Digital Book News

When ebook companies fix prices:

Apple E-Book Price-Fixing Trial Set for 2013

The U.S. joined 15 states and Puerto Rico in claiming Apple, CBS Corp. (CBS) (CBS)’s Simon & Schuster, Lagardère SCA’s Hachette Book Group, News Corp. (NWSA) (NWSA)’s HarperCollins, Macmillan and Penguin colluded to fix prices of e-books. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, who is presiding over the consolidated lawsuits in federal court in Manhattan, set the trial for June 3, 2013.

“Several parties, Apple and DOJ are pushing for a fast trial as fast as can be accomplished that is consistent with justice,” Cote said yesterday as she set the nonjury trial with Apple and other defendants that haven’t settled.

. . . Apple’s digital book-pricing practice may have cost consumers more than $100 million, Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said at a Washington news conference after that suit was filed.

The case is U.S. v. Apple, 12-cv-02826, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Eeep . . . Big Brother is a . . . book? Ray Bradbury might have figured it would turn out like this!

WSJ: Your E-Book is Reading You

For centuries, reading has largely been a solitary and private act, an intimate exchange between the reader and the words on the page. But the rise of digital books has prompted a profound shift in the way we read, transforming the activity into something measurable and quasi-public.

The major new players in e-book publishing—Amazon, Apple and Google—can easily track how far readers are getting in books, how long they spend reading them and which search terms they use to find books. Book apps for tablets like the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook record how many times readers open the app and how much time they spend reading. Retailers and some publishers are beginning to sift through the data, gaining unprecedented insight into how people engage with books.

Great opportunities for self-published authors!

California Libraries Make Deal with Smashwords

Califa, California’s largest library network, is about to strike an ebook deal with self-publishing site Smashwords, Library Journal reports. The partnership would bring about 10,000 self-published ebooks into Califa’s 220 libraries.

Califa would “purchase about 10,000 of the company’s top titles for about $3 a title.” Some of the titles could cost less, though: Smashwords CEO Mark Coker recently told me that the company will soon allow its authors to set their own ebook prices, and said “a lot of them are going to want to offer libraries lower pricing…or will want to offer their books for free to libraries.”

But unfortunately . . .

People Overlook EBooks in Libraries

Some 62% of respondents to the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project’s latest library survey said they didn’t know if their library offered e-book lending. In reality, three-quarters of public libraries in the U.S. offer this service. The problem is, not enough people are taking advantage of it, or even know about it.
In fact, only 12% of Americans over the age of 16 who read e-books say they’ve borrowed one from the library in the past year.
. . . Pew found 52% of e-book borrowers reported at one point or another they encountered a waiting list to borrow an e-book. We think digital, 25 people can read it at once, but that’s not the case at all. Mitgang says you need to “think of digital books as a physical book, you can only lend it to one person at a time.”