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an online newsletter for publishers, authors, book lovers and booksellers

Vol. 9, No. 2   February 2011

Index (scroll down for stories)  

  1. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange signs $1.3 million book deal with Knopf
  2. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ paramour to bare all in book
  3. Breaking news from the book barons
  4. China market for foreign book rights developing rapidly
  5. Baidu tries to cast off links to piracy
  6. Shania Twain has memoir, show with Oprah, marriage on horizon
  7. Draft bust Ryan Leaf signs three-book deal with micropublisher
  8. Is publishing deranged? Novel purportedly written by Snooki released
  9. News about self-publishing and vanity presses
10. News about bookstores, publishing, marketing and promotion
11. Borders bankruptcy would hurt major publishers
12. Low-income homes have only one book per 300 children
13. International outlook: The Indian book market at a glance
14. Books to movies and movies about books department
15. How bad is it – and what is the book business doing to cope?
16. Update journalism: Latest skinny on past Southern Review stories
17. The publishing revolution: News of e-books and other new media
18. P-book sales continue to decline as e-book sales soar
19. Google eBooks may give boost to Android operating system
20. Amazon introduces Appstore development portal
21. Apple introduces iBooks 1.2, pushes color e-books for iPad
22. Google, Amazon put new emphasis on books for browsers
23. Graphic novels and comics news
24. New politically correct  ‘Huckleberry Finn’ omits the ‘N’ word
25. Free comic book: ‘Commander X Adventures’
26. News about self-publishing and vanity presses
27. These sites are the most important for selling self-published e-books
28. Sisters in Crime survey delineates mystery/crime fiction market
29. Milestones: Records, Prizes and news of note in book publishing
30. American Library Association names Newbery, Caldecott winners
31. Disney Publishing Worldwide hits one million app downloads
32. News of chicanery, dishonesty and tort-feasing in the book business
33. Author tells in Kindle offering how he corrupted Amazon reviews
34. David Sedaris puts out tip jar at signings, makes $4,000
35. Fourth Trivandrum Book Fair concludes in India
36. Rural India was theme of Delhi Book and Stationery Fair
37. Sixth annual Karachi International Book Fair 2010 held Dec. 24-28
38. Boston Comic Con moving to Hynes Convention Center
39. Major upcoming trade shows, book fairs and book festivals
 

1. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange signs $1.3 million book deal with Knopf
 

WikiLeaks.org founder Julian Assange has signed a $1.3 million book deal to cover legal costs relating to his arrest and any lawsuits aimed at his controversial Web site.

The book is to be published in the U.S. by Alfred A. Knopf, part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at the Random House unit of Germany’s Bertelsmann AG.

In an interview with the UK's Sunday Times, Assange, 39, said he is writing the book in order to cover his mounting legal fees.

"I don't want to write this book, but I have to," he told the Times. "I have already spent £200,000 for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat."

Assange, an Australian national, is fighting extradition from the United Kingdom to Sweden, where two women have accused him of sexual misconduct. He is free on bail in England after being arrested on Dec. 7 in London.

Assange told the British newspaper that he will receive $800,000 from Knopf while a separate deal with British publisher Canongate is worth £325,000, or approximately $502,000.

According to Assange, the site has lost approximately $650,000 since this funding was cut off by PayPal, Visa and MasterCard. At its peak, the site was receiving about $130,000 in daily donations, he said. In addition, Assange said in December that his existing legal costs were approaching £500,000.

The site, which has been up and running since 2006, has repeatedly created controversy since April, when it released a video of a 2007 Baghdad airstrike that shows a U.S. army air-to-ground attack that killed two members of the Reuters news staff.

In late November of this year, WikiLeaks and five worldwide newspapers began to leak over 250,000 American military and diplomatic cables from 274 U.S. embassies around the world.

2. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ paramour to bare all in book

Title Town Publishing, a small publisher in Green Bay, Wis., announced on Jan. 4 that it will publish a memoir by one-time Clarence Thomas paramour Lillian McEwen. The small Green Bay-based publisher will release D.C. Unmasked and Undressed in early February.

When Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his explosive 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Thomas vehemently denied the allegations and his handlers cited his steady relationship with another woman in an effort to deflect Hill's allegations.

Lillian McEwen was that woman.

At the time, she was on good terms with Thomas. The former assistant U.S. attorney and Senate Judiciary Committee counsel had dated him for years, even attending a March 1985 White House state dinner as his guest. She had worked on the Hill and was wary of entering the political cauldron of the hearings. She was never asked to testify, as then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who headed the committee, limited witnesses to women who had a "professional relationship" with Thomas.

Now, she says that Thomas often said inappropriate things about women he met at work - and that she could have added her voice to the others, but didn't.

McEwen. now 65, is retired from a successful career as a prosecutor, law professor and administrative law judge for federal agencies. She has been twice married and twice divorced, and has a 32-year-old daughter.

After Thomas’ wife, Virginia Thomas, left a voice mail on Virginia Hill's office phone at Brandeis University seeking an apology - a request that Hill declined - McEwen changed her mind and decided to talk about her relationship with Thomas.

McEwen says her relationship with Thomas was disclosed to Biden, who had been her boss years earlier.

In her Senate testimony, Hill, who worked with Thomas at two federal agencies, said that Thomas would make sexual comments to her at work, including references to scenes in hard-core pornographic films.

In his 2007 memoir, the justice calls Hill a tool of liberal activists outraged because he did not fit their idea of what an African American should believe.

McEwen's memoir includes explicit details of her relationship with Thomas, which she said included a freewheeling sex life.

Given that history, she said Hill's long-ago description of Thomas's behavior resonated with her. "He was obsessed with porn," she said of Thomas, who is now 63. "He would talk about what he had seen in magazines and films, if there was something worth noting."

Presented with some of McEwen's assertions, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Thomas was unavailable for comment.

McEwen recalls writing Thomas a short note before the confirmation hearings, curious about what she should say if she were quizzed about their relationship. She said Thomas preferred that she would take "the same attitude of his first wife," who never talked publicly about their relationship.

McEwen, a Democrat, acknowledges growing increasingly irritated with Thomas's conservative jurisprudence and his penchant for casting himself as a victim in the Hill controversy.

Thomas himself has obliquely referred to the McEwen both in his 2007 memoir and during his confirmation hearing.

McEwen met Thomas in 1979, when both were among a tiny handful of young, black Capitol Hill staffers. A group of them would hold monthly meetings at neighborhood watering holes, and soon enough McEwen and Thomas had struck up a close friendship.

At the time, Thomas was married to his first wife and working for then-Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.). McEwen, meanwhile, had recently separated from her first husband.

Over time, she said, Thomas would come by her place for drinks. She said the relationship grew intimate after Thomas left his wife in 1981. She said they broke off their relationship in about 1986.

But now, she says, "I know Clarence would not be happy with me."

"I have no hostility toward him," McEwen said. "It is just that he has manufactured a different reality over time. That's the problem that he has."

3. Breaking news from the book barons

Nora Roberts has joined Stieg Larsson and James Patterson in the Kindle Million Club by selling over one million e-books for Amazon's Kindle. Roberts, has officially sold 1,170,539 million copies on Kindle. By the time this item is read, she will have sold many more.

4. China market for foreign book rights developing rapidly

In 2005, fewer than 10,000 foreign book titles were sold to China.

By 2008, according to the General Administration of Press and Publication, more than 15,700 foreign titles were bought by Chinese publishing companies, including more than 4,000 from the United States.

Among the more popular U.S. titles in China are Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, with two million copies in print, and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, with 800,000 copies in print.

Novels currently sell in China for 20 to 36 renminbi (US $3 - $5.40). According to the New York Times, the biggest agency selling rights to mainland China is the Big Apple agency. It represents publishers and imprints from around the world seeking to sell book title rights to the more than 1,000 publishers in China. It generally receives a 10 percent cut on deals.

The agency said it sealed more than 2,000 contracts in 2009 and expected that number to increase this year. Big Apple recently resold Chinese rights to J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye for more than $200,000.
 

5. Baidu tries to cast off links to piracy

Baidu Inc, operator of the China’s most popular Internet search engine, has begun official cooperation with book publishers by charging for its e-book services, a first step in its fight against piracy, analysts said in December.

Readers will be able to purchase electronic books from the Baidu e-book store, a section of the Baidu Library launched late last year. E-books will reportedly cost around 10 percent of the same book in print form.

In total, nine categories of books are being offered including lifestyle and technology, while some categories like literature remain empty on the site.

The search engine launched its online store quietly.

Previously users could download e-books and documents via Baidu Library for free with the use of virtual money earned through submitting or sharing documents or books online.

The library stocked nine million documents as of October.

But the company's free documents sharing model was not without problems and eventually incurred copyright infringement lawsuits.

Shanda Literature Ltd. formed an alliance with copyright owners including China Written Works Copyright Society. The group filed a lawsuit against Baidu Inc. over copyright infringement in December. Some of Shanda Literature's most popular novels can be downloaded from Baidu Library for free due to peer-to-peer sharing functions.

Shanda Literature is the digital publishing unit of Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd, one of China's leading interactive entertainment media companies. It has over three million copyrighted works in its database.

Some domestic publishing houses and writers, like the country's "King of Fairy Tales" Zheng Yuanjie, have lent their support to Shanda Literature Ltd. over the dispute.

"This is important for Baidu Library to promote copyrighted books and avoid piracy," said Hai Lei, manager of the user product marketing department with Baidu.

"We are negotiating with dozens of publishers and publishing houses that can promote their books via our e-book store," Hai said.

Sharing income for e-book sales and inset advertisements with publishers is their cooperation model, according to Hai. (Source: Zhao Qian, Global Times, Dec. 28, 2010)

6. Shania Twain has memoir, show with Oprah, marriage on horizon

Shania Twain, who has been out of the spotlight the last few years, has an autobiography due out in the spring, and is scheduled to have her own show, “Why Not with Shania Twain,” on Oprah Winfrey's new television network OWN, which launched on Jan. 1, 2011.

Twain is also engaged to be married, representatives from her record label, Mercury Records Nashville, have confirmed.

News of the engagement first appeared on the Internet via Us Weekly, which reported that Twain's husband-to-be, Swiss-born Nestle executive Frederic Thièbaud, proposed to the singer a few months ago. People magazine reported that the engagement was sealed with a three-carat diamond solitaire ring.

Thièbaud is the ex-husband of Twain's former best friend, Marie-Anne Thièbaud. During the 2008 dissolution of Twain's 14-year marriage to record producer Robert "Mutt" Lange, it was rumored that Marie-Anne and Lange had an affair, though both parties deny the rumor.

7. Draft bust Ryan Leaf signs three-book deal with micropublisher

Former NFL quarterback Ryan Leaf is planning to write three books about his life, football career and addiction to painkillers.

The deal was announced by Crimson Oak Publishing, a publisher located in Pullman, Wash., that bills itself as specializing in books about "hope, possibility and determination."

Leaf confirmed the book deal.

The first book will focus on Leaf's career at Washington State, including the team's 1998 Rose Bowl appearance.

Another book will be a broader biography covering his youth in Montana and troubled NFL career.

A third book will be about his addiction to prescription painkillers, which resulted in a 2009 indictment while he was coaching quarterbacks at West Texas A&M.

In April, Leaf pleaded guilty to eight felony drug charges and received 10 years of probation.

8. Is publishing deranged? Novel purportedly written by Snooki released

Snooki Polizzi’s first novel, A Shore Thing, is unlikely to be remembered as literature. To become an expert writer, if we acknowledge Malcolm Gladwell, takes about 20,000 hours of practice. Snooki had yet to finish reading the fist book in her life when she announced she was writing a novel, and the book miraculously appeared.

Foolish reviewers have since fawned over the tome purportedly written by Snooki. Excerpts ran in the Washington Post. An example: “I love food. I love drinking, boys, dancing until my feet swell. I love my family, my friends, my job, my boss. And I love my body, especially the badonk.” And again, "Yum. Johnny Hulk tasted like fresh gorilla."

TV's Jersey Shore cast member Polizzi did a cameo on The Late Show with David Letterman to offer the "Top Ten Reasons to Buy the New Snooki Book.". Reason number one: "The finest work of literature ever written by an author named Snooki."

For anyone who actually believes the book  was written by Polizzi, let’s set the record straight, It was ghost-written by Valerie Frankel.

A Shore Thing  is published by Gallery, $24.
 

The article is at http://ereads.com/2011/01/do-authors-make-good-publishers.html. In it, he looks at three of the most publicized authors who have ventured into the self-publishing arena - Seth Godin, Cory Doctorow and J.A. Konrath. Bottom line of the article is that few authors have what it takes to be successful publishers… How are self-publishers doing selling their wares through Amazon.com’s Kindle store? According to a post by  Robin

 Sullivan on Jan. 3, here are the sales figures for December 2010 for five self-published authors in the U.S.: Amanda Hocking, 109,000; H.P. Mallory, 22,300; J.A. Konrath, 13,000; Victorine Lieske: 11,145; Michael Sullivan, 10,500. Not to be outdone, Stephen Leather piped in a day later to say, “Hey, let’s not forget the Brits. I sold 43,000 copies of Once Bitten, The Basement and Dreamer’s Cat through the UK Kindle store in December, more than 12,000 on Christmas Day and Boxing Day alone!”

10. News about bookstores, publishing, marketing and promotion

Amazon is acquiring the publication rights of up to 121 books currently published by The Toby Press. The books represent the works of 61 authors and include diverse fiction titles and works in translation. Amazon's publishing imprints, AmazonEncore and AmazonCrossing, will re-publish the works as print editions and Kindle editions in the United States and globally in cases where authors choose to make their works available. Kindle editions will be available for Kindle devices and Kindle apps, and print editions will be available on www.amazon.com and its websites worldwide, as well as in bookstores throughout the United States, United Kingdom and Germany.

11. Borders bankruptcy would hurt major publishers

The announcement by Borders that it was suspending payments to certain vendors while it seeks to refinance debt is seen as an omen of imminent collapse of the bookseller.

The collapse, most analysts agree, would hurt book publishers in general.

Agents and authors would also be adversely affected if the more than 600 Borders stores went out of business.

Traditional book outlets such as Barnes & Noble and Borders account for about 49 percent of book sales in the U.S., according to Albert N. Greco, professor of marketing at Fordham University, who follows trends in book publishing and book retailing.

While people could go to other retail outlets such as Wal-Mart to buy books at retail, the discount chains typically offer fewer selections. Wal-Mart carries around 1,400 to 1,700 titles, said Greco, while Borders' superstores stock well over 100,000.

Publishers as large as Pearson PLC’s Penguin, CBS's Simon & Schuster, Random House and News Corp.'s HarperCollins could lose between $10 million to $50 million in sales if Borders goes out of business, Greco said. Some smaller publishers also would go under.

Barnes & Noble is incensed that Borders is getting special terms from its vendors. "We fully expect publishers will require Borders to pay their bills on the same basis upon which all other booksellers pay theirs," said Mary Ellen Keating, a spokeswoman at Barnes & Noble. "Any changes in publishers' terms should be made available to all."

Over the years, Borders' has lost ground to its competitors.

Goldman Sachs estimates that Borders' share of physical book sales slipped to 8.7 percent in 2010 from 11.4 percent in 2006. Meanwhile Amazon's share rose to 17.5 percent in 2010 from 11 percent in 2006.

12. Low-income homes have only one book per 300 children

Cheerios has announced the findings of its national survey that asked moms of children aged two to six about the role reading plays in their daily lives.

The survey found that although today's moms are prioritizing reading - 67 percent read to their child at least once a day - nearly two-thirds (61 percent) say "busy schedules" prevent them from spending more time reading.

Through its continuing Spoonfuls of Stories program, Cheerios aims to recognize all of the families who read together, while also encouraging those who do not yet read every day to pick up a book and start.

The survey examined moms' perceptions of one of the greatest barriers to literacy today - lack of access to books.

A separate study (Neuman, Susan B. and David K. Dickinson, ed. Handbook of Early Literacy Research, Volume 2. New York, NY: 2006, p. 31) showed that while in middle income neighborhoods the ratio of books per child is 13 to one, in low-income neighborhoods, the ratio is one age-appropriate book for every 300 children.

According to the Cheerios survey, about four in 10 moms do not think there is a drastic disparity between middle and lower-income neighborhoods in the U.S. when it comes to children's access to books. Additionally, nine in 10 moms believe that all kids have access to books through their local school and/or public library - a misconception this year's Spoonfuls of Stories initiative hopes to address.

The Cheerios Reading Occasion Survey results are based on online interviews of 1,012 mothers with children ages two to six. Interviews were conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, Sept. 28-Oct. 4, 2010.

This past fall, Cheerios, through its Spoonfuls of Stories program, once again provide more than six million children's books, written in both English and Spanish, free inside Cheerios boxes.

Cheerios also made a $300,000 donation to First Book, an award-winning national nonprofit that helps get books into the hands of children from low-income families. Since 2001, Cheerios has donated more than $3.5 million to First Book.

"Parents play a key role in helping their children become readers. By putting books inside Cheerios boxes, we hope to inspire families to take a few minutes each day to enjoy a good book together," said Meredith Tutterow, Cheerios marketing manager. "Through its Spoonfuls of Stories program, Cheerios hopes to increase children's appetite for a good breakfast and a good book, paving the way for a productive day and a bright future."

Jennie Garth, an actress and the mother of three, joined forces with Spoonfuls of Stories to celebrate the ninth year of the program and to discuss why she feels it is so important to find time to read with her own kids each day.

"As a mother of three inquisitive daughters, I know how important it is to take time out of our busy lives to read to our children on a daily basis and to instill this important ritual at a young age. Along with nearly 40 percent of the moms surveyed by Cheerios, I too, was not aware that when it comes to children's access to books, there is a drastic disparity between middle and lower income neighborhoods in the U.S.," said Garth. "That's why I'm thrilled to be a part of an initiative aiming to provide millions of families with access to wonderful children's books and encouraging families to read together."

Since Spoonfuls of Stories' inception in 2001, Cheerios has distributed almost 50 million children's books inside boxes. This year's in-pack book offerings, appropriate for children aged three to eight and all from Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, are:

13. International outlook: The Indian book market at a glance

Book publishing in India is booming. It not only meets domestic demand but is playing a key role in international distribution.

Some the big names in Indian book publishing are: MBD Books, Academic Publishers, Overseas Press India, Manohar Publishers & Distributors, Allied Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd., Laxmi Publications, Asian Books Private Limited, Jain Book Agency (JBA), B. Jain Group of Companies, BahriSons Booksellers, Jaico Publishing House, CBS Publishers & Distributors PVT. LTD, Educational Publishing House, D C Books, Eastern Book Company and Emerald Publishers.

When it comes to bookstores in India, the leaders include: Strand Book Stall, Crosswords Book Store, Sahithya Bharathi Book Shop, Oxford Bookstore, Pragati Books Centre, Jain Book Agency (JBA), Mahavir General Store Books & Stationery, Acron Arcade, LANDMARK LTD, Aditya Books Pvt. Ltd., International Book House (IBH), Agarwal Book & General Store, Gangarams Book Bureau & Gallery, All India Book House, D.K. Agencies (Pvt.) Ltd., Amit Book & Stationers, Chawla Book Shop, Arun Book Depot, Chapter and Verse Book Store, BahriSons Booksellers, Butterfly Books, Book Selection Centre and Book Paradise.

Stationery manufacturers in India include Cello Writing Inst. & Cont. Pvt. Ltd., Reynolds, ADD Corporation Ltd., Rebnok Pens (Rover Writing Instruments), Adore Stationery Products (Market Movers Exports India Pvt. Ltd), Paras Pen Pvt. Ltd, Camlin Ltd., Navneet Stationery, Flair Pens Ltd. (Mumbai), Luxor International Pvt. Ltd, HINDUSTAN PENCILS PVT. LIMITED, Jineshwar Writing Instruments Pvt. Ltd. (Montex) and Kores India Ltd.

14. Books to movies and movies about books department

In 2010, there were 38 book-to-film adaptations, up from 22 in 2009. Word & Film featured "The Year in Books on Film," noting that instead of ranking the best overall adaptations, "we've highlighted specific feats of virtuoso performance, cinematography, score, voice-over narration, limb severing, etc…."

15. How bad is it – and what is the book business doing to cope?

Borders Group Inc. declined to a penny stock following its December announcement that it is delaying payments to some publishers, a sign that its financial troubles are worsening. The nation's second-largest bookstore chain by revenue, behind Barnes & Noble Inc., said the delays were part of its efforts to refinance its debt and that it had notified the publishers with which it is seeking to restructure payments. The retailer also said "there can be no assurance" that its larger refinancing efforts will be successful… The world's largest consumer book publisher, Random House Inc., a division of Germany’s Bertelsmann AG, is seeking to find tenants for nine of the 24 floors it now occupies at 1745 Broadway in New York. Random House plans to unload as much as 250,000 of 645,000 square feet it occupies in its headquarters building. The publisher, which used to own the building, has a long-term lease. Random House currently has a 30 percent vacancy rate on its floors. Many publishers, including Random House, have had to lay off staffers in the past few years because of the poor economy and its impact on book sales… Borders Group will close its distribution center in LaVergne, Tenn., this July. Some 310 employees will lose their jobs. The staff at the facility has already been cut by 200 in the last two years. Borders said that it no longer needs three distribution centers and will shift LaVergne's functions to its facilities in Carlisle, Pa. and Mira Loma, Calif.

16. Update journalism: Latest skinny on past Southern Review stories

Florida sheriff's deputies on Dec. 20 arrested the self-publishing author who wrote a guide on pedophilia. Phillip Ray Greaves II was arrested at his home in Pueblo, Colo. on obscenity charges. Amazon had allowed the book to be sold on its site, but amid an outcry from the public, pulled the book. Fox News reported, "Polk Sheriff Grady Judd says his office was able to arrest Greaves on Florida obscenity charges because Greaves sold and mailed his book, The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct, to Polk deputies. Judd said Greaves even signed the book." While Greaves lives in Colorado, by selling his book across state lines, he broke the law.

17. The publishing revolution: News of e-books and other new media

Amazon may sell more than eight million Kindles this year, "at least 60 percent more than analysts have predicted, according to two people who are aware of the company's sales projections," Bloomberg reported. One of the sources said the company sold 2.4 million Kindles in 2009. Analysts at Citigroup, Barclays Capital, BGC Partners and ThinkEquity estimated that Amazon would sell about five million Kindles this year. Caris & Co. predicted 4.8 million, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. projected four to five million, Bloomberg said… In the UK, e-book versions of romance novels are outselling p-book romances by seven to one. According to Nielsen BookScan, just two per cent of all printed books sold in the UK in 2009 were romantic novels, compared with 14 per cent of all e-books sold. One of the reasons – if you’re reading a romance on an e-reader device, no one can see the cover of what you’re reading… All-digital literary magazine Electric Literature’s new project, Broadcastr, will be a geolocative archive of stories. Participants will be able to record audio stories and place them on a map, and visitors can then use the app to hear stories left behind by others. Broadcastr is already gathering up the stories of organizations such as the Shoah Foundation to add a layer of storytelling to the very real world. Electric Literature also runs Electric Publisher, a way for authors and publishers to deliver content through smartphone apps.

18. P-book sales continue to decline as e-book sales soar

Total unit sales of all print books through the first 50 weeks of 2010 came to 674.5 million, a four percent decline from the same 50-week period in 2009, according to Nielsen BookScan. The service tracks about 75 percent of the market and does not include e-book sales.

Sales of hardcover books declined two percent, to 167.4 million units. Trade paperbacks, the biggest segment by units, suffered a three percent drop in sales, to 360.3 million.

Sales of mass market paperbacks, a category that has been troubled for decades, slid 13 percent to 104.8 million.

E-books, by contrast, are growing by leaps and bounds. Digital sales at Random House Inc., the world's largest trade publisher, are on track to surpass 250 percent in 2010, according to Chief Executive Markus Dohle.

In the most recent survey by the Association of American Publishers, e-books accounted for about nine percent of sales for the major publishers. Among bestsellers, the digital portion can easily top 30 percent, according to trade journal Publishers Weekly.

Nielsen executives have said that BookScan will begin tracking digital sales, but a start date has not yet been announced.

19. Google eBooks may give boost to Android operating system

Google is said to be ready to reduce the share of revenue it collects from the sale of Android apps.

Google broadened its competitive front against Apple and Amazon with the launch of Google eBooks. But Google eBooks remains a sideshow in the company's larger effort to establish Android as the dominant mobile development platform.

According to data released on Jan. 3 by Nielsen, Android has become the most popular smartphone operating system in the past six months and is approaching Apple's iPhone in terms of overall consumer market share.

With Android set to power a new wave of tablets, many of which were announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, Google hopes to encourage news publishers to participate in a digital news showcase for Android devices.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Google wants to improve news reading on Android devices and is prepared to offer better financial terms and access to data derived from app sales.

Presently, Amazon, Apple, and Google offer 70 percent of revenue from the sale of apps or digital news content and keep 30 percent for themselves. The Wall Street Journal says that Google has proposed taking a smaller percentage of revenue and providing customer data about app buyers. Lack of access to this data remains a significant gripe among large content providers and developers.

It's not clear whether Google intends to offers a greater share of revenue to all developers selling apps in the Android Market or only select new publishing partners, if the deal happens at all.

If Google goes through with this reported plan and offers Android developers a better deal, Amazon and Apple would likely feel pressure to reduce the percentage of revenue they collect in their respective online stores. (Source: Thomas Claburn ,  InformationWeek, Jan. 3, 2011)

20. Amazon introduces Appstore development portal

Amazon in early January launched its Amazon Appstore Developer Portal, the first step towards the creation of its own Android App Store, which will exist outside the official Google Android Market.

Although there are several other Android app stores (see story about Google app store above), Amazon's will likely be the first to have a major impact on the Android development community.

Amazon's application submission model is going to follow Apple's when it comes to which apps will be allowed into the new marketplace. Google only steps in when the application developer is in violation of its Terms of Service, terms which basically prevent harmful apps or malware from making their way to users' phones and tablets.

However, in Amazon's case, apps will be reviewed to ensure that they work properly as outlined by the developer. They also must be safe, both in terms of consumer data privacy and impact to the mobile device itself. Those rules are not all that different than Google's own requirements, but the way Amazon is going about enforcing them is - it will check apps prior to app store deployment, not after problem apps are spotted.

The Amazon review process will reportedly be more open than Apple's. Apps won't disappear into a black hole after submission, for sometimes months at a time, but their progress can be tracked at any time using the developer's Dashboard within the Developer Portal.

Amazon will also enforce some general guidelines: apps cannot be offensive, illegal, infringe on intellectual property or copyright and cannot contain pornography. However, Amazon says that it doesn't want to stifle innovation by prescribing what constitutes good app design.

"Amazon is a big believer in innovation in general," reads an FAQ on the Developer Portal, "and we hope to feature many creative and innovative apps in the Appstore."

The biggest change developers will be facing is the pricing model. Instead of the standard 70/30 split, developers tell Amazon what price they would like Amazon to list the app at. But Amazon doesn't have to sell it at that - it will sell it at whatever price it sees fit. Developers will still see a 70 percent cut of revenue generated, unless Amazon deeply discounts the app or offers it for free. Then developers are promised a 20 percent cut of the original list price. Or, in other words, Amazon pays developers 70 percent of the sale price or 20 percent of the list price, whichever is greater.

Being listed in Amazon doesn't prevent developers from selling at whatever price they choose in Google's Android Market - the only requirement is that both applications must be updated at the same time.
 

21. Apple introduces iBooks 1.2, pushes color e-books for iPad

According to the New York Times, Apple is making a big push for illustrated e-books in the iBookstore.

More than 100 new color e-books were introduced into the store with iBooks 1.2, the newest version of Apple's iPad e-reader software, which debuted in December. These books include children's books, cookbooks, and photo books, the Times said.

Illustrated picture books for kids are a big part of Apple's announcement, the Times said.

Publisher Jon Anderson from Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing said his company has been "itching to do it since e-books became possible," but they were limited by the lack of color options. "It finally gives us the opportunity to have our picture books join the e-book revolution," he said. "It gives us great opportunity to monetize our content in a way that we previously haven't been able to."

Some of the first books from Simon & Schuster that are included in the color e-books rollout in the iBookstore are Candace Fleming's Tippy-Tippy-Tippy, Hide!; Elise Broach's When Dinosaurs Came With Everything; and Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell's And Tango Makes Three.

The Times said that according to Anderson, at the beginning of 2011, color e-books will be released at the same time as a print edition. This is already the status quo for text-only e-books and their print versions.

Disney Publishing, HarperCollins, the Hachette Book Group, MacMillan and Workman Publishing are other publishers that will begin producing color illustrated e-books for the iBookstore, Apple told the Times.

22. Google, Amazon put new emphasis on books for browsers

December news about the Google eBooks store and Amazon's Kindle for the Web is that the Web browser (such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox) will play an important part in distribution and reading of e-books. Indeed, browsers may become as important a reading device as Amazon’s Kindle and the B&N Nook.

Self-publishers can benefit from adding browser-based e-book options to the services they use to sell their books, such as Smashwords, Scribd, and Amazon DTP. This best-of-breed group will get their books in all the dedicated e-book readers, mobile, and multi-use devices, and now, delivered into browsers.

In the frenzy of formats, platforms, and devices recently introduced to the market, awareness of the Web's importance as an e-publishing platform faded into the background.

One of the advantages of the Web browser is that with proper formatting, HTML can provide a better reading experience on a 19-inch flat-screen or a three-inch mobile device. The browser even gracefully delivers transmedia books with embedded audio, video, images, and graphics - something today's e-book readers are hard pressed to do.

Even if a book is enclosed in a container such as the Kindle (providing discovery, sales, and downloads), the browser delivery system lets book buyers access their downloads from the cloud - using any device they happen to be near that has an Internet connection, as long as it has an HTML5-compatible browser. Computers and smartphones are able to take advantage of books in browsers, but many dedicated e-readers can't.

The launch of Google eBooks in December has put books in browsers back  in the headlines. Hours after the announcement, Amazon announced Kindle for Web, making browsers even more relevant.

Readers can now buy hundreds of thousands of e-books from Google, or download over two million public domain titles for free. They can access their downloaded books on any device with an HTML5-enabled browser from their computers or via apps for iPhones, iPads, and Android-powered smartphones. Buyers can access the books they purchased on any e-reader based on an open platform, like EPUB, which includes the Sony Reader and the B&N Nook. (Source: Jane Doh, ARGNet, Dec. 17. 2010)

23. Graphic novels and comics news

Legendary Pictures has launched a new comic books division to publish original graphic novels that can be adapted into film and television projects.The unit, named Legendary Comics, will be headed by veteran comic book editor Bob Schreck, who most recently worked at IDW Publishing, and previously spent nearly a decade at DC Comics after founding Oni Press and also working at Dark Horse Comics. As editor in chief for Legendary Comics, Schreck will oversee the publication of four to six graphic novels a year both for digital and traditional print distribution. The first project will be published in the first half of 2011.

24. New politically correct  ‘Huckleberry Finn’ will omit the “N” word

An Auburn University professor and Mark Twain scholar is planning to release a new version of Huckleberry Finn, in one volume along with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that will replace all mentions of the N-word with “slave.”

Alan Gribben, who is publishing the new edition through NewSouth Books, explained the substitution in Publishers Weekly. “This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind,” he said. “Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.”

Hmmm. Maybe someone will expurgate the works of Shakespeare, which are rife with epithets. Can’t wait to read that.
 

25. Free comic book: ‘Commander X Adventures’

Nemo Publishing, publisher of Jay Piscopo's “The Undersea Adventures of Capt'n Eli” graphic novel series, has released its third annual “Commander X Adventures,” a free online-comic book.

This free comic book is available at http://www.captneli.com/dailycomic.php.

Commander X Adventures” features pulp adventure stories about the renowned time traveler, Commander X, who is an integral character in the “Capt'n Eli” series.

This collection of stories has a retro-modern feel. Piscopo noted “Our hero, Commander X, is a classic comic strip and movie serial hero with some high tech gizmos and time travel thrown in.”

Piscopo edited the free on-line comic book with a team of creators from the United States and England, including stories by Frank Schildiner, Vito Delsante and Michael Leal. Artwork was created by Marvel cover artist Mike Fyles, Wynn Ryder, Danny Kelly, Robert Caine Jeffcoat and Mort Todd. Piscopo also wrote and illustrated a story and edited the collection.    

In Piscopo's story, fans meet Commander X as the Undersea Knight.

26. These sites are the most important for selling self-published e-books

If you're self-publishing, several sites are important for marketing e-books.

The following sites are the most important. They will get your e-book into the largest number of e-tailers and devices, not to mention brick-and-mortar booktores like Books Inc. and Diesel, who are helping their customers buy digital material.

The sites:

• Upload your book to Google eBooks and promote it through their partner program.
• Upload your book to the Amazon store through Amazon DTP. (If you publish your POD book through CreateSpace they'll give you a DTP formatted version.)
• Upload your book to Smashwords for sale in their store. Distribute in their catalogs: Their Premium Catalog aggregates your book to major retailers and their Atom/OPDS Catalog gets your book in major mobile app platforms. They also provide HTML and text formats easily read in browsers.
• Upload your book to Scribd for social media attention, previews, sale, and distribution to the customer's device or for display in their browser-based reader.

A word of caution – these sites are finicky about material that is not formatted to their specifications. Be sure to follow directions. Most of the sites will send you specific messages about what you still need to do before your book is properly formatted for upload.

Other sites you might consider for marketing your e-book:

•  Upload your book to Lightning Source, the POD and e-book arm of Ingram for self-publishers. Ingram is the most important book wholesaler in the nation.

•  Another important site that sells a lot of e-books but requires special uploading is Fictionwise at http://www.fictionwise.com.

If you don’t know how to format an e-book, there are a number of services that will do it for you - for a price. The charge is around $250 at a service like eBook Architects.

27. Fiction tops 2010 ‘USA Today’ best-seller list

While about 80 percent of all books sold in the U.S. are non-fiction, that’s not the case when it comes to  best-sellers.

According to an analysis of USA Today's top 100 bestselling books list for 2010, 77 percent of the weekly bestsellers were novels, up from 76 percent in 2009 and the highest percentage since the list began in 1993.

Romance accounted for 12 percent of bestsellers, up from 10 percent in 2009.

USA Today suggested that one contributing factor might be that "readers who wouldn't be caught dead with risqué book covers in public enjoyed the privacy of reading romantic e-books" on an e-book reader.

Among nonfiction books, George W. Bush's Decision Points finished fourth for the year, despite a fall release. Laura Bush's memoir, Spoken From the Heart, was number 62.

28. Sisters in Crime survey delineates mystery/crime fiction market

According to a recently released study by Sisters in Crime, women over 45 constitute the majority of buyers in the mystery book genre.

"The Mystery Book Consumer in the Digital Age," survey was designed to offer an overview of the mystery/crime fiction book-buying market, using research based on publishing industry data gathered and interpreted by Bowker's PubTrack division.

The 47-page report is available at www.sistersincrime.org.

The study found that the majority of mystery/crime fiction buyers are women (68 percent) over the age of 45 (66 percent). Buyers in the 18-to-44 demographic buy 31 percent of the mysteries sold.

Some 48 percent of the mystery buyers live in the suburbs, 27 percent in rural areas and 25 percent in urban areas. The South accounts for 35 percent of sales, followed by the West (26 percent), Midwest (20 percent) and Northeast (19 percent).

Brick-and-mortar stores sell 39 percent of all mysteries, with library borrowing accounting for approximately 20 percent and online purchases 17 percent.  

The number one factor that determined how mystery readers became aware of books was found to be knowing/liking an author. The next four factors were: the book was part of a series; an in-store display/on shelf/spinning rack; a book-buying club such as the Book-of-the-Month Club or the Mystery Guild; and the recommendation of a friend or relative.

Fifty-seven percent of respondents said the book cover had "some influence" on their decision, while 18 percent said the cover had a "high influence."

29. Milestones: Records, Prizes and news of note in book publishing

Crown Publishing Group on Dec. 22 said the memoir of former president George W. Bush, Decision Points, sold more than two million hardcover and e-book copies since its release in early November. By comparison, former president Bill Clinton's memoir, My Life, has had total sales of 2.2 million copies since it was first published in 2004…

30. American Library Association names Newbery, Caldecott winners

The American Library Association presented its Youth Media Awards at its winter meeting in San Diego.

The Newbery medal went to Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool. The Caldecott went to A Sick Day for Amos McGhee illustrated by Erin Stead, and written by Philip Stead. Among other honorees, Tomie dePaola won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for "a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children."

Four Newbery Honor Books were named: One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (Amistad/HarperCollins), which also received the 2011 Coretta Scott King Author Award; Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm (Random House); Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus (Amulet/Abrams); and Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Rick Allen (Houghton Mifflin).

Two Caldecott Honor Books also were selected: Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave illustrated by Bryan Collier, written by Laban Carrick Hill (Little, Brown), which also received the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award. The other Caldecott Honor book is Interrupting Chicken, written and illustrated by David Ezra Stein (Candlewick).

The Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in YA literature went to Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown), which was also a National Book Award finalist. Four Printz Honor Books were chosen: Stolen by Lucy Christopher (Chicken House/Scholastic); Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King (Knopf); Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick (Roaring Brook/Macmillan); and Nothing by Janne Teller (Atheneum/S&S).

31. Disney Publishing Worldwide hits one million app downloads

Disney Publishing Worldwide has reached an important milestone, with one million downloads for its Disney Book Apps globally on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

Mickey’s Spooky Night Puzzle Book, Princess Dress-Up: My Sticker Book, Toy Story 3 Read-Along and Winnie the Pooh: What’s a Bear to Do? Puzzle Book, are among the most frequently downloaded applications on the iTunes app store.

Currently, Disney Publishing offers nine book apps.

All the Disney Publishing apps have been in the Top 10 Paid Book Apps since the iPad debuted in April 2010. In addition, four of the book apps are currently listed in the Top 10 in the iTunes App Store, and even nine months after launch, the Toy Story Read-Along app remains in the Top Five Book Apps in over 35 countries.

Disney was the first publisher to launch a vast library of over 500 children’s books online in September 2009.

Disney Publishing Worldwide (DPW) is the world's largest publisher of children's books and magazines, with over 250 million children’s books and over 400 million children's magazines sold each year.

32. News of chicanery, dishonesty and tort-feasing in the book business

Two Philadelphia law school professors have won more than $2 million in damages after a legal publisher released a book addendum bearing their names even though they didn't work on it. A federal jury found West Publishing Corp. defamed the professors when it published the 2008 addendum to their book on Pennsylvania criminal court procedures. The professors claimed West damaged their reputations by putting their names on an inferior product they didn't create. University of Pennsylvania professor David Rudovsky and Widener Law School professor Leonard Sosnov were awarded $2.5 million in punitive damages. They say they stopped work on the addendum because West wanted cut their pay for the addendum to $2,500 each. The publisher says it plans to appeal.

33. Author tells in Kindle offering how he corrupted Amazon reviews

Thomas Hertog, an author who initially wrote the Kindle book Wealth Hazards, claims he's manipulated the Amazon system by buying his book 200 times and posting fake reviews promoting the work.

Now he's peddling a new e-book, The Day the Kindle Died, in which he writes:

“I've purchased my own book, Wealth Hazards, close to 200 times now. I wrote 42 customer reviews and voted on them 108 times. Not once was a review or vote rejected by Amazon. It took about 45 days to move the book up to #1, but after it got there I didn't feel it was appropriate to promote it - so I have not profited from it. I continue to buy two or three copies a day, write reviews and vote on the reviews and wait for Amazon to notice.

“They haven't. They pay me royalties every month and recommend the book to people who buy similar personal finance titles. My new book The Day the Kindle Died is even more obvious - but Amazon hasn't noticed. They even recommend it to customers who purchase Amazon's own Kindle publishing manual. Amazon clearly has a problem with ranking books, creating the bestseller lists and making suitable recommendations to customers, but they don't appear to be in a hurry to correct this,” Hertog crowd.

But just as hubris leads to ate (pride goeth before a downfall), Hertog had his comeuppance a few days later.

In early January, Amazon removed Hertog's Kindle books - Wealth Hazards and The Day the Kindle Died - from its Web site. The removal proved temporary. The books were soon restored to the site, but without their reviews and rankings.

Hertog said it took "about 45 days" to maneuver his book to the number one spot in personal finance. "Not once was a review or vote rejected by Amazon," he observed.

According to the Guardian, Hertog's conclusion was that "Amazon's bestseller rankings are 'inaccurate,' 'contrived' and 'misleading' to customers (and) his findings meant 'the Kindle experience is dead.' "

34. David Sedaris puts out tip jar at signings, makes $4,000

According to a story by Adam Markovitz in Canada’s National Post,  David Sedaris made $4,000 with a tip jar while on a book tour.

“A couple of books ago, I put a tip jar on my signing table and I made over $4,000 on my tour,” Sedaris told the Post. “The problem was then I started hating people who didn’t tip me. I didn’t say anything to them, but I would just sit there thinking, ‘You cheap son of a bitch. I just signed four books and you can’t even give me a dollar?’ And why should they? But I just got so involved in it. I had to stop doing it.”

35. Fourth Trivandrum Book Fair concludes in India

The Fourth Trivandrum Book Fair was held at India’s Kanakakkunnu Palace from Dec. 18 through Dec. 22.

The fair was organized by the Kerala Balasahithya Institute as part of the Grand Kerala Shopping Festival, in association with the Frankfurt Book Fair, German Book Office, American Embassy and Alliance Francaise. Books from hundreds of publishers, both foreign and domestic, were for sale at the venue.

International publishing houses like Cambridge University Press, Scholastic; Indian publishers like Orient Blackswan and National Book Trust; and regional publishers like Mathrubhumi were among the companies whose books were available at the fair.

The fair is reported to have sold books worth one crore in its previous year.

In addition to the book sales, various other events took place in the last three days of the fair.

A Copyrights Table was set up for sale of rights for translation of eight thousand manuscripts.

A book reading session by Prof. Valerie Miner of Stanford University was held at the Suryakanthi auditorium. She read excerpts from her work, The Low Road: - A Scottish Family Memoir in an interactive session with the audience.

36. Rural India was theme of Delhi Book and Stationery Fair

The dynamics of rural India were presented through fine print at the 16th edition of the Delhi Book and Stationery Fair, which opened in Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, on Dec. 25, and ran to Jan. 2, 2011.

The fair is a collaboration of the India Trade Promotion Organization (ITPO) and the Federation of Indian Publishers (FIP).

This year’s event hosted 270 Indian and foreign publishers from countries like China, Pakistan and Iran, among others.

On display were books on education, academic fiction, non-fiction, literature, children's books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, periodicals, magazines, journals, teaching aids and computer software.

India has 16,000 publishers and 30,000 bookshops besides multi-national publishing companies like Oxford University Press, Macmillan, Penguin, Harper Collins, Random House, Hachette, Picador and Rutledge Harvard Business Publishing.

Around 70,000 titles are published in India every year, according to statistics compiled by ITPO and FIP.

Hindi accounts for the highest number of titles published every year, while 30 percent of all books are published in English.

The other major languages of publication include Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi and Tamil.

37. Sixth annual Karachi International Book Fair 2010 held Dec. 24-28

The Sixth Annual Karachi International Book Fair 2010 opened on Dec. 24 and concluded on Dec. 28.

Held at the Karachi Expo Center, the KIBF is the largest annual book event held in Pakistan.  The event brought 160 publishing and distribution houses together with domestic and international publishers, booksellers, librarians and institutional customers. An estimated 250,000 venders and visitors attended, with business of millions of rupees expected to be done. Publishers from various countries, including Singapore, Iran, Britain, Malaysia and India, participated.

One undesirable aspect of the event was the reluctance of Pakistani authorities to grant visa clearances to Indian publishers invited by the Pakistan Publishers and Book Sellers Association to participate. Initially, only three or four of the Indian publishers were given clearances by the Pakistani Interior Ministry. Eventually, 18 Indian publishers were cleared, but they were unable to reach Karachi before Dec. 26.

38. Boston Comic Con moving to Hynes Convention Center

The Spring 2011 edition of Boston Comic Con will double in size and move to a much larger venue, the Hynes Convention Center!

The move was essential to accommodate the growing popularity of the show.

The show will be held April 30-May 1. It will feature superstar creators Frank Quitely, Adam Hughes, Darwyn Cooke, Arthur Adams, Frank Cho, Tim Sale, Dave Johnson, and Golden Age legend Joe Kubert!
 

39.Major upcoming trade shows, book fairs and book festivals

January 2011

Jan. 7 -11. American Library Association's Midwinter Conference.  www.ala.org 
Jan. 11-13. Inspirational Value Book Show (IVBS).  www.ivbshow.com  
Jan. 16-17. Ciana Remainder Book Show, London.  http://www.ciana.co.uk 

February

Feb. 25-March 1. The National Association of College Stores Conference. www.nacs.org 
Ninth Hispanic Book Festival.  www.hispanicbookfestival.com or call Andres Puello, Festival Director, 281-558-3052
South Carolina Book Festival. http://www.scbookfestival.org

March

March 25-27. Spring Book Show, Cobb Galleria/Renaissance-Waverly Hotel, Atlanta, Ga. SBS is one of the largest remainder and bargain book shows in the world. www.springbookshow.com
National Association of College Stores (CAMEX). www.nacs.org
Bologna Children’s Book Fair.  www.bolognachildrensbookfair.com 

April

April 11-13. London Book Fair . www.londonbookfair.co.uk
April 30-May 1. Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. After 15 years at the UCLA campus in Westwood, the festival, which has grown into one of the biggest in the country, is moving to the University of Southern California's University Park Campus, near downtown Los Angeles. Last year, more than 140,000 people attended.
April 30- May 2. Museum Store Association’s Retail Conference & Expo.
April 30-May 1. Boston Comic Con, Hynes Convention Center.

May

May 23-26. BookExpo America, New York.  www.bookexpoamerica.com  
National Stationery Show,  New York.

June

June 24-29. American Library Association, Washington, DC. www.ala.org
June 27–30. ICRS - International Christian Retail Show,  St. Louis, Mo www.christianretailshow.com
Printers Row Book Fair, Chicago. http://www.chicagotribune.com/about/events/printersrow  
The Australian Booksellers Association's, Melbourne. The International New Age Trade Show West 

 July

July 21-24. Comic-Con International, San Diego, Calif. The grandfather of all comics shows, which began in 1970, and capped its attendance at 125,000 three years ago.
 

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