead of the traditional acceptance of prices set by publishers. Walden, Dalton, and Crown are all now gone, along with Borders, which was then becoming the up-market retailer because of its commitment to so many varieties of books and its innovative inventory system.
Seth Godin's self-publishing experiment is over Keith Murphy in the Mobylives blog on why famous self-publisher Seth Godin is returning to traditional publishing - after using Kickstarter to get pledges for 10,000 copies.
Seth Godin is returning to Portfolio, his former publisher, two years after jumping ship in favor of self-publishing and selling his books directly to readers. Godin announced yesterday that his self-publishing experiment was over, and that he would release three new titles through Portfolio starting in January. The move comes after Godin used Kickstarter to gauge interest in his upcoming book projects. By the end of the day on June 18th Godin had signed up pledgers for 10,000 copies of his lead title, The Icarus Deception.
Making E-books Is Harder Than It Looks Andrew Zack in the Huffington Post on why ebooks are more expensive to produce than people think.
As the Department of Justice faces off with the major publishers and Apple, I want to offer up a simple statement that likely contradicts what most readers believe: Making e-books is harder than it looks. As a literary agent, I fell victim to the same false conclusions I think most readers do, that e-books are easily produced from paper books. But that's not quite true.
$7,000 Fine for Sharing "WordPress For Dummies" on BitTorrent A New York federal court ruled in favor of John Wiley & Sons, one of the world's largest book publishers. Robert Carpenter from Poughkeepsie, New York, has been ordered to pay the publisher $7,000 in damages for sharing a copy of WordPress All-in-One For Dummies on BitTorrent, thus becoming guilty of both copyright and trademark infringement.
A New York federal court has ordered a rare default judgment in favor of John Wiley & Sons, one of the world's largest book publishers. Robert Carpenter from Poughkeepsie, New York, has been ordered to pay the publisher $7,000 in damages for sharing a copy of "WordPress All-in-One For Dummies" on BitTorrent. According to Judge William Pauley, the man is guilty of both copyright and trademark infringement. bittorrent for dummiesLast fall, John Wiley and Sons became the first book publisher to go after BitTorrent users in the US. And the publisher didn't stop at just one. In recent months Wiley has filed more than a dozen mass BitTorrent lawsuits involving a few hundred John Doe defendants in total.